How Dear Is Life (34 page)

M
RS.
N
EVILLE
, seated in her window with its view of the lower slopes of the grassy Hill, and all of Hillside Road, saw Mrs. Maddison walking down the pavement with what looked like Timmy Rat’s box held in one hand by its strap. She knew the box well; for invariably Phillip had brought it down to show Desmond every time he had returned home for the holidays.
I just brought Timmy down to welcome Desmond home again, Mrs
.
Neville.
His
box
is
quite
clean
,
really
—she could hear Phillip’s voice now: at times he had such a charming, diffident manner, just like his father.

Where was Mrs. Maddison going with the box? Was she coming to see her, and perhaps ask her to take care of Phillip’s white rat? Had Phillip’s father decided that he would not have it in the house any longer? Surely not, while Phillip was away at the front! Well, really, whatever the reason, if Mrs. Maddison intended to ask her to look after Timmy—no, no, she must not say yes! It was unhealthy. Rats and mice—she drew the line at rats and mice. Desmond’s hedgehog, that the boys had once brought home in a handkerchief, to unroll on the carpet and dip its head in milk—when, surprisingly, it unrolled
to lap up the saucer—had been able to take care of itself in the garden—but Timmy Rat in her kitchen, never! She must be firm!

It was shortly after eleven o’clock on the morning of Monday, the 2nd of November. The day had started with rain, but now it had cleared. The sun was shining in her kitchen window; and having carried her cup of mid-morning tea to the sitting-room, Mrs. Neville, comfortable in her chair, had worked off her slippers, and with cup-handle ready in position for the first slow reflective sip, had taken up the morning paper. At that moment she caught sight of Phillip’s mother; and she was about to get up from her chair, to open the window and ask Mrs. Maddison in for a cup of tea, when her eyes caught the headlines on the front page of the paper lying across her knees.

LONDON HIGHLANDERS IN ACTION

BAYONET CHARGE RESTORES

BROKEN LINE SOUTH

OF YPRES

Heavy German Losses

Tears sprang from her eyes. “O my God!” she said, staring through them. Phillip! Mrs. Cakebread’s two boys! The three Wallace brothers just down the road! They must have been in it! O my God! poor Phillip’s mother! That was it! Phillip’s father wanted to get rid of Timmy because—O, surely not! What dreadful thoughts she was capable of! Mary, Mother of God, forgive me!

Mrs. Neville dabbed her eyes, and rising swiftly for one so weighty from a chair none too big for her bulk, managed to throw up the window and call out to the familiar trim little figure just as it was going round the corner into Charlotte Road. Thank God, Mrs. Maddison smiled when she turned her face! Then everything must be all right—so far, at any rate. Mrs. Neville touched the wood of her table.

She waited while the small smiling figure crossed the road, and composed herself for the moment of speaking when Mrs. Maddison should stop by the railings at the end of the open, tiled approach to the flats. Then in her best party voice Mrs. Neville called down, sweetly,

“Do come up and have a cup of tea, dear, if you can spare the time. I’ve just made a pot! I’ll come down and let Mazeppa out. Then Timmy will be safe in his box on the mat, behind the closed door.”

Mrs. Neville, having drawn a deep breath in order to put on her shoes, hid the paper under a cushion, and went down the stairs and opened the door, Mazeppa mewing before her.

“Do come in, Mrs. Maddison. Out you go, Mazeppa now! Away with you, lazy cat! All he thinks about is his food. There now, Timmy will be safe on the mat. Go up, dear, will you? I’m such a weight, I’ll follow you. You’ll have a cup of tea, won’t you? I’ve only just made it. Go up, dear, and sit down, while I fetch another cup.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Neville.”

“Well now, what is the latest about Phillip?” said Mrs. Neville, sweetly, having brought in her tray. “No news is good news, I always say.”

“Yes, Mrs. Neville!” replied Hetty, almost gaily. “Phillip is very well, he says. They are staying in an empty convent, somewhere in France, having moved up from the railhead where they were working. He does not say, of course, what he is doing, but it is nice to think that they are in a convent, with wooden floors, too. He was always such a delicate child, and prone to catch cold.”

“Well, let’s hope the war will be over by Christmas, dear. I hope you don’t mind me calling you ‘dear’—‘Mrs. Maddison’ sounds so formal, for Phillip’s mother, somehow.” She paused, listening.

“What’s that noise? Did you hear it, dear? There it is again.”

“It is Timmy coughing, Mrs. Neville. He is not very well, I am afraid, nothing contagious, but he has croup, and wheezes such a lot that my husband thought that, as he was also very old, and the war, he thinks, may go on for sometime—well, perhaps it would be kinder to have Timmy put to sleep.”

To her surprise she saw Mrs. Neville’s eyes suddenly look staring and large, before she lowered her head and sought her
handkerchief. She too had felt almost like crying at the thought of Phillip’s pet being put to sleep—not the ‘put down’ of Dickie, such a harsh term. What would Phillip say when he heard?

“There now,” said Mrs. Neville, looking up. “How very silly I am, to be crying because of Timmy! Of course, dear, Phillip’s father knows best, and Timmy may have something contagious. Why soon, like me, he’ll be losing his teeth!” she cried, with a little shriek of merriment. At once her face became serious. “Well, it is so nice of you to come and see me—do drop in, dear, any time you want to, won’t you? I’ll come down with you and let Mazeppa in. He is quite a companion for me, you know, now that the boys are all away from home.”

At the door Hetty said goodbye, and carrying the box, went on down Charlotte Road. She was about to turn into Dorrie’s when she saw Mr. Bolton coming out from his gate, and start to walk up towards her, as though he wanted to say something. He raised his bowler to her in rather less than his usual courtly and deliberate manner; and he appeared to stagger. Could he have been drinking? Then she realised that never before had she seen Mr. Bolton without his pug-dog on its lead.

She smiled and nodded, and was about to go through the gate when Mr. Bolton waved his stick, and began to walk faster than his usual slow gait towards her. By now she knew that something had happened; and going to meet him, saw that his face was drawn, and tears running down his cheeks.

“Oh, Mr. Bolton, is anything the matter?”

He bowed, and lifted his hat. Holding it against his fawn covert coat with its brown velvet collar, he looked at her with his pale eyes and said huskily, “M’am, my boy has been killed in action.”

“Oh dear, Mr. Bolton——” said Hetty, and then realised that he was with the London Highlanders.

“Oh dear, what can I say? Oh, I am so sorry! Oh yes, of course. Have you—have you only just heard, Mr. Bolton?”

“Not ten minutes since. Yes, it came—the War Office telegram—just as I was setting out for my walk on the Hill. Your boy, Phillip, I trust, is all right?”

‘’Oh yes, we heard only this morning! He says he is billeted in an unfinished convent.”

Mr. Bolton stared at Hetty, as though striving for breath, or words; then he said, “There has been a great battle, Mrs. Maddison. I trust all will be well with your son.”

“Oh, Mr. Bolton, have they all been in it?”

“Yes, m’am. But they saved the day, according to
The
Times.
”

She managed to say, “Believe me, you have my deepest sympathy in your loss.” Her voice added, with a slight tremor, “These things are in the hands of God, as are all our lives, especially in these times.”

Bogey the pug-dog was now to be heard and seen, barking violently, his anxious black face at one of the front windows of Mr. Bolton’s house.

“Ah, the little fellow, he knows!” muttered Mr. Bolton. “Well, I must go to him.” But the old man seemed loath to be left alone. “Will your father be going on the Hill this morning, do you think, Mrs. Maddison?” he muttered next.

“Oh yes, he is sure to, Mr. Bolton! He will be deeply grieved to hear of your son’s—passing.”

The old man drew himself up. “Well, life must go on,” he said, with a ruined smile. “There’s the little fellow barking for me. I shall have to go and attend to him.” He went slowly back to his house.

Dorrie had not yet looked at the morning paper. Now the sisters opened it together.

“We must continue to hope, Dorrie. And to pray that God will hear our prayers.”

As she was leaving, Hetty remembered Timmy Rat in his box, waiting in the hall.

“Oh no, I could not bring myself to take Phillip’s pet down now, Dorrie! Certainly not! Dickie would never forgive me. Oh no! We can only hope and pray. Yes, I must wait and consult Dickie before I do anything now.”

And with the box in her hand, she returned up Hillside Road, watched by Mrs. Neville, who had already heard, from Soal the greengrocer and coalman, that Mr. Bolton’s son had been killed.

Later that afternoon, as, house-work done, Mrs. Neville sat by the window sewing, she saw the telegraph boy pass on his red bicycle. The boy prepared to alight, one boot scraping on the road used as brake, while standing on the pedal with the other. Oh no, don’t say that he was going to the Wallace’s! Pretending to post a letter, she took an old envelope, put on a coat, and went downstairs and out to the post-box, feeling as though it were a matter of her own life and death.

She waited just inside the narrow lane, leading to the back-garden doors of the flats, until she saw the boy come out of the gate, and then moved, envelope in hand, guiltily towards the pillar box. She passed the boy as he wheeled his machine away from the curb, preparatory to mounting.

“Do you realise, I wonder,” she said to the boy, with a smile, “what the sight of you stopping in a road, in these times, can mean to a mother who has a son at the front?”

“Don’t blame me, m’am. I don’t know what’s in me telegrams. Only sometimes, like.”

“Were you the little boy who brought the telegram to Mr. Bolton’s, this morning?”

“’Im what’s son was killed? Yuss, I did an’ all. And the lady I just bin to’s ’ad three killed, all together. I wouldn’t take nothin’ from ’er, though she offered me a copper.”

“You are a good, kind boy,” said Mrs. Neville. “Now you wait here, dear, and I will bring you a nice orange.”

On the same day Hetty went down to show Mrs. Neville the Field Post-card which had arrived by the eleven o’clock post, all the various laconic printed items of information crossed out in indelible pencil except
I
am
well
,
and Phillip’s signature. In her relief Mrs. Neville said gaily, “You know, dear, Phillip was always getting into scrapes, and managing to get out of them, and somehow I feel he will come through all right. He’s got his wits about him, very much so, has Phillip.” Then at the sight of Mr. Bolton coming out of his gate, with Bogey, to go for his walk upon the Hill, her large face started to shake, and tears streaked the powder on her cheeks.

“It’s November, dear. I always get like this when the leaves fall, don’t take any notice of me,” she smiled. “At any rate, the London Highlanders have done their bit, and it will be some time before his battalion is used again, so that is one comfort.”

“Yes,” said Hetty, almost gaily. “Dome had a letter from
Bertie just now, apparently they have gone back to rest, and to be refitted. I am just going to post Phillip a parcel, with a red chest-protector in it, from his grandfather, to keep out the cold.”

P
HILLIP
thought that Bailleul was a pleasant town. Two things made him contented: they were allowed to go into the estaminets and drink beer and
café-rhum
in the evening; and cousin Bertie had turned up, safe and sound. There was no rule about privates being seen with sergeants, so it was good to have Bertie to talk to, sometimes. Gerry was in hospital at the base with a shrapnel ball in his thigh.

Bit by bit news of the company casualties got around. Baldwin had been killed at once. Elliott had been hit by a shell as they were coming into the open out of l’Enfer wood. He had lain all doubled up, his leg and arm bones protruding out of a tattered mass of kilt and tunic. “Grannie” Henshaw had a bullet in the shoulder, in the withdrawal, and was already in England. Bertie was in high feather: he said the new Colonel of the Coldstream, with which his grandfather and great-uncles had served, had applied for him, and the C.O. had signed his papers for a commission.

From Bertie Phillip learned that the battalion was to remain at Bailleul for a large draft expected from the 2nd Battalion in England. New rifles were to be issued. Phillip had reported that his had been struck by a bullet; he said nothing about die carbine, left beside Martin as the Germans were breaking through. “I went, sir, with the others, to man the reserve line.”

The Grande Place of Bailleul was filled with guns—long-toms, or naval guns from the South African war, all newly painted in blotches of decaying cabbage. Lacking ammunition, they had been withdrawn from the line, but to the troops they were part of the reserve, which showed that things could not be too bad. The town seemed to be a centre for Territorials. The two cousins, in the bar of the Faucon d’Or, talked with some of the Honourable Artillery Company. They looked at the dining-room, where wall-mirrors had been broken by drunken Uhlan
officers throwing empty bottles about. There were various stories of Uhlan atrocities. Before leaving a house in which they had been billeted, a house owned by an old lady and her servant, some German officers had taken out all the sheets in the linen-press, spread them over the beds they had slept in, and then fouled them, for a joke. In another billet they had done the same thing upon some of the plates of a set of delicate china taken from a glass-fronted cupboard; then they had put back the plates. And yet, when he went into a butcher’s shop to buy a piece of sausage, Phillip learned that the Germans had paid for everything they had asked for, though in silver marks, with the eagle on one side. The Germans had told the butcher that the money would be good after the war. Phillip exchanged one of his silver francs for a German mark as a souvenir, a new word picked up from the regulars.

The H.A.C. were very nice chaps, he thought, although somehow they did not look like soldiers, with their long lavender-coloured greatcoats. It was the same colour as that worn by the Officer of the Guard at the Bank of England, which he had watched one autumn evening of the previous year, marching through the City. He wondered if they would have to have khaki coats before they could go into the line, lest they be mistaken for Germans. The German coats were more grey than the H.A.C. overcoats, judging from those he had seen on prisoners.

During the second evening out with Bertie, there was an ominous increase in the gun-fire rolling down the wind. Another attack was being made for Ypres. Phillip was glad to be out of it: it was generally agreed that they had done their bit; but a shock was coming: after dinner the next day Sergeant Furrow entered the billet to announce company parade, full marching order, at four o’clock, to go into the line that night.

“That’s torn it,” remarked Lance-corporal Collins.

“Why don’t they send in the H.A.C.?” said Church. “They’ve only lost two men so far, digging reserve trenches, by stray shellfire.”

“But Sergeant!” said Phillip. “How can I go? I haven’t got my new rifle! There weren’t enough to go round! I am supposed to wait until the next issue!”

“You’ll be given one before parade, from the transport men.”

Phillip followed him out of the billet.

“Please, Sergeant, may I be allowed to see the Company Commander?”

“What about?”

“I want to transfer to the transport.”

“Why?”

“I like horses, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Furrow looked at him from his superior height and said slowly and softly, “You’ll find yourself on a piece of paper one day.”

Phillip saw Church looking at him with his slightly projecting teeth showing. He never knew whether Church was smiling, or sneering, with those teeth. He had looked at him like that ever since the ‘Leytonstone louts’ remark. He wondered, too, what was wrong in applying to go on the transport? Other chaps had said it was a good thing to be in.

Sergeant Furrow’s remark recurred many times to his mind, as he rode up to Ypres by ’bus, now almost desperately missing Baldwin. So far he had not thought of Norman as dead; only a blank. Now, as with slight horror he imagined a crumpled piece of newspaper lying beside a hedge, and realised what Furrow meant, the idea of never having Norman with him again was like a blow.

Norman
Baldwin
dead
,
and
gone
for
ever
persisted as a thought, as
he marched up the Menin road once more. Fresh blisters had formed under the “New Skin” on his heels, so that he padded along with a sort of lope, constantly getting out of step, to the annoyance of the man behind him. German shells were dropping both sides of the road. The rifle dished out to him was the old Mark I; it would not take the pointed ammunition clips.
You
’
ll
find
yourself
on
a
piece
of
paper
one
day!
He was that awful word, which some of the men used! Suddenly he remembered he had used it, as a joke, to describe the shag in the Free Library book. Thence to mind-pictures of Reynard’s Common, Whitefoot Lane woods, bluebells everywhere in spring—trying to think of anything except Baldwin dead—and this time, perhaps——O, no, no, it could not be——

Mother—Mother——

*

In the darkness every 18-pounder firing blanched the road and fossilised the roadside trees with its narrow white smiting stab. They had passed beyond the gigantic moth-wing orange flashes
of two up-pointing howitzers, the orange-wing flash smacking away its shell with high corkscrewing rush diminishing into the sky. After the 18-pounders, they must be near the front line. A spreading crackle of musketry was to be heard in front. Someone pointed out the château of Hooge, now in gun-light seen half in ruins. And less than a week ago they had paraded in front of it, for the General’s inspection! Beyond the deserted château soldiers were standing in the doorways of broken white-washed cottages.

There had been visible a pale greenish tinge in the lower sky as they were marching up. Now through trees on either side of the road he saw what someone said were parachute lights rising up to hang at the top of their arcs, and drop slowly down, spilling wavery light like that of burning magnesium. A wood came between them and the firing line as they turned off the road and went along a track to a farm, which Captain Ogilby told Sergeant Furrow was Bellewaarde. They were in reserve, to dig support trenches and build redoubts. Phillip was one of three men under Lance-corporal Blunden for Headquarters guard. This meant twenty four hours respite, every two hours out of six on sentry-go, followed by four off to sleep.

The guard-room was in a shed, next to the farmhouse kitchen, used as the orderly-room. The shed had dry straw on its earthen floor. He was No. 3 sentry, his first spell from ten o’clock to midnight. This meant four blessed hours sleep at once.

At ten o’clock he was awakened. It was rather fun, having two hours before him in which to challenge all who approached, and demand their regiment. There were many troops passing, ration fatigues and working parties.

“Halt, who goes there?”

“Black Watch.”

“Pass, Black Watch.”

The flares filled the wood with mystery, so did spent bullets flopping down. What strange German had fired into the dark?

“Halt, who goes there?”

“Camerons.”

“Pass, Camerons.”

They staggered past, carrying big cubes of shining tin which glinted in the flares for ever rising beyond the black, seeming-shifting trees.

“Halt, who goes there.”

“Coldstream.”

“Pass, Hotwater!”

A voice called out, “Who the pushin’ hell d’ye think yeer? Harry Lauder on stilts?” in truculent Glaswegian accent.

“Fred Karno’s Army.”

A cat was wailing on the broken wall of a building.

“Puss! Puss! Where are you?”

“Mee-aw-iou!” cried one of the Goalies.

“Halt, who goes there?”

“Puss in pushin’ boots!”

“Pass, friend!”

They went away with their biscuit boxes, talking about it, while Phillip had a quiet in-throat laugh to himself. Up the old Bloodhounds! If only he could see Cranmer again.

Bullets smacked among the trees. It was eerie with the worn-out moon adding its half-black shine to the powdery pallor of the German parachute flares.

He tramped up and down, to keep warm, to pass away time till midnight. Midnight Parade—Glinka’s! He sang the song to himself, while the unseen cat mewed thinly on the broken wall. He stared, trying to see it; and was turning away when it seemed that someone had caught hold of his coat above the waist and tried to jerk it off, together with the rifle slung on his shoulder. His first thought was that the Guardsmen had attacked him for insulting their regimental name. But nothing else happened. Feeling the place of the blow, he discovered that his greatcoat was ripped across the front. A button was shattered, the webbing sling of his rifle cut. With a shaking feeling he realised that, as he had turned away, a bullet had hit the coat parallel to his body.

How welcome was the midnight relief, and a mug of hot sweet milky tea offered by gentle, dark little Blunden, who had been a messenger of the London, Liverpool, and Globe Insurance Office before the war. Then down upon the straw, with four blessed hours in which he could belong to himself.

*

In the morning the greatcoat was an object for wonder. Even Major Forbes, the acting C.O., came to see it. The orderly room sergeant put an extra tot of rum in his mug of tea. As he ate fried bacon sitting in the straw, he heard from the orderly room talk that they were now attached to the 1st Guards Brigade, under General Fitzclarence, a famous hero. At Bailleul, in the
estaminet, there had been talk of how he had saved the day, rallying the Worcesters with a hunting horn when the line had been broken on the morning of Hallo’e’n. They were in the 1st Corps, commanded by Sir Douglas Haig, whose headquarters were the White Château just outside Ypres.

In the afternoon Phillip rejoined “B” Company in the wood while scouts went forward to Gheluvelt to find the headquarters of the battalion to which the company was now attached.

They waited, silent and tired, each one suspended in the noise of almost continuous firing.

There had been a re-arrangement in the battalion: the eight-company system had been changed to four, as among the regular battalions. “A” and “B” had been merged into No 1 Company, under Captain Ogilby. A new arrival, 2-Lieutenant Thorverton, was second-in-command.

While they waited, a soldier looking like an old-clo’ man went by, in his hand a sheet of newspaper. He was obviously bent on retirement among the trees. It was five days old, as Phillip saw when the bearded, stumpy, muffler’d, woollen-balaclava’d, buttonless-tunic’d, mitten’d object stopped to ask for a light for his German cigar.

“Let’s have a squint, mate,” Phillip called to him.

The fellows crowded round, as he read out an account of the Battle for the Channel Ports. It mentioned Gheluvelt, Hooge, and other familiar names which he saw almost with a shock. To his disappointment there was nothing about Messines, although he realised that there had been no time for an account when the paper was printed.

“A newsboy here would make his fortune,” said someone.

“Ta chum,” said the old-clo’ man, taking his paper back and wandering off, puffing the cigar.

They waited. The day dulled. The shelling increased. Wounded men began to appear, walking down among the trees. It began to drizzle. At last orders came to lead on. They filed away to the Menin Road, and marched away from the line. Cheerfulness at once returned; but soon after they turned off the road, and breaking step, followed along a yellow cart-rutted track, towards woods with the floating smoke of bombardment above them.

The track led into plantations of spruce and larch. It became a drive, with cross-drives among chestnut stoles, above which
rose standard trees of oak and ash. Occasional trees were smashed by shell-fire. Phillip heard the crowing of cock pheasants in the dense covert; and suddenly, as they were crossing a drive, four invisible 18-pounders let fly, the shells scorching seemingly overhead so close that they ducked. Yet the battery was not visible: only fragments of cordite bags dropping in the momentary hot air quiver of four buffeting cracks. Thank God they were ours, he thought, seeing a notice nailed to a tree—
Het
est
verboden
in
het
bossch
te
gaan
—and with an interior start realising that this was the same Belgium in which he had found the long-tailed tit’s nest outside the Ursulines convent at Wespelaer, when he and Mother had gone there to fetch Mavis for a holiday in Brussels, and they had all visited, Gran’pa and Uncle Joey and cousin Petal, the Field of Waterloo, and the guide who looked and spoke like an old sergeant called himself Captain Welsh and outlined the plan of the battle on top of the memorial pyramid with a malacca cane worn down almost to a stub, uttering words to which he had not listened, they had seemed so unreal, like the picture in the front room at home of Blücher greeting Wellington after the battle among the dead and dying men and horses—and now this was like the picture in the front room, with
Baldwin
dead
and
nearly
four
hundred
others
in
the
battalion.
And yet how
could
it be happening to him, was it real, was it all a bad dream?