Love and the Loveless (2 page)

The speaker lay back, a fixed look on his face. There were dark grooves in his eye sockets. Phillip looked out of the window, and began to rattle his teeth to the rhythm of the wheels passing over the expansion gaps in the rails, while in his mind he sought to find, once more, the solution of a problem which had obsessed him for the past thirty-six hours: If he had behaved differently, would not Lily still be alive? Had he really betrayed his best friend by becoming friendly with her, after he had gone to ask her to let Desmond alone? If he had not interfered—if he had not—but he could think no further; and gave up the race with the wheels, and stared at the flat green countryside moving past. The carriage became a tank, scythes on the hubs of its wheels like Boadicea’s chariot, slicing down telegraph poles and their loops of wires rising and dropping swiftly with the speed of the train. His teeth now kept time to the thuds of the engine, while the imaginary scythes extended to the horizon, cutting down
everything,
trees, barns, churches, houses, hedges, levelling all things in every direction. Then everything would have no purpose any longer, and the heart of the earth could rest. Or start again without mankind, thus giving every tree, bird, and animal a fair chance. Mother, Father, his sisters then could find peace. If only the bomb had fallen on his own home, when all of them were in bed——

*

As the train slowed before Grantham, Pinnegar said, “If we’re out first, we’ll stand a chance of getting a taxi, now that petrol’s hard to get. If you look after my valise, I’ll go outside and collar one.” Phillip followed with the trolley, Pinnegar beyond the ticket barrier called out, “Our luck’s in!”

Sitting side by side in the T-model Ford with its high, tarred hood open at the sides, they left for the Training Centre. There they paid off the driver with the half-a-crown demanded, a fare which Pinnegar disputed, saying to the driver that a London taxi for the same distance would have been hardly more than a shilling. The driver persisted. “I shan’t give you a tip, anyway,”
as, with Phillip’s one and threepence added to his own, he almost tossed the coins into a grimy hand.

They joined other officers in the asbestos orderly room, standing before blanket-covered trestle tables at which sergeants sat, taking particulars and checking nominal rolls. Phillip and his new friend were given a number denoting their hut—B 6—and told that batmen would be detailed for them later on.

“First parade, nine o’clock Monday. Orders will be posted in the mess this evening,” said an officer with a limp and one arm missing, the assistant Adjutant.

“My God, what’ll we do till then?” grumbled Pinnegar. “That’s just like the Army! We could just as well have stopped in Town!”

Phillip was determined that this time he would work hard; no more fooling about. He went to B hut with Pinnegar, and together they looked in at various doors, to select the best cubicle, for most of them had cracks in the asbestos walls, while others were connected by holes.

“Someone’s had a rough house here,” remarked Pinnegar. Entering the end cubicle, “I say, I like this!” admiringly, for upon the walls were portraits in crayons of highly coloured and curved female figures, some clad only in high-heeled shoes and black stockings, and all with luring eyes. The friendly atmosphere of this cubicle, improved by six bullet holes in the ceiling, drew from Pinnegar a spontaneous, “My name’s Teddy. What’s yours? Right, how about a drink? Let’s find the mess, Phillip.”

“Suits me, Teddy.”

Valises and haversacks having been dumped on the floor, the two friends went outside, eventually to discover a large marquee of grey canvas. Inside, scores of trestle tables were ranged beside wooden forms for seats. There was no flooring, the grass was already crushed into the damp soil. Half a dozen elderly men in long-sleeved yellow-and-black footmen’s
waistcoats
above aprons of green baize were unpacking square wicker baskets containing table-cloths, boxes of knives, forks, spoons, and glasses. The wind flapped the loose canvas of the marquee, a sparrow flew up by one of the brown poles, seeking a way out. A man looking like the steward came forward, bowed, and said smoothly, “Tea will be at half past four, gentlemen.”

“How about a drink?”

“I’m afraid not until dinner, sir.”

“Who’s running this show? The Temperance League?”

“Curling and Hammer, from London, sir.”

“What time is dinner, d’you know?”

“Seven o’clock, sir. We hope to have everything ready by that hour.”

“This is all new since I was last here,” remarked Pinnegar, outside. “And to think we might have remained in London! I’ve got a bottle in my valise. How about a drink in the cubicle?”

“Good idea,
mein
prächtig
kerl!
”

“I wish they were alive, don’t you?” said Teddy, eyeing the chalk figures on the walls. “You’ve got a hell of a fat valise. What’s in it?”

“A gramophone.”

“Good. Let’s have some music!”

Phillip put on a record, which he had played many times to himself,
The
Garden
of
Sleep,
sung by Sidney Coltham, a light tenor. “I like the way he sings,” said Pinnegar, and Phillip felt closer to his new friend. They were listening to Kreisler playing
Caprice
Viennoise
when the door opened, to reveal two subalterns standing there, with their valises. One, with the badges of a Northumberland Fusilier, was obviously a ranker officer, for he wore the riband of the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

Hiding the bottle, Pinnegar said, “How the hell do they expect us to get four camp beds down in this small space? What do they think we are, bloody hens? No wonder the walls have caved in next door!”

“’Tis better than nowt,” said the Northumbrian. He had dark small eyes in a face pitted with blue specks, which gave him a badly-shaven appearance. “Th’ lads would be glad of this on the Somme. D’you mind if we come in?” Phillip noticed that the back of his hands were dark-speckled, too.

“Please yourself,” said Pinnegar.

“I’ve bagged next to the wall,” said Phillip. “Under the window. I can’t sleep with a window closed.”

“How I agree!” said the fourth man, with a glance at Phillip’s wound stripes. He, like the Northumbrian, looked newly commissioned.

Phillip offered his cigarette case.

“I don’t mind if I do,” said the Northumbrian.

“Awful good of you,” said the other. “By the way, my name is Montfort.”

Four cigarettes having been lighted, and some foxtrots listened to, Pinnegar suggested that they all go down to take a look at the town. “There might be a revue at the theatre!”

The main street was filled with officers, all apparently new arrivals like themselves. They walked down one pavement, passing by shops with the least interest, and came to a large forbidding iron-works, sombre with its own smoke-stains; and returning on the opposite pavement for variety, went down to look at the outside of the theatre.
The
Man
Who
Stayed
at
Home.
A play. “I’ve seen it. Thank God I was tight at the time. Utter tripe!” said Pinnegar. So they visited a dull façade of ironwork, wood, and corrugated posters advertising Theda Bara and Mary Pickford, which was the local Picture Palace.

“I’ve seen them both,” said Pinnegar. “My God, what a hell of a place to spend Saturday afternoon.”

They stood on the pavement, each of them severed from the life he had known, spiritually and physically—four acquaintances casually come together, to adhere in the moment through
loneliness
: four among thousands of immature men with lost or withered roots recently sent into the district, yet scarcely knowing what was lacked. Where should they go? Tea at the Angel? Or one of the tea-shops? Which would be the most likely place for girls? They looked into two tea-shops. No girls there, only soldiers; so they went into the Angel.

“As I thought, a place for brass-hats,” remarked Pinnegar, at the door of a long room. “And they’ve taken all the fire.”

“They’ll hear you,” whispered Phillip.

“Who cares? Our money’s as good as theirs, isn’t it?”

Armchairs with red-tabbed figures in long shining brown boots and spurs were spoked round an open hearth. “Cavalry!” Pinnegar eyed the backs of the recumbent figures with hostility, as he sat on a hard-backed chair.

“Do you like poetry as well as music?” said Phillip, not at ease with Pinnegar’s remarks.

“Some things, yes. Why?”

Phillip took from his pocket book a poem originally copied from
The
Times,
which he knew by heart. It was now much frayed, having been carried in his pocket diary for nearly a year.

“Let’s have a look,” said Pinnegar. “I’ll tell you if it’s any good.”

He read a few lines, and snorted. Almost angrily he read on, then throwing down the paper, exclaimed, “Absolute tripe,
in my opinion! The person who wrote that had never been anywhere near the front!”

“As a matter of fact,” said Phillip, hiding his disappointment, “the man who wrote this died of wounds soon after sending the poem home to his father.”

“Tripe all the same,” repeated Pinnegar. “All that glory of war stuff gets my goat.”

“Give us a look.” Phillip passed the clipping to the
Northumbrian
, saying, “It’s not glory of war.”

Pinnegar was persistent. “I still say that no-one before a battle thinks like that. I’ve been in two, and I damned well know what I’m talking about!”

“Aiy, that’s true,” said the Northumbrian, sombrely, his eyes lifting from the print after reading half-a-dozen words. “I was in attack at Glory Hole in front of La Boisselle, and I had no sich thoughts before we went over t’bags, and got coot oop by Jerry’s machine guns.”

“I was hit in Mash Valley, just north of the Glory Hole,” said Phillip. “This is an idealist’s poem, I agree, but Julian Grenfell had been in a battle, and won the D.S.O. before he wrote this.”

“Yes, in the cavalry!” said Pinnegar, hotly. “And the son of a lord! With bags of decent grub sent out in hampers from Curling and Hammer’s in Piccadilly! What has the cavalry done, since 1914? Even then, they covered the Retreat on
horseback
, while the poor bloody footsloggers wore their boots to the uppers and got court-martialled when they lost their nerve and wandered off, driven scatty by fighting all day and marching all night!”

“Steady on! Those staff wallahs may hear what you’re saying.”

“I don’t give a damn! I’m not frightened of a bunch of gallopers! I got a bullet through my ribs during the flame attack at Hooge in 1915, and another at Arras early this year, and I never saw a cavalryman the whole time I was in France! They were sitting on their bottoms in rear areas, hunting foxes, shooting hares and pheasants, and living on the fat of the land! French was a horse soldier, so was Haig, so was Gough, and all the others at the top. What do they know of barbed wire and the front line? Sweet fanny adams!”

“Aye, that’s a fact,” said the Northumbrian, giving back the clipping.

“May I see it?” asked Montfort. Phillip passed it to him, saying, “Anyway, Pinnegar, I think it’s a very fine poem. Though during First Ypres I must admit I didn’t feel like Julian Grenfell did, when he wrote this poem.”

“Of course you didn’t, nor did anybody else!” Pinnegar held out his hand for the paper. “Look at this!”

that bit’s all right, I’m not objecting to that, it’s the next bit that gets my goat,

‘He is dead who will not fight.’ Yes, if he’s a tommy, as I said just now, who loses his nerve and ends up being tied to a post, or stood up against a wall of some château pinched for Corps Headquarters, and shot by a firing squad! Otherwise he who fights is damned lucky to get a blighty one, and not an army blanket in a shell-hole! Which anyway the poor stiff has to pay for! How anyone can seriously believe that bit about having increase if he dies fighting beats me altogether! It’s tripe, as I said.”

“Officers are rich men, and don’t think the same as t’ poor man as has to work ’ard for a living,” said the Northumbrian, sententiously.

“What are you, a bloody Socialist?” asked Pinnegar, hotly. “I’ve no time for that tripe!”

“You’re middle-class, I can see that, Pinnegar. I’m a workin’ man. I’ve ’ad to work ’ard, I ’ave, all my life, and no college education. I’ve lain many an hour sweatin’ at craggin’ lip. I got these bits of coal in t’ face from a premature shot.” He stared from one to another with the expression as dark as coal itself.

“Come off it, you old four-flusher,” smiled Pinnegar. “How the hell did you get a commission, without any education?”

“Night School,” replied the Northumbrian.

“What the hell’s wrong with Night School?” exclaimed Pinnegar. “That’s where Lloyd George got his education.”

“And Horatio Bottomley,” said the Northumbrian. “Don’t forget Bottomley!”

“Bottomley my foot!” cried Pinnegar. “The biggest bloody crook unhung!”

“Hear hear,” said Phillip, echoing Mr. Hollis, senior clerk in the office. Would Downham now be at Catterick?

“Then what the hell are we arguing about, Phil?” said Pinnegar, smiling suddenly.

“I don’t know—Teddy!” Phillip felt warmth towards him.

“I were sergeant of machine-gun section in France, and was promoted on field when t’ officer were killed,” remarked the Northumbrian.

“Obviously you’re a bloody good man, to get
the D.C.M.,” said Pinnegar. “Too good to talk Socialist guff. What’s your name?”

“Fenwick. Some’s call me Darky.”

“Right, Darky!”

Fenwick seemed sombrely pleased to be called by this name.