Love and the Loveless (25 page)

The taximan was waiting for his money, the flag being down. “Let me pay,” said Ghing.

“No no, really.” Phillip gave the driver a ten-shilling note and, seeing his disabled soldier's badge, told him to keep the change. Gratefully the driver drove away.

“Ten shillings!” said Mavis. “What do you want to do that for? The fare was a shilling on the meter, with one and sixpence extra. That's half a crown! Three shillings would have been ample!”

She was near to tears. In the train her brother had spoken nearly all the time to Nina. And why had he asked Ching to come, when he knew how she disliked him? He disliked Ching, too; he had always said so. Then why, except to spite her? It wasn't fair. He had always done things like that. He knew very well that Ching was a pest, calling at the house whenever he came on leave, and staying there, making sheep's eyes at her. She wished she had not come. Poor Mother, left all alone at home.”

“Come, Elizabeth, we're all going to enjoy ourselves,” whispered Nina.

“But ten shillings, don't you see it would have helped Mother quite a lot. Father gives her precious little housekeeping money, as it is.”

Ching had an inspiration. He bought two bunches of flowers—the largest in the basket—and offered the first to Mavis.

“No thank you. I really couldn't.”

“I'll carry them for you until you get back home, Mavis.”

The use of that awful name made her say shortly, “No thanks.”

“Oh well,” said Ching. “How about you, Doris? You can have the two bunches, if you like.”

Loyal to her sister, Doris promptly said, “No thank you!”

“Lovely wallflowers, lady,” said the flower girl.

“How about you, Nina? Wouldn't you like them?”

“Well, its awfully kind of you, but really——”

“All right. I don't want these, after all,” he said, to the young woman in the straw boater held on by a long hat pin, and a shawl over her shoulders.

“Such lovely flowers, too, ducks! Do you want y'r money back?” The affection in the woman's voice caused something to break in Ching. “No. I'd like you to have them.”

“Tell you what, love, I'll give you y'r money back, and you can treat me to this lovely bunch of lavender. It'll keep, see. Go on, take the money, ducks. I can sell my flowers many times over, 'tisn't like before the war.” She gave Ching back his florin. “Now the lavender'll be tuppence, ducks. Ta! And good luck, dear!”

Phillip looked across the road at Eugene, who had not seen them yet. The Brazilian was looking at himself in the shop-window glass, as he adjusted bow tie, angle of straw boater, and set of grey herring-bone jacket with its hand-stitched lapels. Unaware of being watched, Eugene admired his own good looks, particularly his mouth, lips, fine white teeth, and almond eyes, which had been praised by many girls and women.

Led by Phillip, the five “Wakenhamites” left the island, to cross in a gap of the traffic. Eugene saw them coming, and waited with some satisfaction to meet Mavis, whose looks and figure he had long admired.

Eugene lifted his boater, letting fall the eyeglass.

After introductions, Phillip suggested their old haunt, The Popular, before Eugene could ask about the Piccadilly Grill. He remembered the last time he had been there with Desmond and Gene—and the bill, nearly five pounds, which, as usual, he had paid.

“Take the girls there, will you, you two, and order what you and they want while I slip away to book seats for the show.”

When he rejoined them he noted with satisfaction that Gene and Mavis were getting on well. Leaning over the table, he was telling the girls the story of
Madame
Butterfly,
his eyes returning again and again to the face of Mavis. A bottle of “Popular Huzzar” sherry stood on the table, with five unsipped glasses.
“Come on, knock this back!” said Phillip, emptying his glass. “It's quite harmless. Where's Ching?”

“He's gone, Phillip.”

“Why, Nina?”

“He said he knew when he wasn't wanted,” said Doris.

“The truth at last!” said Mavis.

“Poor old Ching. However, don't let the talking stop the drinking!”

The orchestra, by special request, struck up
Butterfly.
Soup arrived; the empty bottle was taken away with the plates, to be replaced by fish and a bottle of Chablis. Claret with the chicken, but no potatoes—“Sorry, sir, a Ministry of Food order—no potatoes on Saturday!” However, the salad seemed to give the second bottle of claret a better taste than the first. By the time coffee was served, with kümmel, the party was a success. Why was it, Phillip wondered, that whenever he had a few drinks and others didn't, it always seemed as though others had had as much as he had? He ordered brandy and cigars—for dear old Gene and himself. Damme, Mavis was jolly pretty; at moments, she had a gentle beauty, she seemed to glow. He felt pride that Gene was obviously impressed by her. She laughed gaily at times, her eyes were bright, they had lost their dark and remote look.

The seats were in the tenth row of the stalls: nearly a week's pay, but what did it matter? He had over a hundred pounds in the bank now. What should he do if Gene wanted to borrow money afterwards? Gene still owed him quite a lot; so did Desmond.

The orchestra was playing the familiar gay theme of the heroine, who wore the lilac mask, or domino. He knew all the names of the cast, having seen
The
Lilac
Domino
several times before. How lovely it was to see and to hear Clara Butterworth and Jameson Dodds again! It was very sad when estrangement came between the lovers, but life was like that. The audience was half khaki, wives and sweethearts sitting close to their men, some on leave like himself, others soon to go out. Here was the world of dream, blossoming before them on the stage as a flower. Soft eyes, moist eyes, deep red plush seats, darkness glowing with romance and the yearning of the heart. Then, during a scene outside the ballroom, when it seemed that the lovers must be estranged by misunderstandings, and that Nina was sending towards him the same feelings that he had for the hero and
heroine, he turned his head involuntarily and saw her misty blue eyes opened wide, as though by the swelling of her heart. Fear made him withdraw his feelings into himself. His flow towards the stage interrupted, he looked at Doris on the other side of him. How her face was set! Was she thinking of Percy, buried near Flers? She was the one of the family who had real guts. Then from the corner of his eye he saw Gene's hand moving towards the hand of Mavis, watched her take her hand away, rather roughly; and was half sorry, half relieved, because Gene was a sort of
roué.

Only when he was lying in bed that night did it occur to Phillip that the term he had applied in his mind to Eugene might have been applied to himself, and that his friend, of whose amours he privately disapproved, was natural. At the same time, was it natural to want to ravish a girl, if you did not love her? Was deception natural? No, it was treachery to tell the tale to a girl, to deceive her in order to possess her, without caring for her as a person. How serious was Gene? He had asked Mavis to go with him to the pictures. Would that mean taking her to his flat afterwards? Anyway, he wasn't likely to get much change out of Mavis. She was too selfish—or rather too involved in herself to have true sympathy for anyone else. Again, ought he to tell Gene of her attacks? As usual, he could not make up his mind about anything, as he strayed into memories of old scenes, all disastrous, reducing him to thin nothingness, a state of mind in which Lily did not enter, for she was dead, and gone for ever. He wished he hadn't drunk so much wine at dinner.

*

One morning, idly looking at
The
Daily
Trident,
he was surprised to see a photograph of Bright, looking grimmer than ever, beside two of his brothers. He got up and ran in to show his mother, and to read to her the account, under the headline, TARRED AND FEATHERED. Bright's wife had been “receiving attentions” from a young man who was “in a reserved occupation under the Ministry of Munitions”, and having been warned by the brothers to stop seeing her, had refused. The three brothers had kidnapped the lover, taken him to a barn on the farm, stripped him, tarred him, rolled him in white Leghorn feathers, driven him into the market town in a motorcar, and there turned him loose.

“Oh dear,” said Hetty. “Of course it was very very wrong of his wife to encourage the young man, she must have been terribly
unhappy, I think. Still, her husband was at the front—and yet, we must not judge. I feel sorry for all of them, Phillip——”

*

He lay about in the garden during the sunny days, thinking of France which, hour by hour, was drawing him darkly nearer to feelings of return. In quietness of spirit he went to the Old Vic with his mother and grandfather, in plain clothes, pretending it was the old days as he rode with them in a tram through the Old Kent Road to the New Cut, where on a corner stood the dingy little theatre. They were early for the matinée, and went down some stone steps into a coffee house, marked GOOD PULL UP FOR CARMEN. That was part of the old days, and welcome. He pretended it was a dug-out, with much-worn American cloth on the tables, sand on the floor, steaming tea-urns, thick horse-flesh sandwiches. They sat at a table where the attendant wiped away tea-stains while lifting up a scallop shell of mustard in which was stuck a bone spoon looking thoroughly sodden.

“Shakespeare knew places like this,” said Thomas Turney, getting a grip on the sanded floor with the soles of his boots.

“I was thinking, Gran'pa, if only we had places like this to go to in the trenches! They say the Hindenburg Line dug-outs have canteens in them, and also electric light.”

“Very clever, the Germans. However”—with lowered voice and looking over his gold spectacle frame—‘“guard well thy tongue', m'boy.” Three mugs of tea came. “Gunfire!” said Phillip, sniffing it. “Gunfire tea. Early morning char. Thick, rank, and sweet. Cheerho!” He played a game with himself, pretending that he was glad he had come.

“This theatre where we are going,” said Thomas Turney, “was built on what originally was a swamp. The foundation stones were taken from the old Savoy Palace in the Strand, when that building was cleared away to build Lancaster Place. It was called after Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg——”

“Gran'pa!” smiled Phillip, raising warning finger. “‘Guard well thy tongue'!”

“Well done! But as I was saying, it is now the Victoria Hall, so we're quite safe, he-he-he!”

He went on to say that, although it was in a squalid neighbourhood, the best roses grew out of a clay soil heavily larded with muck.

“Famous actors have played here, like Edmund Kean, Booth, and Buckstone. And Paganini, the violinist.”

Then, the doors being opened, they crossed the street and bought tickets for the dress circle. It was
The
Tempest,
and soon Phillip was transported. The innocence and faith of Miranda and her “Brave new world!” when she met the ship-wrecked sailors! Poor Caliban, bad because he didn't know any better! The magnanimity of Prospero towards lesser men who had injured him! The farewell to Ariel, the final decision to break his wand, and sink his book into the sea, lest goodness in the wrong hands be changed to badness! And, above all, Miranda and her young lover playing chess under a tree, so calmly and happily, while the older men discussed their affairs. How wonderful to live among such people! But they lived only in the mind. He sighed as the curtain went down. Mother was clapping, smiling and with shining eyes.

He said goodbye to them outside in the street, and went by bus over Waterloo Bridge, and so to Charing Cross, to walk up the Haymarket to Flowers' Hotel. There he had tea, and, seeing no-one he knew, left soon afterwards and went by bus to Reynard's Common, to wander in places once known, and the heather where he had sat with Lily. Could it have been more than a year ago when he had brought her on his motorcycle, and they had wandered by the lakes, on his last afternoon before going out to France for the opening of the battle of the Somme? Ariel, Prospero, Miranda, Lily—from afar, faintly shivering the calm evening air, came the sound of guns in Flanders.

On the way up from Boulogne the weather was dull and cloudy. A slow journey added to his depression, with the morose Bright, among others, for company; the carriage was full. When the train gave its final jolting stop at Steenwercke there were no grooms with horses awaiting the train.

“We’re in Downham’s bad books all right,” he said to Bright, who merely grunted. The two reported at the orderly room. To Phillip’s relief Downham was not there, but only Pinnegar, sitting back in a canvas chair, moodily trying to enclose, within smoke-rings from his cigar, various flies clustering inside the
walls of the tent. When Bright had left, Pinnegar said, after glancing around, in a lowered voice, “Did you read about that tar and feather business? I can just imagine him doing a thing like that, can’t you? Rough-looking chap, isn’t he? It’s all over the B.E.F. Still, that slacker deserved what he got.”

After awhile Phillip said, “Did my telegram from Boulogne about Black Prince get through, Teddy?”

“Yes. I was going to tell your sergeant to see to it, but Downham stopped it.”

“I see.”

“I should worry! The windy bastard is like that to all of us. Calls himself a Sharpshooter! The only thing he shoots sharply is his precious carcase into a dug-out!”

Pinnegar went on to ask what London was like, what he did, what shows he saw, was there a shortage of food, were prices up, was London very windy over the daylight Gotha raid, and (eagerly) personal questions about any girls; and seemingly disappointed about the last item, relapsed into pessimism.

“The old feeling in the company is gone. I’m fed up. The bloody Sharpshooter’s all spit and polish. And is he windy! We had a few bombs dropped the other night, and you’d think, by the way he carried on, that the old Hun had broken through our lines! Blowing a whistle, yelling to everyone to scatter, telling Rivett to get the drivers to disperse the mules. And all because Jerry’s hickaboo dropped three twelve-kilogram eggs a hundred yards off!”

“Where’s Downham now?”

“Gone to Pop. We’re under orders to move at twelve hours’ notice. We’re transferred back to Fifth Army.”

“What, going south again?”

“No. Gough’s come up here. He’s in command of the Ypres push.”

“What’s happened to Plumer? Stellenbosched?”

“Damned if I know. Old Plum’s been here for two years, and knows the Salient like the palm of his hand. I suppose he’s got the sack because he didn’t push on at once when we got on the crest of Messines. If Gough had been in command, he’d have put the cavalry through.”

“So we’re back under the old mud-balled fox!”

This was a reference to the dragging brush of the fox which was Fifth Army sign. All the Armies, with Corps and Divisions, had their stencilled devices. Fourth Army sign was a boar’s head,
adopted by General Rawlinson after a leave spent in the South of France boar hunting. It was rumoured that the General had brought a young boar back with him, as a pet. It lived at Army Headquarters, with the name of Rawly. The Fifth Army had been formed after July the First, and had soon gone into the mud of the Ancre Valley.

“Any idea where we’re going?”

“Brigade says Proven.”

“Where’s that?”

“Other side of Poperinghe. Now there’s a bon town! Ever been to ‘La Poupée’? You get a dam’ fine dinner there for five francs, or did, when I was there at the beginning of ’sixteen.”

“I see. Well, have you got anything for me to do?”

“Damn all.”

“I’d rather like to see Armentières, while I’ve got the chance.”

“What the hell d’you want to go to a place like that for? Oh, another Cook’s tour! I’ve never been able to understand what you find to interest you when you go off by yourself.”

“It’s all right if I have a horse?”

“I don’t care what you do.”

He went to the picket line. There Morris told him that he had had the bay mare saddled up, but Sergeant Rivett’s orders were that it was to stay on the line.

“That’s right, sir!” said Rivett, cheerfully. “Major’s orders, sir!”

“That I’m not to have a horse?”

“The major’s orders were that no charger was to be sent to railhead. Your servant Barrow has gone back to a gun section.”

“Oh.” After awhile he asked how things had been during his absence.

“Oh, we’ve managed pretty well, I think, sir.”

“Good. No casualties, or anything?”

“We did have some trouble with air-raids at night. However, we scattered in time.”

“I want Morris to bring the bay mare to my tent in ten minutes. And to accompany me on a mule.”

“Very good, sir. Oh, by the way, Driver Nolan is absent without leave.”

“Nolan?”

“That’s right, sir. Since mid-day stables, in fact.”

“Perhaps he’s about somewhere.”

“He left the lines without my permission, sir. He and Cutts.”

Phillip realised what Rivett was thinking: almost hoping, to judge by his alert expression. Surely Nolan wouldn’t be such a fool as to desert? And with Cutts, of all people!

“I’ll be away about an hour, sergeant. Don’t do anything about it, should they come back while I’m away, will you?”

He rode north along a lane, past fields where hay had been cut and was now being carted from cocks, to Oosthove farm, turning right-handed over the small Warnave river, in the direction of the ruins of the deserted industrial town of Armentières, lying grimly to the east. The land in front of him was low-lying, consisting of water-meadows beside and within an ox-bend of the river Lys, where old peasants in sabots and dark clothes, the men in peaked caps, worked slowly with horses and long carts like shallow boats on wheels almost up to the sites of batteries and other congestions of war. How they must hate their land being mucked up, he thought, as he saluted one old man with a long white moustache walking as slowly as his horse on the worn grass beside a thorn hedge. He got no response.

Following the bend of the river, he came to what was apparently the Corps laundry, with women hanging out greyback shirts and vests and long woollen pants on wire lines. Near the building some soldiers were arguing with a screeching old woman, and going nearer, he saw what the trouble was. Several lengths of screw-pickets had been lashed together to clear drains choked with shirts and pants. A sergeant told him that the women had done it, “as an underhand means of demanding higher wages”. Inside a shed adjoining was a large and heavy machine which, his informant said, was a Foden Disinjector. Asked what it was, he replied that it was to destroy parasites in uniforms.

“Oh, a delousing machine, sergeant? What a queer name. Wonder what it means. Does it chuck out the crumbs?”

“I don’t follow you, sir.”

“Don’t you know the army slang for lice?”

“I was the manager of a West End laundry before I joined up, so I’m afraid I am not entirely conversant with army parlance, sir.”

Phillip felt a little scornful of his superiority, akin to that of Rivett. “Well, your Disinjector is better than the fizzing sticks of cordite we used in the crutch of our trousers in ’fourteen, sergeant.”

He rode on towards the town, stopping next at some sheds, outside which men of the Labour Corps were making mats of old
bean-stalks and wire. He asked if it was for camouflage, and was told that they were Malay mats, to cover duckboards, and deaden the noise of footfalls. This made him wonder if the coming attack was to be made at night.

He was now in Belgium, having crossed the frontier; and reaching the Ypres-Messines-Armentières road at Le Bizet, went on into the town. Many of its buildings were in ruins. Walls everywhere were pocked by shell fragments. Evacuated by the civilian population, many of the houses were locked up. Notices against house-breaking and looting were tacked on every door. Lean dogs and cats slunk about. Looking through a barred, basement window, he saw mildewed furniture stored there, and on one table a box of matches which had fallen open with damp.

There was an observation post of a howitzer battery up a factory chimney beside the Lys, with a lift to the top. The lift was a wooden platform suspended on wires to pulleys, and worked by ropes. After talking with the gunner officer, he was invited to go up with him. The lift was without sides or rails, it swayed, jolted, jarred, and at one place it stuck in the chimney. At the top, just below the rim, where the wind passed gently roaring, a couple of bricks had been removed; and resting field glasses in the small space, he looked across many lines of trenches and belts of rusty wire stretching over a flat green country threaded with dykes and streams, and small clumps of trees about farms. In the farther distance chimneys and buildings half dissolved in haze were the towns of Commines and Wervique, connected by the river wandering into the east; and beyond them, to the north, across rising ground made dark by woods and forests, lay the ridge dominating the Ypres Salient, from Zonnebeke to Passchendaele and Staden, the first objective, said the gunner, of the coming campaign to push the old Hun out of Belgium. The plan was to reach Thielt, Bruges, and the submarine base at Zeebrugge, and then, with the right flank guarded by the river Lys with the towns of Menin, Courtrai, and Ghent on its banks, to let the cavalry through to the Dutch border.

*

“We won’t ’ave no more trouble over our swingle-tree chains not being burnished for inspection, not now, sir,” said Morris, on the way back. “Driver Nolan’s been an’ gone an’ won a special set from one of the Fred Karno’s lot recently come from ’ome. They was so shiny they looked almost nickel-plated.”

“How did he manage it, Morris?”

“It was during the wind-up in the hick-aboo, when them Goothers come over an’ dropped their eggs. Twelve pair ’e snatched, the ’ole caboodle, sir. The other lot kep’ them for inspections, a spare set like. Nolan’s idea is to use ’em for our transport, and also to ’ire ’em out to others, at a franc the chain. ’E’s flogged ’em to the section. Each driver put a franc in the kitty, so’s the section owns ’em, and will git the rhino for ’iring. So Nolan’s pouched twenty francs. Wiv that sum innisat fer safety, like, he slings ’is ’ook ter ther Free Pipes at Romarin wiv’ ’is China, Cutts. Sergeant Rivett’s ravin’, sir, says ’e’ll get ’em both court-martial’d, sir.”

“What’s a China, Morris?”

“What we calls a mixing chum, sir.”

On his return Phillip read
General
Instructions
for the Courts-Martial Section in his copy of General Routine Orders; then he went to see Pinnegar, saying that he ought to get Nolan and Cutts back before the military police got hold of them. Pinnegar, who was mess president, suggested that he take the Maltese cart and buy some stores at the Expeditionary Force Canteen at the Duke of Connaught Camp, on the Leinster Road leading to Neuve Église. Some tinned chicken, tongue, pork sausages, and
pâté
de
fois
gras,
as well as vegetables, bread, and a dozen of whiskey. The absentees at the Three Pipes could be brought back, hidden in the cart.

Phillip thought that the Maltese cart was too small, so he took a limber as well; and the two roysterers, hidden under the canvas cover, were brought back a few minutes before Major Downham, riding Prince, whose mouth was flecked with froth, returned to camp. By that time Cutts and Nolan, less their driver’s-boots, which had been stolen, lay side by side in a spare tent put up near the baled hay at one end of the picket line.

“I think you ought to put Drivers Nolan and Cutts under arrest, sir!”

“I
beg
your pardon, Sergeant Rivett?”

“I would have done so, had you not expressly ordered me not to do so, sir.”

Phillip replied quietly, “I think I’ll be able to deal with them, without any fuss, Sergeant Rivett.”

“I mean to say, sir, it is within my province to maintain discipline, since most of the burden of administrating the transport personnel so far has fallen upon me. Therefore, sir, I consider
that they should be put on charge, and brought before the Officer Commanding.”

“That will mean a court-martial, possibly, Sergeant Rivett.”

“I still think that they should be put on charge, sir. I can’t accept responsibility for them.”

“Now I’m back, I take the matter out of your hands, Sergeant Rivett.” When the man standing before him did not reply, Phillip went on, “Cutts has been badly shell-shocked, or had the guts knocked out of him in childhood, spiritually the same thing, as I told you. Nolan was through First Ypres in my regiment, the Gaultshires. He’s been out here for nearly three years, without leave. Also he has bouts of malaria. He was in South Africa with the Seventh division before the war.”

Sergeant Rivett pursed his lips. “It seems to me that the ‘old soldier’ excuse can get away with anything!” There was partial challenge in his manner as he looked straight at his officer. “I mean to say, sir, just because a man happened to be in the Army before the war, the ‘refuge of the destitute’, I think was how they were regarded——”

Phillip walked away. What was it Father Aloysius had said, “Objects of our own hate arise from wounds within us”. If Rivett had been through hell he would be at least sympathetic to others who had suffered more than he had. By God, Downham too! He hesitated: he must not feel scorn of Rivett because he was inexperienced; and returned to where the sergeant was still standing, to say quietly, “I appreciate that you have the well-being of this section at heart, Sergeant Rivett, so I will speak to Nolan and Cutts first thing in the morning. Will you bring them to me immediately after early stables.”

A spruced-up, almost jaunty Nolan was marched up behind Cutts by the sergeant. It was a fine summer morning. Caps off: attention.

“Drivers Nolan and Cutts, sir.”

Nolan had on a new pair of driver’s boots; Cutts wore a down-at-heel pair of marching boots, obviously thrown away by somebody, with puttees. His heavy clean-shaven brown face had a sagged and mournful appearance, his dark brown eyes were heavy with fear; in contrast to Nolan, who had cut the ends of his moustache and waxed the stubs into little upstanding points.

“At my request, Sergeant Rivett is not bringing a charge, at the moment. So I’ll get to the point. You know the possible penalty, don’t you, Nolan?”