The Golden Virgin (57 page)

“Why should I? What has it to do with you?”

“I might have asked the same question, Desmond. But I didn’t. I don’t mind if you see her or not. Both of us have been friendly with her, you know; though not in the same way. I told you that before I went back to France, when you were kind enough to wish for my death. Incidentally, it might be argued that your remark was hardly that of a friend. Whether it was a betrayal of friendship, or not, you can decide for yourself.”

“As usual, you are very plausible, and can twist anything round your own way.”

“Well, everyone has his or her own point of view, you know.”

“Did you promise me on one occasion, and did you promise my mother again the other day, that you would not see Lily again? And have you broken both promises?”

“I don’t remember making definite promises.”

“Well, let me jog your memory. Do you agree that my mother asked you not to see Lily again, for her own sake, because you had made her fond of you, but did not care for her? In other words, she asked you to play the game with Lily. Do you admit that?”

“She did ask me. But the reason, as you put it, to play the game, wasn’t mentioned, so far as I recall.”

“But it was inferred?”

“Yes, in a way.”

“Would it be true to say that as soon as you got from Polly what you wanted, you had no further use for her?”

“Yes, I think that is true.”

“Furthermore, having achieved your desire at last with Helena Rolls, you promptly lost interest in her?”

“That’s probably true, too. But no harm has been done to her.”

“How do you know? You had your triumph, and that’s all that matters to you. You don’t really want love from anyone, you want to be able to gloat over them. It is what is known as diabolical possession. So if you do not leave Lily alone I shall consider it my duty to kill you. Then I shall shoot myself.”

“Well, that would not exactly be an act of friendship, would it? Also, wouldn’t Lily tend to blame herself all her life? She does now, you know; or did. She told me so. She felt she had come between us.”

“On the contrary, it is you who have come between Lily and me. Your shadow lies upon her—what the Germans call a doppelganger. She’s fascinated by you, as a dove is by a snake.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Yes, I do. I remember your power over Peter Wallace, and how you got him to fight your battles for you. He believed everything you said—until he found you out! You got him to thrash Albert Hawkins, merely because he dared to talk to Mavis behind your garden fence. What harm could that do—childhood sweethearts? By your act Albert Hawkins’ heart was broken, as well as his face. That never occurred to you, did it?”

“I don’t know why you’re talking like this. It happened a long time ago, anyway, and I admit I was a bit of a coward then.”

“Are you any different now? You may think so, perhaps. Let me remind you. Didn’t you clear off and leave your pal Martin in the lurch on Messines Ridge, in 1914?”

“How do you know that?”

“You told me yourself.”

“It’s only partly true, anyway. The Bavarians had broken through. Martin wouldn’t get up when I tried to get him up, so I retreated, with many of the others. No one knew what was happening.”

“Except Peter Wallace and his brothers, who had the guts to stay, and were killed.”

“Why are you using all that I told you against me?”

“To prove to you that you always twist everything in your own favour, regardless of the truth. You make up all the rules to suit yourself, don’t you?”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing now?”

“You’d wriggle out of anything. But you won’t wriggle out of your treachery to me over Lily so easily. You’ve seduced her spiritually—that is your power over people. I tell you now, and I swear it before God, that if you see her again, I’ll put a bullet through you, Phillip Maddison!”

Did Desmond really believe that Lily would be able to love him if the so-called diabolical influence of himself were removed? And thinking thus, he was jagged by the thought that Lily might have said that to Desmond. Lily had turned Catholic; Catholics believed what their priests told them about such things. Could Lily, after he had left her that evening, have confessed to a priest that she was being pulled back from the Love of God by himself? Well, if that was the Love of God, the sooner he was dead and in hell the better.

“Do the Catholics go to confession on Saturday night, Desmond?”

“Yes. Especially round here, because many are working all the week. Why do you ask?”

“I wondered if the idea of my diabolical nature had come from the priest’s confessional box. You are a Catholic, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but you can’t bluff me. What you really want to know is what Lily said to me.”

“Tell me if it was Lily who first talked of demoniacal possession.”

“Would it surprise you if I told you that she did?”

Phillip made no reply.

“I saw Lily tonight,” said Desmond, quietly. “I called round after I’d said goodbye to Gene.”

“Is it true that Lily said that? About me? On your honour?”

It was now Desmond’s turn to be silent.

“Answer me, Desmond! You
must
tell me!”

“Why should I? You don’t tell me the truth, so why should I answer your questions?”

“Then you are a wriggler, and no better than I am, are you, according to your ideas?”

“Except that I love Lily with all my heart and soul,” said Desmond. “Tonight I asked her to marry me,” he said, hardly above a whisper.

“What did she say?” Phillip said, putting away his feelings.

“I’ve told you in so many words. Your influence, or shadow, stands between us.”

The night wind moved slightly in the hawthorn standing by Phillip’s end of the seat. He heard a brown leaf dropping through the spined twigs, making the slightest of sounds, like broken sighs, as it left the parent tree for ever, its brief summer over and done with.

“Desmond.”

“Yes.”

“If it could do any good, I would go away for ever. If it would do any good between you and Lily, I mean.”

“How do I know that you will keep your word this time?”

“I said I would go away if it would do any good between you and Lily.”

“Well, I have told you it would.”

“Did Lily tell you that? Please tell me the truth.”

“You ought to know the answer.”

“Did she kiss you, Desmond? I mean, tonight?”

“Yes,” said Desmond, and at this Phillip felt black depression gripping him. But he managed to say, “If she kissed you as though she loved you, why are you worrying about me?”

“She kissed me on my forehead, she kissed me goodbye, because she’s possessed by you!” cried Desmond, as he got up and walked away in the darkness.

*

Some time later Phillip arose and walked round the Hill, filled with thoughts of Lily streaming in the night sky like meteors from the constellation Berenice’s Hair, her eyes the light of the morning, her brow the dawn, Eos of the Greeks, driving her chariot
up to heaven from the River Oceanus, to announce the coming of the sun.

He had picked up these crumbs of learning from the
Smaller
Classical
Dictionary
;
how Eos had carried off youths distinguished for their beauty, such as Orion, Cephalus, and Tithonus, whence she was called by Ovid
Tithonia
Conjux.
“By the prayers of Eos (Dawn) who loved him, he obtained from the gods immortality, but not eternal youth, in consequence of which he completely shrank in his old age; whence a decrepit old man was proverbially called Tithonus.”

The fate of Orion seemed to be linked with his own conduct: for Orion the hunter had treated the maiden Merope badly, after falling in love with her. Her father in revenge had his eyes put out. But Orion recovered sight by exposing his eye-balls to the rising sun; and after death he lived among the stars, with lion’s skin, girdle, club, sword, and Sirius the hound trailing him as he bestrode the universe.

There it was, the constellation of Orion: low over the horizon: far beyond the Weald of Kent, beyond the battle raging from North Sea to Alps, beyond the sands of Africa and the coral strands of the south. Lily, Lily, be thou mine, save me from the terrors of the world. No, no; stand alone, Phillip. Even as “Spectre” West.

When he returned to the seat, he saw Desmond sitting there. Something in his humped-up attitude made Phillip say,

“Desmond, I’m awfully glad to see you back! I’ve been thinking. There’s a lot of truth in what you said to me.”

“Phillip,” said a low, quiet voice. “I’ve been talking to Mother.”

“I see.”

Desmond sighed deeply. “She says I am wrong. So I’ve come to say one thing to you, before I volunteer to go back to the front.”

After a long silence Desmond began in a voice almost inaudible.

“First, I must tell you about my mother. But before I do that, I want your word of honour never to tell anyone what I am going to say.”

“I promise.”

“My mother, when she met my father, used to haunt the promenade of the Alhambra. She was very much the same as Lily was when I first met her in Freddy’s. Lily, you know, used to go in to pubs in order to get off with men——” the deep voice quavered to a stop.

“We all seek for the one true love, Desmond.”

“My mother walked the Alhambra Promenade because she was a prostitute.”

“How do you know? Did she tell you?”

“No, I heard it from my uncle in Nottingham. He is my father’s brother. He and his sister—they are both unmarried—pay my mother a monthly allowance.”

“Forgive my asking, Desmond, but did they say that your mother took money from men?”

“No, but they inferred it.”

“Nottingham is quite close to Grantham. When I get back there, I think I’ll go and see them—not about what we’re talking about, of course.”

“I shouldn’t do that. You see, they don’t approve of you.”

“How do you know?”

“They told me so.”

Phillip felt subdued: a familiar feeling: otherwise he might have wondered how it had come about that people who had never met him could disapprove of him.

“My father,” went on Desmond, “has another family.”

“I see.”

“I know what you’re thinking. But you’re wrong. My father and mother were married. They still are, in fact.”

“I see.”

A large white brilliance opened in the darkness of the sky, low in the south-west. It hung steady, shedding its beams softly.

“Hullo!” said Desmond. “What is it?”

The light floated, swimming in its own solitary brilliance. Then a red shearing flashed upwards to the light. A few seconds later came the deep crump of a bomb. There came a shout from the silhouetted mass of the school.

“It’s a parachute flare dropped by a Zeppelin!” said Desmond.

Searchlights were now weaving about the sky, trying to pierce the ball of brightness hanging over the distant streets and houses. Shouts and cries came from the roof of the school, as a pale blade arose towards the stars. It seemed to burst, with the throbbing of the engine driving the dynamo in the sheep-fold, into a lilac blaze, reaching up until it dissolved wanly in space.

“What the hell are our guns doing? There’s a three-inch on One Tree Hill,” said Desmond. “Look! The blasted thing’s coming our way!”

A second flare scalded the sky with brightness dazzling the eyes; followed by another ruddy flash.

“Come on, under cover!” cried Desmond. “We can get over the railings into the lavatory.”

“What’s the odds? I vote we stay and watch what happens.”

“She’s making for Woolwich Arsenal,” said Desmond, listening to the growl of engines. “I bet it’s Mathy! What an idea, to blanket our lights with flares! The guns can’t spot her, either.”

Searchlights were fumbling nervously. Then one swung around in a complete arc, before making a steady point.

“They’ve spotted her!”

All the lights rushed together and clustered upon a tiny yellow length, tilting steeply, yellow-brown as its nose bored a way out of sight into a cloud.

“It was over twelve thousand feet,” said Desmond. “And rising fast. One of the new thirties. I’ll swear that’s Mathy.”

One after another the searchlights died away. The beam lancing up from the roof of the school glowed a pale pink before leaving an eye-daze upon the darkness.

“There must be an aeroplane about,” said Desmond. “Listen!”

They heard the throb of engines.

“The note is too heavy for a 90-horse Raf engine in a BE2c. Those are Maybach engines. Hark!”

The scoring hiss of a bomb travelling aslant scalded the sky. There was a leaping flash, and three to four seconds later a rending reverberation. The sword lights leapt up and pointed about the sky again.

“Swine!” cried Desmond. Phillip, too, felt hot and angry. “That one must have fallen right into the High Street.”

“Come on, man! Let’s go down and see!”

“No, I want to watch what happens. We can see best from up here. There must be a reason why the guns haven’t opened up. An aeroplane above the Zeppelin would see it against those flares you know. What’s the time?”

“A quarter to one.”

“Look, there it is! I knew there was a reason for the guns not firing!”

The rod-like yellow length was now seen in the massed beams to be as though dragging a money-spider on a gossamer, which glistened now and then.

“He’s firing tracer and incendiary!” yelled Desmond. “He’s into her! Look! In Christ’s name, look! He’s into her!”

The glistening money-spider was beside the Zeppelin. Then the searchlights flicked out once more.

“Have they lost her? Have they lost her?”

“Wait! Wait!”

Desmond gripped Phillip’s arm. “They’ve got a platform on the top, and a machine-gun mounted there. The aeroplane was visible to them, in our lights, you see!”

They waited, tense and anguished. A scarcely audible rattle, like a woodpecker drumming, came from the stars; again, and yet again. Then a wriggle of red showed in the northern sky. It moved slowly, it extended and broadened, flames were seen, growing wider until the whole of the Hill, every tree and seat, pebbles on the path, Desmond’s face, the hard bony lines of his brow and cheeks and jaw, glowed with fire. Then from all around the Hill, sounding far away, came thin flame-like cries, recalling to Phillip children screaming on Band Night, but these cries were deeper, harsher, from all the streets of London.