The Phoenix Generation (8 page)

“Did you put them there, Rippingall?”

“I can’t remember, sir.”

He turned to Felicity. “Did
you
?”

“I think I must have done.”

Without a word he carried the shoes back to his room and locking them in the cupboard put the key in his pocket. Then ignoring the tearful apparition at the bottom of the stairs he returned to find Rippingall sitting in the summerhouse with a foolish smile on his face. The empty bottle lay on the seat beside him. Rippingall struggled to stand up and salute but fell back, murmuring, while his eyes glassed over, “All pres’nt an’ c’rect.”

Still unspeaking, Phillip left the garden and, getting into his motorcar, went to his bank in Colham, drew out ten pounds, had the tank filled with petrol, and set out for London.

When Lucy returned with the children in her brother Ernest’s motorcar, the house was empty. She saw Cabton sitting in Phillip’s chair in the garden. Had he seen the others?

“No.”

“Oh well, they’ll come back sometime, I suppose.”

Cabton stayed to supper, and when about ten o’clock Lucy said “What are your plans for the night?” he said, “I never make plans.” So Lucy made up a bed for him, and he stayed three days, fishing all day up and down Phillip’s beat, while Lucy said not a word. She thought Phillip might have given him leave to fish there; but knowing Cabton, she very much doubted it.

*

Phillip went through Randiswell hoping that no-one would recognise him, and feeling that he never wanted to see the place again. Most of the shops had been modernised and the place looked like any other conglomerated suburb. It was no longer a village with its own distinctive character. Driving up Charlotte Road he turned the corner and saw a furniture van, and a shallow looking as though it belonged to a scrap merchant, parked outside No. 11. At the door his father met him with the well-known exasperation on his face. He heard voices above.

“What’s happening, Father?”

“You may well ask. Better to go upstairs and see for yourself, old chap. Your mother’s ways are beyond me.”

Upstairs Phillip found three men, bare-headed, standing outside his mother’s bedroom door. Two wore green baize aprons. The third looked particularly humble to find himself in what he seemed to believe to be such posh surroundings.

“Ver lady’s upset, just a little, sir.”

“I’ll speak to her. Hullo, Mother, may I come in?”

He found her wiping her eyes, and trying to smile. A hammer of the kind for breaking coal lay on the floor. The brass bed was dipped forward thirty degrees to the normal, its back detached and leaning against the wall. The mattress and bedclothes were piled against another wall. Hetty said nearly inaudibly, “All you children were born in this bed, Phillip.” More tears fell.

“Whose bed is it, legally speaking?”

“It’s—it’s—your father’s. He has sold it to the barrow man.”

“I know exactly how you feel, Mother dear. I’ve inherited some of your genetic traits, don’t forget. I know the power of past association.”

“Of course you do, Phillip. I am being silly, I know.”

“That’s not altogether complimentary to me, Mother. Do you want this bed? I can get it stored for you quite easily.”

“What will your father say, Phillip?”

“Nothing. Leave it to me.” He went to the open door. “Did you buy this bed?” he asked the humble barrow man.

“That’s right, guv. Paid the gent a dollar fer it.”

“Will you take a profit?”

“Oo me, guv?”

“Yes, you, mate. I’m a farmer, I buy and sell. Will you take a profit of half a dollar?”

“Phillip, may I have a word with you, please?”

Hetty was hovering by the door. He went to her, saying audibly to the men, “The chaps will need a wet after all this. Now what is it, you poor dove mourning for its nest?”

“Perhaps after all it would be best for the bed to go. I know I’m being very silly——”

“No, you’re not being silly. But my presence has fortified you, and three pints of Bass in the Barbarian Club have fortified me. In addition to your presence, of course. You know what you told me once about Barley, not to let thoughts of her spoil my life with Lucy?”

She smiled and took his hand. “Father has bought such a comfortable new bed, for you and Lucy when you come and stay here. There now, I’ve given away his secret. Promise you won’t let him know? He wants it to be his surprise, you see.”

The barrow man went down Hillside Road whistling with his bargain. The bed was an affair of many thin steel lathes which supported a mattress transversely. Brass knobs and rods comprised
the upper frame. He had been given an extra half-crown by the young gent.

The new walnut-veneer’d bed from the Stores’ van had replaced it, together with a thick and sumpy mattress of dark blue ticking with pompoms, patented with the name of Driftasleep. Thanking the guv’nor (Phillip) the two green-apron’d removers departed, each, like the humbler scrap-man, with the price of five pints of best. Everyone was pleased; but while Phillip was driving on the Dover road he could not rid himself of the feeling that he had let down both Father and Mother, for he had told them that he and Lucy would definitely not be living at Fawley.

At Maidstone he stopped and sent a telegram to Piers, saying that he would be staying at Skindles Hotel, Ypres, for three days.

*

“Well,” said Mrs. Ancroft, sitting upright in her chair and switching on the shaded reading lamp beside her, “Now you can tell us all about it, my girl.”

Felicity’s guardian sat in the armchair across the unlit fireplace. He felt pleasure in the sight of the young woman in distress before him. Felicity was sitting, as though half-collapsed on the sofa. She had arrived in a hysterical condition, in tears and almost incoherent. After an omelette and tea she had recovered a
semblance
of composure. Now, behind the timid mask of her face in the presence of both inquisitors, she had decided to say nothing about the real reason of her sudden return.

“Philip asked me to go up and see his publisher about his trout book.”

“But by your general appearance of being upset, I might almost say in a state of shock when you arrived here, I imagine that something must have occurred to upset you. Besides, my darling,” Mrs. Ancroft went on, “your letters have not been altogether happy letters. I have thought I could read between the lines, and so concluded that all was not well with you.” Her voice took on a winning note. “After all, Girlie, I am your mother, and I have not known you since you were my dearest little baby, without coming to understand your inmost thoughts.”

“Oh mother—please——”

“Very well, dear, I won’t play the heavy parent. But I am naturally concerned for your welfare. You may speak frankly before Fitz who has your interest at heart almost as much as your mother has.”

When Felicity said nothing, her mother went on, “How do you
get on with Mrs. Maddison—or rather, Lucy, whom I feel I know so well from your letters?”

“She is a very sweet person, Mother.’

“You are good friends?”

“Oh yes.”

“What are the children like, Girlie?”

“Oh, Rosamund is a darling. So are the two boys. Billy is rather a problem child, in a sort of way——”

“Billy is the son of Phillip Maddison’s first wife, I take it?” remarked the guardian.

“Yes, Fitz.”

“Tell me more about Billy, Girlie. I very nearly popped down the other morning to see how you were getting on. The excursion trains are running again, and cost only eight-and-six return. That would have been a surprise for you, wouldn’t it?” She spoke pleasantly, while waiting nervously for her daughter’s reply.

“Oh, Mother, never do that. People who live in the country always call by appointment.”

“I suppose the Maddisons have many visitors?”

“Only the local people call, about a dozen in all, to leave cards. It’s a good thing really, for Phillip is always very busy writing.”

“Does he dictate to you, or write in longhand?” asked the man in the armchair.

“He did try once, but I think my presence got in the way.”

“Oh really?”

“In what way, may I ask?” said Mrs Ancroft.

She felt a nervous flutter about her heart, and prayed that she was not going to have one of her attacks. She saw with some relief that her box of tablets was in place on the marble shelf beside the clock.

“He says that he can feel what other people are thinking.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Ancroft, who wondered what exactly her daughter meant by that. Could it be—but no, the child had had a Christian upbringing. Such a thing was unthinkable. Her daughter knew the difference between right and wrong. Besides, she had had her own example of duty always before her.

“You’re looking tired, Girlie. I’m going to give you a bath and then put you to bed with a cup of hot Maltine. Then tomorrow, after a good sleep, you can tell your mother all your troubles.”

*

When Felicity was in bed Mrs. Ancroft returned to the
sitting-room
where her old friend (with reservations) was doing the
cross
word
puzzle of
The
Daily
Telegram.
Dare she tell Fitz her
forebodings
? Or was it better to wait until she had spoken to Girlie in the morning?

“I’ll make some tea, Fitz. China tonight, or Indian, which is it to be?”

“Oh, China, if you’ve got any lemon.”

“Of course there is lemon. I should not have asked you otherwise.”

“I fancy I’ve caught a bit of a cold.”

“Girlie is putting on weight, Fitz.”

“Too much clotted cream,” he replied, wondering what it was that began with LA, had eight letters ending with IS, and would be greeted by hysterical screams if seen crossing the carpet of a lady’s bedroom in Golders Green.

“She told me she was trying to ‘bant’—what an expression—and thought of having a sauna bath tomorrow.”

“Puppy fat. What would make you scream if you saw it crossing your bedroom floor with eight letters beginning LA and ending with IS, although you don’t live in Golders Green?”

“I should not scream in any event, but can the answer to your problem be one of the Three Fates of Greek mythology, ‘Lachesis’?”

Mr. Fitzwarren calculated. “Well, it fits in. I’ll look in the dictionary.”

When she returned with the tray he said, “How clever of you to guess first go off. ‘Lachesis’ is also a species of venomous
rattlesnake
found in Suninam.”

“I remember my brother George telling me about the Three Fates, Fitz. Poor George. He worked so hard that he damaged his eyes, working at night by a single candle. He got a first in Greats, only to die four days after joining his regiment at Zillebeke.”

She poured the tea, and added two thin slices of lemon to the cup before putting it beside him.

“Did she say what had upset her?”

“I didn’t dare to ask.”

Their eyes met.

“Better take her to a doctor, Nora, and forget about the sauna bath.”

Desperately she said, “Do you think he could have turned her away?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. He came here, you know, one night two years ago, and hung about to see me off. I thought then
that there might be something in the wind, and so awaited an opportunity to take him with me. It was when you were away seeing your mother.”

“You never told me that, Fitz.”

“I didn’t want to alarm you unduly, old girl. If you remember, you asked me to keep an eye on her while you were away, and so I came round about ten o’clock, as usual, to see if she was all right.”

“But why ever didn’t you tell me about him being there when he offered her a post of secretary? My mother knew that I should never have let her go so far away from home, at her tender age. I distinctly recall her words—‘Mark what I say, you’ll regret letting her go.’”

“Well, don’t meet trouble half way. Take her to the doctor tomorrow.”

*

Phillip and Piers had walked from Ypres to Poperinghe, and were making their way to the rue d’Hôpital to find Talbot House.

“I came here with ‘Westy’ in nineteen seventeen, before Third Ypres, and again just before the last battle for Passchendaele.”

Toc H was found to be next to the chemist’s shop, a three-storey building behind iron gates. Phillip called at the chemist’s to ask if it would be possible to see the chapel in the hop-loft, where many thousands of men had received the Sacrament before going up to the battles beginning at the end of July and ending with the
occupation
of the Passchendaele crest in early November, 1917.

“The chemist won’t know me, of course, but I remember him. He has a face like that of Hindenburg, and I told him so once.”

They went into the shop. The chemist said that the owner of the house would welcome them.

“Thank you, m’sieu’. Do you remember my telling you, thirteen years ago, that you were like a famous German general?”

“To whom do you refer, m’sieu’?”

“To the President of the German Republic—Marshal von Hindenburg, m’sieu’.”

The face went hard. Phillip left the shop hastily. Piers remained to talk.

“I see that his ideas have not changed,” said Phillip, when his friend came out of the shop.

“Nor would yours, perhaps, if your country had been invaded.”

Phillip rang the bell of the tall grey house. Almost at once the
inner door opened and a young girl appeared. She unlocked the gates, and drew back with a movement quiet and charming, bidding them enter. “To see the chapel, messieurs?”

She led the way up bare white enamelled stairs to a room austerely furnished, up another flight, and so to a door, which she held open for them before leaving with a slight movement of her head, neither bow nor nod, but a gesture of sensibility and understanding.

Phillip remembered the last flight up, very steep, poplar wood unpainted and thin—worn by thousands of nailed boots clumping up and clumping down. He sat on the bench at the far end, where the altar, a carpenter’s bench, used to stand.

The sun came out of a cloud, and light shone whiter through the five semi-circular windows. Sparrows were chirping on the roof. Slow rattle of wheels on the
pavé
of the road below. Phillip was standing with eyes closed, trying to recall ‘Spectre’ West in the loft, when there came, as from far away, a dull report. Ah, the terror and dreadfulness of Third Ypres, during those four months, a horizon without hope, every tomorrow as today. How could it ever be written?