A Fox Under My Cloak (19 page)

Later that day he realised he had been done, when he saw, in the only garage he had not so far visited, a new 1915-model Connaught for
£
29 10
s
.

“Why didn't you come to me first?” said the garage owner. “You could have had the machine you've got now for fifteen pounds. That's the price I got for it, from the fellow who took it out the day you tried it. It's got a cracked crankcase, you know, that's why there's little compression. I told him that when he come back here after he had seen you, and bought it off of me.”

“Then,” cried Phillip, “that's fraud! He sold what wasn't his!”

“Too late now,” said the other.

Phillip did not mind about the little oily crack, or the price: he had a motor-bike, that was the main thing. He thought about the coming weekend all the rest of the afternoon and evening, his new life symbolised by a gleaming, golden brooch.

Yet the fear of returning to the front sometimes recurred. One of the officers in the Green Howards had already received orders to go overseas before the end of the course. At night,
in the room which now had been set aside as the ante-room, he asked Phillip if he could suggest anything, outside the
prescribed
officer's kit, essential for the trenches. “Bearing in mind, of course, that one's kit must not exceed thirty-five pounds in weight. You're the only one of the class who has been out, so I wonder if you would advise me?”

The others gathered round the veteran.

“Well, yes, now you come to mention it. Take plenty of newspapers.”

“Newspapers? I'm afraid I don't quite follow you.”

“Well, you know,” replied Phillip, “they are very scarce at the front. For going to the latrine.”

“But why not take the real thing?”

Phillip was puzzled. “I don't know what you mean by the real thing.”

“Well, a box of Bronco.”

Phillip felt that he had shown himself to be rather a simpleton; and after a while left the circle of polite port-sippers. He went out into the street, seeing Cox his room-mate standing there with an undecided air, a monocle fixed in one eye.

Cox's face looked as though it had been so scorched by the Chinese sun that the skin had peeled off and never grown again. Cox's boiled red look seemed to be in his very nature, for he was always restless, seldom able to sit still. He had a hoarse voice, and every evening so far he had walked about the town, looking for what he called a bird.

“They hunt in couples in this town,” he said to Phillip. “How about coming with me?”

“Right ho!” replied Phillip, not really wanting to meet any girls, but at the same time he did not want to appear to be a greenhorn. Cox had an extraordinary method of attracting their attention. He carried a whangee walking stick, full length, and when they passed a girl half way down the hill, he turned round and rattled it on the pavement, a grin on his face. “Will that fetch her?” he said to Phillip. The girl went on up the hill without looking back.

“No,” said Cox, “that one doesn't rattle!”

Nor did any of the girls in Sevenoaks rattle, apparently; for after hanging about outside the Picture House at the bottom, they returned up the hill on the other side of the street, Cox's rattles having no result.

“I think your presence is putting the birds off,” said Cox, with sudden red-faced irascibility.

“Where did you get the idea of the rattle?” asked Phillip.

“Shanghai,” said Cox, shortly.

Then, gnawing his lower lip, he swung on his heel and barked, “I must write some letters to my fiancée! And I'm damned if I remain at the Regina with you, muttering and groaning to
yourself
all through every bloody night, especially as they won't reduce their scale of charges! Damme, how can one live on seven-and-six a day, and pay eight-and-six at a hotel? I gave up a good job to come home and join up.”

“What were you in, Cox?”

“That's my bloody business! I suppose you've got private means?”

“Well, sort of. I'm sorry I mutter and groan, but you snore like a barn owl, don't forget! Well, cheer-ho!”

Cox abruptly left Phillip, and strode away. Phillip saw the red round face turn again at the corner, as a girl went past. There came the rattle of the whangee cane, again without response. Cox threw up his hands in a hopeless gesture before disappearing round the corner. Well, thought Phillip with glee, he had learned something about customs in the Far East. He was seeing life. He went back to the Regina, hopeful of seeing more.

The next day, Saturday, was fine; work ceased at 12.30 p.m. After a hurried luncheon, he set out for the journey home. It was most pleasurable. The Connaught ran with a pleasing purr, and he soon mastered the way to change gear without clashing the teeth, with de-compressor valve lifted.

He enjoyed the shape and colour of the red and green tank, long aluminium foot-boards, on which he tried to stand up and drive as though it were a circus bike. He tried hands-off, too, but an alarming stagger showed that the weight was not properly distributed. Soon he was buzzing along Shooting Common, then through Brumley, down the hill to Cutler's Pond—and then he was going up Charlotte Road, seeing above him the sticky brown chestnut buds broken into green, and with a brief glance at Mrs. Neville's window, up Hillside Road.

That afternoon, hearing that Helena Rolls was going to visit her grandparents in Twistleton Road, Phillip waited until she left her house to walk over the Hill, then mounted the
Connaught 
and went along Charlotte Road to meet her the other way. He wore his light fawn British warm because it looked so nice on other officers, with the gilt star on either shoulder-strap—the wonderful yellow star with red and green enamelling in the centre. He waited near St. Simon's Church; watched her turn the corner from Foxfield into Twistleton, waited with drying mouth for her to get fifty yards down before starting up and passing her. Fifty yards on, he stopped, got off, and feeling in his
velvet-lined
pocket for the blue case, opened it with slightly shaking hands; and clutching the brooch in his left palm, walked forward and gave her a salute.

“Hullo, Phillip!”

Panic held him; but he managed to say, as he had rehearsed, “Hullo. I say, would you like to have this brooch? It's my regimental badge, the Mediators.”

He had never before been so close to her, to see the beautiful moulding of her cheeks and forehead, her lips, her chin. Then calmly and pleasantly she was saying,

“I don't think I could take it, Phillip, but thank you very much for offering it.”

“You—you aren't offended?”

“No, of course not! It is a beautiful brooch. But I couldn't possibly accept it.”

“I see. I hope everyone is well at home?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Well, goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

Ten minutes later Phillip had told Mrs. Neville all about it, having asked, several times, if she thought from Helena's frank manner that it might after all mean something; and heard Mrs. Neville's reply that she was very young, but, of course, in her heart a woman would be pleased to think that a man thought so much of her that he would want to give her of his very best——

“I don't know, Phillip, I can't say dear——” went on the fat woman, hoping she would not cry. He was so young, so inexperienced, she knew how he worshipped that girl; the more, she sometimes thought, because his early life had been so
unhappy
. Oh dear, these boys and girls, how they were growing up. There was Phillip's sister, Mavis, only seventeen, but already she had got an officer—a staff-major in the War Office, of all things!

She was glad that Phillip and Desmond and Eugene, the Brazilian boy, were together that evening; it was almost like old times, Bloodhound Patrol pram-wheel wagon camping days, to see the three of them setting off for Freddy's—Phillip driving, Desmond on the carrier, and Eugene sitting on the tank, his legs over the handlebars. Let them be happy while they could, bless them.

*

Mavis, a slim dark girl with large brown eyes that glistened with a strange light when she was happy or animated, had fallen in love with an officer she had met in the train, when, during the rush-hour, she had, with considerable nervousness, got into a first-class carriage at London Bridge Station. He was sitting alone in a carriage, and he wore a very new uniform with red tabs on his lapels and a red band round his hat. From the three pips on his shoulders she knew he was a captain. When she got out at Wakenham station, he saluted her, and said that he hoped he would be allowed to see her again.

On the second occasion of their meeting, Mavis' new friend was in ordinary clothes, what Phillip had called mufti; and he invited her to the Hippodrome. She went with him, determined to go straight home afterwards, since strange men were not to be trusted. It was with some apprehension that she had a cup of coffee with him in a teashop, with two chocolate
éclairs
;
then he walked with her part of the way home, saying goodbye outside St. Mary's Church, and adding that he hoped to see her again soon. In some excitement that he was so gentlemanly, Mavis hurried home, telling her mother that she had been out with her friend Nina, having first found out that Nina had not called for her that evening. Nina was a fair girl with rather fat legs who lived in Rushy Green.

Hitherto Mavis and Nina had been inseparables. Their friendship was one of spiritual intimacy, based on Nina's regard for the porcelain-delicate dark-eyed Mavis; and on Mavis' acceptance of her friend's devotion.

Mavis felt that she was now leading more than a double life. In order to be with her officer, she told Nina that she was going out with her mother, and her mother that she was going out with Nina. She felt herself to be living a very strange life indeed, when, in addition to playing off Mother and Nina, she became involved in a conspiracy with Phillip. An envelope marked
Strictly
Confidential
and
Private
arrived one morning, with the
Sevenoaks
post-mark. Mavis responded at once to the contents: for it would give her an additional safeguard, or excuse, should Nina find out that she had not been out with Mother.

The meeting took place as Phillip had planned. Although it was a warm sunny day, he wore his fawn-coloured British warm, carrying gloves and whangee cane, and punctiliously returned all salutes. He wandered in a dream within the tall cool rooms of the National Gallery, between Mavis and Helena. He took a taxicab to the Trocadero afterwards, having heard that this was a place where officers took ladies. He gave the waiter a half-crown, and bought a packet of gold-tipped de Reszke Turkish cigarettes, the fat ones, remembering it was not done to smoke in the streets. Then home again, buying first-class tickets to Randiswell, as he could not bear the idea of drab Wakenham station. They walked up Hillside Road together, watched by Mrs. Neville, who was in the secret, from her flat window. Outside No. 11 they said goodbye, Helena thanking him before she went on to her home, carrying the photograph.

The next day, after Evensong at St. Simon's, he got a report from Alwyn Todd, a friend of Helena's, about the happenings of the day before, and entered notes, “for later cogitation and analysis”, in his old 1914 diary, in a space between records of birds' nests found, and the holiday on Exmoor, just before the war. He wrote partly in code, based on the little Latin he had bothered to learn at school, and “let the truth rip”, as he said to himself.