A Fox Under My Cloak (32 page)

“Who was she?”

“My Father’s wife.”

“Idiot! Is it that girl you told me about?”

“Good lord, no! I seldom see her. She doesn’t care a damn for me.”

“Nor does Basil for me! So we are in the same boat, Phil, aren’t we?”

Oh no, we are not, he thought; but said, “Judging by those letters you showed me—pages and pages of them—Basil loves you desperately!”

“So that is what is in your mind! Look at me, Phil! No, don’t turn away! Do you think me a vamp?”

“How could I, when vamps are dark. Theda Bara, you know, and Nazimova.”

“Well, that’s one thing in my favour, since I am freckled and have carroty hair.”

“It’s not carroty, it’s tawny, it has the gloss of the fox.”

“Phil, don’t mock me. I’m utterly serious. I told you I made a terrible mistake in marrying Basil. Oh, you think me shameless, don’t you?”

“Not at all. But I think you are a flirt!”

She stared at him with face seeming thinner, the high cheekbones more prominent, as she grasped his elbow at arm’s length. He thought she was putting it on. Then his feelings of dismay and satisfaction and faint scorn changed to dismay when he saw the tears in her eyes. She sprang up, biting her lips, and ran from the room. What an account he would be able to give Mrs. Neville and Desmond when he saw them! He was seeing life!

The thought of sharing this life with his friends in the flat lasted only a moment before he felt sorry for her. When her younger sister came in and sat on the sofa, he felt ashamed; and unhappy when she said, “Phil, be honest with me. You don’t really care for my sister, do you?”

“Yes, I do,” he said, sitting on his hands. “But I can’t feel what I can’t feel, can I?”

“You like her as a friend only?”

“I suppose so. I wish she were my sister, and you, too, Estelle. You’re both so gay, and good fun to be with.”

“Well, Phil, perhaps then it would be for the best if you didn’t come here any more. Please don’t look so hurt. I am thinking of Fairy, you see. She was always a highly-strung girl, and Father being what he is, always irritable, made her worse. That’s why she married, really, to get away.”

“I know, she told me.”

“And marrying someone older than herself——”

“Out of the frying-pan into the fire.”

“Well, in a way, yes; for now she is in the fire. She’s
desperate
about you, Phil. Don’t treat her as a plaything, will you?”

All he could think of saying was, “Why, when I am so ugly and thin and stupid?”

“That’s your modesty. You’re really terribly attractive.”

He tried to stop his mouth from being loose and sloppy; and sat with a straight face beside her on the sofa. They both laughed. She was fuller-bosomed than Fairy, who was slim; he boggled at the word
flat.
Yet Fairy was very pretty, so alive and intelligent. Estelle was rather sly, he thought. Had Monty and she——? Monty was away at the moment, on holiday with his actress
fiancée,
who was rather like a Barribal girl, tall and fresh, dark, round reddish cheeks, a fringe, small round hat, many billowy blue diaphanous scarves floating around her neck.

He felt a flow between Estelle, with her white face and warm brown eyes and hair and bosomy white silk blouse, and himself. Awful! He was a Don Juan really. Mrs. Neville’s remark,
Every
woman
at
heart
is
a
rake,
Phillip.
Could
they be like men?

“Yes, you’re right, I’d better go.”

“No, you mustn’t do that,” as she put a warm hand on his wrist. Again the trickle of fire.

“Have a whiskey? Help yourself.”

Fortified by the slightly nauseating liquid, he told her that at any moment he would be leaving to join his new crowd.

“But-you won’t be far away? You’ll have leave? You’ll come and see us, won’t you?”

How awful of him, he wanted to embrace her! He was restraining himself when Fairy came suddenly into the room. She wore another frock, dark green, with a pale necklace of coral around her slender neck. She had brushed her hair. He noticed silk stockings, also dark green, very daring.

“Titania, how sweet you look,” he said, feeling an ass’s head over his own. “Haw, haw, Fairy. Your health!” He waved the glass.

She became serious and still when he told her about his transfer. At last she said, when Estelle had gone to prepare
the supper in the kitchen, “And you never told me! Oh, Phil! You didn’t trust me.”

The postman knocked a double rap on the knocker. She ran out, returned with two thick wadded envelopes, said tragically, “You see? Every post almost, they come like this. What can I do?”

After another large whiskey and soda, he said, “Don’t cry, Fairy. I do understand, really. Look, I’ll write to you when I go away, though it may not be for months yet. But I’m not what you think me, you know. I’m really a throw-back. They say you can tell a man’s real nature by how he is at home, well, I am simply
awful
at home. I dislike my father, I contradict my mother, I don’t really care about my sisters. They aren’t my sort, or I theirs. You once said I love no-one, not even myself. Well, it’s true. I used to love birds, and the spring; but that has gone. I don’t know why, but it just has. That’s the real me, and also I’m cowardly. I’m only going to the navvies’ battalion to avoid going back into that hell out there. Now you know! May I help you to some whiskey? I wish you’d let me buy you a bottle, I drink all yours up, you know.”

“Don’t talk like that, dear. You are honest, that is all. That is why I like you so much. And you are really very brave.”

He scoffed; and emptied his glass.

“Oh no! I wangled my way home from France, you know. I bribed an orderly ten bob to be marked ‘Bunk’. The real chaps, the really honest ones, like Cranmer, my old pal I told you about, and Baldwin, and Elliott, and the Wallace brothers, they’re still out there. They had guts. I’ve got no guts. Now you know.”

He poured himself another whiskey.

She went to the piano and played Chopin. She saw his glistening eyes when she had finished and sat beside him, holding his hand.

“Phil, dear, I am so glad you told me.”

She sat at the piano, and began singing in a light, sweet voice the popular song of the moment,
They
’
d
Never
Believe
Me.
Phillip knelt by the piano to turn over the music; but though she tried to make him sing, he was too shy of his voice. Besides, there was Helena …

*

He arrived back, without lights, just after midnight, ready with an excuse: he would say he thought he heard Zeppelins.
He had an acetylene lamp but no fresh carbide. No trouble; a wide and forsaken High Street. He stood his machine against the side-wall and went into Godolphin House. It was silent. A parallelogram of gas-light on the floor of the mess-room came from the open ante-room door. He went in, and saw the adjutant, Jonah the Whale, asleep in an armchair, snoring slightly, head back, long legs in tight Indian-cavalry breeches, and Tom Hill canvas leggings tightly buttoned to above thin ankles of long pointed brown boots.

Phillip stood there a moment, wondering if he should creep away to bed. He was filled with fear. Why had he done it? What would happen to him now? Supposing it happened to him what had happened to Uncle Hugh, and Uncle George Lemon? He might be done for.

Jonah the Wale opened an eye. He sat up, stifled a yawn.

“Hullo, I’ve been waiting up for you. Your orders have come through.”

Before he could think, Phillip gasped out his fears. Jonah the Whale stared at him.

“But how do you know? You
are
a young ass! See the doctor in the morning, and for heaven’s sake don’t go blurting it out to others as you have to me. You’re a case, you know, you really are! Well, you won’t have much time. You have to report on Tuesday at ten pip emma to the senior draft officer at Victoria Station, and”—he looked at his watch—“it is already midnight. So you’ll have to get a move on, young feller.”

“Victoria Station, sir? Aren’t I going to the—I mean to say, isn’t it my transfer——?”

“I forwarded your application some time ago to return to the front, and assume that this has had priority over your later application for transfer. I have waited up specially to tell you in case you want to leave early in the morning. The first train to London leaves at six-thirty ack emma. I’ve warned your batman to come here at five, to pack up your things. The Maltese cart will be outside at six, to take your valise to the station. And take my advice, leave married women alone in future! Especially when they have husbands serving away from home, doing their duty by their country.” The adjutant turned away.

Phillip did not know what to say.

Captain Whale went out of the mess, after a curt “Good
night”. Phillip said “Good night, sir”; whereupon Captain Whale returned to say, tersely, “You might at least have the courtesy to say ‘thank you’ when a fellow stays up on your behalf! After all, it’s only good form!”

“Sir!” said Phillip, coming to attention. “Thank you very much indeed for waiting up on my behalf.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Jonah the Whale, adding without tension, yet still with a terse tone, “On second thoughts, you’d better, in view of what you’ve just told me, catch the later train, after seeing the M.O., who will fix you up.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Now don’t be an ass in future! And when you get to your new unit, keep your thoughts to yourself! Be modest and quiet in manner!”

“Yes, sir.”

“And do what you’re told without questioning higher authority. Remember the saying, ‘Speech is given us to conceal our thoughts’,” concluded the county auctioneer.

“Yes, sir.”

“Stand easy, for heaven’s sake! This isn’t the orderly room.”

Jonah the Whale looked at the ingenuous face before him and said, not unkindly, “We all have to learn, you know, and there is no easy way to knowledge. Come and see me after you’ve seen Old Sawbones, and I’ll give you your travelling warrant.”

*

Phillip left on his motor-cycle, his valise having been sent by train labelled
Victoria
Station
, after luncheon the following day. He was surprised at his send-off. Everyone was really quite decent, some even wanted to shake him by the hand. “
Strawballs
” was quite genial, in a massive sort of way, and both his and the handclasp of Major Howes were really meant, he felt. The face of “Hairy Harry” Fridkin, now with
lieutenant-colonel’s
badges up, cigar as usual in suction, was inscrutable as ever. He had not spoken a word to Phillip in all the time he had been with the battalion; and he said nothing now, as he sat at table while the subalterns came out on the pavement or crowded the windows, eager to see the last of the cause of much amusement. O’Connor said, “Take care of yourself, my boy”; there were cries of “Good luck!” as he pushed off for the run and vault into the saddle.

Phillip, feeling himself almost to be liked, opened the throttle wide; there was an explosion in the coffee-pot, which blew off; and to laughter and cheers, part derisory, part affectionate, he sped away up the hill, retarding the spark to produce the loudest reports in the open exhaust, while sitting athwart the saddle in order to glance back and wave until the faces were out of sight.

D
URING
the past month of August many aspects of the coming campaign on the Western Front had been discussed among the privileged in London. It was known that, after the corn harvest was in, a major attack in the Champagne Pouilleuse was to be launched by the French, simultaneously with a minor thrust on their northern flank, in the sector of Artois recently taken over by the British. This northern thrust was to draw the
German
reserves away from the main attack by the French.

By the end of July the doubts of the British commander-
in-chief
, Field-Marshal Sir John French, concerning the ability of the troops under him to carry out such an attack, were generally known. Also known was the matter of dissension between the “Soldiers” and the “Frocks”—between the Imperial General Staff and the Prime Minister’s Cabinet. The field-marshal had declared that the British Army in the field was exhausted after the wasting spring battles of Neuve Chapelle, Second Ypres, Aubers Ridge, and Festubert: that the recently-formed Territorial divisions, and the divisions of the New Army required further training—particularly the men of the New Army, who were without experience even of static trench warfare: that the heavy artillery, and reserve of shells (due to diversion to Gallipoli), were insufficient to reduce the German defences in the
heavily-fortified
coal-mining area of Artois, with its pit-heads and dominating spoil-heaps held by the enemy between La Bassée Canal on the north and the ridge of Nôtre Dame de Lorette on the south.

The field-marshal’s protest had been over-ruled by the Cabinet.

The field-marshal had made further protest. In this he was joined by General Sir Douglas Haig, commanding the 1st Army. Both commanders were opposed to committing untrained troops to battle before the spring of 1916. Again the protests were over-ruled by Downing Street. The German successes in Russia demanded a relieving attack in France.

Among the “Frocks”—the term for politicians in use among some generals at the “War House” held a suggestion of derision—there was dissension, too: Mr. George, as the new Minister for Munitions was contemptuously known in the Tory houses and clubs, “the intriguing little Welsh lawyer”, was trying to unseat the P.M., Herbert Asquith, who, though a new-comer,
and
a Liberal, at least had the manners and appearance of a gentleman. Mr. George characteristically was running with the hare of the commander-in-chief, and the hounds of the Cabinet. At the dinner-table and in the
salon
the facts were discussed and passed on, until the facts became rumours in the politer suburbs; to die out in those areas where the L.C.C. electric trams began their runs, where the war to most people was a simple matter of right and wrong, as they had been told by their betters,
via
newspapers.

*

Heading for the south-eastern suburbs, Phillip on
battleship-grey
Helena
,
O.H.M.S. in white letters boldly displayed across front forks, thudded around Trafalgar Square for the joy of hearing his open exhaust and taking various salutes; but none from a bunch of Australians, who were lounging against the pedestal of one of the bronze lions. Seeing one grinning at him, Phillip stopped, leaned the machine on a pedal against the
kerb-stone
, and approached them. They were in slouch hats and long overcoats—tall, thin men, very wiry, with sun-burned faces. They watched unmoving as he came up to them, and said, “Good morning! May I enquire why you fellows never salute an officer?”

After an impassive regard of him, one of the Australians tapped him on his collar-bone: “Are
you
an officer, sonny?”

“Yes, can’t you see I am?”

The tall soldier turned to his mates. “Can you see an officer, cobbers? Look around, can you see one anywhere?”

They shook their heads, and the spokesman said, “We don’t see no officer, sonny.”

“It’s the uniform you salute, not the person, let me tell you fellows.”

“Is that so? Now tell me, ain’t you still in diapers?”

As he stood his ground, another Australian spoke. “Aw, git yourself an eyeglass, Archibald! We’ve come from where there’s bin fightin’. Salute you? ‘Archibald, certainly not!’”

Phillip, although slightly flattered by this reference to himself as a music-hall toff, felt he had had the worst of it; and
continuing
around Trafalgar Square, an idea made him laugh, so stopping at an optician’s in the Strand, he bought a gold-rimmed monocle. Screwing it into his right eye, he returned to the area of the lions, dismounted, and walked to the Australians. Before the group he came to attention, and saluted them.

“That’s because you’ve been in Gallipoli, cobbers!” Leaving them both unmoving and unspeaking, he vaulted on his machine and continued slowly, with soft-pumping engine, down Whitehall and so to Westminster Bridge, the flag on its post showing that the House of Commons was sitting. A newsbill
Artillery
Duel
in
Champagne
quickened his sense of personal drama, and opening the throttle, with resounding reports from the open exhaust pipe he flew between the tramlines, feeling that the spectators might be thinking what he was fancying for himself: a thrilling rôle of carrying down the Dover Road urgent dispatches to be rushed by destroyer across the Channel, and so to G.H.Q.—“Ah, Maddison, how weary and travel-stained you are! But you have saved the day, as the London Highlanders did at Messines!” He had to slow up, to rescrew the monocle into his eye-socket, owing to the uneven cobble stones of Peckham Rye.

The sense of the dramatic began to leave him as he continued along the Old Kent Road, and turned up to Nunhead, to avoid the tramlines. Passing Wakenham Station, with its dreary, dead appearance, he removed the monocle and put it in his pocket, after a small boy had called out, “Swank on Old Iron!” Soon he was home; and trying not to feel overcome by dullness.

This time he would not go and say goodbye to the Rolls. He would let Helena learn the news of his return to France when he was gone: it would, then, perhaps, startle her into realising that she might lose him.

“Thank God that Desmond and Eugene will be home this evening, Mother.”

“You won’t be late dear, will you, as it’s your last night? And Father will want to see you, I am sure.”

*

That night in Freddy’s it seemed natural that he should again and again pay for drinks for all three. Were they not all
great friends? Eugene was in the Public Schools battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, and, like Desmond, a private soldier. “You coves are my guests—when you get your pips, you can treat me.” Tom Ching came in, and then there were four of them. The more the merrier!

Tom Ching, still in the Admiralty, told them that all postal and telegraphic communication abroad was suspended, for—Tom rolled his eyes around the bar, before gathering their faces close to his own—there was to be a big landing on the Belgian coast, after a terrific bombardment by battleships and monitors of the Fleet. It seemed to be the Big Push at last; and visualising the German lines broken, with cavalry in pursuit, and hundreds of thousands of prisoners taken—the war over by Christmas—Phillip, monocle screwed into eye, convinced himself, with the aid of Haig’s whiskey, that he was jolly glad to be going out again.

A few minutes before closing time “Sailor” Jenkins suddenly appeared, yachting cap on head, special-constable arm-band sticking out of greatcoat pocket.

“Hullo, Phillip! Your father told me you were home, and returning to the front tomorrow. Well, at least you’ll be away from the dull routine of business life today. Which isn’t being made any more cheerful, between ourselves, Phillip, by our sergeant’s behaviour. I can fully understand now why you, as a boy, were a caution! It’s ‘not the thing’ to pop in and have a quick one on a cold night, or to smoke a cigarette on duty, alone at midnight on a clear night, in case Zeppelins spot it! I ask you! Then if we talk about the war while inside the station—
inside
,
mark you—he points to the poster hanging there, ‘The ears of the enemy may be listening’, and says it is our duty to give a good example to others. No, your father is not at all popular, I can tell you, Phillip. What’s the eye-glass for, effect?”

“King’s Regulations,” replied Phillip, casually. “Have to see the enemy, you know.”

“Go on with you!” replied Mr. Jenkins, as he upped his hot sugared Irish whiskey, and dabbing lips with silk handkerchief, he pulled the arm-band out of his pocket and slipped almost furtively out of the bar.

“Damn bad form,” said Phillip, imitating Baldersby, as the door closed. “No idea of good form.”

The next morning at breakfast he told his father what Tom Ching had said about the coming bombardment of the Belgian coast.

“Well,” said Richard, as he laced up his boots, “all I can say is that I do not think that Master Ching has any right to
disclose
official secrets, especially in the place where apparently you met him last night.”

“But the Germans surely knew as soon as the first shell dropped, Father? The
communiqués
have mentioned the Belgian coast bombardment for days, now.”

“That is as it may be, my boy; but I am still of the opinion that official matters should not be disclosed. Well, Phillip,” he said with sudden geniality, rising and holding out his hand, “I wish you all good fortune, and a safe return. Look after yourself, old man, won’t you?”

Then taking his yellow straw hat—cleaned most carefully with an old toothbrush and salts of lemon every May Day for the past twenty years, the black band having been renewed twice in that period—and with umbrella on arm, Richard left the house. He thought of many things as, half an hour later, he crossed London Bridge for the nine thousand two hundred and eightieth time (he kept count annually in his diary)—this lonely,
honourable
, and stilted member of Outer London’s middle-classes—believing all he read in his newspaper, impelled by what to him were the Victorian precepts of right living, punctilious in everything concerning the letter of his duty, at home and in the office; meticulous often to the point of pain—guarding ever, within his scope, the idea of his family’s, and his country’s, well-being.

*

Phillip was given an extra twenty-four hours’ leave when, reporting at the R.T.O.’s office at Victoria Station, he agreed to take a draft to France the following day. Leaving his valise in the cloak-room, he hurried home. Although Desmond would be on searchlight duty that night and Eugene had gone back to camp, yet there would be friendly faces in Freddy’s.

He was passing the gate of Turret House when he saw Mrs. Rolls, and had saluted her when, in the friendliest tones, she said, “You used to be a great one for birds, Phillip, I wonder if you could tell me how to pluck a cockerel?” Where did one begin, she asked, explaining that her cook had gone home to
her mother the day before, after hearing that her only brother had been killed in Gallipoli.

“Gerard will be home at six, and I must give him a good dinner, dear boy, after his hard day’s work, now that so many of the younger men have gone. Then there is the question of drawing it—I’ve never had to do such a thing in my life before, Phillip, and how fortunate that you came along when you did.”

“Mrs. Rolls,” said Phillip, going hot with the thought of his boldness, “I mean—if you like, that is, if it would help in any way—I’d be glad to do it for you.”

“Would you? How very kind of you!”

“I’d like to, really.”

He was invited into the house: it was the first time he had been inside, and everything seemed unreal. What would he be able to say when he came face to face with Helena? The sight of her hat and coat hanging on the coat-rack, with her tennis racquet, string bag of balls, and white plimsolls, made him quiver.

“Come through, Phillip, to the kitchen—d’you mind?”

Passing an open door, he saw within a piano and the music of
They
’
d
Never
Believe
Me.
With racing heart he imagined Helena singing the song, thinking of him. In a dream he followed Mrs. Rolls into the kitchen.

“We can put some newspapers on the table. Or would you like to sit in the garden—of course you would! It’s such a lovely day, isn’t it? So you are on leave, are you? What has
happened
to your motor-cycle—what a noise it makes, to be sure.”

“I’ve stored it at a place in the Lee High Road, where I bought it, Mrs. Rolls.”

Mrs. Rolls did not appear to hear. She took a large basket, and put some paper in the bottom. “There now, do you think that will do for the feathers. We ought to collect them, don’t you think? For the hospitals.”

“For pillows?”

“Yes. Helena’s Red Cross Party has asked for feathers, among other things. Poor boys, we must do all we can to make them comfortable, mustn’t we? Now then, you would like a rug to sit on, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, please don’t bother. I can sit on the grass, really.”

“It is damp, Phillip. I wouldn’t hear of such a thing! You always were a wild boy, weren’t you? It would not do to mark
your smart uniform, would it? Here, let me put Helena’s nursing apron on you.”

He stood still, thrilling with joy as she tied the tapes in a bow behind him. “Now you do look workman-like! Here’s the basket. Have you everything you want? It is
so
kind of you—what a good Samaritan you are, to be sure!”

Happiness spread through him as he plucked, feather by feather, to prolong the exquisite feeling of being allowed to serve the beautiful people. The garden seemed to float in a golden stillness of peace and everlastingness, the summer of his boyhood had come again. It was a calm, mellow day, not yet heavy with the colours and dews of autumn. Then, lest she should think he was trying to prolong his presence there, he began to pluck faster. He must finish soon, and make his
departure
. Where was Helena? Hardly daring to lift his eyes from the task, for he must not appear curious, or betray Mrs. Rolls’ trust in him in any way, he pulled fingerfuls of dark-red feathers; and coming to the back of the neck, wondered if he dare ask for some of the hackles which made the Red Spinner flies, according to the cobbler who tied flies at Lynmouth. Fishing: and he was going to the front tomorrow. How long ago, far back in the past, was his holiday in Devon—in another world.