A Fox Under My Cloak (33 page)

When he had finished plucking, and then drawing; when the limp body, strangely thin and naked, was hanging from a branch of the lilac tree, he had to summon his courage before venturing to the open kitchen door, and, after further hesitation, to call out softly, “Mrs. Rolls!”

There was no reply. He waited in a mild distress of indecision, before calling again. Still no answer. What ought he to do? Where was she? Dare he go inside, and call into the hall? And waiting there, he heard the front gate bang behind its coiled spring, the crunch of gravel, and the plop of letters on the mat, followed by two short rings on the bell. The postman had come. Then footfalls downstairs.

“Mrs. Rolls, I’ve finished now.”

“How very kind of you, Phillip! Come in, dear boy.” She had three envelopes in her hand. He could not stop himself giving a glance their way. As though in response to his curiosity, she held one up.

“I expect you know that writing, don’t you, Phillip?”

It was an
On
Active
Service
envelope, written in indelible pencil, a red rubber
Passed
Censor
stamp, a signature in one corner, addressed to
Miss
Helena
Rolls.

“From your cousin Bertie Cakebread. Such a fine young man. Gerard and I have always admired him, so upright, and such a good boy to his mother——”

Phillip did not know what to say. Why was Bertie writing to Helena? He did not know that the Rolls were friendly with Bertie. It was staggering news! Perhaps that was why he had been invited into the house! Bertie had given him a good name!
If
ever
there
was
a
peach,
it
’s
that
girl.
Bertie was helping his cause!

“His father was such a splendid man, wasn’t he?” said Mrs. Rolls. “And it is nice to know, too, who was the grandfather of one’s children’s friends, don’t you think?”

Phillip replied “Yes”, not realising that she was referring to the Cakebread family connexion with the Coldstream. He thought she must mean Gran’pa Turney, until she said, “Three generations in one regiment! Not many people today can boast of a thing like that, Phillip. Well, thank you very much, dear boy,” she was saying, when Helena came into the garden. She was smiling, she was radiant, she clung to her mother’s arm, she looked into his eyes with frank delight; and Phillip’s joy was complete.

“Isn’t it awfully kind of this dear boy, Helena, to help us out like this? I think we ought to ask him to come in and eat it tonight, don’t you? Or have you already made plans for this evening, Phillip?”

It was then that he saw that Helena was holding Bertie’s letter to her bosom.

“Oh, yes,” he heard his voice saying. Eyes on the ground: get away, quick, quick! “I’m afraid I have to see someone tonight, I’m going to France tomorrow morning. Well, I must go now. Goodbye.”

“Going back so soon, Phillip? Surely you’ve done your bit?”

“I’m taking a draft of London Highlanders to the front, Mrs. Rolls. That’s why I got an extra twenty-four hours. I was supposed to go this morning.”

“Ah, I wondered why you had stored your noisy motorcycle! Well, I think you are a brick, the way you tackled that cockerel.”

“Hear, hear!” said Helena.

“Well, goodbye,” and hurrying away, almost he ran through the gate, and to the asphalt pavement of Hillside Road.

*

It seemed strange that men should be painting the spiked iron railing round the Hill the same bright green as in peace-time; that the milk-cart should be standing outside the flats, seen so clearly in the quiet sunshine. He could hear the footfalls of the milkman, with his white apron and straw hat, as he moved to put the milkcans at the doors, with his yodelling cry of
Milk-oo.
It was all as he had always known it; but now there was a sheet of plate glass between him and life.

“What shall I do, Mother, what shall I do? Did you know about Bertie all the time? Then
why
didn’t you tell me? O, what a fool I have made of myself! Mrs. Rolls once said I was morbid. You all think this really, I know. All the lot of you! Aunt Victoria, Uncle Hilary—no-one seems to understand what it is to feel time passing, while life is also standing still. I’ll tell you now why I never got on with Mavis and Doris! They laughed at me when I couldn’t help them seeing the tears in my eyes years ago, when I spoke of the swallows soon to be flying away over the sea! It was in the kitchen during breakfast, Father had gone to the station. It was early October, and a high wind was rattling the kitchen window. I can see it as though it were yesterday. Doris pointing at my face, and Mavis jeering, ‘Cry baby!’ No-one understood in those days!
No-one
understands now! Sometimes I don’t want to live any longer—I hope I shall be killed!”

When he was calmer, Hetty suggested a picnic on Reynard’s Common. They could go by train from Randiswell, and be back in time for Mavis’ tea. Doris could get her own; she would leave the key next door with Aunt Marian. It would be like old times, she said; and strangely quiet and still, his unhappy feelings settled or renounced for the time being, he said he would like to go with her to the Common.

Hetty was quiet, too; her bright nervous manner was shed. They were companions, as in the days after his scarlet fever, when they had gone together for a little holiday to Brighton. He was her little boy again, on that very same table they had played together with his bricks, or written letters to one another across the table—his handwriting a pencil squiggle; the early
days when he had needed and confided in her his little secrets, and how he loved Da-da! Now he trusted her again.

They had the carriage to themselves; few people were going into the country at that time of day; and at the end of the line was the dear, familiar wooden turn-table for the engine, worked by cranked handle and cogs; then came the tree-shaded lane leading up to the Common, with its yellow-brick cottages and coppices and white dusty lanes through the woods. “O, to live here always, in a dear little cottage!” exclaimed Hetty.

Beyond the woods was open ground, where the gorse bore the last of its massive yellow nugget-blooms of summer. While they walked they heard little cracks, as the gorse pods split screw-wise and cast black beans upon the peaty earth. He collected some, to sow in the Backfield. Perhaps some other boy——

They sat down upon the sun-hot earth, in a space of sward where as of old the linnets were a-wing, their breasts
faint-branded
by the fire of summer suns. The corn-bunting still sang on the telegraph wires, the lizard clung warm upon the faded posts torn by the spiked climbing irons of the repairing men.

“Mother, I think I will give you my locket, and if I do not come back, will you give it to Bertie? And say I hope he will be very happy.”

With piercing insight he thought of the human desperation, despair, and misery under the same sky which was so calm above this very Common, where all was peace, where the only movements were of cloud and bird and seed. Curled and bleached, the thin pods of the rose-bay willow-herb were loosing away their parachute seeds; they glistened and trembled in the webs of spiders hanging everywhere between gorse and thorn. Yet all life there had suffered; upon the pebbly spaces charred stumps showed where fires in past summers had burned the common black; but life had returned, for hundreds of sapling silver birches were now rising there. It was the land of linnet and stonechat, of bunting and goldfinch; of adders among the pans of pebbles anciently rolled by floods across the chalk of north-west Kent. Now upon this land the last heats of summer were dispread on fading heather-bell and carline thistle; only the yellow nuggets of the furze defied the sun’s declension, while autumn’s pale tickets showed upon distant elm and beech and oak.

This was perhaps the last time he would see the Common. How still and quiet everything was; even the twitter of linnets was finished. Time here was standing still; out there, Time was rushing fast, rushing upon life after life. Time rushed backwards for him, bringing winter scenes like transfers upon his mind; bearded faces, knife-shortened greatcoats, woollen
balaclavas
, fire-pails, flares, mud-tracks through broken trees. Death was an instant away, the other side of the glass fixed between life and the soul.

His mother saw his face when he returned to where she was sitting, the sandwiches spread on a table napkin upon the ground, and said, “You won’t forget your crucifix, will you, dear? It came from the convent, and was given me by Mère Ambrosine at Thildonck.”

“I know.”

“And don’t forget your prayers, Phillip. They will help you in your duty towards others.”

“Prayer never yet stopped a bullet.”

“That is not quite what I mean, dear. Do you remember the poor boy you used to give bread and dripping to, because he was so hungry?”

“Cranmer. Yes, why?”

“Well, Phillip, when you thought of Cranmer being so hungry, you did not stop to think about any consequences to yourself, did you?”

“You mean Father forbidding me to go about with him?”

“Yes, dear, that is what I meant.”

“What’s all this leading up to?”

“Well, dear, you are now in a position to help others, the men under you, and if you always bear it in mind when you say your prayers, it will give you strength to continue through bad times.”

“The Germans pray to God, too.”

“Even so, God’s help is always forthcoming when everything else seems to be lost.” She turned away her face, to hide the tears.

Seeing them, he felt like scoffing; struggled against saying something unkind; strove to be kind; nearly gave way to black despair, but managed to say, “Cheer up, Hetty! I’m not dead yet. In fact, I’m rather glad to be going out again.”

It seemed to her that her prayer was answered. “Of course,
dear! You came through last time, and you will come through again! You always did scrape through, somehow!” she laughed. Memory bloomed in her. “What fun we had during our picnics here, when you were all children! Oh, the sun, the sun! How time flies—it seems only yesterday when you were my ‘little mouse’, and Father was so good and unselfish, nursing you night after night, so that I should get some sleep, and be able to feed you——” She sighed; a tear started; to be lost in a sudden smile. “And then, in answer to my prayers, one morning, very early, there stood the old man who lived opposite, with a little jug of special milk; and oh, the relief when at last you stopped crying, and fell into a peaceful slumber in my arms! And Father could sleep too—do you know, never in all that time when he was awake with you, night after night, did he once complain. He was splendid!”

“Was—was Father
really
like that, Mum?”

“Yes, dear, of course, naturally. He loved his little son, very very dearly.”

He got up and wandered away, and stood again by the massive gorse bush, its spines radiating the sun’s heat with a strong sweet scent, and tried to feel clear, as he had when a child. Then Cranmer’s face came into his mind, while it seemed that the air about him was warm and kind, and he was no longer afraid. Cranmer, he thought, Cranmer, are you near me, and it seemed that Cranmer was with him in spirit.

When he went back to his mother, and they spoke again, he felt that she was quite different, her way of talking was so assured, and there was now a sort of friendship between them, no longer that of mother and son, but of two friends who knew one another.

This feeling lasted all the afternoon and evening, which he spent at home, playing cards with Mavis and Doris and Mother, while Father seemed happy as he read the paper in his chair. When the morning came, Phillip was surprised to feel that he was looking forward to being at the front again, in a strange sort of way. And if he should be killed—well, he would go where Cranmer had gone, and Baldwin, and all the others who were now fixed faces in his mind.

V
ICTORIA
S
TATION
. Thousands of soldiers, hundreds of officers returning from leave; a whole coach reserved for the staff, red tabs and gold-oakleaf hats; wives and mothers and sweethearts—some older women in black, with mourning veils, and crêpe upon their hats—kit-bags, valises, porters with hand
luggage-trucks
—tears, red-eyes, white-faces; serious old men in bowler hats and cavalry-cut of suits, and grey moustaches, standing by near-cheerful, pink-faced soldier sons in tall mahogany-polished riding boots and spurs—cavalry subalterns obviously going out for the first time.

Phillip had gone up alone, after a hurried firm farewell in the hall. At the last moment he was persuaded to take his father’s mackintosh, despite his protest that he could get anything he wanted in France, at the base. He had not troubled about a revolver, or map-case; as for field-glasses, he would pick up a pair somewhere. Prismatic compass? Such gadgets were for the Fireside Lancers or “Strawballs” Staybacks. All he needed was a British warm, a haversack, and a
walking-stick
.

There had been one moment of panic after breakfast, before he had removed braid and cloth stars from his tunic cuffs, and, from his mother’s work-basket, taken needle and thread with which to sew the pips on his shoulder straps.

“Let me do it for you, dear, won’t you?”

“Leave me alone! I must hurry! Please leave me alone!”

The cuff badges would be obvious to snipers.

Reporting to the R.T.O. at Victoria he was taken to his draft of sixty London Highlanders, and signed copies of the
nominal-rolls
handed over to him by one of their officers who had marched them from headquarters. They were to be conducted to an Infantry Base Depôt at Boulogne, where further orders would await him. Among the sixty was a familiar face, clean-shaven and faintly brown, with
pince-nez
spectacles—little Kirk, of the original battalion, whom he had last seen at Bleak Hill, when he had motored there with Desmond in the early spring.

“How strange that we meet again, Kirky, old boy. By rights I should have been crossing yesterday, but got an extra
twenty-four
hours to take you blokes.”

The uniform of the London Highlanders had been changed. The men wore a khaki tam-o’-shanter, with blue toorie and flash, instead of the old glengarry bonnet. They carried short rifles, wooded to the muzzle, and had boots and puttees
half-way
up their hose; but the old kilt of hodden grey was the same. He wished, in a way, that he was still with the regiment; but reflected that, as nearly all the old faces were gone, it was best as it was. What would his new crowd, the Gaultshires, be like?

The crossing was without qualms, the sea being level and blue as the sky. Rolling thuds of gunfire came upon the ship, from the unseen Belgian coast. Having left the draft on a lower deck in charge of the sergeant, Phillip climbed to an upper deck among the officers, seeing, in a reserved place with cabins beyond railings, the group of brass-hats, immaculate in appearance, entirely remote from the swarm of subalterns and captains for’ard. There was also a reserved space for field officers, the ordinary majors and colonels. Phillip thought that these looked, somehow, much more approachable than the staff officers, whose tunics all bore ribbons.

During the march up to the Base Camp on high ground above the town the draft sang
Tipperary
and other songs. It seemed rather flat; but he had made friends on the boat with two subalterns, one of whom had been out before, wounded at Neuve Chapelle, who told him of a good place where to get lunch in Boulogne. There was also an Officers’ Club, he said, where it was possible to wangle an extra night there if you were on your own; but with a draft you were tied like a nursemaid to a perambulator. There were other possibilities of a night in Boulogne, too. This officer confirmed the stories about the
uncut
wire, and lack of high-explosive shells.

It was strange to see German prisoners working in the Base Camp, white-washing rows of stones leading to the big brown huts, painting doors, and even digging in garden plots. They had big round blue patches let into their grey tunics and trousers. Phillip spoke to one: immediately the prisoner leapt to
attention
, snatched off his pork-pie hat, and stood rigid before him.

“Stand easy,” said Phillip. “
Sprechen
sie
Englisch?
”

“A little, sir.”

“I hope you are all right here. I had many talks with you chaps—
prächtig
ker
ls
—last Christmas Day. Do you
understand
?”

“Yes, sir.”

“
Prächtig
ker
ls
—I liked them. This war is no good.”

“I understand, sir.”

“We are all homesick, you know. Well, keep smiling!”

“Many grateful thanks, sir.”

“Cheer-ho!”

That night the draft had to be marched down the hill again, to the station. The destination was Béthune. Phillip thought, we are all for it: the talk in the officers’ mess had nearly all been of the coming push, in the mining country north of Arras. Béthune was the rail-head. Practice assaults, he learned, had been going on in the country round about since the middle of August. The attack was to take place south of the La Bassée canal, the objective being Lille, through which all the railways ran behind the German lines. With Lille threatened, and cavalry pouring through the gap, the old Hun would have to go back to the Scheldt. Just as Gran’pa had said! It was all rather exciting.

“And,” said someone, “the attack is to be preceded by a new kind of stupefying smoke which will conceal our advance right up to the German parapets, and lay out the Germans for a couple of hours, after one whiff. It’ll be a walk-over for our chaps.”

“Like bloody hell,” said the chap who had been wounded at Neuve Chapelle. He seemed quite angry. “Latrine rumours!” he snorted.

*

Béthune. Enormous naval guns on multiple bogies standing in railway sidings, sixty-foot rifled snouts lifted eastwards, towards the German lines. Enormous stacks of shells in fields; rows and rows of Ford ambulance cars with khaki covers painted with red-crosses; thousands of mules and horses tethered to endless picket lines. Soldiers crowding square and market place; dingy buildings, tall water-tower, a few cracked roofs; shops with chocolate and bread and meat for sale; military police wearing revolvers and red caps at every street-crossing; rattle of wheels and hoofs, trail of white puffs in the high blue overhead
following a white speck moving east, above the sullen booming of big guns. No beards, no fire-pails, no short overcoats, no boots worn to the uppers, with toes showing. All this looked like a new business!

A peasant in peaked cap was being led away by red-caps, a handcart following loaded with brown army blankets. Officers on horses, long columns of wagons and limbers, scarlet-banded hats in motor cars. Rattle of wheels on cobbles, filthy grey drain-water in gutters half-dried in the sun, white chloride of lime sprinklings. Oh, for a base job, to be able to watch the war, all so tremendously interesting, without the dread of having to go over the top: the odds in the infantry were three to one against being killed.

Beyond the town, in evening light, shocks of yellow-brown corn stood in fields, looking strange with vast dark mounds and pyramids rising above them, with tall chimneys and the tracery of iron-work above the coal pits.

A fellow subaltern in the camp of khaki canvas huts told him that this was Artois. Coal seams ran everywhere under the skin of chalk. The whole depressing landscape was crowded with khaki, and hazy with smoke. Even so, he felt a sense of freedom to be in the midst of such varied movement, glad to be one of the hundreds of thousands of troops. Life was everywhere
interesting
, on such a vast new scale. He told himself that he would not have missed it for anything; and there was satisfaction in thinking that his army pay was accumulating, together with his salary from the office. This was the real thing, not life with that “Cantuvellaunian” lot! “Strawballs” ought to be covered with woad. Well, he had seen the last of them, thank God! What matter if the water tasted of chloride of lime, when whiskey was three francs fifty a bottle from the Expeditionary Forces Canteen? Grub was good, too.

What luck, they seemed to have forgotten all about him. There were many decent restaurants in Béthune; and nobody bothered what time they got back to their Nissen huts. This was the life, lived against the flickering rumble of gunfire. Most of it was British; the Germans seldom replied. Roll on, the Great Push. Berlin this time!

*

On the fifth morning after his arrival, looking at the
notice-board
in the mess, he read that officers with experience in
chemistry were requested to give their names to the office of the D.A.Q.M.G. What was that when it was at home?

“Deputy Adjutant and Quartermaster General, old boy. Some sanitary job,” the Sussex officer beside him said.

A cushy job, perhaps! He went to give in his name at once. After all, he had had some experience in the laboratory at school, and there was his shilling magician’s set years ago. There was a policy he had made out in Wine Vaults Lane, for a chemical factory at Silvertown in the East End somewhere, and Mr. Hollis saying one morning that he had inspected it.
So
I
con
sidered
my
experience
entitled
me,
Mrs.
Neville
—— He imagined her shaking with laughter when he told her.
Oh,
there
are
no
flies
on
you,
Phillip
!

That evening he was called to the orderly room and ordered to proceed the next day to Helfaut, together with two other officers. Thither, wondering what they were in for, they went by Crossley tender—a wonderful journey, with a stop for lunch at a restaurant in Hazebrouck of many memories. The old Rossignol estaminet was still there, but the cabbage-painted Long Toms gone from the Grand’ Place. After the meal, which was taken with two bottles of champagne, the Crossley roared down the narrow cobbled road to St. Omer, past wide fields where corn was being carried in blue-painted tumbrils looking like wooden boats on high wheels. He enjoyed the thought of the last time he had come along that way in the darkness, nearly a year previously, riding beside Baldwin on the top of a London bus, and so into the battle for Ypres. All that was over!

The course. A lecture given by a junior subaltern of the Royal Engineers, on the method of using liquid chlorine gas in trench warfare, illustrated by a sergeant unscrewing the rounded top of a cylinder and fitting the connecting or discharge pipes. Then a field demonstration in trenches dug for the purpose. Gas was turned on, damp grey P.H. goggled helmets worn over the head, the ends tucked under the collars of tunics. Phillip got hold of a spare one—what fun to ride up Hillside Road like that, on his bike!

Squads, all of N.C.O.s, were formed, each to an officer. Phillip had three sergeants and thirty corporals, half of whom had been under fire in the infantry, the remainder specially enlisted as chemists. On the last afternoon of the course there was a lecture by a staff officer from G.H.Q. on the tactics of the
use of gas, and its application in trenches before an infantry assault. The prevailing wind, said the staff officer, on the western front was from the Atlantic, from the south-west; and as the enemy lines were, generally speaking, to the E.N.E. of the Allied lines, the prevailing wind was in favour of the Allies. The idea was to drench the Hun positions with smoke and gas of such density as to render the infantry and machine-gunners
hors
de
combat
before the infantry assault; while the gunners, particularly during X and Y days and nights, already would have destroyed the Hun wire, emplacements, and dugouts.

“The bayonet and the bomb, gentlemen, will eventually decide the issue. It is our job to saturate the enemy positions before the assault. In doing so, we shall only be paying the Hun back in his own coin, and with interest! It is known,” went on the staff officer, after a pause, “that the Hun infantry is supplied with respirators that will last for about a quarter of an hour only. After that, they require to be redipped. On the other hand, their machine-gunners have oxygen helmets which will protect them for about thirty minutes. There will, therefore, be two periods of discharge. The first period will continue for a period sufficient to ensure that, in the surprise caused by the use of gas, the Hun will neutralise his helmets during the
preliminary
dosage. The second period of discharge, the disabling one, will then follow. It will be accompanied by smoke from candles, to screen the infantry assault. I need hardly add that secrecy in every particular must be observed by every officer and non-commissioned officer here in this room. Upon your absolute discretion will depend the element of surprise, as much as upon the employment of the asphyxiating gases themselves.”

*

The cylinders were of steel, about thirty inches high, weighing over a hundredweight when filled with sixty pounds of liquid gas. The armoured parapet pipe was ten feet long; this was to be connected to a further pipe, flexible and about seven feet long, the other end of which was secured by a nut holding down the union joint to the cylinder head. This head was protected by a steel dome held over one end of the cylinder by a large hexagonal nut.

When the course was ended, Phillip left with his squad in two motor lorries, and was “decanted” at Verquin, two miles south of Béthune. On the way there they passed the bivouacs and
lines of many cavalry regiments, and also an aerodrome, on which biplanes were standing; and nearby, an observation balloon tethered by steel cable to a winch. Nearer the front were the great dumps: rolls of wire, piled boxes of S.A.A. under
tarpaulins
, boxes of bombs and hand-grenades, limbers and wagons, shells, picks and shovels, angle iron and screw-pickets—acre upon acre of materials, all giving a feeling of power.