A Fox Under My Cloak (52 page)

“Now you’ve spoiled a pretty compliment!” cried Mrs. Neville.

“Well——” he said. “By candlelight, you know——” He stared at the bottle.

“It’s no good looking at that bottle, Phillip,” laughed Mrs. Neville. “That bottle is to be opened only in an emergency!”

She smiled coyly at Phillip, before turning to the older woman and saying, “That’s our little safeguard, isn’t it, dear? Oh yes, Phillip, that bottle is quite an old friend now. It’s been three times on this table, beside that candle, during the past six weeks, hasn’t it, dear?” with a wink at Phillip.

Footsteps sounded on the tessellated area in front of the flats. Phillip blew out the candle. “Hush. It’s Ching! Don’t move!” They heard the bell in the next flat ringing. At last footfalls went away, and after an interval, Phillip said he must go. He was going on the Hill, half way across, with Eugene, who lodged in Foxfield Road, he told Mrs. Neville. Saying goodbye, they left the three women sitting round the bottle on the table. What a night!

Distant guns broke out as they walked up Hillside Road. “I bet the bottle will be opened now, Gene!” as a broad lilac beam leapt above the roof of the Modern School before them. “I’ll just call in to see if Mother’s all right, I won’t be a sec.”

He ran up to the porch, key in hand, quietly opened the door
in darkness, to hear from above, down the long passage to the end bedroom, Mavis’s terrified voice calling, “Mother! Mother! I can hear one coming! Quick! Quick!” then Mother’s voice saying, as she hurried down from the front bedroom, “It’s all right, dear, Mother’s coming!”

Phillip heard a faint high throb passing away in the sky. “Don’t get the wind up!” he called up the stairs. “The chance of anything falling here is a million to one! I’m just going on the Hill, Mum, I won’t be long. Cheer-ho!” and he was about to leave before she could say anything to stop him, when Polly came down the stairs in white bodice and bloomers. She carried her skirt and shoes in one hand, and coming to him beside the newel post, said with a little laugh, “Hullo. May I come with you?”

“You’re not dressed.”

“Yes, I am,” as she got into the skirt. “I can put on my overcoat, see?”

“You’ll catch cold,” he said, feeling her knee, while her nearness drew the wire in him.

“That I won’t!” She tossed her curls, and called out, “Aunt Hetty, I’m just going on the Hill for a minute with Phillip, to see the sights. It’s all right, I’m already dressed.”

“Polly, I don’t think you ought to, dear. It is so very very late!”

“Only for five minutes, Aunt. I’ve got on my thick overcoat. Come on,” to Phillip. She took his arm while he closed the door quietly by turning the Yale key. “Uncle won’t be home until midnight,” she whispered.

Arm in arm, exhilarated in comradeship, Phillip and Polly and Gene walked up the gulley. Phillip was glad that Polly was with him. She could walk fast, like a man. She was a bit of a sport. He sighed, thinking of Helena.

*

London lay around the Hill, dark with the smallest lights. Northward a tongue of flame arose, casting a pink haze in the darkness. Gunfire started again. They saw little red flashes high in the night over Woolwich; then searchlights were weaving, clustering, breaking apart, wildly searching. The beams went out, one after another, quickly, leaving the stars winking coldly in the wind, and bright points of light burning below.

“Thermite candles,” said Phillip. They waited for flames;
when none appeared, they walked arm-in-arm towards the elms, where Phillip stopped.

“Father once saw a Camberwell Beauty on his strips pinned to this tree, with his dark lantern,” he said, suddenly. “Before I was born. He used to collect butterflies.” Loneliness
overcame
him for a moment, giving way to a desire for Polly. Yet he did not want to say goodbye to Eugene.

“We’ll meet again, Phil?”

“Of course, rather! Well, goodbye for now, old man.”

They shook hands. Holding on to Polly’s hand, Eugene said, “Are you ever in Town?”

“Sometimes,” said Polly, tossing her curls. “Why, may I ask?”

“I’d like to take you out to dinner one night.”

“Perhaps,” said Polly, taking back her hand.

“Well, so long!” said Eugene, fixing the monocle and raising his hat. “Till we meet again!”

They waited while his footfalls lessened in the darkness.

“It seems awfully sad, somehow, to have to say goodbye,” said Phillip. “But life is like that, you know.”

They walked back unspeaking until Polly said, “I am sorry about Bertie. Aunt Hetty asked us not to talk to you about it, but I want to say I’m sorry, Phil.” She took his arm again.

“Oh, Mother doesn’t understand, really. She always tries to hush things up. Was Aunt Dorrie very upset?”

“She didn’t cry, Aunt said, but was very quiet. Gran’pa wants to take them both to Brighton, but there’s Uncle Dick, with his special constable’s work, to be considered.”

“Yes, he’s out until midnight, three nights a week. Poor old Father. What’s the time now?”

The hands of his Ordnance wristlet watch, glowing
phosphorescent
, showed twenty past eleven. The wire between life and death drew him. He did not speak while they crossed the crest of the Hill; but at the top of the gulley he stopped, holding the sleeve of her coat. “Polly, shall we——?”

“If you like.”

They went along the hurdles opposite the sheep-fold and sat down on the grass.

“You’re shivering,” said Polly. “Here, come inside my coat.”

She held him. After a while she unbuttoned the top of her bodice. “Lay your head here.” He fondled her warm softness,
while all feeling for her stayed away with his thoughts. He clung to his thoughts, yet knowing them to be hopeless. It was ended; all he had ever hoped for was dead. He might as well have Polly. He put his lips to her breast, feeling roughness rising in him.

“Polly, has anyone else ever——”

“Wouldn’t you like to know!”

“Not particularly. Come on.”

“All right‚” said Polly.

*

The October night was quiet. From the Hill the distant
shunting
of ammunition trucks in Woolwich could be heard. It was half past eleven. Richard Maddison had another thirty minutes to go before he reported to the Randiswell Police Station. Each night he visited the dozen special constables on their beats, always at the same times and places, so that they could rely on him appearing regularly. He was tired, quite fagged-out, he told himself as he walked down a street, dutifully looking for cracks of light in doors and windows, and scanning roof-tops for sign of signalling by flash-lamp. He was cold, he had had but a scanty supper, he had arrived home from the office only ten minutes before being called out for duty. He had never been late yet. In the dreary course of his patrol he thought of his dark lantern, and wished that he had not given it to Phillip years before—the boy would have taken it anyway—for then it could have warmed his hands during the coming winter nights.

February 1954—May 1955
Devon.

by Henry Williamson in Faber Finds

THE FLAX OF DREAM

The Beautiful Years

Dandelion Days

The Dream of Fair Women

The Pathway

The Wet Flanders Plain

A CHRONICLE OF ANCIENT SUNLIGHT

The Dark Lantern

Donkey Boy

Young Phillip Maddison

How Dear Is Life

A Fox Under My Cloak

The Golden Virgin

Love and the Loveless

A Test to Destruction

The Innocent Moon

It Was the Nightingale

The Power of the Dead

The Phoenix Generation

A Solitary War

Lucifer Before Sunrise

The Gale of the World