Death of a Hero (49 page)

Elizabeth looked annoyed at the question, but tried to pass it off lightly.

“I don't see much of her now – Fanny's so popular, you know.”

“But why don't you see her?” Winterbourne pursued clumsily. “Is anything wrong?”

“I don't see her because I don't choose to,” replied Elizabeth tartly and decisively.

He made no reply. So, owing to him there was fixed enmity between Fanny and Elizabeth! His mood of depression deepened, and he went to his room. He picked a book from the shelves at random and opened it – De Quincey's
Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.
He had entirely forgotten the existence of that piece of macabre irony, and gazed stupidly at the large-type title. Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts. How damned appropriate! He put it down and began to look over his painting materials. Elizabeth had taken his sketching-blocks and paper and all his unused canvases except one. The tubes of paint had gone hard and dry, and his palette was covered with shrunken hard blobs of paint just as he had left it fifteen months before. He carefully cleaned it, as if he might be sent before his Company officer on the charge of having a dirty palette.

He turned up some of his old sketches and looked through them. Could it be that he had composed them? They were undoubtedly signed “G. Winterbourne”. He looked at them critically, and then slowly tore them up, threw them in the empty fire-grate, struck a match and set fire to them. He watched the paper curl up under the creeping flame, glow dull red, and shrink to black fragile ash. Numbers of his canvases were stacked in little neat piles against the wall. He ran through them rapidly, letting them fall back into place as if they had been cards. He paused when he came upon a forgotten portrait of himself. Had he painted that? Yes, it was signed with his name. Now, when and where had he done it? He held the small canvas in his hands, gazing
intently at it with a prodigious effort of memory, but simply could not remember anything about it. The picture was undated, and he could not even remember in which year he had done it. He deliberately put his foot through it, tore away the strips of canvas from the frame and burned them. It was the only portrait of him in existence, since he had always refused to be photographed.

In the line they had been forbidden to keep diaries or to make sketches, since either might be of use to the enemy if they got possession of them. He shut his eyes. In a flash he saw vividly the ruined village, the road leading to M—, the broken desecrated ground, the long slag-hill, and heard the “claaang” of the heavies dropping reverberantly into M—. He went to Elizabeth's room to get a sheet of paper and a soft pencil to make a sketch of the scene. She had gone out. As he rummaged at her table, he turned over and could not help seeing the first lines of a letter in a handwriting unknown to him. The date was that of the day on which he had returned to England, and the words he could not help seeing were: “DARLING, – What a bore, as you say! Never mind, the visitation can't last long, and…” Winterbourne hastily covered the letter up to avoid reading any more.

He went back to his room with paper and pencil and began to sketch. He was astonished to find that his hand, once as steady as the table itself, shook very slightly but perceptibly. The drink last night, or shell-shock? He persisted with his sketch, but the whole thing went wrong. He got tired of blocking lines in and rubbing out. And yet that scene existed so vividly in his memory, and he could see exactly how it could be formal-into an effective pattern. But his hand and brain failed him-he had even forgotten how to draw rapidly and accurately.

He dropped the pencil and rubber on the half-erased sketch and went back to Elizabeth's room. She was still out. The room was very quiet and sunny. The old orange-striped curtains had gone and were replaced by long, ample curtains of thick green serge, to comply with the regulations about lights. There were summer flowers in the large blue bowl, and fruit on the beautiful Spanish plate. He remembered how the wasp had come through the window, like a tiny Fokker plane, almost exactly three years ago. To his surprise he felt a lump in his throat and tears coming to his eyes.

A church clock outside chimed three-quarters. He looked at his wrist-watch – a quarter to one. Better go somewhere and have lunch. He dropped into the first Lyons Restaurant he came to. The waitress
asked if he would like cold corned beef – thanks, he'd had enough bully beef for the time being. After lunch, he rang up Fanny's flat, but got no reply. He walked in her direction, strolling, to give her time to return home. She was not in. He scribbled a note, asking her to meet him as soon as she could, and then took a bus back to Chelsea, lay down on his bed and fell asleep. Elizabeth came into the room about six and tiptoed out. At seven she woke him. He started up, fully awake at once, mechanically grabbing for his rifle.

“What's up?”

Elizabeth was startled by this sudden leap awake, and he had unconsciously jostled her roughly as she bent over him.

“I'm so sorry. How you started! I didn't mean to
frighten
you.”

“Oh, it's all right. I wasn't frightened – used to jumping up in a hurry, you know. What time is it?”

“Seven.”

“Good Lord! I wonder what made me sleep that long!”

“I came to know if you'd dine with me and Reggie tonight.”

“Is he coming here afterwards?”

“Of course not.”

“I think I'll have dinner with Fanny.”

“All right; just as you please.”

“Can I have the other key to the flat?” Elizabeth lied:

“I'm afraid it's lost. But I'll leave the door unlocked as I did today.”

“All right. Thanks.”

“Au revoir.

“Au revoir.”

Winterbourne washed, and worked desperately hard with a nailbrush to get out the dirt deeply and apparently ineradicably engrained in his roughened hands. He got a little more off, but his fingers were still striated with lines of dirt which made them look coarse and horrible. He rang Fanny up from a call-box.

“Hullo. That you, Fanny? George speaking.”

“Darling!
How are you? When did you get back?”

“Two or three days ago. Didn't you get my letter?” Fanny lied:

“I've been away, and only found it when I got back just now.”

“It doesn't matter. Listen: will you dine with me tonight?”

“Darling, I'm
so
sorry, but I simply can't. I've an appointment I simply must keep.
Such
a bore!”

Such a bore, as you say! Never mind; the visitation can't last long, and “It doesn't matter, darling. When can we meet?”

“Just a moment: let me look at my memorandum-book.”

A brief silence. He could hear a faint voice from another line crossing his: “My God! you say he's killed! And he only went back last week!”

Fanny's voice again:

“Hullo. Are you there, George?”

“Yes.”

“Today's Wednesday. I'm awfully busy for some reason this week. Can you see me on Saturday for dinner?”

“Must it be as late as Saturday? I've only a fortnight, you know.”

“Well, you can make it lunch on Friday, if you prefer. I'm lunching with somebody, but you can come along. It'd be nicer to dine alone together, though, wouldn't it?”

“Yes, of course. Saturday, then. What time?”

“Seven-thirty, the usual place.”

“All right.”

“Good-bye, darling.”

“Good-bye, Fanny dear.”

He dined alone, and then went to a Circassian Café, which he had been told was the new haunt of the intelligentsia. It was very crowded, but he knew nobody there. He found a seat, and sat by himself. Opposite him at a couple of tables was a brilliant bevy of elegant young homosexuals, two of them in Staff Officer's uniform. They paid no attention to him, after a supercilious stare, followed by a sneer. He felt uneasy, and wondered if he ought to be there in his Tommy's uniform. Perhaps the Cafe was out of bounds. He paid for his coffee and left. After wandering about the streets for a time, he dropped into a pub in the Charing Cross Road, and stood beside a couple of Tommies drinking beer. They were home-service N.C.O.'s – instructors, he gathered from their conversation, which was all about some petty way in which they had scored off an officer who did not know his drill. Winterbourne thought he would stand them a drink and get into talk with them, but his eye fell on a notice which forbade “treating”. He paid and left.

He dropped into a music-hall. There were numbers of War songs, very patriotic, and patriotic War scenes with the women dressed in the
flags of the allied nations. All references to the superiority of the Allies and the inferiority of the Germans were heartily applauded. A particularly witty scene showed a Tommy capturing several Germans by attracting them with a sausage tied to the end of his bayonet. A chorus of girls in red preWar military tunics sang a song about how all the girls love Tommy, kicking up their trousered legs in unison, and saluting very much out of unison. There was a Grand Finale of Victory to the tune of:

“When we've wound up the watch on the Rhine,
Everything will be Potsdam fine.”

At the end of the performance the orchestra played “God Save the King”. Winterbourne stood rigidly to attention with the other soldiers in the audience.

Eleven o'clock. He thought he would go and sleep at his Club. The place was dimly lighted and empty, except for three or four elderly men, who were earnestly discussing what ought to have been done in the hand of bridge they had just played. There were notices everywhere urging members to be economical with light. The servants were women except the head waiter, a pale little spectacled man of forty-five, who informed Winterbourne that no Club bedrooms were available. They had all been commandeered for War purposes. Winterbourne found it odd to be addressed as “sir” again.

“I've got me papers too, sir,” said the waiter; “expect to be called up any day, sir.”

“What category are you?”

“B1, sir.”

“Oh, you'll be all right. Keep telling them you're a skilled club steward, and you'll get an Officers' Mess job.”

“Do you really think so, sir? My wife worries about me something dreadful, sir. She says she's sure I'll catch my death of cold in the trenches. I've a very weak chest, sir, if you'll pardon me mentionin' it, sir.”

“I'm sure they won't send you out.”

The little waiter died of double pneumonia in a Base Hospital early in 1918. The Club Committee made a grant of ten pounds to his widow, and agreed that his name should appear on the Club War Memorial.

Winterbourne felt sleepless. He was so much accustomed to being alert and awake at night and sleeping by day, that he found a difficulty in breaking the habit. He spent the night aimlessly wandering about the streets and sitting on Embankment benches. He noticed that there were very few occupants of the benches – the War found work for every one. Odd, he reflected, that in War-time the country could spend five million pounds sterling a day in trying to kill Germans, and that in peace-time it couldn't afford five million a year to attack its own destitution. Policemen spoke to him twice, quite decently, under the impression that he was a leave man without a bed. He tried to explain. One of them was very fatherly:

“You take my advice, my boy, and go to the Y.M.C.A. They'll give yer a bed cheap. I've got a boy your age in the trenches meself. Now, say you was my boy. I wouldn't ‘ave ‘im goin' with none of these London street women. ‘E's a good boy, ‘e is. An' they've treated ‘im cruel, they ‘ave. ‘E's been in France nearly two year, and never ‘ad any leave.”

“No leave in nearly two years! How extraordinary!”

“No, not even after ‘e was in orspital.”

“What was he in hospital with?”

“ 'E wrote us it was pneumonia, but we believe ‘e was wounded and didn't want to fret us, because he wrote afterwards it was pleurisy.”

“Do you happen to know the number of his Base Hospital?”

“Yes, Number XP.”

Winterbourne smiled sadly and cynically; he knew that was a venereal disease hospital. Pay was stopped while a man was under treatment, and he lost his right to leave. Winterbourne determined not to undeceive the policeman.

“How long is it since he came out of hospital?”

“Ten months or more.”

“Oh, well, he'll certainly get leave before Christmas.”

“D'you think so? Reely? ‘E's such a good boy, good-lookin' and well set-up. P'raps you'll see ‘im when you go back. Tom Jones. Gunner Tom Jones.”

Winterbourne smiled again at the thought of looking for Tom Jones in the swarming and scattered thousands of the Artillery. But he said:

“If I meet him, I'll tell him how much you're looking forward to seeing him.”

He pressed half a crown in the policeman's hand, to drink the health of Tom and himself. The policeman touched his helmet and called him “sir”.

He had breakfast at a Lockhart's – kippers and tea – and washed in an underground lavatory. He got back to the flat about ten. Unthinkingly he went into Elizabeth's room. She and Reggie were having breakfast in dressing-gowns. Winterbourne apologized almost abjectly, and went to his own room. He threw off the boots from his aching feet and lay down clothed. In ten minutes he was fast asleep.

The meeting with Fanny was somehow a failure. She was extremely gay and pretty and well-dressed and charming, and talked cheerily at first, and then valiantly against his awkward silences. Winterbourne did not know why he felt so awkward and silent. He seemed to have nothing to say to Fanny, and his mind appeared to have become sluggish – he missed half her witty sayings and clever allusions. It was like being up for oral examination and continually making silly mistakes. Yet he was very fond of Fanny, very fond of her, just as he was very fond of Elizabeth. And yet he seemed to have so little to say to them, and found it so hard to follow their careless intellectual chatter. He had tried to tell Elizabeth some of his War experiences. Just as he was describing the gas bombardment and the awful look on the faces of men gassed, he noticed her delicate mouth was wried by a suppressed yawn. He stopped abruptly, and tried to talk of something else. Fanny was sympathetic, but he could see he was boring her too. Of course he was boring her. She and other people got more than enough of the War from the newspapers and everything about them; they wanted to forget it, of course, they wanted to forget it. And there was he, dumb and dreary and khakied, only awaking to any appearance of animation when he talked of the line after drinking a good deal.