The Golden Virgin (13 page)

“I love London,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s fun?”

“Yes,” he said, wanting to kiss her, but would she think him a bounder if he did?

They drove on across the bridge. On the dark platform, while the train approached under a ruddy haze of steam, they waited side by side. He wanted to ask her when they could meet again, but could not make the words come, until she kissed him. How sweet and soft were her lips. He kissed her, gently as before. Her lips fondled his. “You have such soft lips,” she whispered.

“Alice, will you write to me, at Grey Towers, Hornchurch?”

“I may. But you’ll come up soon, won’t you? Can’t you bring a friend for Frances?”

“I may not be able to come up often, owing to Zepp. raids. The moon’s growing, you see. But I’ll write.”

The train came in, he put her in a carriage, he kissed her again as she leaned out of the window, then the darkened train was gone.

It was after midnight when he got back to Hornchurch. The house was in darkness, the fellows in his room asleep in their camp beds, including Wigg. He undressed without a light, and got into his sleeping sack, to lie still and live again scenes of
the evening, and think of the mouth of Alice gently fondling his own.

*

He wondered whom he could invite to meet Frances. Milman, the piano player and violinist, would do, a very gentlemanly fellow, but he went always with his chum Thompson; besides, Milman was friendly with Miss Broad, the Colonel’s daughter, a nice girl. Then there was a pink-faced amiable captain called Bason, who was second-in-command of the company, under Kingsman. But was Bason too old, being twenty-six? A fellow called Ray, also in the company, had tried to cadge a lift to Town; but Phillip did not want Ray. Ray was abrupt and cheeky, and simply awful with girls, picking up anyone in the streets of Hornchurch and asking one question, as he wore his sloppy trench-cap on the side of his head, pulled down like a pre-war nut’s cap; he wore yellow breeches and puttees, and his nails were as dirty as his stories, which Phillip avoided. So he decided to ask Bason, who on the next expedition “up West” sat in the Swift beside him.

Phillip followed the routine of the previous visit almost exactly: meeting behind the shop, down Regent Street, Frances on Bason’s lap, Alice’s fingers gentling his neck, the bus parked outside the Criterion restaurant, dinner at the same table in the Green Room of the Apex House. After the meal, for which Phillip insisted on paying, they went to the Café Royal, and then to the picture house across the street. Phillip insisted that they were his guests, but Bason quickly put down what he called a bradbury, with a shilling, for two boxes.

“It’s against King’s Regulations to stand treat to a senior officer, old sport!”

Having already kissed Alice on Vauxhall station platform, Phillip was not shy of her for long; and during the picture, with Mary Pickford and her cluster of curls, he put his lips against her lips at intervals with remote feelings of pleasurable friendship. The time passed happily, and when they had seen the second picture, he tapped on the door of the box next door, and going in, found Bason and Frances sitting sedately side by side. They, too, were ready to leave; and Phillip led the way back to the Café Royal, where, feeling to be quite an old
habitué,
he ordered coffee in the Russian style, in long glasses. There on the plush settees sat the Bohemians in large dark felt anarchist hats, a guarded look in every eye.

The Lion of Chelsea was there, in the same place, with another,
older model. This time he was smoking a large meerschaum pipe. He and his companion were drinking hot whiskies with lemon, which they stirred with glass rods. They seldom spoke.

The putty-faced man with the greasy curls and the large gold ear-rings was there, too, looking more unwashed than before, with the same dark woman looking like a gipsy. They left before the Lion this time; and Phillip heard the Lion say, as they went out, “Dirty little East Side Yidd!” to his companion.

Shortly after this Frances said, “I really think we should be leaving. I hate to say it, but Alice has some way to go. It’s been such a lovely evening, thank you both so much.”

At this, Bason said he would see Frances home in a taxi, and meet Philip in half an hour inside the Café. So Phillip drove Alice to Vauxhall, waited with her for the train to Surbiton, kissed her as she leaned out of the window, saluted, and watched, with his usual feelings of life coming to an end as the red tail-lamp grew smaller and smaller in the darkness.

Phillip and Bason saw the two girls twice more during the next week. Each time the same routine was followed; the gas-lit lane, the Apex House, Cinema, Café Royal, Vauxhall station, Grey Towers in darkness after midnight. Then, lighting the gas in the ante-room, a glance at Orders on the green baize board.

“I say, Bason, look at this! A new battalion is to be formed!”

Bason leaned on his shoulder as he read that officers whose names were posted below would proceed by train from Hornchurch to Northampton on the morrow to form the nucleus of the new battalion under (temp.) Major J. T. Gleeson, with Captain J. d’A. Kingsman as second-in-command.

“Good old Jasper,” said Bason. “Now I’ll get the company. I can do with some more dough, too. Blime, little old Milman’s Adjutant! Bad luck, Phil, you haven’t got a company. You should have got here last August. Tommy Thompson has, so has ‘Brassy’ Cusack. I bet both Wigg and Cox are fed up, neither’s got a company!”

In the morning when Phillip came down to breakfast Milman was being congratulated on his engagement to Miss Gladys Broad, the C.O.’s daughter. Remarks at the lower end of the table were various: Wigg’s was really dreadful, thought Phillip; while Ray said, with a laugh, “Fancy believing in love! Christ, they’ve got something coming to them!”

Later Bason said to Phillip, “Ray’s old man deserted his mother when Ray was a kid, so of course he doesn’t believe in any Ideal.”

It seemed a strange remark from Bason, with his unimaginative face, thought Phillip; he felt closer to him, all the same, as he went to congratulate Milman, with others.

“Look at them,” he heard Wigg say. “All sucking up to the little shop-walker!”

In the early afternoon the cadre of the new battalion detrained at Northampton, and proceeded to billets in a residential part of the town. Bason suggested that he and Phillip should mess together in one house; they had a bedroom each, and a sitting-room where their meals were served to them by their servants. He said that Major Gleeson didn’t know where they were going to eventually; meanwhile the company of less than forty men, all of them fairly young, was to carry on normal infantry routine training.

Company headquarters was in an empty Mission Hall. The men slept on the floor on straw palliasses. Routine inspections of feet and kit were soon over, when both officers and men were free for the rest of the day.

Two new officers had joined Captain Bason’s company that morning. One was a tall, powerfully-built man who told Phillip that he had been a buyer of carpets for an Oxford Street store before joining up. The other, a short sturdy man, came from Grimsby, where he had been in the fish trade.

On the afternoon of the day following their arrival—a Saturday—the High Street of the town was thronged almost entirely with women and girls. Phillip, walking alone up the street to explore, passed hundreds of them. They seemed to scurry past, to be in unobtrusive hurry, as though they were fearful of missing something. He glanced surreptitiously at the faces coming his way hoping for one upon which he might fill his sense of vacancy. Reaching the end of the High Street, he felt himself to be on the verge of acute loneliness. Desmond would be back after his course at Waltham Abbey; and here he was, in a strange desolate place, where all the faces of the hundreds of girls walking up and down had the same white, subdued expressions. They seemed somehow to be furtive, mouselike.

With relief he saw the figures of the two new company officers
in the crowd on the pavement. He went to them, and suggested that they have tea together.

“What a hot-stuff place,” said the other, from Grimsby, appreciatively in his deep voice, as the eyes in his healthy face surveyed the hordes of girls. “Bags of it thrown at you.”

“We’re the first of Kitchener’s Army, apparently, to be billeted in the town,” said Paul, the carpet buyer before the war. “Most of these girls work in the boot factories. They get plenty of money now, on Army contracts.”

“Aiy, they’ll pay for your drinks, an’ all,” said the Grimsby man, named Flagg. “Last night I clicked with a bird——” With a frankness that slightly repelled Phillip he described his luck. As he turned away a young girl passed, and gave him a soft guilty look.

“Go on, Maddison, you’ve clicked,” said Paul, turning politely to Phillip. His eyes were a bit stony, thought Phillip.

“Oh, I’m quite happy walking about by myself.”

“G’ a’ht!” said the Grimsby man. “It’s here, why not ’ave it? You ought to come with me,” he added, generously. “There’s bags of it waiting, wherever you look. What did I tell you? I’ve clicked!”

He set off after a fair-haired pale girl, who had turned to give him a lingering look.

“I can see you are a fastidious man,” said Paul. “I don’t believe in indiscriminate picking up,” he went on reflectively, “I prefer to wait until I see the kind of girl I like, quiet and respectable, with good face and figure, of course. On the other hand, as you’ve seen, Flagg goes after the first flapper who gives him the glad eye. I found a very nice piece last night,” he went on, as though he were describing a Wilton carpet. “She had an excellent appearance, a wonderful soft skin, auburn hair, rich and thick, and took me home to introduce me to her parents. Her boy was killed in the gas attack on Ypres, and she said I reminded her of him. Her people gave me supper, and went to bed, leaving us alone. She got me a drink out of her father’s whisky bottle, and sat at my feet on the hearth rug before the fire. She clung to me, and was very passionate. Very nice too.” He smiled slightly, but his eyes were still stony. “But perhaps you don’t care for taking what the gods provide?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Well, take an older man’s advice, and look for a girl who will take you home. If she comes from a respectable family, you can bet on her being quite safe.”

“I know what you mean, Paul.”

“One has to use judgment, as in everything else in life.” Wigg, complete in pea-jacket and cap set slightly down on one side, sauntered up to them.

“Taking a look at the market?” asked Paul.

With a barren glance at him, Wigg strolled on, cane under arm, hands in flapped pockets.

“Bit stuck up, isn’t he? A bit dissipated, too, I should judge. What was he before the war?”

“Tobacco at Smyrna, he told me.”

“That explains his contempt for women, and also for me. His type is recognisable among the customers who used to come into my department, on leave from the East. Not quite pukka sahibs. I know the type well. Some of them brought home carpets to sell, and treated us rather as though they were still among dagos.”

“Talking about tobacco, how about some tea?”

After tea Paul said he was going to call on his girl of the night before, and take her to the pictures; and alone once more, Phillip wandered up the High Street, wondering if he should go by himself to the flicks; but in the glow under a lamp-post he saw a girl walking alone. She gave him a half-look, and strolled on. Her white hungry face lured him to follow. He kept to a distance of about a dozen yards. At the top of the street she walked slower. He adjusted his pace, reluctant to meet her. She walked beyond the thinning throng of Saturday night shoppers, and stopped under a lamp post, as though waiting for a bus. She seemed nervous, and glanced about her.

At last he said, “Are you going for a walk?”

“If you like.”

An iodine-brown moon rose over the roof-tops as they walked on up the street. He tried to see her face; and wondered what to say to her. Her compliant manner made him feel that he might be able to be like the Grimsby fish-salesman Flagg, with his muscular calves and thick thighs, full lower lip and resonant decided voice.

“I don’t know my way about this town. Where are we?”

“We’re in Gold Street now.”

They walked on. “Where does this way go to, d’you know?”

“Gas Street. Down there is the Horsemarket.”

They came to another cross. “That’s Scarletwell, and down there is Silver Street.”

“Silver sounds nice. I’d like to see it.” At the end she said, “This is Sheep Street.”

“That just about describes it!” He thought of the flock of girls from the factories, baa-baa’ing—and Wigg the wolf and Flagg the ram among them. “This way leads to the public park,” she said, a little breathlessly. He took her arm and felt she was trembling.

They walked round an open space. The ground was damp and cold. He walked on, feeling more and more shadowy. They came to the gate, and were back where they started.

“Where else is there to go in this wilderness?”

“There’s the churchyard near Green Street.”

Side by side they returned down the Horsemarket, and came into Gold Street, where was the churchyard. In the yellow moonlight they threaded in and out of the graves, stopping at last beside a vault with a flat top, against which he leaned, while she stood a yard away, facing him.

“Is this a popular place for couples?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you been here before?”

“No, never.”

“Have you ever got off with anyone before?”

“I used to walk out with a boy,” she replied, shivering.

“You’re cold.”

“Oh, I’m not really.”

“Are you a native of this town?”

“No, my people come from Rugby.”

“Have you heard of Rupert Brooke, by any chance?”

“No. Does he live in Northampton?”

“He was at Rugby. The school, I mean. His father was Head Master. Rupert Brooke wrote those famous poems, and died of pneumonia at Gallipoli last April.”

“Go on.”

Silence followed this remark. He wondered how he could get away without hurting the feelings of the pale face waiting—for what everyone wanted. Or did they? Was love no more than—clicketting? Yet, if only he dared—

“What happened to your boy, if it isn’t a rude question?”

“He cast me off.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “you
are
cold, I can hear you shivering. Let’s walk, shall we. I fancy there’s frost in the air.”

They walked down to the main street. There he bought her an
overcoat, and while she was still struggling with words of gratitude he said that he had to go, and with a good night and a salute, returned to his billet.

Captain Bason came back on Sunday night and Phillip asked if he might have forty-eight hours off to go and fetch the Swift. On the way back, he thought he would go to Brickhill, and sleep the night with Polly. Beau Brickhill was, according to the map, only about twenty-five miles from Northampton.

“Sorry, old sport. You’ve got to attend a course on the Lewis gun, beginning tomorrow. By the way, I’ve invited Frances down for next week-end, and how about Alice coming, too? The landlady says they can get a double room next door. I’ll pay their fares, of course.”

“Well, I’ll pay my whack.”

Frances and Alice arrived on the Saturday afternoon. They carried longer umbrellas, and wore what they called freedom skirts, with jackets of Crow Blue, a black material which had dark blue sheens on it at certain angles. They wore shin-high boots, a-swing with tassels. After tidying up, as they called it, in the bedroom which Bason had arranged for them to occupy in the house next door, the girls returned to the sitting-room, for what Bason called high tea.

Afterwards they played whist and rummy. Phillip played his trench gramophone. When he put on
The
Eternal
Waltz,
with its haunting lilt of faraway splendours and romantic loves, Frances and Bason rolled back the carpet, and began to dance. Phillip sat by the gramophone, his ear close to the tinned concave reflector. Alice raised eyebrows at Bason.

“Come on, you slacker,” said Bason, kicking him as he passed, “don’t leave Alice out in the cold!”