The Golden Virgin (41 page)

In the next bed lay a mass of bandages which moaned and whimpered through the darkness, heedless of cries of
Shut
up,
for
Christ’s
sake
pipe
down,
and more violent curses from the length of the ward. The bandaged man had belonged to a party which had tried to storm the redoubt on the Bapaume Road and been burned to death by flamethrowers as it reached the parapet, with the one exception. When Phillip looked in the morning, the bed was empty; the man had died, and been wheeled away.

Later, Phillip was lifted upon a rubber-tyred trolly and wheeled along a passage, to stop outside the operating theatre door. Before he could ask what was to happen a mask was put over his face, with pipes attached to cylinders. So he was to have a whiff. His hands were held when the cocks were turned on. He wanted to say to the nurse that he would not struggle, he would lie perfectly still, so would she please trust him and not hold his hands; but she held his hands, and as he lay immobile he felt distress that he could not say with the mask on what he wanted to say. Down down down he sank into a deep dug-out shaft, seeing the sky above turn green with sparkles and spangling flashes, the pollen of the lilies of the dead, far far far above him—

Then a face in a tilting room was very large, speaking foggy words, while waves washed in sounds somewhere and the angles of the room were acute, then right-angles, then obtuse, always trying to steady themselves while his hands were held and the voice of the face spoke his name and tried to draw him out of a wide open ragged space like a shell-hole under the sky which was white-washed like the ceiling of the room. He was sea-sick with the waves, and with a roar vomited froth into a basin which was part of the white shell-hole. He was sick again and again, and was only half
of himself, the other half burning and held down by the grey-starched bosom of the nurse whose voice boomed as she spoke his name and said, “Come on! Come on! Wake up!” as she pulled him to her in a horrid froth-making way. He tried to push her away, uselessly, and saw her face clearly, as it shrunk; she said, “Lie still, I’ll fetch you a drink”, and the thought made him feel swelled and sick, and why did she have to bang the door with a fearful noise that hurt like thunder when she left the room. Why was he alone in the room, why was he not in the long rather dark ward, why was he isolated, what had happened. He sank away under nausea.

*

Two days later he was gliding in a hospital ship down the Seine. All base hospitals were being cleared to take the wounded coming down from the battlefield, many of them by barges on the canals.

He read a newspaper,
The
Daily
Trident,
which spoke of the continued British advance along the road to Bapaume, of the fall of La Boisselle and the imminent capture of Contalmaison, two miles beyond the old British front line. He wondered if “Spectre” West, who had gone back to the Gaultshires in that sector, had had anything to do with the success there.

Trees on the tall wooded river banks glided past the portholes, green and pleasant as he lay canted on his side, easy with milk and sugar in his belly.

He took up an old copy of
Nash’s
and
Pall
Mall
Magazine,
one of a bundle left on his cot by an orderly. He told himself that he must read carefully, so that when pain began again he might be able to hold his mind above matter. He began with the advertisements.

On the first page there was a picture of an officer in the trenches stropping a safety razor. The loop of the strap was held by a tommy with rifle slung, while another looked on, grinning.

Opening his fountain pen, he gave the officer a beard; then the written comment,
If
it
strops
itself,
then
what
is
the
officer
doing
in
the
picture?

The next advertisement was of a tommy holding an immense tin of Fry’s Pure Breakfast Cocoa, while a shell burst behind him, and underneath the words, WHAT I HAVE I’LL HOLD.

Then one of a small boy, finger to mouth, saying
I’
se
found
out
where
Mummy
keeps
Ficolax.

Ugh, castor oil and licorice powder, given while Father stood by; for Mother alone could not get him to swallow such filthy stuff.

Phillip took his pen and shook blots all over the advertisement, then smeared the blots, and wrote across the advertisement,
PROOF!

Including
Phosgene,
Chlorine,
and
all
Hot
Air
from
Behind
the
Lines
, he added.

There was the picture of a man holding the waist of a girl in a nightdress who was lathering his chin.

Two jobs in one, as Freddy would say.

Then came the familiar picture of a man enclosed in a wooden box, his head sticking out.

Now
that
Gallipoli
is
no
longer
available,
he wrote, as he gave the man dundreary whiskers.

A man in morning coat, with sahib-glance, stiff upper lip, jutting chin, stared out of the next photograph.

If,
wrote Phillip, beside the photograph,
you
don’t
ask
your
shillings
where
they
come
from,
what
sort
of
a
business
man
are
you?
Better
get
into
khaki,
and
be
really
sure
where
your
bob
a
day
comes
from.

The heavy down-dragging weight was coming back, the nausea of pain, turning the mind from clear glass to frosty glass, to sooted frosty glass above London Bridge station, all the engine safety-valves blowing off in one great screeching tearing from which away he could not drag his feet. It was too much, it was happening all the time, it was going on night and day, never-ceasing, flesh splattering and bone splintering, shell splottering, bullet bizz-buzzing, bombwompering mortar crackrending. Rough awful
waves of corrugating glass embedding him silent-screaming into smooth thick thickening thickest stifling excreta of licorice powder bubbled with castor oil breaking into smoke and flame and white flossy caterpillars of silent-screaming fire-terror Mavis.

“You must try not to cry out.”

“It was Mavis. She——”

“Drink this.”

“But my sister——”

“Now try and go to sleep again.”

“Was I asleep?”

“You have been, for the past hour.”

“Thank God, O, thank God!”

“Be a good boy, and I’ll bring you some tea.”

He took up the magazine, rejoicing secretly with it, as with an old and trusted friend.

There was a man with revolver in hand gazing calmly into a looking-glass on an expanding stick, while beside him stood another man with rifle, fear on his face as he had not got a Lifeguard Patent Collapsible Pocket Periscope. Perhaps he was also thinking that his wife could not afford 20/-.

Every one Guaranteed: what, never to stop—running? He began to laugh. Hero-proof watches, wear one and never stop running.

“Don’t cry, ducks,” said the nurse, bringing the tea, “you’re going to get well very soon. Now drink your tea, it’s nice and
sugary, good for little boys.” Little London Cockney boys, he thought, no longer slightly sunburnt.

O love, my love, did you but love me. There she was, his golden girl, in five poses by Harrison Fisher. He ached with longing.

He would write to them when he got home, and send an account of the attack of July the First.

He looked through the pages. There was a story called
The
Fear,
by Charles G. D. Roberts, about prehistoric cave-men and women
(one woman was naked, leaping forward, big toes spread, wild hair flying, with smoothed-out breasts) and mammoths;
The
Wonderful
Year,
a serial by W. J. Locke, to which he would return, as the woman looked luscious and sunny, with golden hair; “Mr. Dooley,” a fat Irishman with a funny face apparently cheating at cards; an essay by Dr. Frank Crane, called
Bunglers,
with a buxom angel visiting a girl in Greek robes, sewing beside a basket of pears, in a Mediterranean setting.