A Test to Destruction (30 page)

“Can you tell us, Maddison?” said Lord Satchville.

He must say something. That he was in another part of the ship at the time, as he had prepared, should the dread question come. Now his mouth opened, but he could not speak.

“I think it might be accepted,” went on the Duke, after an interval of silence, “that in consideration of all the circumstances, the matter be allowed to remain in abeyance. It was unfortunate that Private O’Gorman was without his life-jacket, but on the other hand, had he not, with commendable sense of duty, gone to the aid of Harold West, it is unlikely that he would have taken off his jacket. Perhaps the Colonel of the Regiment would give us guidance in this matter?”

“I agree, Duke, with the line taken. What useful purpose would be served by an inquiry at this time? Maddison, I understand, was temporarily blinded by mustard gas. Nevertheless he sent his orderly to help Westy, as all of us who were privileged to know Harold West called him. A most commendable action, in my opinion, after the order of
sauve
qui
peut
.”

“Hear hear!” They were praising him. He hid his face with his hand to conceal tears. Afterwards Lord Satchville came up and said, “I haven’t had an opportunity before to tell you, Maddison, of my personal satisfaction in how you have borne great responsibilities in the field, and to offer you my congratulations.”

The luncheon extended the ordeal. He dreaded that the stain of sweat under his arm-pits would show through the tunic borrowed from Denis Sisley, and kept his arms almost rigid by his side. It was a simple luncheon: thick brown soup, the usual salty ‘boiled blood’, followed by slices from a haunch of venison, tasteless and pale-green in colour. He sat between Moggers and Vallum. Claret was served. The Duke, Phillip noticed, was not eating venison, but a grilled fish with pink flesh, obviously a trout, brought in by his special butler on a trolley and served to him by his valet, who also put a dish of spring onions before his master. The butler dropped a bit of ice in his wine: rather strange, he thought, since he had always heard that red wine should be drunk at room temperature. After the meat there was a hot caramel pudding, with chilled cream ladled over it from a large golden bowl, and a variety of stewed raspberries and strawberries in jelly, presumably preserves, also with unlimited cream. The Duke had no helping, but munched his spring onions.

He felt more at home with his neighbour, Colonel Vallum, a massive man with a big head, strong jaw, and modest manner, when he told him, almost as a confidence, that his hobby was painting wild flowers, ‘when I can get the time’. Vallum went on to explain that he was a clerk, employed at the War House, ‘all paper’. He wore with the dark red V.C. riband, the D.S.O., 1914 Star, Legion d’Honneur, Croix de Guerre avec palme, the Montenegrin eagle, and Coronation Medal.

“I was a schoolboy at King Edward’s coronation, and got it for shouting at him as he walked by underneath, on his way to be crowned. I had this in my pocket—it always brought me luck.” He put a small object on the table between them. “D’you know what that is?”

“It looks like a piece of yellow phosphorus, but it couldn’t be that.”

“It’s a piece of pancake I grabbed during the Greaze in School Yard.”

“Oh, you were at Westminster, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I went to school at Blackheath.”

“Rugger?”

“No, soccer.”

“Before I got the shape of a rhinoceros I used to play in the Rectory field at Blackheath—you know it, of course.” He made crumbs with his bread. “You did well in France, Maddison. I was reading about you before I came down here.”

Moggers winked at him. “I told yew yew’d do, Lampo, old son.”

I didn’t—
drip
—I didn’t—
drip
—I didn’t—
drip-drip-drip.

“Gentlemen, let us rise and drink the health of His Majesty the King!”

*

One Monday morning he went up to London to see Georgiana Lady Dudley, who, bright and gay as when he had seen her last, marked him down for the next vacancy in a private convalescent home in the West Country.

“So you are home again, Colonel Maddison! Let me see—last time it was?—of course, in the early summer of 1916! And how are you? Much better? I
am
so glad! Last time, let me see, you went to——? Of course, Lynmouth! Dear, dear Lynmouth! I remember how we set out one day to go there
from Watermouth, with dear, dear Bobo Curzon, and the coach wheels skidded all the way down that awful hill! I do hope you will not find Falmouth too relaxing after Lynmouth, it’s much flatter, too! If you come across the Tregaskis at Carligan, do remember me to Zoe Tregaskis, won’t you? They have such lovely gardens. South Cornwall has almost the air of the Riviera, don’t you think? Oh yes—your address? Hus’b’n Abbey. And how is the Duchess? Tireless as ever, I expect, in her hospital? Goodbye, Colonel Maddison!”

Had she really remembered him, or was she helping life along with grace and kindness? Both, probably: it was the only way to live. He wandered down to Piccadilly, a place entirely of memories: gone the uniforms of the Allies in those early days and nights, when he had been with Desmond and Gene. He felt himself to be almost a ghost. What to do? Go down to see Mother? By hurrying, he could catch the 12.30 from St. Pancras, and be in time for Lady Abeline’s picnic. That darling child Melissa, smiling blue-eyes and honey-coloured hair, Melissa the honey-bee, Melissa whose nurse insisted on her wearing white gloves in the park, Melissa—Lily and her dreaming, azure eyes.

To be with the four-year-old child was happiness, sans memory, sans thought. To him came the old desire, no longer frantic but with acceptance that it would never be, to find rest in the tenderness of eyes, hair, warmth of arms, the near-delirious softness of dove-like breasts. He stood still, resisting, resisting the near-terror of loneliness in this city of many streets filled with wheels and faces pressing upon the eyes, and the laughter of passing strangers. He bought a paper to look for a theatre matinée, and was held by bold type on the front page: a new German attack on a wide front down by the Chemin des Dames at Rheims. The Wolff Wireless Bureau claimed a break-through, with thousands of prisoners, both French and British, and hundreds of guns. British divisions so far down the line? They must have been tired troops sent south to rest.

There was no end to it, he thought, giving the paper back to the newsboy. For a moment he wondered if he should go to the War Office, and ask to be sent out immediately, saying that he was perfectly fit.

The paper did not say who the British troops were, of course, although nowadays some regimental names were mentioned by war correspondents, usually long afterwards when prisoners had
been taken. Anyway the Germans knew as much as the British High Command knew about the German dispositions. Should he go at once to the War Office, say he was perfectly fit, and ask to be sent out again, as a subaltern perhaps? Those 18-year-old boys … at least he would be able to help them in a small way. But they would not be able to do anything, he was officially still in hospital.

He went to see Mr. Kerr in Cundit Street, and told him his news.

“Falmouth, that’s a pleasant place. I suppose you’ll be wearing plain clothes most of the time? They do a lot of sailing down there. The oaks up the river Fal will be showing their best at this time of the year, too. How are you off for flannels, and a tweed jacket, sir? I mention it now, so that we can have all you require in the way of fittings at one time.”

“Yes, I’ll want a tweed jacket, and some trousers—grey flannel, I think.”

“I’ll show you some patterns.”

They went to the back of the shop to the bolts, Phillip thinking that if they had been found in Wytschaete, they would have been soiled and lousy within twenty-four hours. He was rather amused by Mr. Kerr’s concern for their qualities, as though there wasn’t a war on; but another side of him took it all in. “We’ve been fortunate enough to get hold of some very decent Donegal tweeds, in spite of all the controls and shortages. I wonder what you will think of this peat and sedge mixture? It’s a summer weight, and will go well with any trousers.”

“Yes, I’d like a jacket with patch pockets made of this, also two pairs of white bags. And while I’m about it, I think I’ll have another tunic, for the summer.”

“I have a light-weight serge here, made from the wool combed from a pedigree flock of Border Cheviots. A very active little animal, the Border Cheviot, as resilient as the heather——”

Phillip approved this cloth at once, and ordered a jacket with slacks to match. No cuff badges of rank: he’d probably come down to commanding a platoon, when he went back to France again, he told Mr. Kerr.

“Yes, sir?” said Mr. Kerr, lightly. “Would you prefer cloth rank badges on the shoulder straps, or gilt and enamel? We’ve also got some in dull bronze? They’re in three sizes … here we are, sir.”

The smallest were scarcely more than a quarter of an inch across. “I’ll have this size, Mr. Kerr.”

“In gilt or bronze?”

“Bronze.”

“They’ll be hard to distinguish, sir. Perhaps you want that?”

“I think I’ll have them medium size, in gilt.”

“That would balance up the jacket, sir. Now the buttons. You’d prefer the usual gilt, or leather? I always think that the smaller round leather button looks well with a fine serge cloth, particularly for a mounted officer.”

“Yes, I’ll have leather buttons.”

“Small leather buttons, Mr. Brown. I think that covers all for the moment. We’ll have everything ready for fitting when you come up to town, on your way through to Cornwall.”

At the door Phillip heard the distant thumping of drums, and a waft of brazen music.

“There’s a parade of some of the girls in war jobs in Hyde Park this afternoon,” said Mr. Kerr. “It should be quite a sight. More war babies to follow, I suppose——” He looked blandly at his customer. “Well, who is to blame them, sir?” as he bowed out his customer.

Phillip went to Hyde Park and saw rank upon rank of regiments of girls—in uniforms brown, grey, white, red, and khaki. One company were Little Red Riding Hoods, covered from head to foot in scarlet. “They make our gas-masks, sir,” explained a constable. Others wore red caps with white jackets and loose white trousers, others the same garb with blue caps. “Also from Woolwich Arsenal,” explained the constable. Phillip knew the V.A.D. nurses with their blue dresses and white aprons, the bus-conductors in dark blue trousers and brown holland jackets, the Post Office girls with bags slung over shoulders, other girls in dark blue uniforms from the electric trams. There was the Land Army—might Doris be with them? He went close, but could not see her, then along a line of Foresters in brown jackets and bright green caps. He drew smiles and glances from some W.A.A.C.s, but hauteur from the senior service (female) W.R.E.N.s, as he looked for blue eyes and fair hair, a soft glance to feed him, the more beautiful the more that the hunger for love weighed upon him, for the face of—a Lily.

Older women officer’d them.

“Company! For-r-rm—fours! Right tur-r-rn! Quick—
march!” The drum thumped out its
boom-boom-boom
—
boom,
boom,
boom
—from the brass instruments curled sunflower-petal music; he walked, fifty yards distant, beside the marching column that led the way to the broad walk under tall and spreading elms, where pigeons strutted and coo’d.

“Mind the low railings, girls!” said a smart young lady W.R.E.N. officer. He watched them go.

It was June, it was high summer, nobody there heard the guns, nobody saw rifles thrown forward as ghosts left bodies sinking at the knees, heads falling forward upon ruined fields under the Monts de Flandres, or among old and rotting heaps of sandbags from which the chalk had long since broken, above the Somme and the Marne.

Phillip went up to London again, while awaiting authority and railway warrant to proceed to Falmouth. It was towards the second week in June when he said goodbye to the Duke and Duchess, and was driven away in one of the half-dozen 1907 Silver Ghost landaulettes. He told himself that he must not tip the chauffeur, having seen the notices put up on many of the walls beyond the red baize doors asking guests not to give money to the servants. He was a sort of guest, so the pound note folded in his trousers pocket was creased and recreased as he rode behind the glass partition to Bleachley junction, where the London train was stopped whenever the Duke requested it, since the line ran through his land.

A luncheon basket had been provided; it was put in the carriage for him by the chauffeur. Out came the pound note; the grateful smile made it a pleasant journey, familiar as far as Exeter; then it was strange country onwards beside the estuary of the Exe, and the railway continuing along the coast to the red rocks of Dawlish to Teignmouth; and along another estuary where salmon fishermen were hauling their nets. After Newton Abbot was green country with cider-apple orchards, giving way, as the train rushed westwards, to purple and yellow tracts of
moorland about which he recognised, with excitement, the granite tors of Dartmoor, with their memories of
The
Hound
of
the
Baskervilles,
the blue paper-covered
Strand
Magazines
in the drawer below the linen-cupboard in his bedroom at home.

The sun was beginning to descend ahead of the engine; and seemingly drawing the train in its descent to lower fields, until the slate roofs and towers of Plymouth came into view. Over another bridge, more salt water, and he was in Cornwall at last! The engine was throwing out smoke; he closed the windows, while the laboured piston-thrusts indicated another ascent to the western redoubts of Dartmoor, and then, running freely, descending once more to a strange country which reminded him of Loos, only these heaps towering into the sky were white: they must be the china clay learned about in geography books in that remote time called schooldays. He imagined battle among the near-impregnable spoil heaps with their muffling effect on high explosive shells, and safety for the machine-gunners in their deep dug-outs. Then the slaughter: it would be like the slaughter around Kemmel Hill, where the German dead had lain in thousands, after Wytschaete had been evacuated. And living in the past with the imagination, he found that the train was slowing before St. Austell station; and puffing onwards into the sun, still high, they came to Truro, and a country of woods and green pastures, and near the end of the journey, for here were wooden ships, beside the muddy saltings of a creek over which the train rattled.

And so at last to Falmouth, and crimson rambler roses along the station railings, where a fluttery old lady (as he thought of her) came smiling obliquely, as with shyness, towards him.

“
Can
you be Colonel Maddison? But you are so young! Do forgive me, but I was expecting someone quite different, and wearing uniform. I
do
hope you had a pleasant journey? Jack will take your bags. It is rather a long way round by motor to Tregaskis, so I do hope you will not mind crossing over by the ferry? I have a taxi waiting, to take us to the pier. How
very
nice to see you, Mr.,—I mean Colonel—Maddison.”

“Well, I was only an acting colonel, so I am really only a ‘Mister’, my substantive rank is lieutenant, Miss Shore.”

It was a brief run down to the pier, where the fresh-faced Jack, who wore a sailor suit and round cap with white band, smilingly took his bag. Phillip was delighted with the idea of
crossing over the harbour in a small steamboat, with its vertical boiler and open furnace door glowing with logs, thrown in by a boy. The ferryman was obviously an old sailor, with a peaked cap and white beard. And looking about him as the boat beat its way across a few hundred yards of water, he saw out to sea, in the broader area of the harbour, two old wooden men o’ war, relics of Nelson’s day. Miss Shore explained to him, in her gentle fluttering voice, that the nearer vessel was a school for sailor boys, run by someone with a name sounding like Mr. Barley Swann.

“He is so good with the poor boys he looks after, many of them without fathers since the war,” she said happily. “I do hope you will like our little place, Colonel Maddison—no, Mr. Maddison, of course, I must remember not to say ‘Colonel’ mustn’t I? Here we are, Jack will drive the governess cart.”

They moved slowly up a street past white-washed cottages, and entering a drive, arrived at a stone-built house among the trees on the top of the hill.

“I am afraid we cannot let you have a room to yourself, but you will find Major Wetley quiet and understanding. Would you like tea? I am sure you must be famished after such a long journey. Now tell me, I have been simply longing to ask you, are you musical? You are! There, I felt sure you were! Let me play you a beautiful record, while they are bringing tea.”

Miss Shore wound up a cabinet H.M.V., and from the open doors came the strains of
In
a
Monastery
Garden.
“Would you care to control the tone?” She held out a black cable, with a sort of plunger on the end. “If you push, it will play softer, or louder if you pull out the plug. It’s so much more like the real thing then, I always think. Now I will leave you awhile, to amuse yourself with it.”

Phillip softened the music, then for an experiment pulled out the nob, so that the mixture of organ strains, bird-notes, bells, and chanting voices swelled out, filling the room. He tried to push in the control, but found it was stuck. While he was wondering how to free it without breaking anything, a tall captain in trews came thudding down the stairs, glengarry on head, and crossed over the room to stand above him, and say, “Must you make that hideous row! It’s time those blasted monks were called up!” and going to the gramophone, the scowling captain jerked the needle off the record. “I’ve had enough of that bloody
old woman’s sentimentality,” he muttered, as he strode out of the house.

“Ah,” said Miss Shore, coming back a minute or two later, while he was still trying to free the plunger. “It was
so
kind to stop the record. It is so beautiful, I think, don’t you. So peaceful.”

“It’s my mother’s favourite record, Miss Shore.”

“How wonderful! Yes, it belongs to a time gone by, when there was peace in the world. Ah, here’s Nurse with tea! Let me introduce you—Miss Goonhilly—Mr. Maddison. Now do you prefer cream or lemon with your tea? Lemon? Help yourself to sandwiches—these are cucumber, and those patum—and tell me all about your journey!”

After tea, Miss Shore said she thought he looked tired, and he ought to go to bed. Nurse Goonhilly would bring up his dinner on a tray at half-past seven. “I shall be dining out tonight, with Mr. Barley Swann, in the
Foudroyant,
his training ship, you know. The more distant ship you saw is the
Implacable.
Mr. Barley Swann is hoping, after the war, to fit that up too, for the older sailor boys. Tomorrow morning Doctor Bull has promised to come and see you; there are plenty of books for you to read meanwhile. Now if you will come with me and Nurse, we will show you your room. I
do
hope you will like it.”

The room was large, facing west. Its white walls were glowing with the sun still high over the trees beyond the lawn. After the northern outlook of the Tennis Ward, it was blankly open to Phillip.

“Have you many other patients here, Miss Shore?”

“Oh yes, all our beds are now filled; we can only have fourteen patients at a time. The others are out and about somewhere; this is Liberty Hall, but we ask for notice if anyone is going to be out for luncheon and dinner, for the sake of the staff, you know. Lights out are at half-past ten, with all our guests, as we think of them, in by ten. That is one of the conditions imposed by the authorities, you know. Nurse will show you the bathroom. Dressing gowns and bathrobes you will find in this cupboard, with towels. Would you like a glass of hot milk, or some Benger’s Food, to stay you until dinner? Do ring if you want anything, won’t you? We shall meet again after breakfast! Ah, here is Jack to unpack your things. Until tomorrow morning, au revoir, and pleasant dreams!”

He was unable to read; a feeling of claustrophobia grew with unbearable thoughts of ‘Spectre’; he stuck it until dinner arrived—vegetable soup, fillets of plaice cooked in milk, and chicken with new potatoes and small carrots—and then began to put on his clothes while trying to control an inner trembling, which spread to his hands, while he sweated coldly. He must get out of the place. Why the hell had he submitted to being sent to bed? He could not breathe; no wonder the tall Scotch captain had been so sullen. Why did they always shove one into bed as soon as one arrived at a convalescent home? If you were fit to walk about in hospital, surely to God a man was fit to walk about in a country house?

The blatant sun, burning the treetops, glared into the room. It was all he could do to unknot his shoelaces. His finger stuck in the back of a shoe, he pulled it out violently, and shoved on the shoe with a knife-blade, afterwards throwing away the knife; then forcing himself to pick it up he put it back on the tray and tip-toed to the door, opening it to listen. It was like
Alice
Through
the
Looking
Glass
—Nurse Goonhilly—Mr. Barley Swann—Major Wetley. What a collection! He sat down in a chintz-covered armchair, and tried to breathe deeply, to find calm. It was no good. He must get away. Damn the old woman, what was the point of sending him to bed? He dared not leave the room, and sat there trembling.

The sun had gone down, with gulls flighting silently over the trees, when he opened the door and, with invisible sparks running through him, went down the stairs. Voices came from a room beyond the large hall where he had had tea; he listened outside, then dared to open the door.

Inside was a pianola and a half-sized billiard table, looking as though they had been hired in the town by an elderly spinster lady to “keep your boys at home”, as the pre-war advertisements ran in popular magazines. Beyond the billiard table three men were sitting at cards. Wine glasses stood on the table. As soon as the door opened the glasses were removed, while heads turned in his direction. “It’s all right,” he said, much relieved. “I’m only one of the patients. Came this afternoon.”

“Ah, you’ve got out of bed without the Goonhilly knowing, you naughty boy!” replied one of the card-players, an elegant youth with gold hair parted down the middle. “We’re playing
cut-throat. How about a foursome, Major?” to the dark-haired elderly man opposite.

“Anything you like, Swayne.” Major Wetley turned to Phillip. “Do you play?”

“I play auction. I don’t play poker.”

“Nor do I,” said the dark man, in a Midland accent. “Come and take a pew. How about a glass of wine?”

“Not at the moment, thank you, sir.”

“I don’t blame you,” said the gold-haired youth, with a mock simper.

Phillip kept his amiable expression at this remark. They drew for partners. He and the elegant young officer drew highest. Sitting opposite his partner, Phillip noticed that Swayne wore a service uniform similar to that of the Foot Guards. Remembering the Guards officers of 1914, it was therefore with some surprise that he heard the young ensign say, after the major had cut to him, “The senior officer present having neglected to introduce us, partner, let me do it for him. My name is Swayne. This extraordinary-looking fat cove here is called Coupar, otherwise Copper Nob. Have some Algerian wine. It’s the major’s birthday, so he’s responsible. God, it’s filthy muck you’ve bought, major! I’d rather drink the Goonhilly’s disinfectants!”

“I told you, it’s all that shop ’ad, Swayne.”

“But why buy wine at a grocer’s, major?”

“This is Falmouth, not London, Swayne.”

“And this is red-ink, not wine, major.”

“You’re drinking it, I notice.”

“Worse luck,” with a simper in Phillip’s direction.

“You don’t ’ave to drink it, Swayne. Any as wants to can help themselves. There are four more bottles.”

“You old poisoner!”

Phillip said to the major, “I should of course have told you that my name was Maddison before I sat down, sir.”

“Oh, we don’t stand on ceremony ’ere,” said Major Wetley’s mild Midland voice. “’Elp yourself to a glass when you fancy one. There’s a spare glass o’er there.”

“The major comes from a place where they had no names, only numbers, didn’t you, major?”

“Anything you say, Swayne. Whose call? Oh yours, Swayne, since you dealt.”

“Well, give us a chance to look at my bloody cards, major!”
Swayne gulped some wine and said, “I’ve got a hand like a foot, so no bid.”

The major studied his hand for some time. At last, “I’ll venture one diamond.”

The fourth player, Coupar, had a fat body below waves of oily copper-coloured hair crowning a big face with thick features. He sat biting his nails as he stared at his cards, then said musingly, “I wonder what you meant by calling a diamond, partner.”

The major was still studying his cards. “My original call was only a conventional feeler, you know, partner,” he said across the table.

“A ‘conventional feeler’, is that what you are, you dirty old man?” said Swayne.

“Now now!” said the major.

“Surely during your sojourn in Aly Sloper’s Cavalry you have learned that Portland Club rules forbid information being passed to a partner directly?”

“Very well, I pass, Swayne,” said the major.

“The correct phrase is, ‘No’, or ‘No bid’, major,” said Swayne.

“Two no trumps,” said Phillip.

“Three diamonds,” said Coupar.

“I’ll double three diamonds,” said the major.

“But you’re my partner!” exclaimed Coupar, indignantly. “You can’t do that!”

“The major can do what he likes. He’s the senior officer present,” tittered Swayne.

“Why can’t I double my partner’s three diamonds if I want to?” said the major, mildly.