A Test to Destruction (32 page)

“That’s enough!” said the major, absent-mindedly breaking the pencil point between his teeth. “No rough housing, boys. You know the unwritten rules of hospitality.” He tried to blow the point out, producing hissing noises in Swayne’s direction.

“Ah, it’s always the unwritten rules that count in life, major,” retorted Swayne, getting up. “As, for example, the unwritten rule that a field officer is protected by his rank from hearing from his juniors what they really think about him and the chemical muck he calls wine!”

“Well, you’ve said enow’ about my wine already, Swayne, but if there’s owt else worryin’ you, out wi’ it, man!”

“Your rank forbids, major!”

“There’s no rank in a convalescent home, we’re all equal ’ere as far as I am concerned, Swayne.”

“Very well, in my opinion you’re an absolute outsider.” Swayne, his eyes bloodshot, glared at the major. The major looked down, saying nothing.

“Hold hard!” said Phillip. “I think you should apologise to the major for that remark, Swayne, which was in gross bad taste!”

“‘Gross’ is pronounced with a long ‘o’, as in ‘grocers’,” said Swayne. “Who are you to tell me what is good taste, when you can’t even pronounce the King’s English?”

“Will you fight?”

“Touché,
what?”

“Put up your hands!”

“Oh, don’t let’s have quarrelling, boys. It’s all my fault, so I ask pardon of all. I’m afraid I don’t know much about red wine. They told me where I bought it that it was the stuff they drank in the Foreign Legion. It’s rather on the acid side, I think. I’ve got some bicarbonate of soda upstairs. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and get some. I find it a good standby.”

The major staggered away, hissing and sucking, and came back with a wooden pill-box, which he offered round. Phillip put two tablets in his glass, then took them out and ground them up between finger and thumb; and when he dropped the pieces into the glass, the red wine fizzed and changed to green.

“It’s bloody conjuror’s wine!” said Swayne. “I thought the major had a look of the Mad Magician about him. If this is what they drink in the Foreign Legion, no wonder they go periodically
cafard.”
He put three tablets in his mouth. Phillip drank his green wine. Coupar chewed away. Soon all four were belching.

“That was it,” said the major. “Acidity! Flatulence! It’s all my fault, as I said just now.”

“After all, the French make petrol out of this stuff for their
camions
,”
said Swayne.

“Alcohol, or what they call
alcool,
surely,” said Phillip, recalling mechanics in a comic French film carrying huge cans lettered
alcool,
in the Electric Palace when he was a boy. “Well, thank you for a jolly good birthday party, major.”

The major looked grateful. Not to be outdone, Swayne said with a gracious manner, “My dear major, I do apologise for my
stupid remarks. It was a most amusing party. Would you all care to be my guests at the Pier Hotel across the water, and crack a bottle of bubbly?”

“Thank you very much, Swayne, but I think I’ll go to bed, after I’ve cleared up this little fracas. It’s just as well Miss Shore was out, I think. Don’t you bother, I can do it. I’ll get rid of the bottles, too, and wash out the glasses.”

“How about you, Maddison?”

“I’m supposed to be in bed, Swayne, so I think I should stay here. By the way, were you at Bullecourt in May ’17? That was where Bill Whiting got his V.C.”

“I was there, in Bill’s company!”

“I heard about it, I was with the M.G.C. then. Your chaps put up a wonderful show. But then the H.H.C. is a
corps
d’
élite
!”

“With the London Highlanders,” bowed Swayne. “No ill feelings?”

“On the contrary!”

“Come on Swayne, before Miss Shore gets back.”

“I can’t bear that bloody old woman!” said Swayne, winsomely to Phillip. “Have you met her yet?”

“Oh yes.”

“Well——!”

When the other two had gone, the major said, “I usually brew myself a cup of tea at this time, would you care to join me?”

In the wardrobe at the other end of the Major’s bedroom Phillip saw fishing rods standing in one corner. The major said he spent some of his time fishing for pollock and codling, and had had some good sport off the rocks by Pendennis point. Soon they were like old friends. The major told him he was born in Staffordshire, and had had a haulage business before the war. Had Phillip been to the Potteries? Or read anything of Arnold Bennett’s? He was a fine writer, and his
Five
Towns
novels would become part of English literature. He offered to lend him a copy of
Clayhanger.
While the tea was brewing, Phillip glanced at the book, saw a passage about the fires of the kilns glowing in the smoky night, and decided that he must read it.

“I managed to get half a pound of Orange Pekoe, one of my little luxuries,” said Major Wetley. “I had a brother in the tea-trade before the war, in Mincing Lane, who always sent me a box for Christmas. Now I drink China’s best in his memory. Tell me, what do you make of Swayne?”

“I’ve met people like him before, who were not really sure of themselves, and so they take it out of others——”

“You’ve got it, Maddison! Swayne’s people keep a large jeweller’s shop in the county town, where my wife comes from, so I know all about him. The Swaynes fancy themselves, and tell people that they are
county
jewellers—you know, imitating the high-class county folk. Well-to-do shopkeepers are terrific snobs, you know. The Swaynes sent their son to Eton, and in my opinion, unless the world changes after the war, Swayne will find himself neither one thing nor the other. Hullo, do I hear the soothing strains of
In
a
Monastery
Garden
?
Miss Shore must be back. You’d better hop into bed!”

Phillip listened at the open door: footfalls were coming up the stairs. There was no time to undress, so he got into bed as he was, pulled the blankets around his neck, and pretended to be asleep.

Nurse Goonhilly came in, carrying a tray with a glass of hot milk. “Are you awake, Maddison?”

“Oh hullo, nurse.”

“I’m sorry if I woke you up. Here’s something to drink. Now sit up and take it while it’s hot, like a good boy. Why, you’ve got your jacket on! Are you feeling cold?”

“I feel cold sometimes, nurse.”

“Well drink this, and I’ll get you a hot-water bottle. It won’t take long. I’ll bring you some bed-socks too.”

He flung off his clothes while she was out of the room, pushed them under the bed, and leapt in, having heard the tap in the bathroom turned off. He was only just in time.

“Now sit up and drink your milk, while I put the bottle at your feet. Why, you were in your coat a moment ago, now you’re in your vest! How did that happen?”

“It may have been some R.A.M.C. orderly—you know ‘Rob all my comrades’.”

“Nonsense! we’ve not any of that sort here. Why, you’ve put it under the bed! I hope you aren’t going to run a temperature on your first night. That won’t do at all. Here, put this under your tongue, and don’t talk. Where are your pyjamas?”

“I think they’re in my bag still.”

“I told you not to talk!”

She looked under the bed, and pulled out a pair of trousers. “Well I never! Do you always keep your trousers under your bed?”

“Always, nurse. Ever since Cambrai last November, when the Germans pinched my best Y.M.C.A. breeches——”

“Oh, I don’t want any of your tales! Trousers under the bed in England because the Germans did something to your precious breeches! Don’t you try to tell the tale to me! I’m too old a bird to be caught with salt on its tail.” She opened the bed, and pushed in a stone bottle wrapped in red flannel. “Come on, shove down your feet! Don’t curl up like a spider. I’m not going to tickle them. Now put the thermometer back under your tongue, and don’t talk this time, or it won’t register properly.” She shook out the trousers, and began to fold them. “Why, you’ve been sleeping in them, what a thing! You’re not in the trenches now, you know. Such a nice new pair, too, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. No talking, now! Not until I take out that thermometer from your mouth.” She put away coat and trousers, turned the socks inside out, and laid them on a sofa. Then his shirt, and short cotton pants. Removed the thermometer. “Ninety-nine point two. There, you see what comes of skylarking about downstairs, when you’re supposed to be in bed! I heard you, and a fine old time you were having, judging by the row inside the smoking room. Lucky for you Miss Shore didn’t come in and catch you at it! Now drink your milk, and be a good boy and put on your pyjamas, and be quick about it, while I go round the other rooms.”

Major Wetley wrote in a diary every night, after his cup of tea, an act which led Phillip to buy a commonplace book in Falmouth, in which to record his impressions. His journal had been lost in Flanders.

One of the M.L. captains, a lieutenant of the R.N.V.R., sailed a hired yacht, and invited two officers—any officers—from the convalescent home to go out with them one day. Phillip went with Swayne. After sailing across to St. Mawes and picnicking, the young married couple invited them to ‘take tea’
with them at their hotel. Staying at the same place was the elderly skipper of a tramp steamer, who had been commissioned with the rank of commander, R.N.R. He wore the D.S.O. riband, and was said to have sunk a U-boat in the North Atlantic off Ireland while commanding a ‘Q ship’—outwardly a defenceless sailing ship being abandoned by her crew, while a submarine stood by to sink it by placing explosive charges in the ship’s hold—thus saving a torpedo. But under a dummy boat upturned on the Q ship’s poop was a six-pounder. When the submarine appeared, the halves of the dummy boat were flung aside, and the gun-crew went into action.

The Germans soon knew of this trick, and some commanders stood off out of range and sank the ‘decoy’ ships, crews and all, with their heavier gun.

Phillip and Swayne were told of this hush-hush action by the R.N.V.R. lieutenant, after introducing them to the captain and his wife; and when the two old people had gone upstairs, ‘to have a lie down before dinner’, as Mrs. R.N.R. said, Mrs. R.N.V.R. remarked, “Don’t you think it’s rather an odd idea to give a man like that, before the war only the skipper of a tramp steamer, the Distinguished Service Order?”

“Why not?” asked Phillip, “if he sank a German submarine?”

“But he wouldn’t have been commissioned if there hadn’t been a war. In any case, the D.S.O. should be reserved for pukka naval officers, who are gentlemen.”

“Oh.”

“And what does that ‘oh’ mean?”

“Well, what
is
a gentleman?”

“‘What
is
a gentleman?’ Well, really——!”

“I was thinking of an uncle of mine, years ago. One morning he employed me as honorary unpaid private secretary to write a letter at his dictation.”

“What has that got to do with it?” asked Mrs. R.N.V.R., on her face the slightly haughty air she had worn in the presence of Mrs. R.N.R.

“It was entitled, ‘What is a Gentleman?’, and was a contribution to some letters then appearing in
The
Daily
News.
My uncle wrote that a party of friends were in a bar drinking with the landlord after closing hours. They were pretty merry, and making a bit of a noise, when a resident in the hotel came to the door and complained. The landlord then came back and,
standing before them unsteadily, said sternly, to his drinking companions, ‘If you cannot conduct yourselves as gentlemen, I must ask you all to leave at once’.”

“Well go on, finish the story!”

“That’s all there is.”

“But I don’t see any point in it!” complained Mrs. R.N.V.R.

“Well, now I come to think of it, there isn’t any point,” said Phillip, regretting his concealed satire. “Thank you both for a very good party!”

“Come again,” said Mrs. R.N.V.R. without enthusiasm.

“Yes, rather! It’s been awfully jolly.”

“Topping!” said Swayne, adding as they left the hotel, “If you ask my opinion they’re a couple of pure bloody unadulterated snobs! That old skipper was a
real
sailor, not a dolled-up nincompoop like that Wavy Navy fop who, I wouldn’t mind betting, was never nearer the sea than the winkle stalls at South-end before the war!”

*

There was so much to do, life was glorious; to awaken in the morning, to realise you were in England, in a bed with white sheets and a carpet on the floor, the sun shining on the lawns below, where thrushes hopped. To get out of bed, put on bathing robe, and your footsteps in the dew left a darker green track among dewdrops glittering and winking sapphire green, blue, red and sometimes a purple glint in the low sun rising above the line of the woods; and walking down the path through the trees to the private boat slip, to dive in and swim around with your two regular bathing companions, young Sandhurst subalterns who, friendly and open, yet held themselves back from full intimacy with one who had no class consciousness and no criticism of others; an odd bird always a little remote and at times almost childish—putting a stone in each wet bathing suit, or broken sticks in their shoes—this senior subaltern who wore the 1914 Star, and three wound stripes, and spoke of poetry as though it were the greatest thing in life; who said that he had kept going through Third Ypres on a bottle of whiskey a night, but who now, when they went together into the hotel bar on the pier at Falmouth asked only for ginger beer.

*

One morning Phillip went into a drapery and haberdashery shop in the High Street, ostensibly to buy a pair of white socks,
in order to scrape acquaintance with the pretty girl sitting in a little glass sentry box, to the roof of which were led overhead wires from the various counters. Told by an elderly assistant that they did not deal in men’s wear, he lingered, saying that he wanted also to buy some hair ribbon for his sister, for a birthday present. While being shown various rolls of velvet, silk, and cotton in many colours and widths, he wondered if he dare send the girl in the glass office a note, by what he thought of as the Wooden Overhead Egg-shell Post: for small wooden shells, containing bills and cash, were shot from the various counters by spring triggers, to speed over the wires and stop above the glass office, and drop into a wire basket. The wooden shell was unscrewed, paper and cash taken out; receipted bill and change sped back to its counter.

Dare he risk being thought a bounder by enclosing his card in a wooden egg?
He dared not; and left the shop looking straight ahead, with three kinds of hair ribbon.

The next afternoon when he went in for more ribbon, another girl was in the glass box. The elderly assistant at the ribbon counter asked him if he had managed to get his white socks.

“I’m afraid I didn’t.” He was about to leave when the girl in the box came out and told him where he could find a shop which sold men’s wear. Upon his saying that he was from the convalescent home, she replied, “Father and Mother feel that my sister and I ought to do our bit by helping to cheer up wounded soldiers. We hire a boat for the summer, and perhaps you and others from Tregaskis House would like to come for a picnic up the Fal?”

He arranged to go the next day, and to take one of his bathing companions. Formality was soon dropped. Beth, the elder girl, was fair-haired and eighteen, quite old, thought Phillip, because of her grown-up manner; Editha, too, who was sixteen and had recently left school, had a grown-up air about her, but she played the piano and was interested in poetry, knowing some of the works of Tennyson, Wordsworth, and best of all, the
Songs
of
Innocence
by William Blake.

For the next four afternoons he called to see Editha, being invited into the apartment above the shop, where was a railed-in roof-top terrace leading out of french windows—a sunny place with views over the harbour and beyond to St. Anthony-in-Roseland, where a white octagonal lighthouse rose above the
sea, no longer showing its beams because of German submarines. The dreaded Manacle Rocks were five miles westward.

He had tea upon the terrace with Editha. Her mother, Mrs. Sithney, a kind old lady (as he thought of her; she was forty years of age) left ‘the two young people to themselves’, after coming to say how d’you do. It was all fun, thought Phillip; and forgot all about Editha when a new attraction arrived at the convalescent home—three children on bicycles from one of the country houses in the district, for a picnic party arranged by Miss Shore on board the
Foudroyant.

Two of the children were twins, sixteen years of age, and different in every aspect except a merry outlook on life. Both had developed mumps at the end of the Whitsun vacation and had remained in quarantine at home. The boy, a naval cadet, was small and dark; his twin sister was big and fair, with yellow hair falling over her shoulders. The third was a cousin, a girl of ten, with a face and self-contained expression that promised beauty later on. Phillip was immediately attracted to them, and became the fourth child of a quartet seeking fun and adventure.

A picnic to ‘the Frenchman’ was arranged—Miss Shore, Mr. Barley Swann, Swayne, Coupar, two other officers, and Nurse Goonhilly sailing to the hulk by quay-punt, while Phillip and the children were towed in the dinghy, already deep in a friendship which was to last forever in his mind, a memory of golden days and laughter—diving from the platform below the companion-way leading up to the massive deck of the ship, exploring the lower decks, one under the other, in deepening gloom until they sat, arms around one another, above the ugly yellow bilge water rocking with the tidal motion of the great and ruinous wooden hulk. It was a melancholy moment saying goodbye, after lingering until the last moment in lengthening shadows; to watch the bicycling figures ever turning to wave, to hear the last far cry of ‘Don’t forget to come over early for lunch tomorrow, will you?’; but his spirits recovered at the thought of bridge in the games room.