A Test to Destruction (33 page)

The three met every day; then the twins were gone back to school, and he felt desolate until, remembering the Sithney girls, he took the penny steamboat across to the Pier and walked up the High Street to the shop. Editha was sitting in the glass
sentry box. He lingered a moment in the doorway, regarding those bright brown eyes, the high forehead from which the brown hair was brushed back to fall, below the black ribbon at the nape of her neck, over the shoulders to her waist. Her ears were a delicate shape, and close to her head—an endearing sight. The nose was slightly aquiline, her teeth, fine and regular but slightly protruding, or so it seemed, for he had seldom seen her except when she was smiling at some gentle thought, or at him.

The female shop assistants, a contented and elderly lot, were watching the couple. Their faces showed pleasure. Miss Edie had been their favourite from her babyhood up.

“Good morning, Phil!”

“Good morning, Edie! I must make a purchase.” He was wearing a blue cornflower in his buttonhole, given him by Miss Shore that morning. Having bought a yard of black garter elastic, he took the flower and put it in the wooden egg
with the bill and sixpence, then whizzed it over its wire. He watched her take out the flower, and make as if to pin it to her blouse; but changing her mind, she put it among the marigolds in the glass vase before her, and taking 1½d. from the till, whizzed it back in the wooden egg
with a radiant smile.

“I’ll be off duty in five minutes. Do go up if you’d like to.” While he was sunning himself on the terrace beyond the french windows Beth came out and asked him if he were free on Sunday afternoon to come to tea. “And stay to supper if you feel like it.”

“Music afterwards? Oh good!”

“Mother and Father only allow hymns on Sunday, you know.”

“I like hymns. Such as
Rock
of
Ages,
Lead
Kindly
Light,
and
Many
Brave
Hearts
are
Asleep
on
the
Deep
.”

“That’s not a hymn, that’s a song!”

“How about
Annie
Laurie
?”

“You’re being deliberately irreverent, aren’t you?”

“Well, not altogether. A love song is in a way a hymn. What about
The
Song
of
Solomon
?
That’s a love song.”

“But it’s in the Bible, and it foretells the love of Our Lord’s Mission on earth.”

“So does poetry, Beth. It all leads to God.”

“Are you being serious?”

“Perfectly. The purpose of God on earth is to create beauty in all His forms; you can see that in evolution, how birds’ feathers are beautiful, when once they were skin-wings.”

“I agree with you there. ‘All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small’. Do you call that poetry?”

“Of course. Just as the harmonium is music, or the song of the crow is music.”

“Now you’re being sarcastic! I believe you are really a wolf in sheep’s clothing!”

“No, I’m a ram in wolf’s clothing!”

“Whatever do you mean by that nonsense?”

“I mean that the crow is a faithful bird, and sings in a little under-voice to his mate on awakening, every morning. Or to the sky, for happiness that another day is starting. The same thing! If he hadn’t got a mate, he would be cawing for one.”

“Really, you do talk nonsense at times, Phillip!”

He felt deflated; what to him was an observed fact, was to Beth obvious nonsense. He felt he had let her down in her estimation of himself; and this idea, which he had not really believed, came again when Editha arrived with her mother to sit with them. Mrs. Sithney stayed until tea-time, during tea, and after tea, crocheting away, saying little, but occasionally putting in a question obviously to satisfy curiosity about his origins, if not his intentions. He invented information.

“My father used to go over a lot to Brussels before the war,” he told her, thinking of what Mr. Jenkins at home had told him years ago about himself, “to see his silkworm factory.”

“You mean a silk factory, do you not, Phillip?”

“Oh no, it is, or was, a silkworm factory. Father had an idea that he could invent a method by which silkworms could be trained to spin their silk direct on to bobbins, and so save their time and the factory’s in one go. I’m talking nonsense, really.” Obviously he had put his foot in it; Mrs. Sithney sat silent, as though disapproving. No, he wouldn’t accept for supper on Sunday; not after all the family had come back from chapel on Sunday afternoon.

“Well, thanks so much, Mrs. Sithney. It has been so enjoyable. Don’t take me too seriously will you? As a matter of fact, the silk people
are
trying to find a substitute for real silk. One of the fellows in the convalescent home, Captain Courtauld, whose people live at Nottingham, tells me that chemists are actually trying to find substitutes. Goodbye, Edie.”

“I’ll come to the door with you.” Downstairs she said, “Mother
is a very truthful person, and doesn’t understand your fancies, Phil. I do,” she breathed, squeezing his hand.

It was a little after six o’clock when he reached the pier, to see the penny steamboat chuffing away to Flushing quay, so he went into the long bar of the Pier Hotel and ordered a double whiskey, sitting by himself and reliving old times with Jack Hobart and Freddy Pinnegar in the Angel at Grantham in the autumn of 1916, and with ‘Spectre’ a year later in Flossie Flowers’ pub in Jermyn Street. What was a girl’s innocent face compared with such friendships, such times together, gone for evermore? And yet—that tremulous hand-clasp, the gentle voice,
I
do.

That evening sky and water burned with sunset. He remained on the quay until red became purple, and crossing over on the ferry boat, got back to Tregaskis House when dinner was over, to hide among the trees when he saw the others strolling on the lawn with Miss Shore, enjoying the warmth and colour of the day’s end to the strains of
A
Monastery
Garden.
Dodging back from tree to tree, he hastened unseen down to the quay, and on impulse hired a boat with an outboard motor, and set out to cross the bay to the lighthouse with a two-gallon tin of petrol-oil on board, which cost him £1,
for petrol was no longer publicly sold. It had come from one of the crew of an M.L. There was a nice pub in St. Mawes, where he had taken Wetley one evening, and they had had a good time in the Rising Sun. Now Wetley was gone away; life was always like that, everything ending, every parting a little death.

Not finding what he was seeking in the Rising Sun he went back to the boat and made for the lighthouse at the entrance to the Roads. Could he make the Scillies on two gallons? Or rather one gallon, for he would have to come back. Grant-Browne, the rude Highlander, had spent a couple of nights in the Scillies, with the crew of an M.L., and been sent away on his return by Miss Shore. What about navigating the Manacles? If he went down, well, he would go down and be with Jack Hobart and ‘Spectre’ West.

There was a fort near the lighthouse, and as he was passing, the boat lifting and dropping in the choppy tide, a siege-gunner with a megaphone called out, “Go back! Go back to harbour!”; so turning round, he had the wind with him, and enjoyed the rolling of the boat, then the plunge, waves riding
him high before the drop and wallow in each succeeding trough. Thoroughly exhilarating!

“My Gor’, us thought you wasn’t comin’ back, midear!” said the boat owner at Flushing quay.

He got in without being seen, and going up to his bedroom, unobserved by the others in the lighted drawing-room, went to bed and read
Clayhanger
until Nurse Goonhilly came up to tell him shortly that it was after midnight, and his light must go out. Paraffin was rationed she said, and the batteries were low. “You ought to know better,
Colonel
Maddison!”

*

In the morning, after breakfast, she said, “Miss Shore would like to see you in her boudoir,
Colonel
Maddison!”

“‘Colonel’,” tittered Swayne. “‘Boudoir’! What next?”

“Yes, ‘
Colonel
’,”
repeated Nurse Goonhilly. “
And
‘boudoir’! You’ll see, Swayne.”

“You sound like a duenna out of
The
Boccaccio,
Goony dear.”

“I don’t want any of your cheek, Swayne.”

“‘Swine’, you mean,” said Coupar. “This kipper is dried up, Goony darling. Can I have a boiled egg?”

“You’re lucky to get anything, Coupar.”

“Brigadier-General Coupar, please,” said Swayne. “Or should it be Lance-Corporal? I hear Mr. Barley Swann is now a Rear-Admiral. Very much rear.” Then, as the nurse went out, “Doesn’t get his greens, I fancy. Oh, so pure, in a monastery garden!”

Phillip went to see Miss Shore in her room, with its many photographs in silver frames among vases of flowers. He was prepared for a reprimand.

“So you have been hiding your light under a bushel, Mr. Maddison!” she said, with a shy smile and movement of head that swept his face momentarily with a glance almost coy. “Did you see yesterday’s
Times
?”

“No, Miss Shore,” he replied, puzzled.

“Then I am the first to congratulate you? How splendid! I say it with all my heart! I am so proud to think that one of my ‘young men’, as I think of you all——” Miss Shore, almost overcome by sentiment, fussed with a tiny laced handkerchief—“But you must see for yourself——” She gave him the newspaper folded back at a column headed
The
London
Gazette,
with its sub-heading
Decorations
and
Awards.

“There
you
are, dear boy! I
am
so proud——”

“Good heavens! There must be some mistake!”

It was unbelievable! But there it was, under the section
Distinguished
Service
Order
—His heart thudded.

“A letter came for you yesterday by the second post, but you were not in all day, so I kept it for you, as it had the Royal Cypher on the envelope!”

“Will you excuse me if I open it, Miss Shore?”

“
Do
, please! Oh, I am
so
excited!”

Within a covering letter was a sheet, typed with a blue ribbon, in italics.