A Test to Destruction (41 page)

They went back the way they had come, down the northern slopes of the Hill to Mill Lane, small and shabby terrace cottages beside the river Randisbourne, where in the past he had walked to and from school, sometimes with Tom Ching. The place was repulsive with cinder path and empty tins and bits of paper and meat bones in front of ricketty doors with paint flaked away, with squares of cardboard and sack-cloth replacing broken window panes. Children in bare feet were as ragged and dirty as in those faraway days, boys with cropped heads and small girls with pale, blank faces—fathers dead, he supposed, the wretched widows existing on small pensions. Passing by the tall brick mill he stopped to watch the water flume rushing under the culvert beside the unseen water-wheel, sighing as he thought of his father in the early days of marriage peering there with mother, hopefully for sight of trout or roach. The brook was dead, dead, dead, with oily sheens on the black water.

They hitched the bridles of their mounts outside the Rat Trap, a small beer-house bearing outside a rotting sign-board with its official name of
The
Maid
of
the
Mill
telling of fairer days before the Kentish stream was Londonised. The beer was dark brown, and tasted of saltpetre, put in to give it a bite; he forced it down, feeling that it was a mistake to have joined up with Desmond, to have tried to bring back the past, to live again as in the old days. In silence they walked their horses up to the Heath, passing the school which he viewed with mixed feelings. It was all too sad: one must never go back.

But tea in the gunners’ mess and a couple of whiskey-sodas afterwards revived his spirits, or rather induced a return to pre-1916 flush, before the break with Desmond over Lily Cornford. He made an attempt to get straight with his friend, who by now surely would be able to see that affair in perspective.

“Did you hear that Keechey was sent to prison for getting some old woman to make a will in his favour, under threats, Des?”

“Yes, Mother wrote and told me at the time.”

Silence. He tried another line. “I didn’t congratulate you, Des, on being engaged, because I understood it wasn’t official yet.”

“It isn’t.”

“As an old friend I’d like to say that I wish you the very best.”

Desmond sighed. He, too, was weighed down by memories. His father had deserted his mother when he was very young, and had another family in Essex. The girl in Yorkshire he had asked to marry him was second-best: he had always to convince himself, by thinking deliberately that she was pure and simple, that he felt any kind of love for her; he had also to convince himself that he did not mind that her people, small village shopkeepers, were dowdy. He had first noticed her for a slight resemblance to Lily Cornford, the only girl he could ever have loved, to whom he had yielded body and soul until Phillip had gone behind his back and, with his plausible ways, stolen Lily. His new girl was no Lily, not thoughtful and understanding like Lily, but—ordinary. Her brain was that of a simple village girl; so he had deliberately forced himself to be simple, too, to see the world through her eyes. Desmond was at times so lonely that he had seriously thought of committing suicide.

“Yes,” he said, in low, languid tones, putting away all feeling, “I thought Keachy going to quod was poetic justice. But all rogues in the end hang themselves by their own rope.”

“‘There but for the grace of God go I’,” laughed Phillip. “Tell me about your lady, Desmond. I’m awfully glad you’re happy.”

“Oh, there’s nothing to tell. She’s just an ordinary country girl. My uncle in Nottingham talks of paying for a farming course for me after the war, and then setting me up on my own somewhere. Pansy has a good business head, and is capable of making a home for a farmer.”

“I am so glad! Yes, farming’s the thing to do after the war. I shall never go back to an office life; in fact, I’ve thought once or twice of emigrating.”

They left the Shop precincts, while Phillip began to feel closer to Desmond; they laughed over Eugene’s adventures, and soon their friendship appeared to have reassumed its pre-1916 flush, so much so that Phillip suggested that they go on to Freddie’s, although he had made up his mind, nearly two years before, never to go there again. And there was dear old Freddie wearing the same faded yellow straw ‘boater’, tipping it to each in turn.

The ‘No Treating Order’, under D.O.R.A. was in force; Phillip got round this by passing Desmond a £1 below the counter.

“Pint please, Freddy!” he said, putting down half-a-crown.

“One for me, too,” said Desmond, tendering the note.

“This is on the ’ouse!” declared Freddy, leaning over to say to Phillip, “To hell with D.O.R.A.!” Then in his politest voice, “My sincere congratulations, Colonel!”

“Keep it dark, Freddy.”

“I quite understand, sir.”

Phillip saw Mr. Jenkins making his way to him, no longer wearing his special constable’s hat and arm-band.

“Well done, Phillip. I always knew you had it in you, despite the way your father behaved towards you when you were a boy.”

“Oh, I was a pretty awful little rotter, Mr. Jenkins. Not on duty tonight? We’ve seen the last of the Gothas, I hope!”

“I’ve resigned, you know, Phillip. I expect your father has told you about the police strike?”

“He hasn’t mentioned it so far, Mr. Jenkins.”

“Oh yes, I resigned on a matter of principle, you know.”

“Well done, sir!”

“I can say the same to you, Phillip. As I told your father, it’s no use bullying a small boy into doing the right thing. What is needed, I told him, is personal example in the home. That was after you’d told me, in this very bar, how you’d run away from your first battle in 1914. Remember?”

“I couldn’t very well run away this last time, Mr. Jenkins.”

“How was that?” Mr. Jenkins came nearer, not to miss a word.

“No one could get past Haig’s wall!”

“What was that, Phillip?” Mr. Jenkins inclined an ear.

“The Reserve Position Wall. It lay some miles behind our trenches, solidly built, rather like Hadrian’s wall. Of course, it wasn’t in the papers, in case the Germans found out about it.”

“I don’t quite follow you.”

“Well, you remember Haig’s ‘Backs to the wall’ order? That was the wall.”

“I still don’t see what you mean.”

“It was an idea based on the Great Wall of China. There was one built in 1915, at Ypres, called the Great Wall of China, but only of mudbags. Well, Haig’s Wall grew out of that idea. It was built like the Ramparts of Ypres, of solid brick, nine feet high and six feet thick. We had our backs to it, so you see, no one could run away.”

Freddie, who had been listening, nodded. Phillip winked at him, Mr. Jenkins saw it. “Are you trying to be funny, Phillip?” he demanded.

“Yes, Mr. Jenkins.”

“Well, take my advice and don’t try to be funny at someone else’s expense! I try to be pleasant to you, to offer my congratulations, and you respond in a sneering manner. It becomes neither the uniform you wear, nor the honour the King has bestowed on you.”

“Honestly, I was only chaffing, Mr. Jenkins!”

“All right, no more said. But it will pay you to remember that the war won’t last for ever, when next you try to be funny at an older man’s expense!”

Ching was the next to push through to Phillip. Desmond was enjoying himself, an ironic look on his face as he stood a little apart, his back to the mahogany partition. Phillip viewed the imminence of Ching with reluctance, until he remembered
the words of Lily on the night of the Zeppelin raid; almost her last words were about Ching.
“He’s
terribly
hurt
in
himself,
isn’t
he?”

“I’m glad to see you, Phil, to offer anew my congratulations.” He put a florin into Phillip’s hand. “Have a double rum with me.”

“Well, no thank you, Tom, I’ve got a very weak head,” as he gave back the coin.

“Just one won’t hurt you. Rum goes well with beer, it’s made from sugar, and beer’s got sugar in it.”

“If you’ll excuse me——”

Ching ordered two half-quarterns. When they came he seized one of the thick-bottomed glasses and was about to tip the contents into Phillip’s pint glass, when Phillip lifted up his beer saying, “Your good health, Tom. Tell us your latest news.”

Having poured the rum into his own glass and then down his throat without a pause, Ching said, “Are you hungry?” and pulled a paper bag from his pocket. Inside was a large pork pie. “I’m asking four meat coupons for it.”

“Where did you get it?”

“It was sent by a farmer friend of my mother. She doesn’t eat pork either. It’s worth five bob, if not more.”

“When did you get it?”

“Came by this morning’s post.”

“I’ll give you four coupons,” said Desmond.

“Here’s the five bob,” added Phillip.

“Now I can buy a bottle of rum! We can drink it on the Hillies after closing time at half-past nine!”

The upshot was that all three went to Desmond’s flat to play the gramophone and share the pie, Ching having apparently forgotten his dislike of pork. By midnight Phillip was lying on the carpet half asleep, while the voices of Ching and Desmond came with whorls of Liszt’s
Campanella,
a popular rag of the moment,
Yaaka
Hula
Hickey
Dula,
Caruso singing
O
Sole
Mio,
and
Solveig’s
Song
from
Peer
Gynt:
which mixture, preyed upon by rum, pork, pastry and beer, went to his head with an urgent signal from below to seek seclusion behind the locked door of the lavatory. He came back to sleep upon the carpet, and to awake at dawn to see the horrid black rum bottle standing on the circular mahogany table beside its cork transfixed by a revoltingly large nickel-plated corkscrew. Desmond, also undressed, was seated
in an armchair opposite Ching, from whose open mouth came snoring.

“I’ve got a kettle on for tea.”

“Phew! Let’s open the window and let out the fug!”

After a cup of tea, he felt bright and happy, and leaning out of the window suggested a walk on the Hill. The three walked up, under the pink flush of dawn upon cirrus clouds. From the crest, as for the first time, London was seen clear to the horizon of the north-west, while north-eastwards lay Woolwich upon the marshes of the Thames under its layers of mist and smoke. But the clear light of morning was not enough to contain Ching who, when they walked beside the lavatory, built like a bungalow surrounded by shrubs and flower beds, climbed over the railings to see what he could find. He reappeared with a can, and began to spray the flowers, returning inside to fill the can again until all the plants had been watered. When he rejoined the other two he shoved his fingers against Phillip’s nose, saying with tongue-rolling satisfaction, “Smell that!” Phillip moved back his head, affronted, but not before he had got a whiff of carbolic acid.

“That’ll show the LOUSY CIVVIES what we think of them!” Ching bawled.

“If they find your fingerprints on the disinfectant bottle, as well as on the watering-can, they’ll put two and two together, and you’ll be for it, you bloody fool!”

Yet Phillip knew the feeling which had prompted the vandalism; the same feeling he had had as a boy when setting fire to the dry grass in the Backfield in August, a kind of self-destructive terror, a substitute for courage, a despairing I-don’t-care-if-I-die feeling. He might have been like Ching, but for the fact that he had met Westy, Jack Hobart, Lord Satchville, and General Mowbray. What a gossamer was the spirit, between a sense of duty and a sense of nihilism, until death was not the last enemy, but the ultimate friend. Conrad would have understood: or would he? There was not much sympathy for
his
Donkin in
The
Nigger
of
the
Narcissus.

One day he would write a book, and it would have no villains or cowards in it: the failures would be loveless men who had once been unhappy, shadowed small children.

A Humberette, hired for the week-end from Mr. Wetherley’s garage in the High Street, was rattling over the granite sett-stones of London Bridge, whence by way of Lower Thames Street it entered the smoother jarra-wood block paving of the City streets on its way to the northern suburbs and Barnet and St. Albans and the Telford highway to Dunstable and the turn at the tiny hamlet of Hockcliffe for Husborne Abbey.

The next morning the Regimental party, under Lord Satchville, walked over fields of roots and stubbles, putting up partridges, eight guns in line, no beaters; one of several parties covering part of the Duke’s estate. Phillip shot a brace of birds, firing off about forty cartridges. The next day they went to church, and he saw Lady Abeline with her son and two daughters in charge of a grey-uniformed nurse. He spoke to them outside the porch, where good-mornings were generally being exchanged, and bent down to speak to Melissa, feeling that he loved her. Then after luncheon goodbyes were said to the Duke and Duchess, a footman waited at the door with a tray of smokes for the journey. No one took cigar or cigarette, so he imitated them, before leaving for the cross-country journey to Landguard. Should he call in and see the Turneys at Brickhill? The old life was gone, he thought, and turning east, made for the coast, wondering how long it would be before he would be in India, a prospect to be faced without enthusiasm, since it was only an escape—from himself.

And so, with next to no hope, to Manor Terrace, and the old round of bridge, bathing, and the minimum of work.

*

A few mornings later, as he was about to go out and swim, he had a shock; and with the shock came a memory of what cousin Hubert had told him at the beginning of the war, when warning him not to go with any women he might feel like picking up; how Uncle Hugh, when an undergraduate at Cambridge, had fainted on being told by a doctor that he had got syphilis.

Returning from the lavatory, Phillip sat down on his camp bed. He must see a doctor at once; but not the battalion M.O.,
for then Lord Satchville would know. He thought of swimming out to sea, the tide setting north up the coast would take his body far out to the Dogger Bank, where it would never be seen again. Mother would grieve, but would think of him as having gone to join his cousins Hubert, Gerry, Percy, and Tommy.

“Anything the matter, old boy?” said Renclair, his room mate, peering at him with an expression of secret happiness deep inside him—a limited happiness, the reason for which Phillip was familiar.

Renclair, two years younger than Phillip, had recently returned to the third battalion after being put on the retired list, without pay for a year, during which time he had earned a small wage as a chorus boy in a musical comedy at a theatre in London.

“Oh no, I just felt a bit giddy.”

“Like to try a shot? It will buck you up no end.”

“No, I won’t rob you, Renclair.”

“But I’ve got plenty by me, old boy!”

Renclair was rather a pathetic character; a bit of a weakling, with a kind and gentle nature that went with feeble will-power. He had been sent home with an adverse report within three weeks of his first arrival in France. Certainly it had been a bad time August 1917, in the rains of Third Ypres, but Renclair had gone into a shell-hole and stayed there during the advance on Inverness Copse; later that day the eighth battalion had been decimated. His colonel had put him under arrest; Renclair had gone home and soon was wearing a pre-war suit and bowler hat (which sat low on his ear-stubs) and now had come back for home service with a fund of stories about the comedian W. H. Berry and a matinée idol called Joe Coyne—all of them kindly stories. Sometimes he sang songs out of the Adelphi show to Phillip, or rather hummed them through nearly closed teeth, while staring at Phillip’s face with an expression of dazed enchantment.

Somebody had put Renclair to bed: a drab little woman whom he had encountered after an evening show, and gone home with
to her room in Lime Grove. She was nearly double his age—he had confided his story to Phillip—the only woman, beside his mother (dead) who had loved him. Once a week a letter arrived from her, written in mud-coloured post-office ink with a clotted post-office pen upon the cheapest kind of envelope in sloping child-like writing of a Board School education. From her Renclair had caught gonorrhoea; together they had gone to one of the many clinics whose existence was advertised prominently in all the daily newspapers; together they had been cured. This bond of misfortune and salvation had increased mutual affection, and they had married. But it had not cured Renclair’s addiction to drugs.

He acquired tablets of morphine sulphate on forged prescriptions from various chemists in Felixstowe and Harwich; Phillip had accompanied him once to Harwich, waiting outside until Renclair reappeared with an expression of suppressed jubilation, as though he had heard the happiest news, but was taking it quietly. After a shot, usually in the forearm, Renclair simmered happily for an hour or so, before becoming haggard and almost limp. Often Phillip wondered how far his home life had been responsible. Mother dying of cancer, father a regular soldier, who had always disliked his eldest son. Renclair had been sacked from a famous Army school for stealing; he had not gone to Sandhurst, but had a temporary commission not in his father’s regiment; while his younger brother, father’s favourite ‘little man’ from infancy, had succeeded where Renclair had failed, and, to Renclair’s eternal damnation in his father’s eyes, this younger brother had been killed leading his platoon in the April fighting outside Amiens, six weeks after passing out of Sandhurst, where, before abbreviated courses were instituted in the war, he would have qualified for the Sword of Honour.

“Aren’t you going for a swim this morning, old boy?”

“I’m in a bit of a mess, Renclair.”

“Anything I can do to help? You’ve only to ask, you know. Yes!”—with a return of secret satisfaction—“I managed to get ten grains yesterday, in a shop in the Butter Market at Ipswich! That’s the place, Ipswich!” His eyes had a shine around diminished pupils.

Phillip told him his terrible news. Renclair became almost professional.

“May I see? How long ago, less than a week? No, that’s
not old man siff. Not a bit like it. I’ve seen scores, but never one like that. Nor does it look like old man gunn’k, old boy, but more like barber’s rash. Nothing to worry about—it may be married-man’s clapp. Why not see Dr. Farina in the town, he’s fixed up a lot of chaps. Sure you won’t have a bracer? I’ve got plenty,” he said, as he thrust a hypodermic needle into the skin of his own forearm.

After breakfast Phillip got leave to go into town. Dr. Farina was Italian, slim, dark, and popular, almost celebrated, among a certain class of sporting officer in the garrison brigade, for the poker parties he gave on Saturday nights at his villa, providing sandwiches and a sideboard of drinks, the bottles being contributed by the guests.

“Herpes,” he said. “It should clear itself up in a day or two. I’ll give you some ointment. Come back in a week’s time. Meanwhile if you feel any pain, or if a hard chancre appears, an ulcer in other words, come and see me at once.”

Phillip left in jubilation, and said a prayer as he walked back to camp, feeling a little mean that he was using God, considering all the circumstances.

After two days the cluster of pustules burst; there had been no pain whatsoever during ‘micturation’, a term he had read in a medical dictionary in the Public Library. However, from the uretha there remained a very slight discharge, with neither discomfort nor swelling.

When this did not disappear, Dr. Farina prescribed syringing three times a day with a weak solution of permanganate of potash.

After a week of this self-treatment there was no change, so he went to see the doctor again.

“Curious,” said Farina. “It should have cleared itself up by now. You say that there is not more than a pin’s head in the morning? It may be a small pocket in the prostate.”

Since the treatment had begun, Phillip had read several more medical books. A gleet might last for years; one could never marry; children might be born blind; the prostate might close up and cause a stricture which prevented micturition. In a bad case of stricture an operation would be necessary; water could not then be contained in the bladder—which might, furthermore, be infected—indeed the disease could spread to the kidneys and cause death.

“I’ll open the pocket,” said Dr. Farina. “Sit in the chair, and lie back. It won’t hurt.”

A silver tube, covered with glycerine, was inserted. “It won’t hurt,” repeated the doctor. “When I turn this screw, it will gently expand. Ready?”

Phillip nodded, and held his breath. Then with a cry he contorted in the chair.

“Steady on, old chap, you nearly kicked me in the face!”

“Sorry, doctor.”

“Yes, it looks like prostatitis. I’ll write to MacDougal in Harley Street. He’s got a new colloidal manganese which oxidises the blood, which has been successful also in some cases of syphilis. Come and see me in four days’ time, when I shall have a reply from him about an appointment.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

“Keep your pecker up, my boy! You’re not drinking any alcohol, are you? Good man. We’ll soon have you fit again.”

Phillip made a will, leaving his money and medals to his mother; his double-barrelled gun and rods to Desmond; to Eugene Goulart the several IOUs Gene had given him from time to time during the past three years; and Sprat to Mrs. Neville. Then having entered up in his pocket-book the half-quarterly salary of £16 13
s
. 4
d
. due at Michaelmas, he went into the mess, to hear that the expected general offensive had opened along the Western Front. The Hindenburg Line had been broken; Cambrai lay open; the Belgian Army under King Albert had got back the Passchendaele Ridge, starting from in front of Ypres that morning; the French and Americans were going forward; the Bulgarians and Turks were about to leave the Central Powers.

There was excitement in the ante-room, and many requests—Phillip and Renclair going together—at the orderly room to be sent out with the next draft. The adjutant told Phillip that his name was already on the Indian Army list, his application having been accepted. He was free to go to London to get his light-weight drill kit, the grant of £15 having been authorised.

He saw Mr. Kerr the tailor, who made no comment when the offer of a tumbler of Dew of Benevenagh was refused; he had already observed a remote look on the young man’s face. Leaving Cundit Street, Phillip went to see the specialist in Harley Street, prepared for intramuscular injection in the thigh. But to his
relief this did not take place; Mr. MacDougal, in morning coat, vest, and trousers, said that he would write to Dr. Farina, who would do what was necessary.

Should he try to find the girl in the green knitted ensemble, as she had called it, and warn her to go at once to a doctor? She was innocent of any knowledge of her condition, he felt sure. But where would she be—one of London’s four millions?

Where to go? After mooning about he went home. There he locked himself in the bathroom, for the second permanganate douching of the day; but feeling that this was of no use, before he went back he hid the glass syringe, stained brown, on the wooden casing of the bath pipes behind the lavatory pan, where in boyhood he had hidden his first penny packet of five Ogden Tabs cigarettes.

On his return to camp, he found an order awaiting him: to hold himself in readiness to proceed to Taranto in Italy, the port of embarkation for Suez and the East. After reading this, he hurried into Felixstowe, where Dr. Farina told him that the colloidal manganese had arrived from London. He was given an injection in the right buttock, after which he limped back to Manor Terrace, and feeling chilled, got into bed, where he lay in a fever of pain all night, his thigh feeling as though a bullet had gone through it. Renclair made him some tea, put on gramophone records to cheer him up, lit a fire, hummed songs from the Adelphi show, and then, as Phillip groaned and twisted, injected morphia in his arm. Ah, that’s better, sighed the patient, while Renclair, his eye-pupils no bigger than black pin-heads stroked his hair.

A week later the ante-room was more than half-empty. Even Renclair had gone with a draft. No embarkation order came for Phillip. News of the crumbling of the Central Powers was filling newspapers; Bulgaria had surrendered; Turkey was asking for an armistice; Allenby was in Damascus; the retreat of the German armies in the West was general from the North Sea to the Alps; there was a mutiny in the German navy at Kiel.

The order to stand by to proceed to Taranto was cancelled. This was followed by notification that no officers were required for the Indian Army. Every breakfast time there were maps in the newspapers, with half-familiar names—Valenciennes, Bruges, Mormal Forest—MONS.

It was over. It was ended. He sat in his bedroom of 9 Manor Terrace, at noon on 11th November, and mourned alone, possessed by vacancy that soon the faces of the living would join those of the dead, and be known no more.

But all was not yet done with. The officers paid an informal visit to the sergeants’ mess, where each drank one glass of beer, standing, the gracious bearded face of Lord Satchville rising above all. Phillip drank, too, dreading that his abstention be noticed. At night toasts were drunk in the officers’ mess, before all stood on their chairs, one foot on the table, and with linked arms sang
Auld
Lang
Syne.
At the top table Phillip, his rank of temporary captain confirmed, felt that at last he belonged to the old Regiment of Foot, as he saw before him the rows of 18-year-old fresh faces above standardised uniforms—cut close for economy, factory-made by commercial tailors become rich since the death of Kitchener’s Army on the Somme—modest youths, well-trained in the Cadet battalions, polite, respectful—and spared.