A Test to Destruction (45 page)

One day Eve, as he called her, had asked him if he had ever had experience with a woman. The question appalled him, for it had been made when she had impulsively taken his hand while they were sitting by the sea and kissed it; and he had felt that poignancy which meant he might be going to fall in love with her. That would be too awful, for he was virtually a pariah.

“Oh, I’ve just remembered something I wanted to tell you, Eve! You know that the London agents promised me the first Brooklands Road Special Norton they received from Birmingham?
Well, I had a letter this morning, saying it had come, and was at their showrooms in Great Portland Street!”

“Wonderful news, my dear! Simply wonderful! No wonder your mind is preoccupied. I can compete for your interest with old Hardy and old Conrad, but not with a new motorcycle! You might be out of a book yourself—the strong, silent Englishman of fiction, at the same time boyish—oh damn you, why do you mock me!?”

That night she taught him to kiss, gently plucking with the lips before the full conjoined softness which worried him in case his breath smelt of rank cigars and possibly decayed teeth—for he had not been to a dentist during the entire war. The next day he went up to London, to collect the longed-for bike.

*

The salesman in Great Portland Street said they had taken the Norton out of the window, since so many enquiries had been made about it. He could have sold it fifty times over; so he had put it in a back room.

It was beautiful, long in the wheel-base, with a greyhound simplicity enhanced by the nickel-plated exhaust pipe curving down from the exhaust port to lie parallel with, and eight inches off the ground, and extending to behind the back wheel. The pipe was two inches in diameter, with a note like an organ pipe when the salesman, a pilot recently demobbed from the R.A.F., had raised the back wheel on the stand—the machine weighed only 200 lb.—and pulled over the wheel.

“Lovely sound, isn’t it? Two hundred and forty revs on the pilot jet. You can paddle off at walking pace. She’ll fire at the drop of the valve lifter. Top speed? Oh, she’ll easily run up to three thousand six hundred revs on full throttle. Flexible job, this engine, considering the long stroke and high compression.”

“The engine runs with little bubbles of sound!”

He stood back to admire the lines of the machine. The handlebars were set wide for control at speed; the grey tank, flat like a wild-fowling punt, extended back to the saddle pillion, where it tapered off. The pearl-grey of its paint, under a coat of clear varnish, was lined out in red; proudly on the bows the word
Norton
proclaimed the inventor, the capital
N
of which flowed back to cover all the other letters, like a guardian wing.

“One feels like a jockey, lying across the back of a horse. Or a greyhound!” he said, bestriding it, holding the grips.

The salesman pointed out the wide cooling flanges and fins of the cylinder, black with graphite; the new model of the B. & B. carburettor, with tapered needle lifting in the barrel as the throttle opened, thus allowing more petrol to be sucked up through the jet, he explained—giving infinite variation, from tick-over to full throttle. “She lapped Brooklands at 74 m.p.h.”

The foot-rests were set back so that the rider’s heels tailed off from his body lying forward over the tank like a pulled-out Z, he saw in a wide looking glass on the wall.

“I’ve got a pair of rubber knee grips, in case you want them,” went on the salesman.

Phillip could not find a mark, much less a scratch, anywhere on his splendid Norton, and no signs of wear on the blue rubber-and-canvas belt to the back wheel. How did the Phillipson variable pulley work, he asked.

“It automatically expands to give a lower ratio with the v-pulley on the back wheel when the engine labours.”

“What is the top ratio?”

“It’s set at 4¾ to 1 at the moment. I think you’ll find that all right, for traffic down the Old Kent Road. There’s not much about on Tuesdays. A touch of the shoe-sole on that outer flange—it’s phosphor-bronze, which is malleable as you know—and the pulley automatically opens against the broad coil-spring within the flange. Normally it’s kept wound up by the engine thrust. Neat little job, don’t you think?”

“I’m a bit scared of its speed. The first time I rode a motorbike, I went straight into a lamp-post.”

“You’ll find her very docile. Go easy for the first hundred miles, won’t you? The bearings like to bed themselves in gradually, of course. Keep to a steady forty, don’t let her labour, and you’ll be all right.”

“How about petrol and oil?”

“I’ve put some in for you. The tank holds just over three gallons, I tipped in a can, that should get you to Folkestone with about a gallon left.”

“Is this the way out?”

“Yes. Er—just a little matter—— I’ve got the bill here for you. You paid a tenner, that leaves eighty-two odd quid.”

New knee-grips laced criss-cross over the tank, new horn clipped above the throttle controls, receipt in pocket: he wheeled her into the street. He had a 5s. driving licence, the other didn’t
matter, he had never bought one for his two previous mounts and certainly wasn’t going to bother about such civvy nonsense now.

Wheeling her round the corner of the street out of sight of all salesmen, he quickened the pace, dropped the valve-lifter, and vaulted into the saddle. At first, owing to the extended position, he swayed across the road, but recovered, and stopped to get used to the feel of stretching forward on cork grips.

It was drizzling, the surface of the road slightly greasy, he must go gingerly. But by the time he came to a wide thoroughfare he felt at ease, and passing omnibuses and drays, after several enquiries reached the Embankment.

There he stopped, and walked up and down, in doubt about going to see Westy’s parents in their City pub. But supposing O’Gorman had gone to see them, and told them the truth? The thought was unbearable; and pushing off the Norton he leapt upon the saddle and opening the throttle with a crackle of the exhaust went down the Embankment a couple of hundred yards before dropping back to a quiet 35 m.p.h. Thence through traffic on wet cobbles to the Old Kent Road and finally home, subduedly to collect an old trench coat and flying helmet. His mother asked if he were going to stay the night, as it was Father’s birthday, but he replied that he must get back to duty; and after declining an invitation to a lunch of cold mutton, ate bread and cheese, and with a cheerful goodbye set out for the Dover Road over Shooter’s Hill. At the sleepy village of St. Mary’s Cray, where cuckoos and nightingales sang outside the post office, he sent off a telegram to Eve,
Falcon
flying
east
hope
arrive
six
tonight
please
dine
with
me
Corvanos.

*

Down Wrotham Hill to the Weald of Kent, the fruit gardens of England; through Maidstone and on to Ashford; at last he was running with closed throttle down the hill into Hythe, round the sharp left-hand corner and along the coast road to Sandgate, where he stopped, and trudged on the brown shingle, trying to think back to a moment of his childhood there, to recover at least a picture of cousin Gerry’s face, and his own romantic feelings when Gerry had told him of the wreck of
The
Benvenue.
Then he thought that he might miss Eve if he did not hurry; and flying up the hill with the open exhaust cracking at more than four times the rate of a Vickers gun firing
bounded over the crest, and closing the throttle, turned right-handed to the Leas, and went along smoothly and almost silently beside the promenade, at little more than fast walking pace; to see, a hundred yards ahead, the figures of Colonel Tarr, his C.O. talking to the G.O.C. Shorncliffe Command, General Shoubridge, a convalescent in a bath chair after double pneumonia. Out of the corner of his eye he saw them looking his way as he passed, and felt relieved that he was not in uniform. Should he have got leave from old Tarr, nicknamed locally the Flapper King? What did it matter, the war was over.

The engine was making deep harp-string notes in the silver exhaust pipe now burnt faintly blue where it left the port. He passed the Pavilion, to see with a shock Eve walking beside a tall, heavy-weight figure wearing the double oak-leaf scroll of a General on the peak of his red-banded service cap. At the same moment Eve saw him and waved. He stopped, and walked over to her, wondering who her elderly companion might be.

She seemed to be a different person, almost formally composed as a lady as she walked a foot apart from her companion, not exactly keeping step with him, but giving the impression of unity with him. As he approached she smiled, and said something to her companion, who had an air of knowing him, almost of expecting him, which was puzzling. He tried to recall where he had seen the big face before.

“Good evening, Mrs. Fairfax!” he said, pulling off his tweed cap with an assumed air of shyness.

“Good evening, Phillip. I’ve had a wonderful surprise! Lionel arrived home on leave at five o’clock this morning, isn’t it simply heaven? We’ve got a whole ten days together. Lionel, this is Captain Maddison, otherwise Phillip, adjutant to the Flapper King.”

“How do you do, sir.”

So this was her husband: crossed swords of a Brigadier, two rows of ribands, four wound stripes, friendly face—not at all
like the ‘we live our own lives’ dullard he had imagined from Eve’s description.

“We’re going to sit by the band, Maddison, why not join us?”

The Bacarolle from
Tales
of
Hoffman
throbbed from the octagonal glass shelter.

“I think you know an old friend of mine, George Mowbray, who commanded the Home Counties division in France? We travelled together from Cologne. As you may know, he’s come home to command your first battalion at Cannock Chase——”

“Oh really, sir?”

“I’m a sapper, and may get posted to the Canal. I was telling Eve that life can be quite amusing in Cairo. You are serving on, I suppose?”

“I’m only temporary, sir——”

Eve’s red-lipped smile and bright eyes turned from one to the other. “You two soldier boys don’t mind me eavesdropping, I hope?”

“Do forgive me, darling.”

“I wasn’t serious, I can see you both at once when you talk across me!”

There was a pause, while the ’cellist stroked dark blue plummy notes from a humming G string before moving over to an ecstatic A.

“Let me change places, darling,” she said, with a brilliant smile for her husband.

Under the assumption of an open, unsophisticated manner Phillip concealed a feeling of slightly painful perplexity increased by a liking for Lionel and faded hopes of an early dinner in a restaurant with Eve and the dream of taking her on the pillion to the open spaces of the Romney Marshes, free as air, and bathing in the sea off the shallows of Dungeness among the ring-plover and shore-larks. Soon he made an excuse to say goodbye, with thoughts of applying to be sent back to the first battalion; or for a job in the Army of Occupation, anywhere so long as it was not in England.

“We’ll be seeing something of you, I hope, before I go back to Hunland?”

“Oh—thank you, sir.”

“Call me Lionel. Damme, I’m only a camouflaged major!”

“Thank you, Lionel!”

“Come round in a day or two, Phillip,” called out Eve and as he backed away she gave him a wink.

Every afternoon for the following three days he went alone to the low country behind the long sea-wall of the Marsh, visiting places he had hoped to visit with Eve, whose image accompanied him every moment of the long sunny days, arising from the vacancy within. At moments he twisted to get free of her image, while knowing that by every thought he was more deeply held.

*

“Quillie darling, be Mummie’s very own sweet girl, and ask Marty to bring in tea, will you?” Eve knelt on the carpet to enfold and kiss her child. Then to Phillip staring out of the window, “When are you going to take me on the Romney Marshes?”

The old woman called Marty brought in the tea, set it down on the leather pouffe by the sofa, and without a word went out again.

“I don’t know, Eve.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I think I ought to go away.” He took a letter from his pocket. “This came yesterday from a cousin of mine, in Devon. He’s left the army, and suggests that I do the same, and go and live with him, and share a wild life. He has an old lime-burner’s cottage miles from anywhere, by the sea.”

“I should go then, if you feel you’d like to. Is he a nice person?”

“Yes. Full of fun and life. Unlike me.”

“Darling, don’t get morbid. It’s all those books you read. Julian Warbeck got the same way, and seemed to think I was responsible. Personally I think a barrel or two of beer and half a dozen volumes of Swinburne may have had more to do with his state of mind.”

“I don’t like Jay Double-u, Mummy, and hope he never comes back. But I like Pat, and I like Pillie, too, because he plays with me sometimes on the floor. I like the floor best, and under the table.”

“Yes, darling, it’s fun to enjoy yourself, isn’t it? What’s that, Pillie, a photograph of your cousin? Oh,
isn’t
he good-looking! Such enormous eyes, and humorous mouth. Where was this taken?”

“Under one of the trees at the bottom of our garden.”

“Where is that?”

“Near Blackheath.”

“I like your straw boaters. What kids you both look! Willie and Pillie, under the tree at the bottom of the garden. Yes, I certainly like the look of Willie! The name seems to suit that clever little face, full of intelligence.”

“Shall I read you his letter?”

“Do, please.”

He read only part of it, telling of Willie’s life in the solitary cottage above Shelley Cove, with an otter, seagull, and birds he had tamed. It was a beautiful life, said the writer, but lonely at times. He recalled the holiday they had spent together at Lynmouth when on convalescent leave in 1916, particularly the day when they had gone on the light railway from Lynton to Barnstaple and walked down the estuary and round the coast to Cryde bay, ‘where those two men were drowned trying to rescue a governess, who afterwards walked ashore.’

“The bathing sounds as dangerous as Cornwall, where Lionel and I went for our honeymoon. Oh, that grim little Cornish farmhouse at Constantine Bay! Lionel chose the place from a map, because of the name.”

“How d’you mean?”

“Quillie darling, ask Marty to take you for a walk on the Leas, will you? It’s such a beautiful evening.”

When the child and her nurse had gone Eve continued, “He made me swear I’d be constant, after calling me his ‘wild English rose’ to rouse his passion. He’d been used to living with scores of native women, you see, and wasn’t quite sure how to tackle a sixteen-year-old bride, I suppose.” She laughed. “The weather certainly lived up to the name, it rained constantly for a fortnight! However, it helped to produce Jonquil eight months later. Well, are you going to visit Willie Watt on your beautiful new female Norton, whose heartbeats mean so much to you?”

“Willie Watt?”

“Well, I don’t know his surname, do I?”

“Oh, the same as mine, Eve.”

From the high window of her flat she watched Jonquil and Martha walking to the Leas. Then taking his hand, she said, “Why are you so aloof, Pillie? Oh, before I forget! I got
The
Man
of
Property
out of the library when Lionel was here, and
found it very moving, and life-like. Especially the feelings of Irene, Soame’s wife. I know exactly how she felt. I’d have gone straight to Bosinney’s side, and damned those bloody old Aunts and Uncles. But she married someone nearly twice her age, and
that
I
do
understand. Darling, come and sit beside me. I do love you so.”

On the sofa she put an arm round his neck, her fingers gentle in the hair behind his ears. Then she leaned to him, enclosing him with her arms, and put her head on his chest. “Don’t speak. I could be like this for ever with you.”

Half a minute later she said, “I can hear your heart beating, Pillie.”

He held back his head to look at the back of her neck, where the auburn hair grew away in thick tresses, and felt desire from the innocence of her white flesh.

“Pillie dear, don’t you ever feel you want me?”

“Yes, Eve, of course I do.”

“Then why don’t you make love to me?”

He was shocked; for so far he had esteemed her above Rupert Brooke’s ‘sneaking lust’ felt by Lionel for his ‘wild English rose,’ otherwise a young girl’s virginity. But who was he to judge another, when he was afraid to tell her the real truth: that he might give her venereal disease.

“Pillie darling, you disapprove of me, don’t you, in your heart of hearts?”

“I feel first one thing, then another. Anyway, the ‘wild English rose’ feeling is only—lust.”

“Pillie, do
you
feel lust for me? How lovely, darling: Tell me when you first felt lust for me!”

“When you rubbed your bare foot against my shin, when we were lying on the pebbles side by side after bathing that day, soon after I met you.”

She kicked off a shoe, and held up a foot. “This was the one. Bad foot! It couldn’t help it, honest it couldn’t, cross my heart. Naughty foot!”

“I liked the spread of your toes, on the shingle. They looked so natural.”

She felt under her skirt, and unfastened her stockings, pulled them off, and threw them across the room. “That’s better,” she said, spreading her toes. “I used to climb trees like a monkey when I was a kid. I could hold on to branches with these toes.”

She lay back, waving one leg, admiring its shape. “I know how a fish feels with its fins. Let’s go and have a swim!”

“No.”

“Oh, darling, not now. Someone may come.”

“I’ll lock the door!”

“Do you truly love me?” she said, feeble now. He did not answer, held in tension by a thought to pay her out, since she wore nothing under her skirt. Afterwards, alarmed and weakened by shame, he asked what she was going to do about ‘preventive measures.’ She said in a hurt voice, “Why do you have to talk like that, and spoil it? You’re like Lionel.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I wouldn’t mind a baby with your dark blue eyes, Pillie.”

“I think you ought to take precautions, all the same. Haven’t you any——”

“Really!” She looked at him with scorn. “Very well, I’ll ease your mind. On such occasions I usually douche with Lysol, and swish away any little strangers. God, you men are all alike. Go away from me, you and your poetry! Don’t you dare to touch me!”

*

Some weeks later, on returning to Folkestone after taking Desmond back to Wakenham on the pillion of the Norton, Phillip went to the orderly room and saw the Commandant sitting at his, Phillip’s, desk.

Colonel Tarr was smoking a cigar and reading, or rather examining a library book which had remained on Phillip’s desk, unread, for some months,
Joan
and
Peter
by H. G. Wells. The presence of the C.O. was a surprise, for Tarr seldom put in an appearance at the camp after mid-day, and never on a Saturday.

It was past the Colonel’s time of going to the East Kent Club to read the evening papers, drink a couple of long brandy-and-sodas, and talk with one or another of his cronies at the bar before dining. Throwing down the novel, he said,

“You are doing no good for yourself here, Maddison. I am sending you back to your regiment. You will hand over your office to Captain Browne tomorrow morning, and he will give you the necessary papers for your journey. Good night.”

Phillip went to see Eve to say goodbye, and on approaching her flat saw a grey Mercédès-Benz standing outside. Ah, he thought, she didn’t think I would be coming back so soon.
After walking about for an hour he rang the bell, and went up to the flat, to be told at the door that Mrs. Fairfax had given orders that she was not at home to anyone.

“I’m sorry, mister, but that was what I was told to say.”

“Tell her that I understand. Well, goodbye, Marty.”

He walked about until dawn; and after breakfast, having handed over to Browne, and sent off his valise by train, addressed to the first battalion at Brockton Camp, Cannock Chase, Stafford, he set off to cross the Thames by the Gravesend ferry; and riding north passed through Essex and Gaultshire to the Midlands, stopping only for oil and petrol, and so through Birmingham and on to Cannock Chase, where his heart sank deeper when he saw hutments.

Phillip stayed in his cubicle, and did not go on parade. At last the adjutant sent for him. Phillip said he was not well.

“You will report to the Medical Officer.”

The doctor, a
locum
tenens
from Stafford while the R.A.M.C. regular was on leave, said: “You have a dull patch on your left lung. How long have you had these sweatings?”