A Test to Destruction (46 page)

“Off and on since September 1915, doctor. But much more since I went down with mustard gas—”

“That’s enough to have caused a break-down of tissue, and infection by tubercle. Can you give me any particulars of previous wounds or illnesses?”

After this the doctor said, “What do you want to do? Go into hospital, or on leave? Anyone to look after you? Where d’you live? No, London’s not too good. How d’you feel about things?”

“Oh, fairly fit, except a bit depressed at times.”

“Sleep well? Any nightmares? H’m. The same dream night after night, you say. Tell me about it.”

When Phillip had ended his somewhat jerky account, the doctor said, “You know, more ill-health is caused by chronic depressive thoughts, from painful incidents buried deep in the mind, than medical science generally allows. There are two schools of thought about this. The new school, very much in the minority, one need hardly say, believes that the effects of prolonged strain in the war can be delayed longer than was formerly thought. I was an M.O. with a regular battalion for a couple of years, beginning in 1915 and going on until Third Ypres, when I came home fagged out. The former theory was that, as experience is cumulative in human life, so battle experience hardened and acclimatised a man to endure where a partly trained soldier would crack. The contrary is the truth, I believe, for within my experience I saw again and again that a soldier’s power of endurance is worn away the more by every battle he goes through. My dear fellow, what’s the matter?”

Phillip’s tears were momentary. The doctor decided not to press him; he knew already that he had hit the target. “I should think from what you have told me, and from what I know of you, that you have been drugging yourself by returning again and again to France. You have exhausted yourself, by using the war to escape from some underlying repression, probably from your early years. What every man needs is a good wife: in your case, I should say, the need is acute, as in most young men, and the blue-eyed fantasy in your dream denotes this. Have you known someone with blue eyes, someone particular, I mean?”

Phillip told him about Helena Rolls, and then Lily, while the doctor made no comment, but nodded his head slowly as though to himself during the hesitant confession.

“I’ll give you a week off duty. It’s a fine healthy air up here, keep in the sun, and laze about. D’you read? All the better! Conrad? Grand chap! Great writer! But don’t get too tense. Try some P. G. Wodehouse, he’s a very skilful writer, you know … ever read ‘Saki’? He’s another with more in him than at first meets the eye! I’ll lend you a copy, if you promise to bring it back. Of course you will, but somehow books ‘walk,’ as they say. Start with the
Chronicles
of
Clovis
… now out in the sun, and lie in the heather. Meanwhile I’ll send a chit to the orderly room.”

Withdrawal from all life of the battalion, including the officers’ mess—no longer hectic, for these were regular soldiers with careers and ambitions before them—was extended for another week, without seeing the doctor. Philip had not called at his house in Stafford for the ‘Saki’ book offered him, although daily he went into Stafford for mid-day beer and bread-and-cheese at one or another of the pubs. Every afternoon he went to the same place at the edge of the moor, to sit near a self-sown glade of birches and see the road declining before him to the south. Dimly under the heat arising in the fine harvest weather lay the ‘coloured counties’ of the song that Desmond used to sing in his light tenor voice,
In
summer
time
on
Bredon.

At last a chit arrived from his company commander ordering him to report at the company office; it lay unheeded on his dressing-table for a couple of days. Then Silvester, a lean, pale-eyed, lithe rugger-playing fellow with very light yellow hair, came to the cubicle. He was curt.

“The Commanding Officer has called for a report from me in the matter of your dereliction of duty.”

Phillip asked to see the Commanding Officer, Lt.-Col. Mowbray. He sat at his desk, service cap on head, unsmiling. He wore the C.B. with his D.S.O. and two bars, the Legion d’Honneur, the Belgian Croix de Guerre. He had served in the South African war. He had gone out with the original Expeditionary Force in command of the first battalion. Now he was back again to real soldiering, his face carrying the heat-burns of the African veldt, the rains of the Curragh, the sweats of the Retreat from Le Cateau, of First Ypres, Festubert, Loos and Somme, and of all the weights and tensions of a brigade decimated many times in the Flanders battles of 1917, the Fifth Army miseries of 1918 and his division falling back, falling back, always falling back, and no reserves left. These strains had been temporarily relieved by thousands of pegs of whiskey taken abstemiously, thousands of glasses of port also in moderation, and for relaxation—and his eyes still saw with simple straightness behind their set look.

Lt.-Col. Mowbray said quietly, “I am glad you have come to apologise, Maddison. I am sending in papers for your immediate demobilisation.”

“Very good, sir.”

Lt.-Col. Mowbray got up and held out his hand. “Goodbye,” he said. “And good luck.”

Three days later the order for demobilisation arrived. Phillip said goodbye to half a dozen officers outside the mess hut, and pushing off on the pilot jet, vaulted into the saddle, to ride quietly, with the softest beats of the engine, down the narrow stone road to the south; and when clear of the camp he opened the throttle, fleeing on down the road, leaving behind the heather slopes, the birchwood dells, the stunted pines of Cannock Chase and Army life for ever.

*

Night had fallen when, having passed through Derby and many other towns, he arrived at Beau Brickhill; and turning into the courtyard of the house where in childhood he had found so much freedom and happiness, stopped and dismounted and drew back the Norton on its stand. A half moon hung above the ivy covering the disused stables; cob-webbed window panes glinted in silence.

A shaft of light came through the open french windows leading into Uncle Jim’s little office, with the roll-top desk still there, an oil-lamp on it showing the calendars on the wall, many of them going back long before 1914; they were there when Uncle Jim was a boy, his father had hung them up under the boy’s eyes, and for that reason they had been there ever since.

Phillip waited in shadow, hesitating whether to call out, diffident about cousin Polly’s reception of him after the way he had treated her three years before. Then he saw the thin figure of Grannie Thacker in the doorway, dressed in black as always, tight bodice over the wooden corsets which had been her mother’s before her, her skirts below the ankles of her button boots, her hair scrimped into a wispy nob.

Her voice said quietly, “Is that you, Percy?”

He stood still, alarmed lest he shock her. Had she waited, every moment, every hour, of all the days and nights since cousin Percy had been killed at Flers on the Somme: waiting for a miracle, sustained by hope in God’s goodness that Liz’s boy would one day come home?

“No, it’s me—I mean I—it’s Phillip.”

“I thought at first it was Percy,” the voice quavered. “I
heard a motor-bicycle, and thought it must be Percy. Of course, how idle of me. Come you inside, Phillip, and sit you down by the fire, and I will tell Eliza you’ve come.”

“I can’t stay very long, Grannie. How well you look. I’m on my way to the Crystal Palace. How is everyone?”

She appeared not to hear, for she said, “So you are staying at the Abbey for the shoot. My, how times have changed.”

“Yes, Grannie.” It must be wonderful to live outside the flow of time, to live a life of dreams like the sun. “I think I’ll go on now. I must get some carbide.”

“Percy may have some. I saw his tin on the stable rack only this morning. Come you in, my dear, and sit you down by the fire.”

He went into the little room between the office and the kitchen parlour. How small it was, the horse-hair sofa still there, and the
petit
point
cushions, with their red and yellow roses.

The kitchen door opened, and Aunt Liz came in, in black from bodice to trailing skirt, small as a pawn on a chessboard.

“Why, it’s Phillip, I do declare! What brings you here? How glad I am to see you.” She held up her face to be kissed. “So you’ve left the Army, have you?”

“Well, almost. Tomorrow at the Crystal Palace——”

“I heard from your mother only this morning, she told me you were leaving. Grandpa has been very ill, did you know that? Poor old fellow, he is eighty, and has had this Spanish influenza which is still going about. Polly is at Husborne village, staying the night with her cousin, she will be sorry not to have seen you.”

“I’ll call on her as I pass through, Aunt Liz.”

“We can give you a bed for the night. You know you’re always welcome, don’t you?”

“It is so good of you, but I must go on, I think. I must get some carbide.”

“We have a tin in the stables, you’re welcome to a fill up. It was Percy’s, and we’ve kept it there ever since he went away.”

“I understand.” He lit a cigarette. “D’you mind?”

“No, do smoke. I like to see a man smoking about the house. Uncle Jim won’t be back just yet, he’s gone to a meeting of the Gas Board, down by the station. I expect you remember it?”

“Yes, Percy and I fished for roach there once, in one of the pits.”

“That’s right, Phillip! What a good memory you have, to be sure! Now you won’t refuse a sausage roll to warm you on your way, will you? Have you had tea?”

“No, I wanted to get through by daylight. I’d love a cup of tea, if I may.”

“Of course you shall. And I’ll warm up a plate of rolls for you. You always liked them, didn’t you?”

When he was eating hungrily, she said, “Polly is going to be married, did your mother tell you?”

“Why no, Aunt Liz! I am awfully glad!” And yet——

“We’ve known him all our lives, he’s one of the Greylands cousins, at the Round House Farm, I expect you remember it? Turneys have farmed that land under the Duke for four hundred years. Yes, George will take it over, now his father is getting on, and the young people will live there.”

He called on Polly and her cousin in Husborne village, and had a second meal. A glass of wine, then another one, soon had him back in the spirit of the old days, joking with Polly and Milly, her cousin, slices of home-cured ham on his plate, and homemade gooseberry pickle.

“Dam’ good stuff, you girls. Think I’ll come and stay here.”

“You’re quite welcome, to stay the night, Phillip.”

“I must press on, Polly, my dear old sporting partner. I wish you everything good in your marriage, my sweetie!”

“I wondered if Mother had told you. Thank you, Phillip.”

Polite and subdued, he thought. Surely she wasn’t still keen on him? Damn, he must be careful, or she might read his thoughts. “Yes,” she went on, “Doris has a beau now, too. You’ve met Percy’s friend, Bill Willoughby, haven’t you? Doris sees quite a lot of him, I hear.”

“I met him once. Rather shy. A good thing, shyness. Better than being a thruster like me.” He drank more wine.

Polly laughed. She had small teeth, very white and even.

“What’s your beau like?”

“Oh, he’s a farmer. He was in the regiment, you know.”

“Oh, then he’s all right.”

“He’s a very good shot, and is asked to shoot over the Duke’s land, with the tenants, of course.”

“I hit two partridges with four thousand cartridges, two Mills bombs, and half a ton of bird-lime.”

They laughed at this. “I wish I had a simple country mind, like you two Sweeties. Laugh at anything.”

“Not in the least!” said Polly, tossing her head.
“You
are funny, you see. You always were a funny little creature, I remember. So there!”

“Have you met Bob Willoughby?”

“Oh yes. He came to us and stayed quite often, before he went to see Doris. Still, I’m very glad for Doris’s sake, although I think she will never forget Percy.”