A Test to Destruction (55 page)
Read A Test to Destruction Online
Authors: Henry Williamson
They talked happily of old times, while Eugene stood by, feeling out of it, and also resenting Phillip’s delight at meeting such a person.
“What happened to Ah Chum Poo, Bill? Did you ever hear?”
Bill Kidd waited, a look of relish upon his face, while Phillip explained to Gene that the Chinese labourer had driven a camouflaged steam-roller, to bring up water during the March retreat. Gene didn’t think it all funny when Kidd said, “The silly f——r got his one-piecee millee bombs mixed up with the coal and blew the bloody thing, with him to b——y! Well, so long my Mad Son! Bless you, dear boy. You were a bloody good C.O., and don’t you forget it! I read you’d done a stretch in the old Scrubs, like all the best people, sooner or later. Silly bastards, calling it arson! You ought to have told them it was due to ‘fire caused by spontaneous combustion,’ like our billet
at Senlis! D’you remember my Court of Enquiry findings? That’s enough for those inquisitive sons of bitches! Well, cheerio for now, I must do my stunt, I suppose. I’m the door wallah combined with Shagbag the Tailor—the bloody film’s about a silly bastard called that! Happy days!”
Happy days with Gene were over, too, it seemed. With veiled irony under his sadness Phillip noted the details of the end of their friendship. After more aimless walking about, Gene finally invited him to have lunch with him in Tiger’s Apex House, where they sat at a table for two while Gene studied the menu, finally ordering sausage and mash for Phillip (10
d
.)
and a mixed grill for himself (2
s
. 4
d
.).
But then, thought Phillip afterwards, it was the same pattern as with Desmond: he had always invited them to be his guests, without actually putting it that way; they had always come, he had always paid. That had been the pattern. Mother had always given way to Elizabeth when she had bullied her for money, and that was the normal pattern to Elizabeth. In nature, the parent fed the young, and the young went to the parent to draw warmth, food, and protection. Until Mother turned against Elizabeth, Elizabeth would treat her the same way, and not learn by necessity to stand on her own feet. The same with Father and himself. Now it was wonderful to feel free of one another.
*
“You know, Mum, I am sure it was a good thing that all that fuss happened. Honestly, I never knew half the time what I was saying, about the cigarette case, I mean. I suppose it had burned into me so many times when I was a kid, the injustice I mean, and then to be smudged over in my mind until it became a sort of murky gramophone record in my memory, and out it came when Father used the word ‘honour’. I felt quite light-headed while I was shouting at him, rather like going over the top.”
Later he said, “The spirit of hate in newspapers has rather maimed Father, you know. Also, he’s so honest himself that he thinks everyone else is honest, too. That Corpse Factory story was a deliberate fake, you know. And when I think of how our fellows kept on—and the Germans kept on—both in the same hell—and all in vain——”
And later, “Well, it was hell for most of them. I was really very lucky, you know. I learned something out there which
people at home have missed. I’m much luckier than Father. He never really had a chance, did he? I mean, look at the way his father behaved towards him! I hope he gets his Special’s medal. If anyone deserves it, he does. I’ve always remembered how he stuck it after that Zeppelin torpedo had knocked him out, and covered him with powdered glass in Nightingale Grove, that night when Lily Cornford and her mother were killed. I think he’s probably still shell-shocked, you know.”
*
Phillip wrote to Desmond, now learning to farm as a pupil in Yorkshire, sponsored by the uncles in Nottingham. Phillip asked in the letter if it would be convenient to let him have some repayment of the money lent to him during the past four years. He had kept a careful account, he wrote, and the total was
£
39 10
s
.;
which of course, he added, did not include the dinners and theatres they had been to together, as Desmond had been his guest.
Back came an answer on an unsigned postcard.
£
39 10
s.
!
Think again! For I should hate to have to write to the Duke of Gaultshire and tell him that one of his guests was a swindler!
Desmond must still be very bitter to write like that, thought Phillip, before the fire in his dug-out, snug in the rainy night. A tweed blanket—one of half-a-dozen taken as souvenirs from No. 6 Rest Camp, two of which had been made by a tailor into overcoats—hung across the french windows. He sipped tea made in his 1908 scout’s billycan. A pity about Desmond and Eugene, but it was his own fault—he had made the nest warm for those two cuckoos.
*
By day he walked many miles into Kent, sometimes with Julian. Then one morning he read in a newspaper in the Free Library that a new Club for writers was to be formed in London, with premises in Long Acre, where once a week young authors and journalists might foregather to discuss literary matters and listen to lectures by famous writers.
Thither the next Thursday evening Phillip went, and this led to an idea of becoming a journalist in Fleet Street; which in turn led to Thomas Turney, after summoning all his strength to leave his fireside, taking his grandson to the City to introduce him one
February morning of a biting north-east wind to a former Lord Mayor, Sir Timothy Vanlayitt Sterneau, from whose firm M.C. & T. had long bought their paper.
*
Phillip thought that the only word to describe Sir Timothy was the Victorian word
dignitary.
He was a living effigy of Elgar’s
Pomp
and
Circumstance
March
:
not a ridiculous figure, not at all, as Julian Warbeck would have seen him, but one certainly oozing the comfortable spirit of gold transmuted from the sap of many primeval trees turned first into wood-pulp then into paper.
“May I introduce my grandson, Lt.-Col. Phillip Maddison, Sir Timothy.”
Tall silk hat with curly brim, unnaturally dark curly moustachios and eyebrows, thin face the hue of thousands of grilled rump steaks, frock coat revealed under greatcoat with astrakan collar, pointed boots shining black under grey box-cloth sides fastened by small flat buttons of mother-of-pearl—surely a concession to Edwardian fashion by a Victorian? Protruding starched white cuffs and crested gold links, immaculate pink nails, ridged and polished on long fine fingers—two of which, after the Dignitary had bent down to listen to Thomas Turney introducing his nephew, immediately felt into a waistcoat pocket and fished out a pasteboard card, simultaneously with fingers of the other hand seeking elsewhere a gold pencil with diamond slide—thumb pushing out the lead—card poised——
“I’ll give you my card to take to Lord Castleton’s Chief Private Secretary in Foundry House Square. You are Colonel——?”
“Oh, Mr. Maddison now, sir. I was not a regular soldier.”
The City dignitary gave him a smile of brown and gold teeth and said, “As you wish, Mr. Maddison,” and having written on the pasteboard and held it out, acknowledged Phillip’s raised bowler and strode away down Ludgate Hill.
“You’ll find Foundry House Square—down by—the river.” Thomas Turney struggled for breath. Finally, “Be—modest in your—approach, m’boy—and temperate in—all you do.”
The shaking, rasping struggle for breath began again. At last, wheezing and gasping, the old man managed to say, “I think—I’ll take—a cab—home.” Phillip called a taxi, gave the address, and helped in his grandfather. The last words he heard from him were, “Guard well thy tongue.”
Phillip followed the taxi round the corner down to the Embankment, and turned into Upper Thames Street, and so to Foundry House Square, and the principal newspaper of Lord Castleton. Walking up steps he went through a heavy mahogany door, to enter a hall with a long counter at one end, behind which stood men scrutinizing forms and talking to callers about filling them in. His heart sank. Would he have to work behind the counter, at one of the many tables all so close together? Beyond was a glass house, with the words CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS MANAGER on it.
He was shown to a lift, taken to an upper floor and into a small office where sat a pale, clean-shaven young man wearing pince-nez spectacles, stand-up collar, bow tie, and dark vicuna jacket. He was writing on a pad, and continued to do so until, throwing aside his pen, he looked up and said, “Mr. Salusbury isn’t in town, he’s with the Chief in Kent. Anything I can do for you?”
“I’d like to write for your paper.”
“Do you know the Chief socially?”
“No, sir.”
“Know Sir Timothy?”
“I had an introduction, sir.”
“Ex-soldier? What were you?”
“A private in the London Highlanders.”
“Where were you at school?”
“Heath’s, sir.”
The young man stuck out his jaw diagonally. “How much?”
“It’s at Blackheath. I was there five years, leaving just before the war.”
“What d’you want to write about?”
“The countryside—or the war——”
“The war’s over. Well, I’ll see. Half a motor.” He lifted a telephone, spoke briefly, and said, “I’ll take you to Mr. Linnett-Jones. After you.”
Down a corridor and through an open door, and there behind a desk sat a small man with agreeable blue eyes and greyish hair with whom Phillip at once felt at ease. After some talk, during which Mr. Linnet-Jones sat quite still and composed, in contrast to the jumpy young man Phillip had first seen, he was told, “We have nothing to do with the editorial side, here we are concerned only with advertisements. They are the main support of a paper, you know. There is much competition between newspapers,
for what is called advertising revenue. I see you’re wearing a B.N.C. tie?”
“It’s the Mediators, sir, I fancy?”
“Yes, the gold stripes are slightly thinner than Brasenose. What rank did you finish up with?”
“Captain, sir.”
“I’ll take you down to see our Classified Advertisements Manager, Major Pemberthy. Perhaps he can fit you in.”
They went down the stairs to the hall, and through the counter to the glass box. There sat a big young man with kind and gentle manner transcending ordinary courtesy, who asked him if he would like to work as an advertisement canvasser in the House Agents’ and Auctioneers’ section of his Department.
“Very much, sir, thank you!”
“Then you can do your writing in your spare time.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I thought you were a writer as soon as I saw your face.”
It was arranged that he should start in a week’s time at £4 a week, then Phillip was taken to a smaller office at the far end of the hall, introduced to the senior canvasser, and left with him. Mr. Brown said:
“We’re going to run a weekly Auctioneers’ and Estate Agents’ Register, the idea being that a reader of the paper, perhaps in a Free Library, desirous of obtaining a property in the suburbs, will see the Register, and write to the agent in the desired district. I will tell you more when you come here to start.” Mr. Brown brushed up his moustaches, looked at some papers on the table, and said, “I expect you know the Chief?”
“I met Lord Castleton when I was a boy at Brighton. He asked me to call and see him when I had left school. That was before the war.”
“You know who Major Pemberthy is, don’t you? He’s the Chief’s godson. Yes! Son of the Chief’s great friend, Max Pemberthy, the author.”
“Max Pemberthy, who wrote
The
Submarine
Pirate
?
I read it years ago; wonderful stuff!”
“Fine yarn, I agree. You saw Mr. Linnet-Jones too, didn’t you? Nice feller. What did you think of Colonel Cow?”
“Colonel Cow?” Phillip kept a straight face.
“Young feller-me-lad, but don’t say I said that, with
pince-nez
glasses.”
“He didn’t look much like a Colonel!”
“They made him one when he was put in charge of selling war-surplus goods. Sold millions of pounds’ worth of stuff, lorries by the hundred lot, they went like hot cakes. Yes, Cow got an O.B.E. for that. His job here is to suggest schemes of layout-space to big commercial concerns, to get them to advertise more in the paper. Some old readers won’t like it, of course, but the times are changing, or should I say
is
changing, ha ha. It’s the Chief’s idea to popularise the paper; he dropped the price from fourpence to a penny, you know. So long, old man, till Monday week!”
Now that he was hopeful again, Phillip confessed to his mother what had happened to him eighteen months before. He was surprised that she was so calm. In fact, she did not behave like the Mother he had known.
“I think if I were you I should go up and see the specialist in Harley Street again, Phillip,” she said quietly, “and let him examine you. Then you will be quite sure, and it will relieve your mind.”
He went the next morning. A man-servant showed him into a waiting room. At last he was before Dr. MacDougal.
“It may have cleared itself up by now. To make sure, I will give you an injection. This will cause recrudesence of any latent infection.” When this had been done, he said, “Take home this bottle, and let me have a specimen of your water on first rising tomorrow morning. It is important that it is the first water you pass.”
The next morning Phillip took up the specimen, and left it with Mr. MacDougal—as he preferred to be called—who told him that he would write to him. Phillip left his cheque for
£
2 2
s.
face down on the table.
23 Feb.
MacD. said only slight trace of streptococcus infection. He will send a vaccine to my doctor here, for two weeks’ injections to clear it up.
After hearing verdict (by letter, which I asked Mother to open) I went to London to call on Westy’s parents. Found them very friendly. Told them why I hadn’t been before, and they understood. My grandfather is dying. I have never seen anyone actually die of old age; scene will be important for my scheme of a long family novel. I want to get hold of my grandmother’s diaries for this before
anyone can burn them. They are locked up in T.W.T.’s desk in his bedroom.
She died before the war, and when home for the summer holidays I saw her the moment after she had died, when my Mother had come out of the bedroom crying,
She
is
gone,
she
is
gone,
running downstairs to tell her brother Hugh, an invalid to whom something terrible had happened when he was a young man, what, I did not know then; but I was sternly forbidden to go into his room at the other end of the house by my father, the room where I write this now. After watching the nurse tie up my dear Grannie’s jaw, without emotion beyond curiosity, I listened on the stairs to my mother in Uncle Hugh’s room, where I imagined her crying beside him, while he sat on a couch, his paralysed legs showing the outlines of bones inside his trousers, at different angles to the floor.
He
killed
her,
the
devil,
I heard him saying, and then on crutches he went to see my grandfather. A little awed by this time, I crept down and listened outside the door to terrible accusations by my uncle, while Gran’pa sat still, breathing heavily.
My uncle had been left his mother’s diaries in her will. There were about a dozen leather-bound books, each with its small brass clasp and lock. Sometimes when I visited the garden room he would play his violin with poignant longing and sweetness, making the tears come in his eyes, and in mine too. At other times he read to me from the diaries, intimate accounts of her early life, the bringing up of her children, and later unhappy confessions about Tom and her growing sons.
When Hugh died, without leaving a will, the diaries presumably went to my grandfather, so now my mother may have them. I shall want them, for having read Galsworthy, I recognize the importance of all details of past living that the diaries contain—details of a similar penetration which are lacking in the Galsworthy family story. It is
detail
which makes books last, true detail. I hope to write, one day, a family triology of novels which will bite deeper than Galsworthy’s satirical yet officially respectable family novels. All members of my family, as I see them, with the exception of Mother, are part of mass neurosis (from which I am not free altogether) which is the underlying cause of the war. But I must not stress that, or other aspects (as, e.g., Galsworthy seems to find property the root of evil) for attitudes of mind pass away, while simple details, almost ‘small beer’ details, as in Hardy at his best, give the true feeling of living. Soames is obviously somebody Galsworthy hated, and perhaps feared (the same thing?)—and yet, if I put Ching and Mavis in the books, how can I get round to their true or underlying natures? Both are essentially selfish, living only for themselves. Effects of causes, or heredity? Or both?
My uncle Joseph Turney, the ‘fool’ of the family (who was, says
Mother, ‘dropped on his head when a baby’) has just arrived. He brought his son, 18, Arthur, but would not let him come into this room. Perhaps he thinks I am a second Hugh, as I am, in a way.
There are now two nurses in the house, as well as Miss Cole, the housekeeper. Must break off now: Miss C. has just come to tell me I am wanted upstairs. “Please go, quietly, won’t you, and you must be prepared to find Mr. Turney much changed.”
Later.
The curtains were drawn across nearly all the windows, shutting out the view over the grassy slopes of the Hill, set with silver birches and other trees. I saw my mother and uncle standing mutely by the bed, in a dim light, holding hands like children. That is just what they are, I thought, two good little children standing sadly by the bedside of their ‘dear Papa’ who is going to leave them.
Seeing me, my mother came towards me. I could see she was crying. I put my arm round her (she is a small woman) and tried to feel as I thought I ought to be feeling; but no emotion arose in me, or passed between us. I have been cut off emotionally from her ever since my first return from the war early in 1915. I wanted to say to her that death is as natural as birth, and to trust in the truth that is the spirit of life, and so to reassure her and give her strength; but to my dismay I could not speak, but found the tears rolling down my own cheeks.
Grandfather in bed was now writhing and muttering, clawing the bedclothes and evidently finding great difficulty in breathing. His face seemed very dark as it twisted about on his shoulders covered by the white nightshirt. He was 80 years old, and the flame of life was hovering over the wick fallen at wax end.
Now he began to gurgle, as though being strangled. One nurse stood by the bed, moistening his lips with something on a sponge. Seeing the sad and innocent look on the face of my uncle—who is short, like my mother—I went to him and put my arm through his, while holding my other arm round mother’s shoulders. Suddenly there began a fearful struggle. Gran’pa had been a man of powerful physique, and now he was wrestling for life. It reminded me of some wounded men who clung screaming to those who would help them (against orders in an attack), gripping with a grip that could only be broken by the aid of a blow from entrenching tool handle or rifle-butt. Some men badly hit in the body hooked on to the legs of passing soldiers, and dragged them down in their instinctive terror of death, or loneliness. Holding firmly to my relatives, who were deeply affected, I watched the suffocating face. It was almost as though some force were tearing the life away from the contorted, garrotted body; with a prolonged noise, half snore, half cry, ending
in throaty bubbling, the struggle ceased, and my grandfather was dead. I was more affected than I thought I would be.
Later.
I did not like to ask then about the diaries, so said nothing about them. This morning, while Gran’pa is lying in his coffin, I asked Mother, who said that her brother had taken them away to burn them, because, she said, he wanted to ‘protect his father’s memory’. I was angry when I heard it, because, I told her, apart from personal and local details, they contained many interesting details of travelling, to Africa, Canada, and North America, and smaller journeys by carriage and dog-cart in Gaultshire, where he had been born, and had scores of relations, many of whom were sketched sharply, so that they were immediately visible to me when a boy listening to Hugh reading to me. Apparently it was the record of the old boy’s marital infidelities, and the account of Hugh’s misfortune, that had caused Uncle Joe to take them away to burn them.