Love and the Loveless

by Henry Williamson

  And yet—with a pang—I have come with an adverse report—all in the Orderly Room and the mess must know it by now: and through my fault entirely Pinnegar has been sent home, too, in disgrace.

  *

  Under the green baize board, to which Orders and other notices were pinned, there was a table, and on it a thick leather-bound book containing photographs of officers of the Regiment. Looking through it, he saw ‘Spectre’ West, as a second-lieutenant, standing before a painted roll of scenery. He looked very young, but with the same expression of directness under his high white forehead. The flat service hat looked strangely old-fashioned. The photograph had been taken in Gaultford, the capital town. Allen had told him that West had been a junior master at the school, when it had grown from the county grammar to a public school. Allen had been at the school, where he had won a Classical scholarship to Balliol. He hoped to go up when the war was over.

  An envelope came, addressed to Lieut. P. S. T. Maddison, to report to the Orderly Room immediately. Thumping heart, drying mouth. Resigns his commission, the King having no further use for his services.

  Phillip had spent a week drilling with others on the square. The Colonel asked him how he would move a platoon, without halting it, through a gateway from one field to another, when it was advancing in line towards the gate. The Colonel had a little sketch of the gateway, the two fields, and the platoon in line.

  “What order would you give your platoon, Mr. Maddison?” Phillip could not think. He remained silent.

  “Would you not mark time, Mr. Maddison?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then what would you do?”

  Silence.

  “Your men are marking time, Mr. Maddison. How to get them through the gate?”

  “I would form fours, sir.”

  “What then?”

  “I would order left turn, then forward march, sir.”

  “Surely ‘Forward march’ is a cavalry order, is it not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He could not remember.

  “Your men are still marking time, Mr. Maddison.”

  “I would order, By the left, lead on, sir.”

  “Yes, I think that would get them through. That will be all, Maddison.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The assistant adjutant later told him that a favourable report had been returned, with his dossier, to Eastern Command, together with the C.O.’s recommendation that he be gazetted as attached to the 1st Battalion.

  “The first battalion?”

  “You served with the first at Loos, surely? But you’ll probably remain with us here until your next medical board in March. By the way, you’re down for four days’ Christmas leave on the thirty-first.”

  Happily he returned to the ante-room. A full moon was shining over the parade ground; first warning had been sounded. He was looking at the book of photographs when the electric light was cut off. Derisive cheers came from the bridge-players, with loud calls for candles.

  *

  Passing through the immovable iron gate, he saw chinks of light through the shrouded windows of the front room. Could ‘Spectre’ be back? It was a shaking thought. Quietly he pushed open the front door and crept past to his room, where Allen was reading by fire-light. The borrowed bed was gone; in its place, a faded green stretch of wood and canvas. He went out to see his servant.

  “Mr. Oliver-Jones, when he went out, gived it to me, sir,” said the batman. “He told me to sell it if I wanted to.”

  “How much d’you want?”

  “Would ten and a kick be too much, sir?”

  “Too little! I’ll give you a pound for it.”

  “Very good, sir. The major was asking after you, sir. He’s in the front room now, sir.”

  Back in his room, he sat down on the little beer barrel, with a cushion on it, which his batman had scrounged from the mess sergeant. Allen went on reading. Phillip remained still, deeper entoiled. The front door opened; there were greetings in loud voices. Evidently a party was going on in ‘Spectre’s’ room. He felt he could not face them.

  “I think you are expected,” said Allen, at last. “Major West has just returned from an Investiture at the Palace. He looked in here about half an hour ago, and asked for you.”

  Phillip forced himself to go. Entering, he saw faces in candle-light around a central figure sitting back to the door, tunic off, trousers rolled to the knee. Although faces were turned to the newcomer the sitting figure did not move.

  “Good evening,” said Phillip. ‘Spectre’ appeared not to have heard. Over the sitting man’s shoulder he saw white and nobbly feet standing in a tin basin filled with steaming water. He noticed particularly the big-toe joints, which stuck out, so that the toes themselves appeared to point inwards. Too small boots in childhood! Dear Westy. Perhaps he was as shy of the meeting as he himself had been; the thought released warmth, and bending down, he put a hand over the older man’s hand, and squeezed it gently; whereupon ‘Spectre’ screwed round his head, and looking round his nose with his one eye, exclaimed, “Hullo, you horse-thief! How are you? Stand in front of me, and let me look at you! No, don’t look at those barnacles!” for Phillip had glanced at the new tunic hanging on the wall, to see a second silver rosette upon the D.S.O. riband. “What adorns your manly breast is worth all of them put together!”

  A seat was found; and then ‘Spectre’ asked Phillip to tell him what had happened after he had left him on that rainy afternoon.

  All seemed to be listening intently. The warming whiskey made it seem all a joke, which amused him the more his hearers laughed. He imitated portly Brendon, while someone re-filled his glass, and another gave him a lighted cigarette. He added bits about Broncho Bill’s exploits in repeatedly stealing the A.P.M.’s breeches. “So I thought it was about time someone pinched his nag, to save both Broncho Bill and Brendon further trouble!”

  “Now tell us what you did at Westcappelle.”

  “Everyone there was awfully decent. Among other things, they sent aeroplanes to photograph the sector east of the cemetery, to try and find you, Westy.”

  “Now let me tell you something! It wasn’t aerial photography to which I owe my life—not that it’s worth a damn—but I owe it to the finest General to appear in this war, apart from the Chief. I mean Monash, of the Third Australian division. If he’d had his way on the eleventh of October, we would have taken Passchendaele a month before it fell to the Canadians! Moreover, it was another Jew, one of his Brigadiers named Rosenthal, who got on the Ridge behind the Belle Vue pillboxes on the eleventh, and believe you me, never were figures so welcome! So when any of you ever feel like damning Jewboy profiteers in this war, chalk up against it John Monash, and the Third Australian division!”

  When I was alone with Westy—he asked to be remembered to you, by the way—he said, “The slums have died in Flanders. And it is the descendants of those who in the old days were sent in hulks half-way round the earth by England, for protesting against bad working conditions, or for stealing a sheep to feed their starving children, who were among the first to come to the help of England.” He rather talks like that now: the G.H.Q. attitude, I suppose.

  Anyway, we’re going to spend New Year’s Eve together in London, in the same hotel where I once went with Jack Hobart.

  The night before they went to London the band played in a marquee adjoining the dining room. Pink-shaded electric lamps lined the table-centres, faces glowed with laughter and talk. The Bandmaster came in just before the King’s health was proposed, to stand beside the Colonel with a glass of port, afterwards sitting down to smoke a cigarette.

  In the ante-room there was singing, and later still a sort of scrum started, one side trying to roll up the leader of the other side in the carpet, with cries of “To the incinerator!” The struggle twisted itself as far as the card-room, where a young lieutenant-colonel, a famous cricketer known as “Johnny-won’t-hit-today” roared out, “Stop that bloody row!” but nobody too
k any notice, until the electric light went out, and someone shouted in pretended rage, “You bloody Gothas, go home, damn you, go home! Candles, Candles!”

  The fun ended just before midnight with the assistant adjutant singing Roses of Picardy, which quietened everyone—only the juniors were left then. It was sung in candle-light. Then “Father” Andrews brought in what he called his trumpet-violin, an affair of cat-gut which extended tautly over a cigar-box, from the other end of which protruded part of a brass motor horn. Playing with a horse-hair bow, he made comic noises, until Sisley, muttering “You have no soul”, took it from him, seated himself on the edge of a chair, held it between his knees, and drew from it such plaintive and tender notes of Danny Boy and then of Waley Waley, that the only other sound in the ante-room was of distant anti-aircraft guns.

  *

  On New Year’s Eve Westy and Phillip were in the train to London.

  “Flossie said she remembered you. But she says that of everyone. What she does remember is who, among her rows of photographs, has been killed. It gives her a romantic feeling to say, ‘He was killed’, and ‘He was shot down in flames’. The place is becoming a crush, as more and more people discover it.”

  “Perhaps all the rooms will be booked, Westy?”

  “Flossie keeps some back for her friends. Anyway, I booked a couple when I was in London.”

  Phillip was about to ask how Westy could have known that he would be at Landguard; but thought that possibly he had invited him when one of his other friends couldn’t come. So he said, “It was great luck for me to be sent to the Gaultshires, instead of to the Prince Regent’s.”

  “Well, I remembered what you told me about having a bit of trouble with your C.O., so I asked ‘Nosey’ Orlebar to keep an eye on you.”

  “Thanks very much!”

  “Nothing to thank me for. There’s been far too much mixing up of regiments, which destroys esprit-de-corps. Among strangers a man feels that he belongs only to himself; in a regiment, to his friends. Every regiment ought to insist that it look after its own. It just wasn’t possible during Third Ypres; it would have needed organisational resources that weren’t available. Tell me how you came unstuck at Cambrai.”

  “I lost the way down from Bourlon Wood, when we had to wear box respirators. Wouldn’t have happened if I’d had a compass.”

  “Where did you get to?”

  “Right down on the other flank, by the Escault canal, instead of the Canal du Nord. So the guns weren’t available when the counter-attack came from Moeuvres next morning. However, they came in handy for ‘Vincent’s Force’, at Gouzeaucourt.”

  “I’ve been reading War and Peace again in hospital, and have come to believe that there’s something in Tolstoi’s theory of war. All impulses recoil upon themselves, thus carrying their own collapse. By the way, I met a friend of yours at Flossie’s, who asked to be remembered to you.” He added casually, “Sasha.”

  “I wondered if she was still about.”

  Dare he ask about Frances? But Westy would then know that he was wondering if Sasha … Change the subject. The Colonel.

  “I remember Spy’s cartoon of Lord Satchville in the smoking room at Flossie Flowers’, Westy. Dark blue cap, tall and bearded, large blue eyes, holding an oar. I suppose pink ties were the thing in those days?”

  “It’s a Leander tie.”

  “For rowing?”

  “It’s a rowing club.”

  “How is Frances, Westy?”

  “Very happy when I last heard of her. She was married in the autumn.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Somebody in the Indian Army. He’s now in Palestine, I’m told. Now I’m going to get some sleep. We shan’t get much tonight.”

  *

  At Liverpool Street he said, “We’ll get a drink at home. You remember my parents?”

  They took a taxi to Lime Street. The sitting room was laid for tea. How like his own mother Mrs. West was; but more composed. Mr. West, judging by the photographs on the walls, had been a regular army sergeant: pill-box cap, cut-away jacket, tight trousers with a stripe down them, big moustache. There were many photographs, including two young men in khaki, apparently Westy’s young brothers.

  After tea, Mr. West went upstairs with Westy, and Phillip was left with Mrs. West. She seemed eager to talk about her son.

  “He always talks about you, Mr. Maddison.”

  “Please call me Phillip!”

  “May I? Harold always speaks of you as Phillip. So we know you already, you see! He is very fond of you.”

  “I can’t think why!”

  “Oh, don’t say that! He says you are a very loyal person. He told us a lot about you when he came back last time. You took his message, didn’t you?”

  “That was easy, Mrs. West. And apart from that, any of us would do anything for Harold. He’s a wonderful man!”

  “Yes, everyone tells us that. Even as a boy, Harold was always very considerate to others, not like most boys. He was like another father to his little brothers. So kind and patient. They loved him dearly.”

  Phillip was silent.

  “You look tired, Phillip. Would you like to lie down a bit?”

  “Oh, I’m all right, really.”

  “Are you sure? Well, I won’t fuss. Yes, Harold was always all that his mother and father could wish for. And as I said, always so good to his brothers. There they are, up there.” She pointed to a family group. “Yes, he was the kindest brother to our two little ones. He used to take them out whenever he came home from Christ’s Hospital, and kept it up when he was at the University.”

  “They’re in the Army, too, Mrs. West?”

  “Yes, they joined up when the war came. We lost them,” she said, gently.

  “Oh, I am so sorry.”

  “They were in the Post Office Rifles, and were together when it happened, when the shell fell in the trench. It was at Hill Sixty—you know it, perhaps?”

  “I was never there, but of course I’ve heard of it.”

  “Have you any brothers, Phillip?”

  “Only two sisters.”

  “How nice for you! Father and I had only boys. I expect you are very fond of them?”

  “Yes, Mrs. West.”

  “You’re going to see them this leave, I expect?”

  “Yes, we live only a mile or two out, near the Crystal Palace.”

  “Nice and high up! Father and I are looking forward to retiring after the war, but I don’t want to go too far away from my friends. I’m a proper Cockney, you see. But Father, he wants a garden. It’s in his blood, he was born in Gaultshire. So we thought of looking for a cottage not too far away. Harold wants to take Holy Orders, he told you, I suppose?”

  “Yes, Mrs. West.”

  Why did he feel a little disappointed? Was it because Westy now seemed to be almost an ordinary person?

  *

  They dined at the Café Royal, and went to see Teddie Gerard in a revue; Phillip’s former attitude towards ‘Spectre’ West was recovered under brighter lights. With recovery came a new feeling, that Westy must be extraordinarily gentle, under the rather gruff manner. And what a marvellous understanding of children he had! One day, Mrs. West had said, she had taken Harold and his youngest brother to the Guildhall, where the faces of Gog and Magog the giants had terrified the little boy, so that he said again and again when he got home that they were coming to take him away, and was afraid to go to bed. So Harold had made a model with clay and painted the ugly face, and then given his brother a hammer and told him to break it up.

  “I thought when I first saw you, how like you were to Harold when he was younger, only your eyes are bluer, Phillip.”

  Seek from fears to vanish fears,

  One day poetry would have to shatter the old fears of Europe; a Blakian mental fight.

  Exaltation gave way to exultation, that he was in such a wonderful gathering. He had seen Sasha, who had almost run to him to take his hand and call him darling. At firs
t he had pretended to be cool, wanting to hurt her a little. She had taken his arm, and hugged it; seen someone else, held up her hand, whispered “We’ll meet later—darling! Don’t forget!” and dashed away through the dancers. Later—her smooth body, so gentle and girlish in the darkness. This time it would be different. Westy was talking to some of his other friends, round a table, bottle in ice-bucket—he strolled happily through the throng.

  In the centre of a group a man was talking to a most beautiful girl, with fair hair and blue eyes. Her face was vaguely familiar. Where had he seen it, on a photographic postcard of famous actresses? She was not like Lily Elsie, or Gladys Cooper, or Zena Dare. Who could she be? She stood face to face with her companion, a short man with a rather large head, but he had such a direct, clear look that the oversize head was not remarkable after the first glance. He had a little moustache, and wore the uniform of a cadet officer. What were they talking about, and why were the others listening? Moving closer, he heard that they were speaking in poetry to one another. This was exciting. He pushed his way nearer, and recognised the Indian Maid’s Song from Keat’s Endymion. The Cadet said:

  “Whence came ye, merry Damsels? whence came ye,

  So many, and so many, and such glee?

  Why have ye left your bowers desolate,

  Your lutes, and gentler fate?”

  The beautiful girl, who was staring delightedly at the cadet’s face, replied:

  “We follow Bacchus! Bacchus on the wing, A-conquering!

  Bacchus, young Bacchus! good or ill betide,

  We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide”

  He: “Come hither, lady fair, and joinèd be

  To our wild minstrelsy!”