Sir Pompey And Madame Juno

by Martin Armstrong

  ‘No, thank you, Miss; I’ve got one.’ He patted his left trouser-pocket and she saw that a hank of rather dirty towel hung out of it. ‘Why,’ she thought, looking at him more kindly, ‘he’s nothing but a great overgrown child.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked him.

  He stopped with the full pail hanging from his right arm, the left arm held away from his body to balance it. ‘Me? Jim Marsden, Miss.’

  ‘And the other soldier?’

  ‘My pal? He’s Stan. Stanley Rolf.’

  How clear it all came back to her, after all these years: nine … nearly ten years. ‘Jimmy!’ she whispered to herself. ‘Jimmy Marsden!’ That was the door he had come in at. He had stood at the sink there. She fell back into her dream.

  It was really, she reflected, from that moment when she asked him his name that she had set her heart on Jimmy – adopted him, as it were, for her own. Not that she had surrendered to this invasion of young men as soon as that. No: it had taken them a week – more, a fortnight – a fortnight, at least-to tame their ‘Ma,’ For it was they – she confessed it willingly now – who had tamed her, not she them. She smiled dreamily to herself. To begin with, she remembered, she had been very independent. Jimmy, of course, could have done what he liked from the first, but she had been very stand-offish with the rest. She complained about the way they banged the front door: and another thing, she told them – she couldn’t have them running in and out of her kitchen. ‘Right you are, Ma!’ they replied in a chorus. Their way of receiving her complaints was quite different from that of the young men at the street corner. They, she reflected, would have faced her with an amused and scornful silence and then laughed at her when her back was turned. These fellows were rough but, somehow, nicer, franker.

  The one she held out against longest was Old Bill. What was his real name? She never could remember it now. Bill was older than the rest; a thick-set, ungainly fellow with a raggy, wet moustache and awful teeth. He wore a little bit of striped ribbon on his tunic: he had served in the Boer War. He had all sorts of dodges and ideas of his own: special ways, different from anyone else’s, of cleaning boots and buttons, folding trousers, packing kitbags. He was always boasting about being an old soldier, and, when he did, the young ones used to break out into a ridiculous song:

  ‘Old soldiers never die, never die, never die;

  Old soldiers never die,

  Die, die, die!’

  making the place sound no better than a public-house. Miss Witherspoon took a dislike to Bill at the outset. It was not only his appearance. He was low-class, rough-spoken: it was he, she was sure, who had first begun calling her ‘Ma,’ Curious, she reflected, how she used to dislike Bill. She remembered how he had come into the kitchen one day just as she was going into the yard to get some coal.

  ‘Coal?’ he had said, seeing her carrying the coal-bucket. ‘Want some coal, Ma? Give it to me!’ and he grasped the handle of the bucket.

  But Miss Witherspoon held on to it. ‘No, thanks!’ she said coldly. ‘No, thanks! I can manage.’ And then, when Bill did not loose his hold: ‘Leave go, please!’

  ‘Come on, Ma!’ said Bill, and to prevent the struggle from becoming ridiculous she had been forced to let go. But she had been very much annoyed, and when Bill returned with the coal she wasn’t there to thank him.

  Another time he had come upon her with pail, bath-brick, and scrubbing-brush, opening the front door.

  ‘Fall out, Ma!’ he shouted at her. ‘I’il show you how to do a step,’ He took off his tunic and began to take possession of the things, and again Miss Witherspoon had to retire indignantly to avoid inevitable defeat. Really the man was impossible. But the step, as it happened, had completed her surrender, for when she came out into the passage a few minutes later, Bill was just rising from his knees.

  ‘What price this, Ma?’ he called to her, and Miss Witherspoon had stepped acidly forward to inspect. The clean grey step was edged with a yellow border of bath-brick, and not only that but a semicircle of paving-stone in front of the step was also washed and bordered with yellow. Miss Witherspoon’s face thawed a little. ‘Well, I’m bound to say,’ she remarked, ‘it’s beautifully done.’

  ‘What I don’t know about cleanin’ steps …’ declared Bill with great emphasis, and immediately the chorus broke out upstairs:

  ‘Old soldiers never die, never die, never die.’

  Soon Miss Witherspoon found that all the heavier jobs had been taken out of her hands: fetching coal, scrubbing floors, lighting the fire, swilling out the yard – all of such jobs were done by the Tommies. She began to think she had turned into a lady with a whole staff of servants.

  But soon she felt the desire to be doing jobs for them. It began with Jimmy, of course. One day he came and asked her for some grey wool. He wanted to darn a sock. ‘Bring the sock to me,’ she had said, Til do it. And if you’ve a shirt or socks that want washing, bring them at the same time.’

  ‘Oh no, Miss!’ – Jimmy had always called her Miss to the last – ‘that would be …’

  ‘Run along now,’ she ordered him, ‘and don’t be silly’; and he had brought two pairs of socks and a grey flannel shirt. Private J. Marsden, No. 2071: she remembered even his number to this day.

  Before long she was washing and darning for the whole lot of them, even for Old Bill. And Miss Witherspoon discovered that she had turned not into a lady with six servants, but into a woman with a family of great sons. ‘My boys,’ she used to call them when speaking of them to Mrs. Coleman and the rest at the Red Cross classes. Rules about banging doors and running in and out of the kitchen were forgotten. She scolded them still, but simply, now, out of excess of affection: ‘Now, whose cap is that on the dresser? Take it away at once,’ ‘Rolf, that shirt of yours isn’t aired. You can’t have it yet.’ She loved to have them swarming about the place with their strong bare arms and shining faces, to feel that the house was full of them-two clumping overhead, perhaps; one straddling in the yard, legs wide apart and body bent forward over a pail, scrubbing the back of his neck and ears with soap; Jimmy at the kitchen mirror carefully parting his black hair and smoothing it out with a wet brush. Jimmy always kept himself so smart. What, she wondered, did he think of those blue eyes of his, looking at him out of the mirror. Nothing remained now of the six huge soldiers, all exactly alike, who had crowded in on her only a few weeks ago, except only the lower halves of them-the tight cylindrical trousers, the clumsy puttees, the heavy boots, which made their legs look stiff and far too big for their bodies, ‘like a lot of great foals,’ she thought to herself.

  And the language! Terrible expressions – Hell, bloody, and sometimes both together – became mere household words. Soon she forgot even to pretend to be shocked at them. ‘Ain’t it a bloody nuisance, Ma?’ Bill had said when they were ordered out on Night Operations one wet night. ‘It is, indeed!’ she had replied, and they had all laughed. ‘Lummy, Ma! You don’t ‘alf sling the language.’ And she heard worse, when they didn’t know she was within hearing – words that had no meaning for her. ‘But after all,’ she said to herself, ‘they’re soldiers.’

  Yes, they were a nice lot, that first lot. Jimmy, Old Bill, Stan Rolf, George Webster, Sam Barnes, and Bertie Smith. She remembered every name. Others that came later she had forgotten long since. But that first lot, of course, had stayed much the longest. Eight months. Yet during that time they were always, it seemed, on the point of going. All sorts of rumours came along. Now they were off in a week to Mespot, now they were to be broken up and drafted to different units in France, once they were even said to be going to China. Each new rumour was the truth at last. ‘No mistake this time.’ ‘Gospel, I tell you! Bet you what you like! Straight from Corporal Johnson, Brigade Orderly Room.’

  ‘You and your rumours!’ said Miss Witherspoon. ‘Get along with you!’ But every time a new rumour came, her heart dropped like a stone.

  Then her mind ran on to that terrible, rapturous time. It see
med to her now, as she looked back on it, that the slow passage of time had suddenly begun to hurry, to whirl visibly past, as it had done when as a little girl she had unhooked the pendulum from the kitchen clock at home. A storm of events had swept down on her, engulfing her, whirling her from despair to delight and back again to despair, leaving her at last flung aside, deserted.

  First had come the brief delightful days of Jimmy’s illness. It was nothing much, as it turned out, but at first the doctor thought it might be appendicitis and he had to lie in bed, perfectly still, for two days. For those two days she had had him all to herself. On the first morning, as soon as the rest had gone on parade, she had gone to her linen drawer and got out two sheets and a pillow-case. He was in bed in the little room. At first he had resisted: he was quite comfortable, he said, in blankets. But the truth was she saw that he was shy. ‘Such nonsense!’ she said. ‘And me nearly old enough to be your grandmother. Besides, you don’t have to uncover yourself,’ and she rolled the two sheets and slid them between his blankets in the way she had learnt at the Red Cross classes. Then she got him an extra pillow and brought him one or two books from the sitting-room.

  ‘Now,’ she said, gazing down at him, ‘don’t tell me that isn’t more comfortable.’

  ‘It’s fine!’ he replied, and his blue eyes smiled up at her. ‘Think of the other poor devils on parade. “Shun. As you were. Slope arms. As you were. Form fours. As you were.” He’s enough to drive you mad, our Major is.’ He settled his shoulders into the pillows with a little sigh of content.

  ‘Knock on the floor if you want anything,’ she told him, and went off to the kitchen to see about some soup for his dinner. Extraordinary sounds came from the kitchen that morning: Miss Witherspoon was singing. And as she sang, her mind hovered timidly and ecstatically over a wonderful plan which, some weeks before, had begun to form itself in her mind. It was that she should adopt him as a son. She had a nice little sum put by which he could have some day, and meanwhile she made more than enough each year to keep them both in comfort. But, for the plan to be realized, he would have to be an orphan or at least to have parents who would be willing to part with him. Weeks ago she had made up her mind to question him. But the very fact that so much hung on his answer made it almost impossible for her to ask the question. She was afraid she might make herself ridiculous by her over-eagerness. For weeks she tried in vain to screw up her courage. Often, just when she had brought herself to the point of speaking, a sudden fear assailed her, telling her that the right moment had not yet come. But, now that he was ill, opportunities occurred all day long. If she still submitted to her cowardice she would never, she was convinced, be able to overcome it.

  She asked him suddenly, almost in spite of herself, on the first afternoon of his illness, while she was sitting on the edge of his bed watching him have his tea, and, in a minute, her wonderful plan lay shattered before her eyes. Both his parents were alive. As soon as he got out of the army he was going into his father’s business. He was an only son. She might have guessed it, all along, by the parcels he got.

  She changed the subject so abruptly that he glanced at her in surprise.…

  In two days he was up again, on light duty, and it was after his second morning on light duty that the blow fell. Stan Rolf yelled it out, coming off parade, as he went upstairs.

  ‘Moving on to-morrow, Ma! No mistake this time. It’s out in Orders.’

  She stood for a moment, one hand against the passage-wall. Then she turned into the kitchen, to be alone. She felt suddenly very tired and sat down on the nearest chair beside the open door. A cold despair had clutched her, shrivelling her vitals. Then her mind flew to Jimmy. He couldn’t go. He wasn’t well enough. And in imagination she wrestled for Jimmy against the blind tyranny of the army. Ever since her life had become part of the soldier’s life she had been darkly aware of that tyranny working behind the scenes, a vast black machine, the enemy of all love, desire, and humanity. Now, she felt, its relentless power was suddenly being increased: it was beginning to drive at high pressure, blind, irresistible. What difference would it make whether Jimmy was well or ill, whether she loved him or hated him? The machine would turn its iron wheel and the War, which had been waiting so long for Jimmy and the rest, would swallow him up. Suddenly she felt that she could not bear to be alone any longer. With a desperate determination she controlled her face and went upstairs.

  Jimmy was bending over the bed in the little room with his back to her. He had turned all the things out of his kitbag and was absorbed in folding and repacking them.

  ‘You won’t be able to go!’ she said, in a voice that sounded strange to her.

  Jimmy looked up. ‘Me? Why? I’m all right.’

  ‘You want to go?’ A chill crept to her heart. She couldn’t face his eyes.

  ‘Of course, when the other chaps are going.’

  She stood with hanging arms, hands clasped in front of her, watching him. He was serenely absorbed in his preparations. Neither of them spoke.…

  And then, all in a flash it seemed, it was next morning and she stood holding open the front door as they went out, loaded up with their full-marching-order and their kitbags hoisted on their shoulders. ‘Ta-ta, Ma! Good luck!’ ‘So long, Ma!’ One by one they filed out, Jimmy among them. The Orderly Sergeant had told him, the night before, to parade with the rest. ‘Good-bye! Good-bye!’ She patted the pack on his back. ‘You’ll write, won’t you?’ ‘You bet!’ he promised. He was happy, smiling. His eyes, as they met hers, shone dark with contentment. For a moment they all stood together on the pavement, great strapping fellows; and she suddenly recalled the moment, eight months ago, when they had arrived, crowding in upon her, sweating, clumsy, all exactly alike. …

  Miss Witherspoon sighed, and the sigh, catching and quivering in her breast, roused her again from her reverie. Her eyes wandered incredulously about the kitchen, empty now of all those ghosts of pain and happiness. How easy it was to call them back, alive and vivid, across the gulf of ten years. Or was it not rather she that crossed the gulf – dipped back into that past where they still somehow existed?

  She closed her eyes. But in a moment she opened them again and began to move about the kitchen. It was not good, she knew, to dream too much of the past. What was it, this time, that had started her off? At first she could not remember. Then it came back to her that it had been the voices of the young men laughing behind the privet-hedge as she stood at the bedroom window. The church clock struck four and she began to fill the kettle and light the oil-stove. Why couldn’t she go to the front door and call to them: ‘Come in, all of you; come in, and let’s have tea.’ It seemed simple enough – simple, and yet, she knew, impossible, quite impossible. For the old barriers were up once again, as in the days before the War.

  She took up her duster and went into the sitting-room: she might as well be doing a little dusting while the kettle boiled. But she had hardly begun to dust when there came a knock at the door.

  She opened it to find a little group of young men standing before her. The foremost one held a boy by the arm – a boy who stood capless, with hanging head. ‘He’s ill or hurt,’ she thought, and at the same moment the young man spoke:

  ‘He’s split his head, Miss. Fell off his bike at the corner there.’ Another young man held the boy’s cap and a third his bicycle.

  Miss Witherspoon took the boy’s arm. ‘All right!’ she said. ‘All right! I’ll take him.’ The other fellow handed her the cap and the third leaned the bicycle against the house wall, near the door.

  ‘It’ll be all right here, won’t it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Witherspoon, ‘if you chaps will just keep an eye on it.’ She closed the front door and led the boy into the kitchen. He walked with his head still bowed stiffly forward as though he thought that blood was dripping from the wound.

  ‘Sit down here, Sonny!’ she said. ‘Now, where is it?’

  The boy pointed gropingly.

 
Miss Witherspoon went to a drawer and got out scissors, lint, plaster, boracic powder and some clean linen. Then, separating the thick black hair with careful fingers she found the cut and examined it. ‘Only the skin broken,’ she remarked, and began to clip away the hair round the wound. ‘Now your coat off!’ She helped him out of his coat and took off his tie and collar. ‘Now come over to the sink and let me bathe it.’ She bathed the place with a clean rag and then went to the table and made a pad of lint, tore a bandage of linen, and, placing the pad on the wound, secured it with the bandage which she tied under his chin. The boy still held his head tilted awkwardly forward. ‘All right, Sonny!’ she said, and put a finger under his chin and lifted his face. He raised his eyes to hers – dark eyes under black brows – and smiled at her. The kettle was boiling: she filled the teapot. Then she conducted him into the sitting-room and made him lie down on the sofa. ‘Just for a short time,’ she said. ‘It’s a good thing to rest a little after a knock on the head. Try and have a little nap. But first I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’

  She brought him the tea and laid his coat, collar, and tie on a chair. ‘Now drink the tea and then lie quiet till I call you,’ she ordered, closing the door on him. She returned to the kitchen, sternly repressing the desire to sit and talk to him. In an hour, she determined, she would look in and see how he was.

  But before the hour was past she heard the sitting-room door open and he came into the kitchen. He had put on his coat and his collar and tie. ‘I ought to be getting along,’ he said. ‘I’ve still ten miles to go and they’ll be expecting me, and I feel quite all right now.’

  ‘Sure?’ she asked.

  ‘Quite sure, thank you.’ He touched the linen bandage and smiled shyly. ‘May I take this off now?’

  Miss Witherspoon considered seriously. ‘Well,’ she conceded: ‘perhaps! But keep the pad on. You can put your cap over it.’

  She untied the bandage for him, looking again into his eyes as she did so. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.