The Golden Virgin (16 page)

“Goodness gracious me, you gave me a shock, suddenly appearing round the corner, I was at that very moment thinking about you,” exclaimed Aunt Liz. “Well, I am sure everyone will be very pleased to see you. Polly has gone for a walk with Percy, he’s home on leave, you know, and goes back to barracks tomorrow, and then to a battalion at Catterick Camp in the North. Come in, my dear boy, and warm yourself by the fire. Mother is asleep, she often takes a nap, poor old lady, she wanders a bit now and then in her mind. I didn’t light the lamp, as Grannie prefers the twilight.”

“So do I, Aunt Liz.”

“Yes, it is very restful. Now you go and make yourself at home, Phillip, while I lay the tea. I’m longing to hear all your news, and you must tell me all about Mother, and the girls, and Uncle Tom—all of you, in fact. Now sit by the fire, dear, and warm yourself.”

He went softly into the little dim parlour leading off from the breakfast room. The thin figure of Grannie Thacker, in lace cap and black bodice and skirt, was upright and still on a horse-hair chair by the grate. He stood, leaning against the wall, watching her. After a few moments he realised that the figure was not asleep, for a craky voice said, as though in reply to a question, “You are quite right, Jim, Eliza is of course very worried, but we must keep cheerful for her sake, especially. We are all in the Lord’s keeping. And to think that the Kaiser is a grandson of the Good Queen! Did he never learn from her that blood is thicker than water?”

Hands on elbows crossed on her thin bosom, she looked towards him with tiny points of flame in the eyes of her shrunken face, and
said in a mourning tone, “I hear too, that a lot of men from the village have fallen down, the ones who joined up early, when the Duke first made his call. Why, is that Percy? How tall you look. Sit you down on the sofa, and warm yourself, do.”

Phillip sat back in a corner of the sofa, his face part turned away.

The old lady, upright in the wooden stays which had belonged to her mother, and which were worn with filial love, gave a long sigh. “I can call to mind the time when the champion team of Clydesdales were taken from my father’s farm, for the Russian war. The carter went with them, although he had a wife and children, and ’listed, specially to take care of them, but neither he nor his team ever came back. Now the Russians are with us. Ah well, our lives are in the hands of One Above. Do you say your prayers, Percy, every night?”

“I’m Phillip! I’ve just arrived! How are you?”

“My, my, it’s the little fellow! How you have grown to be sure.”

“I’ve come to pay you all a visit.”

He had to speak loudly, for she was getting deaf.

“I have been wondering how many battles have been fought round about here! There was one at Barnet, another at St. Albans, but I suppose all the fields in England were once nothing but blood and acorns, you know, great forests and sabre-toothed tigers, mammoths, moose, and deer, before the clearings and the settlements, which were then fought for by people with different ideas of what life should be. Well, Grannie dear, I must not disturb you, I think I’ll go and look for Percy,” he said, meaning Polly. When she arrived with her father and brother he found he could not say anything to her.

*

“So you ride a horse now, Phillip?”

“Yes, we are mounted troops, Uncle Jim. When I pass out of the riding school, I hope to be posted as transport officer to a company. There are to be sixty-four animals—riding horses, light draught horses, and mules, in each company. When all of Kitchener’s Army is out, the scale will be turned. Our artillery, too, is increasing greatly. By the way, I must leave here tomorrow at crack of dawn. I daren’t risk being late for the riding course.”

“Do you think the war will end this year, then, Phillip?”

“It’s quite possible,” he said, knowing tiny little Aunt Liz’s anxiety about her son. “You’re wearing a nice pair of breeches, Percy.”

Percy Pickering looked down at the upper parts of his legs with approval.

“I got them for him from Murrages, from an advertisement in the
Chronicle
,” said his father. “Then you consider they are a good cut, Phillip?”

“Very good,” said Phillip, concealing his thoughts of the laces, the poor quality of Bedford cord, the sloppiness around the knees.

“I remembered what you told us when you came home last time,” went on Uncle Jim, blowing smoke from his calabash, “about the transport being more or less out of the thick of the fighting, so I thought it advisable to get a pair of breeches for Percy. Then he will already be equipped if a vacancy occurs in the transport of the battalion he is joining.”

“Good idea,” said Phillip, brightly, seeing their trusting faces upon him. “The thing to do is to apply as soon as he gets there, and in his spare time help in the horse-lines, without making himself too much of a nuisance.” He felt sad that they should be so helpless as to depend on him for advice to save Percy’s life. “Percy is still a bit deaf from his childish illness, isn’t he? It might also help if he pretends he can’t hear the orders on parade. Then they might bring him into the transport.”

“You mean he must practise deceit, Phillip?”

Aunt Liz did not seem happy, as she looked up at him from her small height. She was like a child, rather as Mother was. They had never really grown up: Father, Mother, Mavis, Aunt Dora—he saw them all in the shadows of their own pasts—disappointed, downcast. He saw them all in their different ways trying to straighten out the tangle of their thoughts. The soldier, shot and on his knees, had got beyond the tangle.

“Well, now you know what to do, Percy,” said Uncle Jim, trying one last match to the ashes of his pipe, as a flash of optimism rose in him. He looked at Phillip.

“What time must you be off in the morning, did you say?”

“I’d like to be away by five o’clock.”

It was arranged that Polly should have the alarm clock and set it for half-past four; then she would get him his breakfast, and he could leave without disturbing any of the others.

“And now,” said Aunt Liz. “We must all have tea, for we want to go to evensong. You’ll come, Phillip? That’s right. I’ve got some of your favourite sausage rolls, you must be very hungry, so come and sit at table, your old place is waiting for you.”

*

As they were walking back from church, behind the others, Phillip said, “Don’t let’s waste time arguing about the Duke, Polly. You think he’s selfish and keeping people from building on his land, but I think it should be conserved. Anyway, I prefer what my friend ‘Spectre’ West says about the Duke, for he knows him personally, and not merely from village gossip.”

“I say the Duke is thoroughly selfish, so there!”

“And I say he is not! He has been very good to everyone in the Gaultshire Regiment. The Duke, or his forbears—the Duke in fact, for the dukedom is a position, more than a mere man—built all the schools and churches in his villages, too, in the past. And the countryside is beautiful because the mob is kept out. You ought to see what the mob has done to the bluebell woods in Kent, now part of the County of London—tearing down fences and trees, and leaving the place squalid. No, you leave the Duke alone, for you don’t understand him.”

They turned in at the gate. “Let’s play billiards.”

“I’m going to help mother get the supper.”

He caught her and put his arms round her. “You’re going to stop with me.”

“Who do you think you are?” She broke away. He let her go.

When he came level with her again she was standing outside the french-doors leading to the billiard room.

“Come on, let’s have fifty up before supper.”

“Why should I?” said Polly, with a toss of her curly head. “I dislike the Duke. He’s made his eldest son an outcast, because of his radical opinions.”

“Well, don’t make me an outcast, I’ve got radical feelings, so how about coming into my bed tonight.”

“That I will not!”

He lit the gas, chose a cue, set out the balls, spun a coin, and said, “Heads or tails?”

“How d’you know I want to play?”

“Because you are such a sport. That’s what I like about you. I’ll start. There you are, a nice leave, it’s your stroke. No mercy! I’ve played a bit since I saw you last.”

“I don’t believe a word you say, so there!” said Polly, as she took aim. Her ball rebounded from one cushion to another, and returned diagonally down the table into the area of baulk with just sufficient momentum to kiss the red and the white. He put two on the board for the cannon. She got two more cannons; six in all.
Then she potted the red; and with following stroke, potted his white, leaving her ball in baulk.

“That will teach you!” she said. “Now kindly put the red on its spot for me. I haven’t finished.”

“Very sporting of you,” he said sarcastically.

She went in off the red, leaving it in position to go in off again; and again; and again, until she had made eighteen. Then she left her ball and the red in baulk.

“Your turn.”

He could not get the angles, so started to slosh the balls.

“You’re not trying to win, are you?” she said, poking him in the ribs with her cue. He twisted the cue from her hands, and put it down to seize her. She twisted free, then started to box him, standing without flinch before his blows of pretence. Again and again she poked him in the ribs. He gave up.

“No man can fight a woman, slippery as an eel. By the way, did you know that female eels live seven or eight years in fresh water before going back to the sea, to breed?”

“Do they now!”

“The male eels spend their time skulking in the estuaries, afraid to go up into fresh water, in case they are gobbled up by the beastly omnivorous females.”

“That’s all you know! Eels don’t lay eggs, so there! They come from horsehairs in the brook. Everyone knows that.”

“So the eel’s father is a horse?”

“You’re just being a naughty little boy!” Polly could not help laughing. “You always were what Uncle Dick called a prevaricator.”

“Eels never prevaricate, they glide away.”

“You ought to know. You are slippery if anyone ever was.”

“I can’t help slipping on sea-weed.”

“Really! What will you say next?”

He moved towards her. She moved away. “I don’t want to have anything at all to do with you, until you cease being the silly little child you always were when you get into one of your moods, so there!”

“Good! Then how about another game? Only play properly this time. Take the game seriously!”

“I like that, from you!”

Polly was off her stroke, while he felt he had never played better. He won, just before the door opened and Percy and his parents came in, to say that supper was ready.

The door of his bedroom opened and Polly in her nightgown came silently on bare feet. He noticed how her toes were widely spread, and thought of sea-shells. She stood waiting, hugging herself lightly, standing on the carpet, until he opened the bed-clothes beside him, and said, “Come on, get in.”

She got in, and sat up beside him. He had no feeling for her now, although he had desired this moment ever since turning off the Great North Road that afternoon. He settled his pillow on the thick, long feather bolster, and lay back with hands behind his head.

She continued to sit up in bed, looking down at him as he lay on his back. At length she said, “Well, I think I’ll go back now.”

She pulled back the bedclothes, and put out a leg. The sight of her broad foot, with the big toe she could wiggle almost like a thumb, made him put his arm round her ribs, to prevent her going. Then sitting up, he examined the back of her neck in the light of the candle reflected from the walls, lifting up the black curls falling on the quilled shoulders of her nightgown.

“Let me shift the candle. I want to look at you properly.”

Her eyes were smoke-grey, her nose looked to be slightly flattened on her face, due to the wide-spaced nostrils; her lips were full and red, the chin strong, the ears small and well-shaped.

He unbuttoned her nightgown, while she said, “What d’you think you’re trying to do?” with the slight toss of her head, as when defying her father sometimes.

“I said I wanted to look at you. Keep still.”

He opened the neck of her gown, and pulled her arms free, then worked the nightgown off her shoulders to her waist. It was strange to think of Polly as a woman. He put his lips to her breast, but drew back, feeling that he was being unmanly and weak to have the wish to be a small child. Yet the sight of her sitting there so calmly drew him back to her breasts, although they were not as he had imagined a hundred times, but ordinary flesh, and quite firm, although silky to the touch. They were pinky-brown at the tip, little rosettes in bud.

“I suppose you’ve got what is called a good figure?”

“I’ve never thought about it.”

Her back looked broad and strong, tapered curiously to a small waist, and her belly was flat and hard when she filled her lungs.

“I’ve got good muscles, you know,” she said, holding out a thin arm and drawing up her fist. “You feel.”

“Quite a bicep,” he said, amused at the idea of Polly wanting to be strong, like a boy. “Do you do much gym at school?”

“Yes, and also hockey and basket ball. And we play cricket, and have lots of swimming in the bath beside the river.”

“Good for you, Polly.” He felt warm towards her, her boyish ribs were slender, as she sat there, looking at him. He drew his hand over her shoulder and arm, and felt the bud of a rosette becoming hard. Then lying down, he put his head against her ribs and nipped a fold of her skin between his lips and held his face hidden, while his feet began to work, as though his thoughts were dissolving through his splaying toes. He breathed out a long sigh, and lay back, one arm round her ribs, while she leaned over and gave him a light kiss on his head.

“I wish I’d learned boxing, and played rugger at school. It makes you hard and daring. You’re quite brave, really, aren’t you? I always was a bit amazed at the way you stood up to Uncle Jim when he got angry with you. You never gave way, but faced him with your chin up. So did Doris, when Father attacked her for saying she would kill him if he made Mother cry. She was only about four, but she had the courage to defy him, saying she was going to kill him for making Mother cry. He gave her a beating, but Doris refused to cry.”