The Golden Virgin (44 page)

“But who is ‘they’? You’re talking of the German High Command. I’m talking of the ordinary regimental soldiers.”

“I’m talking of the two sides of the German character, or nature, Phillip,” said Hilary, leaning over the bed in persuasive earnestness. “The side that ruthlessly massacres innocent civilians
en
masse,
and then immediately afterwards hands coffee to the survivors—stolen from the estaminets, no doubt—and chocolate to the unhappy little children. Chocolate, in compensation for the death of their parents! Think of it, Phillip! They stop firing, and then play the host.”

“Well, they also stopped firing when our stretcher bearers came out to help bring in the wounded before La Boisselle, Uncle. I was there, I saw them!” said Phillip, in a tremulous voice. He felt he could not breathe.

“I am glad for your sake, Phillip,” said Hilary, trying to speak amiably. “Still, one isolated example does not alter the fact that they are a brutal people by nature, despite superficial kindness. One swallow does not make a summer, you know.”

Swallows usually come in April, in the spring, thought Phillip, faintly. He felt himself to be feeble as frayed blotting-paper.

“Well, I told your Father I’d have a word with you in the matter. He is bothered by your attitude to the Germans, but I told him that it was nothing to worry about, especially as you’d done your duty so splendidly against them. It’s our life as a nation or theirs, you must never forget!”

Phillip lay back limply, fighting remotely against the wire in himself becoming a thin, thin scream.

“Now, before we leave the subject, just let me tell you one more thing, nothing to do with bloodshed this time, Phillip. It concerns the way they have treated, and still are treating, Belgium, which is a small country, and can hardly be regarded as having been a threat to Germany in any way—of course the Germans want the mouth of the Scheldt, which is also the mouth of the Rhine, and all it entails, with the port of Antwerp, and other facilities. Well, the
economic stifling process was put into operation as soon as war broke out, when the Federation of German Manufacturers,
die
Grossindustrielle,
urged that they should pay no taxes for the continuance of the war, but that the Belgians and French of the occupied areas should pay instead, by fines imposed by the Military Governor. This was pure extortion, Phillip. It was continued until March this year, when the idea of ‘speedy victory’ was modified, by the non-success of their land and sea strategy, and they had to float war-loans. You know what they are, I expect?”

The head on the pillow nodded.

“I won’t go on, but I must say this, Phillip. The war is by no means only the fighting, you know. Well, about money, which is the sinews of war. These loans the Germans have floated in Berlin, carry interest to be paid out of reparations to be imposed
when
they have won the war! If that isn’t a swindle, what is? The bonds will be worthless in a defeated country, of course. Meanwhile another kind of swindle is taking place. Big firms are now clearing off their debentures, using the inflation of the mark. Krupps have done this, and have made a profit often million pounds, in our currency, by the manoeuvre.”

Phillip saw Gran’pa Turney in his mind, and felt reassurance coming into him.

“But aren’t debentures usually held by the family that owns the firm, Uncle? Grandpa’s debentures are, anyway; that’s why he wants them to remain in the family. And isn’t Krupps a family concern?”

“Well, if they held all the debentures, they wouldn’t want to sell them, would they, Phillip? No, take it from me, it’s a swindle, and shows up the entire character of the financial-military combine, the pan-Germans, who want to rule the world, to aggrandise the Prussians!”

Phillip felt like the small boy Uncle Hilary had trapped between his legs, chuckling as he had tried desperately to escape.

“Well, there you are! That’s what we are up against, and what you fellows are helping to destroy, in a war to end war, to destroy militarism for ever. Well, Phillip, my advice is, don’t bother your head further about sympathy for Germans. You do your job and let others take care of the rights and wrongs of how the war is being run. You’ve done well, you’re a credit to the family, and just to show my appreciation, I propose to buy in your name one hundred pounds of war loan, to be left in trust for you until you are twenty-five.”

When he was alone again Phillip lay back with closed eyes, wondering why Uncle Hilary always made him feel as though he were nothing.

“You’ve been talking too much,” said sister, coming to stand by his bed. “Now try and get some sleep.” She put her hand on his forehead. “As I thought, you’ve got a bit of a temperature, naughty boy! That comes of talking too much!” Flicking a thermometer, she put the bulb under his tongue. “There, it’s up to a hundred and one! Any pain?”

“No, sister, thank you.”

Reading again, later that evening, a letter from cousin Willie, who had been in the attack when La Boisselle and Ovillers had been taken at dawn from the southern flank at Contalmaison, and the high ground before the outskirts of Pozières had been reached by the end of the day—the final objective of July the First—he felt a wild regret that he had not been there. He saw the battlefield as in a dream, something that could never be properly realized, which made his breast ache with all longing when he tried to enter in upon it, silent and without physical movement, the red-hanging brick dust over the villages, the sun shining down on the still, still bodies of the dead: the same sun, but O so different, whose light was reflecting from the polished wooden floor of the ward and making a haze about its flowers, coming in under the blinds half-drawn against the August sun staring down upon the hot baked brick wall and white-painted sill of the open window beside his bed, with the murmur of traffic in the London street below. In his mind he was a spirit, feeling the radiant heat of the chalk of the trenches; cooling himself in the flicker-rippling Ancre. O, to be able to see it all again, a ghost world of gun-flashes at night. O to see it all, to grasp all of it, without violence, without pain; to share the marching and the singing of the living that were part of the great dream of life and death.

*

It was a strange feeling to be out of bed, his foot still itching inside its plaster cast, with a pair of crutches, and sister beside him, to explore a new world. The figures in bed, the beds, tables, doors —all looked so different. It was quite a surprise to realize that there was a passage outside the door, leading in two directions, instead of it being a sudden-appearance place of doctors, nurses, wheeled stretchers, and food trolleys. It was sad that the world seen from the safety of bed had already vanished.

He visited other officers still prone, and sat beside them, and they
talked about anything but the war. It was fun to play draughts with them, and have little championships. They were not the dangerous or bad cases, which were in another ward.

The morning came when his foot was taken, pallid and warped, out of its plaster cast. Exercises began in another room between parallel bars, the crutches put away—a perilous feeling, to be all alone in a polished, swaying room. Then the crutches were exchanged for a walking-stick with a rubber ferrule, although his leg still felt to be hooked to him, rather than part of his body. Further exercises brought the aching flaccid muscles back into tension.

The
London
Gazette
had
his promotion in its close-printed columns one morning. He was a senior subaltern! He cut two cloth stars off his spare tunic and asked for a needle and khaki thread. The sister asked him what for, and when he told her, took away stars and tunic, and returned it with the new rank upon the cuffs, leaving the mark of the old star unfaded in the middle of the twin stars. It was a wonderful sight, at which he glanced again and again during the day.

Sooner than he imagined he was one of a party of officers taken to the theatre. They saw
Chu
Chin
Chow
;
two days later, they went to see
Romance.
They were taken to a tennis party in Regent’s Park, where he met delightful people, who sent their motors to fetch parties of officers from the hospital, and take them back again.

“I think we can let you out for an hour or so this afternoon,” said the doctor one morning. “Only no drinking of spirits, mind!”

Joyfully he took a taxicab to Charing Cross Station and in the train smelt, by the open window, the familiar smells of fish-glue, vinegar, sulphur, hops, tan-yards, and a new one of iodoform. Then the junction, and the line parallel to the brook running polluted and dead behind tattered drab fences of flowerless back-gardens, and so to the old dark station with its old dark dog-chasing cat, the walk through the village and up Charlotte Road, under the same old peaceful chestnuts, past summer-dulled privet hedges, rain-worn oaken gate-posts, up the asphalt of Hillside Road with its cracks where, thank God, pink convolvulus flowers were growing; and at last to the so-narrow gateway and the porch beyond.

Mrs. Bigge, Mrs. Feeney, Gran’pa and Aunt Marian, Mrs. Pye fatter than ever, and—a dared visit to Turret House. Mrs. Rolls said how thin he was, and so much more grown up. Helena arrived from the hospital, and he was asked to stay and take pot luck. He sat on his hands when he was not eating, trying to say acceptable
things, feeling strained into a state half-dream, half-shyness, feeling he was talking jerkily, flippantly, about his fellow patients, doctors, nurses—and at ten to two when she had gone down the road again—rather a relief that she was gone—he felt he had said and done everything to put himself in the worst light.

*

The day came when he could walk almost normally except for a tight feeling when he sat down. He thought to go and see his father and sister at Head Office in Haybundle Street, but when he saw the building, and the smiling moon in silver hanging over the door, he felt he could not face Martin the messenger there, after all Mavis had said about everyone at H.O. knowing what had happened on Messines Hill; so he crossed over and walked through the streets and Leadenhall Market, meaning to call in at The Grapes, and see Westy’s parents. It was after closing time, so he went on into Fenchurch Street and to Wine Vaults Lane, where Mr. Howlett said,

“You could not have come at a more opportune moment, Maddison! Downham’s up in town. He and Hollis and I are going to have tea at four o’clock at the Crutched Friars’ Mecca café. It’s my birthday. We always meet there once a year, you remember? You’ll come? Splendid! How’s the leg, better? Oh, good. Be here about ten to four, will you? You must tell me all that’s happened.”

Phillip went on to see Eugene in his warehouse in Houndsditch, where he learned that he was on holiday; and so he sat in the churchyard in Gracechurch Street where often in the past he had eaten his sandwiches, among others who had always seemed to be poor, in that dark place splashed by pigeons.

He found Mr. Howlett and the others at the bottom of coffee-smelling stairs, in a large room with tables topped by brown glazed tiles, some scattered with dominoes. Downham was in field boots and spurs; and noticing Phillip’s limp, he made a joke about his wound.

“Shot in the arse, were you? What were you doing, running away again?”

“Come, come,” said Mr. Hollis, sharply. “That’s not fair! Anyway, you’ve damned well taken care not to present your precious carcase anywhere near the Germans!”

“Well, how do you get on with your father now?” asked Mr. Howlett.

“I haven’t seen him yet, Mr. Howlett.”

The next day the doctor said, “You’re better. I’m sending you for a Medical Board at Caxton Hall tomorrow.”

He was given six weeks leave, to be spent in a convalescent home.

“Go and see Georgiana Lady Dudley,” said Matron, on his return. “She’ll fix you up at a place in the country. Tell her where you want to go. She’s got lots of places on her list. Don’t be put off by her painted face, she’s a dear old thing.”

*

Almost from the beginning of the war private fortunes had been expended to equip hospitals, in both England and France, by many of the great and famous hostesses of Society for the sons and brothers and cousins of their own and their friends’ families, whose names were beginning to fill the casualty lists … until now all were spilled away, and the names in the Roll of Honour were of strangers.

But England had need of them, and soon after the Battle of the Somme began there were few country houses which had not answered the appeal of Georgiana Lady Dudley and her friends, to open their doors to men of the New Armies recovering from wounds and sickness. By the month of August over a hundred officers a day were being sent to houses great and small, from Sutherlandshire and Caithness in North Britain, to Kent and Sussex and Hampshire in the South, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Essex in the East, to Devon and Cornwall in the West Country.

At first, it had been possible to discriminate: to send only men of one’s own class—those who had been at the only three possible schools, and who therefore knew good form—to one’s friends’ places as guests; while the other kind, the vast majority of half-and-half people, could be disposed of to the smaller places—dower houses, manor houses, and even Highland lodges—where they would be able to amuse themselves in their own ways. For the deluge had arrived.

With a pile of papers, telegraph forms, and card indices before her on the desk, Georgiana Lady Dudley disposed of one temporary officer after another, as he came with respectful affability, as though assured in his new status, before her. For Georgiana Lady Dudley induced no feelings of awe as she sat, her luxuriant white hair crowned by a circular floral hat, and her complexion all cream and roses, on a hard wooden office chair giving forth, but not radiating, an impersonal, all-enveloping geniality: this hostess of Edwardian luncheon and dinner parties of from a mere dozen or score of faces to hundreds of guests, many of them enveloped with the spirit of the cream and roses of the earth, upon whom had
fallen the bloom of gold of hundreds of thousands of sovereigns every year from carbonised vegetation lying in seams below their estates and properties.