The Golden Virgin (54 page)

“Sandpipers hopping! They’re waders!”

“Have it your own way.”

“It’s not my way, it’s the sandpiper’s way.”

“I think you are funny. You always were funny. You always made me laugh.”

“Give me a straight answer. Do you, or do you not, think it’s all my fault? Anyway, I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”

“Well then, we need not discuss it further, need we? I am going to help Aunty Hetty and Doris with the picnic basket.” And lifting her chin Polly said, “Let me pass, please,” and walked downstairs.

*

It was a mellow day, air calm, the sky blue, as though vacant, but with the last quiet warmth of summer. Phillip hired a Humberette runabout from Wetherley’s garage, and drove them to the Fish Ponds. They sat upon the exposed roots of the pines, at the verge of the larger pond, placid with water-lily leaves beginning to decay. The two girls had brought their bathing dresses, but Polly, who had been silent during the drive to Brumley—where she and Doris had done some shopping—did not bathe. She said the water was too cold. So Doris swam alone, while Phillip wandered about, mourning for the care-free days that were gone for ever.

When they returned home he went to see Mrs. Neville. He showed her a prayer-book, with ivory covers, that he had bought on the return through Brumley. “I thought Mother would like it, to remember me by, Mrs. Neville. I saw it as we were going to
Reynard’s Common, in the shop next door to the haberdasher’s Polly went in with Doris.”

“What did she want to buy there?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“And then she didn’t bathe? And she a fine swimmer? And you buy a prayer-book for your mother—all in one morning. Oh dear, I must look into this, Phillip! You bring Polly down here, and leave us alone for awhile, will you. Only don’t say it is my suggestion! Ask her down will you, to hear the gramophone.”

The Decca had been at the flat since June, except for the evening at the Rolls’.

Having taken Polly down, Phillip returned to his house. Ten minutes later, as he was sitting in the front room—where Father seldom went, so one could be apart there, and feel apart, too, from life, since life as it was known to the family was all about them in the sitting room—he saw Polly come in the gate. He opened the front door. She came in without a word; but as she started to go up the stairs she whispered. “I didn’t think that you were a sneak!” and went on before he could think of anything to reply.

Down he went to find out what had happened. Once again Mrs. Neville dropped the key from her window, then went on with her crochet work while he sat before her, waiting for her to begin.

“Well, what did Mother say to the prayer-book?”

“She seemed a little surprised.”

“I don’t wonder!” cried Mrs. Neville. “The devil was sick—!” Then seeing his rueful face, “It’s only my fun, Phillip.”

The crochet needle worked up and down. “I’m a little behind-hand with Maude Hudson’s birthday present. I want to give her a set of six doilys for her tea-table, so you won’t mind my working away while we talk, will you.”

“How many have you done so far?” He felt he was splendidly restrained.

“This is the third, only the borders of course, then they’re sewn on to the centres. I do think a dainty doily looks well under a silver cake-stand, don’t you?”

“Yes, Mrs. Neville. What did Polly say?”

Needle and thread promptly went down. Eyes in the large pastry face became round as pale green grapes.

“Oh, what a brazen hussy! She defied me! ‘That is my affair entirely!’ she said, holding up her chin. I began by saying, ‘Now Polly, let’s have no nonsense. Who else did you know in Lynmouth? What about that fellow Piston? Phillip tells me you went
out in a motor boat with him one day, as far as Ilfracombe.’ ‘So I did,’ she said, ‘but there was a boatman there all the time.’ ‘Even when you landed to have tea? Come now, don’t let’s have any nonsense about it,’ I said. ‘You’re talking the nonsense,’ she says looking at me, as bold as brass! ‘And I’ll go further,’ she says, ‘and tell you that you don’t know what you’re talking about. So there!’ she says.

“‘Oh ho, my girl, it’s like that, is it? Well let me tell you that your whole attitude is causing Phillip a very great deal of worry, and while I don’t for a moment say that Phillip is blameless—boys will be boys and girls will be girls, we all know that, I’ve been young myself you know—but there’s a feeling about this affair I can’t quite feel happy about. And you know what I mean, don’t you, Polly?’

“‘I haven’t the least idea what you’re trying to say,’ she says.

“‘Very well, let’s get down to brass tacks, since that’s something you’ll understand, my girl,’ says I. Oh, I could see it was going to be a contest of wills, Phillip! And I admire her for it! Well, as I was saying, ‘There’s nothing the matter with you, Polly, and you know it. Now tell me this! Where did you spend that ten shilling note Phillip gave you, for that medicine? You didn’t buy anything with it, did you? Until, that is, you found that you suddenly had to go into a haberdasher’s shop this morning? Was it anything to do with the fact that you, a fine swimmer, didn’t swim afterwards in the Fish Ponds? Answer those questions, my girl, if you can!’

“‘Why should I?’ she says, oh, bolder than ever she was, the minx!—‘I shall not, if I don’t want to, so there! It is entirely my business,’ she says, ‘and none of yours, not in the very least!’ she says.”

Mrs. Neville exploded, “I expected her next to ask if I had been given power of attorney!”

“Well, she admitted that she was sometimes irregular in her ways. You know the business women have to put up with I expect. Anyway, she could not bathe today for a very good reason, and so you have nothing more to worry over.”

“Then she’s not going to——”

“No, dear, she’s not, so you’ve no need to worry,” said Mrs. Neville gently. Then the comic side of her rushed in. “But don’t go and do what a fellow I knew once did—he worried so much over a girl he’d got into trouble that in his relief after getting her clear of it he promptly put her back in the family way again!”

“No fear. I’ve learned my lesson, Mrs. Neville. Well, thank you ever so much.” Then thinking of Lily, he got up.

“What are you going to do now!”

“I’m going to have a word with Polly. I think I ought to say I’m sorry for having worried her.”

Mrs. Neville, a look of wisdom on her face, slowly shook her head. “No, dear, women are not like men. After all, Polly is a woman, and a woman’s dearest wish is to hold her baby—”out came the little square of lawn—“in her arms.” Having recovered from her momentary melting mood, she went on. “So say nothing, Phillip. And don’t be too kind, or she may begin to hope——” More eye attention. “I feel a brute, you know. After all, isn’t it natural—even if it was all pretence—to want to be a mother? Instinct, you know, is after all an agent of Creation, and in war-time, with all its death and destruction, the spirit of life works on—faster than before, judging by all I hear!” the voice ended on the familiar ribald note. Mrs. Neville sighed.

“Don’t think me cynical will you, Phillip? But as I get older, you know, I see the comic side of life more and more. No, don’t go and tell her you’re sorry. Polly is evidently fond of you. You can be attractive at times, you know!”

Another line of thought opened up. “I wonder what Helena is thinking. She always looks up at this window, you know, and waves to me. Still, no harm has been done there. She probably feels as you do—glad that you’re free of your
idée
fixe,
as Mr. Hudson used to call it. And after all, you know, you are Bertie Cakebread’s cousin, and Bertie liked you, and so there you are. Ever hear from that mannequin, and her friend Alice.”

“No, but that reminds me, I mustn’t forget to try and see ‘Spectre’ West on Wednesday, when he goes to Buckingham Palace.”

“Will you be able to get in, do you think?”

“Oh no, I shouldn’t want to, even if I had the chance.”

“Why not, dear?”

To her surprise he broke into tears; but almost immediately recovered. He did not tell her what had suddenly caused him to break—a vision of thousands of still figures lying in Mash Valley as he crawled away from his dead platoon on that afternoon of intolerable sunshine.

*

Later in the evening Phillip hurried down to tell Mrs. Neville the latest news: a telegram had come from Polly’s mother saying that
Percy had been killed during the battle of Flers, on the 15th September.

“Oh no! Not that young country boy! Oh no, Phillip, it isn’t fair! That little thing, his mother! She doted on him! We all went to Greenwich Park for that picnic, in the hot summer of 1911, do you remember? And now that red-cheeked country boy is dead, you say? Killed? Oh, it isn’t fair, Phillip, it isn’t fair!”

He sat before her, while her face fell into ruin. “Don’t worry too much, Phillip,” she said when she had composed herself. “I know just how you feel. What a pity you and Polly aren’t suited to one another, isn’t it, so that you could comfort her. Oh, I can’t get that little mother out of my mind! She was just like a pawn on a chess-board, the resemblance struck me immediately I saw her. And as good and simple. She must feel herself broken, poor little soul.”

“Doris is very cut up, Mrs. Neville, too. She and Percy were very thick. I only wish I could be simple and ordinary, like Polly or Doris, or Percy.”

“Go back and be very very kind to them all, dear. Go and comfort them, your mother and sister, and Polly too. At such a time a woman wants someone near her to be strong and stable, to give her extra strength. After all man was made for woman, and woman for man, whatever Darwin may say about it … and I’m not sure that his species idea isn’t already in the Bible, in Genesis, you know. He merely dug up some old bones and fossils and if he’d read Chapter One of the Bible he would have saved himself a lot of trouble, anyway, that’s what Mr. Hudson used to say. ‘What’s all the fuss about this feller Darwin?’ I can hear his very tone of voice now. Still, death is death, and however clever a man fancies himself, we’ve all got to come down to fundamental realities in the end, so you run along home, dear, and do your best to cheer up your mother and the girls.”

What could he say? Percy had copped it; he hadn’t been one of the lucky ones. Still, he must try and say something.

Polly, her bag packed, was in her tweed coat and skirt, topped with small fur toque. She looked calm and self-possessed.

“I’m awfully sorry, Polly, really. It was very bad luck. Are you going home now?”

“Yes,” said Polly. “I’ve explained to Aunt Hetty why I must go home tonight, and I’ll tell Mother what you say, Phillip.”

“Yes, please give her my love, and also Uncle Jim. I’m terribly sorry, Polly. Let me run you up to London in the bus. I was just going to return it down to Wetherley’s but I’d like to take you to Euston.”

“I do not want to keep you from your friends, thank you all the same.”

“Let Phillip take you, dear,” said Hetty. “And perhaps Doris could go with you as well, Phillip?”

“Yes, of course I’ll come,” said Doris, with quiet determination. He could see no signs of weeping on his sister’s face. Perhaps women were like men in action; grief came afterwards.

So Polly said goodbye to Aunt Hetty and Uncle Dick, Gran’pa and Aunt Marian, Mrs. Bigge, and Mavis; and if she felt anything she did not show it, not even at Euston station, where just before the train left Doris clung to her and let tears fall.

Phillip stopped at three pubs on the way back, to stoke up, as he put it, while Doris waited in the Humberette outside. He was callous, he told himself: the truth was that the news of Percy being killed had not really affected him, except as a surprise. Why was it, that he could not feel like other people: but only for certain things, like poetry and music and the
idea
of things, and not for the things themselves?

Returning the runabout to Wetherley’s, having taken his sister home, he went into Freddy’s, and soon felt merry and bright. Tomorrow he would be seeing “Spectre” West. But why was he thinking of Polly, and Percy, and the grief that must now be felt even by the walls of Brickhill House?

*

He went up early the next morning to Charing Cross, and walked down the Mall to Buckingham Palace. A crowd was outside the tall black and gilt railings, before which sentries of the Welsh Guards in khaki service uniforms with fixed bayonets marched up and down, stamping at the turns. He hung back from the entrance through which motors and taxis with soldiers, sailors, and airmen of all ages and ranks, showing cards of invitation, were allowed in. He did not see his friend.

They began to come out soon after noon: admirals and generals, captains and commanders and colonels, field officers and junior commissioned ranks with their ladies; then the warrant ranks of the Navy and Army, the chief petty officers and the sergeants, with their wives; the lower deck and other ranks with their women, as the official description of the period ran. Hundreds of them; gold
braid upon blue and scarlet; pins on tunic breasts whereon Victoria Crosses of the bronze of captured guns of the Crimean War, gold and enamel Knight’s Crosses and Companionships and Orders, smaller crosses and medals of silver had been hung by the gruff-voiced, bearded King-Emperor.

There were Indian troops as well, some of high rank in turbans and general’s gorget patches, with subahdars and jemadars, all of whom he saluted, saying to himself that if they had fought for England then they deserved to be saluted by an Englishman, whatever the latitude line of the sun shining upon their heads. Besides, since ‘all handsome men were slightly sunburnt’, according to the advertisement, ergo, these wallahs being more than slightly sunburnt were the more entitled to be treated handsomely, especially as so many of them had the fine, slightly aloof bearing of aristocrats. Let them therefore be saluted by one who bore upon his tunic only two slender gold stripes on the left sleeve, since wounds were all he had gained in battle. If only he had a ribbon on his left breast; but that was never likely to be.

When he saw “Spectre” he went forward eagerly, but remembering the last occasion when he had shown enthusiasm for his old friend and been put in his place for it, he walked slowly to where his group was standing. He recognised Frances, and thought how top-hole she looked; the two old people were probably his parents. With a manner of slight self-withdrawal, he hesitated before going up to them, as they stood, apparently waiting for a taxi. While he stood there Frances turned her head, under a large picture hat, and recognised him. With a smile she came to him, showing delight in her face, as she laid the fingertips of one gloved hand gently on his forearm.