The Golden Virgin (56 page)

“Let me see,” said Eugene, fitting his eyeglass.

A second waiter attended. “Cocktail, m’sieu? Sherry?” Eugene shook his head, the waiter bowed and departed.

Phillip thought the prices were very high. Still, he had five pounds and a few shillings.

“Do you mind ordering, Gene? I’ve rather lost touch since coming home.”

“How about our usual porterhouse steak, with onions and fried potatoes? And a Burgundy? I’m going to lunch with Charlie Mayer at his house in Sydenham tomorrow, so I fancy something simple tonight.”

The leader of the band came forward, violin under chin, bow in hand. People clapped.

“That’s de Groot, the famous violinist,” explained Gene. “He’s made dozens of gramophone records.”

“Good lord! Of course! I’ve got his Selections from
Razzle
Dazzle
!”

The band played selections from
Chu
Chin
Chow.
The lights, the gaiety, the food, the wine, the laughing faces were all around; yet something was absent. It was not like the old days. Since meeting again at the door of the flat, he and Desmond had not spoken much. Desmond seemed subdued; he was still, he said, passing a hand across his forehead, liable to headaches, from being blown up.

“What happened?” asked Phillip. If only Lily were with them, and they were four friends together. Polly—Percy—Jasper—Bason—no, the old days were gone.

“Oh, we were in a Russian sap, in front of the infantry, and when we blew in the end of the tunnel the blast came back and the roof fell on us,” Desmond’s low voice was saying.

“What was the idea of blowing in the end while you were still there?”

“For the infantry to debouch. It was a shallow tunnel, you see, and the end was under the German front line. The blast was supposed to lift the lid off the end, but it didn’t, so we were all trapped.”

“How long were you there?”

“I don’t remember, but it must have been a long time, for when I recovered consciousness, I was lying on a stretcher, and it was night.”

“You were lucky.”

“I know. It got me out of that hell.”

“Where were you?”

“In front of La Boisselle.”

“I was in Mash Valley. On the left of the Bapaume Road.”

“A very unhealthy place. It’s no good asking me about it, I can’t remember anything since the explosion.” Again the hand across the brow. Was Desmond doing a Piston?

“Ought you to drink wine, if your nerves are bad?” He winked at Eugene.

“Oh, that doesn’t affect me. I drank the best part of a bottle of rum last night, and was the same afterwards as before.”

“Seems rather a waste to drink wine then, doesn’t it.”

“That’s the sort of remark you would make.”

“Well, I didn’t mean it that way.”

“But you said it.”

Phillip looked at Gene, whose faint eyebrows on the edge of a slightly receding brow were lifted.

“Now then, Des, Phil didn’t mean it the way you took it. Can’t you take a joke?”

“Drink up,” said Phillip, filling the glasses. “Waiter, bring another bottle.”

At this point the R.F.C. pilots dining somewhat noisily at one of the large tables in the middle of the room got up and left, after the manager had spoken to them.

“First warning,” said Desmond.

The band went on playing, while many heads were turned to the departing officers in their riding boots and double-breasted jackets. The waiter whispered: the famous Leefe Robinson, V.C., had been
among them. The life of the restaurant seemed to have departed, too. When the music stopped it was quiet, even subdued. Desmond seldom spoke. Phillip felt the secret satisfaction of his thoughts of Lily going from him. How much was Desmond putting on his having-been-blown-up mood?

After their dinner they left for the cheaper Monkey House for coffee. The vast carpeted room with its marble pillars and mirrors and chocolate-gilt decorations seemed to be filled more than before with full-lipped dark-haired people in family parties with eyes like black grapes gazing at ease among figures in khaki, a few wearing the new gold-braid wound-stripes on their left-arm sleeves, sitting with patient faces and shut-away thoughts.

Phillip was drinking coffee with his cigar and looking upon the scene into which, it seemed, music like golden-shred marmalade was being poured with the din of voices, when a fat young man wearing homburg hat on his head, a smart new overcoat with astrachan collar, and pointed yellow boots pushed past to a family party near them, and beckoning with a fat hand on which many rings showed, said something which made them all get up and walk away together. Other dark-eyed groups followed the general exodus, until khaki uniformed figures here and there with their womenfolk became prominent.

“See how they run,” said Gene. “There’s absolute panic in the Whitechapel Road when a Zepp is anywhere near. Here in Piccadilly the wealthier ones are the first to get down into the Underground. They all ride round the Inner Circle on a penny ticket until the raid is over. How about going to Hampstead by tube, and looking over London from the high ground? It will be safe up there.”

Outside in Piccadilly the crowds were thick as before, taxi-cabs with their little yellow oil-lamps, newsboys in the faint glow of the Prince of Wales theatre foyer crying the names of evening papers—
Star,
Globe,
Pall
Mall
Gazette,
Evening
News
—All the latest! Advance on the Somme continues!—Italian Victory on the Isonzo!—German Food Shortage!—All the Latest!—Hullo Dearie, looking for a Nice Girl? No thank you. Well then, push off! That’s just what I’m doing, good night. Obviously Ray, dug-in at Cherry Hinton, had graduated in Piccadilly Circus.

“It’s too bloody far to Hampstead. Let’s go and see Freddy.”

“That means I’ll have to come back to Town by myself,” said Gene.

“You can go all the way by tube to Paddington.”

Piccadilly Underground was crowded with people, so they walked to Charing Cross. Lily, would she be in Freddy’s? Had she changed her mind? He felt heavy with longing.

*

“I’ve heard nothing down this way,” said Freddy.

It was not the same place any more. He did not want to drink whiskey, and led the way to the Gild Hall. New flappers, new faces, innocent eyes and fresh complexions, young soldiers seeming smaller, shy-bold, callow. Had he once been like that?

He wanted to be alone, to dream of Lily, to nurse the ache within him. Was he lost again, as he had been with Helena? When Desmond suggested a game of three-handed snooker, all against all, he made his excuses.

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go home. I’m still a bit under the weather with my leg at times, so I’ll leave you two, if you don’t mind.”

“Just a minute,” said Gene, drawing Phillip aside, “I wonder if you could lend me a pound? I’m rather hard up at the moment. My quarterly allowance is due next week, at the Brazilian Bank, so I’ll be able to settle up all the other money I owe you then.”

“I’ve only got fifteen bob left, but you can have ten, if that’s any good. Righty-ho, see you soon. Thanks for coming with me tonight.”

“Don’t mention it, it’s a pleasure. You know very well how I feel about you, Phil.” Eugene pressed his hand.

He walked home, hesitating at the chinks of light around Mrs. Neville’s window; then went up Hillside Road, where the two lamp-post lights were out.

His house was dark.

“Is that you, Phillip?” How anxious the voice seemed.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Don’t make a noise, dear. I’ll come down.”

How small she was, in her bare feet and dressing-gown, her hair so thin, a grey wispy rat-tail.

“Father was called out. Don’t say a word to Mavis or Doris, will you, but Zeppelins have been reported on the way here. Doris is all right, but Mavis is terribly nervous, and she’s not well, either.”

Mavis’ voice called with wild fear from her bedroom door at the end of the house. “Who is it, Mother?”

“Only Phillip, dear.”

“I thought I heard one just now! There was a flash right across my window!”

The window looked east, towards Woolwich and Shooter’s Hill.

“It was only a tram,” said Phillip. “Don’t get the wind up.”

“You’ll wake Doris, and she’s got to take her College of Preceptors exam this term.”

“I’m awake,” said the voice of Doris. Her dim face looked over the banisters of the landing above.

“If you all go on talking I shall never get to sleep,” came the complaining voice of Mavis from down the passage. “Phillip turns night into day, just as Father says.”

“That’s better than turning night into fright, anyhow.”

“Night into getting tight, you mean!” came the satirical laughter. “Where have you come from now, eh? Freddy’s, I bet! How’s the washerwoman’s daughter?”

“I’m going for a walk on the Hill, Mother.”

“Down to Freddy’s, you mean,” Mavis called out.

“Mavis, will you stop taunting your brother!”

“Well, he began it.”

“Yes, I made the mistake of being born before you,” said Phillip, closing the door behind him.

It opened again. “You won’t be late, will you, dear?” whispered Hetty.

Outside the gate the shadowy figure of Desmond awaited him.

*

Across the North Sea from Germany nine airships were flying. Six of them, of an older type, were making for the east coast of England north of the Thames estuary. They were loaded with two-hundred-kilogram bombs and thermite canisters. Their objectives were factories, foundries, and industrial plant in the Midlands.

Three others had been ordered to bombard London, now declared to be both fortress and arsenal by the German Supreme Command. Driven at fifty miles an hour by Maybach water-cooled engines housed in gondolas suspended under rigid frames of aluminium, each of the silken envelopes contained a million and a half cubic feet of hydrogen gas. They were the new and improved type of Zeppelin, capable of a maximum air-speed of sixty miles an hour.

Shortly after six o’clock,
L 31
and
L 32
,
based on Ahlhorn, had crossed the industrial areas of the Rhineland. Far to the south the crews could see Cologne Cathedral. Then in the dusk, at six hundred feet, they continued side by side above the glimmering Belgian roads, lined with trees, which guided them as they flew by map and compass.

Darkness settled upon the earth as they rose above the gathering mists, heading for Ghent, on course for Ostend. With the coming of night, direction by wireless came to each airship from ships of the German fleet, which gave bearings from List, Nordholz, and Borkum.

The cold which had come into the air with the setting of the sun increased the buoyancy of the gas in the envelopes. A difference of three degrees in temperature meant one per cent in weight-carrying capacity, or three hundred feet in altitude.

Shortly after ten o’clock that night
L 31,
L 32,
and
L 33
were passing down the coast of Northern France. The crews saw on their port beams, like a great livid wound lying upon Europe in the darkness, the lights of the raging battlefield of the Somme. For nearly an hour the pallor in the night accompanied each man in his loneliness, remote from the turmoil upon land and sea, but not from the fear and resolution of each mind, as slowly the wan ghost receded astern, while they hung under the stars, to the throbbing of exhausts.

One of the commanders was Mathy. He had planned to make his landfall upon the coast of Kent—a dim wandering line of chalk awash with the fret of shallow waves—and then turning nor’-nor’-west through wingless darkness to follow the lines of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway into the City. Thus he hoped to avoid the formidable defences of the guns, lights, and patrolling aircraft concentrated upon the north-east approaches to London.

*

Desmond sat upright at one end of a seat on the Hill. At the other end Phillip was lying back, feeling smoothed and selfless, neck resting on hands behind head, feet stretched upon the gravel before him. It was a warm night, with a gentle wind. Remotely above them the Milky Way lay across the depth of the sky. It was the beginning of the season of meteors and shooting stars.

He could never write poetry like that. It was as unattainable as the pale star-dust of the galaxies, which had been burning aeons before man had come upon the earth, in his earliest amoebic form. Yet Love was before the stars were flames, and Love would remain when they were burned out. Love was the spirit of the universe, shining in the Abyss.

“This situation between us has got to be settled now, one way or the other.”

“I agree.”

“I’ve hardly had your betrayal of our friendship out of my mind for more than a few minutes during the past three months. I’ve been in hell. I’ve thought about it at night. It begins the moment I wake up. Now it must be settled one way or the other.”

When there was no reply, Desmond said, “I thought you would not answer. I told you before that it was in my mind to kill you, and you laughed cynically. Well, before I decide whether to kill you or not,” the low voice went on, “I’ll give you one more chance to tell me the truth. Did you see Lily tonight, before you came to see me? I want just a plain yes or no.”

Phillip wondered if the fact that Desmond had been blown up had worn down his nerves to what engineers called the flash-point of gaseous liquids such as when paraffin and petrol turned to flame. He told himself that he must be careful. Had Desmond got a revolver in his pocket?

“Yes, I did see Lily tonight. I went to say goodbye, as she is going away soon. I called to see Mrs. Cornford some days ago, and she told me her daughter was coming home, and invited me to tea. Now may I ask you a question. Why do you ask?”

“Because I also have seen Lily tonight.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me before?”