The Golden Virgin (6 page)

There was another column for money borrowed by Eugene, totalling £13. He had no thoughts of money ever being paid back; both were his friends, and money anyway was to be spent, or used, on behalf of friends. He had given his mother £5, to help with
the housekeeping—which meant Mavis’s constant demands for money, as she spent most of her salary on clothes, which were a sort of fetish with her—some women were mad on clothes, why, he could not think.

He was putting away his pocket diary when he was aware of somebody else in the room, although he had heard no sound. Turning his head, he saw the elderly subaltern, who had been at work with toothbrush and saucer in the bedroom. It seemed polite to stand up, since he was a newcomer.

“No need to get up,” said an even voice. “Although one appreciates the courtesy to another senior by age. Has Milman gone? He gets my goat with his damned mincing ways. Bogus little man!”

Phillip thought that the less he said the better; he was wary of this man with the face of a faded desert cat.

The hard yellow eyes in the rutted face seemed to be weighing him up as he leaned sideways and pressed the bell. Almost at once the wine-waiter or butler labelled PORT wobbled through the door. His scanty hair was flatter than before, his moustaches curled upwards in thin strings, and white cotton gloves seemed about to drop off his fingers as he put his tray down.

“Bring me a large pink gin, and see that it is Pickelson’s this time, not Hooth’s.”

“Certainly, sir, very good, sir!”

The old fellow picked his way out, a model of Victorian military earnestness.

“What did you think of our Cabin Boy? He was an apprentice in the Merchant Service last week, and came straight to the battalion on his eighteenth birthday as a captain. What it is, to have a socialist member of Parliament for a father! Was that your motor?”

“Yes.”

“Did you lend it, may I ask?”

“Well——”

“Probably you are quite right. The thing here is to be on the right side, as apparently you have already realised. I should advise an upstanding, handsome young man like yourself to pay court to the Colonel’s daughter, then you may find yourself with three pips instead of one. But you’ll find Milman a keen rival, I warn you.”

The speaker walked up and down in front of the fire, and went on, “If you’re not doing anything else, would you care to come to
Town with me, and look for a couple of girls? The place is beginning to swarm with enthusiastic amateurs, as you probably know.”

Phillip had never been to the West End at night, and from what he had heard from his mother, it was a highly dangerous place; there it was that Uncle Hugh had come a cropper. This man was obviously a bad companion.

“I’m orderly officer, I’m afraid.”

A tall motor car stopped outside the window. “I would have appreciated your company. I’ve got very few friends in London, having lived abroad before the war.”

Phillip offered the other a cigarette; which, without a glance, was refused.

“I smoke my own. Turkish. American tobaccos offend my sense of smell.”

He selected a fat oval cigarette from a gold case, and fitted it carefully, after tapping, to his dry lips. “I was in tobacco before the war, at Smyrna, and managed to bring back a thousand or so with me. Turkish leaf will soon be unobtainable in this country, there is little left in bond. What will happen after the war, I dare not think. The Gyppies are capturing the market now, since Turkey is blockaded. Well, it was a good life while it lasted. For all its filth, Smyrna is the place to live! Give me a twelve-year-old Circassian girl who has been properly trained, to come into a man’s bed, slowly, past his feet, gradually to his knees, and you can have all your English flappers!”

Discomposed and silent, attracted yet repelled, Phillip stood by while the other put on a short fawn-coloured pea-jacket with flapped pockets that ended on the same line as his tunic. Then he fitted on a floppy trench cap, the brim of which was set at an angle to cut the line of the brow: and having put up jacket collar, stuck hands in pockets, hunched shoulders, thrust out chin, he turned his face so that a wolfish profile was visible.

“That’s the stance. The bum-freezer gets a girl, where the common or garden greatcoat with its protective swaddling has no attraction at all.”

“How do you mean?”

“The hunched shoulders and slightly bowed back tend to emphasise the look of a lonely soldier. It arouses the maternal instinct. Next, the prowling young female notices the bum-freezer, the shortness of which emphasises the desirability of the buttocks and the length of one’s legs. One must stand still, of course, the
quintessence of a lonely soldier, thus inducing in the girl that baby-in-the-bulrushes feeling.”

The driver sitting at the wheel of the Argyll landaulette beyond the window gave two hoarse honks on the horn. The man in the pea-jacket swirled the remains of the pink gin in his glass, tossed the liquid into his mouth, appearing to catch it at the back of his gold teeth without touching either tongue or metal; then holding back his head, he let the liquid run down his throat.

“I can see that your education has been neglected, my young friend. Another time let us pursue further the all-important subject of
l’
amour.”
With a short cane under one arm he turned at the door to say, “No good with a walking-stick! That’s the prop of the English country gentleman, making love as he rushes his fences in the hunting field.”

With considerable relief Phillip saw him getting in beside the driver; then with a grind of Glaswegian machinery the Argyll moved off, and out of sight, but not of sound, around the bend of the carriage sweep.

Phillip returned to the fire. What could he do? He saw the mess waiter in the doorway, and called him. The man wobbled forward. The ends of his moustaches, he noticed, were wet.

“Who was that officer?”

“Mr. Wigg, sir. A real gent, sir.”

“Oh! Are there any other officers about?”

“Most on’m’s already gone on leaf, sir.”

“Where’s the mess sergeant?”

“Gone ’ome to see ’is missus, sir. On week-end leaf, sir.”

“Are you going on week-end leaf?”

“What me, sir? I’m the wine-waiter, sir!”

“Good. Let me have another large whiskey and soda, will you.”

When it had been brought, he said, “What do you all do here, when you are here, I mean? Dig trenches?”

“We ’ave done a spot o’ diggin’ in the past, sir, but not lately. The boys goes for rowt marches, drills like on the square, care of arms in ’uts; and generally prepares themselves for what’s to come.”

“What is to come, do you know?”

“Well, if you arst my opinion, sir, I say the future will always come with what it brings. More I wouldn’t like for to say, sir.”

“I see. What else do the boys do, wine-waiter?”

“We provides guards for bridges and factories dahn by the
river, sir. Some goes on detachment, guarding prisoners of war, and providin’ escort duties, sir.”

“Lines of communication, in fact,” said Phillip with satisfaction. With any luck he would see out the war in England from now on.

And then remembering ‘Spectre’ West and the Gaultshires, he ordered another whiskey, to drink the health of lost faces.

*

What the hell could he do? Risk going back to Wakenham, in the hope of meeting Desmond and Eugene in Freddy’s? Supposing, meanwhile, he was sent for? Or a Zeppelin dropped thermite canisters on the huts while he was absent? If only he had reported earlier, he might have got leave, too. However, he must hang around, in case he were wanted. No more miking with this new lot! He must make a good impression. He rang the bell.

“Bring me another whiskey and soda, will you?”

When he had signed a chit for this, he said, “Is there Church Parade tomorrow?”

“Oh yes, sir! The Ganger allus takes it, sir.”

“Ganger?”

“Beg pardon, no offence, sir, that’s what we call the Colonel, sir.”

“Really? Now can you tell me, is there any geography on the ground floor?”

“Oh yes, sir. Follow me, sir. Choice of two, sir.”

“One will be enough for the moment.”

On returning to the ante-room, or lounge as it was called, he picked up
La
Vie
Parisienne,
and returned to his creaking wickerwork armchair. Remembering what Wigg had said about Circassian girls, he refrained from looking at the picture on the cover until he was lying back with his feet up, cigarette smoke straying past eyes, preparatory to using his imagination with the slightly yellow, svelte, and semi-naked body in diaphanous underwear. But somehow the picture did not give the benison hoped for; the more he tried to imagine it real, the flatter surface it remained. Had poor old Father felt like that when he had looked at the same sort of pictures in the
Artist’s
Sketch
Book
of
Parisian
Models
which he kept locked in his desk in the sitting room? He recalled his own feeling of fascination, after he had opened the desk with a key on his mother’s ring and gone through the contents of Father’s desk, to look for the revolver kept there, and
had come upon the book, which he had smuggled into the lavatory, the only private reading room in the house. He must have been about nine or ten at the time. Even now, the thought of Father looking at such pictures flurried him. He flung away
La
Vie,
scornfully.

Then he picked it up again, and tried once more to find in it rest, light, and relief from dark depression overcoming him. Damn the bloody rag! He hid it under a large and heavy
Atlas
of
the
World,
before lying back in the chair, wondering how he could possibly get through the rest of the day, the rest of his barren life. What
was
there left in his life? Then through his depression arose the face and hair and eyes, like a dream of everlasting summer, of Helena Rolls.

He sighed, and thrust away the vision. It was no good thinking of her ever again. She had loved cousin Bertie, and now that he was dead, she would keep him in her heart for ever. Even though dead, Bertie was still real to her; while he, Philip, had never been real even to himself. That was the terrifying truth.

Thinking of cousin Bertie, such a splendid man in contrast to his feeble self, Phillip’s depression became so acute, his thoughts so devastating, so annihilating, that he uttered an involuntary shout of acceptance of his own shame and damnation.

The mess waiter appeared at the doorway. “Ready for another little drop, sir? Keeps the cold out, sir, in a manner of speakin’.” He grinned somewhat unsteadily, as though he had been keeping the bottle warm.

Phillip pretended to be asleep. The mess waiter tottered away. Lying in the chair he felt himself sinking under the helplessness of his thoughts. He would always feel the dark weight within when he thought of Helena. What could he do about it? Desmond had tried to help him; he had rebuffed Desmond. What could he do,
what
could
he
do,
he shrieked within himself. He could no longer force himself on her, as he had, idiotically, in the past. O, the damned silly idiocies of himself! Humiliations, silly lies which everyone saw through—his life was ruined. Why had he not remained in France with the Gaultshires? By now he might have found release from the dark shadow that had, so far back as he could remember, always been near him, sometimes threatening to press his life away. Only in death perhaps would he be free from the shadow of himself.

Was death the end? Mother believed in life after death; Father scoffed at her for it. Yet how could the person, who was his mind,
or self, survive when it was made up of myriads of impressions, all from his feelings, all little cell-like photographs of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. When a bullet broke the store-house of self, inside the skull, how could those myriads of photographs survive, or the personality that they made up? Why should they survive, what use were they to life? If only he could stop his thoughts.

To remain alive was to continue to endure the nihilism of time rushing by, soundless and vain, atoms whirling in a void, creating life that must be destroyed, leaving blanks to be filled by other speck-like atoms whirling in darkness. Life was sadness, sadness, sadness; ache, ache, ache; until you were dead. His mother’s words came into his mind—
Happiness
comes
only
when
we
can
forget
ourselves.
And yet she was seldom if ever really happy. How could anyone forget himself or herself?

He pulled from his pocket a letter he had forgotten, given him by his mother that morning, before he left home. Mother had asked him to read it slowly, and to consider very very carefully every word that his grandfather had written to him.