A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  The way Desmond said this seemed to Phillip to be so frightfully funny that he nearly spilled his drink with silent laughter. He pictured Freddy, in shirtsleeves kept up with nickel-silver bands, running, straw-hat on head, from one vast open space to another, a little cloud of dust behind him; then after a pause, and some polite hat-lifting and square-pushing as Cranmer would say, on again! Desmond was grunting with laughter beside him; several people turned to look at them on the settee, Phillip also grunting as he bent sideways with his backwards-in-throat laughter that he had “patented” at school, presenting expressionless face while jerky groan-like noises were stifled upon indrawn breath. Desmond, who had copied the patent, sat groaning beside him; while the child-wife behind the bar regarded them with the look of a small ferret on her white-and-pink face.

  “Hi, you two!” she said. “What’s the joke?” as she bobbed the baby. Their laughter burst its constriction, they leaned on one another, half-empty glasses shaking in hands. Tears came into Phillip’s eyes; with a gasp he sat up, ribs aching, his eyes avoiding the challenge of Mrs. Freddy.

  “Oh dear!” gasped Desmond.

  “‘And that’s the bit of paper I’ve been looking for!’ said the soldier, as he walked past the guard room,” said Phillip, winking rapidly. “Well, how about another rum?”

  “It’s my treat, Phil.”

  “No jolly fear! I don’t suppose your pay’ll run to many of these in a week. And I’ve got three weeks’ leave, and a lot of back-pay to come.”

  “I said, ‘What’s the joke?’” repeated the girl-wife.

  “Sorry; I didn’t hear you,” said Phillip.

  “Then wash yer ears out! D’you think I don’t know your friend was talking about me?”

  “I was telling my friend about a soldier in India named O’Casey who successfully swung the lead with the Doolally Tap.”

  “I don’t think! See any green in my eye? You made that up, I know by your face. Tell the truth, and shame the devil. You were talking about me. Doolally Tap! I’ll Doolally Tap you! What you want, the same again?”

  She poured them, her face sweet and childlike once more.

  “How much, please?”

  “One and a kick to you. Ta!” She took the half-crown he put down. As she shut the till with a bang she turned round, and said, hard-faced, “I’ll give you and your friend talk about me, if you take away my character, you bleeder! Who d’you think you are?”

  “I’m Sergeant Haggis, didn’t you know?” said Phillip, picking up the shilling change, and smiling amiably at her.

  “Gerr’rr’t yer!” she cried, making as though to give him a back-hander. Her face looked pretty again. “I’m glad you can take a joke.”

  Freddy came up from the four-ale bar, raising his hat to his wife. “My dear, I want to introduce you to a friend of a friend of mine, I would like to say also a friend of mine, who ’as just come back from the trenches. Am I right, sir?” he beamed.

  “Well, actually, I’ve just come out of hospital.”

  “I think your name is Maddison. I once had the pleasure of serving your father. Meet my wife—the missus,” said Freddy, sipping his pseudo gin.

  Phillip saluted her, and shook her hand. “How d’you do!” Then gently he wiggled the lobe of the ear of the sleeping infant. “And how d’you do, too!”

  This put her into a happy mood. Sucking a tooth familiarly, she said to Freddy, “I knew his name wasn’t Haggis. Wonder you didn’t say Harry Lauder. I’m not a fool you know! What’r’-you thinking now? Come on, out with it, a penny for them!”

  “I was thinking how nice everyone is.”

  She studied his face; decided he was not being sarcastic, and said suddenly, “Here, kiss the baby for luck.” Phillip touched its delicate little wrinkled brow with his mouth. Then, while Freddy beamed with his slits of eyes, she turned to the till, and took out a half-crown. “Go on, shove it in your pocket! ’Ave those two on the old man. He’s got plenty, the mean old devil.”

  “Te-he,” tittered Freddy. “Every Englishman’s home is his castle, I don’t think.”

  “Well, thanks,” said Phillip. “You know, I keep thinking I’ve seen your wife’s face before, somewhere.”

  This was obviously not a tactful remark; for she looked at him with half-angry sullenness, half bright-eyed challenge.

  “What do you think I am, a four-penny pick-up?”

  Keeping a straight face to this extraordinary person, he said, “I know—you’re Mona Lisa!” Fancy a woman, young and pretty, talking like that! he thought.

  “None o’ your sauce!” she retorted, her free hand going to the handle of the water jug. Phillip thought it was time to go back to the settee. “How about another game o’ billiards, Des?”

  In the billiards-room, as they chalked their cues, Desmond said, “Freddy told me something about the acoustics of the saloon. When it isn’t too full, he can hear what people say on the settee, by listening beside the water-jug. I suppose the sound-waves reflect off the ceiling, and down into the jug. Perhaps that’s why his wife stands there, to hear what people are saying about her.”

  “Rather like the listening apparatus the Germans put up in No Man’s Land, Des, to pick up our morse from the signaller’s dugout in our trenches.”

  “Yes, we had a lecture about that the other day. The Germans gave away their invention, when the news came over to our buzzer, for a Lieutenant Smith to proceed on leave, they put up a notice on their parapet saying, ‘Enjoy your leave, Mr. Smith’.”

  “Yes, but the name wasn’t Smith. He was an officer in our brigade,” said Phillip, crouching over his cue. He would aim carefully this time. But he could not get the angles, and it ended in the same old sloshing strokes, 9–50.

  Back in the bar, he told Desmond that it was the finest place he had ever been in. It beat the Rossignol hollow! By God, he was not afraid to go in and see Mrs. Wallace! Even when he saw Tom Ching entering, bowler-hatted and carrying a rolled umbrella, he greeted him with an “Och aye!” Ching shook him by the hand and held it so long that Phillip had to pull it away, ostensibly to scratch.

  “I’m itchy-koo, you know, so look out.”

  “I called at your house, hoping I’d see you. Your mother said you were out, so I guessed you were down at Desmond’s, and calling there, found out from his mother where you had gone.” Ching’s cold damp hand pressed Phillip’s again. “I understand what you’ve been through, old pal.” The pressure came again. Phillip put his hand in his jacket pocket, before more sympathy could exude from the lip-licking Ching. “Now I want to hear all about it. Let’s have a drink first. What’r you drinking? Rum? That’s my drink. Two rums, please, miss. Oh, I forgot your friend Desmond. Three, please.”

  “Singles or doubles? They’re drinking doubles.”

  Ching hesitated, then, “All right. After all, it is a special occasion.”

  Mrs. Freddy winked at Phillip. “Mine’s a Johnny Walker. The baby likes that best,” she said to Ching.

  “All right,” said Phillip. “I’ll stand that.”

  “No, no,” said Ching. “It won’t break me.” All the same, he looked unhappy, as though tricked. He lifted his glass. “Here’s to the wishes of your heart, Phil. You’ve done your bit.” They sat on the settee.

  “Good gracious, is this your overcoat?” Ching spread it and whistled. “You have a merciful providence looking after you, Phil. Have the others seen it? I say——”

  “Oh, put my coat down!”

  But Ching’s reflection of his supposed glory had had its effect. Others in the bar came to look. A stranger asked Phillip if he might shake him by the hand. The London Highlanders? Indeed! He was honoured to shake the hand of——

  The embarrassing pressing forward of faces was interrupted by Freddy leaning over the counter and saying to Phillip that two old friends of his were in the snug next door, and would like to see his coat, too, if he could spare the time.

  “They don’t think it’s right for ladi
es to come this side,” he whispered in Phillip’s ear. “You know them, I think, Mrs. Birkett and Mrs. Cummings, where your parents lodged before you were born.” And tipping his straw delicately, Freddy moved to another customer.

  Leaving the greatcoat behind, Phillip went into the mahogany-panelled snug next door. He saluted the pair. Optimistically he replied to their questions. He was very well, the war would end after a break-through in the spring, over the Scheldt in June, over the Rhine in July, Berlin by September. After some talk, to most of which he did not listen, he learned that his father’s beat, as a Special, included the High Street outside, from eight o’clock until midnight.

  “He comes so regularly that anyone could set their clocks by Mr. Maddison’s punctuality! He was always so in the old days—punctual, never miss a train, or the date of a payment——”

  “Fancy remembering all that time ago, Mrs. Cummings.”

  “We remember more of the past as we grow older, dear. You don’t mind me calling you dear, do you?”

  “Good lord, no!”

  He accepted a hot rum and lemon from them, swallowed it, shook hands, gave a bow to each; and hastened back to the saloon.

  There he saw a face that he welcomed. Good old Cundall, fellow bagman of the last term at school, faithful old Cundall of the Old Heathians fourth football team! Cundall, in the Artist’s Rifles, was waiting to be gazetted into the Royal West Kents.

  “You lucky devil!” said Phillip.

  “Heavens, haven’t you applied for a commission yet, Phillip? They want thousands of officers for the new Service battalions.”

  “What is a Service battalion?”

  “All the county regiments are taking on a dozen and more service battalions, for Kitchener’s New Armies. You’d get your pip tomorrow, if you applied. Get a blue form from the War Office at once, man! Then get your Colonel to sign it. Simple!”

  “The trouble is, the C.O. of our battalion in France won’t let any more applications go in.”

  “Then get posted to your second battalion, and apply from there!”

  Desmond said he would be on searchlight duty the following night, in Hyde Park, and have to sleep at headquarters. This would mean the next day off. Would Phillip like to drive down to the second battalion in Sussex, in the Singer?

  “Topping!” cried Phillip. This was the life!

  “By the way, Phil, if you see the motor in Wetherley’s, don’t let on that it belongs to my uncle. I told Wetherley, you see, that my uncle had given it to me. I’m hoping he will, as a present for joining up.”

  Cundall told Phillip that nearly fifty old boys from the school had got commissions already. Milton was there the other day, sword and all, calling on the Magister. “He’s with the Middlesex. Remember ‘Snouter’ Greenall? He’s in the Berkshires. Practically all the Swelling Belles of the Sixth of our time—Cruttenden, Latymer, Fysh, Keble, Grounds, Howard—have got their pips. You’ll get yours! Hullo, what’s happened to your greatcoat? Somebody tried to knife you in Paree? Seriously, I’m damned glad you got through all right, Phil.”

  “Hear, hear!” said Ching, adding that he wished he were free to join up, but the Admiralty would not allow it.

  “Not allow it? Why, in heaven’s name?” asked Cundall.

  “I’m reserved.”

  “Reserved in the Admiralty? What for? The immemorial sport of all sailors?”

  “I’m a writer, if you want to know.”

  “What do you write, besides rude things on lavatory walls, O Ching?”

  “I can’t give away official secrets.”

  “I can. There are no ‘writers’ in the Admiralty, not permanently anyway. ‘Writers’ go to sea in ships. But perhaps you mean you’re a typewriter, O son of China?”

  “Certainly not! We don’t have such things in the Admiralty.”

  “Then you’re a human typewriter?”

  “Well, that’s one way of putting it. Except that a typewriter cannot think.”

  “Can you think, O son of the Orient?”

  “All God’s higher creatures can think.”

  Cundall gazed around with wonder. “The man’s gone religious! Are you one of God’s higher creatures, Ching?”

  “If you’d studied Theosophy, you wouldn’t be so ready to scoff, Cundall.”

  “I am merely, like Alexander Pope, a humble student of mankind. I am wondering about your real motives for studying Theosophy, Ching.”

  “What’s all this leading up to?”

  “Your bowler hat!” said Cundall, blandly. “Your umbrella! Your gloves! Your natty gents’ serge suiting! Put them in moth balls for the Duration, my son! Your King and Country need you! Pro Patria Mori, Ching!”

  “I would if I could but I’m not free, as I told you.”

  This conversation, held close to the counter, had apparently been listened to with absorption by Mrs. Freddy, to judge by the detached expression as she stared at the floor, her ear near the water-jug. When Cundall invited Phillip to have a drink, she poured two rums, filled the glasses with lemon and sugar and hot water from the copper kettle simmering on the gas ring, and put them on the counter. A port in lemonade for Ching followed, and a tot of neat whiskey for herself.

  “You gents can have yours with me,” she said, to Phillip and Cundall, as she raised her glass. “Cheerio.”

  Tom Ching held up his port and lemon. “Cheero,” he said, to her.

  “Whatjer looking at me like that for?” demanded Mrs. Freddy.

  “I wasn’t looking at you like anything.”

  “Yes you was! You was oggling me! I’ve seen a sight too many of your sort. Soppy date!”

  “I was drinking your health, the usual custom when one is stood a drink.”

  “Who stood you one? Me? I never! Who d’you think you are, Oliver Twiss?”

  “I understood that you asked me to have a drink with you.”

  The small pink face, made for charm and innocence, scowled at Ching. “Not in these trousers! Oo’y’r trying to spruce? I asked these two gents, not you! Port’n’lemon, sevenpence, come on, cough up!” She held out a hand.

  “Anyway, my friend here asked me to have a drink. It’s his turn.”

  “What abaht your turn to put on khaki? You look healthy enough.”

  “I’m in the Admiralty.”

  “Where’s that, next door to the Lavatory?”

  “I can show you my pass. Look here!”

  “You know where you can put that, don’t you? Come on, don’t let me ask again, sevenpence!”

  Freddy had listened to the last few words. Standing behind his wife and baby, he tittered silently towards Ching, then leaning across the bar, said in a confidential voice, “Are you married, sir? Then take my advice—don’t!”

  “Ger’t’yer!” cried his wife, kicking his bottom.

  “Married life doesn’t suit her,” said Freddy, to the company at large. “Marry in haste, and repent at leisure.”

  “Freddy’s caused it now,” chuckled Desmond, in Phillip’s ear. “I bet he gets the jug treatment.”

  In an edgy voice Mrs. Freddy declared that Freddy had insulted her baby, despite the fact that the infant was still sound asleep. “Yes, you can stand there, smug and amused, thinking you’re his dad, but only I know the right answer, see?” As Freddy tittered with amusement, Phillip wondered where he had heard that hard, aggrieved voice before. Ah, the people in Mill Lane, locally known as Botany Bay, through which he had walked on his way to and from school. Mrs. Freddy’s face, too—she looked now exactly like the pretty little doll-like girl in an old woman’s hat and pinafore he had once seen, proudly wearing a new pair of boots and splashing through puddles, one winter morning as he was going to school. It must have been six years ago, far away in the remote past.

  “Don’t you think you can oggle me you bag of haggis, you!” she cried, catching Phillip’s eye.

  “Ha, ha!” laughed Phillip, thinking it was all terrific fun.

  “You shut your big
mouth, or I’ll shut it for you!” shouted Mrs. Freddy.

  “No-one would believe that she learned the Licensed Victualling Trade at the Ritz,” murmured Cundall. “Ah, watch the maître d’hôtel!”

  Freddy turned round slowly and said to his wife, “This is a respectable house, this is! Up to bed you go, both of you!”

  “He means the baby, not Ching,” whispered Cundall.

  Mrs. Freddy, thin-lipped now, took a proper kick at her husband. Freddy dodged nimbly, and with a titter, explained to the roomful, “The missus is nursing the baby, you see, I told her to drink only lemon with the customers. Yes, my girl, take more water with it next time.”

  “That’s more’n you could do, you old river-rat, you!” cried his wife. “But in case I’m mistaken, here’s some to be goin’ on with!” and, picking up the water-jug, she jerked the contents over him.

  Freddy appeared to take it all in high good humour, as he shook his straw hat before putting it on again and remarking: “Now you know, ladies and gentlemen, why I always wear it!” Having wiped his spectacles, he placed them carefully on nose and ears again; then, going to a door, opened it, bowed to his wife, and said, “I think it is now the baby’s turn, my dear.”

  “You wait till I get you alone!” she called out, as he was closing the door behind her.

  “It will be my turn then,” said Freddy, smoothly. “Now customers all, last orders, please!”

  For Phillip the room began to shift about. He had to fix his eyes on the lights to keep it steady. He was wondering if he was going to be sick when he saw “Sailor” Jenkins coming in the door. Mr. Jenkins wore a special constable’s arm-band, with the yachting cap he affected before the war when cutting his front hedge.

  “Hullo, Phillip. I heard from your father only a moment ago that you were back. He’s outside.”

  “’Struth!”

  “He’s on the other side of the road. He never comes in here, so you’re quite safe.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t thinking of that, Mr. Jenkins.”