A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  He hoped that his arrival at the third battalion would be welcomed as that of a veteran of the first; but in the large Drill Hall he found himself unknown, one of hundreds in uniform. At last he was before the adjutant. His heart sank as he was told that Colonel Cust could make no recommendation, at least until a man had served with the third battalion. Phillip saluted and went out.

  Cust—Cust—what did the name convey? He thought hard, then remembered that it belonged to the retired officer of the regiment, the Oxford don who had sent out the plans of the Roman catapult he had seen tried out in the wood. They had cussed too, when the jam-pot bomb had exploded while still in the sling!

  While he hung about in the hall, wondering what to do and where to go, a face recognised from Bleak Hill days passed him in a civilian suit, and raised a bowler hat to an old officer with gentle face and four rings on his sleeves, with a crown and two stars, whom Phillip thought must be Colonel Cust.

  “Ah, Sparks, we are expecting you,” said the C.O. “Come up and meet the adjutant.” As he passed, Phillip gave him a salute like that of the R.S.M. who had been killed in the Nun’s Wood. The old colonel smiled, and said, “Are you waiting to see me?”

  “Sir! 9689 Lance-corporal Maddison. I had the honour of seeing your catapult used in action against the Germans before Wytschaete, sir.”

  “Oh, really? I hope it proved to be of some use.”

  “It had a wide range, or throw, sir, and livened everyone up.”

  “I am most glad to hear it. You are reporting here for duty?”

  “I am still on sick leave, and am offered a commission by the War Office, sir, if I can obtain a Commanding Officer’s recommendation.”

  “You were at Messines?” The colonel was looking at the greatcoat.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come with me to the orderly room, and I will see what I can do.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Phillip, giving him another R.S.M. salute.

  To his relief the adjutant was not in the room. The courteous, gentle face peered at the application form.

  “You are on sick leave, I see. How do you feel?”

  “I’m quite fit, sir!”

  The C.O. signed the paper and shook hands with him. After another vibrating salute, Phillip departed down the stairs two at a time; and lest anyone be sent to recall him, he took a taxicab.

  “Drive likes blazes!”

  “Where to, sir?”

  “The War Office!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Seeing the cloud of blue smoke behind him from the little window in the back of the cab, Phillip, from past studies of motoring journals, imagined the engine, probably old when Blériot flew the Channel in 1910, thumping on its worn big ends, slapping its cast-iron pistons, their rings acting as oil-pumps in the “pots” as the ex-horse-cabby jigged his wheel about and zigzagged in and out of traffic at twenty miles an hour. He gave the driver a shilling tip as they stopped in Whitehall, then turned away and strode down the side-street he had left barely an hour previously. A pavement artist was now there, touching up the drawings of the day before. The Crown Prince and the Kaiser now had scarlet tips to their noses.

  The captain with the Sam Brown slung on a peg with his cap, gloves, and cane, told him it would be between ten days and a fortnight before the posting appeared in the London Gazette. He left in great glee, and gave half-a-crown to the pavement artist who promptly added to both Kaiser and Little Willie devils’ horns, and tails sticking out of their uniforms.

  *

  Phillip and his mother arrived at Beau Brickhill from London the next afternoon. Polly was out to tea with a little friend, said Aunt Liz.

  “Oh dear, what a pity. She will be so disappointed when she knows you have arrived, we expected you a bit later, but never mind now. We were also looking forward to seeing you in your kilts, Phillip—what’s happened to them?”

  “Oh, I was only too glad to get into mufti.”

  “Phillip has been given a commission,” said Hetty proudly. “Yes dear, Aunt Liz is right, we shall all miss you in kilts.”

  “Oh, Mother, do be quiet.”

  “We are all proud of you, Phillip, I am sure,” said Aunt Liz.

  “I think I’d like to go for a walk, if you don’t mind, and look at the old places. When will Percy be coming home, Aunt Liz?”

  “Uncle Jim and Percy will be late this evening, as it’s market day, Phillip, and what with the increased plowing-up, the seed-trade is very busy nowadays. Have some tea first—I’ve got some of your favourite sausage rolls—then we’ll go down and tell Polly. She went to fetch a cockerel for supper, and would never forgive me if I did not tell her you’d come.”

  After tea they went down to the house where Polly was with her school-friend. At once Polly announced in her forthright way that she would have to leave. She took her small fur hat and muff, and putting them on, went with Phillip for a walk down to the Satchville brook, running through the Duke’s moors.

  “I wonder if those oak-apple sprays we put in last Whitsun will have petrified yet, Polly. D’you remember when I got that stoat, or clobster?”

  “Yes, they’re still there, and turning grey, Phil. I often look at them.”

  Wild duck were nesting in the hollow pollard oaks, and snipe were drumming over the rush-clumps; but he had none of the old feeling of spring; rather a feeling that this time he must really do what he had failed last time to do with Polly.

  Polly carried a basket with some ribstone-pippins in it, a gift from her friends at the farm. She tied two on the brass-wire, after removing the oak-apple sprays, and dropped the wire again into the water under the little arched road-bridge. The brook petrified everything—apples, nuts, even dead frogs or sticks, it was the lime in the water. She took his hand on the way back.

  “You mustn’t get a chill, you know, Phil. You don’t look very well. It must have been awful, all that fighting.”

  “When you’re out there, you’re done for, unless you can get into hospital. I was lucky to get dysentery.”

  “Never mind,” said Polly, putting her arm in his. “You’re back now, and you’ve done your bit.”

  “Everyone talks about a ‘bit’! What ‘bit’?”

  “Anyway, I can’t imagine you fighting, somehow.”

  He shook off her arm. “What made you say, just now, ‘I can’t imagine you fighting, somehow’?”

  “Well, you never were a quarrelsome sort of person.” She seized his arm again.

  “Let go my arm!”

  “I shan’t, if I don’t want to, so there!”

  “Oh, yes you will! Who d’you think you are?”

  They faced one another. She looked at him stubbornly, the fur hat perched on her dark curls, her grey eyes challenging him—Polly in a black serge school dress reaching to her knees, her lace-up boots half-way to her calves, which were fuller than when he had seen them last. So was her bosom.

  “You’re a cheeky kid, always were.”

  “What about yourself?”

  “Well, what about me?”

  “I think you are extremely comical.”

  “That’s right, laugh at me—everyone does.”

  “I don’t laugh at you, so there!” She took his arm again.

  “I’m hungry. What time’s supper?”

  “Seven o’clock.”

  “What is it?”

  “A White Wyandotte, which I’ve got in this bag.” She swung the cockerel against his leg. “Are you feeling in better temper now?”

  “If I am, it’s not due to you!” as he threw off her arm again.

  “What does that mean, pray?”

  “You ought to know.”

  “Well, I don’t, so there!” Tossing her curls, she walked on alone.

  Exasperated within himself, he walked beside her unspeaking, hoping she would take his arm again. Polly did so, while little trills of temptation ran through his nerves.

  He gave the stone oak-apples to his mother as a present
when they arrived back. The warm brightness of the farmhouse kitchen made him feel suddenly glad. It was like old times—the fowl sizzling on the spit, turned by the jack that clicked inside the tinned-copper cowl in front of the oak-log blaze on the open hearth; the fat falling on potatoes roasting below; and Grannie Thacker’s gooseberry wine glowing on the table. He helped himself, at Uncle Jim’s request. Percy came in, his face and large ears red with washing under the pump in the yard. They all drank wine, even Mother. It was better than old times—until Uncle Jim proposed a toast to the “great victory at Neuve Chapelle.”

  After supper, the three younger people went into the music room to sing the old duets, Polly at the candle-lit piano; but somehow the words and music were not the same—In a tavern in the Town, Polly-wolly-ooly, and Fleur-de-lys. Afterwards Percy went out on his motor-cycle to see a friend about some seed barley. Polly and Phillip were left alone.

  “Where am I sleeping tonight, same old room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Same old four-poster bed?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where’s Mother?”

  “In the room opposite to you. Do you want the gas?”

  “I don’t like too much light. I’m used to candles.” He thought of the bunkers in the wood. “Thank God for a warm fire.” He picked up the poker, and began to shift the logs. Warm and safe; he could hardly realise it. The tree-shadows would be slanting in the flares now. Ration parties hobbling on the corduroy paths; shrapnel whistling and cracking suddenly; white paa-aangs of detonating light followed by red spark of burning fuse as one of our eighteen-pounder shells screamed towards the Alleyman lines. It would be cushy in the wood compared with what the poor devils were undergoing down at Neuve Chapelle. “A great victory”: what did Uncle Jim or any other civvy know about out there? It was obvious from the communiqués that the attack had been held up on the wire, before enfilading machine-guns. There weren’t enough high-explosive shells in France to cut the wire properly; but it was no use saying that to these people at home. Even the eighteen-pounders were allowed only five rounds a day each, and shrapnel at that, which would not cut wire, although all the gunners asked for H.E. He had seen on the bike-ride on Christmas Day what a lot of lines the Germans had behind their front trench; and thick tangles of rusty wire in front of each one. Our wire was galvanised; theirs was plain iron, much thicker. How could shrapnel cut that?

  “Why didn’t you come in your uniform, Phil?”

  “Oh, I prefer mufti. Do you remember this herring-bone suit? I wore it when I came down last time. By God, I was ticked off when I got back to Wine Vaults Lane! I overslept, remember?” His throat felt a bit dry.

  “You’re cold,” said Polly. “Here, let me make up the fire.”

  “Don’t touch it!”

  “You’re very particular all at once, aren’t you?”

  “These logs aren’t dry. Sappy oak is very hard to burn. Out there—oh, you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Tell me, Phil. I’d like to hear.”

  He could not say what was in his mind: Polly coming into his bed. Curious that she should say, almost in the next breath:

  “Have you seen Helena Rolls since you came home?”

  “Good lord, no. I hardly know them.”

  At once something seemed to click dully inside him, almost like the jack in the kitchen. The click became an ache.

  “How is Mavis getting on with Lieutenant Wilkins?”

  “Lieutenant Wilkins? I’ve never heard of him. Who the hell is he?”

  “Someone she met in the train. She’s sweet on him. I thought you knew.”

  “Someone sweet on Mavis? Good lord!”

  “Well, don’t say I told you, will you? I think Aunt Hetty is rather worried about it. Now would you like a game of billiards?”

  “No, I like the feeling of the darkness. Blow out the candles.”

  He thought of braziers crackling in the new breastworks behind the Diehard T-trench. Or had the breastworks been shelled to bits?

  There was a knock on the door. Mother giving “the young people” due warning? The door opened, and her voice said, “Cocoa in the kitchen, children.” Then she came in, followed by Aunt Liz and old Grannie Thacker, who said in a gentle, quavery voice:

  “Well, Phillip, your mother has been telling me all about your doings, dear. So you are going to be an officer! Well, I must say I think you have deserved it.”

  “Percy wants to join up soon in the county regiment,” said Aunt Liz. “How nice if you two can be together.”

  “He can be my batman,” said Phillip.

  “Batman! Oh! How nice to get some cricket,” said Grannie Thacker. “Don’t you want the gas lit? What are you about, Polly?” as she held to her thin bodice a copper hot-water bottle in its red-flannel jacket.

  Aunt Liz said, “We are all going in the warm kitchen now, Mother. Now up to bed you go, it’s past your bed-time.”

  Cocoa and sausage rolls on the kitchen table, half a faggot blazing in the hearth, warmth, warmth! For a special treat a tot of peach brandy, as a night-cap. Stuff to give the troops, thought Phillip, emptying his glass. To get another glass, he proposed Percy’s health.

  Percy was now a big youth of eighteen, who had been left slightly deaf from pneumonia in childhood. He was a simple person, thought Phillip, who liked his Dad, and was always happy and smiling. Uncle Jim was a sort of chum to Percy—unlike his own niggling, grumpy Father.

  Uncle Jim, puffing his calabash carved in the shape of a negro’s head, soon got round to his favourite bugbear, the Duke. His yellow-green eyes glared as he held forth, and his pipe went out. While he relit it, Hetty, seeing that Phillip was about to argue with him, said, “Well, dear, I think we ought to be thinking of making tracks for bed. You must be tired after your journey.”

  “You mark my words!” said Uncle Jim, puffing furiously. “Lloyd George will make the Duke and his like sit up after this war!”

  “Well, I don’t think I’ll sit up any later now,” said Phillip. He avoided looking at Polly as he said good night all round. Then, thinking that perhaps his omission of Polly was too obvious, he shook hands solemnly with her. Aunt Liz gave him and Mother a lighted candlestick each.

  “Ah,” cried Uncle Jim. “I had almost forgotten the bed-warmer!”

  Phillip went up to his cold bedroom, waiting there until Uncle Jim brought up embers in the copper pan, and slid it about in the bed. Then Polly came in with a brass can of hot water, and wrapped the towel around it in the basin. He began to feel that the room was friendly, and as he had always remembered it.

  “Good night, Polly.”

  “Good night, Phil.”

  Would she come in later on? Why had he not asked her when he had had the chance?

  He waited impatiently while Mother came in to tuck him up, and to say that if he felt ill in the night, she was only just across the landing.

  Both Hetty and Richard had heard shouts and cries from him during his sleep, every night at home; but they had said nothing to him.

  “I’m absolutely all right now, Mum, please don’t treat me like a kid any longer.” If only she knew that he was a secret Don Juan!

  *

  Time went by in the shiny darkness. The candle at the bed-head burned with occasional slight flickers. Why were the heavy curtains drawn across the window, suffocatingly? He lay, hands behind head, still in the soft feather mattress, which was too soft, almost horribly soft, for one used to the bare earth, to the billet floor. There was no sleep like billet sleep, on a firm, hard floor. Anyway, the question was, would Polly come?

  The patchwork quilt, of all shapes and sizes and colours embroidered together, arose, a hill of many soils and pastures, over his knees. There were curtains around the bed-posts, tied back with blue ribands. In one corner, on a table, a dome of glass protected two stuffed woodpeckers, one a green or galleypot, and a smaller, spotted one, the rattler. They had always been there, shot by dead-and-gone Grandpa Thac
ker when a boy, with muzzle-loader and dust-shot. They must have been wonderful days, soon after the coming of the railway.

  Was Polly coming? Had she taken his hand-shake as final? He must go and get her, if she wasn’t coming. Why didn’t she come? The last time he had been no good; this time he must—he would—— And lying in a mixture of doubt and longing, revulsion and uncertainty, he waited until he could wait no longer; and getting out of bed, opened the door and crept down the passage, cursing the creaking board that he had forgotten.

  From Grandma Thacker’s room came regular soft snores. If Mother opened her door now, he would pretend to be walking in his sleep. He had done it once before, after scarlet fever, at Brighton. Thank God Polly’s door was ajar. He pushed it open enough to whisper:

  “Are you asleep, Polly?”

  “No.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, are you? You mustn’t catch cold.”

  Why did she let him stand there, clenching teeth against chattering? A white ghost arose before him.

  “You’re cold,” breathed the ghost, dark curls over neck and shoulders. “Come in to my room,” he whispered, shuddering. The ghost followed, the board creaked twice.

  A ghost no more to lie beside him, but one strangely soft, grey eyes the colour of smoke in candlelight, while the eye of the woodpecker gleamed behind the dome of glass. There was softness, there was warmth, but it was not within Phillip; he remained cold within the spirit, and the more he tried to release the coldness with Polly’s help, freely offered, the more he felt he was like the spray of oak-apples he had taken from the brook, petrified.

  *

  Across the landing, Hetty lay unsleeping, worried by a succession of her own failures, foolish acts, humiliations, all of her own making, all of the past which now seemed to envelop the present with greater darkness, which was the war. Why had she drunk cocoa so late at night, when she knew it did not agree with her?

  Behind the wall Jemima Thacker lay awake, after her first short doze, thinking of how she might have helped her husband Charley more when he was worried by business, had she but known; of her dead son, little Charley, who had died of lockjaw at the age of forty; and many other griefs arising from her own failings in so many ways in the past.