A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  “The boy doesn’t know,” said Thomas Turney. “He is only repeating what he has heard. It is like the story of the Russian soldiers coming through Scotland at the outbreak of war, who turned out to be a consignment of Russian eggs, he-he-he.”

  “I would suggest, sir,” said the Belgian, “that until you are sure of your facts, you do not contribute to the untruths about my country!”

  “The boy has only just come home from playing his part in the trenches,” said Thomas Turney. “All the same, Phillip m’boy, let this be a warning to you. ‘Guard well thy tongue’.”

  Whereupon Phillip had gone away; and when Hetty saw him again, he was holding forth to half-a-dozen ragged boys near the bandstand; but moved on when he caught sight of her.

  *

  The order came to report the next Monday morning at 9 a.m. to the Officers’ Instruction Course at Sevenoaks, at the Regina Hotel. It was fortunate that Gerry and Bertie came to see Phillip during the morning of Sunday, for then, with two splendid cousins by his side, he could go on the Hill, and join the after-Church parade.

  All three were in uniform, Hubert Cakebread wearing the Lilywhites chequered band round his cap, with the gold-braided peak of the Guards.

  “No smoking outdoors, young Phillip,” he said by the gate. “And why aren’t your shoes properly cleaned? You mustn’t let down the side, you know.”

  The two brothers waited while Phillip took his father’s Wren polish, and put on so much that it took some time to polish it off again. Then he had to wash his hands, having brown-polished his nails; and ran out to join his cousins walking up the gully before him.

  Gerry had got into the gunners, the R.F.A., and was at what he called the Shop, at Woolwich. On the Hill they walked up and down, Phillip looking anxiously for sight of the Rolls family. They passed two of Peter Wallace’s sisters, in black: they gave him the barest acknowledgement to his salute. Had they got to know about his past in the night of Hallo’e’en? He was relieved when they turned off, to go down the gully.

  It was a sunny morning; khaki mingled with Sunday best clothes, there were still many toppers showing with broad silk lapels of frock and morning coat. “Business as usual” was the slogan, held in scorn by some of the khaki boys, unaware of the tragedies caused among poor people at the outbreak of war, when their means of livelihood went overnight. Here were no signs of war, beyond the clay-coloured uniforms, and bunches of pale-faced Belgian refugees, of whom various stories were told. Phillip told Bertie how his Uncle Hilary’s wife had opened her house in Hampshire to some of them soon after the war had started: how they, of an industrial class from the north, had shown surprise and resentment when Aunt Bee had suggested they visit their poorer countrymen billeted in cottages in the village.

  “‘But they are common people! We do not know them in our own country’, they said. Aunt Bee didn’t half tick them off. ‘Then it is time you began to do so in this country’, she told them.”

  “Well, if they were anything like the lot we saw out there, I don’t blame them—or your respected aunt,” remarked Hubert. Then, “My word, here’s a peach, if ever I saw one!” Twenty yards away, Helena Rolls was coming towards them, her face fresh and smiling.

  Phillip felt a glow of pride when the entire Rolls family stopped and congratulated them all, as they stood on the grass. In the centre of the lovely people stood Helena, looking straight at him, so eagerly it seemed, as though the Spring were rushing through her in beauty, to fulfil the golden moment of his life. She did look eagerly at him, she did! Her face was glowing; then he saw her beautiful eyes lift to Bertie, and a faint flush spread up from her neck, like hawthorn petals faintly pink when they were dying, and the nightingale was no longer singing in the day and the night. Then they were gone, and he was no longer walking, but borne forward effortlessly in the stream of life flowing from the sun.

  “She’s a peach, that girl of yours,” said Gerry, to Phillip.

  “My word, yes,” said Bertie. “If ever there was a peach, it is that girl,” and Phillip’s face shone with joy.

  *

  Phillip sat on his bed, gazing at the photograph of Helena. He would have a coloured miniature made of it, enclosed within a gold locket, and wear it on a gold chain round his neck, where once he had worn his Mother’s crucifix, which now lay with his old identity disc in his cupboard.

  This plan, of course, had to be confided at once in Mrs. Neville, in whose sympathy Phillip’s real life found such constant nourishment.

  Chapter 10

  “HELENA”

  HE was still living in the golden moment of that Sunday morning when after tea Desmond drove up Hillside Road with the Singer, to take him to his course at Sevenoaks. At the last moment, during leave-taking on the pavement, now beginning to show green bines of convolvulus through its asphalt cracks, he decided to leave his kit behind, as an excuse to get leave to collect it. So the valise was taken in again; and with another glance at the house at the top of the road, hoping that his departure by motor car would be noticed, he got in beside the driver, and with a muttered, “No more farewells, for heaven’s sake,” gave the assembled family a salute, and with relief turned the corner, took salutes in Randiswell, and so down to the High Street and out into Kent. Soon they were opening up along Shooting Common.

  “How’s Eugene?”

  “He’s left school,” said Desmond, “and wants to join the Public Schools Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers. He’s coming to stay next week-end, so if you can get off, you’ll see him.”

  “Good. But do you think they’d have a Brazilian?”

  “His father’s given permission.”

  Soon, too soon, they reached the top of River Hill, below which lay the wooded Weald, and the smoke of Sevenoaks spreading into the calm spring evening.

  In the Regina Hotel a tall dark captain, beltless and in slacks, left a newspaper and armchair and came forward to greet him, and enquire his name.

  “I see you have brought your servant with you,” said the commandant, seeing Desmond sitting at the wheel of the car. “No official accommodation is provided for officers’ batmen, so no doubt you will make your own arrangements.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Phillip.

  “There’s the office,” said the captain. “I expect they can fix you both up.”

  Phillip was told that a single bed in a double room was all that they had left. Would he mind sharing with another officer? As for his servant, there was the harness room vacant.

  “I’ll be back in a moment,” he said, not knowing what else to reply.

  “Fixed up all right?” said the commandant, back in the armchair with his paper.

  “Yes thank you, sir.” Outside he said, “’Struth, they think you are my servant! They want to put you in the harness room! Play the part, until you go. Gave! Porter coming.” In a louder voice, “Well, James, take the car back to Town and get the cardan shaft seen to, will you?—Drive slowly. That universal joint is distinctly rocky.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but there’s a good garage in the town, it might save your man a journey,” suggested the porter.

  “Thank you, but we have our own little stable, with mechanics. No, I haven’t any bags for my bedroom.”

  At that moment the gong sounded inside the hotel. “Hell, I shall have to leave you now. If I hadn’t pretended you were my batman, we could have had supper together elsewhere. Damn, I don’t like this place. I’ll write. I’ll get a motor-bike as soon as I can.”

  *

  The subaltern of the shared bedroom was elderly, almost portly. He occupied the double bed, while Phillip had the small one against the wall. The first night was an agony of sleeplessness, since the elderly subaltern snored loudly. A score of times Phillip sat up meaning to wake him; but each time he could not screw himself up to do it. Screw was the right word: the snores seemed to arise from the other bed like thick fat corkscrews until, feeling himself to be a cork breaking
under the strain, Phillip reached under the bed, pulled out a boot, and hurled it with a wild cry at the farther wall. Then he hid under the bedclothes.

  At once the sleeper awakened, sat up, and said, “What was that?” Ashamed of what he had done, Phillip pretended to be muttering in a nightmare. “Look out, Johnson coming!” came the muffled voice from under the bedclothes. “Keep down, chaps!”

  He listened while the other seemed to be getting out of bed. Then a voice enquired huskily, “I say, old man, are you all right?” He pretended to be asleep; listened while the other moved about the room; heard the rattle of a glass, then the squeak of a cork, and liquid being poured, followed by the sound of a sucking sort of drinking. Peeping from under the sheet, he saw in the light of an electric torch on the white marble mantelpiece that the other had what looked like a bottle of whiskey in his hand.

  “What’s the time?” said Phillip in a weary voice, appearing from under the bedclothes. “When’s Number One up?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Phillip sat up, pretending to be awakening as he rubbed his eyes.

  “Oh, thank God it was a dream! I thought I was back in Birdcage Walk, and we were being crumped. I could hear them droning down.”

  “Would you care for a pull?” said the other, offering the bottle. “I always keep a little drop for an emergency.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You were asleep when I came in late last night, and muttering then, and grinding your teeth.”

  “Was I? I hope I wasn’t snoring.”

  “No, but you were bathed in sweat. Have you been in France?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the infantry?”

  “I was with the London Highlanders.”

  “My dear chap, help yourself to a good stiff peg! And may I shake you by the hand?”

  Phillip shook the older man’s hand, which was shaking enough already, he thought. Had he met a real drunkard at last? What fun!

  “Cheer-ho! Ah, that’s the stuff for the troops!”

  “Take another pull, my dear fellow! It will feed your nerves.”

  In the morning, as he watched the other shaving, Phillip remembered he had left all his kit at home, including his cut-throat razor. “Do you think I need a shave?” he said, playing a rather helpless rôle.

  The other examined his face through spectacles. “Hardly. Have you used a razor yet? You can borrow mine, if you care to, only do be careful. Perhaps I had better shave you? It is just as you like.”

  Seeing the shaking hand, Phillip said no thanks. He was confirmed in his belief of the newcomer being a drunkard when, having washed off his lather, Kenyon drank the half-glass of whiskey he had poured the night before. Then he saw that some false teeth were left in the glass.

  “Whiskey is the best disinfectant. Did you think I was giving my teeth a drink last night?”

  All the same, thought Phillip, he must be careful: this man was possibly one of the bad companions Mother had often warned him about.

  “This must be your boot,” said the bad companion. “Look, where it struck the wall! Didn’t you know you had thrown it?”

  “It must have been in my dream, I think. I was hurling a a jam-pot bomb.”

  “It’s a damned good thing you didn’t hit me, old man!”

  “You can write home and say you’ve been in a bombardment,” laughed Phillip.

  The next night, Kenyon, the elderly subaltern, had moved to another room, his place being taken by a newcomer, a younger red-faced man with almost white hair and eye-lashes, named Cox, in the Middlesex Regiment.

  *

  The commandant was a pre-war crammer for Sandhurst, recalled from the Reserve of Officers. He wore the General List badge on his lapels, with leather buttons on his tunic. His aides were a quiet lieutenant of the Royal West Kents named White, who had the D.S.O., and a merry second-lieutenant with an acorn-shaped face crowned with golden curls, from the King’s Liverpool Regiment, called Porritt, who rode a Red Indian motor-cycle. It was an easy course, so far as Phillip was concerned: he took the minimum of notes, and listened to little of what was said during lectures.

  Outdoor work was done in a park of rolling grassy chalkland set with old oaks and beeches around a great house, or cluster of houses enclosed within a walled rectangle. It was the historic home of the Sackvilles, said Kenyon, who added that he was a writer. The mansion contained as many staircases and rooms as there were weeks and days in the year respectively.

  In the park, on rising grassland in front of Knole, the young officers took turns to drill their own squads. There was a King’s Sergeant of Foot Guards who put them through it, teaching them how to salute on parade, after halting with stamping feet—“One—one two!”—rather like a horse, Phillip thought. Then the semaphore of the right arm, the quiver of the flat hand: the sergeant did it as though his hand at any moment might fly off his wrist. Terrible howled sounds of command tore out of his throat, echoing back from the grey stonework of Lord Sackvilie’s historic mansion.

  After drill, they practised advancing in extended order by sign and whistle, and to give fire direction on targets on the landscape to be regarded as a clock face, its centre a given mark.

  “All the old stuff, in fact,” Phillip told Kenyon. “At the clump at nine o’clock, fifteen rounds rapid, Fire! Out run all the hares and pheasants! Honestly, a fat lot of good this sort of thing is out there!”

  The R.W.K. lieutenant with the D.S.O., wearing mackintosh however warm the weather, and leaning on an ash-plant, seldom speaking, remarked conversationally: “It had its use for fire control before the war became static, you know”; and since he had commanded his battalion, though wounded, on the Aisne, where he won his D.S.O., Phillip made no more criticisms. Both the commandant and his lieutenant were invariably very quiet in manner, never raising their voices. They were real gentlemen, he could see.

  At half-past eleven every morning the commandant gave the class a map-reference.

  “We will meet there at noon precisely, gentlemen; each officer will find his own way there, in so far as is possible, independently. Any questions?”

  On the second morning Phillip asked if they must walk, or might they ride to the map-reference?

  “You can get there how you like, on foot or by bicycle or motor car, as you wish.”

  Thereupon, after dismissal, he went to one of the garages in the town, and asked to be allowed to try out a second-hand motor-cycle for sale. It was a Fafnir, with poppet inlet valve, very old, priced five pounds. He took it back afterwards, saying it was not fast enough. The next day he took out a Triumph, but this too had a defect, he explained upon returning: it whistled loudly through the belt pulley.

  “But that is the design of the 1911 model, sir. It’s the crankcase relief valve.”

  “I suppose you haven’t a later model? This one sounds too much like a starling to me. I want a machine as soon as possible, so I think I’ll just have another look around.”

  A third garage had what Phillip thought looked like a Stick Insect on Wheels: a four-cylinder shaft-driven Belgian F.N. “I would like to try this one.”

  “Certainly, sir!”

  The F.N. was duly returned, with the criticism that the handlebars were too far back.

  “They are rather like a huge hairpin, aren’t they? You have to sit too far back, causing a tendency to skid in the dust round corners. Well, I’ll come back later, when I’ve had a look around. Maybe you’ll have some others in by then.”

  In this way the first week was passed, six machines in all being “tested”; and so Phillip learned more or less how to ride a motor-cycle. His conscience told him that he was a bit of a swindler, getting the machines out on false pretences, thus raising false hopes. Perhaps one of the little tin-roof-shanty proprietors had hoped for a better livelihood, after a sale.

  Thus condemning himself, almost by habit, Phillip deceived himself: for he did want a motor-cycle, but did not know what kind to buy. This ignorance
of what he was and what he wanted led to him falling an easy victim to an astute amateur businessman, a qualified electrical engineer who happened to overhear what he was saying to a garage man on the Friday morning.

  “This 10 h.p. twin-engined N.U.T. is really too powerful, and far too costly, for me. I think I’ll buy a two-stroke after all. What about a Levis? Oh, what a pity you haven’t got one. I must have a bike by tomorrow, for a very special occasion.”

  As he walked back to the Regina for luncheon, he noticed a rather nice-looking two-stroke with red and green tank coming towards him, making a fine buzzing noise. The rider drew up.

  “If you are looking for a reliable machine that can’t go wrong, never let you down, how about a Connaught? The engine has no valves to break, none to grind in, no springs to lose temper, no oil to pump into the crankcase. Like to try it? Much more economical to run than a four-stroke. Of course, it’s no use pretending you can blind about on it.”

  “I don’t want to blind,” said Phillip. “How much is it?”

  The fellow seemed to be thinking. Then he looked up sideways and said quickly, “Thirty-five pounds. Why not have a ride?”

  Phillip got astride, and paddled off as directed. When the engine fired, he wobbled, it seemed to be going very fast. He fumbled throttle and brake, and went diagonally across the road, helplessly into a lamp-post.

  “I say, I’m awfully sorry,” he said, picking himself up, then the machine. If he had damaged it, he would have to buy it.

  The other soon straightened the handlebars, holding front wheel between knees.

  ‘You’ll be all right when you get the hang of it. There are two gears, as you see.”

  “What year is it?”

  “Nineteen twelve.”

  “How fast will it go?”

  “Forty on the level; tuned up, probably forty-five. I’ll tell you what I’ll do: knock off a pound. There! Thirty-four pounds.”

  “Well, I haven’t got any money on me,” said Phillip, entranced with the idea of riding up Hillside Road on it the next afternoon. “My cheque book is at the Regina.”