A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  In high good humour—he would take out a horse again, until he could ride properly—Phillip swung the handle, and got in. He started off full of confidence, and changing gear with only two clashes, was going up the High Street at about 25 m.p.h. when he saw the three other horses coming down on what he thought was the wrong side—they were on his left-hand side—and putting on the brakes, sat helplessly while the motor-car swung to the right, then to the left, before revolving completely on its own tracks and stopping, facing backwards. The polished steel-studded rear-tyres had skidded on the tarred surface.

  He sat there while the horses went by, giving a little salute to each; then getting out, restarted the motor, and reversing without incident, went on and arrived at the Green House, to be welcomed by three sisters for tea—and supper, with songs, Chopin, and gramophone records while a nightingale sang in the garden.

  *

  The notes of other nightingales could be heard in the silence of the High Street after the ten o’clock closing of pubs, when the touts, who spied through big black binoculars, stop-watches in hand, from the beech-clumps of the Severals upon race-horses by day, and the stable boys, who might be any age between fourteen and eighty years, had gone to out-house, loft, harness-room, and stable. A peaceful country town, in the fullness of May; and nobody enjoyed the ups of life there more than Phillip despite the downs, from which he arose again with the buoyancy of ignorance, unaware of the reasons of his being disliked, a herdless youth having little or no percipience of the feelings of those older men who were to him merely faces whose critical gaze was to be evaded or disregarded.

  Laughing to himself as he thought of the terrific spree in the Belvoir Arms, he walked back to Godolphin House in the moonlight, and stopped to listen to a nightingale. It was a calm and beautiful late evening in the third week of May. The old feeling for birds and woods and spring was overlaid by the excitements and adventures of his new life. He chuckled, imagining Desmond beside him, enjoying his account of the adventure; and continued on his way, now and then deviating a little from his course, which added to his sense of the evening’s fun. His head was wet, so were the shoulders of his tunic, his tie, and his collar. What a rag it had been! In this mood he went in by the side door of the mess, and pulled himself up by the rail beside the stone steps to his attic room, where his camp-bed stood by itself.

  *

  Lying within his sleeping-sack, he reviewed the evening’s details. When he had gone under the brick arch into the courtyard, the gramophone was playing They’d Never Believe Me. He was standing by the open door, listening, when an R.N.A.S. man said to him, “I say, would you mind not using our mess? This is the C.P.O.s’ mess, you know.” Phillip said, “Oh, I didn’t know,” and going away, walked out of the courtyard and up to the clock-tower at the cross-roads at the top of the town. Then hoping his former self would not be recognised, he went into the bar of the Belvoir Arms and sat on one of the stools. He ordered a pint of bitter beer, and drank it in two draughts, out of bravado; then he asked for another in the same tankard. The barmaid was the rather plump girl who rode on the flapper-bracket of the A.S.C. officer’s Douglas.

  When that person came in, dark eyes sunken, the blue-dark of his jowl combining with many craters of chicken-pox to give his face an uneven appearance, Phillip asked him to have a drink, hoping to talk about the comparative merits of single and twin-cylinder engines. He swallowed his pot of beer, and ordered two more.

  “How does your Douglas behave up-hill with a pillion passenger?”

  “Depends on the hill, and the passenger.”

  “Well, say the barmaid here. Would it go in top up to the Heath?”

  The other eyed him. “Why do you ask?”

  “I only wondered. Mine’s a single-cylinder, of course. I say, if I asked the barmaid to come for a ride on it, d’you think she’d say yes?”

  “I don’t understand you!”

  “Well, I saw her on your bus, and I wondered if she’d care to come for a ride on mine. D’you think she’d be offended if I asked her?”

  “What exactly do you mean?”

  Phillip saw that he was angry, but had no idea why. “I mean, she’s game, isn’t she?”

  The A.S.C. officer turned his back. The barmaid, who was polishing a glass behind the counter, gave Phillip a cold stare. The A.S.C. officer said something, and she poured him a glass of gin, to which he added soda-water from the siphon on the counter.

  The tankard of beer was still there when at nine o’clock the green-aproned cellarman came in, and the barmaid left. A minute or two later the A.S.C. man left; and going out, Phillip saw him taking his Douglas off the stand, and the barmaid getting on the cushion. Then the machine purred away in the direction of Six Mile Bottom.

  Could the barmaid be the A.S.C. chap’s bird? Had he thought he was trying to get her away from him? How funny, when he had a girl of his own—there it was, Helena, on the silver-grey tank of his own motor-bike!

  Having nothing to do, Phillip returned to the bar and picked up The Daily Trident. There he read, under headlines of big dark type, “The Tragedy of the Shells. Lord Kitchener’s Grave Error.”

  It was what he had always known, what everyone in France had known, there in print. Shrapnel, instead of high explosive, useless for cutting wire … “responsible for our Armies failing to gain their objectives, and the consequent appalling casualties.”

  “Dirty yellow rag that, sir. Been publicly burned in the Stock Exchange today, according to the evening paper. Several trade unions have condemned it, too, sir. Attacking Kitchener like that!”

  “I think Kitchener deserved it.”

  “Really, sir?”

  “I don’t think that anyone at home has the slightest idea of what has been happening out there.”

  At this moment the senior subaltern came in, a half-smoked cigar between his teeth, followed by the adjutant, the second-in-command, and a strange lieutenant, wearing the same badges, whom Phillip had not seen before. All were smoking cigars.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” said Phillip genially, as they made for the far end of the room. They did not appear to hear. He swallowed his beer quickly, thinking that he ought to switch to whiskey, since the adjutant at the other end of the bar had ordered four large White Horses for his party.

  When he returned to the others sitting on the settle, upholstered in woven horsehair, which ran round three sides of the room, Phillip ordered a large White Horse.

  The next to enter the bar was an old-faced man with a coarse voice, obviously a bookmaker. Phillip, perched on his stool, heard him say to the cellar-man, while pointing at The Daily Trident, “Castleton, who owns that yellow rag, is an ally of the Huns.”

  “Oh, no,” said Phillip, swinging round on the stool. “Castleton’s quite right. He’s a decent chap. I met him when I was a boy.”

  Thereupon he declaimed his opinion of what was wrong in France, how Kitchener’s mind, having been formed on problems of the East, was incapable of grasping the problem of the present war in France.

  “The Germans have eight or ten howitzers to our one, all firing high explosive. Their shrapnel is a farce. So is ours. The people in this country do not know the truth. Do you know, f’instance, that the Germans believe absolutely in the righteousness of their cause? I’ve talked to many, so I know. They all said the same thing on the truce of Christmas Day. They can’t lose the war, since it is a righteous war, and God is with them. No, no, don’t go away—just listen a moment ——”

  “What are you, a Hun?” asked the bookie.

  “My grandmother was German, but I’m English. No, really, honestly—what I’m saying is the gospel truth. What the Germans say is that they are an increasing nation with practically no colonies ——”

  “And those won’t be theirs much longer!”

  “Just a moment. They are a growing nation ——”

  “Were, you mean!”

  “All right.” Phillip gulped down his whisky. “Any
way, they have to depend on increasing trade, selling all sorts of things abroad, even toys, to keep going. They’re shut in, you see. So they built battleships to protect their shipping, just as we have done, only we started earlier.” Having rid himself of all his ideas on the subject, Phillip asked the other to have a drink. His offer was refused; and unperturbed, he ordered another for himself.

  The cellar-man, his cropped hair ending in a water-flattened curl pressed low on his forehead, said, immediately the large beef-faced man had left the bar, “Lord Kitchener is very highly regarded in this town by the racing fraternity, sir.”

  “I like him, too; but he has let us down over shells. Our chaps, before an attack, are forced to try and cut enemy wire with machine-gun bullets. What a hope! There’s no hope! Everyone anywhere near the front line knows it.” The cellarman polished a glass. “Including those who have found out by personal experience,” muttered Phillip, to himself.

  Then he began to whistle the tune of a song which Cranmer had sung during one of the peaceful bacon-frying mornings behind the Brown Wood Line, which ought to have been called the Bill Brown Line since the bunkers and rifle-pits in it had been dug by the Grenadiers. He sang to himself the words of the last verse.

  If you want to find the old battalion

  I know where they are, I seen ’em I seen ’em,

  I know where they are.

  They’re hanging on the old barbed wire.

  I seen ’em, I seen ’em,

  Hanging on the old barbed wire!

  Raising his glass, Phillip, now in a state of semi-exaltation with his own thoughts, drank to Cranmer, to Baldwin and to Elliot, to Peter and David and Nimmo Wallace, to the Earl of Findhorn and the Iron Colonel, to the wounded and the dying in No Man’s Land, to faces seen in the pallor of flares and the glow of charcoal braziers, ration parties making a crude xylophone sound on the frozen corduroy path with their boots, fearful of the tearing scream and crack of shrapnel, to Tommy Atkins whose ghost must have come to help him out of the T-trench, to the prächtige Kerls, in field-grey on Christmas Day, and to that which, by God, cried inside him, Come back to us, come back—and with this feeling he hurled the empty glass upon the floor.

  The cellar-man was used to that sort of thing; but only when toasts were drunk, on special occasions, such as banquets, in the private dining-room. However, he said nothing; but lifting the flap in the counter, came through with brush and pan, and quietly swept up the fragments of what had been a large wine-glass, and returned to his original place.

  “That will be another sixpence, sir,” he said, across the counter.

  Phillip gave him half-a-crown, telling him to keep the change.

  “Thank you very much, sir. You have been in France, I take it?”

  “Yes, I was with the London Highlanders, as a ranker, and fought through the first battle of Ypres.”

  “Yes, sir?” He leaned over the counter. “But there are others, sir, if you will pardon my saying so, who have not had the same experiences as yourself, sir.”

  “Quite! Quite!” and Phillip offered his hand to be shaken by the cellar-man.

  Baldersby appeared, shoving past a circular three-legged table to the bar. He was going to order more drinks.

  “I say, Baldersby,” said Phillip, feeling extremely genial towards the entire world, “would you care to have a drink with me. Two large whiskies, please,” to the cellar-man.

  “I won’t drink with you,” replied Baldersby, almost violently.

  “I don’t really mean to chuck my weight about, Baldersby.”

  “Weight!” retorted Baldersby. “What weight have you got?”

  “Ten stone four pounds, actually. But seriously——”

  Baldersby turned his back on Phillip. His eye caught the heading of The Daily Trident. He picked it up, cried out “Pah!” and ripped it in pieces. This had also recently happened in the Pigskin Club, where Baldersby and the others had dined. The Trident had been carried by one of the members there to the fireplace, between polished steel tongs, and put in the fire.

  The cellar-man put two goblets of pale yellow whisky on the counter. Phillip paid him, and was about to reach for the siphon when Baldersby seized it first, filled one goblet to the brim, raised it over Phillip’s head, and tipped it. The liquid was still foaming down past his nose and ears, and fizzing on the back of his neck, when a fairly hard jet of soda-water struck him on the face, as Baldersby stood back, taking aim.

  This was tremendous fun to Phillip: this really was like Fred Karno’s Mumming Birds at the Hippo. He grabbed the glass jug of water on the counter, and sluiced it all over Baldersby. Then he gave Baldersby a push, which sent him clattering backwards into the three-legged table, which went over, Baldersby with it. Still laughing, Phillip put on his cap, which had been hanging on a hook, and walked out of the bar, over the cobbles, under the arch, and so down the moonlit street, with its echoes of a distant nightingale, to Godolphin House and his attic room; to undress and lie down, happily knowing, by the absence of saliva in his mouth, that he was not going to be sick.

  The camp bed still smelt of carbolic fluid, and suddenly recalling the remark of the salesman at the Stores where he had bought it—You’ll find it redolent of the rigours of the campaign—he imagined Desmond with him, and started to shake with laughter.

  Chapter 15

  SPREE—continued

  LYING on his canvas bed, Phillip was listening to the far voice of the nightingale, when up the stone steps beyond the open door came the blast of an ill-blown hunting horn. This familiar noise of Baldersby’s made him get out of bed, and listen at the top of the stairs. The horn notes came again, from the ante-room, judging by their muffled effect: two shut wooden doors between. He knew what was happening below, and went to lock himself in the lavatory opposite Baldersby’s room at the end of the landing.

  Then he decided not to hide but to face whatever was coming, so went back to bed in his wide attic room, first having removed the locket with the miniature from around his neck. Rising footfalls on stone steps, horn notes down below; door pushed open, flash-light dazzling.

  “Come on, just as you are. You are wanted in the court.”

  “What court? Anyway, let me put on my British warm.”

  “Come as you are.”

  Held by both arms, he was taken down the steps in pyjamas, through the mess and into the ante-room. There the chairs and sofas, filled with subalterns, were arranged in a rough square. Baldersby stood by a table in the centre, copper horn shoved between brass buttons of his tunic showing water stains. He was flushed, cigar-stub between teeth.

  Phillip caught a glimpse of Major Fridkin, the second-in-command, in an open doorway: the broad, easy, Chinaman-type face of Hairy Harry, as he was known behind his back by some of the subalterns. It disappeared. Baldersby removed the cigar stub and rapped on the table with his heavy gold signet ring.

  “Prisoner over there,” he pointed. “Now, gentlemen, we have a duty to perform, and as senior subaltern of the regiment I have called this court martial to decide what shall be done in the matter of Temporary Second-lieutenant Maddison. We are all aware that he is not a member of the regiment, but only attached for duty: even so, he comes under the jurisdiction of this court. I would like to add, at this point, that the fact that he is not a member of the regiment has nothing to do with the matter in hand, but only his conduct. There are other subalterns attached to us, and we regard each one as one of ourselves, as by their behaviour they do not let the regiment down. In fact, they are dam’ good fellers.”

  Cheers greeted this remark. Baldersby took several puffs of his dead cigar, examined it, pinched it, puffed again in vain, then went on:

  “Well, that’s all. I have called this court to assemble, in accordance with time-honoured unwritten law, as senior subaltern, and not as Bertram Baldersby——”

  “—of Baldersby Towers, Baldersby, Berkshire!” roared half a dozen voices in chorus.

  “Quite, quit
e,” blinked Baldersby. “But all joking aside, you fellers, Dimmock, just returned from the first battalion, is next in seniority to myself, and since I am standing down to be a witness in the case, not as senior subaltern, as I said, but as——”

  “—Baldersby of Baldersby Towers, Baldersby, Berkshire!” roared the solid square of junior subalterns.

  “Order,” said Baldersby; and sitting down, he extracted a cigar from a heavy leather case, and lit it, puffing blue clouds of smoke.

  Phillip recognised Dimmock as the fourth man in the Belvoir Arms, with Major Fridkin, Jonah the Whale, and Baldersby.

  Dimmock, lean, fair, blue-eyed, sat on the table edge and said, “I accept the presidency of this court, which is composed of a junior subaltern of the regiment, another junior subaltern of the prisoner’s regiment, and myself. Let the case be stated against the prisoner. Who is the prosecutor?”

  “Here,” said Baldersby, holding up a hand.

  “Who is defending counsel for the prisoner?”

  O’Connor stood up. He was a spare, dark man, with lean, clean-shaven brown face, and pince-nez glasses. “If the defendant wishes——” He went to Phillip. “The defendant is agreeable, sir.”

  “Very well, I call upon Baldersby——”

  “—of Baldersby Towers, Baldersby, Berkshire!” roared the onlookers.

  “Not so much noise, you chaps,” said Dimmock, in a quiet voice, as he swung a knee from his perch on the table. “Carry on, the prosecution.”

  “Very well,” said Baldersby, expelling smoke as he got up. He looked round for an ash-tray, upon which to lay his cigar. After a little fussing, he put it on the marble mantelpiece, and standing there, said, “General bad behaviour, lack of respect to senior officers, speaking when not spoken to first—often with a cigarette in mouth—all examples of bad form. It lets down the regiment.”