A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  It was about that time that Helena Rolls was told of Hubert Cakebread’s death by her mother.

  Chapter 29

  LONDON, S.E.

  THERE were no submarines in the Channel, but there were waves. He spent the crossing hidden in the shame of sickness, lying upon the floor of one of the lavatories, only half-conscious that his life was torn away to the last froth. Wan-faced he walked off the ship at Dover, and settled to shivering sleep in the train. At Ashford he had a small pot of tea, and a brandy to settle his stomach, as it had in childhood’s train-sickness; and after being sick again, he lay in the locked lavatory until just before Victoria. He was surprised to see “Crasher” and “Little Willie” getting into a taxicab, followed in another by their two servants loaded up with about a dozen pickelhauben, several sandbags of nosecaps and saw-bayonets, and other souvenirs. He wanted to speak to them, but did not like to risk the “Tom Fool” remark again. So he watched them depart, as old friends; and feeling that all was strange and empty, went into the buffet where beef-tea gave him back the warm idea that all life was adventure.

  He went by Underground to Charing Cross, wondering at the quietness of everything. Sight of the river from the Embankment cheered him. He was back again! All the same——

  He walked up Villiers Street to the Strand, and found himself in a scene so poignantly different from what was really happening that he felt like screaming. How could women sell white and yellow chrysanthemums out of large wicker baskets, and talk cheerfully to an officer buying some for the girl with him when a paper-boy was running past with a bundle under his arm and crying out, “New attack on Western Front! Loos battle flares up!” He bought a Star and read the communiqué from G.H.Q. ending with the well-worn phrase: The morale of our troops is excellent, which belonged to the scene all around him, of the world beyond the pallor of the flares which he had forsaken. But it would have been too lonely without Westy, without “Twinkle”, without Kirk, and all the others.

  He crossed over to Trafalgar Square, drawn by longing to see again the faces of the Australians who had been in Gallipoli. Something was happening around the pedestal of Nelson’s column where a large crowd was pressing forward. On the plinth above he saw that a woman was trying to speak. Other women were standing beside her, and a small girl and two old men. They were holding banners. The crowd, among them Australian soldiers, was heckling the speaker. A man stood at one corner of the plinth, with a camera. Below one of the lions a number of men were yelling in unison, to drown the speaker, who, he saw, was Sylvia. So it was a Suffragette show. He did not want to be seen by her, so kept on the outskirts of the crowd, coming to where some more men were putting red and yellow powdery stuff into paper bags. One looked at Phillip and said, with a grin:

  “This’ll dust the old cow all right!”

  “What are they?” he asked, pretending ignorance.

  “Who, them?” sneered the man, jerking his thumb upwards. “Why, it’s all paid for by the Germans! Tryin’ to stop the war! Stabbin’ our boys aht there in the back, that’s what it is!”

  “Who are you? Where did you get that powder?”

  His questions remained unanswered, as the group moved off to bombard the speaker. Bags were thrown. He saw the little girl on the plinth crying, her dress spoiled by red powder. Another bag hit her in the face.

  “Stop it, you cads!” he shouted, “or I’ll have you all arrested!” They flung what was in their hands, then made off. Moving nearer, he saw the face of his Aunt Theodora in the crowd. She was watching with a strained expression, her mouth slightly open, showing her projecting teeth. How old and worn she looked. She smiled when she saw him, and did not look so old.

  “Where did you spring from, Boy? I thought from what your mother wrote to me, that you were in France, doing something rather secret.”

  “We were told not to write home any mention of the gas.”

  “Tell me, Boy, are you well?”

  “Yes, thank you. But did you know that Bertie has been killed?”

  “Bertie Cakebread? Oh dear——” Her eyes became remote. She was thinking of Sidney, his father, dead in the Boer War: Sidney, the only man she had ever loved, or would ever love. And now his son had followed him——

  Phillip thought that Aunt Dora looked very thin and cold, with a faintly red tip to her nose.

  “So little Bertie has been killed——

  “Apparently he was nicknamed ‘Marie’. I wonder if it was after the Marie biscuit, a play on his surname, Aunt Dora.”

  He told her about meeting Bertie at Lone Tree; and what he had heard of the night patrol at the Hohenzollern Redoubt.

  “What are you doing here, Aunt Dora? This ‘Stop the War’ movement hasn’t a hope, you know. The soldiers are the only ones who could stop it, I think. But both sides think the same things, you know. Willie believes that is why it could be stopped, if only each side could realise what the other side thinks; but I’ve been thinking, you know, and see that while both sides think as they do, it is bound to go on. It’s a bit confused, I’m afraid, but—well, anyway, it is a deadlock, in my opinion. How is Willie? Still in Gallipoli?”

  Aunt Dora said he was, when last she had heard of him; and she went on to say that she had left the Movement, as she could not agree to Sylvia’s further opposition to the war. “It is a war of systems, Boy, our democratic way of life against an autocratic and military tyranny. But Sylvia and I remain good friends. It is the babies who matter!” she smiled, a light coming into her fragile face. “The Mothers’ Arms!”

  This reminded him of “Twinkle”. “I don’t know what her name is, the old chap kept it dark, but he said his mother was the oldest member of the Movement.”

  “How very strange that you should mention such a thing, Boy! For I have been to the War Office about such a matter this very afternoon! If it is the same person, then it must be a most extraordinary coincidence. But read for yourself.”

  He took the thin, cheap, clay-coloured sheet of paper from the O.H.M.S. envelope.

  Infantry Office

  Hounslow.

  10.10.15

  Madam,

  I am directed to inform you that a report has been received from the War Office to the effect that No. 431 Pte. Nobbs J.S. 1st Battn. Essex Regt, was sentenced after trial by court martial to suffer death by being shot for desertion, and the sentence was duly executed on 8 October 1915.

  I am, Madam, Your obedient Servant,

  P. G. Hendley,

  2nd-lt., for Lt.-Colonel Infantry Records.

  “Grannie Nobbs is over ninety, Boy, so it seems most likely that she is this poor fellow’s mother. She refuses to believe it, saying that he has already been reported killed in two previous wars, and that he will turn up again after it is all over. She is the very spirit of our people—undefeatable.”

  “I am afraid he won’t come back from this one, Aunt Dora,” said Phillip, feeling weak. Good lord, it must have been about “Twinkle” that the story was told in the Gaultshire mess, of how one deserter had insulted the firing party, drawn from the Guards, who had shot him.

  He said goodbye, and made his way to the station, where he took a first-class ticket to St. John’s, thinking to walk over the Hill. Blinds must be drawn; Zeppelins had been reported over the Thames estuary. The dear old South Eastern and Chatham Railway!

  Seeing Tom Ching on the platform, he made for the nearest carriage, a third-class with pale gas flame wobbling familiarly within dirty enamel and glass dome in roof, mantle broken, war-time gas turned low. Buck-navvy-smelling carriage, thick boots, stale beer, shag, and coal. Hoarse voice of unseen porter on platform of London Bridge station, calling familiar names of stations … Greenwich, Woolwich, Gravesend, Erith … foggy riverside names, muddy-water-ebbing-tide names, shivery melancholy names, hurrying working-class pale-faces names, truck-shunting-in-darkness names, ammunition loading at the Arsenal … and, from another platform, there was-the mysterious Paddock Wood, green leaves and woodpeckers,
far beyond the black county of London, with its shunting of trains, hiss of steam, banging doors, and Hurry along, please.

  The door was opening, railway gangers with copper-peaked caps getting in, empty tea-canteens in hand, too tired to speak after a few words to one another, no glances at himself, lying back close-lidded. Smells of glue, vinegar, hops … rattling over points at New Cross. Plate-layers getting out, door slammed, alone. Quietness, sadness: what sorrows and despairs had the carriage known, weeping women, broken-hearted children, poor old men … He got out at St. Johns, and felt lost in an unbearable silence of nothingness.

  *

  Walking over the cold and windy Hill he saw searchlights leaning upon the clouds. The beams moved about; died out; others sprang up and wavered hesitating; moved together to a common apex, seemed to fumble; moved away again. Then one swept half round the sky and came to rest pointing upwards; and the others rushed to join it, and the dark greyness of the Hill became lilac, as though slightly powdered, when a new strong beam stared upwards from the roof of the old West Kent Grammar School, now the L.C.C. Modern School. He heard throbbing: a lorry in the sheep-fold showed dark, mounted with running engine. Voices, a shout; the violet beam died reddish then black-staring in his eyes.

  London lay in darkness once more. His footsteps crunched on the gravel, the wind rustled all the grey birch leaves at the corner of the gully. His feet resounded on the circular iron grating of the drain by the spiked iron gates; he saw a thin yellow line under the blinds of the Rolls’ house. He hesitated; drew back; waited unseen by the railings. Then, assembling himself, he went in past the gate, hollow and thudding. It was too late to turn back now; he had rung the bell.

  It was Wednesday, and Mr. Rolls would be away from home, he was always away from Monday to Friday. He waited. It was worse almost than going over the top, all the early fears possessed him. Then a deep baying came from beyond the door. It was too late to clear off now. Mrs. Rolls was opening the door.

  “I am very sorry if it is inconvenient——”

  “Phillip, dear boy! Do come in, you look so cold—I thought at first it was a ghost. Come by the fire—so good of you to come. Don’t be alarmed by Rastus—down, sir, down! Noisy creature, Rastus! Sit down, Phillip. Helena is upstairs, lying down, she has a headache, poor child. Yes, we have heard the news about Hubert. Then a letter came from him, by the six o’clock post this evening. So sad, isn’t it? You are shivering! Sit down on that chair, draw it up to the fire—turn Rastus out.”

  The dog, a gaunt animal with drooping ears, loose skin, skull-like brow and sunken eyes, had climbed into the armchair, the only one in the room, and lay there, head on paws, looking despondently at his mistress, but not moving. “Get down, Rastus! Get down this instant, sir!” Rastus, looking broken, crept off the chair with a groan of displeasure. Then, turning round, it nipped a square of carpet with its teeth, and carried it to beside the copper coal-scuttle, where it lay across it.

  “Good boy, Rastus!” cried Mrs. Rolls. “Rastus is one of Colonel Anthony Rolls’ bloodhounds, Phillip. Anthony sent Rastus to guard us, while Gerard is away. He is Gerard’s cousin, you know.”

  “Oh, I see,” as he perched on the edge of the chair. Could his patrol really have resembled Rastus? He had to suppress an idiotic desire to laugh at the idea of Rastus being Mr. Rolls’ cousin.

  “Have you just come back, Phillip?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Rolls.”

  “All you poor boys——’ she said, in a voice caressing and tender, while she sat on the other side of the fender, on a straight-backed chair, her khaki knitting on her lap.

  He thought that her name, Flora, meant flower; she was a violet, the colour of her eyes. Her voice was rather like Aunt Beatrice’s voice—he winced away from the thought of the too-soft skin of Aunt Bee’s cheek, like a silken bag holding in the flesh of her face—but Aunt Beatrice’s voice had a sort of metallic hardness behind it, when she laughed or spoke suddenly. Mrs. Rolls’ voice was deep unexpectedly, with a sweet lovingness in it. It was strange that she was Helena’s mother; in a way, she seemed younger, like a bunch of violets to a sunflower.

  “You are shivering so, Phillip—break up that lump with the poker——”

  Could it really be true that he was sitting in the red plush armchair glimpsed in rare moments through the window as he had hurried past outside? He was taut, unable to stop his shivering, unable to sit back, afraid to speak lest he stammer. He sipped coffee that was too hot, and burned his lips.

  “Do smoke, Phillip—I think a fireside without a man with a pipe is not really home, don’t you?”

  “I-I-I’ve given up smoking, Mrs. Rolls, thanks all the same.” Why had he said that, when he had pipe and pouch showing in his pocket. He must give up smoking now.

  “Why is that?”

  “The gas makes the taste rather awful.” True then; but not afterwards. Hopeless.

  “Oh, that awful gas! They used it, didn’t they, in the battle. Thank goodness, I said to Gerard, when he read it aloud from The Times—thank goodness that we have not used the gas those fiends used, but a stupefying gas that lasts only for an hour or two. Rather like dentist’s gas, I suppose, only not the laughing kind, Phillip?”

  Jonah the Whale’s voice saying, Speech is given us to conceal our thoughts. “I think that dentist’s gas is nitrogen dioxide, Mrs. Rolls. Or was it—n-no, I think that was the brown, choking gas we made in the laboratory at school. I rather think that it is nitrous oxide and not nitrous di-oxide.”

  “What a lot you know, Phillip. Now do tell me, what has brought you home so soon?”

  “I have transferred to the Middlesex Regiment, Mrs. Rolls.”

  She stared at nothing, her thoughts elsewhere, her hands paused in their knitting. Then in lowered voice, “Tell me about Hubert, Phillip. We were all so fond of him. Such a pity that all the fine ones are going, isn’t it? I remember his father—such a gentleman. He wrote to Helena, you know—they were such chums. Poor girl, she is most upset. Yes, your cousin spoke of you in the letter we got today. You were wandering about, looking quite lost on the battlefield, he wrote.”

  Phillip told of the meeting, leaving out the whipping incident, and indeed, all that had really happened. He did not omit the truth deliberately, for he had not formulated any aspect of truth in his mind as yet; and the details of his own living had always, from those early years when punishment had entered and dominated his life, been something to conceal. He spoke in the idiom in which his letters home had been written.

  “It was a bit trying for the reserves, without food and water. It’s all rather strange at first, you know, and when someone thought the order to retire had been given, everyone began to go back. I was with some wounded fellows, going to the aid-post at Le Rutoire, when I met Bertie and some others of the Guards Division coming up, an advance party. It was all a bit of a muddle, one way and another, I suppose.”

  “I know, it must have been terrible for you poor boys,” the voice almost crooned. “Then you don’t know where he—where it happened, Phillip?”

  He told her what he had heard that morning, adding, “Death was instantaneous. He is buried at Vermelles, Mrs. Rolls.”

  Violet eyes stared into the fire, the khaki sock drooped on her lap.

  “I was making this pair for him, Phillip. You must have them now, dear boy.”

  *

  The moment was dream-like, the coal-flames fluttering in the grate drying his eye-balls, while in drowsy warmth he rested, feeling that it was all happening to someone other than himself —as indeed it was, for the Phillip sitting there was not so much person, as persona: he was acting a part, unconsciously, all the time, while the real Phillip was hiding behind the past.

  The moment was dream-like, beyond gratitude, beyond words, as in a dream when words are neither spoken nor heard by the remote point of life which is innocence, and the soul.

  *

  The real Phillip looked at Flora Rolls for a brief instant: a gla
nce that seemed to her to be of dismay, of surprise, of fear; perhaps he had not heard her, she thought, he is so very very tired, he has been so near to death, the quietness of this room must be strange to him, after what he had gone through. Her thoughts were in the space of a glance, then she saw his head turn again, and yes, there was fear indeed in his eyes, as he turned his head to the door, and saw Helena coming into the room.

  Flora Rolls went on knitting, composed within herself, at ease within her world, which was a world of love, of a loving father and mother, of a loved and loving husband: so she had always lived in a world ordered by a loving God; she knew no other world. There were evil things in the world, but they were not of God, they were of the devil—and evil things in the German nation had made the war. It was all foretold in the Bible. But the evil things were not oppressive upon her, for she was a loved woman.

  She went on with her knitting, while her daughter walked across the room; and as Phillip got up from the chair, she said, without lifting her head, “How kind of Phillip to come, isn’t it, Helena, when he has only just arrived from France.”

  “I came to tell you——”

  He could not speak further. His throat had closed. She stood before him. He saw that her face was different. Always it had shone; smiled when he had met her. (It was this which had given him hope for his dream. Phillip had never thought, and did not now, that what was lacking in his own home he had sought in her face—the peace, the harmony, of beauty, which comes from the shining face of heaven.)

  “Oh, he is so tired, poor boy,” said Flora Rolls. “Let him sit down, Helena. Rastus! Where are your manners, sir?”—for the bloodhound, seeing the empty chair, had picked up its square of carpet and was advancing to lay it upon the comfortable and draught-free seat that it shared with its master. But Rastus had been born and bred in a military kennels; without asking why, he turned round again, spread his bed diminutive, and curled again by the copper coal-scuttle.