“And you should have seen the face of one of the war correspondents when ‘Crasher’ asked his question! I tell you, people at home have no idea at all of what really happens out there. Take the gas, for instance——” He repeated what Mrs. Rolls said she had read in The Times.
“Oh, it’s Bonaparte eating babies for breakfast all over again,” remarked Cundall. “Well, let me stand you a drink, my beamish boy, and let’s drink to the national motto, a variation of the Nation of Shopkeepers’ ‘Business as Usual’, which includes the Fabrication of News by the Press, all of which has now gone completely yellow.”
It was some time later that Mr. Jenkins touched Phillip’s arm. “Can I have a word with you, Phillip?” They moved to a vacant space away from the stained-glass partition. Then “Sailor” said with motionless lips, “Follow me into the private bar next door, in about a minute.”
Phillip, having gone there, listened with amused impatience to what “Sailor” had to say. There were spies about; there were also the police, and nearer than Phillip imagined; and it was his duty, as well as theirs—“We’re all in this war, Phillip, we must all pull together”—to report anything of a nature likely to impede the war effort. And from what he, Phillip, had been saying, he might find himself in queer street.
“To spread alarmist reports about what is happening over there, Phillip, is tantamount to acting for the other side, you know. It’s all very well to scoff!”
“Look, Mr. Jenkins! What happens out there and what you and Father and other civilians read in the papers are two utterly different things! Besides, what did I say that could upset anyone in particular?”
“Well, Phillip, you praised the Germans as brave men, yet in the next breath you boast—and between ourselves, is it anything to boast about—how you dodged the fighting by pretending to be a chemist. Anyway, the last time I saw you, you said that you were only taking over reinforcements, and that you hoped you would take no part in the fighting. No, Phillip, you’re not doing yourself any good by talking like that!”
“I said I took no part in the fighting, but I saw quite a lot of it, as a matter of fact.”
“That sounds like a quibble. Anyway, I am only giving you a tip, as a friend, Phillip. Don’t talk too loudly, for there are quite a number of people in the neighbourhood who have known all about you from early boyhood, you know! There’s another reason, Phillip—is it entirely fair to your father to praise the Germans openly? I mean to say, some people have not forgotten what your house was once named, and why, you know! So take a friendly tip from one older than yourself, Phillip, and lie low.” “Thanks, Mr. Jenkins. That’s what I intend to do henceforward. So low that I’ll be beneath the dust!” He laughed at his own joke. Less than the dust. He was less than the dust, beneath her chariot wheels——He felt tears coming into his eyes, and looked on the ground.
“No offence taken, Phil? I’m only trying to help you, you know.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jenkins. Now I’d like to ask you something. How are you sure there are spies about, Mr. Jenkins?”
“How I know, or from whence my information, I am not at liberty to divulge, but you can take it from me it is as good as official, Phillip. There’s one about disguised as a War Office staff man, with scarlet hat-band; and”—Mr. Jenkins whispered—“he is always seen when Zeppelins are coming over, Phillip! The warning’s been given tonight, you know!”
“By Jove, Mr. Jenkins, supposing you were to catch the spy!” he exclaimed, trying not to laugh.
“Well, one never knows, does one, Phillip? Your friend was quoting the Bard just now, two can do that, you know! ‘There’s more things in your philosophy, Horatius, than were ever dreamt of in heaven and earth’, as Shakespeare once said. Well, keep smiling, and don’t forget what I’ve told you, Phillip!”
“No, Mr. Jenkins, I won’t.”
Back in the saloon bar, Phillip told Cundall some of what had been said, with the comment, “He’s full of wind and Woggle-dagger, and doesn’t know the difference between Julius Caesar and that bloke who kept the bridge.”
“What bridge?” asked Cundall; and when Phillip told him, “Oh, such shocking iggerance, and from an Old Heathian! Horatius kept his bridge to himself—no inquests on why his partner went to bed with his ace—while it was to Horatio that Hamlet made that celebrated remark about heaven and earth——” Cundall, the brainy bird, was saying, when “Sailor” Jenkins pushed open the door and going to the bar said to Mrs. Freddy, “I’ve just got time for one more very quick one! It’s going to be a hot night tonight, my dear,” with several quick nods of his head. Then turning to Phillip, he said behind his hand, “I’ve just seen the sergeant, who has come from the station. Five Zeppelins have crossed the coast! Better get home while you can, Phillip.”
“Oh, they don’t worry me.”
“But there’s your mother and sisters to think about, Phillip. Get them into the coal cellar! That’s where my wife and children will be tonight!”
Phillip thought this funny; and when “Sailor” had hurried away, he told Cundall and the others.
“What’s that you’re saying?” asked Mrs. Freddy, paler and more child-like than usual. Phillip told her, and to his surprise a hard line came on her mouth and she took a kick at Freddy, helping himself to four penn’oth of water.
“What’s biting you now, my dear?” he tittered, sipping his drink.
“You, you bleeder! I to’d you you ought to take me back to Mother!” She turned to Phillip. “She works in the Dragon at Farnborough, you see, while Dad’s in the Army.”
“Jolly good place to work in, Mrs. Freddy! Next best place to a brewery!”
“I don’ want none of your lip, see?” she cried. Phillip was surprised at her anger. He had not connected it with her fear, for her baby, Freddy, and home. “We can do without your sort! And you!” whipping round on Ching, who was merely looking at her with his prominent eyeballs. “You ain’t got your uniform yet, I see! And what’r you doing, you with angel’s wings, why aren’t you up arter them bleedin’ gasbags?”
“No plane,” said Cundall, simply. “No bus. No kite. Not even a sausage. So, not being a Knight of the Air, I did the next best thing, and decided on a Night with Wit and Beauty.”
“Very well expressed, sir!” chimed Freddy, touching his straw. “Very neat. I’d take it to be an honour if you’d have one on the house, sir. All of you gentlemen join me, please.”
They were drinking Freddy’s health, and Freddy was drinking it too, when a deep grinding sensation was felt everywhere in the bar, coming through ground and air at the same time. It caused two wine glasses on a shelf to chime against one another. There was a colourless pause, in which every face seemed fixed; then female cries arose, one from Mrs. Freddy, another from a woman in the unseen public bar opening direct on to the High Street pavement, and further shouts from outside. From the billiard-room door the two bowler-hatted plain-clothes men, umbrellas in hand, strode out unspeaking.
Phillip, Cundall, Ching and Eugene went out into the street to see the fun. A tram came to an abrupt stop opposite. People hurried off. One woman was moaning. A man who looked like a coster, with a rag round his neck, shouted out, “Put them lights out!” in a hoarse voice. On plimsoled feet he ran to the tram-driver. They seemed to have an argument. The tram lights remained on. People stopped, or hurried to listen, then many voices demanded that the lights be put out. Someone shinned up a lamp-post, fumbled at the glass, put his fist through, smashing the mantle. Other people were now inside the tram, pulling out electric bulbs above the cane-woven seats along both sides. Screams were heard far off, then shouting; faces were looking up, lit by searchlight beams sweeping round in circles to come to a common apex in the height of the sky.
Running to the centre of the road, with Eugene, while Ching and Cundall stood on the pavement, Phillip was in time to see a long thin cigar-shaped object, yellow at the point of a dozen beams, lifting its nose almost lazily upward while faint smoke came fr
om under it as it climbed, now with gathering speed, and moved out of the haze of light. Distant guns began to fire from all directions. Phillip looked at his watch. It was just after half past nine. He glanced around for sight of his father; then went back with the others to the warm bar, now with one mantle alight, and that turned down. But the life had gone from the place, and after one more drink, he thought to go on the Hill for a view over London.
How to shake off Ching? He wanted to be alone with Eugene. He was delighted that he and Gene had become friends. Before, he had been puzzled, slightly hurt, that Desmond could see anything in his Brazilian friend. Like many youths coming from small houses awed by Victorian fathers, to Phillip all the world was his feelings: he was only now learning to think apart from them. Now that he and Gene had warmed to one another, he felt more secure about his friendship with Desmond: it was doubled.
“I’ll see you up to your house, Phillip. You might need a friendly arm, you don’t look very well, you know.”
Ching, too, wanted friendship—and the love of Mavis.
“I am perfectly all right, Ching. Anyway, Gene and I have to see Mrs. Neville, who may be worrying.”
“I’ll wait outside while you go in.”
“We may be an hour or more, eh, Gene?”
“I don’t mind how long I wait, when it’s you, Phil.”
“Well, I do.”
They walked over the bridge in silence. Occasional beams of light pierced the sky. Randiswell was dark and seemed deserted, until a solitary figure approached, holding an open umbrella over a bowler hat, although the night was now fine and starry. The umbrella stopped; and a cultured voice said, “Middleton, I presume? Surely I am not mistaken? Middleton, I think—yes!” Having delivered this greeting, the squat figure staggered sideways; immediately to recover balance, using the umbrella like a tight-rope walker. Stability having been maintained, the stranger advanced for further sociability.
“How do you do?” A hand was held out. Phillip shook it.
“Middleton, my dear boy——! England owes a debt she can never repay to you, and to others like you. Will you gentlemen honour me by coming with me to the Conservative Club, the bar of which remains open until eleven o’clock, and drink to the victory in France?”
This seemed to promise high adventure, so they went back beside the man with the umbrella, who said he was Dr. Dash-wood. Phillip had heard of Dr. Dashwood from Mrs. Neville; he was a popular man, with beautiful manners, the only trouble being that, “under the influence”, he was liable to stagger about during confinements, or while testing eyes for glasses; and, solely on that account, as a medical adviser he was not altogether reliable, although he had not so far poked a finger in anyone’s eye or dropped a new-born baby. Apart from that, Dr. Dashwood was a gentleman of the old school, said Mrs. Neville.
The Conservative Club was next to the railway bridge. A lonely figure standing under the shelter of the bridge turned out to be “Sailor” Jenkins. “Ah, Middleton—my dear fellow!” exclaimed the benevolent Dr. Dashwood, as he persuaded Mr. Jenkins to come in out of the cold night, and share the umbrella. Paying attention to each of his guests in turn, he walked beside them up to the club entrance beside the pawnbrokers, remarking “Very handy for members, don’t you think.”
Phillip saw a room full of polished leather armchairs and sofas seeming to be of great age, for most of the leather was cracked. There were prints and engravings of the borough in past ages. Dr. Dashwood, his heavy jowls and cheeks revealed in the gaslight to be of a shade between maroon and purple, ordered double Haigs. Having drunk his, with concealed shudders, Phillip thanked him, and said he must be going; but the doctor protested.
“The night is but young, my dear Middleton. Fill the glasses, will you?” to the barman. “If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I will leave you for a moment. Do you know the geography of the place? Permit me——” he ushed them all towards the lavatory, which was only large enough for two.
“Come on,” whispered Phillip to Gene. “This is our chance.” Suppressing giggles, the two hurried out of the club, passing the pawnbroker’s three gilt balls at a run, and on the pavement exploded in merriment. “What an extraordinary man! Fancy calling us all by the same name! I wonder who Middleton really is? Anyway, thank God we’ve got rid of Ching! Quick! Hop it!!”
Mrs. Neville was in the downstairs fiat, sitting with two women in shawls. A bottle of Martell’s brandy stood on a small round table between them, beside a solitary candle.
“O-oh, what a night, Phillip! My word, Gene, Desmond will have something to tell us tomorrow! Did you hear that bomb? They say it fell in the Strand, just outside a theatre. Another ten yards, and it would have caught the lot inside. The beasts! Do you know what they dropped over Highgate the other night? A hambone, with a label tied on it, saying, ‘For Starving England’. Thank God someone can laugh!” she suddenly shrieked. Then in her creamy voice, “I am forgetting my manners, blame it on the Kaiser. This is Mrs. Tinkey, and this is her daughter, Miss Tinkey.”
Phillip tried not to giggle; it sounded like Stinkey. To cover his laughter, he pretended to cough, thumping his chest, saying, “It’s the gas, I got a whiff on the twenty-fifth.” Then trying to be gallant, like Dr. Dashwood, he said to the elder woman, “I thought you were two sisters,” whereupon the older woman said, “There now!” in a pleased tone of voice, while the younger said, “Go on, I don’t believe you!”
“Now you’ve spoiled a pretty compliment!” cried Mrs. Neville.
“Well——” he said. “By candlelight, you know——” He stared at the bottle.
“It’s no good looking at that bottle, Phillip,” laughed Mrs. Neville. “That bottle is to be opened only in an emergency!”
She smiled coyly at Phillip, before turning to the older woman and saying, “That’s our little safeguard, isn’t it, dear? Oh yes, Phillip, that bottle is quite an old friend now. It’s been three times on this table, beside that candle, during the past six weeks, hasn’t it, dear?” with a wink at Phillip.
Footsteps sounded on the tessellated area in front of the flats. Phillip blew out the candle. “Hush. It’s Ching! Don’t move!” They heard the bell in the next flat ringing. At last footfalls went away, and after an interval, Phillip said he must go. He was going on the Hill, half way across, with Eugene, who lodged in Foxfield Road, he told Mrs. Neville. Saying goodbye, they left the three women sitting round the bottle on the table. What a night!
Distant guns broke out as they walked up Hillside Road. “I bet the bottle will be opened now, Gene!” as a broad lilac beam leapt above the roof of the Modern School before them. “I’ll just call in to see if Mother’s all right, I won’t be a sec.”
He ran up to the porch, key in hand, quietly opened the door in darkness, to hear from above, down the long passage to the end bedroom, Mavis’s terrified voice calling, “Mother! Mother! I can hear one coming! Quick! Quick!” then Mother’s voice saying, as she hurried down from the front bedroom, “It’s all right, dear, Mother’s coming!”
Phillip heard a faint high throb passing away in the sky. “Don’t get the wind up!” he called up the stairs. “The chance of anything falling here is a million to one! I’m just going on the Hill, Mum, I won’t be long. Cheer-ho!” and he was about to leave before she could say anything to stop him, when Polly came down the stairs in white bodice and bloomers. She carried her skirt and shoes in one hand, and coming to him beside the newel post, said with a little laugh, “Hullo. May I come with you?”
“You’re not dressed.”
“Yes, I am,” as she got into the skirt. “I can put on my overcoat, see?”
“You’ll catch cold,” he said, feeling her knee, while her nearness drew the wire in him.
“That I won’t!” She tossed her curls, and called out, “Aunt Hetty, I’m just going on the Hill for a minute with Phillip, to see the sights. It’s all right, I’m already dressed.”
“Polly, I don’t think you ought to, dear. It is
so very very late!”
“Only for five minutes, Aunt. I’ve got on my thick overcoat. Come on,” to Phillip. She took his arm while he closed the door quietly by turning the Yale key. “Uncle won’t be home until midnight,” she whispered.
Arm in arm, exhilarated in comradeship, Phillip and Polly and Gene walked up the gulley. Phillip was glad that Polly was with him. She could walk fast, like a man. She was a bit of a sport. He sighed, thinking of Helena.
*
London lay around the Hill, dark with the smallest lights. Northward a tongue of flame arose, casting a pink haze in the darkness. Gunfire started again. They saw little red flashes high in the night over Woolwich; then searchlights were weaving, clustering, breaking apart, wildly searching. The beams went out, one after another, quickly, leaving the stars winking coldly in the wind, and bright points of light burning below.
“Thermite candles,” said Phillip. They waited for flames; when none appeared, they walked arm-in-arm towards the elms, where Phillip stopped.
“Father once saw a Camberwell Beauty on his strips pinned to this tree, with his dark lantern,” he said, suddenly. “Before I was born. He used to collect butterflies.” Loneliness overcame him for a moment, giving way to a desire for Polly. Yet he did not want to say goodbye to Eugene.
“We’ll meet again, Phil?”
“Of course, rather! Well, goodbye for now, old man.”
They shook hands. Holding on to Polly’s hand, Eugene said, “Are you ever in Town?”
“Sometimes,” said Polly, tossing her curls. “Why, may I ask?”
A Fox Under My Cloak Page 48