The Perils and the Prize

by Jim Crossley

  The cold light of a winter morning, coupled with a throbbing headache and a churning stomach did little to cheer him. He could not touch the egg and bacon breakfast which his old landlady had prepared downstairs, and the sight of Jacky, elegant, graceful and fresh as a daisy eating heartily, made him more nauseated than ever. Somehow a plan for the day formed in his brain. He would not go to the Slade today. He would go down to Walworth and talk to his guardian. As soon as his visitor left, he grabbed his things and set off.

  In the yard at the back, William kept his AJS motorbike. Hoping that a spin might make him feel better, he put on his greatcoat and flying helmet and wheeled the machine out into the street. His breath made great clouds of mist in the cold air as he kicked at the starter. The engine made a few pathetic pops then died completely. He swore to himself as he fiddled with the mixture control and the throttle. Not a sign of life. He resorted to push-starting, running down the street, pushing the machine and then letting go the clutch so as to spin the engine. After two or three tries, he was leaning exhausted against a wall, panting and cursing to himself. By this time half a dozen urchins had appeared as if from nowhere and were making helpful remarks such as “Won’t she go, mister?” or “Like yer ’at, gov.”

  All of a sudden the audience melted away as a London bobby appeared round the corner.

  “Trouble, sir?” he said, glancing briefly at the licence plate.

  “Well, yes, actually she won’t seem to start.”

  “I don’t know much about motorbikes, sir, but if you were to ask me I would say you could try switching the petrol on.”

  William glared at him furiously. Of course the petrol was on; he wasn’t a fool. To prove the point, he glanced down at the little brass tap under the fuel tank. Impossible! It was off. He remembered turning it and remembered pressing the button on the top of the float chamber to flood the carburettor. Then the revelation came to him. Idiot! He must have forgotten to turn the tap off last time he used the machine. So now he had turned it the wrong way. It was all those bloody little urchins’ fault for putting him off. Red-faced and angrier than ever, he turned the tap and kicked the starter again. The motor burst into life, and soon settled down to a steady tick-over. Thanking his saviour profusely, a shamefaced young man rode off over Battersea Bridge and along Nine Elms Lane towards a mean little house in the poorest part of London, which served as a rectory for the Rev. James Tullow, known to his friends as Flopsy.

  Flopsy had been a close friend of William’s father. During the Great War he had served as a chaplain in a Guards regiment and had earned an MC and bar for outstanding bravery in rescuing wounded men from no man’s land. Always slight and frail, he had lost a lung to a German gas attack during the Somme battle and had come out of the army physically wrecked, but had nevertheless plunged himself immediately into one of the toughest, poorest parishes in London. William drew up outside the house and was pleased to find that Flopsy was in.

  “Just a moment, old chap, I’ve got to try to find somewhere for Betty here to go. Been beaten up again at home. Can’t go back there. See what I can do.”

  William caught a glimpse of a filthy-looking young woman, obviously pregnant, with a livid bruise on her cheek. He sat down to wait. There were various comings and goings at the rectory. At last it seemed that Betty had been suitably accommodated, then Flopsy came through into the little dining room to talk to William. He looked pale and exhausted, but he smiled and did his best to make his young visitor feel at home. It was difficult to imagine this frail, flustered and faintly absurd-looking clergyman as a member of a crack regiment. His hands fluttered as he spoke and he kept looking about him and seeming to remember something he had forgotten. His sparse, unkempt, sandy hair fell untidily over his forehead. He was apt to knock things over when moving about and to lose his train of thought when speaking. He was constantly out of breath. William, however, knew that he had been one of his father’s staunchest friends and it was to him that his dad had entrusted his only surviving child as he went to war. For as long as he could remember, William had been able to speak easily to him on any subject and be certain of a sympathetic hearing.

  After the usual formalities and a tray of tea and biscuits, William got down to the reasons for his visit.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he began. “I feel awful troubling you with my little problems when you have so many desperate people to deal with, but I just don’t feel I’m on the right course. I’m never going to be even a competent artist – that’s certain and I feel I’m wasting my life. Oh, I enjoy London and the parties and everything but something happened last night which made me feel so vain and inadequate” – he described the evening and the encounter with the old soldier – “I just feel as if I was on a road to nowhere.” (This phrase had occurred to him as he was riding over Battersea Bridge. He was rather pleased with it.)

  His guardian studied him closely. He noted the long hair, the rather foppish clothes, the unmistakably studied demeanour.

  “Oh, dear William,” he said. “I can’t tell you what to do, you have to work that out for yourself, but do tell me, have you any ideas?”

  William was about to answer when a furious knocking interrupted their conversation. A grubby little boy burst into the room.

  “Please, Mister Reverend, I’m to tell you Aunty May is taken queer and she can’t do the soup today, maybe not for a week. Sir, can I have one of them biscuits?”

  The plate was passed over and, to William’s horror, the brat grabbed, not one, but a handful, and was gone out of the room at a run.

  “Blast it,” said Flopsy. “What am I going to do about the soup? There will be twenty or thirty at the hall in an hour and it’s the only hot food most of them get in the day. Now I’m going to let them down. What on earth can I do?”

  “What about tinned soup?” suggested William, struck by a sudden brainwave. “I passed a big grocer’s shop on the way here. We could dash there on the bike and get it. Then we could warm it up here.”

  “Oh, brilliant!” cried the clergyman.

  So off they set, William and Flopsy on the AJS, Flopsy nursing a large suitcase. They managed to get two dozen cans of oxtail and buzzed unsteadily back to the rectory. Flopsy dug out his largest saucepans and soon he had William stirring them on the stove while he went around to the hall, which was only a few steps away, to set out the bowls and spoons. Luckily, there was plenty of bread left over from the previous day. As soon as the soup was hot, the two struggled out with the brew to where their first customers were waiting in line. Some had brought a bowl or mug, to take a helping to some friend or relative. A sorry lot they looked, thought William, as he ladled out the soup. They were of all ages, thin, drawn and mostly dirty. Above all, there was an air of helplessness about them. These were people who had given up on life. No prospect of work. No joy, except perhaps when they could scrounge a bottle of something, and only cold, dirt and misery to be certain of. They didn’t seem particularly grateful for the soup, and they looked at him, he fancied, with sullen contemptuous expressions. Few said “Thank you,” and none returned his smile as he doled out the oxtail. Who was this precious-looking young man, come down to gawp at them? It was him or the likes of him that ratted on the workers during the general strike, and they hadn’t forgotten. It occurred to William that these were exactly the proletarian masses whom the communist lecturer had been talking about. Victims of the injustice inflicted by capitalism. But something else struck him strongly. They obviously respected and trusted Flopsy. He seemed to know many of them by name and he had a word for everyone.

  “Hello, Mrs Carver, and how’s young Billy liking school?”

  “Good to see you on your feet again, Reggie, soon have you running a mile.”

  His little quips and kindnesses brought a rare smile to careworn faces and even, sometimes, a laugh.

  Flopsy managed to delegate the washing-up to two of the local ladies and he and William returned to the rectory. Somehow, William couldn�
�t return to the conversation about his own woes. His guardian told him a little about the unemployment and squalor in the poor parts of London. About the crime and fear of crime which stalked the streets. About the miserable lives of his parishioners.

  “Hot soup here five days a week, and that’s all the decent food some of them get – and to think that we fought a war to make a land fit for heroes.”

  Somehow, William found that he had been talked into coming again the next day to help – Aunty May was unlikely to return to the foray for several days. It would have to be tinned soup again; neither of them had any idea how to make the proper stuff. Tinned was expensive but somehow William couldn’t bring himself to ask for the money he had spent at the grocers, and Flopsy never mentioned it. So, the next day, he arrived again at the rectory, this time wearing a haversack stuffed with tins. The procedure was the same as the day before, except that, of course, Flopsy had forgotten to get any bread. Once again, the motorbike had to be used to collect loaves from the bakers. This time the passenger on the pillion was a young street urchin who clearly had never done such a thing before and disguised his nervousness by whooping and yelling at the top of his voice and using language which made William blush. He discovered afterwards that his passenger had managed to purloin a shilling from the baker’s change.

  After the soup routine, William and Flopsy got into a discussion about communism. Flopsy was not nearly as hostile to the idea as William had expected.

  “Honestly,” he said. “I look around me here and I see a whole mass of people who have no chance, no hope at all and they have almost no opportunity to get out of it. Now, I am no admirer of Marx but I have to accept that he has a point. Ownership of the means of production really does seem to give a few people – increasingly few, actually – a disproportionate share of the good things in life. I’m not the only priest drawn to communistic ideas. We’ve got to face the fact: traditional Christianity means nothing whatever to most of these people. They come for the soup, OK, and they come to me if they are in trouble, but a church service? Never. The only people who come to my church are a handful of shopkeepers and middle-class types. Not the masses. You must have heard of William Temple?” William had. “Well, you know he only just managed to get ordained because, like me, he wasn’t in line with all the dogma they stuff into you at theological college. But he’s really bringing Christian socialist ideas home to people. If Christianity means anything, it’s caring for our neighbours, even if they do smell bad and swear often. Maybe all of us clergy ought to take a lead at least from the Labour Party, if not from Marx. What about you?”

  Before William could speak, Flopsy remembered that he was already late for his planned round of visits that afternoon. Once again, his young visitor found he had been manoeuvred into another day of the soup run. It occurred to him that he had missed two whole days at the Slade already, and his friends would be wondering what he was up to. That evening he made for the Royal Dragoon to see if anyone was around. Sure enough, the usual group turned up and were soon engaged in a noisy free-for-all argument about the French Impressionists. William hung around on the fringes of the conversation, feeling somehow that he was now a stranger to all this and that he had nothing to add to the chatter going on around him. He was only a few miles from the Walworth he was coming to know, but this seemed like a foreign country. The party was interrupted by the entrance of an excited and exuberant Jacky.

  “Well, how did it go?” asked Guy. William wondered what “It” was.

  “Fantastic! I met this American. Funny-looking cove, a bit fat and greasy actually. Something to do with a studio in Hollywood. He made me do a little scene out of Hamlet, you know the “To be or not to be” one, then he telephoned someone else – we were at the Savoy you know – and I had to do it again with both of them watching. Then they sent for a girl, I think she was French, and I had to do a little love scene with her. That was quite fun actually. They asked me to wait outside and I could hear them chattering through the door, then they called me in again and I had to stand around posing for lots of photos. At last he asked me if I had an agent. Well, I said I hadn’t and he said he would send a contract direct to me, and I should sign it and be ready to sail for America in three weeks’ time. Just like that. On the Queen Mary too. Then he said, “Oh, you’ll need something to be going on with,” and gave me a hundred pounds. New five-pound notes. Just look!”

  So Jacky was bound for the States and films. William was glad for him, but somehow his friend’s success made him even more insecure about his own future. As the pub rang with celebrations and the film-star-to-be stood one round after another, he sunk gloomily into his own thoughts. Several times people tried to drag him into the midst of the celebration and everyone wanted to know where he had been and when he was going back to the Slade, but he answered evasively and kept sullenly to himself.

  It was soup again the next day, and this time, at last, he got a chance to have a proper talk with his guardian. Eventually they agreed that William should abandon the Slade and return home to Tyneside; he would write to Flopsy as soon as he had some concrete plan as to what he should do. Flopsy emphasised that he must look at all options and make a serious decision within eight weeks.

  “You can’t hang around for ever,” he said, “but you must give yourself time and space to think things through properly. I think a little time at home is a good idea.”

  At the same time as William was studying art in London, another young man, – in fact a relation – was coming of age in a divided and strife-torn Germany. Hans von Pilsen had been sheltered by the wealth of his family and his father’s international connections and overseas income from the hardships caused by the collapsed German economy. The family still lived in the castle in Prussia which had been its home for centuries, although economic circumstances had enforced the closing off of many of the rooms. In spite of this, Hans could not ignore the misery which surrounded him and the hopelessness which dominated the lives of so many of his countrymen. He himself had successfully passed the first phase of his law examinations and it was assumed that he would soon find a comfortable place as a corporate lawyer. It seemed that a safe and prosperous life was awaiting him, if only the country could emerge from its economic woes, but he could not enthuse about the prospect. He was an active and adventurous young fellow, never happier than when shooting game on his father’s estate or setting off in his sailing dinghy to camp on some remote island with a few friends. A lawyer’s office seemed a miserable place to spend one’s life when there were deer to be hunted, fish to be caught and grilled over a camp fire and fearsome wild boar to be found and shot in the forest. But there was a ray of hope. He had joined a sailing club with premises on the Baltic, not far from his Prussian home. Most of the other members seemed to be smart young fellows like himself, recently graduated from university. The previous month they had been addressed by General von Seeckt, the chief of the miniscule armed forces which Germany had been allowed to retain after 1919. The general was a daunting figure, stiff, reserved and formal in his approach, but he spoke eloquently about Germany’s shame of 1918, the injustice of the peace settlement and the need for all Germans to unite and work together to restore the honour of the nation. It was stirring stuff. As a finale von Seeckt dropped some hints about a new organisation taking shape somewhere to the east. An organisation which somehow would change the fortunes of the nation and make it great and respected again.

  Around the time of von Seeckt’s visit, subtle changes seemed to be taking place in the club. Sailing races in small keelboats was soon supplemented by “voluntary” runs through the nearby forests. A new physical training instructor appeared from no one knew where and somehow talked the young men in the club into stricter and stricter regimes of fitness and endurance. It was even rumoured that some members had been invited to take a test, but no one was quite sure what had happened, as those who took it either clammed up or somehow ceased to appear at the club, leaving mysterious excus
es. What was happening? Well, Hans would soon know. He had been invited to “Spend a day with Otto” – that meant taking the test – in a few weeks’ time. After that he’d know all about it.

  The test was gruelling. Six young men had to jog along soft, sandy tracks in a dark, hot, airless forest, singing lustily. This went on, not for half an hour, like their usual runs, but for a full hour and a half, then, when they were ready to die with exhaustion, the instructor halted them at the edge of a lake. They had to strip and plunge into the water then swim a quarter of a mile to a small island. Two of them gave up and had to be rescued and immediately sent home while the other four floundered half dead onto the island. There a sergeant from the army was waiting for them. Still stripped to the waist and barefoot, they next had to run along logs laid across trenches while the sergeant pelted them with fir cones and whatever else he could find. Anyone who fell off was immediately sent back to repeat the exercise until he succeeded. Next the four had to work together to move some large tree trunks across a clearing, and manhandle them over a wall. Another soldier, an officer this time, watched them, making notes on each man’s performance. More such team tests followed. When they had finished, a third member of the party was sent home, and the remaining trio were given a drink and told to put on army-issue overalls. Then they were marched to a hut where they thankfully sat down to rest. The respite was brief. A sheaf of papers was placed in front of each man and a written test commenced, probing into mechanical understanding, mathematics, literacy and ability to reason logically. Finally, each one had to give a brief talk on a subject chosen by the directing officer – Hans’ subject was “Should Germany respect the terms of the Versailles treaty” – then to submit to criticism of his argument by his fellows. Exhausted as he was, Hans found this difficult, but managed to struggle through it, making a few points he had heard from his father. As soon as the classroom tests were completed, the party was off to the lakeside again and had to swim back and reclaim their clothes. Hans was relieved to see a truck waiting for them but instead of picking the exhausted party up, it sped off in front of them, leaving them to stumble back to their assembly point where they lay down more dead than alive and waited for the bus which would take them back to the yacht club.