As the two walked on down Charlotte Road, under its chestnuts opening their sticky buds, Elizabeth said, “I don’t trust Mrs. Neville, with her smarmy manner all put on. Why couldn’t she say straight out that she had had a letter from Phillip, instead of pretending like that! I knew it at once, didn’t you, Mother? It was obvious as soon as she mentioned Husborne Abbey! You didn’t tell her what hospital he was in.”
“What does it matter after all, Elizabeth?”
“Well, I can’t stand hypocrisy in any form!”
A twinge of helplessness came over Hetty, to be avoided by “Well, why shouldn’t Phillip write to Mrs. Neville? After all, she was kind enough to look after Sprat while he was away. And I expect Phillip wants to know how Desmond is getting on.” At the same time she could not help a pang because Phillip had always seemed to prefer Mrs. Neville’s flat to his own home.
“Oh now, you know very well that he and Desmond quarrelled over that girl, Lily Cornford, two years ago! Ever since then Desmond won’t speak to Phillip. No wonder! Look how he deceived his best friend!”
“Really, Mavis, I mean Elizabeth, you should not say such a thing!”
“It’s true, anyway! You see, you don’t know Phillip like I do!”
“I told you before, dear, that you are inclined to be too critical of others. It only hurts yourself, you know. One must try to live and let live. It’s the only way, I am sure.”
“All right, you tell that to Phillip when he comes home! You are always taking his part against me! You favoured him as a child! It isn’t fair!”
“That is not true, my girl! I have no favourites, as I’ve told you many, many times in the past. All you children, and your Father, are equally dear to me.” Immediately she regretted having been so unkind (as she thought) to her child, whose troubles and perplexities she knew so well; and behind all her care was a dread that she might have one of her attacks. She must be careful not to upset Elizabeth in any way.
By now the beauty of the spring day was made remote by care; but once they were on their way, and past the Obelisk, she felt happy again, living in the variety of life all around her in the streets—people whose feelings she could secretly share, their hopes and kindnesses to one another, their tragedies endured so bravely, their happy little family moments. Ah, there was the Old Vic, with its wonderful, wonderful plays of Shakespeare, week after week despite all the war-time worries. Yes, the war had brought people together in so many ways; God indeed did work in His own way, to bring beauty and love into the lives of everyone: if only they could see it was true!
And the Thames! Hetty had never ceased to feel the wonder of the river, every stone and brick beside it part of history. Oh, life was truly wonderful! But more was to come on this buoyant Spring day. Suddenly through the dusty glass window of the tram was to be seen the procession, lined up along the Embankment, just about to start off. The two got down at the next stop, and waited under the speckled shadows of the plane trees for the head of the column to pass.
“Oh dear, I do hope Doris has not missed it, Elizabeth.”
At the head was a tall girl carrying the Union Jack. She wore a smock with breeches and leggings, and on her head was a turned-up felt hat on which was pinned a rosette of red and green. How healthy she looked, with her coiled golden hair! Behind her walked another girl carrying a duck, with a notice round its neck, I have laid 31 eggs in 34 days, and I am still doing it.
“Poor thing,” exclaimed Elizabeth. “I think it’s a shame to make fun of a dumb creature!”
“Doris will be so disappointed not to be here.”
“Oh, Mother, stop worrying!”
Next came light-draught horses, pulling wagons and carts, all brightly painted, while the horses’ coats gleamed and their feet were dark with oil. In the wagons were more land girls, singing songs as they stood among sheaves of corn set in patterns of beech and box branches, and clusters of primroses and daffodils; while above them were banners, ‘Come with us into the country’, and ‘Join with us and work for Victory’. How Dickie would have loved seeing it, she thought, instead of being cooped up in the office. Still, he was happy on the ‘rods’, as he called them, of his allotment.
“There you are, Mother, I told you not worry!” cried Elizabeth. “There’s Doris, you see, in the queue! Look, over there, one of those girls singing!”
The wagons had passed; and among the girls carrying rakes, spades, shovels, and hoes, and wearing smocks, knickerbockers, high-legged boots and felt hats, walked about fifty girls in ordinary clothes, but with rosettes pinned to their jackets and blouses. Gould that be Doris? Surely not, for her hair was bobbed.
“Of course it’s Doris! I shall get my hair bobbed, too.”
It was quite a shock for Hetty: why, Oh why, hadn’t she told her mother that she was going to cut it? And could she really have joined up? Oh dear, what about Bedford College? She ought to work for her degree in History, if she was going to be a schoolteacher. She sighed. “Such a pity!”
I have lawns, I have Bowers,
I have fruit, I have flowers,
The lark is my morning’s alarmer;
So jolly girls now, here’s God speed to the plough,
Long life and success to the farmer!
Doris saw them as she marched by, and waved gaily.
Let the wealthy and Great
Roll in splendour and state,
I envy them not, I declare it;
I eat my own Lamb,
My Chickens and Ham,
I shear my own fleece and I wear it;
So jolly girls now, here’s
God speed to the plough,
Long life and success to the farmer!
By the time Hetty arrived at Hyde Park, to walk among pens of lambs, pigs, and poultry, to see happy faces and clear eyes, and to be told by her younger daughter that she had joined for six months—“Only until the autumn, Mummie!”—and that she would be able to work at her books at night, she felt that the only worry now was what Dickie would say.
The girl took home with her a copy of The Landwoman which she put on the sitting-room table, near the corner where her father usually sat in his armchair. When Richard came home, having worked until nearly 7 o’clock, he took it up, and was at once interested in an item that said the plague of moles in the country was due to all ferrets having been sent to France to kill rats in the base warehouses, and in the trenches.
“H’m,” he remarked. “Whoever heard of ferrets being used to kill moles? It’s the mouldiwarp catchers who have gone to France! Where did this come from?”
“Doris brought it home, Dickie. Some of the girls at London University have joined the Land Army just for the summer. They are going to do their studies in the evening, and on wet days.”
“That’s a sensible idea. Why doesn’t Doris go, too? It will do her the world of good.”
“I’ll tell her what you say, Dickie.”
“Oh, it’s nothing to do with me, really. It’s for her to decide, she’s of an age to make her own decisions now.”
He took up The Daily Trident, to read a forecast that the new Budget, to be announced on Monday, would contain a rise in Income Tax. Richard was already paying 2s. 3d. in the £, his annual salary being within the £160 to £500 class, at £350. And when on the Monday evening he read in The Pall Mall Gazette that there was not only no increase in tax for him, but an extra allowance of £25 had been given for a wife, he felt quite optimistic.
“Well, Hetty, it may interest you to know that you are worth more by £25 today than you were yesterday!”
“Well, I am glad to hear that I am of some value after all, Dickie.”
“Oh come, may I not make a joke for once in a while?”
“Yes of course, dear, naturally!”
“Well—— Just a moment. Ah, I see! The £25, after all, is but a nominal sum.”
“I thought it was too good to be true.”
“In practice it will work out at, let me see, a saving
to the household of just under £3. Against that, all letters will require a thr’penny ha’penny stamp instead of a penny. Tobacco is up, that doesn’t concern me any longer. The stamp duty on a cheque is to be raised to twopence. However, Doris being under eighteen years of age and still at home will entitle me to the same allowance as last year, £25. Of course, if she joins the Land Army, this relief may not be allowed.”
Hetty was silent.
“What is the situation, do you know?”
“I joined on Saturday, Father,” said Doris, coming into the room.
“Oh?” said Richard, looking at his wife. “You didn’t tell me that, Hetty.”
Her fatal desire not to upset anyone was once again the cause of upset. “Why don’t you tell me these things? Why are you so—— Why do you hide them from me? ’Pon my word, you treat me in my own house as though I were a bully, who cannot be told a blessed thing!”
“Well, you can’t, Father.”
“What?” He turned in his chair to look at Doris. “What do you mean by that remark?”
“That you are always bullying my Mother.”
“Doris, how dare you,” said Hetty.
“Leave the room!” shouted Richard. “Leave the room immediately!”
Doris got up, gathered her books, and walked out of the room. The front door closed.
“She shall not enter my house again until she has apologised!”
“Yes, Dickie. It was wrong of her to say that. It is all my fault. Please don’t upset yourself. I’ll bring in your tray. It’s a herb omelette, Doris got some eggs specially for you from the Parade on Saturday.”
“Oh. Then why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Doris wanted it to be a surprise.” She wept. It was always the same. Everything went wrong, however hard she tried. Perhaps the best thing she could do was to die.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake don’t turn on the water-works! Why can’t you think straight? You are afraid of me, I know it. But your fear creates these situations, you know.” He went on, protestingly as usual, “I am far from being a bully by nature. But it is my duty to try and see that things happen in an orderly and upright manner in this house.” He felt hopeless.
“It’s all my fault, Dickie. I should have told you, of course. Please do not take any notice of what was said by Doris. She is still terribly hurt by Percy’s death. She doesn’t say much, but she feels things the more because of it. She’s been working very hard, too, at college, to be a credit to her parents.”
“Well, we all work hard. I work hard, but I don’t complain! I do what I am supposed to do, as a normal thing, and accept what comes along with as good a grace as I can.”
“I think you are right about her working on the land, Dickie. It will tone her up.”
“I never said that, but I certainly hope it will. Where’s she gone now?”
“I expect next door.”
“No doubt complaining to Mr. Turney!”
“Oh no, she wouldn’t do that. Doris is very loyal, you know.”
He sat down again, and took up the paper. “Loyal, is she? I had not noticed it when she was here a moment ago.”
“It’s her nerves, I think. She also feels she isn’t wanted.”
“By whom, pray?”
Hetty felt a desire to laugh. It would be fatal. “I’ll get your supper, Dickie. It’s all ready in the oven.”
“In the oven? What, an omelette? What am I supposed to do with it, pray? Repair the soles of my boots?”
She could laugh now. Richard was mollified by the success of his joke.
“The gas is turned very low, Dickie.”
“Well, I haven’t had a herb omelette for many years now. Where did the herbs come from?”
“Doris brought them with the eggs.”
“Oh, she did, did she? Well, I expect she will do well on the land. After all, it’s in her blood, on both sides of the family. Now let us see what this celebrated herb omelette looks like, old girl.”
While Hetty was out of the room he looked at the Roll of Honour. Under Infantry his eye ran down to the words Gaultshire Regt. Nothing about Phillip; it would be too early; the lists were delayed, he had heard, lest information be given to the Germans. But there was one name which held his sight in that column of small print under KILLED: (temp) Lieutenant H. F. Turney. Some relation of Hetty’s, no doubt. It raised her in his eyes; and when he heard her coining, he got up quickly and opened the door for her, allowing her to pass, before closing it, as though he were still a young man, and she were the young woman he had wanted to marry.
Later, Doris apologised, formally and stiffly. He had meant to be affable about it, but her curt manner discomposed him. He could say nothing until she was almost out of the door, when he said, “Please try to close the door gently this time. Each time the lock is banged it is like hitting it with a hammer.”
Noiselessly the door was shut; he gave a sigh, and found that he was reading Bonar Law’s Budget Speech again without any feeling about what he was reading.
*
Day in the Royal Tennis Court ward of the Duchess of Gaultshire’s hospital meant relief from night—but day brought another kind of endurance, voices talking, talking.
“—as I was saying, Garfield chucked himself at the machine-gun, and that’s how he lost his testicles——”
“They’re off, as the monkey said, sitting on the circular saw——”
“That’s not funny, Brill.”
“—hard luck on his wife——”
“Steady on, you fellows, Garfield’s just coming——” Silence. Then the voice of Major Henniker-Sudley continued, “No, I couldn’t agree that that war correspondent’s account was propaganda. I saw the New Zealanders arrive on the 27th of March. They were in tremendous form—shaved, boots polished, webbing equipment khaki-blanco’d, even tin hats oiled. The wounded called out from the ambulances, ‘Gawd ’elp Jerry now’.”
The man in the next bed, Brill, was always discussing someone called Colin. “Colin slept with the Admiral’s wife when he went on leave. She told him he reminded her of her son. Any old excuse——”
The fool didn’t understand. He thought of Sascha, ‘all things to all men’, she had said.
The gramophone on the end table was a relief. It played always about this time, and the same record, sung by Clarice Mayne, accompanied by ‘That’ at the piano.
Give me a little cosy corner, and the boy that I love——
But why didn’t the fool change the needle, and put back the regulator to 78, instead of playing at 84?
—And the boy that I love.
The record began again, the needle grating as it jabbed the wax.
It was a relief when it stopped.
“I hand it to the doctors in this war. It was hell for them at the C.C.S. at Merville. Rasp, rasp, rasp with the silver saws, filling a tall wicker basket every quarter of an hour, legs and arms taken away by orderlies, who looked as though they’d had the treatment! They had the effect, without the action, if you understand my meaning.”
“I saw one of those young soldiers come in who’d shot himself through the wrist. The bloody fool didn’t know enough to do the job properly by putting a sandbag over it, before pulling the trigger. The M.O. saw the scorchmarks, halfway up his elbow.”
“What happened?”
“The doc took off his forearm, before the A.P.M. came round and spotted an S.I.W.”
“He deserved a court-martial. Why should that little tick get home to tell the tale ever afterwards, with a pension?”
“I don’t quite see it like that, you know, Brill. He shouldn’t have been sent out in the first place, in my opinion. You can’t put guts into a man if nature hasn’t done it first.”
“You’ve been reading that book again. What the hell you see in poetry beats me.”
“It’s damned good stuff, the first to tell the truth in this war. Haven’t you felt like that, during a counter-attack?”
“Of co
urse I have, but I don’t talk about it, let alone bleat about it afterwards. Who is he, anyway? Sounds like a Jew to me.”
The voice of Henniker-Sudley said, “The Sassoons are Parsees, Bombay merchants, I fancy.”
His mind wandered, came back with a start when at the other end of the ward, another voice said, “‘Spectre’s’ old man dropped a farthing in the grave as they fired the volley. Curious custom, that, to start the dead man off with something in the next world. It’s in all races, they still put out food for the pixies on Dartmoor, and the fairies in the Isle of Man.”
“The last pay of a soldier, when he’s for the town’s end,” said the voice of the man who had been reading the book.
Phillip wondered what ‘the book’ was, as he lay with eyeballs stung by tears. He dreaded the time coming when the bandages would be off, he could not face things again.
Eleven o’clock beef-tea came round. In fifteen minutes the Duchess would arrive.
“If they give us any more of this bloody broth, I’ll cat my heart up. They say the Duke has had nine and a half pounds of beef shin brought into the kitchen every day for the past thirty years. No wonder he looks like something out of a cave.”
“I’m told it’s mostly bison meat now. Too strong for my taste. Still, mustn’t grumble. You should taste the grub in Devonport Military Hospital.”
“Couldn’t be worse than Netley, old man. I was there last time I was hit. It was——”
“I was at Osborne first, in the Isle of Wight, but got the shove to Devonport. Robert Loraine, the actor, was there. Flying bloke. I got the push after three of us had got lost down a passage, and found ourselves in the Royal Family wing. Then the Queen came along. We didn’t recognise who she was until she sailed up to us, and said ‘Out of my way’.”
“Doesn’t sound like Queen Mary to me. Are you sure it wasn’t Queen Alexandra, I’ve heard she was always late for any appointment? They usually say, ‘Make way’, the equivalent of a Commanding Officer’s order when passing through troops.”
A Test to Destruction Page 25