14 July
The Tregaskis twins came over after breakfast to take me to lunch at Carligan. I walked a couple of miles to their place, while they rode bikes, one on either side of me, each a hand on my shoulder. Squire T. was at Truro, their mother homely and friendly. She was brought up in a large Irish family. We had cottage pie then strawberries and cream. Afterwards the twins planted me in a large leather chair in their father’s study, while I wondered what he would say if he came in suddenly, finding them rummaging in the drawers of his desk to find me a cigar, while I sat there, wearing a sort of dark Napoleonic hat which B. had dared me to wear, saying that it had been bought by her father, years ago, when he thought he was going to be appointed High Sheriff, only he wasn’t. We explored the outbuildings, and there was an old motor-car under a dust-sheet weighed down by bits of straw, etc. from starlings nesting in the roof above. We took it off, and tried to start the engine, J. having got a can of petrol from somewhere. I cleaned the plug, then the make-and-break, flooded the surface-carburettor, filled the cylinder with gas, called out, ‘Contact!’ while J. switched on. It fired, and thumped away, sending out clouds of blue smoke. I switched off, and looked at the oil level, it was well up, so asked if we ought to be doing what we were. B. said her father never gave it a thought; the De Dion hadn’t been driven for years. Anyway, I thought we ought to ask their mother, so her brother J. asked her and returned saying, ‘It’s all right to drive it’.
We pumped up the tyres, which were a bit cracked, and rather gingerly I tried the gears, after we’d shoved it out of the shed. The clutch worked smoothly so we set off around a field. Mrs. T. having no objection, we went back to Tregaskis House to tea. Miss S. was a bit anxious at first, thinking I’d pinched it without permission, but on being reassured said gaily, ‘Come along in and have some strawberries and cream’, which we did, to the strains of In a Monastery Garden muffled by the doors of the cabinet being closed, as the control plunger is still stuck at loud.
Afterwards I took them back home, and put the De Dion Bouton, now renamed Boanerges, in the shed.
After dinner Miss S. took me aside and said with a sigh, “Such a pity, that Captain T. drinks.” Then she said, “Oh, I am no better than a scandalmonger! Please never repeat what I said. What I intended to say, only please do not be hurt, is that I know what happened on the night of your arrival, and while I do not wish to blame anyone, I must tell you that it must never happen again. You see, I have known so many friends go to the wall through intemperance, young men with all the world before them, who ended up by sleeping on the Embankment, and earning an odd copper by holding horses’ heads in the Strand.”
The three met every day; then the twins were gone back to school, and he felt desolate until, remembering the Sithney girls, he took the penny steamboat across to the Pier and walked up the High Street to the shop. Editha was sitting in the glass sentry box. He lingered a moment in the doorway, regarding those bright brown eyes, the high forehead from which the brown hair was brushed back to fall, below the black ribbon at the nape of her neck, over the shoulders to her waist. Her ears were a delicate shape, and close to her head—an endearing sight. The nose was slightly aquiline, her teeth, fine and regular but slightly protruding, or so it seemed, for he had seldom seen her except when she was smiling at some gentle thought, or at him.
The female shop assistants, a contented and elderly lot, were watching the couple. Their faces showed pleasure. Miss Edie had been their favourite from her babyhood up.
“Good morning, Phil!”
“Good morning, Edie! I must make a purchase.” He was wearing a blue cornflower in his buttonhole, given him by Miss Shore that morning. Having bought a yard of black garter elastic, he took the flower and put it in the wooden egg with the bill and sixpence, then whizzed it over its wire. He watched her take out the flower, and make as if to pin it to her blouse; but changing her mind, she put it among the marigolds in the glass vase before her, and taking 1½d. from the till, whizzed it back in the wooden egg with a radiant smile.
“I’ll be off duty in five minutes. Do go up if you’d like to.” While he was sunning himself on the terrace beyond the french windows Beth came out and asked him if he were free on Sunday afternoon to come to tea. “And stay to supper if you feel like it.”
“Music afterwards? Oh good!”
“Mother and Father only allow hymns on Sunday, you know.”
“I like hymns. Such as Rock of Ages, Lead Kindly Light, and Many Brave Hearts are Asleep on the Deep.”
“That’s not a hymn, that’s a song!”
“How about Annie Laurie?”
“You’re being deliberately irreverent, aren’t you?”
“Well, not altogether. A love song is in a way a hymn. What about The Song of Solomon? That’s a love song.”
“But it’s in the Bible, and it foretells the love of Our Lord’s Mission on earth.”
“So does poetry, Beth. It all leads to God.”
“Are you being serious?”
“Perfectly. The purpose of God on earth is to create beauty in all His forms; you can see that in evolution, how birds’ feathers are beautiful, when once they were skin-wings.”
“I agree with you there. ‘All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small’. Do you call that poetry?”
“Of course. Just as the harmonium is music, or the song of the crow is music.”
“Now you’re being sarcastic! I believe you are really a wolf in sheep’s clothing!”
“No, I’m a ram in wolf’s clothing!”
“Whatever do you mean by that nonsense?”
“I mean that the crow is a faithful bird, and sings in a little under-voice to his mate on awakening, every morning. Or to the sky, for happiness that another day is starting. The same thing! If he hadn’t got a mate, he would be cawing for one.”
“Really, you do talk nonsense at times, Phillip!”
He felt deflated; what to him was an observed fact, was to Beth obvious nonsense. He felt he had let her down in her estimation of himself; and this idea, which he had not really believed, came again when Editha arrived with her mother to sit with them. Mrs. Sithney stayed until tea-time, during tea, and after tea, crocheting away, saying little, but occasionally putting in a question obviously to satisfy curiosity about his origins, if not his intentions. He invented information.
“My father used to go over a lot to Brussels before the war,” he told her, thinking of what Mr. Jenkins at home had told him years ago about himself, “to see his silkworm factory.”
“You mean a silk factory, do you not, Phillip?”
“Oh no, it is, or was, a silkworm factory. Father had an idea that he could invent a method by which silkworms could be trained to spin their silk direct on to bobbins, and so save their time and the factory’s in one go. I’m talking nonsense, really.” Obviously he had put his foot in it; Mrs. Sithney sat silent, as though disapproving. No, he wouldn’t accept for supper on Sunday; not after all the family had come back from chapel on Sunday afternoon.
“Well, thanks so much, Mrs. Sithney. It has been so enjoyable. Don’t take me too seriously will you? As a matter of fact, the silk people are trying to find a substitute for real silk. One of the fellows in the convalescent home, Captain Courtauld, whose people live at Nottingham, tells me that chemists are actually trying to find substitutes. Goodbye, Edie.”
“I’ll come to the door with you.” Downstairs she said, “Mother is a very truthful person, and doesn’t understand your fancies, Phil. I do,” she breathed, squeezing his hand.
It was a little after six o’clock when he reached the pier, to see the penny steamboat chuffing away to Flushing quay, so he went into the long bar of the Pier Hotel and ordered a double whiskey, sitting by himself and reliving old times with Jack Hobart and Freddy Pinnegar in the Angel at Grantham in the autumn of 1916, and with ‘Spectre’ a year later in Flossie Flowers’ pub in Jermyn Street. What was a girl’s innocent face compa
red with such friendships, such times together, gone for evermore? And yet—that tremulous hand-clasp, the gentle voice, I do.
That evening sky and water burned with sunset. He remained on the quay until red became purple, and crossing over on the ferry boat, got back to Tregaskis House when dinner was over, to hide among the trees when he saw the others strolling on the lawn with Miss Shore, enjoying the warmth and colour of the day’s end to the strains of A Monastery Garden. Dodging back from tree to tree, he hastened unseen down to the quay, and on impulse hired a boat with an outboard motor, and set out to cross the bay to the lighthouse with a two-gallon tin of petrol-oil on board, which cost him £1, for petrol was no longer publicly sold. It had come from one of the crew of an M.L. There was a nice pub in St. Mawes, where he had taken Wetley one evening, and they had had a good time in the Rising Sun. Now Wetley was gone away; life was always like that, everything ending, every parting a little death.
Not finding what he was seeking in the Rising Sun he went back to the boat and made for the lighthouse at the entrance to the Roads. Could he make the Scillies on two gallons? Or rather one gallon, for he would have to come back. Grant-Browne, the rude Highlander, had spent a couple of nights in the Scillies, with the crew of an M.L., and been sent away on his return by Miss Shore. What about navigating the Manacles? If he went down, well, he would go down and be with Jack Hobart and ‘Spectre’ West.
There was a fort near the lighthouse, and as he was passing, the boat lifting and dropping in the choppy tide, a siege-gunner with a megaphone called out, “Go back! Go back to harbour!”; so turning round, he had the wind with him, and enjoyed the rolling of the boat, then the plunge, waves riding him high before the drop and wallow in each succeeding trough. Thoroughly exhilarating!
“My Gor’, us thought you wasn’t comin’ back, midear!” said the boat owner at Flushing quay.
He got in without being seen, and going up to his bedroom, unobserved by the others in the lighted drawing-room, went to bed and read Clayhanger until Nurse Goonhilly came up to tell him shortly that it was after midnight, and his light must go out. Paraffin was rationed she said, and the batteries were low. “You ought to know better, Colonel Maddison!”
*
In the morning, after breakfast, she said, “Miss Shore would like to see you in her boudoir, Colonel Maddison!”
“‘Colonel’,” tittered Swayne. “‘Boudoir’! What next?”
“Yes, ‘Colonel’,” repeated Nurse Goonhilly. “And ‘boudoir’! You’ll see, Swayne.”
“You sound like a duenna out of The Boccaccio, Goony dear.”
“I don’t want any of your cheek, Swayne.”
“‘Swine’, you mean,” said Coupar. “This kipper is dried up, Goony darling. Can I have a boiled egg?”
“You’re lucky to get anything, Coupar.”
“Brigadier-General Coupar, please,” said Swayne. “Or should it be Lance-Corporal? I hear Mr. Barley Swann is now a Rear-Admiral. Very much rear.” Then, as the nurse went out, “Doesn’t get his greens, I fancy. Oh, so pure, in a monastery garden!”
Phillip went to see Miss Shore in her room, with its many photographs in silver frames among vases of flowers. He was prepared for a reprimand.
“So you have been hiding your light under a bushel, Mr. Maddison!” she said, with a shy smile and movement of head that swept his face momentarily with a glance almost coy. “Did you see yesterday’s Times?”
“No, Miss Shore,” he replied, puzzled.
“Then I am the first to congratulate you? How splendid! I say it with all my heart! I am so proud to think that one of my ‘young men’, as I think of you all——” Miss Shore, almost overcome by sentiment, fussed with a tiny laced handkerchief—“But you must see for yourself——” She gave him the newspaper folded back at a column headed The London Gazette, with its sub-heading Decorations and Awards.
“There you are, dear boy! I am so proud——”
“Good heavens! There must be some mistake!”
It was unbelievable! But there it was, under the section Distinguished Service Order—His heart thudded.
“A letter came for you yesterday by the second post, but you were not in all day, so I kept it for you, as it had the Royal Cypher on the envelope!”
“Will you excuse me if I open it, Miss Shore?”
“Do, please! Oh, I am so excited!”
Within a covering letter was a sheet, typed with a blue ribbon, in italics.
Awarded the Distinguished Service Order. (temp.) Lieutenant (A/Lt. Col.) Phillip Sidney Thomas Maddison (attd.) 1st Gaultshire regt, Commanding 1st Composite Battalion, British Expeditionary Force in France. For conspicuous devotion to duty and gallantry. Throughout the operations in March 1918, he displayed marked courage and determination as a leader, especially at Albert on the night of 26/27 March in an attack on superior German forces in the town, resulting in the capture of many prisoners, followed by a skilful withdrawal through encircling enemy forces. It was entirely due to his example, courage, and determination that the Battalion did so well in the face of outnumbering enemy forces.
He is an extremely keen and resourceful Commanding Officer.
He did not read all of this, but glanced at the sheet of paper, before dropping it on the table; then recovering his manners he offered it to Miss Shore, saying, “I don’t deserve it. The man who wrote that is dead, owing to me.”
When he had told her part of the story, she said, “I, too, have lost dear friends, and reproached myself afterwards that, if only I had known what I knew later, I might have been able to help.” She yearned with sympathy on the chaise longue. “But you are so young! Do, please, believe me when I say that Time will heal the memory—meanwhile, I ask you, most sincerely, not to be too hard on yourself!”
“Miss Shore, do the others know about this?”
“I have told no-one. Oh dear, I thought you would be so glad, and proud, to learn that you had been paid such a wonderful tribute! And at your age, how splendid!”
If only he had gone down with Westy.
At two o’clock on that Sunday afternoon, having drunk seven double whiskeys in the Pier Hotel by himself, he walked out at closing time and knew that he had only a short while before he passed out. He managed to get to the Sithney’s side-door, and with a feeling that all below his head was without weight turned the handle and, with the door safely shut behind him, gained enough hope to haul himself up the stair-rail to the landing, where, locking himself in the lavatory he knelt down and all dissolved in his mind except the remote need to remain on his knees waiting until froth and nausea gave way to further need to hide. Time went by without knowledge of its passing. At last he got up, shuddering with cold, and made his way to Editha’s bedroom, where he crawled under the bed and became unconscious.
When next he was aware of himself he heard the sister saying, “Oh Phil, how could you, and on Edie’s birthday?”
“Don’t tell anyone,” he managed to say.
“They know already. Edie came in, and I heard her cry out before she fainted.”
He crawled out, and got on his feet. “It’s no use saying I’m sorry, I know, but I am terribly sorry.”
“Why did you do it? And on a Sunday——”
“I don’t know. I’ll go. Oh yes, I must first apologise to your parents——”
“I don’t think that would mend matters. I’ll tell them that you have, though.”
“Is Edie very upset?”
“Yes, very!”
“Might I see her for a moment?”
“What good would it do, Phil? You must never see her again.”
“Very well, but please tell her I am truly sorry.”
Under the tan of summer her face was almost as pale as his own. “Goodbye, Phil. I’ll come and let you out——”
“No, I can do it. Really——”
“No, I must make sure that nobody will see you.”
She peered into the street. It was quiet and empty, pe
ople were at their tea. “You realise that you’ve made it quite impossible, don’t you, for you to see Edie again?”
“I always seem to make things impossible. Well, thank you all for your kindness to a rotter.”
When he got back to the house he avoided the room where they were having tea, and, creeping upstairs, locked himself in his bedroom. When Nurse Goonhilly knocked on a panel, he lay still on the bed.
“I know where you’ve been! And a nice way you chose to celebrate your success! The whole town knows of it! What did you want to do it for? Come on, open the door, and drink this warm milk!”
When he would not open the door she went away; and returned with Miss Shore, followed by other footfalls. He heard Swayne suggest a ladder to the windows. Coupar capped this by saying, “How about fetching the Fire Brigade, Miss Shore?”
“Oh dear, do you think he might set fire to himself? I have heard of such things happening.”
At this he got up and opened the door.
The next morning Miss Shore told him that he would have to go away. She could not risk a recurrence of what had happened, she said. He listened to an earnest and embarrassing lecture on the evils of drink.
“I had a very dear friend, he was very dear indeed to me, when I was young, but he drank, Colonel Maddison, and today he is holding the heads of horses! No, I am afraid we cannot give you another chance. In any case your time is nearly up. Dr. Bull has arranged for you to be transferred to Devonport Military Hospital. You will be leaving this afternoon. I have asked Jack to take your bags in the governess cart to Flushing, and a taxi is to meet you on the pier and take you to the station. I will say goodbye, now. You will try, for your mother’s sake, to overcome your—your terrible propensity, won’t you?”
A Test to Destruction Page 32