A Test to Destruction

by Henry Williamson

  “Yes, Miss Shore. And thank you for all you have done for me.”

  *

  Devonport Military Hospital. Patients allowed out 2 p.m.–7 p.m. daily. Prison-like high walls; small area of garden divided off from a smaller area in which the venereal cases were isolated and totally enclosed.

  Plymouth Hoe. Broad parade whereon walked or sat seemingly thousands of young officers, of all shapes, sizes and classes; one-third of them intent on trying to get to know the few score of girls in the summer weather. A boring, arid place, until an afternoon in Genoni’s Café when a young junior subaltern across the table offered him a cigarette from a gold case. He explained that he was at Durnford Street hospital, that the case was a twenty-first birthday present from his mother. Thenceforward they met every afternoon outside the Theatre Royal.

  It was a gay summer friendship by the sea, with nothing to check mutual liking. ‘Gibbo’, from Eastbourne, and ‘Maddo’, from south-east London, ate oysters and drank stout in Jones’s Oyster Bar; they walked miles up and down Union Street, seeking interest and pleasure; joined the promenaders upon the broad asphalt of the Hoe, laughing and talking; visited Williams’ and Goodbody’s for tea, saw flicks at the Savoy, Gaiety, the Palladium, drawn by Charlie Chaplin or William Hart; they called, as time of return within walls drew near, at Nicholson’s sawdust bar for crab sandwiches, the long bar of the Royal for sherry, the Poseda for Pimm’s No. 1 stout, the Athenaeum where many midshipmen were to be seen; or descending to shadier, more attractive places, drank beer in the Golden Lion, the Post Office, the Corn Exchange, the Old Chapel, where port and madeira came from the wood at sixpence a dock glass. In one sailor’s pub they were shown the skeleton of a baby in an ebony coffin over the counter—not a place to revisit, they agreed.

  Gibbo sometimes stuck on a Charlie Chaplin moustache, while wearing an eyeglass with his usual languid manner. They were photographed together, Phillip with cap on one side of his head, a lieutenant’s stars on his shoulder straps, but no ribands on his left breast—thus keeping faith with the undistinguished dead.

  It was a tremendous friendship while it lasted; and it lasted all their lives—in Phillip’s memory. Soon they were to go their separate ways. In the meantime they met ‘Lux’, a young Marine who had been at school with ‘Gibbo’. The two men talked of Eton, and all Phillip could think to say was, “Did you by any chance know a chap named Swayne?” Lux and Gibbo laughed lightly and replied, “Oh Swayne! Ha-ha-ha, oh yes, we knew Swayne. Have you met Swayne?”

  He told them all about the Algerian wine party.

  “Oh yes, that sounds like Swayne, indeed yes,” and all three laughed gently, lightly, together.

  Dear delightful Gibbo. One afternoon the sunshine seemed not to glitter. “I shan’t be seeing you tomorrow, Maddo, my dear. I’m being boarded, and go home by the afternoon train.”

  A last toasted-tea-cake at Genoni’s, a last dozen oysters at Jones’s, two final docks of dark brown sherry at the Old Chapel; and then the hand clasp, Gibbo saying calmly through his teeth, “Well, all the best, Maddo. I suppose I’ll be back in France this time next month.”

  “I want to get back as soon as I can, Gibbo.”

  “Pity we aren’t in the same regiment, Maddo. It would be fun going over the top together.”

  “Yes, indeed it would, Gibbo.”

  “So long, Maddo.”

  “So long, and all the best, Gibbo.”

  So long—for ever.

  *

  Phillip asked for a board the next day. One among several score of officers, all needed for the coming Allied counter-offensive on the Western Front, he was perfunctorily passed fit for Active Service, and given three weeks’ leave and a railway warrant to London. It was 19 July. The mid-day editions of the London evening papers carried thick black headlines of Foch’s counter-offensive on the Marne, with sketches arrow’d in the shoulders of the great salient left by the German drive to Paris in May, when the city had been shelled by a long-range gun, and from the Eiffel Tower at night could be seen the lights of the battlefield beside the Marne.

  *

  It was too early to go home, so he decided to call on Mr. Howlett, his old manager in the office, and was taken to lunch in the London Tavern.

  “I always knew you had it in you, Phillip. Downham’s a colonel, too, you know, so is young Sparks of the Accident Department at Head Office. He’s got the M.C. as well as the D.S.O. I often wonder how you young fellows will settle down to office routine after the war? It can’t be long now, the Germans are very shaky over raw materials, the Blockade is having its effect. Well, I shan’t be sorry, apart from everything else, it’s been a hard grind to get through the work. We’ve lost a lot of fellows, you know, over eighty have been killed in the various branches in London and the provinces. I saw your father the other day, he always comes in to pay his midsummer premium. You have some commission due to you, I’ll keep it until you come back, shall I?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Howlett. Will Downham be coming back to the Branch, d’you think?”

  “I see no reason at present why he won’t be. He was in the other day. He’s commanding a Young Soldiers’ battalion at Colchester.”

  If Downham comes back, I won’t literally be seen for dust, thought Phillip, imagining the new Norton motorcycle he had ordered, the first on the list of post-war deliveries. He would go down to the West Country, and live alone in the woods. This feeling came again that evening when he went down to Mrs. Neville’s flat. Seeing him, Sprat almost curled tail stump to nose; the little dog looked most unhappy until suddenly it ran up the stairs and hid under the table.

  “I know how he feels, Mrs. Neville.”

  “It is only for the moment, Phillip. Time restores, you know, as well as heals.”

  He looked at her sharply. “Why do you say ‘heals’, Mrs. Neville?”

  “Oh, no particular reason, dear,” she said gently. His eyes had a fixed remote look; the scarred skin of his face seemed stretched over nose, cheek-bones, and jaw. “Things will seem a bit strange at first, Phillip, they’re bound to.” She went on, after a few moments of unhappy silence, “I understood why you didn’t reply to my letter, congratulating you on your—award, is that the word? Also, you must have had a great many letters of congratulation.”

  “Five, Mrs. Neville. One from Freddy Pinnegar, one from Mr. Howlett at the office, and one each from Gran’pa, Aunt Marian and Uncle Hilary, who asked me to get in touch with him.”

  “You will, I suppose?” She knew from Phillip’s mother that Hilary Maddison had bought back family land in the West Country; and that he had no children of his own.

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Neville. How is Desmond?”

  “Oh, my son can be relied upon to look after himself, you know that! He’s guarding the East Riding against German raiders, or was when I last heard. I’ve no need to worry myself over Desmond!” She went on to ask about his parents. “I expect Father is very proud of you now, Phillip! I often see him going to his allotment in the evenings, wheeling his barrow-load of tools. He was very pleased to see you, I expect?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Neville.”

  “Of course he was, dear! Your Mother came down here, waving Grandpa’s Telegraph when you were in the papers. I can tell you, it was quite a local sensation. Did you hear that?”

  The terrier who had been shivering under the table crept out, and lifting up its head, uttered a long, cooing howl. Then turning away, it went to its rug under Mrs. Neville’s bed. Phillip got up.

  “Well, I mustn’t keep you, Mrs. Neville. Goodbye.”

  “Phillip!” She turned in her chair, round-eyed. “What is the matter, dear? I’ve felt all the time you’ve been here that something is worrying you. Won’t you tell me? You know that you can trust me with your confidence, surely, by now?”

  He dropped back into his chair, all sharp bones she thought, knees sticking out of trousers, thin wrists, neck and bony skull. She caught her breath with the pity of
it.

  “I wish I hadn’t come home,” his voice said levelly, behind the half-shaded face.

  “You felt like that when you came home after 1914, dear. It will pass.”

  “Do you know, Mrs. Neville, I’ve always felt more or less like this since I was a child, and Mother had scarlet fever! Mavis and I went away to stay with Uncle Hilary and Aunty Bee. When Mother came to fetch me, I hid, and wouldn’t kiss her. You know, to be truthful, I never really got back my old feeling for her again. At the time I didn’t know why I felt that I wanted to pay her out, for having me sent away. My feeling for my father had already gone by then. It wasn’t his fault, or Mother’s. It isn’t Mavis’ fault that she’s what she is. But the truth is, I can’t bear them any longer——”

  She began to feel swelled with pain as she looked at him; something had happened to him: the old Phillip, gay and full of fun, who could always laugh at himself, was gone. She wanted to comfort him, but was impotent to say or do anything, and from the swelled feeling tears oozed, to run down her cheeks. “Sprat knows, Phillip,” she managed to say. “Look at him, the little dear, he knows what you are feeling.” The dog had crept back into the room, and was staring at his old master. “Make a fuss of him, dear!” she cried.

  “I don’t want to,” he said. The dog was now hiding its head in her skirt. “I must go now, Mrs. Neville.”

  “Come and see me again, Phillip. I’m always here, you know,” she managed to say, with an attempt at gaiety.

  Chapter 16

  ROSES AND REWARDS

  He went back after only four days of his leave to Landguard. To his relief, Denis Sisley was in the orderly room.

  “You’re entitled to put up the cherry ripe riband with the blue bars, you know. Oh yes, rather! No need to wait until you go to Buck House. By the way, on Wednesday the Colonel is taking a bunch of the old sweats to Husborne for Minden Day. He’s away in London at the moment, but you’re to attend the party, so let me see that manly breast properly adorned.”

  “Minden Day?”

  “First of August. You’ll have to eat your rose in the evening, washed down by bubbly. It’s an old custom, and apparently not done to ask why.”

  On arrival with other senior officers of the Regiment at the Abbey Phillip was led to a large bedroom with a four-poster bed, a thick blue carpet which muffled his footfalls, and, among other furniture, a writing desk inlaid with lighter woods in an intricate pattern of flowers, above which was a level top behind a gilt trellis. Here stood a large gold bowl of red and yellow roses, flanked by candlesticks of the same metal, each nearly two feet tall and fluted above stepped-up bases. His room was behind the red-baize door preserve. Wonder at his position possessed him; how had it happened? With no belief in his own powers, he thought of himself as evasive of all real life, unlike other men, who got to and held their positions by deliberate force of will. Everything so far in his life had happened in spite of himself, all was due to a series of flukes. He had known that when having lunch with Mr. Howlett during which the idea of going back to the Moon Fire Office after the war had been unthinkable.

  A double knock on the door. “Come in!” The door opened, and Colonel Vallum entered.

  “Hullo, Maddison. I’ve come to offer my congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Colonel.”

  “Vallum to you. How are you feeling? All the gas effects cleared up? Good. What wonderful roses. I’ve got some in my room. That’s an old moss rose, you don’t see many of them today. Good to see you again.”

  “When do we wear our roses? Tonight?”

  “Tomorrow. One of each colour, on the left side of the service cap. They’ve been practising Trooping the Colour all this afternoon. A bit ragged, inevitably, but these boys are coming on nicely.”

  Phillip wanted to ask what the origin of the roses was, but forebore: he imagined that it was an incident similar to that when the Cherrypickers got their nickname, after eating cherries on their way up to some old battle. Perhaps it was Minden? He did not like to ask, so powerful a personality was Colonel Vallum to him, with that rock-like steadiness behind massive imperturbability; before which Phillip’s inner core of diffidence revealed itself in the sudden remark, “You know, sir, I feel a complete fraud to be here. I did nothing, really, it was all a tremendous fluke—Albert, I mean.”

  “I think we all feel like that when we think about ourselves.” Behind the held-back glance of grey eyes was friendliness. “These things are after all a tribute to the Regiment.” The speaker noticed Phillip’s glance at the maroon riband, with its miniature bronze cross: the ten-thousandth glance he had had to endure with equanimity. “After all, nothing is ever done without one’s men. Otherwise such things would have no justification, as I see it, in modern war. And talking about flukes,” went on Vallum, “Minden was a classic example of a battle won almost by chance. As you know, in the Seven Years War, Austria, France, Russia, Sweden and Saxony combined to knock out Prussia under Frederick the Great. In the end we went to help Prussia, sending the equivalent of a small expeditionary force of infantry and cavalry. There was a gale blowing on August the First, 1759, and our infantry advanced through a mistake in delivering an order against the French flank. We went up through some rose gardens, and helped ourselves, whence these”—he pointed to the blooms in the silver gilt bowl—“and caught the French on the hop. The cavalry under Sackville didn’t follow through, so the infantry went on to victory by themselves. So here we are!”

  “Have you read, by any chance, the poems called Counter Attack, sir?”

  “Oh yes. I read them in course of duty. I’m Intelligence at the War House, for my sins.”

  “What do you think of them, sir?”

  “Oh, I think we’ve all felt like that, at one time or another. I’m no judge of poetry, but I heard Winston Churchill at White’s talkin’ about them the other day. ‘Cries of pain wrung from soldiers during a test to destruction’, were his words. Well, I must bathe, and dress for dinner. See you downstairs. By the way, Maddison, I asked you to call me Vallum.”

  *

  August the First opened calm and clear. Phillip was awake, and reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness when bugles sounded Reveille. Almost at once came the sound of drums; he went to his open window; the band was approaching the Abbey from the park. Entering under the Gate House, they marched round the courtyard upon which his windows looked. Under the sun, now burnishing the sloping roofs and chimney stacks of the far side of the Abbey and casting shadows on the cobblestones behind the Drum Major twirling his gold stick, the walls resounded with the crash and blare of the Minden March. The side drummers wore white leather aprons, the bass drummer a leopard skin. All wore roses in caps and upon the cords of the drums. He saw heads leaning out of windows to left and right, some above pyjama coats, like himself.

  When the band had marched away under the arch of the Gate House he flung on burberry and made for the bathroom, where he quickly shaved while water gushed from a massive silver tap into the deep and narrow bath, set on a lead base to trap and lead away splashings. The bath, enclosed in mahogany, was deep enough to drown two people at once. He filled it a third full, over a foot deep, and got in, to lie down, pull himself up and soap himself quickly, then dipping again, stood up and dried in a huge towel while the water gurgled away down the trap. Others would be wanting the bathroom; he was out within three minutes of entering, to see Vallum walking down in bathrobe and red Algerian slippers without heels, like those brought back by Grandpa and Mr. Newman from their travels years ago.

  The Trooping the Colour took place at the other end of the park, on the parade ground of the Command Depôt. The G.O.C. Eastern Command took the salute on a dais, the senior officers standing behind the Colonel of the Regiment; behind them were other officers from the hospital. Everything looked new—the pressed tunics and trousers of the troops taking part, roses in their service cap bands, rifle butts gleaming with oil, the Colour adorned with roses. He quivered, near t
o tears; shook back his feelings, while his mind burned within ancient sunlight of Somme and Bullecourt, Poperinghe, the Bull Ring at Etaples, the white chalk parapets of the Bird Cage, the brown desolation of the Messines Ridge. Posterity, posterity!—a sentence from Francis Thompson’s essay on Shelley ran in his head with the beat of the drums—posterity which goes to Rome, and weeps large-sized tears, carves beautiful inscriptions, over the tomb of Keats; and the worm must wriggle her curtsey to it all, since the dead boy, wherever he be, has quite other gear to tend. Never a bone the less dry for all the tears!

  And now it was ending; and he wanted it to go on, for ever and for ever, in the sunlight which was shining on the dead, in the spirit which carried all who had walked away from love at home and found a greater love in friendship of men like Father Aloysius in the land of pain and destruction; but it was over; and the battalion of Young Soldiers was marching away, the column getting smaller against the dark hutments of military servitude.

  The officers and sergeants waited on the men’s dinners, the tables set with vases of roses and pint glasses of ale, roast pork, baked potatoes, batter pudding with chopped sage and onions, and then plum duff with dates instead of currants. Then to a cold luncheon in the sergeants’ mess, after which the Colonel of the Regiment proposed the King, and the Duke made a speech, congratulating the Regimental Sergeant-major, one of the original Mons sergeants of the First battalion, with his Military Cross and Distinguished Conduct Medal ribands, and five wound stripes.

  To rest; and at night a dinner in the Great Hall at Husborne, over a hundred officers, Phillip at one end of the high table, eating a rose petal by petal and washing it down with champagne which (Lord Satchville told him afterwards) was cider, matured in bottle for twelve years in the cellars, and ‘indistinguishable from all but the best vintages in the caves of Rheims, where expert cellarman turn the bottles, with a special flick of the wrist, every so often, with inherited skill’.