A Test to Destruction

by Henry Williamson

  “No,” replied Gene. “Have you?”

  “I’ve got no money.”

  “You know, Phil, I feel disappointed in you. I used to admire you quite a lot, and tell my friends you were a D.S.O. colonel——”

  “Yes, you told me that, when I turned up at the Pop a mere loot!”

  “It’s not so much that, but when they read in the Mirror that you were—well, in Wormwood Scrubs—I just didn’t know what to say. You were a sort of hero to me before, you see.”

  “Ah, heroes, my dear Eugene! Now there’s a real one over there! My God! If it isn’t Bill Kidd!!” He ran across the street to where Bill Kidd stood outside a picture palace, dressed as an Arab sheik, sunburn paste, sword and all, but wearing his own extravagant moustaches.

  “Blow me down if it isn’t my Mad Son! Well, sink me sideways! Once seen, never forgotten! You old crab wallah, you! Got me pinched by Jerry, you double-crossing son of a lamp-post! By God, I’m glad to see you, old boy! You got blinded by mustard gas, I heard. Poor old ‘Spectre’ gone, dammit. You’ll never guess who’s my assistant, or trainee, as the bastards who run this place call him. Your old batman, O’Gorman! Remember him? We often have a jaw about you, and the old days. I got him a job, from the Regimental Association employment register.”

  “May I present a friend of mine, Mr. Eugene Goulart. Major Kidd. He’s got the Military Cross, you see, Gene—and none deserved it more. A real hero!”

  “Gar’n!” said Kidd. “You did bloody well yourself, and don’t you forget it! O’Gorman tells a different yarn to yours, old boy. He says you saved him from a court martial, by refusing to give evidence about his cork-belt.”

  “I don’t understand!”

  “O’Gorman didn’t bother to put one on, and ‘Spectre’ made him put on his, when the mine had sunk the ship. Don’t pretend you didn’t know that!”

  “But before that, I told O’Gorman to take his off, Bill! Together with all his equipment—when I sent him to find ‘Spectre’!”

  “Well, that isn’t what O’Gorman told me, old boy. He said he never had a bloody belt in the first place, and never wore one all the time he was on the ship. And furthermore, my Mad Son, he says it was through you that the enquiry was stopped! He knew you were at the Duke’s hospital by the way. He was at the Command Depôt across the park, and pissed himself nightly in case you sent for him to ask him questions.”

  “My God, and I’ve been thinking the exact opposite for nearly a year now, Bill!”

  “Ger’t’y’r!” retorted Bill Kid, preening his moustaches. “Who’r’y’r kiddin’?”

  “You! You King of the Crab Wallahs!”

  They talked happily of old times, while Eugene stood by, feeling out of it, and also resenting Phillip’s delight at meeting such a person.

  “What happened to Ah Chum Poo, Bill? Did you ever hear?”

  Bill Kidd waited, a look of relish upon his face, while Phillip explained to Gene that the Chinese labourer had driven a camouflaged steam-roller, to bring up water during the March retreat. Gene didn’t think it all funny when Kidd said, “The silly f——r got his one-piecee millee bombs mixed up with the coal and blew the bloody thing, with him to b——y! Well, so long my Mad Son! Bless you, dear boy. You were a bloody good C.O., and don’t you forget it! I read you’d done a stretch in the old Scrubs, like all the best people, sooner or later. Silly bastards, calling it arson! You ought to have told them it was due to ‘fire caused by spontaneous combustion,’ like our billet at Senlis! D’you remember my Court of Enquiry findings? That’s enough for those inquisitive sons of bitches! Well, cheerio for now, I must do my stunt, I suppose. I’m the door wallah combined with Shagbag the Tailor—the bloody film’s about a silly bastard called that! Happy days!”

  Happy days with Gene were over, too, it seemed. With veiled irony under his sadness Phillip noted the details of the end of their friendship. After more aimless walking about, Gene finally invited him to have lunch with him in Tiger’s Apex House, where they sat at a table for two while Gene studied the menu, finally ordering sausage and mash for Phillip (10d.) and a mixed grill for himself (2s. 4d.). But then, thought Phillip afterwards, it was the same pattern as with Desmond: he had always invited them to be his guests, without actually putting it that way; they had always come, he had always paid. That had been the pattern. Mother had always given way to Elizabeth when she had bullied her for money, and that was the normal pattern to Elizabeth. In nature, the parent fed the young, and the young went to the parent to draw warmth, food, and protection. Until Mother turned against Elizabeth, Elizabeth would treat her the same way, and not learn by necessity to stand on her own feet. The same with Father and himself. Now it was wonderful to feel free of one another.

  *

  “You know, Mum, I am sure it was a good thing that all that fuss happened. Honestly, I never knew half the time what I was saying, about the cigarette case, I mean. I suppose it had burned into me so many times when I was a kid, the injustice I mean, and then to be smudged over in my mind until it became a sort of murky gramophone record in my memory, and out it came when Father used the word ‘honour’. I felt quite light-headed while I was shouting at him, rather like going over the top.”

  Later he said, “The spirit of hate in newspapers has rather maimed Father, you know. Also, he’s so honest himself that he thinks everyone else is honest, too. That Corpse Factory story was a deliberate fake, you know. And when I think of how our fellows kept on—and the Germans kept on—both in the same hell—and all in vain——”

  And later, “Well, it was hell for most of them. I was really very lucky, you know. I learned something out there which people at home have missed. I’m much luckier than Father. He never really had a chance, did he? I mean, look at the way his father behaved towards him! I hope he gets his Special’s medal. If anyone deserves it, he does. I’ve always remembered how he stuck it after that Zeppelin torpedo had knocked him out, and covered him with powdered glass in Nightingale Grove, that night when Lily Cornford and her mother were killed. I think he’s probably still shell-shocked, you know.”

  *

  Phillip wrote to Desmond, now learning to farm as a pupil in Yorkshire, sponsored by the uncles in Nottingham. Phillip asked in the letter if it would be convenient to let him have some repayment of the money lent to him during the past four years. He had kept a careful account, he wrote, and the total was £39 10s.; which of course, he added, did not include the dinners and theatres they had been to together, as Desmond had been his guest.

  Back came an answer on an unsigned postcard.

  £39 10s.! Think again! For I should hate to have to write to the Duke of Gaultshire and tell him that one of his guests was a swindler!

  Desmond must still be very bitter to write like that, thought Phillip, before the fire in his dug-out, snug in the rainy night. A tweed blanket—one of half-a-dozen taken as souvenirs from No. 6 Rest Camp, two of which had been made by a tailor into overcoats—hung across the french windows. He sipped tea made in his 1908 scout’s billycan. A pity about Desmond and Eugene, but it was his own fault—he had made the nest warm for those two cuckoos.

  *

  By day he walked many miles into Kent, sometimes with Julian. Then one morning he read in a newspaper in the Free Library that a new Club for writers was to be formed in London, with premises in Long Acre, where once a week young authors and journalists might foregather to discuss literary matters and listen to lectures by famous writers.

  Thither the next Thursday evening Phillip went, and this led to an idea of becoming a journalist in Fleet Street; which in turn led to Thomas Turney, after summoning all his strength to leave his fireside, taking his grandson to the City to introduce him one February morning of a biting north-east wind to a former Lord Mayor, Sir Timothy Vanlayitt Sterneau, from whose firm M.C. & T. had long bought their paper.

  *

  Phillip thought that the only word to describe Sir Timothy was the Victorian word dignitary.
He was a living effigy of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March: not a ridiculous figure, not at all, as Julian Warbeck would have seen him, but one certainly oozing the comfortable spirit of gold transmuted from the sap of many primeval trees turned first into wood-pulp then into paper.

  “May I introduce my grandson, Lt.-Col. Phillip Maddison, Sir Timothy.”

  Tall silk hat with curly brim, unnaturally dark curly moustachios and eyebrows, thin face the hue of thousands of grilled rump steaks, frock coat revealed under greatcoat with astrakan collar, pointed boots shining black under grey box-cloth sides fastened by small flat buttons of mother-of-pearl—surely a concession to Edwardian fashion by a Victorian? Protruding starched white cuffs and crested gold links, immaculate pink nails, ridged and polished on long fine fingers—two of which, after the Dignitary had bent down to listen to Thomas Turney introducing his nephew, immediately felt into a waistcoat pocket and fished out a pasteboard card, simultaneously with fingers of the other hand seeking elsewhere a gold pencil with diamond slide—thumb pushing out the lead—card poised——

  “I’ll give you my card to take to Lord Castleton’s Chief Private Secretary in Foundry House Square. You are Colonel——?”

  “Oh, Mr. Maddison now, sir. I was not a regular soldier.”

  The City dignitary gave him a smile of brown and gold teeth and said, “As you wish, Mr. Maddison,” and having written on the pasteboard and held it out, acknowledged Phillip’s raised bowler and strode away down Ludgate Hill.

  “You’ll find Foundry House Square—down by—the river.” Thomas Turney struggled for breath. Finally, “Be—modest in your—approach, m’boy—and temperate in—all you do.”

  The shaking, rasping struggle for breath began again. At last, wheezing and gasping, the old man managed to say, “I think—I’ll take—a cab—home.” Phillip called a taxi, gave the address, and helped in his grandfather. The last words he heard from him were, “Guard well thy tongue.”

  Phillip followed the taxi round the corner down to the Embankment, and turned into Upper Thames Street, and so to Foundry House Square, and the principal newspaper of Lord Castleton. Walking up steps he went through a heavy mahogany door, to enter a hall with a long counter at one end, behind which stood men scrutinizing forms and talking to callers about filling them in. His heart sank. Would he have to work behind the counter, at one of the many tables all so close together? Beyond was a glass house, with the words CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS MANAGER on it.

  He was shown to a lift, taken to an upper floor and into a small office where sat a pale, clean-shaven young man wearing pince-nez spectacles, stand-up collar, bow tie, and dark vicuna jacket. He was writing on a pad, and continued to do so until, throwing aside his pen, he looked up and said, “Mr. Salusbury isn’t in town, he’s with the Chief in Kent. Anything I can do for you?”

  “I’d like to write for your paper.”

  “Do you know the Chief socially?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Know Sir Timothy?”

  “I had an introduction, sir.”

  “Ex-soldier? What were you?”

  “A private in the London Highlanders.”

  “Where were you at school?”

  “Heath’s, sir.”

  The young man stuck out his jaw diagonally. “How much?”

  “It’s at Blackheath. I was there five years, leaving just before the war.”

  “What d’you want to write about?”

  “The countryside—or the war——”

  “The war’s over. Well, I’ll see. Half a motor.” He lifted a telephone, spoke briefly, and said, “I’ll take you to Mr. Linnett-Jones. After you.”

  Down a corridor and through an open door, and there behind a desk sat a small man with agreeable blue eyes and greyish hair with whom Phillip at once felt at ease. After some talk, during which Mr. Linnet-Jones sat quite still and composed, in contrast to the jumpy young man Phillip had first seen, he was told, “We have nothing to do with the editorial side, here we are concerned only with advertisements. They are the main support of a paper, you know. There is much competition between newspapers, for what is called advertising revenue. I see you’re wearing a B.N.C. tie?”

  “It’s the Mediators, sir, I fancy?”

  “Yes, the gold stripes are slightly thinner than Brasenose. What rank did you finish up with?”

  “Captain, sir.”

  “I’ll take you down to see our Classified Advertisements Manager, Major Pemberthy. Perhaps he can fit you in.”

  They went down the stairs to the hall, and through the counter to the glass box. There sat a big young man with kind and gentle manner transcending ordinary courtesy, who asked him if he would like to work as an advertisement canvasser in the House Agents’ and Auctioneers’ section of his Department.

  “Very much, sir, thank you!”

  “Then you can do your writing in your spare time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I thought you were a writer as soon as I saw your face.”

  It was arranged that he should start in a week’s time at £4 a week, then Phillip was taken to a smaller office at the far end of the hall, introduced to the senior canvasser, and left with him. Mr. Brown said:

  “We’re going to run a weekly Auctioneers’ and Estate Agents’ Register, the idea being that a reader of the paper, perhaps in a Free Library, desirous of obtaining a property in the suburbs, will see the Register, and write to the agent in the desired district. I will tell you more when you come here to start.” Mr. Brown brushed up his moustaches, looked at some papers on the table, and said, “I expect you know the Chief?”

  “I met Lord Castleton when I was a boy at Brighton. He asked me to call and see him when I had left school. That was before the war.”

  “You know who Major Pemberthy is, don’t you? He’s the Chief’s godson. Yes! Son of the Chief’s great friend, Max Pemberthy, the author.”

  “Max Pemberthy, who wrote The Submarine Pirate? I read it years ago; wonderful stuff!”

  “Fine yarn, I agree. You saw Mr. Linnet-Jones too, didn’t you? Nice feller. What did you think of Colonel Cow?”

  “Colonel Cow?” Phillip kept a straight face.

  “Young feller-me-lad, but don’t say I said that, with pince-nez glasses.”

  “He didn’t look much like a Colonel!”

  “They made him one when he was put in charge of selling war-surplus goods. Sold millions of pounds’ worth of stuff, lorries by the hundred lot, they went like hot cakes. Yes, Cow got an O.B.E. for that. His job here is to suggest schemes of layout-space to big commercial concerns, to get them to advertise more in the paper. Some old readers won’t like it, of course, but the times are changing, or should I say is changing, ha ha. It’s the Chief’s idea to popularise the paper; he dropped the price from fourpence to a penny, you know. So long, old man, till Monday week!”

  Now that he was hopeful again, Phillip confessed to his mother what had happened to him eighteen months before. He was surprised that she was so calm. In fact, she did not behave like the Mother he had known.

  “I think if I were you I should go up and see the specialist in Harley Street again, Phillip,” she said quietly, “and let him examine you. Then you will be quite sure, and it will relieve your mind.”

  He went the next morning. A man-servant showed him into a waiting room. At last he was before Dr. MacDougal.

  “It may have cleared itself up by now. To make sure, I will give you an injection. This will cause recrudesence of any latent infection.” When this had been done, he said, “Take home this bottle, and let me have a specimen of your water on first rising tomorrow morning. It is important that it is the first water you pass.”

  The next morning Phillip took up the specimen, and left it with Mr. MacDougal—as he preferred to be called—who told him that he would write to him. Phillip left his cheque for £2 2s. face down on the table.

  23 Feb.

  MacD. said only slight trace of strept
ococcus infection. He will send a vaccine to my doctor here, for two weeks’ injections to clear it up.

  After hearing verdict (by letter, which I asked Mother to open) I went to London to call on Westy’s parents. Found them very friendly. Told them why I hadn’t been before, and they understood. My grandfather is dying. I have never seen anyone actually die of old age; scene will be important for my scheme of a long family novel. I want to get hold of my grandmother’s diaries for this before anyone can burn them. They are locked up in T.W.T.’s desk in his bedroom.

  She died before the war, and when home for the summer holidays I saw her the moment after she had died, when my Mother had come out of the bedroom crying, She is gone, she is gone, running downstairs to tell her brother Hugh, an invalid to whom something terrible had happened when he was a young man, what, I did not know then; but I was sternly forbidden to go into his room at the other end of the house by my father, the room where I write this now. After watching the nurse tie up my dear Grannie’s jaw, without emotion beyond curiosity, I listened on the stairs to my mother in Uncle Hugh’s room, where I imagined her crying beside him, while he sat on a couch, his paralysed legs showing the outlines of bones inside his trousers, at different angles to the floor. He killed her, the devil, I heard him saying, and then on crutches he went to see my grandfather. A little awed by this time, I crept down and listened outside the door to terrible accusations by my uncle, while Gran’pa sat still, breathing heavily.

  My uncle had been left his mother’s diaries in her will. There were about a dozen leather-bound books, each with its small brass clasp and lock. Sometimes when I visited the garden room he would play his violin with poignant longing and sweetness, making the tears come in his eyes, and in mine too. At other times he read to me from the diaries, intimate accounts of her early life, the bringing up of her children, and later unhappy confessions about Tom and her growing sons.

  When Hugh died, without leaving a will, the diaries presumably went to my grandfather, so now my mother may have them. I shall want them, for having read Galsworthy, I recognize the importance of all details of past living that the diaries contain—details of a similar penetration which are lacking in the Galsworthy family story. It is detail which makes books last, true detail. I hope to write, one day, a family triology of novels which will bite deeper than Galsworthy’s satirical yet officially respectable family novels. All members of my family, as I see them, with the exception of Mother, are part of mass neurosis (from which I am not free altogether) which is the underlying cause of the war. But I must not stress that, or other aspects (as, e.g., Galsworthy seems to find property the root of evil) for attitudes of mind pass away, while simple details, almost ‘small beer’ details, as in Hardy at his best, give the true feeling of living. Soames is obviously somebody Galsworthy hated, and perhaps feared (the same thing?)—and yet, if I put Ching and Mavis in the books, how can I get round to their true or underlying natures? Both are essentially selfish, living only for themselves. Effects of causes, or heredity? Or both?