Love and the Loveless

by Henry Williamson

  “First parade, nine o’clock Monday. Orders will be posted in the mess this evening,” said an officer with a limp and one arm missing, the assistant Adjutant.

  “My God, what’ll we do till then?” grumbled Pinnegar. “That’s just like the Army! We could just as well have stopped in Town!”

  Phillip was determined that this time he would work hard; no more fooling about. He went to B hut with Pinnegar, and together they looked in at various doors, to select the best cubicle, for most of them had cracks in the asbestos walls, while others were connected by holes.

  “Someone’s had a rough house here,” remarked Pinnegar. Entering the end cubicle, “I say, I like this!” admiringly, for upon the walls were portraits in crayons of highly coloured and curved female figures, some clad only in high-heeled shoes and black stockings, and all with luring eyes. The friendly atmosphere of this cubicle, improved by six bullet holes in the ceiling, drew from Pinnegar a spontaneous, “My name’s Teddy. What’s yours? Right, how about a drink? Let’s find the mess, Phillip.”

  “Suits me, Teddy.”

  Valises and haversacks having been dumped on the floor, the two friends went outside, eventually to discover a large marquee of grey canvas. Inside, scores of trestle tables were ranged beside wooden forms for seats. There was no flooring, the grass was already crushed into the damp soil. Half a dozen elderly men in long-sleeved yellow-and-black footmen’s waistcoats above aprons of green baize were unpacking square wicker baskets containing table-cloths, boxes of knives, forks, spoons, and glasses. The wind flapped the loose canvas of the marquee, a sparrow flew up by one of the brown poles, seeking a way out. A man looking like the steward came forward, bowed, and said smoothly, “Tea will be at half past four, gentlemen.”

  “How about a drink?”

  “I’m afraid not until dinner, sir.”

  “Who’s running this show? The Temperance League?”

  “Curling and Hammer, from London, sir.”

  “What time is dinner, d’you know?”

  “Seven o’clock, sir. We hope to have everything ready by that hour.”

  “This is all new since I was last here,” remarked Pinnegar, outside. “And to think we might have remained in London! I’ve got a bottle in my valise. How about a drink in the cubicle?”

  “Good idea, mein prächtig kerl!”

  “I wish they were alive, don’t you?” said Teddy, eyeing the chalk figures on the walls. “You’ve got a hell of a fat valise. What’s in it?”

  “A gramophone.”

  “Good. Let’s have some music!”

  Phillip put on a record, which he had played many times to himself, The Garden of Sleep, sung by Sidney Coltham, a light tenor. “I like the way he sings,” said Pinnegar, and Phillip felt closer to his new friend. They were listening to Kreisler playing Caprice Viennoise when the door opened, to reveal two subalterns standing there, with their valises. One, with the badges of a Northumberland Fusilier, was obviously a ranker officer, for he wore the riband of the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

  Hiding the bottle, Pinnegar said, “How the hell do they expect us to get four camp beds down in this small space? What do they think we are, bloody hens? No wonder the walls have caved in next door!”

  “’Tis better than nowt,” said the Northumbrian. He had dark small eyes in a face pitted with blue specks, which gave him a badly-shaven appearance. “Th’ lads would be glad of this on the Somme. D’you mind if we come in?” Phillip noticed that the back of his hands were dark-speckled, too.

  “Please yourself,” said Pinnegar.

  “I’ve bagged next to the wall,” said Phillip. “Under the window. I can’t sleep with a window closed.”

  “How I agree!” said the fourth man, with a glance at Phillip’s wound stripes. He, like the Northumbrian, looked newly commissioned.

  Phillip offered his cigarette case.

  “I don’t mind if I do,” said the Northumbrian.

  “Awful good of you,” said the other. “By the way, my name is Montfort.”

  Four cigarettes having been lighted, and some foxtrots listened to, Pinnegar suggested that they all go down to take a look at the town. “There might be a revue at the theatre!”

  The main street was filled with officers, all apparently new arrivals like themselves. They walked down one pavement, passing by shops with the least interest, and came to a large forbidding iron-works, sombre with its own smoke-stains; and returning on the opposite pavement for variety, went down to look at the outside of the theatre. The Man Who Stayed at Home. A play. “I’ve seen it. Thank God I was tight at the time. Utter tripe!” said Pinnegar. So they visited a dull façade of ironwork, wood, and corrugated posters advertising Theda Bara and Mary Pickford, which was the local Picture Palace.

  “I’ve seen them both,” said Pinnegar. “My God, what a hell of a place to spend Saturday afternoon.”

  They stood on the pavement, each of them severed from the life he had known, spiritually and physically—four acquaintances casually come together, to adhere in the moment through loneliness: four among thousands of immature men with lost or withered roots recently sent into the district, yet scarcely knowing what was lacked. Where should they go? Tea at the Angel? Or one of the tea-shops? Which would be the most likely place for girls? They looked into two tea-shops. No girls there, only soldiers; so they went into the Angel.

  “As I thought, a place for brass-hats,” remarked Pinnegar, at the door of a long room. “And they’ve taken all the fire.”

  “They’ll hear you,” whispered Phillip.

  “Who cares? Our money’s as good as theirs, isn’t it?”

  Armchairs with red-tabbed figures in long shining brown boots and spurs were spoked round an open hearth. “Cavalry!” Pinnegar eyed the backs of the recumbent figures with hostility, as he sat on a hard-backed chair.

  “Do you like poetry as well as music?” said Phillip, not at ease with Pinnegar’s remarks.

  “Some things, yes. Why?”

  Phillip took from his pocket book a poem originally copied from The Times, which he knew by heart. It was now much frayed, having been carried in his pocket diary for nearly a year.

  “Let’s have a look,” said Pinnegar. “I’ll tell you if it’s any good.”

  He read a few lines, and snorted. Almost angrily he read on, then throwing down the paper, exclaimed, “Absolute tripe, in my opinion! The person who wrote that had never been anywhere near the front!”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Phillip, hiding his disappointment, “the man who wrote this died of wounds soon after sending the poem home to his father.”

  “Tripe all the same,” repeated Pinnegar. “All that glory of war stuff gets my goat.”

  “Give us a look.” Phillip passed the clipping to the Northumbrian, saying, “It’s not glory of war.”

  Pinnegar was persistent. “I still say that no-one before a battle thinks like that. I’ve been in two, and I damned well know what I’m talking about!”

  “Aiy, that’s true,” said the Northumbrian, sombrely, his eyes lifting from the print after reading half-a-dozen words. “I was in attack at Glory Hole in front of La Boisselle, and I had no sich thoughts before we went over t’bags, and got coot oop by Jerry’s machine guns.”

  “I was hit in Mash Valley, just north of the Glory Hole,” said Phillip. “This is an idealist’s poem, I agree, but Julian Grenfell had been in a battle, and won the D.S.O. before he wrote this.”

  “Yes, in the cavalry!” said Pinnegar, hotly. “And the son of a lord! With bags of decent grub sent out in hampers from Curling and Hammer’s in Piccadilly! What has the cavalry done, since 1914? Even then, they covered the Retreat on horseback, while the poor bloody footsloggers wore their boots to the uppers and got court-martialled when they lost their nerve and wandered off, driven scatty by fighting all day and marching all night!”

  “Steady on! Those staff wallahs may hear what you’re saying.”

  “I don’t give
a damn! I’m not frightened of a bunch of gallopers! I got a bullet through my ribs during the flame attack at Hooge in 1915, and another at Arras early this year, and I never saw a cavalryman the whole time I was in France! They were sitting on their bottoms in rear areas, hunting foxes, shooting hares and pheasants, and living on the fat of the land! French was a horse soldier, so was Haig, so was Gough, and all the others at the top. What do they know of barbed wire and the front line? Sweet fanny adams!”

  “Aye, that’s a fact,” said the Northumbrian, giving back the clipping.

  “May I see it?” asked Montfort. Phillip passed it to him, saying, “Anyway, Pinnegar, I think it’s a very fine poem. Though during First Ypres I must admit I didn’t feel like Julian Grenfell did, when he wrote this poem.”

  “Of course you didn’t, nor did anybody else!” Pinnegar held out his hand for the paper. “Look at this!”

  ‘And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light

  And a striving evermore for these’

  that bit’s all right, I’m not objecting to that, it’s the next bit that gets my goat,

  ‘And he is dead who will not fight,

  And who dies fighting hath increase.’

  ‘He is dead who will not fight.’ Yes, if he’s a tommy, as I said just now, who loses his nerve and ends up being tied to a post, or stood up against a wall of some château pinched for Corps Headquarters, and shot by a firing squad! Otherwise he who fights is damned lucky to get a blighty one, and not an army blanket in a shell-hole! Which anyway the poor stiff has to pay for! How anyone can seriously believe that bit about having increase if he dies fighting beats me altogether! It’s tripe, as I said.”

  “Officers are rich men, and don’t think the same as t’ poor man as has to work ’ard for a living,” said the Northumbrian, sententiously.

  “What are you, a bloody Socialist?” asked Pinnegar, hotly. “I’ve no time for that tripe!”

  “You’re middle-class, I can see that, Pinnegar. I’m a workin’ man. I’ve ’ad to work ’ard, I ’ave, all my life, and no college education. I’ve lain many an hour sweatin’ at craggin’ lip. I got these bits of coal in t’ face from a premature shot.” He stared from one to another with the expression as dark as coal itself.

  “Come off it, you old four-flusher,” smiled Pinnegar. “How the hell did you get a commission, without any education?”

  “Night School,” replied the Northumbrian.

  “What the hell’s wrong with Night School?” exclaimed Pinnegar. “That’s where Lloyd George got his education.”

  “And Horatio Bottomley,” said the Northumbrian. “Don’t forget Bottomley!”

  “Bottomley my foot!” cried Pinnegar. “The biggest bloody crook unhung!”

  “Hear hear,” said Phillip, echoing Mr. Hollis, senior clerk in the office. Would Downham now be at Catterick?

  “Then what the hell are we arguing about, Phil?” said Pinnegar, smiling suddenly.

  “I don’t know—Teddy!” Phillip felt warmth towards him.

  “I were sergeant of machine-gun section in France, and was promoted on field when t’ officer were killed,” remarked the Northumbrian.

  “Obviously you’re a bloody good man, to get the D.C.M.,” said Pinnegar. “Too good to talk Socialist guff. What’s your name?”

  “Fenwick. Some’s call me Darky.”

  “Right, Darky!”

  Fenwick seemed sombrely pleased to be called by this name.

  Montfort, who had been listening intently to the talk, now screwed himself up to say to Phillip, “Talking about poetry, what do you think of Henry Newbolt? And Drake’s Drum, in particular? Don’t you think it’s very fine?”

  “‘Drake is in his hammock, a hundred leagues below, and dreaming all the time of Plymouth Hoe!’” exclaimed Pinnegar. “Music Hall stuff! You’ll be shouting The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God next. I don’t care for that sort of tripe, either. Here’s the waiter.”

  His voice dropped, and an expression, half cunning, half endearment towards the white-haired old man, came upon his face. “I suppose you couldn’t manage to get us a drink?” His voice became tender, with a surprising softness. “I’ll make it worth your while, you know.”

  In a grave voice, devoid of feeling, and audible in every part of the room, the old man replied, “This is the residential portion of the hotel, sir. Are you staying here, sir? No, sir? I must inform you that only residents may have alcoholic refreshments during the hours of the closing of the buttery. And the public tea-room is down the passage, sir. I will show you the way, sir.”

  “What utter tripe our licensing laws are,” said Pinnegar, as they pulled armchairs to the fire in the other room.

  “I like Henry Newbolt’s verse,” said Phillip to Montfort.

  “Oh, do you? I am so glad!” Montfort seemed relieved. “Do you mind if I call you Phillip?” He seemed doubtful.

  “Of course! We’re all pals here!”

  “You might think England was still under Oliver Cromwell, instead of in a great war!” grumbled Pinnegar. “We’re supposed to be fighting for freedom, yet we can’t get a drink at four o’clock on a bloody cold autumn afternoon!”

  They walked back to camp in twilight, having agreed that it was not worth sporting a shilling each for a taxi. Back in the Harem, as Teddy called it, they sat on the floor, smoking, yarning and listening to Phillip’s gramophone until shortly before half-past seven, when having brushed their hair, they went to the marquee, not having changed into slacks, because of the mud, and the general appearance of formlessness.

  There was more criticism by Pinnegar during mess dinner. He grumbled about profiteers, and the incompetence of those responsible for the messing arrangements. Phillip enjoyed the strange scene. Hundreds of officers sat on hard forms at tables covered by cloths upon which candles in saucers guttered as draughts scored under the walls of shaken canvas. Many were returned from the war. They sat with faces made to appear gaunt and patient, or savage and impatient in the flickering light and shadow. Some talked quietly, despite knees pressed together, and elbows jogging as they drank tepid soup served in hurried relays by the half-dozen elderly imported London waiters now in tail coats with starched shirt-fronts and cuffs. Those officers who had been served first waited impatiently, some muttering, for the last to finish, when the interwaiter relay races of the Six Little Tichs, as Pinnegar called them, began all over again; the old men hurrying lugubriously through draughty candlelight with plates of cold pressed beef, ham, and tongue.

  The impatient minority became the majority, as they waited for drinks that did not come. Phillip heard complaints above the canvas flapping. “What, no wine list? Damnable!”

  “Waiter, bring me a large Scotch and soda!”

  “Waiter! I’ve asked three times for a bottle of Bass’ beer! Well, bring any beer, only bring it now!”

  “Waiter!”

  “Won’t be a moment, sir!”

  “Waiter!”

  “Coming sir! Sorry sir, just for tonight it’s a bit of a muddle, sir!”

  Why were they so devoid of understanding? Obviously the poor old fellows were doing their best. “You’re reet!” said Darky Fenwick, to whom Phillip confided his opinions. “But most on’m here’s snobs, wi’ no feeling for the workin’ man.”

  Pinnegar began to sing, beating time with his fork on the table,

  “‘Waiter, waiter!

  Bring me a morning paper!

  Waiter, waiter, do you hear?

  Bring me half a pint of beer!

  It’s waiter here!

  It’s waiter there!!

  It’s waiter all over the shop!!!’

  I heard Little Tich sing that at the Hippodrome, Birmingham, more than once,” he remarked happily, oblivious of the glances he got from some of the regular-officer types at his table.

  “Pinnegar, you want to watch your step,” said the Northumbrian. “Some’s watching you.”

  At last they were fed, and feeling bett
er, deliberated what to do with themselves. In the end they walked back to the town, to drink at the theatre bar. The play was on; there was a rosy glow from the stage upon the faces lining the upper circle when Phillip peeped through the door. After several drinks he began to feel again the romance of being alive in such stirring times; this feeling led to thoughts about the immediate past.

  The bar led off from the upper circle, and after awhile he slipped away; and standing under an electric light in a passage lined with dark-red wallpaper, read a few lines of the poem Into Battle, enough to bring back, in a moment as fleeting as it was poignant, a vision of Lily Cornford’s face in the shaded gaslight under the yews of St. Mary’s churchyard. There, while reciting to her some of the verses of the poem, he had dared to look at her face, to see her eyes brimming with gentleness, and compassion.

  He must seek the darkness, and be alone with his thoughts. He went down the stairs and out of the theatre; and finding a narrow passage way, lit dimly by a gas lamp, he went down it, and stood still there, trying to project his thoughts to Lily, and to receive an answer. After awhile he turned back, and had gone into the street, when a voice said, “Hi! You there! Come here!”

  He went towards a figure standing by a lamp-post, and saw a red-banded cap above a British Warm with the somewhat dreaded letters A.P.M. around one arm. It was Brendon. Would it be the thing to congratulate him? “Good evening, sir! May I——”

  “Why are you improperly dressed? Where is your service cap?”

  “Sir——”

  “What is your name and unit?”

  “Lieutenant Maddison, sir, attached Machine Gun Corps, Harrowby Camp.”

  “Well, don’t let me see you improperly dressed again, or I’ll run you!”

  “Yes, sir. May I offer my congratulations, sir? I saw the notice in the Gazette this morning.”

  “So you know me, do you?”

  “Yes, sir. At Heathmarket, the Cantuvellaunian mess, in the summer of 1915, sir.”