“Then you don’t think this is a war to end war?”
“Afraid I don’t. That’s just a slogan, to keep people up to the mark. It’s the fox promised to hounds, tear ’im and eat ’im, to keep them going.”
“Yes, I discovered during the ’14 Christmas truce that the Germans were being told the same sort of things as ourselves.”
“You bet your life they are! They wouldn’t fight, otherwise.”
Hobart refilled glasses. Pinnegar was talking softly to the younger blue-eyed girl. Phillip felt balanced between them all. A bottle popped, another was shoved in the bucket and screwed round in the broken ice. The blue-eyed girl gave Phillip a smile. He smiled back. This was the life. If only Desmond——Was Lily, so soon, being forgotten——?
“You all right?” he heard Hobart saying.
“Oh yes, thanks. I was thinking what you said about Richard Crook-back betraying all his friends, one after another, until he was alone. I suppose that was his fate? Do you believe in fate?”
“I do indeed. Fate is character. A man makes the same pattern again and again. It’s the pattern he’s born with. He can try and alter it, but he won’t succeed.”
The blue-eyed girl left, with another glance at Phillip. Pinnegar slid along the oak chest they were sitting on.
“It’s born in him, in other words, Captain Hobart?”
“That’s what I believe.”
“So Crook-back was, in a way, lucky to be killed fighting?”
“Most fortunate. He was no good at living. He was a bad type, intelligent but warped. His mode of living, or thinking, came from his twisted spine. That made his pattern of living, from the start. His mind followed the pattern of his body. That set him apart from the others. He lived entirely in his solitary feelings.”
“But couldn’t his feelings change?”
“He tried to change them—he had a conscience, he knew what he was doing—but couldn’t change himself.”
“Not like changing a name, you mean. Such as the name of Ho-bart?” Pinnegar said. “Now don’t pretend you’re not Ho-bart of Ho-bart’s Polish, Jack. No false modesty among friends, you know!”
Phillip winced at Teddie’s persistence, and was relieved when Captain Hobart laughed; but he was bored by Pinnegar’s persistence, Phillip felt. “Hubb’rt or Ho-bart, it’s all the same to me! You pays your money and you takes your choice! My grandfather called himself Hubb’rt, my mother and my aunts and uncles call themselves Ho-bart, to sever connexion with the generations of Cheshire peasants and small-holders going by the names of Hubbard, Hubberd, Hibberd, Hubbert, and Habbitt when they moved to London. We still call it Lund’n, by the way, and not Lon-don, but you can call it what you like, and good luck to you, you hair-splitting Brummagem counterfeiter!”
“Even so, I still maintain that you can’t get away from the fact that H-O-B-A-R-T spells Ho-bart, and I defy you or anyone else to prove otherwise!”
“That’s the spirit,” said Captain Hobart. “You’re the type who never retreats an inch, the kind of bloke we want behind the Vickers guns, so let me fill your glass, and we’ll drink to the company, and the army in France, and the sooner we’re out there again the better, to finish the job, and get back to normal life again!”
Back to normal life again … Phillip felt the shadow of his life coming upon him; he thrust it away as they clinked glasses, against a moderate roar now coming from the bar. After dinner they went in Hobart’s 4·5-litre Mercédès, which had four immense flexible exhaust pipes coiling like brass snakes out of the side of the bonnet, to the theatre; and shattered the frosty midnight hour by a return to camp with blue flames stabbing through the cut-out.
Chapter 3
FRESH FIELDS
The purpose of limbers and waggons, the various woods and metals in their construction, the harness of mules which drew them—traces and straps by which they were tugged and the long pole bar supported on neck, hip, and withers; grooming by brush and curry-comb, sponging nostrils, dock, and sheath; importance of watering before feeding, to prevent colic or stoppage when the gases of indigestion pressed against the heart and might finally stop its beating by causing rupture; daily rations, providing three feeds totalling 10 lb. of oats and 10 of hay for officers’ chargers and light draught horses and mules of the section—sixty-four animals in all—and the biggest feed in the evening, because it gave the animal more time to digest its food and also it was injurious to work on a big feed. Chaff given with oats, to make the animal chew; bran mash once a week to open its bowels.
Picketing: on a hard soil, near water supply, gentle slope for drainage, hedge or wall for shelter, hard-core standings for the feet; watch weavers, blowers, and cribbers—neurotic animals which disturbed the sleep of others by swinging their heads to and fro as though with mournful thoughts, or blew sighfully, or gnawed incessantly at picket post, rope, or neighbour’s rug.
March discipline: stables at least 1½ hours before moving; the farrier, or cold-shoer, inspecting all hoofed feet; rations of corn secured in nose-bags, canvas water buckets available; even loading of limbers and the one G.S. waggon; forward scrutiny to see roads were clear, to prevent blockage, fatal in battle, when thousands of vehicles both horse-drawn and petrol-driven were in unceasing movement amidst shell-fire, and downward traffic from the battlefield was as important as upward supplies. Phillip remembered Loos, the miles of shattered horses, men, and vehicles by day, and the failure of the transport of over forty battalions to get forward in the night; immobility when the enemy line was broken, and the untried reserves arrived sleepless, unfed, and thirsty upon the battlefield, and too late; so that in the morning, when they advanced, they were shot down and they broke, leaving the battlefield while the German reserves, which had come up by marches equally forced during the night, stood up and watched them go.
The day before the written exam arrived. The stout subaltern who had won fame by getting up, over, and off his mount in one unified motion, had been a salesman of women’s clothes in civil life; he had a fund of smutty stories which Phillip heard with reluctance; and when he came to him with a suggestion about the forthcoming exam, Phillip did not like what he had to say.
“I say, old man, I’ve got an idea. The usual practice, I understand, in the sections is to give each instructor a present at the end of the course. That works both ways, naturally, with the instructor letting his class know beforehand the questions of the written paper, at half-a-crown a head. I think you’ll agree that isn’t altogether unreasonable? How about it? I thought I’d approach you first, old man, as you’re senior officer here.”
“Well, I really don’t know. I don’t want to go against the rest of the section, but I’m not keen on having the questions either.”
“Of course, you’ll pass out on your head, old man.”
“You’re much more likely”——began Phillip, then stopped himself. But the other man said, with a laugh, “I see what you mean!” The laugh made Phillip like the fat man. He paid up. “Thanks, old man, much obliged.” The organiser collected twelve half-crowns; and that night in his cubicle Phillip studied the questions, feeling restless as he sat before the tortoise stove—one officer to a cubicle now—because he could have answered every question easily without having first seen the paper. It was too late, after mess dinner, to go down to meet Teddie, Jack and others of the group that met nightly in the Angel, and later foregathered at the theatre bar.
The written exam took place the next morning; after which the staff captain sealed the papers in a large O.H.M.S. envelope with red wax, upon which he impressed his signet. And on the following day, before the oral, when the staff sergeant was complimented for the way he had brought along his section, it was given out that all had got full marks for their papers.
The staff captain then asked questions, from a printed card in his hand. In turn each member of the class appeared before him, out of ear-shot of the others. Phillip, as senior, went first.
“What do you do wh
en arriving at a new billet?”
“I look for nails, holes, broken bottles, and shell splinters et cetera, which might damage the animals in my care, sir.”
“What is highly essential in the matter of feeding?”
“Cleanliness of nose-bags, or mangers if in permanent shelters, sir.”
“If in the open?”
“I do not wait for bad weather before I make my drainage and good standing for my animals.”
“What is one of the main things to avoid in stables, and why?”
“The foremost is overcrowding, which prevents horses resting and often results in dangerous kicking.”
“What is better than poor ventilation?”
“A draught, sir.”
“If a horse goes lame, what do you do and why?”
“I examine its feet, and look for a nail, or stone in the frog. I feel if the foot is hot, of course. I look for any swelling in the pastern joint, in front of the fetlock.”
“What is the only permitted excuse for dirty lines?”
“Well, the manual says a hurried advance or retreat, sir, but in practice there wouldn’t be any time to let droppings accumulate.”
“That’s a sound point. I see you’ve been out. How do you feel about your work?”
“I am very keen, sir.”
“No trouble with your leg?”
“None at all, sir!”
“Right. Next officer, please!”
The riding parade was held in the afternoon. Over the jumps with and without irons, as now stirrups were spoken of; figures of eight, and the ‘aids’ for changing feet at each half turn; jumping with arms folded. Phillip was sorry for those on poor horses. Black Prince seemed to know what was wanted, and did it, his only fault being impetuosity. His mount, ears pricked to his rider’s least intention, was off at a gallop too easily. “Bit of blood in that gelding. Nice ’oss,” Phillip heard the Colonel saying to the Riding Master.
“I fancy a deposit is growing upon the off fore pastern bones, just above the coronet, sir,” said the Riding Master, who had a dour look of the night-before on his face under the flattened cap.
The section passed out. A week’s leave was given each officer, after which postings would be announced. Phillip was reluctant to go home, so he stayed in camp, riding into the town by day, Black Prince being available whenever he wanted a mount, said the sergeant, looking him in the eye. So he got a bottle of whiskey for six and six in the mess, and wrapping it in a towel inside his haversack, left the haversack at the sergeant’s hut. When he collected the haversack, a pair of issue breeches, of the best Bedford cord, were neatly wrapped beside the towel.
The sergeant was a friend of the quarter-master sergeant, a big man of unknown age whose white hair was dyed black. He wore many campaign ribands, the first being for Riel’s Rebellion, he explained, and the Red River Expedition in Canada in 1870, followed by the occupation under Lord Wolseley of Fort Garry. Retiring from the Army, time-expired, after the Chitral Relief Force in 1895, he had joined up again during the South African War, and once more in 1914. He sat at a desk inside the single cubicle of “H” lines store-room which was filled to the ceiling with boots, puttees, tunics, greatcoats, and other floggable stuff.
Talking with him and the sergeant instructor in the cubicle, over whiskey and water, Phillip felt quite the old soldier, as he spoke of the Bill Browns, the Coalies, and others with whom he had served in 1914. He took the issue breeches to the tailor in the next hut, and was measured for a tight fit around the knee, waiting while white buck-skin strappings were sewn on by the enlisted man who sat, with needle, thread and ball of wax, crossed-legged on a trestle table beside the stove. Phillip heard about his life in Whitechapel before the war: how suits from Savile Row, Sackville Street, and all the “big” tailors were collected, to be taken home and stitched together, piecework, making sixpence and eightpence a jacket. Phillip liked him, he had brown eyes and a feeling for music and poetry; and charged only a shilling for the job, which took four hours.
From the same stores Phillip acquired a driver’s coat, with large semicircular collar, which he wore into town without badges of rank. It was rather the thing, he observed: senior officers often wore burberries and British warms without rank badges. He spoke to one in a shoe shop in the High Street, taking him at first for a very new second loot, with his smooth pink face and incipient moustache; and seeing that he was buying a pair of lace-up Norwegian field boots, advised him to choose a slightly oversize pair, to wear with an extra pair of socks, loosely, to keep the feet both warm and dry in the trenches. The youth, who could not have been more than eighteen, said, “Yes, I found that to be a good idea,” and went on with his purchases, which included a leather jerkin with sleeves. To try this on he removed his burberry, to reveal a major’s crowns and a Military Cross riband on his tunic. At the sight Phillip, who was waiting to buy a pair of string gloves, drifted to the other end of the shop.
Now, in badgeless driver’s coat, the brass buttons of which had been replaced by leather ones, booted and spurred, he mouched about the town, ending up in a bookshop. There he discovered The Oxford Book of English Verse, and opening it at random, read
The blessèd damozel lean’d out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of water stilled at even.
He stood there transfixed, reading stanza after stanza.
Alas! We two, we two, thou say’st!
Yea, one wast thou with me
That once of old. But shall God lift
To endless unity
The soul whose likeness with thy soul
Was but its love for thee?
His eyes hastened down the page to the damozel’s answer:
There will I ask of Christ the Lord
Thus much for him and me:—
Only to live as once on earth
With Love,—only to be,
As then awhile, for ever now
Together, I and he.
But the final answer was the division between life and death.
(I saw her smile.) But soon their path
Was vague in distant spheres:
And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,
And laid her face between her hands,
And wept. (I heard her tears).
Black depression struck him. There was no union in the spiritual world. Lily was gone for ever. But at least he would have the poem. “I’d like to buy this book, please.”
The bombazine-black girl did not smile, she had a waxen face. What had happened to her? Some Keechey betrayed her? More likely she had grown up in fear. Her avoiding eyes discouraged conversation. He went from the shop to the darkness of the picture palace, followed by tea in the Angel, and reading in an armchair before the fire. He would like to be Lily to the thin little pale girl in the bookshop.
When the bar opened, he went in. The blue-eyed girl, the younger daughter, remembered him, to his surprise. “What’s the book?”
He showed her the poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
“I wondered why you were so quiet!” He dared not talk about poetry; and felt himself to be bombazine-black aloof. There was only one Lily.
Other officers came in; she sparkled, laughed with them; he felt hopelessly out of it. They wore new riding boots, obviously ready made like his own, but not taken in to fit at the top; while, worst of all, the instep side of their toe-caps showed rips of spur-rowels due to clumsy walking. They were unaware of themselves laughing heartily as one mimicked the chief instructor, the Guardee colonel whose broken neck was supported in a steel cup, his one eye glaring and his spine in a steel corset; they mocked him, calling him an old dug-out, and the girl laughed with them. When she went away for a moment into the office, he swallowed his drink quickly and left before she returned.
That night, after mess dinner, he read more of the poems, and played his gramophone; and then sat down to write a l
ong letter to Desmond. Again and again he stopped, and thrust each fresh attempt into the tortoise stove, feeling that nothing would overcome Desmond’s closed mind.
He played Liebestod, by Wagner, unaware that the music was part of an opera, or what it was about. For Phillip it was, as in boyhood when Father had played it—insisting on absolute silence, otherwise he stopped the record and locked up the gramophone—the dying sun saying goodbye to the world. Then The Garden of Sleep, playing it three times. What could he do, where go? It would not be much fun going down to the theatre bar alone. He was thinking of going to bed when there came a knock on the door, and opening it, he saw ‘Darky’ Fenwick standing there. The thin, brooding face was welcome.
“I’m going to Sleaford to see some friends tomorrow afternoon. Would you care to come with me in the sidecar? And play billiards?”
Phillip was grateful that anyone seemed to want to be friends with him. Warmly he replied that he would like to go, very much. The next day was a Saturday, which had been a gloomy prospect, as most of the fellows in the mess went away for the week-end.
“I’m just going down to the town, would you care to come? I’ve got a pal who keeps a nice little boozer there. We could go in my Matchless.”
It was foggy outside, but stars were visible away from the smoke-drift of the camp. The twin-cylinder engine clattered; they bumped away over the grey pot-holed road, with its slippery mud, and soon were among the dim lights of the town. Phillip wiped the drops off his eyelashes, and wondered where the driver was heading for. It turned out to be in the lower quarter of the town.
“How about a game of whist?”
“Yes, rather!”
They played with two civilians. It was a pub used by the rank and file. Phillip examined Fenwick more closely. His head seemed smaller because his hair was cut short, as though by clippers. His jaw was lean, and dark, like his eyes. Phillip filled his pipe, passed over his crocodile pouch.
Love and the Loveless Page 5