Love and the Loveless

by Henry Williamson

  “I’m sorry, sir, I meant to help arrangements forward.”

  “What d’you think would happen if every trainee officer in the Centre took it upon himself to run the show? You’re part of an organisation, a team. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The days and nights that followed put all thought of evening pleasure in the town out of mind, because a staff inspection of the section was soon to be held. The drivers worked from before dawn to nearly midnight, for there was an enormous amount of work to be done. Steel hooks and chain links, by which traces and pole-bars drew the limbers, were deeply corroded by rust. Phillip bought, with his own money, paraffin and silver sand. Also cocoa and tins of biscuits. The men worked hard, rubbing with the abrasive on pieces of old puttee. On the night before the inspection they rubbed for three hours, then shook the chains in sacks containing chaff for a further two hours, but at the end only streaks of brightness shone through. They worked until shortly before 1 a.m., then stopped to lie down on their palliasses, stables having been ordered for 4 a.m.

  When Phillip returned at 4.30 a.m. he found Sergeant Rivett asleep in his cubicle at the end of the hut. In his anxiety, he shook the sergeant’s bed and cried, “Come on, Rivett, if you don’t want to be the last on parade!” Sleepy-eyed, the sergeant stared, then he leapt up. Phillip thought that they would never be on parade by 9 a.m.

  And so it turned out. Feeding and grooming so far had taken anything up to an hour and a half. The mules were half-broken, and afraid; the men afraid and half-trained. So it was this morning. The section was late for 6 a.m. breakfast, a hasty mouth-cramming of bread used to scoop up brown bacon fat in which brittle scraps of rasher were congealed, washed down by boiled bitter tea and sugar, upon which globules of oil floated from yesterday’s skilly. The same dixies were used for all meals. Then to wash and shave in cold water, to scrape wet mud from puttees, breeches, tunics, and coats, ready for the next struggle in more mud with mules, many of which resisted attempts to harness them. It was chaos in darkness; but without shelling. Phillip, who had slept for two hours in his clothes, went from driver to driver, giving a hand; but the parade was half an hour late.

  The inspection by the Senior Supervising Officer was swift and decisive. Forty years old, swarthy, powerful of frame and voice, giving forth the feeling that disciplinarianism was all his mind, he stared at the ingenuous, boyish face showing hesitant dejection before him, and then between pauses, each followed by a tap of short leather-bound cane upon open gloved palm, he said,

  “Rusty chains.” Tap. “Dirty harness.” Tap. “Muddy limbers.” Tap. “Mules not groomed.” Tap. “Drivers imperfectly shaved.” The gloved palm closed over the end of the cane, holding it stiffly, while he continued to stare into the young man’s face, at the large blue eyes with their long lashes.

  “We’ve had no time, sir——”

  “I’ll see your drivers’ rifles.”

  These had lain under limber covers since leaving Ordnance. After trying, in vain, to look down the first three barrels, the S.S.O. took Phillip aside. “How long have you held your commission? Nearly two years? Then what possible excuse can you have for allowing your men to appear on parade with rifles the barrels of which are still bunged up with store grease?”

  “I wasn’t going to let the men bring them on parade, sir.”

  “Good God!” said the S.S.O., almost in a whisper. “I’ve heard some odd things in my time, but this beats them all. You know I’ll have to report this, then you’ll lose your job. Why shouldn’t I report it? Can you give me any good reason?” He gave a sort of smile, while looking straight into Phillip’s eyes. Simulating innocence, Phillip replied, “Well, sir, I thought that as we weren’t going to fire the rifles yet, and as the men had more than enough to do——”

  “So you thought it a sensible idea to hide them away, did you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And you find the work too much for you?”

  “Not for me, but my men have had too much to do. Those chain links take many hours to burnish. We’ve been up, shaking them in chaff bags, until midnight for five nights in succession; and I’ve had morning stables at four o’clock in the morning.”

  Abruptly the S.S.O. mounted his horse and rode away to the next inspection. Two days later Phillip had a chit from Pinnegar, to report to the Orderly Room.

  “Downham wants to see you about some report or other. I’ve tried to tell him it’s all tripe. Don’t let him bounce you. If it were Jack, he’d take it to the Colonel.”

  Downham said, “Well, I can hardly say I’m not surprised, from what I know of you. You’ve had a damned bad report from the Centre. Better read it.”

  This officer is incompetent, and reveals inability to deal even with routine duties. He should have further training.

  The next day Phillip left 286 Coy. His new company commander in “B” lines was a tall upright Canadian with ginger hair and moustache, who soon told him that he had passed through Kingston Military College, Ontario. Phillip shared a cubicle with Clewlee, who snored unbearably at night, and had a habit, in the morning, of washing his face in his canvas basin after he had cleaned his teeth in the water. He also had mustard with his porridge, and bit his nails. Both were members of what was called among themselves the Punishment Squad, passing the first few days in arms drill on the square, under a sergeant-major.

  On the third night Phillip cut mess dinner and made for the theatre bar, where he drank whiskey in intervals of watching the variety show. He made friends with another lonely subaltern, and they had a glittering, glassy time until the late-night reaction. With aching eyeballs and head he appeared on parade the next morning, not having been able to face breakfast. He got through the day somehow, without lunch, and at tea, sitting beside the new company commander, was asked to help him in the orderly room. This was encouraging: if he worked hard, it might lead to a second-in-command job, since apparently he had been kicked out of the transport section.

  Some days later, while they were sitting there, Phillip having dealt with routine office work, Clewlee came in to say that he had gone sick, and had come to report that he was to be admitted to hospital in a few days’ time. Meanwhile, he was fit for light duty.

  When Phillip saw his medical report, he had a shock. Second-lieutenant Clewlee, waiting to go to Cherry Hinton hospital, was suffering from syphilis.

  When Phillip told his skipper this, the Canadian said, “Sure, I knew that. He spent a week-end about two months ago in a Nottingham hotel, and slept with the receptionist girl in the office there. He’s been trying to treat himself in his cubicle for some time, instead of seeing the doc. right away. Somebody told him that mustard was a cure for the complaint. But what can you expect from a man who before the war was what we in Canada call a dry-goods clerk, and you over here know as a counter-jumper?”

  Phillip tried to conceal his alarm at this information. Perhaps he was already infected by the terrible disease which had killed Uncle Hugh. Before him arose a scene that Christmas afternoon when Father was asleep in the sitting room and Mother had opened the door, to see Uncle Hugh, who was forbidden the house, standing there. He had clattered in on crutches, and was sitting in the front room, and they were all laughing at his jokes when suddenly Father came in, and was distant and polite until Uncle Hugh said he knew when he wasn’t wanted, and shambled away again, while Mother cried silently. When he was gone Father had been angry with Mother for crying, instead of wanting to protect her children from a possible horrible end; and Christmas had gone dark.

  *

  On the following morning, on his way to the Medical Hut in “B” lines, Phillip passed Clewlee, who had just come from the Hut. Clewlee was walking slowly, leaning heavily on his stick, his face white and pained. He had just had an intramuscular injection of salvarsan in the thigh. He did not look up as he approached Phillip, in whom such fear arose that, as he came level with the limping man, and before he could think to stop the dark ph
antasm of the past from release in words, heard himself saying, “You filthy beast!”

  Clewlee stopped, his face contorted. He half raised his stick, words frozen in his throat. Before he could retort, Phillip walked away in a kind of daze, wondering what had made him speak like that. It might have been Father, speaking of Uncle Hugh years ago to Mother! Did the mind snap sometimes like elastic, to get rid of its fearful thoughts upon someone else? That was what Father Aloysius said was sin; hate was the absence of love. Poor devil, how awful he must feel! Ruined for life. When he saw Clewlee again, he must beg his pardon. But when he went to the cubicle to find him, after tea that day, he was told by the batman that Clewlee had left.

  He went into Grantham, and bought a bottle of Lysol, which he diluted before splashing all over the floor, door handles, and lower walls. He burned his washing flannel, hair-brush, shaving-brush, tooth-brush and towel, in case Clewlee had used them, in the tortoise stove, which roared, and soon the iron pipe glowed dull red.

  While sitting there, he remembered the poem which Uncle Hugh used to recite to him in his garden room, years before, when he had been seven or eight years old.

  From the hag and the hungry goblin

  That into rags would rend ye,

  All the spirits that stand

  By the naked man, In the book of moons, defend ye.

  Beware of the black rider

  Through blasted dreams borne nightly;

  From Venus Queen

  Saved may you bin,

  And the dead that die unrightly.

  With a wench of wanton beauties

  I came unto this ailing:

  Her breast was strewn

  Like the half o’ the moon

  With a cloud of gliding veiling.

  In her snow-beds to couch me

  I had so white a yearning,

  Like a moon-struck man

  Her pale breast ’gan

  To set my wits a-turning.

  There were other verses, all of them terrible. He read Shelley, to try and lift himself from depression; but it was no good; then an unexpected visit from Pinnegar cheered him with the news that the officer sent to replace him had had an identical report from the S.S.O.

  “So I told Downham that he ought to see the Colonel and tell him that you had done your job satisfactorily. He did so, and you’re to come back tomorrow, old lad.”

  “Thank God. May I come back tonight?”

  “Sure thing. What’s to stop you? My God, this hut stinks!”

  He told Pinnegar about Clewlee.

  “I suppose you’ve got the wind up! Now don’t you worry! You’ll be all right! I’ve got more good news. Jack’s coming back to the company when he’s better. I had it from the Colonel himself!”

  *

  No more was heard of the adverse report. The S.S.O. kept away now that the company was established. Practice made the drivers less unsure of themselves, the mules less fearful. He noticed that the ears of most of the mules were upright as they pulled their limbers around the park. The “donks”, as the men called them, felt at home; they were interested. He came to know some of them as beasts of character. There was Jimmy, grey and hairy, with a mild Sunday-school expression, almost wooden in its simplicity. Others revealed the same slow and gentle temperaments as they stepped delicately, thoughtfully picking their way, while the light draught horses, which had arrived after the mules, plodded forward cheerfully, un-selfconscious. They seemed to leave things to their drivers, of which there was one to each pair, riding the near-side, and guiding the off-side animal with touch of whip-handle and rein; while the mules, though trusting, seemed primly to decide for themselves how they would step. There were two kinds of mules: the donks proper, whose dams were mares; and the jennets who took after their stallion sires, more horse than ass. The jennets were silent; the donks brayed.

  “Jerusalem cuckoos, we call them,” said a driver who had served in Palestine.

  The more Phillip saw of the drivers, the more he liked them.

  “I’m sorry to have to ask you chaps to do so much, but things will be easier in France. I’ve managed to get some dilute sulphuric acid for your chains, that will get the rust off, but remember, vitriol burns! Rust is tri-ferrus tetra-oxide, oxide of ferrus, Latin for iron. The acid will change the iron oxide into sulphate, leaving the bright iron. Wash off the acid thoroughly, then dry and oil. This will save all that boring shaking to and fro in chaff. Ask me if you want anything, won’t you? That’s what I’m here for—to look after you chaps.”

  “Will there be any leaf, sir?”

  “Yes, when we come back from trekking. When Captain Hobart returns we’re going on the road for a week, and then there’ll be leave, half the company at a time. Four days. That’s what the other companies got, before going out.” As he spoke, he leaned against Jimmy, inoffensive as grey ash, and as soft in temperament, with its large brown eyes and tall hairy ears.

  Splendid news came one evening. Hobart was coming back to the company.

  Under Jack Hobart the company was made up to strength, with seven officers, and an attached transport officer for training. One morning they set out for a week’s trek. A cold north-west wind brought an occasional touch of sleet on Phillip’s cheek and eyeball as he sat Black Prince at the rear of the column. Leading the company he could see the figure of All Weather Jack, beside him Pinnegar; then ‘A’ section, led by gunners on foot, Darky Fenwick on the old mare, followed by his section and their limbers; then ‘B’, led by Montfort, who had been an actor; then ‘C’, led by a South African called Lukoff, a Boer who had fought against the British fifteen years before; then ‘D’, led by a small Cambridgeshire potato farmer named Bright, whose trudging grim walk and manner belied his name; and behind the last section rode Sergeant Rivett on a spare hairy light-draught horse, leading cook’s, water, and officers’ mess carts; and at the tail of the column, long legs hanging loose to boot-soles free of burnished irons, he himself lounged on Black Prince, happy in his new nickname of “Sticks”.

  The black gelding had been exchanged for one of the company remounts at the Riding School picket line before dawn that day.

  Through country lanes the column of companies making up a battalion trudged and rolled, while flakes of snow floated down the sky, to drift through leafless elms bordering fields of plough in ridge and furrow, and low-lying grazing.

  During a halt, he heard, above the mist now beginning to form over the fields, the faint cries of birds—seek, seek, they seemed to be crying. Seek, seek. He remembered other redwings, called by old labourers the wind-thrush, passing over the Seven Fields of his boyhood, flitting on south before the clacking field-fares arrived from Norway, in the sad winter months when food was so scarce upon land hard with frost. Seek—seek! through the foggy mist, redwings seeking the sun, flying before the cold north wind, which brought death to “colour and light and warmth”. Seek—seek. Seek always beauty of the spirit, the beauty sought by Francis Thompson, the outcast upon the Thames Embankment, who had left forever the ways of men. Phillip, who had first heard of the poet from his Aunt Theodora, had bought the three-volume Works, ordered at a bookshop in Grantham, and had read most of the poetry and prose with startling awareness of his own feelings.

  A fine mud creamed the iron rims of limber wheels; the men sang along the marching column, they were on their way, having done with training, the sameness of parades, the hurry and sweat of pursued living. Before them lay seven days of trekking, with good billets at night, to be followed by four days embarkation leave—then away from it all, out with the rest of the boys; and, for Phillip, the zestful thought, once again the sharpness of life against the background of death. That was the natural life!

  That night they came to Newark, and warm billets. The officers had quarters in an old inn, panelled with dark oak, and my word, said All Weather Jack, this is something like a dinner, as, washed and brushed up, they sat down at a table before a roaring fire and a sideboard on which stood, under
pale spirit flames of large pewter chafing dishes, a saddle of mutton, a turkey, and roast ribs of beef. Half a dozen bottles of 1892 Chateau Pape-Clement claret accompanied the feast, finished off with a Stilton under a blue and white Wedgewood cover and ivory-handled scoops to cut out the crumbly cheese, like cubby holes in the front line. Packed tight with turkey, mutton, baked potatoes, celery, Christmas pudding with brandy butter, wine, cheese, coffee, and liqueurs, Phillip got into bed with his boots and spurs on, ready for stables in the dark of 6.30 a.m. After a breakfast as sumptuous as the dinner—the same chafing dishes now filled with devilled kidneys, grilled gammons of bacon, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, and tomatoes—washed down by coffee—the meal begun with porridge and cream—he faced the day and the future with hearty optimism, expressed by the thought, Let ’em all come!

  They pulled up at a village where they were to spend three days on a firing range. Phillip and the trainee transport officer, a soft Yorkshireman a year or two older than himself, passed much of the time in the parlour of the small pub, their billet, drinking hot rum and lemon and playing games of ludo, snakes-and-ladders, draughts; and tiring of this, gambled on two-handed cut-throat bridge. After lunch, with strong Burton ale, Phillip decided to visit the company on the range, and setting off at a gallop, followed by his pupil, arrived there during the massed firing of guns. Unaware of the strength of XXX Burton, he pulled up Black Prince from the gallop to salute Captain Hobart, and found himself lying on his back upon grass, not quite knowing how he got there, his right arm still at the salute. The battalion colonel was standing about twenty yards away, watching a section firing in traversing bursts, so he neither heard nor saw what later Hobart called Sticks Turpin’s ride to Burton. His only other remark was, “Prince has played some polo, I fancy.” Phillip sensed an unspoken reproof, and there was no more mid-day drinking.

  While staying in the village he made a deal with a farmer, exchanging a sack of oats, weighing twelve stone, for half a cart-load of carrots. These were sliced up in the farmer’s root-machine and fed to the animals in their nose-bags at mid-day stables. At the next feed his appearance was greeted with lifted ears, whinnies, and intelligent mule-eyes under upright range-finding ears. The farmer was pleased with the deal, too; but three weeks later he regretted it. For by that time hard winter had set in, and the price of carrots rose to five times the market price of early December.