Love and the Loveless

by Henry Williamson

  “Quite well, thank you. How are you?”

  “Aren’t you pompous! Well, you don’t look well! In fact, you look ill! Is anything the matter with you?”

  “I’ve had a touch of trench fever.”

  “I hope it isn’t catching! Well, go on playing the gramophone, I shan’t tell Father! I’m not that sort, you know!” Tears came into her eyes. She went out as abruptly as she had come in, and he heard her calling out as she went upstairs, “Mother, hurry up with my tea! I’m hungry. Nina is coming on leave this evening, and I promised to meet her at the station.”

  It is quite like old times in London, now that a few of the Gothas which used to lay their eggs on us at Proven come over and play hickaboo.

  He had been returning from a long walk around the darkened streets—unable to face Freddie’s Bar or the Gild Hall—hurrying past the ruins of Nightingale Grove with clenched hands and ruinous thoughts—and was approaching the Fire Station when he heard whistles, and then past a stationary, empty tram came the tinkle of a familiar bell, and there was Father bicycling slowly down the street, blowing his whistle. Upon his chest was slung a white placard, printed with red letters

  POLICE NOTICE—TAKE COVER

  He followed the figure in the now empty High Street, while guns began to open up for the apron barrage protecting Woolwich Arsenal. Soon bits of shrapnel were coming down.

  “Take cover! Take cover!” called out an urgent voice. Phillip recognised ‘Sailor’ Jenkins, standing under the railway bridge by the Conservative Club. Bowing shoulders, hands in pockets of driver’s coat, he replied in a Cockney voice, “Don’t get the pushin’ wind up, chum,” as he slouched past.

  Richard had come home, put on arm-band and steel helmet, stopped only to swallow a cup of hot water (the tea in the pot had been made too long, and he must look after his “nervous stomach”) then down to Randiswell Police Station on his Sunbeam, and so on duty. No longer an upright figure, a little bowed after nearly forty years of office life, he pedalled on at the regulation pace of eight miles an hour, regularly blowing his whistle, while fragmentary thoughts passed through his mind—relief that his son was home again; bewilderment, scorn, and anger at the idea of Lord Lansdowne, whose letter to The Times asking for a negotiated peace had been referred to in The Daily Trident as “the white flag of surrender”, being ready to betray his country; depression that the great victory of Cambrai, for which the bells had been rung, had turned out to be a defeat, with hundreds of guns lost, thousands of prisoners taken, and no doubt as many killed. Someone had blundered; and according to the Trident, that someone was in a very high command.

  Shrapnel fragments rained down, tinkling on paving stones, clattering on slate roofs, and wood-block roadway; some falling with whizzing noises, some like little sighs, even moans. He pedalled on.

  Phillip saw his father returning from the Obelisk, and was glad that he was all right. The white blur passed. He looked for a coffee stall, but it was not in its usual place. Food scarcity, he thought, and went home by way of the mill in the lane called Botany Bay, with its rows of little houses, and so to the Hill, in darkness and silence.

  I saw that chap Ching I told you about, one night. Somehow he had heard I was home, and called. He is now a civvy, with 100% disability pension in the offing, he told me. Apparently he swung the lead very cleverly. Pretended to be mad with shell-shock, and ran at his colonel in the trenches with a bayonet, crying “There they are, the Germans!” They sent him down the line; and knowing that real shock is accompanied by temperature and faster heart beats, he chewed and swallowed cordite, and got away with it. Said to me, “If I’d have run at a sergeant, I’d have got jankers for insubordination, and had to stay in the line, but I worked out that no-one would rumble me if I went for the C.O. when he came round with the Adjutant.” I shook him off by jumping on a bus in the High Street. He can’t bear himself, for some reason; always was a hanger-on, even as a boy, never knew when he wasn’t wanted. But who am I to talk?

  Well, Teddy, I didn’t see any shows on my leave, at least not the ordinary kind; I went once with my people to the Old Vic, and saw As You Like It, which I suppose was “the stuff to gie ’em” of those times. Personally I begin to enjoy Shakespeare. Then, at the end of my leave, I got a notice from a brass-hat Captain for Lieutenant-colonel, for Adjutant-General, who had the honour to be My Most Obedient Servant, curtly ordering me to report forthwith to the above unit, and here I am, on my first night, having signed out for Mess Dinner six hours late, because I can’t very well go in in field boots, though I have taken off my silver-plated racing spurs which merely tickled Jimmy the Mule so that he used to stop when I was trying to get him to jump in order to enjoy more scratching upon his hairy hide.

  From the dark cavern of Liverpool Street station Phillip had gone to Ipswich, then by slow branch line to the terminus of Landguard Fort, where he arrived in darkness. As he was finding his way along a road suddenly it was lit up by clusters of Very lights rising above rifle and Lewis gun fire and the gruff coughs of hand grenades. For a moment he sweated; then realising it was a night assault practice, walked on until he came to sea glimmering in pale rushes upon the shore. He went along a row of terraced brick houses, at the end of which were dark shapes of hutments. On his left was a fort-like house, standing on turf at the shingle edge.

  He reported to the Orderly Room. He was posted to “C” company, and told to share a billet in No 9 Manor Terrace with a subaltern named Allen. If he went to the Officers’ Mess across the barrack square and enquired of the mess sergeant, he would be given an orderly to show him the billet.

  “Mess dinner is at seven thirty. It’s Guest Night,” said the assistant adjutant. “Have you got your kit with you?”

  “It was lost in France. I only heard yesterday that I was to come here, and so haven’t had time to see my tailor for infantry knickerbockers.”

  “The breeches are all right, but you’ll need ankle boots and puttees for parades.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  No 9 Manor Terrace had a cast-iron gate which had not yet been taken for salvage, because it was rusted open on its hinges, and more or less unshiftable except by blows of a sledge hammer, explained the orderly, as he pushed open the front door, to reveal a floor hair-light down a passage. His guide went in, a servant came out of the end room and showed him a bedroom with a small fire in the grate, and lit by a gas-mantle, under which sat a young officer reading at a three-legged table. He stood up, putting down his book, hesitating whether or not to say good-evening. In his fatigue Phillip mistook this attitude for aloofness, and after a pause gave the other a curt good-evening.

  “Good evening, sir,” replied the young officer.

  The servant waited. Then he said, “Have you got a camp bed, sir?”

  “No.”

  “May I lend you mine?” enquired the young subaltern, gravely.

  “No, thank you. I can sleep on the floor.”

  “In your valise, sir?” asked the servant.

  “I have no valise.”

  “Right, sir, I’ll soon fix you up!” He spoke in so cheery a voice as he left the room that Phillip felt ashamed of his curtness.

  “Do sit down, sir, won’t you?” said the junior subaltern, offering his chair, as the door closed.

  “No need to call me ‘sir’. I’m only a lieutenant. Just been turfed out of the M.G.C. That’s why I’m in this get-up,” he said, as he took off his driver’s coat. “My name is Maddison.”

  “Mine is Allen.” The chair was placed forward.

  “Thank you, Allen. What’s the book?” as he sat down and stretched his legs.

  “Oh,” hesitatingly, “Euripides.”

  Phillip saw that it was in Greek. “My only acquaintance with Greek is through the Smaller Classical Dictionary. Have you been here long?”

  “A fortnight.”

  “Cadet Battalion?”

  “Abbreviated course at Sandhurst.”

  “Oh, a reg
ular.”

  “Well, yes—for the time being.”

  A series of jangling bumps came through the walls, followed by scrapings and a blow on the door, which opened, to admit two soldier servants with an up-ended wire-bedstead. The new batman explained, “I thought I’d borrow Major West’s, sir, as he went up on leaf s’afternoon.”

  “Major West? With a—with a—you know—wounded—lost a hand, and one eye——?”

  “That’s right, sir. The major told me to fix you up with anything you wanted in the meantime like. I’ll bring in a table and chair, sir. I’ve already got a spare harticle.”

  When Allen went to the mess, Phillip, who had returned there to sign off, sat in the room and read the newspaper he had bought for the journey. Among the items was an announcement that the Army Council had approved the issue of a watered rainbow silk riband to be worn by all members of the British Expeditionary Force who had served or were serving in France or Belgium up to and including 14 November 1914, when the First Battle of Ypres had ended. The riband would shortly be available.

  He read the item several times, and felt a glow, but the glow lost its warmth when he thought of Baldwin, Cranmer, and all the others…. He opened the new copy of the Oxford Book which he had bought on returning home, and copied out one of the poems in his letter to Pinnegar.

  They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,

  They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.

  I wept as I remember’d how often you and I

  Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

  And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,

  A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,

  Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;

  For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

  It would hardly do for Teddy, who would think he was blotto; so he threw the copy in the fire, and went outside. He sat on the shingle, in the roar of the waves; and coming back again, walked towards the hutments. Music of a brass band was playing somewhere. Of course, it was Guest Night. He had cut Guest Night, he supposed.

  *

  At half-past eleven Allen returned.

  “Thank you for letting me use your chair.”

  “No, no, please sit down! I’m just going to bed.” Allen undressed, washed, cleaned his teeth, knelt to say prayers, and was winding up his watch when there was a tap on the door. A senior subaltern stood there. “My name is Sisley,” he said to Phillip. “Will you come with me?”

  They went together down the terrace to the camp. “I thought I’d have a word with you,” said the other. “We can talk best in the card-room, now the bridge-players have knocked off.”

  I’m going to get a ragging for cutting Guest Night, thought Phillip. How events in life repeated themselves! And always due to his own faults. It was the spirit of a man’s life that recurred, for events had no assembly upon him, as it were, apart from a man’s own pattern in life. Death was outside that pattern. Well, he would face whatever was coming, quietly. Nothing really mattered. No excuses!

  “The others have gone to pull Father out of bed,” said Sisley, stepping back before the ante-room door. Was someone going to spring upon him, a scrum? Phillip walked in; the room was empty. “We won’t be disturbed in the card room when they lug in Father. He always goes to bed early on Guest Nights, which is a bore, when he is wanted to play the piano. Do you play, by any chance?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What will you drink?” Sisley rang the bell. With the order he said, “And ask the mess sergeant for the sandwiches, will you?” When the tray came, he raised his glass to Phillip. “Here’s luck! Do help yourself to sandwiches. Now I’ll come to the point. Some of us here know that you’ve had bad luck, and we want you to know that you’re among friends.” He raised his glass again, said “Good health!” and swallowed the rest of his whiskey and soda.

  Phillip could not speak. He just managed to drink.

  “We know,” went on Sisley, “how well you did at Loos after ‘Spectre’ was hit. He had bad luck, too, before July the First, you may remember.” More drinks arrived. “Now get outside these sandwiches. We appreciate your reasons for not coming into mess tonight, although had we known in time, we could have fixed you up with a pair of slacks.”

  “Well, thanks very much, Sisley.”

  Voices without, door barged open, half a dozen subalterns coming in, lugging a large amiable figure with the droll face of a clown. A red grenade on his sleeve showed “Father” to be the Bombing Officer. He looked like a farmer; but when he had given, after repeated demands, his patter on how to sell a gilded brass watch at a Fair, Sisley told Phillip that was how “Father” had earned his living before the war.

  Followed a sing-song around the piano, Father vamping on the keys. When the assistant adjutant arrived, Father got up, swallowed his beer, said “Thank God for small mercies”, and departed. The newcomer sat at the piano, the sheet music of Roses of Picardy having been placed before him. He sang in a sweet tenor voice, reminding Phillip of the singer—who was it now? what was his name?—over two years ago at Grey Towers, Hornchurch—what was his name?—he had become engaged to the C.O.’s daughter, and was killed on July the First. What was his name? It worried him that he could not remember. Was his brain going? What was the name? He could hear the voice, see the face, the smile, the brushed-up Kaiser-moustache. He tried desperately to remember. He had sung Rosebud in my Lady’s Hair. There were no roses in Picardy, only poppies, most of them in no-man’s-land. Francis Thompson, doped with laudanum, on the Embankment, broken boots and all, sleeping at night on a newspaper, under the arch of Waterloo bridge, and writing his poem on the poppy by day, when not holding horses’ heads for a copper.

  The sleep-flower sways in the wheat its head,

  Heavy with dreams, as that with bread:

  The goodly grain and the sun-flushed sleeper

  The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.

  I hang, ’mid men my needless head,

  And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:

  The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper

  Time shall reap, but after the reaper

  The world shall glean of me, me the sleeper.

  In June the periscope showed a level red of poppies fringing shell-holes, wire, and the emptying uniforms of the dead. Roses in Picardy, Flanders, or Artois! Christ, what civvy-songwriter rubbish! What did they know about the truth? Then came the old and hopeless longing for Lily.

  She is waiting by the poplars,

  Colinette with the sea-blue eyes;

  She is waiting and longing and sighing

  Where the long white roadway lies …

  He was too old for them; he who had known Lily in the gaslight among the yews of St. Mary’s churchyard, long ago. In their eyes, unfocused from the present, was still the dream of hope. If only he could feel like them. Arms on one another’s shoulders, warm with comradeship, buoyed by mutual esteem, they lived in the words and music—brother officers, come together for a cause in which few could now believe, but which had been made into something greater than themselves—the spirit of a regiment, the instinct of service one to another, the selflessness of love. If he could not live for them, he could at least die with them. He fortified himself by thinking of the two lines from The Mistress of Vision:

  When thy song is shield and mirror

  To the fair, snake-curlèd pain——

  On Christmas morning there was church parade. He wore infantry knickerbockers made in the town, with new brown boots and Fox’s puttees. From the tailor, too, he had got a piece of the new watered rainbow riband of the Mons Star, sewn on his left breast. Two-thirds of the battalion not on leave marched with the regimental band to and from the parish church. On the way back they passed the pier, and the last houses of the town, and came to a row of beach huts behind an asphalt promenade which ended the watering-place. Beyond was
the brown ridge of shingle. On the ragged horizon of the North Sea was visible a tiny lightship. Approaching the camp, companies were called to attention: and then, six feet above the sea’s edge, a Camel single-seater scout flew past, the pilot waving a hand. Eyes remained to the front, arms swinging in unison, boots breaking upon the road rhythmically. At the head of the column, behind the drums, rat-a-plan-plan—rat-a-plan-plan—walked the tall, bearded figure of the Colonel. Then the fifes ceased to shrill; boom-boom-boom of the bass drum: brass music of regimental march arose in frosty air, with glints of the sun upon the drum-major’s whirling stick.

  By tradition, the officers were invited to the Sergeants’ Mess before luncheon. The Colonel, the first cousin of the Duke of Gaultshire, six feet four inches tall, famous oarsman and once a Viceroy, genial, blue-eyed, spoke to every sergeant in turn. He appeared to know every name, to remember every personal detail—village, wife or mother, family history. Moving among the sergeants, the Colonel spoke to every man. Likewise he seemed to remember the name of every officer, and all that previously had been replied in answer to his genial questions. It was said that when, in his quarters within Fort House at night, he dictated letters to his secretary concerning his Estate, his Grand Mastership of Freemasons, and other public affairs, he wrote private letters upon his knee at the same time. In the Orderly Room, dealing with defaulters, he never raised his voice, but spoke quietly, with impersonal ease, in the same tones with which he praised others on occasion—always detached, remotely paternal, equable. The spirit of service to thousands of acres of land and nearly a thousand years of English history was in his blood.

  Phillip watched the amiable Viking figure, with the full blue eyes—a caricature of whom by Spy he had seen on the walls of Flowers’ hotel—drinking a pint of beer with the Regimental Sergeant Major. This was another, if not majestic, certainly terrific figure with three wound stripes, Military Cross, and Distinguished Service Medal. And when he talked with the sergeant he had spoken to at Charing Cross station fourteen months before, Phillip began to feel really at home for the first time in the war, and trills of joy moved in him as he told himself, These men are from the countryside that my mother and grandfather belonged to, and still belong, and now I am with the Gaultshires!