The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  “What is to come, do you know?”

  “Well, if you arst my opinion, sir, I say the future will always come with what it brings. More I wouldn’t like for to say, sir.”

  “I see. What else do the boys do, wine-waiter?”

  “We provides guards for bridges and factories dahn by the river, sir. Some goes on detachment, guarding prisoners of war, and providin’ escort duties, sir.”

  “Lines of communication, in fact,” said Phillip with satisfaction. With any luck he would see out the war in England from now on.

  And then remembering ‘Spectre’ West and the Gaultshires, he ordered another whiskey, to drink the health of lost faces.

  *

  What the hell could he do? Risk going back to Wakenham, in the hope of meeting Desmond and Eugene in Freddy’s? Supposing, meanwhile, he was sent for? Or a Zeppelin dropped thermite canisters on the huts while he was absent? If only he had reported earlier, he might have got leave, too. However, he must hang around, in case he were wanted. No more miking with this new lot! He must make a good impression. He rang the bell.

  “Bring me another whiskey and soda, will you?”

  When he had signed a chit for this, he said, “Is there Church Parade tomorrow?”

  “Oh yes, sir! The Ganger allus takes it, sir.”

  “Ganger?”

  “Beg pardon, no offence, sir, that’s what we call the Colonel, sir.”

  “Really? Now can you tell me, is there any geography on the ground floor?”

  “Oh yes, sir. Follow me, sir. Choice of two, sir.”

  “One will be enough for the moment.”

  On returning to the ante-room, or lounge as it was called, he picked up La Vie Parisienne, and returned to his creaking wickerwork armchair. Remembering what Wigg had said about Circassian girls, he refrained from looking at the picture on the cover until he was lying back with his feet up, cigarette smoke straying past eyes, preparatory to using his imagination with the slightly yellow, svelte, and semi-naked body in diaphanous underwear. But somehow the picture did not give the benison hoped for; the more he tried to imagine it real, the flatter surface it remained. Had poor old Father felt like that when he had looked at the same sort of pictures in the Artist’s Sketch Book of Parisian Models which he kept locked in his desk in the sitting room? He recalled his own feeling of fascination, after he had opened the desk with a key on his mother’s ring and gone through the contents of Father’s desk, to look for the revolver kept there, and had come upon the book, which he had smuggled into the lavatory, the only private reading room in the house. He must have been about nine or ten at the time. Even now, the thought of Father looking at such pictures flurried him. He flung away La Vie, scornfully.

  Then he picked it up again, and tried once more to find in it rest, light, and relief from dark depression overcoming him. Damn the bloody rag! He hid it under a large and heavy Atlas of the World, before lying back in the chair, wondering how he could possibly get through the rest of the day, the rest of his barren life. What was there left in his life? Then through his depression arose the face and hair and eyes, like a dream of everlasting summer, of Helena Rolls.

  He sighed, and thrust away the vision. It was no good thinking of her ever again. She had loved cousin Bertie, and now that he was dead, she would keep him in her heart for ever. Even though dead, Bertie was still real to her; while he, Philip, had never been real even to himself. That was the terrifying truth.

  Thinking of cousin Bertie, such a splendid man in contrast to his feeble self, Phillip’s depression became so acute, his thoughts so devastating, so annihilating, that he uttered an involuntary shout of acceptance of his own shame and damnation.

  The mess waiter appeared at the doorway. “Ready for another little drop, sir? Keeps the cold out, sir, in a manner of speakin’.” He grinned somewhat unsteadily, as though he had been keeping the bottle warm.

  Phillip pretended to be asleep. The mess waiter tottered away. Lying in the chair he felt himself sinking under the helplessness of his thoughts. He would always feel the dark weight within when he thought of Helena. What could he do about it? Desmond had tried to help him; he had rebuffed Desmond. What could he do, what could he do, he shrieked within himself. He could no longer force himself on her, as he had, idiotically, in the past. O, the damned silly idiocies of himself! Humiliations, silly lies which everyone saw through—his life was ruined. Why had he not remained in France with the Gaultshires? By now he might have found release from the dark shadow that had, so far back as he could remember, always been near him, sometimes threatening to press his life away. Only in death perhaps would he be free from the shadow of himself.

  Was death the end? Mother believed in life after death; Father scoffed at her for it. Yet how could the person, who was his mind, or self, survive when it was made up of myriads of impressions, all from his feelings, all little cell-like photographs of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. When a bullet broke the store-house of self, inside the skull, how could those myriads of photographs survive, or the personality that they made up? Why should they survive, what use were they to life? If only he could stop his thoughts.

  To remain alive was to continue to endure the nihilism of time rushing by, soundless and vain, atoms whirling in a void, creating life that must be destroyed, leaving blanks to be filled by other speck-like atoms whirling in darkness. Life was sadness, sadness, sadness; ache, ache, ache; until you were dead. His mother’s words came into his mind—Happiness comes only when we can forget ourselves. And yet she was seldom if ever really happy. How could anyone forget himself or herself?

  He pulled from his pocket a letter he had forgotten, given him by his mother that morning, before he left home. Mother had asked him to read it slowly, and to consider very very carefully every word that his grandfather had written to him.

  Wespelaer

  Hillside Road

  Wakenham, S.E.

  My dear Boy

  I spoke to your Mother last night about your incipient but regrettable propensity for strong drink—There is nothing stationary in this world—our lives, character, thoughts are always rising or falling and perhaps the most insidious and awful in its result is drink—but not that alone—Indiscretions. Thoughtless folly of all sorts is paid for in months and years to come in the most painful suffering—now, my dear Phillip, have the strength of mind to disregard the habits and minds of any companions. You will learn with experience how rare commonsense thought and conscience are but you can never visualise what remorse, and physical suffering, is accrued by acts lightly and thoughtlessly made in youth. Cut them now and firmly resolve not to drink any spirits except a medicinal dose under exceptional circumstances such as a little rum after severe exposure and trench work.

  If you are beyond the influence of reason—think of your Mother and her noble conduct and example and how she has sacrificed herself to start her children on the road to happiness, and think of the result of your folly to her. She is not strong, and the consequences of your folly may be far more awful than you think now.

  I have a little money for my children and their children, and I have not exercised self denial and much thought and work to have that money fooled away. You have the potentiality of a successful and with moderation in all things a happy life. Be master of your mind and don’t throw your chance away——

  It was obvious what the old man was driving at. His eldest son, Uncle Hugh, had died of syphilis, which he had got after being sent down from Cambridge. As though he would be such a fool as to go with one of those awful prostitutes he and Desmond had heard about in London! Gran’pa was old-fashioned. And who wanted his money? If he ever left him any in his will, he would give it away to the nearest hospital.

  He thought to throw the letter on the fire, but something stopped him. Somehow it was like hurting poor old Gran’pa, to do that. Putting it in his pocket book, he lay back, feeling himself to be drawn once more into the flow of empty Time. The image of Helena fl
oated before him, her face under her fair crowning hair shining with the sun, her eyes blue and frank as the sky. It was all over now, he had deliberately destroyed his ideal on the night of his return from Loos, after the Zeppelin raid, when he had gone into the sheepfold on the Hill with cousin Polly. Henceforward his ideal was dead to him; dead, dead, dead.

  Such was life; everything passed away; the fields and woodlands of boyhood became built upon; streets and pavements and lamp posts arose where warblers and willow wrens had sung; nothing ever remained the same. All the dead lying at that very moment upon the battlefield of Loos were slowly becoming part of the chalky soil—the chalk that was one vast tumulus of shells, aeons of shells of the salt, salt sea. Each shell had once been a house of life, born but to die, each in its dying to add to the salt of the sea, or the soil of the earth. So it was with men. And nothing could ever be done about it.

  He lay still, floating through time; he thought of the sadness of Mother’s face, as he remembered it before he could walk, before he could speak; he recalled Father’s angry voice, the fear of himself and his sisters, sitting still under Father’s pale-blue-eyed anger, his voice thin as a fret-saw—poor old Father, he had never had a chance, from what Aunt Belle used to say about his early life at home, with his angry and often tipsy father. What a grind his life had been from the start: how many thousand times did Father say he had walked over London Bridge to the office, that very office which he himself could never return to after the war, if he lived until after the war? Father taking long strides over London Bridge, on the same worn paving stones, thirty thousand times was it? Without a friend in the world—Father who had once spoken so happily, Mother had said, of having a friend in his son. And what a son: selfish, cowardly, a liar, deceitful: better if he had been killed.

  He lived again the glassy, beyond-fear feeling of the attack on that Sunday, the second day of the battle, across the Lens—La Bassée road, when most of the Cantuvellaunian crowd had copped it. Poor old Strawballs, Jonah the Whale, O’Connor, and all the old faces that had ragged him after he had set fire to the Colonel’s Times during one guest night, for a joke. It had not been the drink he had taken, for he always knew much clearer what he was doing when tight than when he was sober. What a bounder they must have considered him. Now, like cousin Bertie, they were all dead on the field of honour.

  What did it really mean, on the field of honour? Father spoke of honour, as though it was part of life, his own life, for instance. Well, if living like that was honour, he was quite content to remain as Father had often told him he was, lacking in all sense of honour. Field of honour—that ghastly mess at Loos!

  “Bring me another spot of old-man whiskey, will you?” He would wait until the winter was over, and then apply to go back to the Gaultshires. He lay back in the armchair, eyes closed, legs crossed at ankles, hands folded on chest, resting himself in the terrible beauty of gun-flashes filling the darkness with light.

  Chapter 3

  NEW WORLD

  On the following Saturday morning Phillip’s company commander, a quiet elderly captain, asked him if he would care to take him to Southend-on-Sea in his motor. Captain Kingsman explained that he had to go on duty, to inspect a detachment of the company, and the cost of the journey would be borne by an allowance of threepence a mile, recoverable from Eastern Command via the Orderly Room.

  “You may as well have it as a hired driver,” he said, “and if you care to spend the night at my place about a dozen miles away from the salubrious mud-flats, you’d be most welcome.”

  Phillip hesitated, for he had been imagining himself driving up Hillside Road, in the glory of his motor car, and perhaps daring to ask Helena Rolls to come for a ride with him. Then Wigg across the breakfast table said, “May I propose myself for a lift as far as Southend, Captain Kingsman? I’m on leave since last night. Or would three be a crowd?”

  “You must ask Maddison, it’s his motor,” said Kingsman.

  “Yes, certainly,” replied Phillip, “there’s room in the dickey. And thank you for your offer of hospitality, Captain Kingsman.” He felt depressed at the prospect.

  It was a fine morning, and when he brought the Swift up the drive, a fourth man was waiting beside the other two. He wore an eyeglass, and was bending and straightening a whangee cane as he stared straight before him. Phillip recognised the red pug-face and pale eyelashes and hair of Cox, with whom he had been on a three-weeks’ course at Sevenoaks when first he had been gazetted, in the spring.

  The presence of Cox, waiting with the others, made him shy. He remembered the way Cox had scorned him, after an unsuccessful walk (for Cox) up and down the main street of Sevenoaks, Cox rattling his whangee cane at girls, to attract them. Cox’s irritability had increased with his non-success, which he had said was due entirely to Phillip’s presence ‘putting the birds off’.

  “I don’t suppose you remember me, you one-piecee bad boy?” Cox said, with defensive challenge.

  “Oh yes I do,” replied Phillip. “You had no success with your wood-pecker rattle, remember?”

  “I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking of.”

  “That Shanghai custom you told me about. The Rattle!”

  “You’re still quite mad, I see. This one-piecee bad boy——” said Cox, to the others, “filled the night with groans and yells in the room I shared with him at the Royal Oak, until I could bear it no longer. He hurled boots about in the darkness, thinking they were bombs.”

  “Seriously, Cox, don’t you remember our walk down the hill to the Picture Palace and back?”

  “You’re making it all up. Besides, when did you do any walking? When you weren’t attacking the enemy by night, you were chasing him, apparently, in clouds of dust. This one-piecee bad boy——” went on Cox, “had about half a dozen stink-machines, one for every day of the week.”

  “I was testing various motor cycles, as a matter of fact.”

  “At any rate you’ve got a decent vehicle now. Can you find room for me? My wife’s staying at Southend-on-Sea, and I want to bring her back here, as I’ve found lodging in the village. We’ll come back by the train, of course.”

  Phillip saw the reason why Cox had shut him up about Sevenoaks. He did not want to be reminded of his past.

  “If you don’t mind wedging yourself in the back with Wigg——There aren’t any steep hills, I hope——”

  “The very thing for hills,” said Cox, taking some white balls from his pocket. “They never fail. Drop them into the petrol, and they put life into the oldest crock. Remove all carbon from piston tops and cylinder heads.”

  “What are they?”

  “Speed pills. Also they increase consumption by fifteen per cent.”

  Phillip sniffed them. “They smell like moth pills to me.”

  “Speed pills,” replied Cox. “My contribution to the petrol supply. Quite frankly, I’ve got to support a wife on my pay——Speed pills will do the trick. I always used them in my Studebaker in Shanghai.”

  Phillip had read, in The Boy’s Own Paper, of camphor propelling small wooden boats, so it might possibly do the same for an engine. But might it be a practical joke of Cox’s. After all, sugar dropped into petrol turned black as treacle, and clogged the carburettor jet.

  “Are you sure you aren’t ragging, Cox?”

  “Do I look like the sort of person who hurls boots at hotel room walls at one o’clock in the morning? That’s settled. No more talkee-talk, Wigg and I will ride in the dickey.”

  “Moth balls are harmless,” said Captain Kingsman, quietly; and Phillip dropped them into the tank.

  “I’m glad this car isn’t a moth, Cox! I say, mind the paint, please. The step up is this side, for next time.”

  Cox had mounted on the mudguard, while Wigg had used the step. Phillip swung the handle, and seated himself at the wheel.

  “Camphor has a very low flash-point, and burns with a smoky flame, while tending to decrease the speed of the detonation,” said the q
uiet captain. “So it has a use in preventing knocking, when the spark is well advanced.”

  “Are you keen on motor cars, sir?”

  “Very; but don’t call me ‘sir’. My name is Kingsman. I’m a barrister by profession, and an amateur racing-driver by inclination.”

  “Have you raced on Brooklands, Captain Kingsman?”

  “Occasionally.”

  Phillip began to enjoy the adventure. The engine, too, responded to this amazing information by an audible sucking in of breath. The carburettor began to whisper hoarsely as it fed to the cylinders the juice of the speed pills. Had Captain Kingsman given them to Cox? Faster and faster turned the engine, with a pleasing double thrust of its twin connecting rods.

  Phillip was so exhilarated that he was over a cross-roads before he saw them, causing a boy on a bicyle in panic to wobble and a pig being driven by the boy to stop a couple of inches off the front wheel, get into reverse, shudder, and bolt squealing into the boy, pitching him and bicycle into the ditch.

  “A miss is as good as a mile!” Phillip said to Captain Kingsman, who was thoughtfully stroking his moustache.

  “That is an epitaph as good as any.”

  While Phillip was wondering what he meant, Captain Kingsman said, “Is this a particularly favourite route of yours to Southend?”

  “No, I’ve never been here before. I thought that perhaps you knew the way.”

  “Well, one can get on to the road by the next turn to the left, about two miles ahead.”

  The road was narrow but straight, with an occasional thatched cottage along it. To show off the Swift’s paces, Phillip kept the pedal pressed to the floorboard. It might almost have been a steam-engine under the bonnet, he thought, so smoothly did it thrust away at the crankshaft with its nine iron horses.

  Captain Kingsman spoke again. Phillip said he was sorry, he could not hear. Captain Kingsman shouted, “I fancy nine hundred R.P.M. is the safe limit for this type of engine, with the unmodified flywheel.”