The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  The attack fizzled out and the German Red Cross men let the walking wounded go back, me among them. About that time the entire front gave way; I saw thousands of our troops going back, for miles on either side. Poor devils, they couldn’t stick it any longer, first time in, and no water or food. Anyway, they were up against uncut barbed wire, as usual.

  Well, Westy, that is all my news. I’m now scrimshanking with what I suppose are pioneer troops, most of them old navvies with dry clay-faces rutted by the tracks of cart-wheels, any age up to 70. They get six bob a day, as much as A.S.C. lorry drivers. They booze most of it away on Saturday nights. At least, that was so until now; we are an off-shoot of that lot, and forming anew.

  We’ve only just got shifted here, and nothing doing at the moment; but I am looking forward to seeing Frances again shortly; and also to seeing you, so make haste and get better. I remember you whenever I hear They Never Believe Me; I shall never forget that dugout, and the clock that wouldn’t stop ticking before Zero hour!

  Walking about in this town tonight, I saw the moon rising over the roof-tops exactly the colour of iodine. Then it turned terra-cotta red, the hue of a neck-wound contused by internal bleeding, after death. I expect this is morbid, but I often amuse myself trying to connect one aspect of life with another, by means of similies.

  Later, when the moon was higher, brighter, clear of factory smoke, I thought of it shining down upon Le Rutoire Farm and Mazingarbe, throwing long shadows from the crassiers and pyramidical slag-heaps around Loos, and dimming the electric sparkles of musketry around the Hohenzollern Redoubt, as seen from the high ground of Maroc. Isn’t it strange what a fascination the front has for one, when one is away from it? Something seems to be drawing one back again; despite all the hell of it when one was there. I feel the romance of war, even in the dead lying on the chalk, to be absorbed again whence, originally, human life came. Our bones are calcium, and were not our original ancestors fishes? So we are cousins to the minute sea-shells that are the chalk-beds of the world.

  I must stop before I utter any more bilge! Well, Westy, make haste and get well, and all the best, mon capitaine,

  Yours till the last bottle,

  PHILLIP.

  P.S. Brickhill House, Beau Brickhill, Gaultshire, will always find me. It is my cousin’s place.

  Captain Bason came back on Sunday night and Phillip asked if he might have forty-eight hours off to go and fetch the Swift. On the way back, he thought he would go to Brickhill, and sleep the night with Polly. Beau Brickhill was, according to the map, only about twenty-five miles from Northampton.

  “Sorry, old sport. You’ve got to attend a course on the Lewis gun, beginning tomorrow. By the way, I’ve invited Frances down for next week-end, and how about Alice coming, too? The landlady says they can get a double room next door. I’ll pay their fares, of course.”

  “Well, I’ll pay my whack.”

  Frances and Alice arrived on the Saturday afternoon. They carried longer umbrellas, and wore what they called freedom skirts, with jackets of Crow Blue, a black material which had dark blue sheens on it at certain angles. They wore shin-high boots, a-swing with tassels. After tidying up, as they called it, in the bedroom which Bason had arranged for them to occupy in the house next door, the girls returned to the sitting-room, for what Bason called high tea.

  Afterwards they played whist and rummy. Phillip played his trench gramophone. When he put on The Eternal Waltz, with its haunting lilt of faraway splendours and romantic loves, Frances and Bason rolled back the carpet, and began to dance. Phillip sat by the gramophone, his ear close to the tinned concave reflector. Alice raised eyebrows at Bason.

  “Come on, you slacker,” said Bason, kicking him as he passed, “don’t leave Alice out in the cold!”

  “I can’t dance.”

  “Come, I’ll show you,” said Alice, holding out her arms.

  “But I’m no good, really.”

  “It’s quite easy. Just let yourself glide to the lilt of the music.”

  “I feel glued to the floor,” he said, with a laugh to hide his fear of being clumsy and foolish.

  “Come on,” said Alice, smiling steadily into his eye, “you’re not going to get out of it.”

  “My shoes have rubber studs on them, and won’t glide.”

  To his relief the motor ran down at this point. He wound the handle, while Alice looked through the case of records, picking out one after another, swiftly to reject disc after disc and half-drop them on the growing pile. He wanted to ask her to be careful, but kept silent. Obviously she thought little of them.

  “Haven’t you got any foxtrots more up-to-date than Hitchy Koo?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Got any Winner records?”

  “Sorry. Only His Master’s Voice, and some cheap Zonophones.”

  “Do you like only serious music?”

  “Well, yes.”

  She went to the gramophone. “Put on that waltz again. I’ll show you the steps. It’s simple—one, one two, one, one two. Take off your shoes, you can do it in your socks.”

  There was a hole in one toe; but he overcame his dread, took off the shoes, and stood trepidant before her.

  “This arm goes round my waist, like this.” She hid his hand behind her, pressed it firmly. “Now give me your other hand.” A whiff of La Rola scent, as in the advertisements of the girl with wind-blown hair, further discomposed him. “Now, follow my steps, one, one two, one, one two. That’s right. Only don’t hold yourself so stiffly, let yourself go loosely, as though you were balancing a pile of books on your head. Don’t laugh!” She shook him, and said, “You’re not trying! Now be serious,” with a little shake. He felt easier, and thought it rather a joke when he bumped backwards into Bason.

  Thereafter the joke was repeated at intervals, the two manœuvring to give one another bumps.

  “How about a drink?” suggested Bason, when they were resting. “I’ve got some gin, and a bottle of crême de menthe. You ladies no doubt will plump for mother’s ruin? No? Well, how about some of the green eye of the little yellow god?” as he held up the bottle.

  “Only a little, please, Bruce,” said Frances. “Not more than a thimbleful, really.”

  Bason gave them each half a small glass. “What about you, Phil? Mother’s ruin?”

  “Beer, thanks, Bruce.”

  They sat round the fire, and sudden complete easiness came over Phillip. He lay stretched out in an armchair, on the small of his back, feet stretched to the blaze, feeling that he had known them all his life. Outside the December afternoon died as it had begun, in dullness; within the room all was contentment. He marvelled anew at the wonderful turn his life had taken; he was living a man’s life, every day brought its different adventures.

  Seeing that Bason’s glass was empty, he arose with Indian smoothness and unscrewed the top of a beer bottle, gently controlling the sneeze of gas, and then with extreme care three-quarter filled the glass which Bason held on his knee, as he lay back on the sofa beside Frances, one arm amiably around her shoulders. His company commander’s face, with its expression of happy relaxation as he stared into the flames of the fire, conveyed perfectly his thanks.

  Continuing his silent unspeaking glide Phillip went to Alice with the liqueur bottle. One raised eyebrow and a gap between finger and thumb of half an inch beside the small narrow glass held in her hand, a meticulous pouring of the thick green liquid, a little jerk to contain the drip; then in the same flow of silence, save for the flap of flames, he half-filled Frances’ glass, and afterwards his own glass, from the beer bottle. Holding them in the spell of his movement, he glided to the gramophone, wound it slowly, put on a record, set it flowing in circular motion as the centre of a dark deep whirlpool, and gliding away, stood beside the aspidistra fern in its brass cup on the stand and held down his eyes as the two voices, one delicate and ethereal, the other deep and tender, brought back memories of “Spectre” West and Y Z night before the battle of Loos
.

  And when I tell them, and I’m certainly going to tell them

  That you’re the girl whose boy one day I’ll be,

  They’ll never believe me, they’ll never believe me

  That from this great big world you’ve chosen me!

  Pretending not to see that Frances’ eyes were on him, as he lifted the sound-box from the last groove, and that Alice was patting as though secretly the sofa for him to come beside her, and that her lips were parted, and her eyes, smaller than those of Frances, had the dreamy look he had noticed when he kissed her in the cinema box, Phillip put on the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, and went back beside the fern, to feel the sad beauty of darkness, and the dying music of the sun.

  “Play some more, Phil,” said Bason.

  There seemed to be a feeling of unity, of friendliness and ease in the room beyond ordinary hankering desires, by which usually he had wanted to escape from the dull and terrifying nihilism of being alone. It was dark outside, the flame-light jerked about on the ceiling. He lit a candle beside the gramophone, and played record after record.

  “Oh, not that old thing! They play it in every electric palace!”

  He felt foolish, and took off Sinding’s Rustle of Spring.

  “How about Tchaikowski? The Sugar Plum Fairy isn’t bad.”

  “All right, if it’s the best you’ve got.”

  “Don’t be so beastly, Alice!” said Frances, sitting up.

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” said Phillip.

  “Have another crême de menthe?” suggested Bason, lazily, re-crossing his strapped leggings, and jingling his spurs. He yawned without putting hand to mouth.

  “Can’t we do something? How about going to a dance?” said Alice. “I like light and gaiety.” She got up and danced by herself, round the table. Coming to Phillip, she put her arm on his shoulder. He felt proud and grateful, and crossed his arm with hers, on her silky shoulder. He was happy again.

  “You want taking out of yourself,” said Alice, nuzzling his cheek with her nose.

  Bason lit the gas. Then he opened a box and produced three balls and a magic wand. He did things with the balls, holding them between the fingers of one hand, waving the wand, and with a twist of fingers, the balls vanished. There were several variations of this, then he did other tricks, remarking, “The quickness of the hand deceives the eye.”

  “I saw Chung Ling Soo once saw a woman in half on the stage, wonder how it was done,” said Phillip, thinking of Desmond beside him in the sixpennies of the Hippo.

  “Like this?” said Alice, doing the splits on the rug before the fire, showing a length of silk stocking. Bason pretended to hide his eyes with a hand. “Ooh,” he said, grinning at Phillip.

  “Really!” said Frances, as Alice began a pas seul, snapping her fingers as though they were castanets. Soon they were dancing again, to the Eternal Waltz. The table was shoved against the wall, and the fun went on, until the landlady appeared with a tray, to lay the table.

  “My,” she said, “you young people are enjoying yourselves.”

  Chapter 7

  CHRISTMAS 1915

  A move to a camp was made the following week. The huts were of asbestos, and cold, for although each cubicle, for two officers, had a cast-iron stove, there was no coal.

  “We’re in a K3 division now, old sport,” said Bason. “What’s more, we’ve got a good chance of going to France next year, perhaps in time for the Big Push! What luck, eh?”

  Phillip’s room-mate was an amiable, goggle-eyed, half-bald man of about thirty called Lord, who had been selected with him for the Lewis Gun Course. The camp was a big one; huts were going up for miles around. Every morning the two subalterns set off for a large hut where instruction in the new automatic weapon was given.

  The mechanism was explained by a staff sergeant, whose sentences never varied. Having seen how it worked, by the pressure of gas behind a bullet coming through a port in the barrel and ramming a piston down a tube to work the feeding and extractor mechanism, while turning the black circular metal drum of ammunition holding 47 rounds which clapped on above the lock, Phillip had no interest in the technical terms. The gun was cooled by rayed fins inside a cylinder taking away the heat of the barrel. Cold air was drawn through the fins by the pumping action of a buffet ring on the muzzle; the gun could jam at various positions of the cocking handle, and these places, and the direct action to be taken to clear stoppages, had to be learnt by heart. Anyone could see that in five minutes; the rest of the jargon, to be repeated until one was a parrot, was a waste of time.

  “Come, sir, what comes after ‘The action of the cocking handle being drawn back on the rack——’.”

  “I can make the gun work, sergeant, but not those words.”

  “Come, sir, have another try. ‘The action of the cocking handle——’”

  Patiently the staff sergeant repeated the mechanical sentences for the various mechanical details, and in turn the assembled N.C.O.s and officers had to repeat them. The idea was to learn everything by heart, before going on the range to fire the damned thing. Morning after morning was spent in the hut with the verbiage attached to the Lewis gun. Regularly Captain Milman the new adjutant came in, to ask cheerfully how they were getting on. Every afternoon, following tea in the mess, Bason and Phillip set out to walk to the station, three miles away, to catch the train for Baker Street, and an evening with Alice and Frances. Night after night they returned to camp between one and two in the morning.

  Christmas was only two days off when it was announced that one half of the officers were to have four days leave including the 25th and 26th; while the other half would go away, on the return of the first half, until New Year’s Eve.

  Phillip was not among the lucky first batch; he would have to take his after Christmas, as Bason was going to his home in Brondesbury for what he called the festive occasion.

  On the morning of Christmas Eve there was a junior officers’ test for promotion. Ah, at last, thought Phillip. After a little drill, forming platoons on the left, fixing bayonets, and marching a skeleton company about, their fitness was to be tested by a forced march. They had to cover ten miles in three hours across country, which meant a circular route round several lanes. A captain, a Scotsman from Glasgow, who had been prominent in the Trades Union movement with Colonel Broad before the war, was detailed to take a score of subalterns on the march. They got as far as a small public house down a lane, and then with a grin, the big ruddy faced Captain ‘Brassy’ Cusack, who was a father of a growing family, said in broad Scots, “Here’s a guid wee bothy where I can test your various capacities, gentlemen,” as he halted them and knocked on the door.

  The landlord opened it, they went inside, and soon the captain was seated at the piano, his pint pot on the lid, playing while Cox, Lord, Flagg, and others roared out popular songs. There they stayed drinking beer and eating bread and cheese for two and a half hours, leaving to get back to camp with ten minutes to spare. Captain Cusack reported to the adjutant, who came out with Major Gleeson, pipe in mouth. After an amused stare around Major Gleeson told the adjutant to carry on, and relighting his pipe, went back to the warm stove in his office.

  “Carry on, will you, Captain Cusack,” said Captain Milman, and followed the C.O. into the Orderly Room.

  “Fall out, you wretched lot of tipplers,” said ‘Brassy’, “ye’ll all be pleased to hear ye’re fit for promotion.”

  “Hurray!” cried Phillip. “Up the Jocks, and down with the pints!” as he walked to the mess for tea, lots of tea to take away the saltpetre thickness of the beer on his tongue.

  Bason had a bag to take on leave, and he and several others took a taxi to the station. “Room for a little one,” he said to Phillip, who had written to Alice to say that he would expect her at the usual time on Christmas Eve at the Apex House for dinner, and would she like to go with him to the Coliseum afterwards. He wrote at the same time to the Coliseum, for two tickets in the front row of the stall
s for the second house, enclosing a cheque for £1 as deposit.

  In the train to Baker Street Bason said “Frances told me that Alice wouldn’t mind being engaged to you, Phil.”

  This was so unexpected, and complimentary, that Phillip could think of nothing to say in reply.

  Engaged to Alice! Every week there were pages of twin photographs, like two pigeon’s eggs side by side in rows of nests, of officers and their fiancées, in The Tatler and Bystander. He sat in the train looking at his polished brown shoes, with slight feelings of pleasurable satisfaction, that he, Phillip Maddison, would have a girl of his own. But what could he say to ask her? He shied away from the thought, and by the time they got to Baker Street, it had passed from his mind.

  Saying goodbye to Bason, he went on the Underground to Piccadilly Circus, where the outlet near the Criterion Restaurant was lined with what Bason called hoo-ers.

  “Hullo, dearie? Want a sweetheart?”

  He walked past several requests, saying cheerfully to each, “No thanks,” but at the entrance into the street, by the dim blue lights, a dark girl took his arm, and said in a Scots voice, “Be a guid laddie and take my arm, a bluebottle is watching me, to arr-rest me.” She held him with a strong bony arm, and they walked as far as the corner of Lower Regent Street, where she stopped.

  “Gi’e me a wee drappie, and then I know a bonny place yonder, in Coventry Street. You can gi’e me what you like. I’ve seen you fre-e-equently, who are you, Broken Billy? Have ye no cash? I don’t mind, for once, Billy.”

  “Well, thank you very much, but I’m meeting a friend,” he explained; whereupon the croodling tone evaporated and in a voice hard and sharp and deadly as a hatpin she swore at him for half a minute, while binding to him with the bone of her upper arm, before becoming a shadow in the night. Perhaps she had dreamed herself almost to death, he thought. Her heart must be broken, beyond tears. Did she still long for true love? Gould a prostitute love anyone?