The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  There it remained for several days, seen by Richard every time he went into the sitting-room; until at last he said, looking up from his magazine, “What is the wild boy up to now, Hetty? What is all the mystery?” He indicated the pale green paper, which until now he had refrained from examining or asking questions about.

  “Phillip stuck it there for safety, Dickie.”

  “What is it, if I may enquire?”

  “He is going to stay for a while with Dora. Apparently he is not very well, and the doctors have sent him into the country.”

  “Look here!” cried Richard. “What is the mystery about Master Phillip? Is he ill, or is he not ill? If he is ill, why have not I, as the boy’s father, been told about it?”

  “I think it is general debility, Dickie. He was never very strong in the chest as a child, you will remember, and we were anxious about his croup.”

  “Oh. I had no idea. Was that decided when he went into hospital recently?”

  “I think so, but Phillip does not say much to me, you know.” She said this to reassure her husband.

  “Well, it beats me. I don’t understand what is going on, not in the very least.” Richard picked up Nash’s, and read more of the latest adventures of Chota in Billet Notes.

  “Phillip is ordered lots of fresh air and cream, apparently, Dickie, so he is going to stay in Dora’s cottage. He says the doctor told him to fish, so he is waiting for a few days, he says, until the trout are fat, at the end of May.”

  “Good God!” cried Richard, now thoroughly aroused, “what sort of caper is this? Have the authorities gone mad? What are they doing, to allow a bit of a boy like Phillip to run wild—and then they send him fishing for trout! And he bides his time, mark you, he picks and chooses, he waits until they are fat, at the end of May! Then in Heaven’s name how much leave has he got, pray? Two months? Then why isn’t he in hospital, if he is not well, instead of gadding about as he does, turning night into day? What are the powers-that-be doing, I should like to know, to leave a young fellow, if there is something radically wrong with him, to his own devices, until the Lyn trout are in condition? No, I do not accept that explanation! There is something very fishy about the goings-on of Master Phillip, if you ask me! Some things that want looking into very closely indeed!”

  “I expect the authorities know what they are doing; please don’t upset yourself about it.”

  “Who’s upsetting himself? Not me,” said Richard, and taking up The Daily Trident, he read about massed German assaults on the forts of Verdun; after which, an attack on Asquith for mismanaging the war, signed Castleton, the name of the proprietor of the newspaper.

  “Well, at any rate, Dickie, I notice a great improvement in Phillip lately. He was very poorly, you know, when he came back from France last winter, very much on edge. I promised not to tell you, but his superior officer wrote to him and said he deserved a military cross for what he did. I saw the letter myself. Phillip took charge, he said, when the other officers had been killed, and led the men to take the position.”

  “Why didn’t I know of this before?” cried Richard. “Now I come to think of it, Phillip always was a bit of an adventurer. Well I’m blest!”

  *

  Hetty felt happy, as she looked out of the back bedroom window at Phillip, whistling to himself as he worked in the garden below. The beautiful weather seemed to have entered into him; his almost feverish manner had calmed; he was like his old self, when all that had mattered to him was the countryside.

  Phillip was varnishing his three-piece hickory rod, which he had bought before the war at a pawnbroker’s for fifteen pence. Strands of a plaited silk line, speckled black and white, called magpie, were stretched between elm and fence, for rubbing with boiled linseed oil, for stiffening and waterproofing. His grandfather Maddison’s japanned box of flies was open, for the points of the barbed hooks to be sharpened on oil-stone.

  It was a fine morning in the second week in May. The sumach tree in one corner of the garden was in gentle leaf; the blossom of its neighbour, a lilac, was beginning to turn brown. Leaning a branch over the garden fence, as though to touch sumach and lilac, an apple tree planted by Thomas Turney at the same time that Hetty had planted the two trees on her side of the fence, soon after she had come to the house in Hillside Road, bore little green pouts of apples, their throats as though tied with brown bows. To Phillip’s fancy the apples were the little eyes of the tree, whose fruit had been snatched, immature and sour, by the old man’s grandsons during all the sunlit, peaceful years before the war. Never, never again! Gerry and Bertie, Tommy and Peter, Alfred and Horace, and for the boy he was, never the same again, for tree or man or bird. Did trees feel, did they mourn when their fruit, cradling their seeds, was lost to them before the time of ripening at the fall? Birds and animals suffered for loss of their young; so did insects, such as earwigs and spiders which carried their eggs in a silken bundle; some fish did, like the stickleback, the little rufous-bellied father fish, with his spiny daggers, who built a nest among waterweeds and hovered on guard, dashing at beetles which dived down to snatch his young. Once he and Horace Cranmer had watched a stickleback dart at a big black water-beetle, called dytiscus, which Father had told him flew about at night, looking down for water (and sometimes flopping upon glass-houses in the moonlight). The beetle seized the little fish and chewed it up in its jaws. Cranmer had caught it, and put it in a matchbox, and it had started to tear the wood of the box. Sticklebat, Cranmer had called the fish. They had watched it in a pond in Whitefoot Lane woods, in the old Boy Scout days.

  Up in the elm above him sounded petulant beseeching cries. Ten tomtits, with new yellow gapes at the hinges of their beaks, had left the nesting box and were awaiting, on various branches among the green leaves, their parents with caterpillars, spiders, and occasional bits of fat from mutton bones hanging from trees in some of the gardens down the road. In the Backfield a female cuckoo belled through the mist of morning air; from the distant cemetery came the urgent wook-wook-oo of a male bird. The morning seemed to dream in stillness before the coming of great heat, as on the moor above the shadowed valley of the Lyn, during that wonderful holiday just before the war broke out. Would it be the same now, when at the end of the week he and Desmond went together to the West Country?

  Desmond seemed much more contented than he was; he still went out with Lily, or rather to her house in Nightingale Grove, just above the railway; but apart from that, Phillip knew nothing.

  Soon Desmond was to have ten days’ leave, before going overseas to a Tunnelling Company of the Royal Engineers. Six of those days were to be spent in Devon. Only seven more days now, and they would be sitting in a carriage at Waterloo, for the long and thrilling journey to Barnstaple; then the change to the little narrow-gauge engine, with the brass funnel, of the Lynton railway, leading up to the heather and furze and red deer of Exmoor, the bright running streams, the far blue Bristol Channel, the distant coast-line of Wales—far, far away would I rove!

  *

  Rod, line, and flies having been attended to, Phillip went through the open french windows into the house, and played his father’s gramophone, which had been locked, but one of the keys on his mother’s key-ring opened it. After a cup of tea at eleven o’clock, brought by Mrs. Feeney the charwoman (his mother had gone shopping) he went down to visit Mrs. Neville, and had another cup of tea with her at the open window. They discussed Desmond’s transfer, and he reassured her that all Tunnelling Companies were well out of the fighting, safe underground from shelling.

  “I think Desmond applied because he was a little bit jealous of you having been out twice to the front. Of course I could stop it if I wanted to, but he would never forgive me if I did. He’s so big that sometimes I forget that my son will not be eighteen until next September! And now he talks of being engaged to some girl! You look surprised, Phillip; didn’t you know? I hope I’m not giving away secrets—perhaps Desmond wants to tell you himself. Anyway, I expect you know Li
ly, one of the little girls in the Gild Hall? I know nothing about her, beyond what I’ve told you. I don’t expect to share in a young man’s life, like some mothers do. But then, I’m not the possessive kind. I believe in letting the younger generation find its own feet. What’s she like, Phillip? Some fluffy little thing, with goo-goo eyes?”

  “Lily is fair, and rather pretty, Mrs. Neville. She’s not exactly a flapper, in fact she looks quite grown up. Actually, I think she’s the same age as Desmond.”

  “Thank God she isn’t a canary!” Mrs. Neville cried, with a little shriek of laughter. “Although, poor things,” she added, as suddenly reflective again, “they cannot help it. Haven’t you heard of the canaries at Woolwich, Phillip? That’s what the soldiers call them. They’re the girls working in the explosives department, whose faces turn yellow with the chemicals they handle. They make a lot of money, and the soldiers know this, of course, and go out with them only if the canaries stand treat! They’re doing well, you know, some of the working class, nowadays—especially those on munitions. They’re buying motor-cycles, gramophones, and even grand pianos! That’s respectability, you see, Phillip—a grand piano. Nobody can play them, of course!”

  When she spoke next, Phillip realised that she had known more about Lily than she had pretended.

  “Desmond says Lily is rather like Helena, Phillip, only quieter, though what that means I don’t know, for Helena is the last girl to be called flighty! Still, it’s only his first girl—all the boys in khaki nowadays want a girl, don’t they, someone whose photograph they can carry in their pocket-book, and show the other fellows. You look rather sad, dear. Is anything the matter?”

  “Desmond doesn’t want me to talk to her, Mrs. Neville.”

  “A little jealousy, dear, that’s all. Don’t you take any notice of that! He’s finding his own feet, you see. So far it has been you who has filled his life, for as you know, Desmond has not had a father’s care, and a growing boy needs someone other than his mother to look up to. Why, he was jealous of your devotion to Helena at one time, and used to tell me that if you and she became, well—it’s only a phase, Phillip! Have another cup of tea, won’t you? Oh, it’s the gramophone at the open front window again today, is it? ‘If music be the food of love, play on,’ as Shakespeare says. Which reminds me, I am so glad that your mother has found an interest outside her home, in the plays she sees with Grandpa! I see them trotting off down the road, to get the midday cheap tram! Then back again, before your father comes home. Why don’t you go with her to the Old Vic one day, it would give her such a treat, and you’d enjoy Shakespeare too, with your fine perceptive feelings, dear.”

  “Oh, I had enough Shakespeare at school to last me a lifetime! Though I must admit bits Gran’pa used to read weren’t bad. I remember the scene from Henry the Fifth he read, the campfires, and the armourers ‘accomplishing the knights’, knocking in the rivets to their armour. That was when Uncle Sidney and Uncle Hugh were going to the Boer War. Well, I must skedaddle now. Can you hear the gramophone down here?”

  “Faintly, dear. But I shall be looking out when she comes past, wheeling her bike. She always looks up and waves to me, you know.”

  “You are my ally, Mrs. Neville! Well, I must rush now! I think I’ll play the Nimrod movement from Elgar’s Enigma Variations today, and not the Liebestod. Only four more days now, and Des and I will be on our way to Devon! It won’t be the same, of course, for somehow in war-time the country does not seem to be as it used to be, but with Des, who likes fishing better than watching birds, I hope it will be like old times again.”

  Phillip’s new mood of optimism, which might have been due to the slack time he had been enjoying, was not to last long. Detective-sergeant Keechey was to see to that.

  *

  Feeling happy with life, Phillip went down early to Freddy’s bar; but going in out of the sun, which was slanting shadows across the street and half-way up the buildings opposite, he felt sudden longing to be in the country. The bar looked dull and ordinary; he had never been in during a summer day before, only in the autumn by day, and gas-light during the darkness when the shadowy world was shut out. Now Freddy somehow looked older, and artificial, like his wearing a strawyard indoors, a man of straw and cash in the till, and with no other personality than that of a foreground figure to rows of bottles. He was reading The Morning Advertiser when Phillip went in, there being no customers in the three bars.

  “I’ll have a beer, Freddy. And one for yourself.”

  They were on terms almost of confidence now; at least in small things, such as Freddy having confided that the money he got for drinks stood to him went into a money-box for his little boy; but when a very special friend asked him to ’ave one, well, he took a little gin. To show his sincerity, Freddy poured himself a tot from a bottle from which he unpeeled the wrapper.

  Having toasted one another, Freddy glanced around the empty bar, took a look into the snug next door, and into the four-ale bar at the end. Coming back, his eyes made a conspiratorial sweep before saying in lowered voice, “You know those two plain-clothes fellows from the station? I thought I’d warn you that they’ve bin making enquiries about you. I told them nothing, of course. Don’t say I told you, you know they can make it awkward for the tenant of this ’ouse with the Council.”

  “The Council?”

  “The Borough Council owns this house, you see, sir. It’s not a tied ’ouse, like most houses, it’s what they call a free house, leaving the tenant to buy where he likes. But we have to be careful, as the Council owns the place.”

  A feeling of being shadowed, in two senses, came upon Phillip. He thought that his happiness had been too good to last: something was bound to happen. He touched the mahogany slab of the counter.

  “I think—only don’t say I said anything, will you—but I fancy it may have to do with your being about here so long, and out of uniform. You remember that Australian what was here spending money like water a week or two back? You may recall you told me his medal ribands looked wrong, he wore one for Gallipoli, I think it was, and you said there was no such medal yet. Well, they questioned ’im in the billiard room, and later he was arrested in London, as a deserter, by the military.”

  “Good God, do they think I’m a deserter, then?”

  “I can’t answer for what a flatfoot thinks, but I know they are out to get all the pinches they can, for promotion. It’s not for me to express an opinion, but I think you can guess what I think of them,” tittered Freddy, his eyes closed to slits as he sipped his gin.

  Phillip took a draught of his beer, and was putting down the glass when the swing doors opened. Giving a wink, Freddy took up cloth in one hand, glass in the other, and began to polish. Rubber footfalls came from behind Phillip, and he saw in the retinae of his eyes dark-clothed arms from which rolled umbrellas hung.

  “I’d like a word with you,” said Keechey, beside him.

  Discomposed by the deliberate nearness of the two men in bowler hats, Phillip tried to show calmness as he raised his glass, to drink slightly, and, he hoped, with nonchalance.

  When Phillip made no reply, Keechey went on, “Will you come with us into the billiard room? I want to ask you some questions.”

  Freddy went on polishing the glass as though he had heard nothing. Curious and a little upset, Phillip followed Keechey into the billiard room. The tall moustached detective came after him, and shut the door.

  “You have been about here for some weeks now, off and on, and I have made some enquiries about you. I think I am right in saying that your name is Maddison? And it may interest you to know that we have made enquiries at the Motor Machine-Gun Section, Bisley, and they have no knowledge of you. What do you say to that?”

  “Only that I am not in the Motor Machine-Gun Section at Bisley. I am in the Machine-Gun Training Centre at Grantham.”

  “Then what are you doing, sometimes in uniform, down here?”

  “I was given two months’ sick leave by a medical
board at Caxton Hall, a little over five weeks ago.”

  “Two months. That’s a long time, isn’t it? Were you wounded?”

  “No. As a matter of fact, I was given the leave to go away into the country; Devon, in fact. I’m going there on Friday. I’ve been given a railway warrant to Lynton.”

  “I’ll take particulars of your unit. Grantham, you say, is your headquarters? What’s become of your friend Devereux-Wilkins? Ever hear of him nowadays?”

  “He’s not a friend of mine. I’ve only seen him once.”

  “But you went down to see him the night you came back from France, the thirteenth of October last, didn’t you? You went to the Roebuck for that one purpose only, I think. You spoke to him for less than two minutes, having called him away from a game of billiards. Then he left for London, and you came back here. You were accompanied by a Brazilian friend, I think. Shortly afterwards there was a Zeppelin raid. Then you met Dr. Dashwood on your way home and returned with him to the Conservative Club until shortly after eleven o’clock.”

  “You seem to have been shadowing me quite a lot. I suppose you’ve been talking to Mr. Jenkins?”

  “Which Mr. Jenkins?”

  “The special constable who lives in the same road. Anyway, what is all this leading up to? Some spy-scare business?”

  “We have to take notice of every thing, especially during a war, you know. How d’you think the war’s going? When are we going to have a smack back at the Germans?”

  This was so obvious a trap that Phillip laughed. He thought of saying that they might put on khaki themselves and go to France and find out, but he could never make the sort of reply to people that might make them feel awkward. It was because he was a weakling, he knew; quite unable to hit back at anybody.

  “Oh, a big push is coming, all right. We’ve got a lot of water-tanks in position behind our lines in France, south of Arras, in order to make Jerry think we are there for life; but that’s where the attack is coming, I hear.”