The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “In Millbank Hospital, about five weeks ago. From an officer there, who had just come back from the front.”

  “What are the tanks going to be used for? Poison gas?”

  “No, for water, according to what I heard. It was obviously a blind, to puzzle Jerry, if he came over to raid.”

  “In a Zeppelin, you mean?”

  Phillip laughed.

  “So you think it funny, do you?” The buck-teeth were exposed, the upper lip slightly drawn back.

  “Well, sort of Heath Robinson, you know.”

  “Who’s Heath Robinson?”

  “Haven’t you heard of Heath Robinson?”

  “I’m asking the questions,” retorted the other, with a suggestion of snarl.

  “He’s a comic artist. He’s as well known as Bairnsfather.”

  Looking at Phillip sideways, the plain-clothes policeman said, “Are you trying to be funny? Because if you are, two can be funny, see? Who d’you think you’re talking to?”

  “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  “You’ll soon find out!” And taking his umbrella, the buck-toothed man, the blood partly drained from veinous face, walked from the billiard room, and out of the saloon bar, followed by what Phillip, who had been reading a story by Harrison Ainsworth, thought of as his myrmidon. Then, peering through the open slot in the stained-glass partition, his glance met the sky-blue shine of the eyes of Lily smiling at him from the other side of the partition.

  A glass of colourless chemical lemonade stood on the bar, with the penny bottle. Freddy stood opposite her, the Chinese expression on his face emphasised by the oval pebbles of his spectacles framed in thin gold wire.

  “This young lady,” said Freddy, “wishes to ’ave a word with you,” and he went away to polish more glasses.

  Phillip slid the cover over the spy-hole, and went out of the billiard room.

  “Hullo,” said Lily, softly, making as if to take his hand, but stopping herself. “I knew what Keechey and his assistant were after, when I saw them following you over the bridge as I came out of the laundry. So I came after them, just in case I could help.”

  “Well, that’s very kind of you, but I’m quite all right, thanks.”

  “You don’t know Keechey as I do. It was him what set about Dr. Dashwood last night. Haven’t you heard? It was after he had come in to see Mother, after a late visit to a little girl with diphtheria a few doors up. The doctor came into ours afterwards, and Mother give him a cup of tea. When he left it was getting on for eleven, and he was on his way to the Conservative Club when someone set about him in the dark as he was walking down Courthill Road and crowned him, then kicked his face while he lay in the road. Of course it was Keechey; he’s as jealous as a rat, as I told you.”

  “Did you know about Dr. Dashwood, Freddy?”

  “A publican hears many things, sir,” said the landlord, polishing away. “I did hear he had had some sort of an accident.”

  “Accident!” exclaimed Lily.

  “Now, my girl!” retorted Freddy, sharply. “I know nothing, see? This is a respectable ’ouse, and what goes on outside is none of my concern, see?” Coming to be near Phillip, “A man can draw his own conclusions, so long as he keeps them to himself. You, sir, I think I am right in saying, can draw your own conclusions, too? Now will you have a drink with me? Lily, you take my advice and go back to work, and I don’t mean that in any way unkindly. I’m old enough to be your father, see?”

  “They’re all old enough to be a father if you let them,” said Lily, to no one in particular as she sipped her lemonade, “only the nice ones like to fancy themselves as babies first.”

  “That’s what it’s for, isn’t it?” tittered Freddy.

  “Go on, you’re like all the rest of them!”

  “Don’t let the missus hear you say that,” whispered Freddy, “or she might start creatin’! You’re a very pretty girl, you know. You want to get a real sweetheart, and leave the boys alone. It’s time you went steady.”

  “Like you did, you mean? Well, I may not be that sort of girl.”

  “You know the old proverb, don’t you?”

  “I know your old proverb,” said Lily. “But you didn’t run fast enough.”

  “She’s a caution, isn’t she?” tittered Freddy. “So’ll my wife be, if she hears her say that.”

  “She knows it already,” said Lily.

  When Freddy had gone to the lower bar she said to Phillip, putting her hand on his, “I’m sorry you’re going away, but glad for your sake, for I know Keechey will try and pin something on you else. If he does, I know a thing or two about him which would keep him quiet.”

  “Oh, it was nothing, a mere mistake on his part. It’s cleared up now.”

  “Please,” said Lily, swimming to him from the blue lakes of her eyes, “please take care of yourself. And don’t think me too forward, will you?”

  “I think you are rather nice, Lily.”

  “Do you—really?” The lakes of her eyes seemed about to overflow.

  When she had gone, Freddy said, “I’ll say this for Lily, she pays her own way, and don’t come in here to pick up what she can, as some might think.” He leaned over the bar, and whispered, “I have an idea that she fancies someone other than your friend, Desmond Neville.”

  Phillip felt a pang of disappointment; then he was relieved. “I’m rather glad to hear you say that, for quite apart from other things, she is much too old for Desmond.”

  Freddy looked at him peculiarly. “You don’t get my meaning,” he said. Then between his teeth, “Anyway, watch your step with plain-clothes coppers.”

  “Look here, Freddy, did you believe what Keechey thought, that I’d lost my commission, and was due to be called up under conscription? The mistake arose simply because he’d enquired about me at the wrong unit.”

  “I’m not doubting your word for a moment, sir, and it’s not for the likes of me to inquire into your affairs, but you know what I told you about him and Lily, and he’s not the sort to stop at anything to please himself. He’s not got many friends round here, I can tell you! So if you don’t mind me saying it to you again, watch your step. You know what ’appened to a certain party on a dark night, don’t you?”

  “So you think that Keechey may have a grudge against me, as he had against Dashwood, on account of his friendship with Lily? Well, I assure you, Freddy, that there’s nothing like that between Lily and me! As for my great friend, he’s a bit of a boxer, and if Keechey tries any hankypanky on him, he’ll get a surprise! Anyway, Desmond’s going to the front after his week’s leave.”

  “Yes, he told me. Tunnelling, I think he said. He’ll miss you, you’ve been like an older brother to ’im, almost a father, in fact! So you have to that Brazilian fellow.”

  “Is it Eugene that Lily is keen on, Freddy?”

  Freddy looked amusedly at him, and said, “Don’t you know better than that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Freddy.”

  “Well, they say the onlooker sees most of the game, sir, and at the same time, one can never be sure of anything where a woman is concerned, so it’s really none of my business. Will you have a drink with me? It’s a pleasure, I assure you!”

  Freddy tipped his straw; the bar had come alive again.

  *

  The beautiful weather of late spring continued. Evening after evening Richard went down to his allotment, feeling the buoyant sunny air to be part of himself as he pushed his wheel-barrow, its tools wrapped in sacking against rattling, past the cemetery.

  Having arrived at his rods of ground, he set about preparing for work. His Norfolk jacket, folded inside out with the cashmere lining exposed, was placed in line with his tools upon the flinty soil, all laid neatly parallel. Such alignment gave this lonely man pleasure, or rather a feeling of harmony: here he could live his own mental pattern, which almost chronically was broken for him in what he thought of as his ow
n house. Fork, sieve, spade, hoe, line-and-winder, compost pail, two small bags holding hop manure and lime respectively, and a third smaller one containing soot—there they were in their places, keeping their distance from him.

  Having rolled up his sleeves in the correct manner, two-thirds the way up the forearm from the wrist, he took up his hoe, and treading carefully, examined his small plants. He saw them suddenly as they had looked in boyhood: the lettuces so tenderly pale, the carrots like dwarf trees, while the onions and leeks were tiny twisted green poles with black seed-caps on their tips, cabbages a tottering line of tiny little fellows.

  Now to let the air most carefully into their rootlets! The finer the tilth on top, the more moisture would be conserved.

  As he worked, to Richard came a picture of himself hoeing as a boy, after the Home Farm had been taken in hand—the last effort of his father to stave off the inevitable collapse, before the mortgages were foreclosed and everything broke up. The picture dulled; he sighed, and rested. The sun shone; his forearms were brown; he rejoiced again. There was nothing to equal farming; he was hoeing, he was in the open air, the late spring evening was warm and glowing with the same mellow light of boyhood’s evenings in field and lane and attic bedroom looking upon the Longpond at Rookhurst. In his mind he saw the steel chain of twenty-two yards dragging bright and jingling over flints upon a loamy downland field of arable, as the steward, broad-clothed and buskin’d, measured the men’s plots. Here, too, were flints; but upon a gravelly soil made hard with clay, a field abandoned to building plots, reprieved by the war. It was still alive, flown over by the cuckoo; voles lived in the grassy lanchetts between the plots; the kestrel hung above, larks sang in the air.

  In one corner of the allotment stood Richard’s compost heap. It was rectangular, properly squared at the coigns, and level on top. Within, heating in the first process of rotting, lay grass cut with shears, hedge clippings, nettle tops, dock leaves, perishable weeds, and pailfuls of kitchen waste provided by his wife. Not all of the latest pailful had gone into the heap, for some of its contents had been what Richard had asked Hetty particularly not to include: greasy margarine wrapping-paper, which would not rot, but only make unsightly litter.

  He looked up at the sound of a motor-cycle engine and saw a trail of dust behind the familiar figure of the wild boy riding, one negligent hand on throttle-controls, the other resting, theatrically, he thought, on his hip. Stopping a few yards away on the cart track, the rider propped up his machine and strolled over. Richard leaned upon his hoe.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” he said affably.

  “Oh, I thought I would come and see how you were getting on, Father. I’m off to Devon tomorrow.”

  “Well, give the Lyn and the sea my love. And of course Aunt Dora.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Richard watched him casting his eyes around, until they rested on two small pieces of grease-proof paper, neatly folded into squares, and held down by a stone, near the compost heap.

  “Yes, you may well look in that direction,” he said, with a light laugh. “However, we must count our blessings. At least so far no broken glass or sardine tins have been included in my compost pail.”

  “You ought to see the heaps of rubbish in an army camp, Father. Tons of loaves piled high, with rotting carcases of meat.”

  Richard thought this an exaggeration, but he said, “Oh, the great mass of English people are the untidiest on earth, we all know that. Do you remember the litter covering the Hill after a band night? Well, how’s the motor-cycle? Running well?”

  “Yes thanks. I thought of going out to Reynard’s Common to look at the Fish Ponds, and see if the carp and rudd are still basking on the top of the water.”

  “Desmond, I suppose, is coming home from Waltham Abbey tonight?”

  “Yes, Father, if there isn’t an air-raid warning.”

  “He told me, when you were in Millbank Hospital, and the Irish Rebellion broke out, that they had an invasion scare. I mention this because you always tended to scorn any idea of an invasion, I think.”

  “We’ve got a navy, Father.”

  “Well, yes, I give you that point,” said Richard, reluctantly. Then in a lowered voice, “Strictly between you and me, I can now tell you that, on the night following the murder of British officers as they lay in bed in Dublin hotels, we knew down at the Station that the eight Zeppelins which came over, led by Mathy, were working with the German High Seas Fleet. We Specials were on duty until two o’clock in the morning. The invasion alarm fizzled out, thank the lord, and I was able to spend some of my evenings getting on with my cultivations here. Well, tell me what you think of my little holding?” Richard swung out the hoe to encompass his sixteen rods.

  “It looks very good, Father.”

  “We want some rain badly, and I fancy some is on the way.” He looked up at the sky, where a pack of white cumulus cloud was moving slowly towards the north-east. “They may be getting rain in the West Country now. If so, it will bring the salmon up the Lyn for you. They use worm there, you know, in the boiling pools between those huge boulders. Are you off now? Well, thanks for looking me up. Tell Mother I’ll be home about nine o’clock, will you? I want to put in my runner beans, they should have been in long ago. I have to go on duty at ten tonight, so if I don’t see you before you go to Devon, I’ll wish you a very pleasant holiday, now.”

  “Thank you, Father. Would you like me to take the greasy paper back for you?”

  “Oh, no thanks, I shall burn it before I leave.”

  Now what did the wild boy mean by that, thought Richard, as the motor-cycle thudded softly down the flinty cart-track.

  Chapter 12

  LILY AND THE NIGHTINGALE

  Phillip, right hand on the single lever of the Binks 3-jet carburettor, was driving by ear, listening to the soft slow beat of his engine, as though, he said to himself, to the heart-beat of the beloved. This was a familiar phrase from magazine stories; but the engine beat was nearer to his love than any human heart had ever been. He listened with concern: there was inclined to be a rough spot between the pilot and second jet; and he did not want the engine to choke as Helena made her easy, lackadaisical departure. The flywheel was turning about two hundred times a minute: a heavy flywheel, so the pulley did not snatch at the belt. Gently now, open the throttle: his ear delighted in the very sensitive response to the extra gas, and at little more than walking pace, and still with almost silent heart-beats, Helena bumped over the pavement and the kerb to the road, and continued along by the cemetery railings until her rider was out of sight round the corner by the iron gates … then, with nickel-plated lever pushed wide, she gratefully drummed away down the road to the village of Randis-well, her rider now feeling that he was flying through sunshine in pursuit of the angular shadow racing effortlessly before him, as he rose up and down over the bridge, retarded the spark to make the loudest burst of machine-gun fire past the police station, and then slowing, turning into the High Street, driven by the idea of seeing Lily again, to find out, he told himself, the true position between her and Eugene, for Desmond’s sake. Why, if she cared for Eugene, was she also pretending to be Desmond’s genuine lover?

  With this good intention he looked in at Freddy’s, then at the Black Bull, to find her eventually in the Gild Hall, sitting alone before a thick glass cup from which the twopenny blob of vanilla ice had disappeared. She wore a new pale yellow straw hat, with a blue velvet riband fastened under her chin, the colour of her eyes.

  She smiled when she saw him, and when he went to her table she said “Hullo!” almost inaudibly, as she lowered her eyes and began to play with the spoon on the plate in front of her.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he said, avoiding the shiny blue of her eyes. “How about another ice?”

  He gave an order for two, and when they were set down on the table he met her glance and asked if she were expecting anyone.

  “Oh no!”

 
; “Excuse my asking, but do you like Eugene very much?”

  “He’s all right,” she said, dreamily drawing a smoothed spoonful of ice between her lips and sucking it slowly.

  “But do you like him awfully?”

  “He’s a nice-looking boy, and knows it, but he thinks every girl can’t resist him.”

  “Then it is Desmond you—care for most?”

  “Don’t you know?” said Lily, with an unsteady smile. He felt disturbed by the pulse beating in her throat.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, Desmond and I really haven’t talked much about it.”

  She stopped sucking her ice and was looking on the table, so that for the first time he saw what long lashes she had, and the curve of her cheeks. Perhaps she was disdainful of him asking questions like that. Awkwardly he rose to his feet, stammering, “Well, I think I’ll go for a run on my bike. I’m sorry if I seemed inquisitive.” When the azure limpidity of her eyes was upon him he said, “I want to see if there are still carp basking among the lily-pads of the Fish Ponds out by Reynard’s Common. See those gold-fish down there? They’re carp, but poor little tame things. The carp in the Fish Ponds, some of them, are nearly as long as my arm, and a sort of bronzy brown. Have you ever been out there?”

  “Oh please, why are you so angry with me?”

  “But I thought you were angry with me!”

  “Angry with you,” she said, as though he were far away. She gave a little laugh. “Is that where the bluebells come from?”

  “Where they used to come from, before all the lou——I mean the fellows on bicycles pulled them up. No, that’s not quite fair. They lived in, well——” he checked himself in time from saying poor streets— “—away from the countryside, and wanted to take some of the beauty home, I suppose. Haven’t you ever seen bluebells growing?”

  She shook her head slowly, as though nursing him in her eyes.

  “I’m afraid they’re over now,” he said, thinking that her eyes were the same misty blue. “What flowers are left will be ripening into little pods, rather like papery skulls, filled with shiny black seeds. I had an idea to collect some, and throw them out of the carriage window, on the way to London Bridge, just before the war came.”