The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  “Aren’t you funny?” she said, her head on one side. “You’ve got the most beautiful eyes. Did you know it?”

  He was embarrassed, thinking that she was trying to get off with him, when she was Desmond’s girl.

  “Do you mind me saying that? I didn’t mean to say it. Dr. Dashwood told me it was bad manners to make remarks about anyone, or to ask personal questions. Do you believe that the eyes are the windows of the soul?”

  Dr. Dashwood had obviously said that about Lily’s eyes, thought Phillip.

  “Dr. Dashwood likes you—Middleton. Do you mind if I call you Middleton?”

  “I think it’s rather a compliment to have a nickname.”

  “He calls me Bluebell.”

  “How is he getting on?”

  “His housekeeper has left him.”

  “Why, because of what happened to him last night?”

  “No, she left before that. He’s been doing for himself for nearly a month now.”

  “He won’t last long as a doctor, will he, with no one to see to his house.”

  “He has asked me to marry him.”

  Phililp felt a jolt. He was unable to ask if she had accepted, or not.

  “He cried, and said nobody wanted him. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

  “Of course not. Poor old chap. Are you—no, I mustn’t ask that.”

  “He cried because I told him I could not marry him.”

  “Because of Desmond?”

  She shook her head.

  “Oh, Lily, let us be as we were in the churchyard. Please tell me something. Do you love Desmond?”

  She went on shaking her head.

  “Is there someone else?” Seeing her downheld eyes, he went on, “I don’t understand. Can you like many—people—at once. then?”

  The head was shaken once more.

  “I suppose I ought to go,” he said unhappily.

  “Why?” she said, with such appeal in her eyes that, despite the hat she wore, he said, “It’s such a lovely evening. I suppose you wouldn’t care for a ride on the back of my bike to the Fish Ponds?”

  “Oh, I would!” she said, her face lighting up.

  *

  In 1916 it was not easy to start on a motor-cycle driven by a rubber belt and a fixed pulley, when you were on level ground, unless you could run and spring on when the bike was in motion. But when you had a flapper on the bracket it was impossible. The way to start was to go to the top of a sloping street, wait for your passenger, let her seat herself on the bracket over the rear wheel, while you straddled from the saddle; then, all being balanced, you stood up and pushed off with your feet, the handlebars taking all the forward thrust. It was a precarious few moments while you wobbled forward, ready to drop the valve-lifter; and when you did so, and the engine fired, a quick adjustment of weight was necessary, for you who had pushed were now pulled. If your flapper was calm, you were all right; your strong forearms kept the bike straight, as you sat back on the saddle, trailing your feet a moment to show your easy mastery of the situation.

  “Sit tight!” said Phillip, straddling the level cobblestones. “Here we go!” as he shoved off. “This three-jet Binks is marvellous!” as he dropped the valve-lifter. Helena fired with beats slower than those of his heart. He sat back, and opened the throttle. “Top hole!” he cried.

  Safely past Freddy’s, fire station, St. Mary’s church, he told her to put an arm round his waist and hold to his jacket, relieved that she sat so steadily. Desmond of course used to sit astride; Lily sat at right angles to the frame, her back to the rubber belt, which otherwise might have caught her skirt. She saw the polished tramlines rushing away behind her, she felt unsafe and fixed as it were upon nothing except bumps; she felt all was unreal, she glowed with pride. Gran’ma, she thought, again and again, Gran’ma, I am with you at last.

  They passed Cutler’s Pond, and got up Brumley Hill without falter, and through the town, along Shooting Common, and turned up the long gradual incline to the Fish Ponds, arriving without mishap.

  “Were you very uncomfortable? I tried to avoid the pot-holes as much as I could.”

  “It was lovely! Thank you ever so, for asking me.”

  The pines around the upper and lower ponds were reflected in the water; and there, among the floating lily-leaves, were the brown dorsal fins of the great carp which were said to be a hundred years old.

  “The carp is the fox of the water. No angler has ever been known to lose his bait of a small boiled potato, bean, or bread-paste, to these piscatorial wiseacres.”

  “They must be quite happy without what the fishermen want to give them,” said Lily.

  It was strange, he thought, how she seemed to fit into the countryside, accepting it as though she had known it all her life, while not knowing the names of anything—stonechat, linnet, and willow wren, wagtail flitting for water-flies around the verge of the pond, or running on the lily leaves, to take flies for its young somewhere. They walked through the heather, while she stopped to touch the bells coming into colour, and the white bark of a birch tree, while he wondered about it, for in the past he had done the same thing, but always secretly, lest someone see, and know that he was, in Father’s words from earliest memory, a sort of throw-back.

  “Oh, isn’t it lovely?” she said, as slowly, slowly she followed behind him, ribbon of hat in hand trailing the heather and bracken, her mouth loose and her eyes dreaming. He began to assess her: she was strongly built, her skin was very soft and white, her breasts were high and level, slightly moving up and down in her white silk blouse as she walked. Their movement kept him mentally apart from her, while the silk softness of the blouse was alluring, and sweet to see. He thought of her as a woman, older than himself; not that she was seventeen.

  They came to the wooden steps through the oak paling fence of Knollyswood Park, and opened the swing gate into what he said used to be his preserves. It was the first time he had been there since the war, though he and Desmond had passed the fence on the way to Crowborough, more than a year ago, he remembered, when he was going to try to get a commission from the second battalion. How long ago it was, a world gone for ever.

  They sat down on the grass in a glade bumpy with anthills. A green woodpecker dived out of the trees in the near distance and in sloping flight approached them, and knowing the gallypot’s feeding habits he pressed her hand and whispered, “Don’t move!”

  After an abrupt flop down the bird lifted a crimson head to stare at them. Then with a wild cry it sloped off in wavy flight.

  “Oh, what a funny bird. And what a funny noise it made!” said Lily, chewing the sugary knot of a grass stem.

  “Did you see that sharp mad eye of the violent wood-hammerer? That’s the woodpecker which haunts the family that owns this park, and foretells the death of a member of the house.”

  “Go on,” said Lily, her eyes big.

  “It came here as a rest from its eternal task of having to strike furiously at half-rotten trunks and branches of trees in the forest. The crest of the family coat of arms of the Earl of Mersea is a wood-pecker, hence the legend. Its laugh, what is called a yaffle, sounds insane, doesn’t it? Well, it comes here to rest, as I said, from slavery. It has a long tongue, which uncurls like a watch spring, and flips up ants. It saw us, and cried out of its broken heart. Back to hammering wood, striking furiously with its neck muscles, which must be terrifically strong; even so, it must get awful headaches.”

  “Are you joking?” asked Lily.

  “Only if the whole world is a joke. For consider a moment: for thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, special forces have been caged in that frame of bone and flesh and sinew, and all inherited from tiny specks of life in a fluid inside a white shell of lime! Other birds, too, inherit special forces and actions; they can’t escape their fates; the hawk must tear flesh, the owl must fly in darkness, the wren make its nest like a ball with a hole in the side, and persecute spiders. Spiders must give hell to flies, fish m
ust eat nymphs. The chalk downs, farther on towards the Saltbox and Biggin Hill, are but shells of trillions of little sea-animals, all gone, who have all yielded up their obscure little ghosts. Every dew drop which falls has been drunk by something, which has lost its life. Perhaps when death comes, that is freedom for a while, to get away from the destined will and task upon the earth.”

  He sat before her with bowed head, feeling alone and void. She put out a hand and stroked his head; he did not draw back, nor did he yield; but when he looked up and saw her eyes which had brimmed over he did yield, for a moment, and allowed her to take his head on her breast. Without thinking what he did, as he lay there, he nipped a part of the white silk blouse between his lips, gently, and closed his eyes.

  “Oh you are sweet,” said Lily, a deeper tone in her voice. “How your mother must have loved you when you were a baby.”

  He thought he could have her if he wanted to: he had impressed her. The moment was lost as he thought of Helena: that this was not Helena. She divined what he was thinking, and said gently, “You love that girl, don’t you? I always knew you did. But don’t mind me, Middleton! I always knew you were different from the other boys, as I said when we talked beside the cemetery. It is wonderful, I think, what education can do. I never got beyond standard four at Carlow Road School.”

  “Oh, one learns nothing at school, Lily.”

  “But you must have studied lots of books.”

  “I got most of them from the Free Library, years ago. Others were at home, they belonged to my father’s father, such as Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, and books like that. But out in a place like this, thoughts come to one, somehow. I think it is the spirit of the earth, which is hidden under pavements. I had a wonderful time out here when I was a boy, it was so wild and so quiet, the beautiful colours of the leaves and ferns, and if you sat still, you saw the life going on around you, all in beautiful shapes and forms. I saw a fox over there, once, suddenly looking at me beside some brambles. It seemed to shine with its fur, all russet, and its teeth so white, its tongue-tip pink, and its eyes, they were yellow gems. Then with a completely silent flick, it was gone. How or where it went, I didn’t know. The bush was small; it just flicked out, like a camera shutter closing. Tell you what, let’s creep down to the Lake Woods! They are very secret, and by the water we may hear a nightingale. They used to sing there when they had stopped elsewhere; perhaps it was the liquid echo they heard, coming back from the rhododendrons around the water, and they sang to it.”

  “How do you know so much about everything?” said Lily, as they came in sight of a tall barbed-wire fence among the trees in front. “Hush!” he whispered, as he went on slowly, crouching slightly, putting one foot before the other to press down the dead leaves and sticks of the ferny path, wary of cock pheasants whose pitter-pattering away on the woodland floor on all sides might at any moment break into raucous rising cuckettings of alarm, and so betray their presence at that very private and secluded place. Lily followed behind, thrilled with the mystery and beauty, with a feeling, as she looked up through the canopies of the great oaks, of being part of the pale blue sky.

  By good luck the gate was not locked, only secured by a bolt; and sliding this back gradually, lest it squeak or clank, he pulled back the frame of iron and threaded barb, and closed it behind them.

  “The Lake Woods!” he whispered, turning to her.

  “Oh,” she said, with a long sigh. “It’s all just like a picture!”

  The first lake was the deepest. It was surrounded by azaleas and rhododendrons, a boat-house with shingled roof among them, and waterlilies on its brownish-green surface. Old beech mast lay on the mossy path, crackling as they walked on, to the lower terraced ponds, where a heron flew up dishevelled and angular so that she clutched his arm, saying, “Is that a crane?” “Yes,” he said, “that was the old name for it,” as they sat down by the water, and watched a shoal of red-finned roach moving just under the surface.

  “I can’t believe it is true,” said Lily.

  “Yes, it seemed like that to me, when I came here first, about five years ago. It made all the difference to my life. I felt all the birds were mine. I watched them at their nests and saw what they did, and it seemed they were very much like human beings were, only truer, somehow. Oh, I wish we could hear a nightingale. I am sure it sings because it has a feeling for music. It’s born with it. There must be a God, even if it is called evolution. Anyway, Spirit gave colours to some birds, speed to others, song to others, skill in architecture to others. There’s the Bower Bird, but not in England, which adorns its nest and courtyard with shells, stones, and other things. They say it is only to attract a mate, but he brings in the things after the courtship, as well as before. Why shouldn’t a man paint his house after he’s married, if he loves his home, and is happy there? It’s only the unhappy people who don’t care what squalor they live in, don’t you think?”

  He now could look frankly at her, trusting himself to the blue pools of her eyes.

  “‘Bluebell’, he calls you, does he? Poor old Dashwood. I think you are a lily, like your name.

  “‘Now folds the lily all her sweetness up

  And slips into the bosom of the lake.

  So fold thyself, my dearest thou, and slip

  Into my bosom, and be lost in me.’

  “Tennyson knew that at night the water-lily pulls its blossoms under the surface of the water. The lily closes her eyes, the lily withdraws her beauty. Your eyes are beautiful, too, human Lily! Eyes are made of water, so why should their colour not come from blue water, or from the sky, which after all makes all things? That poet I told you about wrote,

  “‘And Life is Colour and Light and Warmth’; well, they’re all there in your eyes.” Then alarmed at what he had said, “Shall we go on to the Saltbox, and have boiled eggs and bread and butter for tea? It’s possible that there will be a nightingale singing in the steep lane below Biggin Hill there. It was another favourite place of mine, years ago.”

  They returned to the road, and on Helena pushed off on the slope beyond the turn of the road below the paling fence; and drummed along the road to Westerham until they came to the tiled and brick cottage built in the shape of an old-fashioned wooden salt box. After tea, served by the old woman in black bodice and lace cap, they went into the beechwood below.

  “I’m afraid it’s too late, Lily.”

  “Dr. Dashwood said there was one singing in the Infirmary gardens, what is now the Military Hospital, on the other side of the Randisbourne.”

  “Really? How lovely! I thought they’d all left the district, driven away by soot, moggies, and river rats. But I’d like to hear it. Do you mind going into the Rec.?”

  “Not now,” she said. “I don’t mind anything now.”

  The young moon was showing brighter in the western sky. He looked at his watch.

  “It’s getting on for nine. If we go now, we’ll be in time for a drink at Freddy’s, and perhaps see Desmond. He’s coming on leave tonight. We’re catching the morning train from Waterloo tomorrow, so it will be the last chance to hear a nightingale this year.”

  Freddy said, as he poured two small whiskies, “No, your friend hasn’t been in yet. What time are you expecting him?”

  “He did say about half-past nine. If he comes, tell him we’re going in the Rec. to try and hear a nightingale.”

  “Yes, Dr. Dashwood was saying only last night ’e ’eard one there. Though what colour it was, he didn’t say,” tittered Freddy.

  “Oh, hell,” said Phillip through closed lips to Lily, a minute later. “Here’s Ching. Go out quick, I’ll follow. Meet me in the churchyard.” Ching passed through into the billiard room, apparently to the lavatory.

  Phillip said to Freddy, “If Desmond comes, tell him we’ll be between the two rustic bridges, for it’s supposed to be singing in the Infirmary Gardens.”

  With a slight wink Freddy said, “I think I understand, sir,” as Phillip swallowed his dr
ink, then Lily’s, afterwards leaving.

  Ching had listened and watched from the sliding panel in the stained-glass screen. When, five minutes after Phillip had left, Det.-Sergt. Keechey came in with his plain-clothes man, Ching told them what he had overheard, while a thin wire of glee spread up from his middle, akin to that Phillip had felt when Peter Wallace had been punching Albert Hawkins’ face held under his left arm.

  “Come on,” said Keechey. “Not you!” he shot at Ching. “You keep out of this!”

  *

  The night was quiet. Soft darkness brooded over the flats of the Recreation Ground. Clouds had come up, shutting out the after-glow of sunset. Rain seemed possible. Disliking the crunch of gravel underfoot, Phillip vaulted over the iron railings, and stood with his back turned while Lily climbed over. They walked across the grass of what once was a water-meadow beside a trout stream where salmon, coming up the Thames by the Isle of Dogs, had run to spawn, below banks flowery with meadowsweet and ragged robin. Now the Londonised soil was packed hard, sour with the soot of the age of factory and deflowerment, during darkness a place of hard-eyed fornication. But soldiers, like sailors, don’t care for the warnings of the respectable, or knowledgeable; and here on that early summer night came Phillip and Lily, to sit on the circular rustic seat around a solitary aged willow that had somehow managed to live on. The tree was equidistant from a gravel path beside a pointed stockade fence, made of old railway sleepers, guarding the railway line on one side, and the gravel path beside the polluted brook, on the other.

  “I feel this is a happy tree now, Lily.”

  “Oh, how did you know I wanted you to sit beside me here?”

  “I think it’s best, really, to face up to things that frighten one. I used to be terribly afraid of my Father; but suddenly, facing up to him on his allotment, I realized he was a poor old fellow, cooped up in an office all his days, working away to keep the home going.”