The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  Richard told Hilary about Phillip, adding, “I have not seen him yet, he has not asked for me.”

  “But why don’t you go and see him, Dick.”

  “Oh no, I know when I am not wanted, Hilary.”

  That evening Hilary went to Wakenham, to sup with his brother and Hetty, and have a talk about the future. He was going to sell the Hampshire place, he said, and would have a fair amount of money, which he wanted to regard as eventual capital for the family.

  “I’m going down to see John next week, and sound him about an idea I have, of buying back some of the Rookhurst land sold off by our father, Dick. You know, I’ve an idea that things will never be the same again after the war. Land won’t sink back as it did in the ’eighties and ’nineties. Now that both Willie and Phillip have shown what they’re made of, on the Somme——”

  News had come to Richard that his nephew had been wounded in the attack on July 14; and Willie was now in St. George’s Hospital, Lancaster Gate.

  “I must go and see them both, Dick.”

  Hilary wrote down the address in his pocket book. “Where’s Phillip lying?”

  “At the Royal Free Hospital, Hilary. As I told you, I have not visited him yet, but his mother has, with Dora. I thought I would go along when he is more recovered. Poor chap, he has had a rough time, so I gather, though he has said very little of what he has been through, to his mother. These soldiers won’t talk about their experiences, you know. They are all the same. From what I can hear, Phillip received two bullet wounds, apparently in the one leg. No bones broken, fortunately, but he has some way to go to mend.” Richard laughed. “You remember Nipper, our terrier, when we were boys at Rookhurst? How he had to be bitten on the nose before he would tackle the rats we let loose in the brew-house? Well, I can’t help wondering if his recent experiences will help to cure Phillip of his illusions about the Prussian militarists.”

  He went on to tell his brother about “the boy’s curious beliefs”, and Hilary said he would soon clear that up with Phillip when he saw him.

  “Taken on the whole, it appears that our mother’s people are a highly hysterical lot. As you know, the Bavarians hate the Prussians, and yet admire them for their strength. This hysteria explains the contradiction in their make-up. Take an instance from the German White Book, published last year. A Major Bauer testified that after the massacre of seven hundred civilians at Dinant, coffee was given to the survivors, ‘with every kindness’, he said, and also ‘chocolate was given to the small children found alive under the bodies’. That is the German record, mark you, so it cannot be dismissed even by pro-Germans as propaganda.”

  “Exactly!” said Richard.

  “Well, this Major Bauer apparently made his testimony in order to show how humane his people are. All in one breath—the massacre for military frightfulness followed by extreme sentimentality, and chocolate! And that is their vaunted Kultur, and inability to see themselves as others see them, Dick!”

  “We have our sentimentalists here, Hilary. In Lord Bryce’s Report, the statements are never definite; every incident is ‘alleged’. I blame Asquith for that. It’s time he went.”

  “These armchair humanitarians and pacifists should serve at sea, Dick! Their eyes would be opened, and their playing-for-safety soon changed if they’d seen crews of merchantmen picked up after weeks in an open boat, half mad and croaking, unable to speak from thirst! The submarine commanders treated them with punctilio when they set them adrift, giving them cigars and brandy, but at the same time they took away all charts and compasses!”

  They spoke of their sister Theodora.

  “We saw her last Sunday, before she and Hetty went to see the boy. Dora is well, and is still carrying on her work among soldiers’ dependents in the East End.”

  “Well, that’s better than agitating for votes for women! You look to be in good shape, Dick. Have you had any holiday this year?”

  “Oh, one can’t have holidays in war-time, old man! We gave up Whit Monday Bank Holiday, you know, and now we shall all have to work throughout the August Bank Holiday. After all, the soldiers and sailors cannot rest in their duties, and the least we civilians can do is to hold the Home Front. However, I manage to get an evening or two on my allotment; that tones one up wonderfully, you know.”

  “How are the crops coming along?”

  “Fairly well, Hilary. I fancy the deep trenching, and breaking the hard pan underneath, with the pick, has made all the difference. I don’t suppose that you will have time to walk round to look at my work?”

  “I would very much like to, but I have to get back to town, Dick. Another time, perhaps. Well, I must say goodbye to Hetty. It has been ever so nice to see you again, old fellow!” Looking almost happy, Hilary tore up the letter, with the single word Forgive, from his wife.

  *

  Now that the Somme casualties were appearing in the Roll of Honour, Phillip was able to learn something of what had happened to the faces he thought about. Letters, too, had been sent back from France, and others to his bankers, for forwarding. One was from “Spectre” West, written from the Duke’s hospital in Gaultshire. He had been wounded in front of Caterpillar Wood, beyond the third and final objective of the White trench near Pommiers Redoubt (“the Hun’s Jamin Werk, and pretty jammy it was too, the men said, when we finally got into it”). He had gone with a patrol as far as the Willow Stream which rose in Caterpillar Wood, he said, and if they had had the reserves which were thrown away up north at Gommecourt, Beaumont Hamel, and Ovillers, they could have got through the Hun’s second line to the Bazentins and High Wood, past the Purple Line and on to the Hun’s third and last positions along the Pys-Sars-Eaucourt l’Abbaye-Flers line, and to open country for the cavalry beyond Bapaume, not only turning the flanks of the German Northern Army Group, but rolling them up to the North Sea. It could have been done; our lines from Arras to the coast were strongly held, and the Germans would not have been in a position to launch a counter-offensive, after their losses and disorganisation at Verdun.

  Phillip thought this a wonderful letter. He studied maps in The Times, The Daily Trident, The Illustrated London News and other papers, until he was confused.

  Westy was all right, that was the main thing, he told his mother when she came on the following Sunday, once again with Aunt Dora and his sister Doris.

  When they rose to go, Hetty stayed behind to say, “Both Father and Mavis would like to see you, dear; perhaps now that you are a little stronger——?” She stopped, seeing his face. “Of course, they would not both come at the same time—— What is it, dear, won’t you tell me?”

  “Well you know I can’t get on with either, don’t you?”

  “But they are both so very proud of you now, Phillip—— So is your Uncle Hilary. Well, anyway, there’s no immediate hurry. Goodbye, and don’t forget your prayers, will you? I am sure the dear little crucifix from Thildonck has brought you safely through. You will never never lose it, will you?”

  “I’ll try not to, Mother. Don’t turn round, someone is coming—— O, why must you?” for Hetty had turned her head. Down the ward, dignified and smiling, came Mrs. Neville, accompanied by a thin woman with a patient sweet face, who turned out to be Mrs. Hudson, the friend she had often spoken about, from Highgate. Phillip’s heart felt lighter; though he sighed when his mother said, after talking to them for a brief time, that she must go. He felt he had turned her away. Mrs. Neville saw this, and did not stay more than five minutes: a quiet, pleasant time for Phillip. He liked Mrs. Hudson at once, she was so sympathetic and understanding, in manner rather than words, for she said very little. Mrs. Neville, too, was quite different from the rather boisterous person he had known hitherto. She seemed to feel the ward was a sad place, with all the frames and “boxes” keeping broken bones and legs away from the bed-clothes, for he felt a tear fall on his cheek when she bent over to kiss his forehead, before leaving.

  When Uncle Hilary came he began by saying that although they
both had German blood in their veins, it was not anything that one could be proud of, particularly at the present time. Then he went on to say something about cigars and cognac to torpedoed sailors, and coffee and chocolate to survivors and children of the massacre at Dinant.

  “Well, Uncle Hilary, I do know that they gave some of our chaps cognac after our attack on Hulluch and Hill 70 had failed at Loos, last year, and——”

  “That’s just the point, Phillip! They shoot you down first, then treat you like that!”

  “But it was sporting of them, all the same, Uncle! If they had attacked us, we wouldn’t have gone out to help them afterwards. Look what happened last Christmas Eve in France!”

  “What did happen?”

  “According to Willie, who was there, they thought it was going to be a truce as in 1914, and were singing carols and lighting Christmas trees when our artillery opened up and blew them all to hell. I don’t call that sporting.”

  “Well, there’s another side to that, Phillip. They’re deeply engaged in Russia, and it pays them to keep their army fighting to a minimum in the west. But wait until Russia collapses—then you see if they’ll be wanting truces and Christmas trees in the trenches!”

  “But who is ‘they’? You’re talking of the German High Command. I’m talking of the ordinary regimental soldiers.”

  “I’m talking of the two sides of the German character, or nature, Phillip,” said Hilary, leaning over the bed in persuasive earnestness. “The side that ruthlessly massacres innocent civilians en masse, and then immediately afterwards hands coffee to the survivors—stolen from the estaminets, no doubt—and chocolate to the unhappy little children. Chocolate, in compensation for the death of their parents! Think of it, Phillip! They stop firing, and then play the host.”

  “Well, they also stopped firing when our stretcher bearers came out to help bring in the wounded before La Boisselle, Uncle. I was there, I saw them!” said Phillip, in a tremulous voice. He felt he could not breathe.

  “I am glad for your sake, Phillip,” said Hilary, trying to speak amiably. “Still, one isolated example does not alter the fact that they are a brutal people by nature, despite superficial kindness. One swallow does not make a summer, you know.”

  Swallows usually come in April, in the spring, thought Phillip, faintly. He felt himself to be feeble as frayed blotting-paper.

  “Well, I told your Father I’d have a word with you in the matter. He is bothered by your attitude to the Germans, but I told him that it was nothing to worry about, especially as you’d done your duty so splendidly against them. It’s our life as a nation or theirs, you must never forget!”

  Phillip lay back limply, fighting remotely against the wire in himself becoming a thin, thin scream.

  “Now, before we leave the subject, just let me tell you one more thing, nothing to do with bloodshed this time, Phillip. It concerns the way they have treated, and still are treating, Belgium, which is a small country, and can hardly be regarded as having been a threat to Germany in any way—of course the Germans want the mouth of the Scheldt, which is also the mouth of the Rhine, and all it entails, with the port of Antwerp, and other facilities. Well, the economic stifling process was put into operation as soon as war broke out, when the Federation of German Manufacturers, die Grossindustrielle, urged that they should pay no taxes for the continuance of the war, but that the Belgians and French of the occupied areas should pay instead, by fines imposed by the Military Governor. This was pure extortion, Phillip. It was continued until March this year, when the idea of ‘speedy victory’ was modified, by the non-success of their land and sea strategy, and they had to float war-loans. You know what they are, I expect?”

  The head on the pillow nodded.

  “I won’t go on, but I must say this, Phillip. The war is by no means only the fighting, you know. Well, about money, which is the sinews of war. These loans the Germans have floated in Berlin, carry interest to be paid out of reparations to be imposed when they have won the war! If that isn’t a swindle, what is? The bonds will be worthless in a defeated country, of course. Meanwhile another kind of swindle is taking place. Big firms are now clearing off their debentures, using the inflation of the mark. Krupps have done this, and have made a profit often million pounds, in our currency, by the manoeuvre.”

  Phillip saw Gran’pa Turney in his mind, and felt reassurance coming into him.

  “But aren’t debentures usually held by the family that owns the firm, Uncle? Grandpa’s debentures are, anyway; that’s why he wants them to remain in the family. And isn’t Krupps a family concern?”

  “Well, if they held all the debentures, they wouldn’t want to sell them, would they, Phillip? No, take it from me, it’s a swindle, and shows up the entire character of the financial-military combine, the pan-Germans, who want to rule the world, to aggrandise the Prussians!”

  Phillip felt like the small boy Uncle Hilary had trapped between his legs, chuckling as he had tried desperately to escape.

  “Well, there you are! That’s what we are up against, and what you fellows are helping to destroy, in a war to end war, to destroy militarism for ever. Well, Phillip, my advice is, don’t bother your head further about sympathy for Germans. You do your job and let others take care of the rights and wrongs of how the war is being run. You’ve done well, you’re a credit to the family, and just to show my appreciation, I propose to buy in your name one hundred pounds of war loan, to be left in trust for you until you are twenty-five.”

  When he was alone again Phillip lay back with closed eyes, wondering why Uncle Hilary always made him feel as though he were nothing.

  “You’ve been talking too much,” said sister, coming to stand by his bed. “Now try and get some sleep.” She put her hand on his forehead. “As I thought, you’ve got a bit of a temperature, naughty boy! That comes of talking too much!” Flicking a thermometer, she put the bulb under his tongue. “There, it’s up to a hundred and one! Any pain?”

  “No, sister, thank you.”

  Reading again, later that evening, a letter from cousin Willie, who had been in the attack when La Boisselle and Ovillers had been taken at dawn from the southern flank at Contalmaison, and the high ground before the outskirts of Pozières had been reached by the end of the day—the final objective of July the First—he felt a wild regret that he had not been there. He saw the battlefield as in a dream, something that could never be properly realized, which made his breast ache with all longing when he tried to enter in upon it, silent and without physical movement, the red-hanging brick dust over the villages, the sun shining down on the still, still bodies of the dead: the same sun, but O so different, whose light was reflecting from the polished wooden floor of the ward and making a haze about its flowers, coming in under the blinds half-drawn against the August sun staring down upon the hot baked brick wall and white-painted sill of the open window beside his bed, with the murmur of traffic in the London street below. In his mind he was a spirit, feeling the radiant heat of the chalk of the trenches; cooling himself in the flicker-rippling Ancre. O, to be able to see it all again, a ghost world of gun-flashes at night. O to see it all, to grasp all of it, without violence, without pain; to share the marching and the singing of the living that were part of the great dream of life and death.

  *

  It was a strange feeling to be out of bed, his foot still itching inside its plaster cast, with a pair of crutches, and sister beside him, to explore a new world. The figures in bed, the beds, tables, doors —all looked so different. It was quite a surprise to realize that there was a passage outside the door, leading in two directions, instead of it being a sudden-appearance place of doctors, nurses, wheeled stretchers, and food trolleys. It was sad that the world seen from the safety of bed had already vanished.

  He visited other officers still prone, and sat beside them, and they talked about anything but the war. It was fun to play draughts with them, and have little championships. They were not the dangerous or bad ca
ses, which were in another ward.

  The morning came when his foot was taken, pallid and warped, out of its plaster cast. Exercises began in another room between parallel bars, the crutches put away—a perilous feeling, to be all alone in a polished, swaying room. Then the crutches were exchanged for a walking-stick with a rubber ferrule, although his leg still felt to be hooked to him, rather than part of his body. Further exercises brought the aching flaccid muscles back into tension.

  The London Gazette had his promotion in its close-printed columns one morning. He was a senior subaltern! He cut two cloth stars off his spare tunic and asked for a needle and khaki thread. The sister asked him what for, and when he told her, took away stars and tunic, and returned it with the new rank upon the cuffs, leaving the mark of the old star unfaded in the middle of the twin stars. It was a wonderful sight, at which he glanced again and again during the day.

  Sooner than he imagined he was one of a party of officers taken to the theatre. They saw Chu Chin Chow; two days later, they went to see Romance. They were taken to a tennis party in Regent’s Park, where he met delightful people, who sent their motors to fetch parties of officers from the hospital, and take them back again.

  “I think we can let you out for an hour or so this afternoon,” said the doctor one morning. “Only no drinking of spirits, mind!”

  Joyfully he took a taxicab to Charing Cross Station and in the train smelt, by the open window, the familiar smells of fish-glue, vinegar, sulphur, hops, tan-yards, and a new one of iodoform. Then the junction, and the line parallel to the brook running polluted and dead behind tattered drab fences of flowerless back-gardens, and so to the old dark station with its old dark dog-chasing cat, the walk through the village and up Charlotte Road, under the same old peaceful chestnuts, past summer-dulled privet hedges, rain-worn oaken gate-posts, up the asphalt of Hillside Road with its cracks where, thank God, pink convolvulus flowers were growing; and at last to the so-narrow gateway and the porch beyond.