The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  Mrs. Bigge, Mrs. Feeney, Gran’pa and Aunt Marian, Mrs. Pye fatter than ever, and—a dared visit to Turret House. Mrs. Rolls said how thin he was, and so much more grown up. Helena arrived from the hospital, and he was asked to stay and take pot luck. He sat on his hands when he was not eating, trying to say acceptable things, feeling strained into a state half-dream, half-shyness, feeling he was talking jerkily, flippantly, about his fellow patients, doctors, nurses—and at ten to two when she had gone down the road again—rather a relief that she was gone—he felt he had said and done everything to put himself in the worst light.

  *

  The day came when he could walk almost normally except for a tight feeling when he sat down. He thought to go and see his father and sister at Head Office in Haybundle Street, but when he saw the building, and the smiling moon in silver hanging over the door, he felt he could not face Martin the messenger there, after all Mavis had said about everyone at H.O. knowing what had happened on Messines Hill; so he crossed over and walked through the streets and Leadenhall Market, meaning to call in at The Grapes, and see Westy’s parents. It was after closing time, so he went on into Fenchurch Street and to Wine Vaults Lane, where Mr. Howlett said,

  “You could not have come at a more opportune moment, Maddison! Downham’s up in town. He and Hollis and I are going to have tea at four o’clock at the Crutched Friars’ Mecca café. It’s my birthday. We always meet there once a year, you remember? You’ll come? Splendid! How’s the leg, better? Oh, good. Be here about ten to four, will you? You must tell me all that’s happened.”

  Phillip went on to see Eugene in his warehouse in Houndsditch, where he learned that he was on holiday; and so he sat in the churchyard in Gracechurch Street where often in the past he had eaten his sandwiches, among others who had always seemed to be poor, in that dark place splashed by pigeons.

  He found Mr. Howlett and the others at the bottom of coffee-smelling stairs, in a large room with tables topped by brown glazed tiles, some scattered with dominoes. Downham was in field boots and spurs; and noticing Phillip’s limp, he made a joke about his wound.

  “Shot in the arse, were you? What were you doing, running away again?”

  “Come, come,” said Mr. Hollis, sharply. “That’s not fair! Anyway, you’ve damned well taken care not to present your precious carcase anywhere near the Germans!”

  “Well, how do you get on with your father now?” asked Mr. Howlett.

  “I haven’t seen him yet, Mr. Howlett.”

  The next day the doctor said, “You’re better. I’m sending you for a Medical Board at Caxton Hall tomorrow.”

  He was given six weeks leave, to be spent in a convalescent home.

  “Go and see Georgiana Lady Dudley,” said Matron, on his return. “She’ll fix you up at a place in the country. Tell her where you want to go. She’s got lots of places on her list. Don’t be put off by her painted face, she’s a dear old thing.”

  *

  Almost from the beginning of the war private fortunes had been expended to equip hospitals, in both England and France, by many of the great and famous hostesses of Society for the sons and brothers and cousins of their own and their friends’ families, whose names were beginning to fill the casualty lists … until now all were spilled away, and the names in the Roll of Honour were of strangers.

  But England had need of them, and soon after the Battle of the Somme began there were few country houses which had not answered the appeal of Georgiana Lady Dudley and her friends, to open their doors to men of the New Armies recovering from wounds and sickness. By the month of August over a hundred officers a day were being sent to houses great and small, from Sutherlandshire and Caithness in North Britain, to Kent and Sussex and Hampshire in the South, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Essex in the East, to Devon and Cornwall in the West Country.

  At first, it had been possible to discriminate: to send only men of one’s own class—those who had been at the only three possible schools, and who therefore knew good form—to one’s friends’ places as guests; while the other kind, the vast majority of half-and-half people, could be disposed of to the smaller places—dower houses, manor houses, and even Highland lodges—where they would be able to amuse themselves in their own ways. For the deluge had arrived.

  With a pile of papers, telegraph forms, and card indices before her on the desk, Georgiana Lady Dudley disposed of one temporary officer after another, as he came with respectful affability, as though assured in his new status, before her. For Georgiana Lady Dudley induced no feelings of awe as she sat, her luxuriant white hair crowned by a circular floral hat, and her complexion all cream and roses, on a hard wooden office chair giving forth, but not radiating, an impersonal, all-enveloping geniality: this hostess of Edwardian luncheon and dinner parties of from a mere dozen or score of faces to hundreds of guests, many of them enveloped with the spirit of the cream and roses of the earth, upon whom had fallen the bloom of gold of hundreds of thousands of sovereigns every year from carbonised vegetation lying in seams below their estates and properties.

  What magic, what splendour, what heights above the congested areas of surburban living did the presence of Georgiana Lady Dudley suggest to many of the temporary officers of the New Armies! The very name was a necklace of precious sparkling jewels to some who sat before her.

  What did Georgiana Lady Dudley think of them? They were the half-and-half people, so very polite, poor dears, so formal, trying hard to appear above themselves; but all was forgiven them for being what they were. Had they not come out of their unknown places and answered the call, from their obscure streets and small houses, to replace, with their plain names in the casualty lists, those of the splendid young men who had fallen in 1914 and 1915?

  This lady with the face of youth and the bright friendliness of age sat behind a desk, her floral hat nodding and moving but never jerking as she arranged the immediate future of captains of eighteen and subalterns of forty-five, in slacks and trews, kilts and breeches, pale cotton of Indian Army and double-breasted “maternity jacket” of Flying Corps; dear boys all—a tick against a long list, a name written down with a gold pencil set with diamonds, and one more was sped to Yorkshire or Cumberland, to Dorset or Flint, to a house by the sea or a lodge on the side of a strath, to have the time of his life.

  From the watershed of the Somme, from charred wood and desolated valley, amidst the fragmentation of steel and flesh and the dust of detonated village hanging in the sun, was coming the thought that would bring not only the end of the old order, but the end of ideas that had endured a thousand years.

  *

  “Devon, or is it Devonshire, it’s so muddling,” said Georgiana Lady Dudley brightly, as she flipped a card index. “It’s Devonshire cream and cider, one supposes, and also the Devonshire Regiment, but no doubt you will know. Now let me see,” she went on briskly, as her eye ran down a list. “All the places in Devon appear to be filled. What have we here—Dorset? No? Derbyshire? No? Durham? No. I agree. Much too cold and smoky, and those everlasting east winds! Denbigh? Very rainy, and the south-west blows all the time. Flint? No? How about Gloucestershire?”

  Discomposed by her bright, bird-like speed, Phillip tried to force himself to ask if he might be allowed to go to his aunt’s cottage at Lynmouth, and have treatment from a local doctor. Willie, whom he had visited in St. George’s, had suggested this for both of them. He felt more uncomfortable when the amazingly alert Georgiana Lady Dudley looked at a gold watch hanging on a diamond and platinum brooch inside her jacket pocket. It was almost one o’clock, and he was the last to be seen.

  “I would rather go to Devon, ma’m, if it isn’t giving you too much trouble. Perhaps I could come again, later on, when it is not so inconvenient?”

  “Miss Catesby, have we any places in Devon, in this morning’s post? We have? How splendid!” Papers were put before her. “Here is the very thing, perhaps. Sir George Newnes’ Hollerday House, Lynton. Two beds will be vacant in a week’s time.
I’ll mark you down for one of them. We drove through Lynton once, when I was a gal, from Lee Abbey. I expect you know it, high above the cliffs, with Wales just across the water? The hills were terrifying, and we all had to get down from the coach and walk. The wheels caught fire! What was the name of the spot! Watersmeet, was it? Of course. Very well, your Matron will be notified.”

  Georgiana Lady Dudley gave him a brilliantly enamelled smile of dismissal.

  “Thank you very much, ma’m. I am afraid I am rather a nuisance, but I have a great friend, a cousin, due to be b-boarded at Caxton Hall any day now. I wonder if it would be possible for him to have the other bed? He asked me to put in a word, I m-mean, to enquire for him.”

  “What a close family yours must be, Mr. Maddison. How nice that you all want to be together. Where is your cousin? At St. George’s Hospital, Lancaster Gate. Very well, if you will give my secretary particulars, she will arrange it. Good morning!”

  Georgiana Lady Dudley, a new light upon her face, cleared as it were for action—she was having luncheon with some friends who were planning a counter-attack on Mr. George, “the Little Welsh lawyer”, who was preparing one more of his low-down tricks against dear Henry Asquith—left without further thought of the young man whose face she no longer saw. Nor did she realise that he had sprung up to open the door for her: accustomed to footmen all her life, she no more thought about doors than Phillip had about those in his ward until he had learned to walk again, on crutches.

  Chapter 22

  THREE TEAS

  “I’ve got a week before I go,” Phillip told Mrs. Neville. “Nothing to do, really.”

  “Have you been down to Freddy’s, dear?”

  “Once, but it seemed so different. I don’t want to go again.”

  “Ah, I expect you have outgrown your old haunts, Phillip. One does, you know, as one grows up. Must you go now? Well, come to tea tomorrow, will you?”

  She was determined not to tell him that Lily had been to see her. The sooner the whole thing was forgotten the better, for the girl’s sake. The boys could look after themselves. It was Lily who had her sympathy now. That brute Keechey! If she ever came face to face with him, she would give him a piece of her mind—and her umbrella, too, and let him sue her for assault and battery, if he dared! Anyway, Lily was safe from that beast now, for she had become a Roman Catholic, and was (Mrs. Neville thought) a changed woman. So Mrs. Neville was resolved not to mention Lily in any way at all.

  This good resolution having been made, and what she thought of as her higher self having been satisfied, Mrs. Neville’s lower self began to feel curious. What had happened between her son and Lily? Was it as she had suspected, that Lily had been anybody’s—including Eugene’s—for the asking, before she met Phillip and fell in love with him? Such devotion as Lily had revealed, though the girl had tried to hide it, might have come from either of two things: from an attachment of the animal that was in every woman to her mate after he had satisfied all her feelings, or from a spiritual love that was based on the highest aspirations of the soul. Mrs. Neville liked to think that it was the soul of Lily that had been touched by the sweetness and gentleness in Phillip—oh yes, of course it was! What was she thinking of? Just because Lily worked in a laundry, did that mean that she was not capable of the highest aspirations of the soul? How was she herself any better than Lily? Hilda, my girl, watch your step, or you’ll be growing into what Maude Hudson’s husband used to call an intellectual snob!

  Having come to the conclusion that she was no better or worse than anyone else, Mrs. Neville felt life to be serene. If only people could know themselves properly, how much easier and simpler living would be!

  She went into the kitchen to prepare her tray for tea: best teapot, early Georgian, the ivory knob to its lid yellow with age, the pawnbrokers’ scratches on its bottom adding to its history.

  While she polished it, Mrs. Neville had the wild idea of asking Phillip, when he arrived, to take a note down to Lily’s house in Nightingale Grove, inviting her to call that evening. The idea so overpowered her that she had to sit down.

  My God, she said to her image in the looking-glass, a few minutes later, as she powdered her nose and cheeks, whatever will you be thinking next? What part was she intending to play, that of a scheming duenna out of The Decameron? Yes, Hilda my girl, you may well look like that! All you really want is to find out what happened, not by questioning, which is the refuge of the banal, as Mr. Hudson used to say, but by watching the two young things together. Hilda, you are a monster!

  Ah well, aren’t we all? she said to herself as, having cut a plateful of thin cucumber sandwiches, and then another of Phillip’s favourite Old Sea Dog Bloater Paste (“Refuse all imitations”——how they had laughed over that on the label!—Phillip declaring that they were special bloaters because caught by the Old Sea Dog diving overboard and bringing them up in his mouth, like a seal) Mrs. Neville carried her tray to her sitting room, and put it on the table. Beside the Georgian teapot was the tortoiseshell tea-caddy that had been given to her husband for a wedding present by one of the Nottingham uncles. Then came milk jug, sugar bowl, and kettle pivoted above a spirit lamp.

  Thus fortified by her lares et penates—the phrase, picked up at Highgate in the Hudson salon, gave her a pleasant feeling of culture—Mrs. Neville awaited the arrival of her guest.

  The familiar exhaust beats of Helena came up the road. With a series of whistling hisses, as the valve was held up, it stopped. The tall figure in white flannels and Donegal tweed jacket got off and leaned the footrest on the kerb.

  “Hullo, Mrs. Neville!”

  “Let yourself in, will you, dear?” the creamy voice said from the open window, as the key fell on the lawn.

  She listened as he climbed up the stairs: yes, as she had thought the day before, one foot did thump more than the other.

  “Ah, just like old days, Mrs. Neville!” he said, seeing the tea tray.

  “Help yourself if you’re hungry, Phillip. I’ll go and get the hot water.”

  He got up at once, saying, “I’ll fetch it, Mrs, Neville.”

  “But your leg, Phillip——”

  “Oh, the stiffness is almost gone. In fact, I thought about playing tennis again, only——”

  She waited until he returned, when he filled the silver kettle with steaming water, afterwards lighting the spirit lamp for her. Then he sat back in the armchair.

  He looked tired and dejected, she thought.

  “Only——? You must not try and do too much all at once, you know.”

  “Oh, my leg’s all right. But I made such a fool of myself just now. I’d go back to France tomorrow if I could. Thank God I’ll be in Devon soon.”

  “I expect it will take some while for you to re-adjust yourself, you know, Phillip.”

  “Oh, it’s not that, Mrs. Neville. It’s my idiocy in trying to join St. Simon’s Tennis Club. It’s Mother’s fault, in a way, though I must blame myself.”

  “Why shouldn’t you join the Tennis Club? I don’t understand, Phillip.”

  In a satirical voice directed against himself he told her that he had gone round to see if Helena was playing; and not liking to be seen hanging about outside, had walked through the gate and watched through a gap in the trees. A set was in progress on the court, Helena and Milton, whom he had known at school, playing against two others. She had waved her racquet at him, and smiled. When the set was over, she had introduced him to the secretary, also the churchwarden, who had just come in, with his wife, carrying a basket of tea things, and kettle and teapot, from the parish hall.

  “Then like a fool I asked if I might join, Mrs. Neville. The secretary said that membership was limited to parishioners of St. Simon’s church, and I must get someone in the club to propose me, and then someone to second me. Helena and Milton were standing by, and I think they were going to offer, when the secretary said, ‘I wonder if it is tennis that is entirely the attraction, Mr. Maddison? I notice a certain nam
e painted on the tank of your machine.’ And Helena heard, Mrs. Neville, and turned away her head. I think she was laughing, as she went away with Milton. Damn! Damn! Damn! Why did I come home at all? What a bounder they must think me, with that name ostentatiously in gold paint on the tank!”

  Mrs. Neville had never seen him so upset. His eyes stared, the nose seemed thinner, the cheek-bones more prominent. He had a look of Uncle Hugh on his face. What she had regarded as a rather prolonged case of love’s young dream now seemed to be something much more serious. But did he love Helena? How could he love her, when he did not know her?

  “‘A bounder,’ Phillip? My dear, you are anything but that. And surely you have proved yourself to the world now? Don’t you know it?”

  “Oh, that business on July the First was nothing! I mean nothing! It was nothing! We had to go over, and that was all; hundreds of thousands like me. No proof of anything there, Mrs. Neville. The others, who had never been in action, were optimistic; those who had been, were pessimistic. That’s all. No, what I mean is that I seem to be two people, almost; one fairly serious and reliable, and the other a stupid sort of jack-in-the-box, doing things suddenly, thinking they might be a great joke, and then finding what a silly stupid fool I’ve been all the time! I’ve often wondered what made me set fire to Colonel Heycock’s newspaper on my first guest night with the Cantuvellaunians at Heathmarket. It was a bounderish thing to do. I may have had something to drink, but I wasn’t drunk; I just thought it would be damned funny. Whereas it was merely damned impertinent. And now this utter stupidity of mine, painting that name on the motorbike, and not realising how it would embarrass her!”

  “I don’t suppose she thought of it at all, Phillip, in that way. Why, most girls would be proud of having their names on——”

  She stopped. It occurred to her that Phillip was right: it was not quite the thing. She pretended to think of something else, knowing how perceptive he was. “Of course, in the old days, a man tilting at the jousts would wear his lady’s favour, wouldn’t he? It was usually a glove, if I remember rightly. Not that I was ever there!”