The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  “Yes, Mrs. Neville, but even the strangers who came to the tournaments were knights. I mean, they belonged—they had status. They weren’t outsiders, like me.”

  He must be low, after the loss of blood, and the shock, she thought. What he wanted was feeding up, and to get away from himself. Desmond had been just the same; there had been that strange scene, when he had shown her Phillip’s letter urging that bygones be bygones, and Desmond had become so bitter about his father. He had even asked her if he had been born illegitimate! Where did these boys get all their ideas from? It was the war: it had upset everything in life.

  “You’ll feel better after a week or two in Devon, Phillip. Mr. Hudson used to say that our physical condition had a lot to do with our thoughts, and that when a man had influenza was not the time to look at the Stock Exchange prices in the paper. That may sound banal, but there’s something in it. Anyway, dear, don’t you worry any more about the affair. What else did the secretary of the tennis club say?”

  “I didn’t wait to hear, Mrs. Neville. I damn well left straight away! I must have looked a frightful fool, from first to last.”

  “I am sure no one thought anything of it, beyond the fact that you had called to ask about joining, to make an enquiry. Oh dear, what the young have to go through. The more sensitive, particularly. You remember Lily, of course? Well, she came to see me, after suffering agonies, Phillip. What a sweet girl she is! I don’t think I’m breaking any confidences by saying that she told me what she told you, about her past life, I mean. That is all over, I am glad to say. Yes, Lily is now a Catholic, and making a fresh start. No more Freddy’s bar. No; Lily has a fine future, I think, if she can meet the right man. The trouble is, of course, that so many rogues look like the right man at first! Anyway, I hope that she won’t allow herself to be imposed upon, for she has a very sympathetic nature.”

  Phillip was silent.

  “Phillip, do you mind if I am very frank?”

  “No, Mrs. Neville. I like it best when you are.”

  “Very well, dear. You know Lily loves you, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t really know, Mrs. Neville.”

  “But can’t you tell, Phillip?”

  “Well, you see, in a way I was frightened of her.”

  “But why? Because she was in a public house?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “You think that makes a difference, then? Oh, of course I know what you mean! A loose woman?”

  “Well——”

  “Did you feel attracted to her?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “But not as my son and Eugene felt—‘what the gods provided’?”

  “No, not in that way.”

  “What way then, dear?” said Mrs. Neville, very sympathetically.

  “I was just very happy when I was with her. And knowing what had happened with Keechey, it didn’t seem fair to—well—to impose myself on her.”

  “I see. Did the thought of Helena have anything to do with your attitude, Phillip?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Once or twice I felt that I would like—well—to give way to Lily, only I expect that seems weak and silly.”

  “Weak and silly? Oh, Phillip! Why, my dear, to be kind, to show tenderness, and to receive tenderness, is part of the love of God.”

  “Well, anyway, Mrs. Neville, I’m always thinking, my brain never stops. And if I see the other person’s point of view, it kind of stops mine. If I have one. I just don’t know.”

  “Do you want to see Lily again, Phillip?”

  “I thought I would when I was in France, and again when I was in hospital; but now I’m home I don’t think I shall.”

  “For her sake?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Then is it Desmond that’s worrying you?”

  “Oh no. If he wants to believe what he says he believes, he must continue to believe it, that’s all I can say.”

  Mrs. Neville sighed. She was no nearer to understanding him; in fact the new personality he seemed to have developed baffled her thoughts. The silver tea kettle was steaming away. “Oh dear, while I’ve been talking, I’ve quite forgotten to give you your tea! It just shows how interesting a personality you are to me. Now do eat up everything you can see. You like China tea still, don’t you? I got some specially for your homecoming.”

  After tea he asked her if she would like to hear his new gramophone records. “I’ve got some of Kreisler, and also some yellow and plum labels—Caruso, Galli-Curci, Scotti, some of Cortot playing Chopin, and Harry Tate’s Motoring. Which shall we have first?”

  “Harry Tate!” She uttered the little shriek she gave when changing gear from the sublime to the comic. “It’s time we came back to earth!”

  “You know, Mrs. Neville, I’ve been thinking that I ought to sell the motor-bike, before petrol becomes unobtainable. I must paint out that name on the tank first. I’ve sold the Swift already. Private motoring will soon be a thing of the past. I see the laundry van has already got a big gas-bag on its roof, and I hear others are fitting vaporisers, to run on paraffin. I had a talk with a sergeant of the A.S.C., in the Tillings Omnibus Depôt near Cutler’s Pond. His name is Martin; he was a crack racing driver before the war.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He told me that he held records for a Singer motor car on Brooklands; also hill-climbs at Aston in Buckinghamshire. He’s got a huge bike with a twin-cylinder J.A.P. engine, with stub exhausts. It makes a noise like four machine-guns. My hat, it was fast—he told me it could do just under a hundred miles an hour.”

  “You’re not going to buy that one, I hope!”

  “Oh no. I just happened to see him with that bike, Mrs. Neville. I asked him what he thought about fitting a vaporiser for paraffin. ‘Not on your life,’ he said. ‘It will cause unequal over-heating, distortion will result, with consequent cracking of the cast-iron pistons, and everything will be peppered inside that isn’t smashed.’”

  He went on to tell Mrs. Neville that Martin, a small dark man with a pale face and black moustache with waxed ends, had said he might find him a customer for Helena. Being in the A.S.C., they had no need to worry about juice.

  “Well, see that you aren’t swindled, Phillip. And if you see Lily, you won’t do anything to make her really fond of you, will you? You know what I mean. She’s too good to play about with.”

  “Ah, but you’ve aroused my interest, Mrs. Neville!”

  “Oh, Phillip! Don’t joke, for God’s sake!”

  What had she done? What a fool she was! She must say no more, never mention the name of Lily again.

  “Hullo,” she said, looking out of the window, “Father’s home early from the allotment, isn’t he? He only went down to it a few minutes before you came. There he is, wheeling his barrow back, Mother beside him. I wonder what can have happened?”

  *

  Hetty had gone with Richard to look at his allotment, carrying a new wicker trug, a present from Hilary. For both of them it was a very special occasion; for Richard had grown the first peas since those planted in his very own garden plot which he had tended nearly fifty years before, when a little bony thing in a tartan kilt; and those peas were now to be picked in Phillip’s honour for a dinner with lamb chops that night, with a bottle of claret.

  Reaching the allotment, Richard saw that most of his carrots had been dug up and taken away, together with the new potatoes, and all the peas and most of the lettuces; while the brassica plants looked to have been trodden down deliberately. The only signs of footprints were those of a large dog across a soft patch that Richard had left fallow.

  He stared unhappily. “Never mind,” said Hetty, trying to show sympathy, while hoping that she would not laugh, for the idea of a large dog helping itself to peas and carrots and potatoes arose ridiculously before her. Alas, she could not help the look in her eyes; and seeing it, Richard turned and walked back the way he had come. She caught up with him by the cemetery gates. He stood
still while a funeral procession was going in.

  “Well, that is the end of it. I shall not try again.”

  “I am sorry I laughed, Dickie, but could it have been a dog?” Then she caught a glimpse of an old man in the solitary cab following the hearse, and realised that it was the funeral of Mrs. ‘Lower’ Low. After some hesitation, she asked Richard if he would mind going on alone; and then she went through the iron gates of the cemetery, to stand near the thin figure in black bowed by the grave: the only other mourner.

  *

  Within the flat in Charlotte Road, Phillip was listening to Mrs. Neville, while the tolling of the cemetery bell came regularly through the open window.

  “You know, dear, everything in this life comes full circle. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small, as Mr. Hudson used to say. How time flies! It seems only the other day that Purley-Prout, that cunning rogue—what a scout-master!—was sitting in the very chair you are sitting in now, with brazen effrontery suggesting to me—to me, mark you!—that Lenny Low had invented the whole story, in order to get a new bicycle out of him! That poor little mite, as Lenny was then, with his legs not quite straight from early rickets, blackmailing that great big swanking bully! Can you imagine it! Purley-Prout was in a deadly funk, of course. He thought he would be sent to prison, I could see that. But the effrontery of it! I soon sent him packing!”

  At this point all trace of sardonic merriment left Mrs. Neville’s big pale face. In a subdued voice she continued, “Ah, we can laugh now, but the sequel was heart-breaking, Phillip, after Mr. Low had made Lenny return that half-sovereign Purley-Prout had given him. Lenny’s poor, poor Mother! She was in debt to the money-lender, you know. She still owed the ten shillings she had borrowed, years and years before, to buy Lenny a winter suit, as you may remember; but the years of trying to get disentangled had left their mark on her. She came here, you know, just before her mind gave way and they took her away to the Infirmary. Her husband, she said, had refused to speak to her for years. Her heart was broken. As long as I live, I shall never forget the story that poor creature told me.”

  Phillip saw tears dropping from her grey eyes. She dabbed them with her handkerchief, sighed deeply, and after a few moments continued, “Poor thing, she was worn out, trying all those years to make ends meet; for that old devil, her husband, kept her so short that she had to make artificial flowers half the night, with her failing eyes, too, by the light of a candle, for he would not let her use the gas. Do you know the rate those flowers were paid for, Phillip? Violets and buttercups, and other small flowers? Seven-pence a gross! Think of it! One hundred and forty-four to be cut out, to be tied on wire which she had already wrapped with green material; and in the end, only sevenpence to show for it all! Roses, which took her a long time, were never more than three-and-six a gross, she told me; but more often it was two shillings, or half-a-crown. She used to work all day, while Mr. Low was at his office, and seldom got more than four shillings for a week’s work. Then she had to take her flowers up by tram, paying her own fare, to Clerkenwell.”

  Mrs. Neville wiped her eyes. “And all the time, Phillip, that money-lender down in Limes Grove was charging her a shilling a week interest on the ten shillings she had borrowed more than six years before. She slaved away at her flowers, so that Lenny should have enough food to eat, and proper clothes to wear. Then she was told no more flowers were required—they went out when feathers became all the rage—and so she used to make up black tulips, and ragged roses, as they were called, with scraps of black silk, for poor people to wear for mourning. She used to sell them to one of the old women outside the cemetery gates, for threepence the spray complete. It would take her, she told me, the best part of a morning to make one spray, with her failing eyesight.”

  Mrs. Neville sighed. “But there, she’s at rest now, and thank God for it, I say! Her eyes had a growth on them, and it affected her brain; so they took her away. When your mother went round to see if she could help in any way—what a kind woman she is, Phillip!—there was old Low with his head on the table, crying. Yes, and talking to his wife, too! Now that she was dead and it was too late! He was old when he married her, you know, and always believed that someone else was Lenny’s father. So he didn’t speak to her for years, eaten away with jealousy. Well, that is life, Phillip! My, what a morbid creature I am, crying like this, and upsetting you, and after all you have been through.”

  “I understand, Mrs. Neville. Life is tragic. One has to accept it. I wonder what happened to Lenny Low.”

  “Didn’t you hear? He was killed on July the First, with many others of the Blackheath battalion of the London Regiment.”

  “Oh well,” said Phillip. “He’s out of it. That makes four of the old Bloodhounds gone west, Peter and David Wallace, then Horace Cranmer, now Lenny Low. I think I’ll go and cheer old Low up. D’you think he’d mind? Hullo, there’s Mother coming back. I’ll go and see Mr. Low after tea. At home, I mean. Don’t tell Mother I had another tea here first, will you? She said Father hoped I would be in to tea, though why, I can’t understand. Well, it’s been lovely seeing you again—au revoir—and many thanks!”

  *

  It was Phillip who helped Richard to forget the calamity of the stolen vegetables, which he heard about at the tea-table. He had seen some bundles of plants on the market stalls in the High Street as he had motored past; and leaving the table, went away on his motor cycle and was back again within five minutes, with two bundles, each of fifty. He put them into a bulb bowl he found under the kitchen sink, and having washed both bowl and plants, took them into the sitting-room.

  Richard hardly knew what to say, the gift was as sudden as it was unexpected. The way it had happened made him feel resentment that the matter had been taken out of his hands: he did not want cabbages; it was not too late to sow swede turnips; he had been imagining them, pale green in beautiful rows, during his tea. It was, of course, very kind of Phillip: but why hadn’t the boy asked him first? The pale green rows wilted away; he supposed he would have to plant the cabbages instead. Then he saw the scars on his son’s hand and wrist, and his slight limp as he went round the table to his chair; and he imagined his baby son, smiling at him, liking him—and the cabbages in the bowl began to look much fresher.

  “Well, that was kind of you, Phillip, I must say.”

  Phillip looked at his father’s face for a moment without dropping his eyes: it was the first time he had looked without flinching, did he but know it, since he had been beaten at three years of age for opening his father’s cases of butterflies without permission, and breaking some of the frail coloured wings in an attempt to make them like fairies.

  Now Phillip looked into pale eyes, faded almost to the colour of washing ammonia, and saw friendliness, timidity, hesitation; and was amazed, and discomforted, when Father’s glance dropped first.

  With determination he went round to see Mr. Low, finding him about to fry a kipper; and there he had his third tea, Mr. Low insisting on sharing the kipper with him.

  Chapter 23

  IONIAN COTTAGE

  Phillip, sitting in a corner of a first-class carriage, The Morning Post on lap, remembered his journey to the West Country before the war as something in a world gone for ever. Khaki now took the place of corduroy and fustian; camp after camp of tents and wooden huts, convoys of lorries on the roads, and soldiers on every station. Brooklands was an aerodrome, with several triplanes of a new type flinging themselves about in the air over the track. He hurried to the next carriage, a third, to point out the exciting news to Polly and Doris. Might he not transfer to the R.F.C.? Pilots got 20s. a day, plus 5s. a day flying pay.

  Doris had the picnic basket. After Salisbury he invited the girls into his carriage, which he called the mess, to eat with him; but no crumbs on the seats, please, or paper thrown under them; if the ticket inspector came round, they must pretend not to know him, but say they had made a mistake. Nobody disturbed them; Afterwards, to prove h
ow fit he was, he turned inside out, holding to the luggage racks, and did various exercises, until the loose change dropped out of his pockets. It was time now for them to go back into their steerage cabin, and leave him alone to smoke the cigar he had bought at the kiosk on Waterloo Station.

  Life was good. He had £110 in his account at Cox’s, his convalescence at Hollerday House would cost him nothing, he had sold Helena for twenty-five pounds to an officer of the A.S.C. at the Omnibus Depot, and given Sergeant Martin a fiver for his part in the deal. They had exchanged addresses; after the war he would try his hand at motor-bike racing on Brooklands. Meanwhile life was more of an adventure than ever. Willie was coming to the convalescent home later on, and they would have a wonderful time together, fishing, swimming, and exploring the countryside. His other cousin, Percy Pickering, was also coming for part of his overseas leave. Poor old Percy, soon to be going out, a footslogger, into that hell.

  Looking at his newspaper, he ran his eye down the column of Awards, and thus saw a familiar name, under the heading Distinguished Service Order.

  Lieutenant (temporary Major) H. J. West, M.C. (and bar) 3rd Battalion attd. 7th Battalion The Gaultshire Regiment. This officer has consistently shown high qualities of leadership and resource, combined with devotion to duty and complete disregard of his personal safety. In the attack on July 1 Major West led his companies close to the preliminary bombardment. When the guns lifted he showed exemplary dash, entering the first position before opposition could be effectively organised by the enemy. Leading his men on, he overcame the enemy’s resistance in successive lines of trenches, and continued until the final objective was reached. The initiative displayed by this officer was the admiration of all ranks, and though wounded in the shoulder, he remained in command of the position won until ordered to the rear.