The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  “Actually, Aunt Dora, it is the original bucket that suggested to Bruce Bairnsfather the idea for his cartoons.”

  “How very interesting,” she said, not realising at first that this statement was in the same category of fancy as the “Pistor” story. Had she done so, she would not have continued, “Willie will be most interested to hear that—he was in Ploegsteert Wood during that first winter, too.”

  She saw his eyes dart about before he replied hastily, “I got blown up there, too, and can’t remember anything about it, except the jolly old fire-bucket and Bruce’s face when the idea came to him to do the first picture for The Bystander.”

  Was he inventing this too, she wondered. Could the source of his fantasy be disturbance to the brain when he had been blown up with the mine before La Boisselle, a graphic account of which he had given her, of himself rising high in the air, and being saved on returning to earth by the cushioning effect of powdered chalk? Might not the shock in some way have brought to the fore a primitive part of the mind? Who knew the mysteries of the brain?

  “Piston by name and Piston by nature, that’s me, temperamental you know, up one moment and down the next.” He was, she told Dr. Minstrel, a kind young man. Not only did he play with some of the village boys at being a pirate, collecting “pieces of eight” in his fire-bucket—circular corks off fishing nets—but he entered into the spirit of the children, making camp fires on the boulders by the shore, and roasting potatoes in the embers. “He is one of them,” she said, and thought of him as The Innocent.

  “I’m bung-full of Devonshire Cream and ozone, Aunt Dora. I say, old thing, do you mind frightfully if I call you Aunt Dora? I haven’t any aunts of my own left, you see. The last two, God bless ’em, were killed in Mathy’s raid on Hull on the fifth-sixth June last year. So may I have the honour to call you Aunty, please?”

  She thought he was most pathetic, a pleading in his eyes like that of a spaniel, and replied impulsively, “Of course, dear boy, I am most touched by your request! Now do please stop lime washing the scullery wall, and go out and enjoy yourself with the others while this fine weather lasts. Mrs. Sloly and I can manage these walls, can’t we, Mrs. Sloly?”

  “Aye aye!” roared the semi-bearded fat cottage woman who came in every day. “Us can manage thaccy, midear, yesmye!”

  “Ah midear!” he shouted back. “Leave it to Piston! Piston always pays! Piston will do it more quickly than slowly, no-yesmye?” to the woman’s bellows of laughter and “You’m a praper pup, midear, you be!”

  Then seeing Dora’s face he said with little-boy brightness, “That’s all right, Aunty, I’m quite happy doing this until the little tackers come along, honestly Aunty! Cross my heart!” The tackers were the small fry which formed his band upon the bouldered beach.

  *

  The easy days passed in a bright flow of summer weather. Phillip and Willie went about together; Doris and Polly, too, were the firmest friends. The officers at the convalescent home came down to bathe, or fish, or sail offshore in the charge of fishermen. There was a boat-house belonging to Hollerday, and among the boats there was a dinghy, and also a small outboard motor. Phillip managed to make this work, after removing and drying out the coil, and adjusting the contact-breaker; but Matron said it belonged to the house, and should not be touched. So the two cousins hired a boat, and went fishing for pollock and mackerel and other fish offshore. Phillip learned how to sail. They hired ponies in Lynton, and taking lunch with them, rode up the valley to the high moor. Westward lay the Atlantic; and Dartmoor to the south rose dimly in the hazy harvest air murmurous with bees at the heath bells. Once the air seemed to quiver with distant and continuous reverberations: the guns in France, the Somme battle still raging.

  They walked, too, up Beggar’s Roost, a steep track of red rock under a tunnel of over-growing blackthorn and ash, and Phillip showed Willie where he had been caught in a cloud-burst two years before. August drew out its golden days of halcyon blue seas and moorland of yellow furze and purple heath, beyond rumours of war, where two-day-old newspapers arrived, never to be looked at; a timeless age while it lasted.

  The day came when Doris had to leave for London. Polly and Dora went with her to the station, and saw her off. Mavis was coming down for a week the next day, a Saturday. Dora did some shopping, before going down the cliff railway, having said that she would see Polly at luncheon. Polly did not turn up; but Willie and Phillip did, declaring that she and Piston had taken the dinghy from the boathouse and with buzzing outboard laying a trail of blue smoke on the calm water, had disappeared round the Ruddy Ball, swiftly on the ebb side. They would come back all right, said Phillip.

  Dora tried not to show her anxiety as she served sea-trout with cucumber slices and new potatoes. She knew that the cliffs went sheer down to the water, and also the force of the tide. Supposing the engine broke down? Or ran out of petrol-and-oil, for it was a two-stroke, and would not run on petrol alone. She was in loco parentis, and what would Lizzie Pickering say if her only daughter were to be drowned, the body perhaps never seen again, as the tides swept away between Land’s End and Ireland?

  “Piston is naughty to do such a thing! He should have known better. I am quite cross with him!”

  “He has only gone round the Ball, and may be back by now, Aunt Dora.”

  “But there are no landing places before Wooda Bay!”

  “And the tide will be against him,” said Phillip.

  Immediately after luncheon Dora left for the quay. No, the little boat had not returned. She asked about hiring a motor boat to look for them. The tide was out, the river low, a few inches deep, between the boulder ridges. She wondered if she should telephone the coastguard. What an idiotic thing to do, really, Piston was completely irresponsible, and Polly should have known better. The girl lacked imagination. There was the incident of her bathing in a childish bathing dress when she was already a woman: it showed that she lacked a sense of the feelings of others. But then she was only a child of sixteen!

  The tide began to flow up the Severn Sea again; but no dinghy, no Polly. Dora telephoned the Matron of Hollerday House. Was Mr. Piston there? No, he had not been in to lunch, nor had he signed the book that he would be out for lunch. Was anything the matter? Dora then learned that a letter had come from London ordering Lieutenant Piston to proceed to a special hospital in the North, where cases of shell-shock were to be treated. This information led Dora to speak of the missing boat.

  Later, a message came from the post-office asking her to go to the telephone. There she was asked to ring up an Ilfracombe number.

  “Hullo, Aunt Dora? I just thought you might be worried, old thing. Oh, everything’s quite all right, in fact it’s better than that. The jolly old engine conked out and we took turns to row here. I’m bringing Polly home by hired car, fairly soon. Yes, everything is top-hole. The sea calm as a mill-pond. I’m getting the old engine fixed up and shall come in another day and bring the dinghy back. Where am I telephoning from? Oh, the jolly old police-station. Yes, of course Polly is all right. Damned good scout, Polly! See you later! Cheero! Keep smiling!”

  When Piston came back with Polly he was apologetic, saying that he had meant only to go out to spin for mackerel for half-an-hour, but the outboard had conked and the tide took them down the coast before they could say Jack Robinson, and the only thing to do, honestly Aunt Dora, was to make for the nearest harbour.

  “Well,” said Dora, “if you want to take Polly out again, I must ask you to let me know first!”

  “Trust me, cross my heart, Aunt Dora!”

  Phillip told Piston when they were alone, “Orders came through while you were away. You’re being sent up to Scotland, to a new hospital.”

  Piston’s eyes became wild. His face looked haggard.

  “Why, old boy? What’s the game? What have I done? Is this a punishment? Who told you?”

  “Oh, I think it was the major. It’s just an ordinary move, I suppose. I expect the medical au
thorities can’t quite make out your case. By the way, I saw you at the C.C.S. at Heilly on July the First.”

  “Was I there? I can’t remember, old boy. When have I got to leave, d’you know?”

  “Tomorrow, I fancy.”

  “Let’s go to the pub and have a drink, for Christ’s sake. I want to think. Also I am overdue in celebrating Leefe Robinson’s V.C. I was at school with him. Spotty-faced little scug, he was, too. My fag, at Harrow, actually,” drawled Piston.

  Phillip had read that Leefe Robinson, the lucky pilot who had got the wooden-framed Schütte-Lanz, had been at St. Bee’s School, Cumberland; but he said nothing as they walked down to the quay, and turned up a steep path to the Rising Sun. There Piston began to drink brandy, drawn from an earthenware barrel on the shelf. Phillip drank beer. He missed Willie, who had gone home. After one more week he was leaving, too; a further week at home, and he would be boarded. He hoped to go back to Grantham, if he could wangle it at the War Office, and become a transport officer to one of the new companies, which, he had heard, were going out to France in increasing numbers. That was the only life, really.

  Piston seemed to be greatly afraid. His dark eyes stared; he kept brushing up his moustache. Perhaps he really had been blown up, and was shell-shocked, like the man he had watched being led down past the painter at his easel in the ruins of Albert.

  “Masson old man”—Piston imitated the small boys who called Aunt Dora “Miss Masson”—“Masson, what sort of a place are they sending me to, did Matron say? What will they do to me? Cook me up and bung me back to France? Or is it a bloody mad-house?”

  “They’ll build you up, I expect. You know, they’ve got all sorts of ways now of finding out things about shell-shock cases I was reading about it in The Times the other day.”

  “Christ, I don’t want to go back again. I couldn’t stand it. Could you?”

  “Oh, it’s not so bad, when it happens, as you think it’s going to be before you start.” He left Piston in the pub, and went on the cliff railway, and the long slow pull up to Hollerday House, for dinner.

  When he went down to the village afterwards he saw an object in front of him, apparently having come up from the beach, carrying a fire-pail full of driftwood. It had a cork-blackened face and wore a wig of sea-weed. It was followed by a score or so of children, shrilly crying out and jeering. Piston appeared to be in a panic, as he turned round to curse the children. They stopped at the cottage gate, when he disappeared round the wall leading to the scullery.

  As Phillip arrived, Dora came to the gate, and telling the children they must not abuse the friendliness of Mr. Piston, asked them to go back quietly to their homes.

  “Mr. Piston is not very well, you know; he was hurt in France, at the war.”

  Shrieks of laughter from Mrs. Sloly were coming from the scullery.

  Dora went there with Phillip.

  “Oh my dear zoul, ’a be a proper mazed man, ’a be! ’A saith ’a be Feyther Neptoon, and ’a’s eyes be dartin’ about in ’a’s ’ade, I be proper scared, m’m! ’A looketh at me like an old rat peepin’ through a broom!”

  “Hush, Mrs. Sloly, he may hear you. It is only his fun.”

  They went into the scullery, and saw smoke rising from the fire-pail. Piston sat on the lime-ash floor, warming his hands. Oddly enough, his eyes did remind Phillip of a rat’s, except that they were bloodshot.

  “What are you doing? You will have the place on fire! Have you lost your senses? This is carrying a joke to excess, surely, Piston,” said Dora.

  As he did not move, Phillip seized the handle of the pail and held it under the pump.

  “Stop acting!” he said, when Piston jumped up, crying, “They’re all around me! They’ve broken through! Where is Sergeant Oldfield? Tell him he’s under arrest! Stand to! Stand to!” Then he leaned his head against the wall, and uttering a long sigh, turned to Dora with round and simple eyes. “What’s happened? How did I get here? What’s all this camouflage?” He ran a finger down his face. “Who did this? Have I been in a raid?” Then he began to cry. “I can’t stand any more. My head is splitting, Aunty.”

  Phillip felt that he could not stand any more either, and walked out.

  “Cannot you remember? You were playing with the children, and came up from the beach like that.”

  “Did I?” he said vaguely. “I can’t remember a thing about it, Aunty.”

  “Now wash your face and hands. Here’s a bowl, and soap and towel. Mrs. Sloly, please do not say anything about this in the village. Mr. Piston is still suffering from shock. Fortunately Dr. Minstrel will be here shortly, and I will ask him to see you.”

  “No, please don’t say anything about it, Aunt Dora! I’m quite all right now, honestly I am! You see, midear,” he went on, in a different voice, as he pulled out the ends of his moustache with finger and thumb, “if you tell the jolly old doc. he may get me sent away among the genuine dippies, and I’m not really that, you know. You see, what happens is this. I can’t control my thoughts of what happened when that mine went up, taking me for a joy-ride. I break into a cold sweat—sorry, perspiration—and then everything goes blank. I can see myself all right, I know what I’m doing, but someone else seems to have taken over. I saw myself putting a match to the old fire-pail, but at the same time knew that it was quite safe, on the stone floor. I felt terribly cold, and then I was back in the trenches. When you spoke to me, it was like being woken up out of a sleep-walk. The old cranium seems to swell up and burst. Sometimes I wonder if I am all of me, or should it be I? Anyway I’m not me, after that jolly old joy-ride.”

  “Our leading psychologists are only now beginning to realise the nature of the most subtle injuries to the mind. Indeed, there is a special hospital, for what they call shell-shock cases, in Scotland now. I was reading about it in The Times recently. The doctors are very clever people, I am sure.”

  “Shall I have co go to Scotland, Aunty? It will be very cold there, won’t it?”

  “They will help you to get well again, dear Piston.”

  Piston left, with his fire-pail, which he had now christened Old Contemptible. He collected more drift-wood before going up the cliff railway.

  *

  “So Piston thinks you are a darned good scout, does he? I wonder how far his scouting got with you?”

  “You better ask him, if you’re so interested.”

  “I’m asking you, Polly.”

  “I don’t see what it has got to do with you.”

  “Only that you’re my cousin, and he’s obviously a——” He stopped; the thought of what he was going to say came back like a boomerang.

  “What is he obviously, pray?”

  “Ssh, don’t talk so loudly. Aunt Dora might hear us.”

  “I’ve nothing to hide.”

  “God’s teeth, I’m in your bedroom! Don’t you realise what she will think?”

  “You used to come in and talk when Doris was here.”

  “Well, you fool, she isn’t here now!”

  “Then what is the difference, may I ask, if I am such a fool?” said Polly, very politely.

  “This,” he replied, opening the front of her night-gown. She closed it, holding her hand there. “No! You do not really care for me. You want me only as a plaything.”

  “That’s right! ‘A Broken Doll’. Poor old Polly! Quite a shame, isn’t it?”

  Polly could not help laughing at his comic face. This was the Phillip she had liked ever since she could remember.

  “I think it was a compliment, when Piston called you a good scout, Polly. But tell me honestly, did you and he, well, you know——”

  “I do not know,” said Polly, loftily.

  “I mean, what you and I——”

  “Oh, I see what you mean. Certainly not! Piston is a perfect gentleman. He treats me as a chum, and a good sort. Not like somebody else I could mention, who has hardly bothered to speak to me all the time I’ve been down here.”

  “Rot! I thought y
ou were jolly good when you dived off the tower, and said so.”

  “Yes, when others had said so first.”

  “Come on, let’s stop this rot!” he said, as he got into bed beside her.

  Later, he said, “We’re supposed to be back at Hollerday by ten, but I can get in through the window of the library, and then creep upstairs. That’s the way we all get in, after lights out.”

  He fell asleep, and Polly did not wake him, for she liked to hear him breathing gently beside her, as he lay with cheek against her bosom and his long dark hair, so soft and silky, against her throat. She dozed, and lay thinking of scenes in her past life, scenes which were always happy, so that every tree in the garden and the plantation behind the boxwood hedge, in which was the little summer-house where a wren always nested, every field footpath and lane, the Satchville brook where she had paddled, and later the river by her school where she swam, the playing fields, the tennis courts, the gym, Daddy and Mummy and Granny and Percy and everyone she had known were of that happiness. And now Phillip was friendly once more, and not snubbing her, and some of that happiness had helped him, she dimly thought; for to Polly he was still “a bit funny”.

  She may have slept, lulled by the Lyn water running beneath the window, feeling peaceful that the soft hair and gentle breathing was beside her; for when she thought of things next it was to wonder why the ceiling was moving with just perceptible hues of pink, or was it her imagination? No, it was a fire somewhere; and getting out of bed, she went to the window and looking up saw flames high up in the sky.

  Polly was not the only one to see the fire on Hollerday Hill. Ships passing up the Severn Sea saw what looked like a beacon burning on the moor. The convalescent home was well alight. Piston had lit the fire-pail, which he kept beside his bed, to warm his hands in the trenches, he said afterwards.