“Of course! This was the road to Bapaume!”
The wreckage of Bourlon Wood was covered by green scrub. Far away on the horizon lay the old Somme battlefield, like a distant sea fretted by waves of wild grass and poles of dead trees. He longed to be once again in the desolation of that vast area, so silent, so empty, so—forsaken. Somewhere in the misty distance were the failed objectives of July the First, that dream-like day of terror and great heat; and below the horizon of fear was Albert, and the Golden Virgin.
“It says Albert on the map, Phillip. Would you like to go there?”
“But there won’t be anyone there, now.”
She took his hand and they walked into the wood. The forest floor was still rough and cratered, barbed wire among its brambles; half-buried dud shells, yellow gas canisters, faded stick-bombs, rusty screw-pickets—rifle-barrels—shreds of uniform—shattered helmets. There was harshness and distress in the air, the sun had no real kindness. He turned to living flesh for relief from thoughts of the dead, and lay down beside her in an area of sunlight amidst the shade of new leafy growth tenderly covering black and splintered trunks and branches of dead trees. He held her in his arms, at peace before rising on an elbow to regard the beauty in her face. One thought came from his blood into his mind and thence to his will: to make this calm and self-possessed girl pregnant.
“Barley, let’s go on south!” he said, after they had lain in the sun. “I don’t want to see the battlefields.”
*
Cambrai, shabby and bleak like Arras, was left behind to gay toot-toots of the snail horn, hands waved to children. Onwards to St. Quentin, through the last of the Hindenburg Line country, grave of Gough’s Fifth Army in March, 1918. Comrades, I will never forget. Sausage and bread and wine and a sleep in the sun before going on to Laon and thereafter it was all new country as they approached the fabulous Champagne department.
Six hours after leaving Arras they were in Rheims: 142 kilometres in 3 hours running time, and not one miss of either cylinder since leaving Calais. “O Bédélia, Bédélia, she must be christened with the vin du pays, a bottle of Veuve Cliquot bought in a wine store!”
After which Bédélia ran south in top gear on full throttle, leaving behind the Chemin des Dames—name inducing compelled thoughts of a hundred bombardments, attacks, and counter-attacks—now but a crest of young tree growth among chalky patches receding behind Barley’s curly head. Bédélia rattled and bumped across the plain to the country of the Marne.
Within the hour they were in Châlons. Boys and old men actually fishing there—ah, the Marne, a word, a name—he said to Barley’s candle-gilt face across the small table à deux in the dining-room of the Hotel d’Angleterre—that had the power to raise eighty thousand ghosts of the original B.E.F., ghosts of both dead and living.
“For we were all ghosts, whether in or out of the flesh,” he went on, as he raised his sixth glass of vin rosé. “Can ‘a necromancer raise from the rose-ash the ghost of the rose’? I shall do it one day soon! Meanwhile let’s have another bottle of the ghost of the grape!”
“Vin rosé is fairly strong, you know. I don’t want any more, but don’t let that stop you. Another half-bottle?”
He sighed. “I’m only in a fume of words, words, words. The necromancer will never raise from the rose-ash the ghost of the rose.”
She pondered this remark. Did he think there was a rose essence in the wine.
“I think it’s made from a pink grape, isn’t it?”
“You don’t understand, you are all matter-of-fact.”
He drank another half-litre in silence, and when they were in their room, she said, “Did I say something stupid?”
“Not in the least. It was I who was stupid.”
“Look at me, Phillip!” She forced him, not unwilling, to stand before her, while she held his shoulders to look into his eyes. “How can I know what you mean, unless what you say comes from your real self? I can only understand you when you feel what you say! If you make yourself clear, in other words! Why should you allow yourself to be hurt, because people don’t know what you mean? At first, when you spoke about the necromancer, I didn’t remember that it occurred in one of the poems you read in your cottage to me when I first knew you. I do remember, now. It was in The Mistress of Vision, wasn’t it?” She shook him playfully and said in a quieter voice, “Anyway, you’ve no need to worry, you will one day write a splendid book about your friends in the war. I know it. I know also that you feel that time is passing, and you’re not working. But it is growing, all the time, in your mind.”
He could hardly believe that it was not a dream that he was beside her in deep-feathered softness, sharing the delirious warmth of a girl, all of whose softness was for him: that the dream of love had come true: and most wonderful of all, she wanted him in the same way that he wanted her: all thought between them was a silk gossamer binding them as one person.
“Darling, darling, darling Barley, it’s too good to be true!”
“Isn’t it fun to be friends, as well as married?”
Yet once more he wondered if such bliss could last—to drift into sleep beside her with no more thought than scent was thought to a flower. Deep, deep sleep; to awaken and see the sun shining through the window; and what fun, another day lay before them, on their way to thalassa!, thalassa!, the sea of ancient Athens, and the radiance of the Greek poets!
After coffee and rolls and butter they went on their journey, travelling towards the sun above the mountains of the Massif Central. But after a while the sun went in and it rained; it rained harder; it poured down and there was no hood to put up. The belts slipped, the engine went dud, with water in the magneto.
They pushed Bédélia for a mile and came to a garage-shed where a new condenser was fitted to the magneto; very cheaply, he thought, giving the mechanic a pour boire. The engine fired at once, the rain ceased to fall, they went on happily through a damp twilight into Chaumont, to leave Bédélia in a side-street barn while Barley looked for a small hotel. It was a relief to him that she decided the price (while he waited below) and all he had to do was to be beckoned upstairs. Safe for one more night! No waiting by the road-side, walking about until dawn: the room, lit by electricity, was a refuge against the darkness of memory. The war was over!
They washed and changed, she collected their clothes to be dried; they went down to a wonderful dinner with a bottle of wine, most of which he drank before going to bed, half-blotto and wonderfully lucky to be safe under a roof with a girl, to watch the trim little female creature undressing quickly and lightly, to see her shape, her gentleness, the small breasts and thin arms and tiny waist and beautifully shaped legs and feet with their high insteps and broad toes; feet which he held one in each hand while determined to make her pregnant. She sighed, she kissed, she nuzzled his throat and cheeks and brow like an animal already enjoying its young.
Again they were on the road early, a clear bright day, the engine running well; through Dijon with its vineyards and rose gardens, stopping to eat their midday meal on a bridge over the Sâone—white wine, cheese, sausage and the usual long loaf of bread. He felt muzzy in the intensely hot sun, and she was sleepy too, so they slept on the river-bank, waking to throw off their clothes and swim naked in the water.
The river turned its course there, the flow had carved a pool at the bend. The water moved gently over a sandy bottom at the verge, and, towards the farther bank, it deepened over a stony pit. While they were swimming to the other side he saw what at first he took to be a water-vole on the bank; but coming nearer, he saw it had a flatter head and curiously small eyes with apparently no nose. It was scarcely seven inches long, with a stub tail, dun brown like its fur. Through the wimpling current he swam, nearer and nearer the animal, which did not move, but opened its mouth in an inaudible mew when the hand of his extended right arm touched the bank. He waited for her to draw level with him, and put a hand on his shoulder to steady herself while treading water.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
They got out, and picked up the mite. It was cold, she breathed upon it for warmth, while feebly it sought with its paws to burrow between her fingers.
“It’s hungry,” she said. “Poor baby.”
Phillip, looking down into the water, cried out, “Come here!”
On the stony bottom of the pool lay an animal slowly swaying in the current. It was on its back, it was dark except for a light patch on its throat. As they stared, the body lifted slowly and half turned over; the current checked this movement, and they saw something upon one paw, attached to a chain.
“It’s an otter, it’s been trapped! The chain is nailed to the top of that sunken post! The weight of the trap has drowned it!”
He swam underwater and hauled at the chain, drawing up the body until its spiky fur showed above the water. It was heavy with the weight of the trap; he released it and sinking down gripped the top of the post, to work it to and fro to loosen it. It was driven too deeply to be shifted.
“What a shame. They trap otters at Laruns, for their fur. I wonder if there are any more cubs?”
“They have them in holes of trees by the river, I think. I wonder how this one got on the bank? It’s too small to swim.”
“Perhaps she was carrying it to another nest, Phillip.” They could find no other cubs, and walked down-river to find a ford.
“We’ll get some milk in the next town. I can feed it with my fountain-pen filler.”
As soon as they had dressed they went on to Dôle, where Barley bought some milk and, mixing it with hot water, fed the cub on the rubber squeezer of the pen-filler.
“Good, it’s sucking!”
It took three fills of the glass container, then closed its eyes. She put it inside her jumper, next to her collar bone, and seeing an hotel, decided to spend the night there, because of its name, the Pomme d’Or.
Next morning the cub was still alive; with joy they went on south, a new view of mountains immediately before them. They climbed up to Poligny, the engine sharply crackling through the tree-lined streets partly in shadow; and continuing along route 83 they came to Lons-le-Saunier and after filling the pointed cylindrical tank over the engine with essence, made for Bourg-en-Bresse, their objective being Lyons—187 kilometres on the map from Dôle. They ran non-stop the last sixty kilometres to find that Lyons was the Birmingham of France, except that it had trees around its great square, and no grime. Even so it was a business town, the hotel they entered for a drink was filled with sallow-faced, podgy men in black coats and trousers, so let’s go on to Vienne, he said.
The mountain peaks were ruddy as they rattled down the valley route beside great Rhône whose leaping snow-waters were visible on their right.
“Just fancy, this town is exactly 500 kilometres, 300 miles, from Paris,” he said, lying on the hotel bed and reading the Michelin guide, while she pulled off her jumper and put on a silk blouse. After fondling her, he tried to draw her to the bed. She resisted. “I must get some goat’s-milk.”
“Come back soon, and we’ll feed the cub here.”
When she did not come back he went to look for her and found her sitting at a table in the salle à manger, a young waiter standing beside the table. They were looking at the cub. He saw that the waiter was young, perhaps eighteen, a handsome youth talking excitedly in French. On the table was an open stamp book.
Barley looked up as he came in. “Hullo, old boy, I’ve been showing Jules ‘la petite loutre’.” She put the cub back inside her blouse.
“Aren’t you coming up to feed it?”
“It’s been fed. Jules wants to show me some of his rare French Colonials.” She remained seated while Jules continued to look over her shoulder, pointing out this and that stamp, while she turned the pages and appeared to share his interest.
Feeling out of it, Phillip went to the bar and ordered a calvados, swallowing the fiery liquid before going back to the dining-room door. The boy-waiter was now seated beside her, the two blond heads close together. He returned to the bar, drank another calvados, and then walked into the street. It was ten minutes before he returned, to find her waiting for him.
“I didn’t order dinner, not knowing how long you’d be.”
He seated himself on the other side of the table. Hitherto they had sat side by side.
There were a few local Frenchmen dining in the room, commercial travellers judging by the tucked-in napkins and the absent-minded speed with which they swallowed their food.
Jules gravely examined Barley as he stood awaiting the order. Phillip could not decide. Had she left undone the top button of her V-blouse on purpose?
“Steak for you, with watercress as usual, old boy?”
“What would you like?”
“I think I’d prefer a herb omelette tonight.”
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Not very. But you have a steak—you’ve done all the work.”
This wasn’t true; she had a blister from changing over the belts, the gradients had varied frequently upon stretches of the journey.
“What wine would you like with your omelette? A Graves? A Chablis?”
“I’ll have Vichy water, I think. Where did you get to, just now?”
Was Jules hanging on his answer? Old boy—yes, he was that. Was her remark intended to show up his greater age? He gave the order; Jules brought the Vichy bottle, and waited beside her again.
“M’sieur! Du vin?”
“Vin rosé, s’il vous plaît.”
He drank silently. The dishes came, expertly placed by Jules. She seemed not to be hungry; she waited, holding her fork as though playing with her food, while he ate the steak and swallowed glasses of wine as though they were water.
“What’s the matter, Phillip?”
“Nothing. Why should there be?”
She pretended to eat while she waited for him to finish his steak. Then she said, “D’you mind if I go up now? I’ve got a bit of a headache. It’s the vibration, I think.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You won’t mind my leaving you?”
“Not at all.”
He stood up, she left, he sat and ordered a large cognac. Headache—or heartache? But he must not allow imagination to—and yet, in the past, all his forebodings had turned out to be real. Eveline Fairfax—Spica—O for God’s sake, not Barley. He finished the bottle and thought to walk into the dark night; but hesitating in the foyer went upstairs to their room, anticipating its emptiness.
She was in bed, only the top of her head visible.
He undressed and washed slowly, and got in his side of the bed, to lie apart from her. At last he could bear it no more, and touched her shoulder with his hand. She patted the back of his fingers, and said, “Go to sleep—you’re tired out, you know.”
“Don’t you want me?” he said at last.
“Of course I want you. But tonight we ought to sleep.”
“Is it anything I’ve done, or said?”
“No, of course not.”
He lay awake beside her, suffering. She didn’t want him. She was thinking, perhaps dreaming, of the eager youth. He lay still minute after minute, breathing through his mouth to make his breathing inaudible. At last she turned over.
“What is the matter, Phillip? I can hear you thinking. Tell me, what’s the matter?”
He told her.
“Oh darling! How clumsy I am! I am so terribly happy, you see! I feel like—well, like Juliet set free from the vault. I suppose I shouldn’t have put ‘la petite loutre’ there, but Jules was so eager for me to see his collection, and anyway the cub is used to sleeping there. Also I thought that probably Jules had no one to talk to about his stamp album.”
“You’re not growing tired of me?”
She took him in her arms. “Oh, my poor boy, so you thought you had lost ‘Anky’! Never, Phillip, never!—never!—never! I can never change towards you, or grow tired, not one smallest fraction of me!�
� She leaned over him and kissed one eyebrow. “Oh, how could you think that I might ever change? I owe you everything—it was you who first opened my eyes to poetry, and the feeling that ‘everything that lives is holy’.”
It was his turn to pay tribute. “And I wasn’t really alive until I knew you. I could never be my real self with anyone before I knew you.”
*
On the way south they ran into flocks of sheep. The dust of the movement of thousands of lean animals, with long ears and tails, hung on the air. Among the ewes were rams with spiralled horns held well above the flocks.
They sat in Bédélia on the road verge, hearing the tottle-tonk of bells, the short clatter of cloven feet in the dust amidst the barking of dogs. Boys with black shaggy hair and dark eyes passed by them, in charge of donkeys which seemed loaded almost to back breaking point. Goats were among the sheep.
“They’re going up to the snow-line grass,” she told him. “The shepherds call this the ‘transhumance’. They live in huts, and eat the flesh of male kids, and drink goat’s milk, all the summer.”
The long-haired goats looked uneasily about them, uttering plaints of discomfort.
“I always heard that goats and sheep didn’t mix.”
“They don’t as a rule, but they all go up to the mountain pastures together.”
“I suppose this summer migration goes on all over Provence?”
“All over Europe, I think, where there are mountains. D’you see the ticks on the ewes’ ears?”
“They look like rivets, close together. How do they get them off?”
“They don’t, there are too many.”
“When are the lambs born?”
“In the autumn, in the lowlands. Some on the way down. The shepherds have to look out for wild boars, and foxes. Lammergeirs, too—eagles.”
“In England they usually have their lambs in January, when the ewes are on the turnips. How would you like to be a farmer’s wife? I’ve still got a chance of going in with Uncle Hilary.”
It Was the Nightingale Page 2