A Test to Destruction (3 page)

A sad-sweet smile came over the small face, with its lines of experience at variance with its child-like look: the brown eyes, shrunken within the orbits, filled with tears, the lips trembled; then with cheerful resolution she went on down the High Street, past Electric Palace and Penny Bazaar, and so to the food shops behind the market stalls of the Borough.

Yes, one must always hope for the best, like the bird singing through the sleet. She remembered the baby missel-thrush Phillip had brought home from Whitefoot Lane Woods one day. He had been out with two boys from his school, looking for nests, and one boy had climbed up a tall pine tree and finding only one chick in the nest had thrown it down before Phillip could stop him. It had been hurt, but for three weeks it had lived, and become quite tame; suddenly it had died. Phillip had buried it next to his museum, a hole in the flower bed covered with glass, and put up a little cross over the fledgling’s grave. She could hear his voice now,
It
isn’t
a
sparrow,
but
there’s
not
much
difference,
anyway
it
fell
to
the
ground,
so
God
must
have
noticed
it.
So thoughtful a remark for one so young: and what a strange mixture he had been, kind and thoughtful one minute, and the very opposite the next, although he had never hurt anyone deliberately, at least never since that sad occasion when he had egged on Peter Wallace to bully poor Alfred Hawkins, for ‘daring’ to speak to Mavis over the garden fence. How strangely children grew up!

There was her elder daughter Mavis, who now liked to be called Elizabeth. Nothing seemed to satisfy the girl. She was always in a hurry, and nearly always late—and never able, it seemed, to live within her salary from the office. Her bedroom showed only too well the state of her mind. Shoes flung anywhere into the bottom of her clothes’ cupboards, underclothes in the drawers tumbled together, bedclothes thrown back in disorder. And yet she had been such a neat little girl, taking pride in having all her clothes just so. If only she would remember not to comb out her brush and roll up the loose hairs and drop them out of the window, where Dickie always seemed to find them, and complain.
Slut,
he had called her, a dreadful word to use before a young girl! Elizabeth had flung herself out of the house, letting the front door bang. But she must not look on the dark side of the moon, as Phillip would say.

Thank goodness for her younger daughter’s calm steadiness, but she wished Doris could be a little less brusque in manner towards her father. If only Dickie would understand that Doris’s manner concealed her feelings about her cousin Percy’s death in the Somme battle, eighteen months before. Doris had never got over it, but being reserved, did not easily show her feelings. But now that Doris had got a scholarship to London University—she was going to Bedford College at the beginning of the summer term—she would meet many new faces, and the change of scene would do her good.

Looking on the bright side, Hetty came to the busiest part of the Borough. But the sight of hundreds of women in the food lines before the shops momentarily overcame her. Then thinking that everyone standing there was like herself, with the same hopes, she took her place before Winner Bros. shop.

She had been waiting in line about ten minutes when an old woman wearing cape and bonnet, and carrying a bass fish-basket from which stuck out the top of a flagon bottle of porter, approached in a rollicking gait, due to the perpetual discomfort of corns consolidated by misfit boots given to her by various mistresses for whom she worked in rotation, charring. She stopped when she saw one of them in the line before Winners’, and a feeling of embarrassment came over her, that Mrs. Mad-dison should have to wait in such company.

None of this feeling was shown in her manner when she stopped before her. “Good mornin’, ma’m. The weather is getting better, I feel it in me corns,” she remarked cheerfully. “Hope you won’t catch cold, m’am, waiting here. But it’s the times, m’am. I sometimes wonder what it’s all coming to. Still, it’s not for the likes of me to say. I’ll be along at nine o’clock tomorrow, m’am. How is Master Phillip? Well, that’s good news. He deserves a rest, if anyone did. After all, he’s done his bit,” she concluded, using a phrase that had gone out of common use since the battle of the Somme, when the realization that what Lord Kitchener had said about a long war had been proved right. “Mr. Turney is better after his bronchitis, I hope? Ah, that’s promising! Good-day, ma’m.”

After waiting nearly half an hour Hetty had an immediate view of the shop. How empty it looked, with its rows of polished hooks holding only here and there a shrunken fragment. She was fourth away when the butcher cried, “Joints all gone, ladies!
Only offal’n sheep ’eads left! Eat a sheep’s brains, they’ll improve your own!”

There was a jeer behind the humour. ‘Meat’ for meat was one of his practices, women were cheap. He could now shut up shop for the rest of the day and kip through the afternoon, in preparation for snooker at the Roebuck in the evening. As far as he was concerned, the war need never end.

“’Ow old are them ’eads?”

“Old as their teeth, like you, mother. Want one? Eleven three.”

“Garn! Give my ’usband that muck! At eleven three? Think I’m made o’ money?”

“Take it or leave it. What for you, lady? Sheep ’ead? That’ll set you back best part o’ ’alf a dollar! They’ll be up tomorrow. I can’t ’elp it, lady. You won’t get one elsewhere no cheaper. What for you, madam?” The Suffragette in front of Hetty had helped to pass the time by addressing remarks to whomsoever would listen to her, on the subject of Corruption in High Places. It was all a question of the Big Profiteers wanting things to remain as they were, in order to continue their high rate of profit. As for the Ministry of Food, its muddles would be laughable if they were not so tragic.

“One day we are begged to eat potatoes, and showers of leaflets come through the post! The next week we’re asked not to eat potatoes—and they come black anyway, and are uneatable. It’s all a disgraceful muddle! We ought to organize deputations to Whitehall, demanding equality of price and distribution. Look at the scarcity of sugar in the shops here, compared with the quantity—and the price!—in the West End! Some of the profiteers in our midst are making fortunes! Sugar costin three ha’pence a pound before the war is now sevenpence! As for those awful substitutes called consip and sypgar, what are they but glucose and beet-sugar syrup? Have you bought any honey lately? Half a crown a pound! We have a friend in Somerset who sent us two rabbits—they are five shillings each down there! And the same price for clotted cream! As for eggs, fivepence each,
when
you can get them! And only the other day I was asked a shilling for a cauliflower, quite a small head too! And do you know what grocers are demanding for a tin of peaches? Four shillings and sixpence! There’s profiteering for you! What!” to the butcher—“only sheep’s heads left. Where are the rabbits?”

“As far as I know, down their little ’oles. Next! Sheep’s ’ead, take it or leave it!”

Returning with empty basket Hetty wondered if she could afford some fish out of her £3 weekly allowance for all food, clothing and coal. Papa ought to have some sole, or halibut. But the price was far too high; four shillings a pound for sole, three for turbot.

“Have you any herrings?” The voice was almost defeated.

“Seen none for months ma’m. Trawlers all on minesweepin’ these days. And picking up more sailors nor mines.”

She remembered Mrs. Feeney saying that she would never touch fish again, from what they were now bound to be feeding on.

Well, there was no hope for it, she must try elsewhere in the afternoon. And going back the way she had come, she saw a familiar figure walking slowly towards her, different only in that now the brim of his dark soft hat was shapeless and pulled down over his ears, while the folds of a long woollen muffler were wrapped twice around his neck, and tucked into the collar of an ulster overcoat extending to his ankles. What was Papa doing, out in the cold?

With head sunken into shoulders Thomas Turney came slowly towards her, tapping a stout lemon-wood walking stick on the pavement. The face looking at her, above the clipped white beard and moustache, was red with a tinge of lilac. His breath came harshly as he stood before her.

“Bad news, my girl,” he managed to say. “Yes, he’s gone, Dorrie’s boy Gerry,” as he continued to look at her with his ruined eyes.

“Oh, Papa! I must go to Dorrie at once! But should you be out and about so soon?”

“I’m well protected, Hetty.” His trousers below the knees were wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. He spoke on, slowly. “Dorrie’s girl Maudie came up to tell me. M’ sister Marian is with Dorrie now. I thought it best to wait until I saw you, before going in, Hetty.” He looked exhausted. “Well, we’ll walk back slowly, shall we? No, I don’t need an arm, thank ye.”

Upon the Randiswell hoardings, replacing the tatters of Lord Kitchener, was a new notice.

While they were looking at this announcement, the billposter was sitting on his pail and eating his lunch. He was pulling apart bits of bread and cheese to put into his mouth, which lacked teeth, when a sparrow flew down and watched him. The man tossed the bird a length of crust, which was seized and borne up to one of the out-jutting tie-bricks in the end wall of the unfinished row of shops.

Thomas Turney pointed with his thick lemon stick. ‘So much for the bureaucrats in Whitehall!”

Father and daughter went on up the road, which rose towards the Hill; and every step they took seemed to Hetty to be towards the doom that all living creatures shared, in a world of sadness and anxiety. And then, as she thought of the billposter and the sparrow, she felt, as she had felt before in dark moments, that all was well behind the veil of life. And what was to occur when father and daughter reached No. 134 Charlotte Road was to Hetty a confirmation of her faith in life.

In the house over the road from Dorothy Cakebread lived Mrs. Wallace, a Scotswoman, who had lost all her sons in the same battle at the beginning of the war. This woman, distraught after reading the deadly telegram, had cried to Dorrie, whose two boys in the same London battalion had come safely through the battle, “You’ve no right to have both your boys alive, when I have lost my three!” Now, when Hetty went in to console her sister, she saw Mrs. Wallace sitting beside Dorrie, holding her hand, and heard her saying, “There dear, be brave!” Our laddies are together! They do not want to see us cast down! Our laddies are watching us, I am sure of it! God gives all life, which does not end with death. We are all one with God, in life as in death, dear neighbour.”

Late on the Friday afternoon a curly-haired, pink-cheeked young man, wearing the red tabs and hat-band of the General Staff, with field boots and spurs, came into the orderly room. Phillip recognized him at once as Devereux-Wilkins, whom he had seen last in October 1915, playing billiards in the Roebuck in the High Street at home. Wilkins, wearing red tabs then, had showed him a wristlet watch engraved as a gift from his platoon at Gallipoli, ‘a token of esteem.’ The local plain-clothes detectives were after him then, as a bogus officer and possible German spy. He had blandly told Phillip that they must have confused him with his brother, who was a secret agent, and having said that, he jumped on a passing tram for London.

And yet, if he had been bogus then, how came it that he was obviously now a staff-officer? Phillip began non-committally. “I don’t suppose you remember me?”

A quizzical look was directed towards him, as though the newcomer was fully aware that this crude opening gambit must be parried by a show of good manners.

“Well, you know, I have met a great many interesting people while with my General,” he said charmingly.

“Weren’t you an A.D.C. in October, 1915?”

“I was.”

“Don’t you remember me in the billiards room of the Roebuck in Lewis’m High Street on the night of a Zeppelin raid?”

“I’m afraid I’ve never been to Lewes in Sussex.”

“I mean Lewis’m in Kent, now a part of London. Surely it was you? Anyway, somebody just like you showed me a wristlet watch, which had been given to him by his men, in memory of Suvla Bay.”

“You mean this?”

He unstrapped a watch, and passed it over.

“Yes, that’s the same one!”

“That belongs to my twin brother. He gave it to me to keep for him before he went on his last hush-hush job.”

“Oh, I see.”

The other held out his hand for the watch. “Well, my general has been put on half-pay, so I am back footslogging once more.”

“But your brother, whom I saw in the Roebuck, told me that he was an A.D.C. to a general,” persisted Phillip.

“Ah, he played many parts—it was his job, you see! Rehearsing, no doubt!”

“I see,” said Phillip, still puzzled. He was sure it was the same man. “Then it must have been your brother who ordered the local battalion of territorials to parade on Blackheath one Saturday afternoon?”

“Quite possibly. Did it pass off uneventfully?”

“Well, the staff wallah rode up to inspect the territorials on a horse hired from a greengrocer named Soal, and spruced everyone in the uniform of a G.S.O. 2 from the War Office!”

“Sounds just like Aubrey,” confided the other. “He used to do things like that, to perfect the art of deception. Rehearsing, as I said. Probably doing the same thing in Hunland at this moment, as a German staff officer.” He moved nearer to Phillip and said between his teeth, “Not a word to anyone, mind. I need hardly remind you that under D.O.R.A. all the activities of the secret service are very hush-hush. Between ourselves Aubrey
is
now in Germany, trying to find out the plans of the coming attack.”

He said all this so smoothly and confidentially that Phillip felt ashamed that he had any suspicions. All the same, he believed that Wilkins was inventing a yarn. And when he said, with a slight deference in his voice, “I say old thing, I can’t very well go on parade in this kit, can I? How about a spot of
leave, to get a new uniform?” Phillip knew that he was a sprucer.

“How long d’you want?”

“My tailor might run me up a pair of regulation knickerbockers in, say, four days?”

To see what Wilkins would propose next, Phillip said, “Everyone wears riding breeches now. All you need is a pair of marching boots, and some puttees.”

“But marching boots must be made to measure, old thing. I’ve got flat feet, I’m ashamed to say. I need special reinforced steel arches to my insteps. I suppose you’re not wanting a transport officer, are you, by any chance?”

“We’ve got no transport, no horses anyway. They bring our supplies by lorry.”

“Then I must go up and see Lobb, my bootmaker.”

“There’s a good bootmaker in the town, here.”

“But will he give credit, old thing? And can you personally recommend him? Has he the latest orthopaedic knowledge? I’d be no use to the regiment if my feet gave way.” He went to a leather hold-all, opened it, and lifted out a cock pheasant by the neck. “Shot a week after the season closed, I’m ashamed to say, but it’s yours if you’ll accept it. From our Norfolk coverts, don’t you know.”

Yes, I don’t think, said Phillip to himself, as he hid the bird behind some files. He would also ask for weekend leave; it would be a surprise to turn up at home with a pheasant. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll see the Adjutant right away.” He returned to make out a half-fare voucher. “You’ve got until 9 a.m. parade, Tuesday morning.”

“I’m most grateful to you.” But the glance of Devereux-Wilkins rested with some regret upon the tail-feathers of the cock pheasant, as though thinking that it needn’t have been given away. Then, to muffle his thoughts, he assumed a musical-comedy air, put on his hat with the suggestion of the bold Beatty-angle, waggled his cane, seized his hold-all (which contained, among other things, a pair of ankle boots and puttees) and with a “So long, old thing,” set off back to Leicester Square, to the girl on whose immoral earnings he lived comfortably.

*

Hetty’s faithful charwoman, Mrs. Feeney, was carrying, as a present to the mis’us—a frozen Australian rabbit. It was
nearly as large as a cat, and broke some of the stitches of her best bag of black American cloth. It took the place of the bottle of porter, for she would be leaving for her room in a terrace house in Rushy Green at 12.30, and would treat herself to a pint of porter on the way home. Mrs. Maddison was welcome to the rabbit, which she had won in a raffle at the Mission Hall, for 2d. Filled up with happiness at the thought of the mis’us’ face, Mrs. Feeney stopped at a butcher’s shop near the Free Library to buy herself a couple of pig’s trotters, her favourite food. It being early, the shop just opened, housewives were not yet about in any numbers. She stooped to pat a dog with wagging tail and appealing eyes outside the shop. The starving animal crept after her across the sawdust. Mrs. Feeney put down her bag to find her purse—a Highland soldier’s sporran with the hairs cut off—suspended for safety between skirt and top petticoat (she wore four, for warmth), and was counting out six coppers for the trotters—a terrible price, she thought, my word, somebody’s getting the money—when she saw the dog dragging the Australian rabbit—which for months had been flattened with five hundred others in a wooden box, frozen for the voyage—out of her bag. Then the dog was cantering away in the direction of the Randiswell Recreation Ground, pursued by three other dogs.

She was still very unhappy about it (for Mis’us had not accepted the pig’s trotters) half an hour after noon, when she left with a florin for her morning’s work; but her mood changed to one of contentment when she saw Master Phillip coming out of Randiswell Station, with the tail feathers of a pheasant sticking out of his haversack.

“My, that’s a fine bird, Master Phillip! Your mother will be pleased. Only be careful, don’t let anyone take it off’f you, will you now? There’s all sorts about nowadays! Oh my, the bag’s moving! Is the pore thing still alive?”

“Very much so, Mrs. Feeney. It flew into my carriage on the way up, and I caught it!” He opened one end of the haversack and the black nostrils of Sprat poked out.

“Good heavings, Master Phil, what sort of fessan is that?”

“An Oo-ja pheasant, Mrs. Feeney. It runs on four legs, eats pepper, and flies backwards to cool its exhaust. Look, here he is, Sprat!” The terrier struggled out, and jumped around before beginning to classify the lesser smells of a London suburb.

“How about a glass with me in the Railway, Mrs. Feeney?” They were standing by the late Victorian garish ex-gin palace outside which, late on Saturday nights, in boyhood, Phillip had sometimes seen poor children, without shoes or stockings, huddled together while waiting for their parents.

“Oh, I daren’t, Master Phil! Whatever would people say?”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Feeney. ‘The slums have died in Flanders’, as my friend ‘Spectre’ West once wrote to me. I told you about him, remember? Eight wound-stripes, one eye, and one hand, Mrs. Feeney! His face a black patch, his body a map of scars! Come on, let’s drink his health!” They went into the Railway, where he ordered two half-pints of Burton.

“I don’t know whether I ought to say it, Master Phil, but I have heard that your father is thinking of joining up. They’re taking men up to fifty-five now, Master Phil.”

“Yes, I did hear about that, Mrs. Feeney.”

“It isn’t for the likes of me to remark on it, so you won’t say I mentioned it, will you, Master Phil?”

“Of course not, my one and only dear Mrs. Feeney! Have another Burton?”

“No thank you, Master Phil. I must be going. It’s been very nice seeing you looking so well. I’m sure your Mother will be pleased. Good day, sir.”

When he arrived at his home, Phillip left Sprat in the haversack out of sight, and went in with the bird.

“There now, Doris, my prayer to Saint Anthony has been answered!” declared Hetty, looking at her younger daughter.

“Oh, Mother, do you really think that saints shoot pheasants for people,” said Phillip.

“The ravens brought food for Elijah in the wilderness anyway,” retorted Doris.

“I expect that Elijah found out where the crows were getting wild currants, that’s all.”

“Ah, my son, ‘there are more things in heaven and earth——’ you know.”

“I can pluck it and draw it,” said Doris. “I learned to do it when I worked on the land last summer.”

“This bird was shot last January; it’s probably petrified by now. I really meant it to go in a glass case, Mother. My proper contribution to the larder is in my haversack outside. I didn’t bring it in, because it’s rather high. Just a moment.”

He put the haversack on the kitchen floor.

“A rolypoly spotted-dog pudding from the mess! It only wants heating up,” as he opened the flap.

The little dog’s appearance was greeted with delight, mingled with consternation from Hetty. “What will Father say, I wonder?”

“Anyway, we know what Father’s best boy says, Mum,” as a growl from the cat sounded under the table. “I won’t risk Father’s displeasure, so I’m going to ask Mrs. Neville to look after Sprat for me when I go out shortly.”

“Oh, Phillip, are you really going again?”

“Now don’t worry, Mum. It will probably be a soft job at the base. So you see, Father mustn’t be allowed to join up, for apart from anything else, he’s the breadwinner. If he went, the office wouldn’t pay his salary, as they are paying mine. Now I think I’ll just dash down to see Mrs. Neville. I won’t stay. I’ll go down and try and get some sprouts to go with the pheasant.”

“Don’t be long, dear, will you?”

“I’ll go with you, Phil,” said Doris, knowing her mother’s dread of Phillip having too much to drink.

“Yes, do, Doris.”

“I hope I won’t meet the mad soldier again.”

“All soldiers are mad!”

As they went down the road together Doris told her brother that she had gone for a walk on the Hill, after working at her History papers, and on the way up the gully a stranger had acted rather queerly. He had stared at her in a peculiar manner, she said, and then looked as though he was about to speak. But all that happened was that his right hand, with fingers stretched, had gone to hide his mouth, with its twisted lips, while he also bent his head.

“He made a sort of clicking noise. Then he followed me up to the Hill, at a distance, and when I turned to go towards him, he moved away across the grass, to the bandstand.”

“Some lonely devil on leave, I expect, Doris. No need to get the wind up.”

The greengrocer had some sprouts hidden in the room behind his shop; he gave a pound of these to Phillip, saying, “You deserve them, after all your time out in France.”

“Oh, I’ve had a very good war, taking it all round, Mr. Soal.”

As they rounded the corner of Hillside Road, Doris said, “There’s the mad soldier, outside the Rolls’ house!”

“He’s a cadet, with that white band around his cap. I’ll go and have a word with him.”

The cadet sauntered away as they approached; Phillip went on up the road when his sister had gone in with the sprouts. He returned soon afterwards and said, as he brought the visitor into the house, “Let me present Mr. Willoughby, Mother. And this is my sister.”

The young man stuttered, after he had saluted Hetty, that he had been a friend of Percy Pickering, and had c-c-come to see his cousin M-M-Miss Maddison, of whom P-Percy had often s-s-spoken. Again the long fingers fluttered to hide the mouth convulsive with words, as he told them that he had been Percy’s best friend, and Percy had asked him before the battle of Flers to get in touch with Miss Maddison if he didn’t come through, and give her his love. Mr. Willoughby went on to stutter that he himself had been hit later, and had spent many months in hospital.

All this took some time to get out; after which Doris left the room and went upstairs. When after some minutes she did not come down from her bedroom, Phillip, who thought that she should have remained out of courtesy, said to his mother, “Mr. Willoughby and I will go for a walk, and try and get something more for lunch. Also, I must ask Mrs. Neville if she will look after Sprat for me, and there’s the question of dog biscuits.”

“Don’t be long, will you, Phillip?” She remembered not to say ‘dear’ just in time. “Your father will be home early today.” Thank goodness, she thought, that Dr. Dashwood had recently got married, and appeared to have lost his terrible habit of drinking whiskey, and giving large glasses of it to young soldiers.

*

Yet she need not have worried, she told Papa in the afternoon. The two young men came back in plenty of time, with an extra loaf, half a pound of Cheddar cheese, a large tin of sardines and half a pound of butter, all put into Phillip’s haversack by Hern the grocer, who would not hear of payment, so Phillip was going to send him a box of cigars by post from London.