Love and the Loveless (5 page)

“My word, now I’ve spoiled your new Harry Hall’s, Teddie!”

“That’s all right,” cried Pinnegar. “I wet them myself sometimes! Well, cheero, Jack, all the best, and many happy returns!”

After the toast had been drunk, Pinnegar went on, “As I was saying, women at Ascot before the war went there solely to out-do other women in hats. Don’t you agree? You’ll bear me out there, I dare say, Jack?”

“I never looked at the hats, Teddie.”

“I bet you didn’t!” said Pinnegar, knowingly. Then, to Phillip, “You want to keep in with Jack! He’s looking for a transport officer! He might ask you, if he takes a fancy to you.”

While Phillip was trying to think of something to say, Captain Hobart turned to him and said, “I hear you were hit on July the First. What section?”

“Albert—before Ovillers. I got a couple of scratches, so I wasn’t there long.”

“I’ve just come back from Albert, or what’s left of it. They’ve nearly brought the railway up, now we’ve got the high ground to the north and east. It was badly plastered after you left.”

“I’ve often wondered if the Golden Virgin on the campanile was shot down.”

“No, She’s still there. The saying now is that when She falls, the war will end. The French engineers went up last month, and fixed her with wire. No connexion between rumour and fact!”

“Can you tell me what the ‘Notre Dame de Brébières’ represented?”

“‘Our Lady of the Shepherdesses’. It was corn and sheep country, you know, all around there. Hence the dedication. She was also known as ‘The Virgin with the Limp,’ as she dragged her right foot. The French are realistic in their affairs, and bring symbolism into their everyday living.”

“I never saw any shepherdesses!” said Pinnegar. “The women were a lot of old scarecrows in black clothes and sabots.”

Captain Hobart continued, “It’s hard to imagine it, but I knew that country before the war. I used to fish some of those Picardy streams—all spring-fed out of the chalk, you know. Do you fish?”

“I’ve fished in Kent, and also in Devon.”

“Ah yes, small trout, but very lively, and excellent eating. Those Department du Nord rivers hold some awful good trout, you know. Two and three pounders quite common. Not quite up to the Test, perhaps, but as good as the Avon at Salisbury. Do you fish wet or dry? Wet, I suppose, in Devon?”

“Most fish wet, but I used a dry fly.”

“Good man! Go after your fish, no ‘chuck and chance it’. How’s the transport course? Passed out yet?”

“No, we have that next week.”

“I’m gettin’ a company, I expect Teddie told you?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Care to come along with us?”

“I’d like to, very much.”

“Good man. I’ll try and work it. With any luck we ought to be out in the New Year. There’s a big show coming off in the spring, at Arras. When I left, Fifth Army was getting ready to clear the Ancre valley. It’s no secret, of course, the old Hun knows it as well as we do. Good hunting!” He raised his glass, and they drank together. “You hunt the deer on Exmoor, don’t you? I’ve never been so far West, I’m a fox-catcher from these parts.”

“I’ve never hunted.”

“Like to hunt?” Captain Hobart filled his glass.

“Rather!”

“We’ll go out one day. There are several meets within reasonable hacking distance. We’ll get hold of some gees, there are several among the remounts capable of toppin’ the timber. We must foregather!”

“I’ve got an awful good horse in my section. It’s a black gelding, sixteen hands high, some Arab blood in it. I’ve been wondering how to wangle it for myself, when I leave the riding school.”

“Who’s your Riding Master?”

“I don’t know his name, but he’s in the Seventeenth Lancers, with long black moustaches, and rides a chestnut gelding that lopes along with a beautiful South African triple canter.”

“Sounds like ‘Ropey’ Griggs. A case of whiskey will grease his palm. Not a word about it to any one, of course.”

“No fear. Well, thank you, Captain Hubb’rt. I ought to say goodbye now, and go back to camp. Will you have a drink with me?”

“That’s awful good of you, but would you mind if we make it another time? It’s my birthday, you see, and as a matter o’ fact, there’s another bottle coming! Won’t you stay and help us make it a dead’n? And I’d be delighted if you’d join my table for dinner. I think if we’re going to be in the same company in France, the sooner we get to know one another the better, don’t you?”

“Well, thank you very much.”

“That’s settled then. I’ll tell the head waiter.”

When he returned, Hobart said, “Wonderful old pub this, isn’t it? Where we sit now, Richard Crook-back signed the death warrant of Buckingham in 1483, his best friend, who went the way of all the rest of his pals. As you know, Richard the Third found himself alone, at the end of his life, forsaken on the field of Bosworth. Wonderful to think of history going on, isn’t it, past and present all one in time? It helps one to keep this war in perspective.”

“How do you mean?”

“What is happening today is all a part with what has happened before. It’s the same life now as it was in the past. The means differ, that’s all. War, fighting, struggles between men—it’s inherent in human nature.”

“Then you don’t think this is a war to end war?”

“Afraid I don’t. That’s just a slogan, to keep people up to the mark. It’s the fox promised to hounds, tear ’im and eat ’im, to keep them going.”

“Yes, I discovered during the ’14 Christmas truce that the Germans were being told the same sort of things as ourselves.”

“You bet your life they are! They wouldn’t fight, otherwise.”

Hobart refilled glasses. Pinnegar was talking softly to the younger blue-eyed girl. Phillip felt balanced between them all. A bottle popped, another was shoved in the bucket and screwed round in the broken ice. The blue-eyed girl gave Phillip a smile. He smiled back. This was the life. If only Desmond——Was Lily, so soon, being forgotten——?

“You all right?” he heard Hobart saying.

“Oh yes, thanks. I was thinking what you said about Richard Crook-back betraying all his friends, one after another, until he was alone. I suppose that was his fate? Do you believe in fate?”

“I do indeed. Fate is character. A man makes the same pattern again and again. It’s the pattern he’s born with. He can try and alter it, but he won’t succeed.”

The blue-eyed girl left, with another glance at Phillip. Pinnegar slid along the oak chest they were sitting on.

“It’s born in him, in other words, Captain Hobart?”

“That’s what I believe.”

“So Crook-back was, in a way, lucky to be killed fighting?”

“Most fortunate. He was no good at living. He was a bad type, intelligent but warped. His mode of living, or thinking, came from his twisted spine. That made his pattern of living, from the start. His mind followed the pattern of his body. That set him apart from the others. He lived entirely in his solitary feelings.”

“But couldn’t his feelings change?”

“He tried to change them—he had a conscience, he knew what he was doing—but couldn’t change himself.”

“Not like changing a name, you mean. Such as the name of Ho-bart?” Pinnegar said. “Now don’t pretend you’re not Ho-bart of Ho-bart’s Polish, Jack. No false modesty among friends, you know!”

Phillip winced at Teddie’s persistence, and was relieved when Captain Hobart laughed; but he was bored by Pinnegar’s persistence, Phillip felt. “Hubb’rt or Ho-bart, it’s all the same to me! You pays your money and you takes your choice! My grandfather called himself Hubb’rt, my mother and my aunts and uncles call themselves Ho-bart, to sever connexion with the generations of Cheshire peasants and small-holders going by the names of Hubbard, Hubberd, Hibberd, Hubbert, and Habbitt when they moved to London. We still call it Lund’n, by the way, and not Lon-don, but you can call it what you like, and good luck to you, you hair-splitting Brummagem counterfeiter!”

“Even so, I still maintain that you can’t get away from the fact that H-O-B-A-R-T spells Ho-bart, and I defy you or anyone else to prove otherwise!”

“That’s the spirit,” said Captain Hobart. “You’re the type who never retreats an inch, the kind of bloke we want behind the Vickers guns, so let me fill your glass, and we’ll drink to the company, and the army in France, and the sooner we’re out there again the better, to finish the job, and get back to normal life again!”

Back
to
normal
life
again
… Phillip felt the shadow of his life coming upon him; he thrust it away as they clinked glasses, against a moderate roar now coming from the bar. After dinner they went in Hobart’s 4·5-litre Mercédès, which had four immense
flexible exhaust pipes coiling like brass snakes out of the side of the bonnet, to the theatre; and shattered the frosty midnight hour by a return to camp with blue flames stabbing through the cut-out.

The purpose of limbers and waggons, the various woods and metals in their construction, the harness of mules which drew them—traces and straps by which they were tugged and the long pole bar supported on neck, hip, and withers; grooming by brush and curry-comb, sponging nostrils, dock, and sheath; importance of watering before feeding, to prevent colic or
stoppage
when the gases of indigestion pressed against the heart and might finally stop its beating by causing rupture; daily rations, providing three feeds totalling 10 lb. of oats and 10 of hay for officers’ chargers and light draught horses and mules of the section—sixty-four animals in all—and the biggest feed in the evening, because it gave the animal more time to digest its food and also it was injurious to work on a big feed. Chaff given with oats, to make the animal chew; bran mash once a week to open its bowels.

Picketing: on a hard soil, near water supply, gentle slope for drainage, hedge or wall for shelter, hard-core standings for the feet; watch weavers, blowers, and cribbers—neurotic animals which disturbed the sleep of others by swinging their heads to and fro as though with mournful thoughts, or blew
sighfully
, or gnawed incessantly at picket post, rope, or neighbour’s rug.

March discipline: stables at least 1½ hours before moving; the farrier, or cold-shoer, inspecting all hoofed feet; rations of corn secured in nose-bags, canvas water buckets available; even loading of limbers and the one G.S. waggon; forward scrutiny to see roads were clear, to prevent blockage, fatal in battle, when thousands of vehicles both horse-drawn and
petrol-driven
were in unceasing movement amidst shell-fire, and
downward
traffic from the battlefield was as important as upward supplies. Phillip remembered Loos, the miles of shattered horses, men, and vehicles by day, and the failure of the transport of over
forty battalions to get forward in the night; immobility when the enemy line was broken, and the untried reserves arrived sleepless, unfed, and thirsty upon the battlefield, and too late; so that in the morning, when they advanced, they were shot down and they broke, leaving the battlefield while the German reserves, which had come up by marches equally forced during the night, stood up and watched them go.

The day before the written exam arrived. The stout subaltern who had won fame by getting up, over, and off his mount in one unified motion, had been a salesman of women’s clothes in civil life; he had a fund of smutty stories which Phillip heard with reluctance; and when he came to him with a suggestion about the forthcoming exam, Phillip did not like what he had to say.

“I say, old man, I’ve got an idea. The usual practice, I understand, in the sections is to give each instructor a present at the end of the course. That works both ways, naturally, with the instructor letting his class know beforehand the questions of the written paper, at half-a-crown a head. I think you’ll agree that isn’t altogether unreasonable? How about it? I thought I’d approach you first, old man, as you’re senior officer here.”

“Well, I really don’t know. I don’t want to go against the rest of the section, but I’m not keen on having the questions either.”

“Of course, you’ll pass out on your head, old man.”

“You’re much more likely”——began Phillip, then stopped himself. But the other man said, with a laugh, “I see what you mean!” The laugh made Phillip like the fat man. He paid up. “Thanks, old man, much obliged.” The organiser collected twelve half-crowns; and that night in his cubicle Phillip studied the questions, feeling restless as he sat before the tortoise stove—one officer to a cubicle now—because he could have answered every question easily without having first seen the paper. It was too late, after mess dinner, to go down to meet Teddie, Jack and others of the group that met nightly in the Angel, and later foregathered at the theatre bar.

The written exam took place the next morning; after which the staff captain sealed the papers in a large O.H.M.S. envelope with red wax, upon which he impressed his signet. And on the following day, before the oral, when the staff sergeant was complimented for the way he had brought along his section, it was given out that all had got full marks for their papers.

The staff captain then asked questions, from a printed card in his hand. In turn each member of the class appeared
before
him, out of ear-shot of the others. Phillip, as senior, went first.

“What do you do when arriving at a new billet?”

“I look for nails, holes, broken bottles, and shell splinters et cetera, which might damage the animals in my care, sir.”

“What is highly essential in the matter of feeding?”

“Cleanliness of nose-bags, or mangers if in permanent shelters, sir.”

“If in the open?”

“I do not wait for bad weather before I make my drainage and good standing for my animals.”

“What is one of the main things to avoid in stables, and why?”

“The foremost is overcrowding, which prevents horses resting and often results in dangerous kicking.”

“What is better than poor ventilation?”

“A draught, sir.”

“If a horse goes lame, what do you do and why?”

“I examine its feet, and look for a nail, or stone in the frog. I feel if the foot is hot, of course. I look for any swelling in the pastern joint, in front of the fetlock.”

“What is the only permitted excuse for dirty lines?”

“Well, the manual says a hurried advance or retreat, sir, but in practice there wouldn’t be any time to let droppings accumulate.”

“That’s a sound point. I see you’ve been out. How do you feel about your work?”

“I am very keen, sir.”

“No trouble with your leg?”

“None at all, sir!”

“Right. Next officer, please!”

The riding parade was held in the afternoon. Over the jumps with and without irons, as now stirrups were spoken of; figures of eight, and the ‘aids’ for changing feet at each half turn; jumping with arms folded. Phillip was sorry for those on poor horses. Black Prince seemed to know what was wanted, and did it, his only fault being impetuosity. His mount, ears pricked to his rider’s least intention, was off at a gallop too easily. “Bit of blood in that gelding. Nice ’oss,” Phillip heard the Colonel saying to the Riding Master.

“I fancy a deposit is growing upon the off fore pastern bones, just above the coronet, sir,” said the Riding Master, who had a dour look of the night-before on his face under the flattened cap.

The section passed out. A week’s leave was given each officer, after which postings would be announced. Phillip was reluctant to go home, so he stayed in camp, riding into the town by day, Black Prince being available whenever he wanted a mount, said the sergeant, looking him in the eye. So he got a bottle of whiskey for six and six in the mess, and wrapping it in a towel inside his haversack, left the haversack at the sergeant’s hut. When he collected the haversack, a pair of issue breeches, of the best Bedford cord, were neatly wrapped beside the towel.

The sergeant was a friend of the quarter-master sergeant, a big man of unknown age whose white hair was dyed black. He wore many campaign ribands, the first being for Riel’s Rebellion, he explained, and the Red River Expedition in Canada in 1870, followed by the occupation under Lord Wolseley of Fort Garry. Retiring from the Army, time-expired, after the Chitral Relief Force in 1895, he had joined up again during the South African War, and once more in 1914. He sat at a desk inside the single cubicle of “H” lines store-room which was filled to the ceiling with boots, puttees, tunics, greatcoats, and other floggable stuff.

Talking with him and the sergeant instructor in the cubicle, over whiskey and water, Phillip felt quite the old soldier, as he spoke of the Bill Browns, the Coalies, and others with whom he had served in 1914. He took the issue breeches to the tailor in the next hut, and was measured for a tight fit around the knee, waiting while white buck-skin strappings were sewn on by the enlisted man who sat, with needle, thread and ball of wax, crossed-legged on a trestle table beside the stove. Phillip heard about his life in Whitechapel before the war: how suits from Savile Row, Sackville Street, and all the “big” tailors were collected, to be taken home and stitched together, piecework, making sixpence and eightpence a jacket. Phillip liked him, he had brown eyes and a feeling for music and poetry; and charged only a shilling for the job, which took four hours.

From the same stores Phillip acquired a driver’s coat, with large semicircular collar, which he wore into town without badges of rank. It was rather the thing, he observed: senior
officers often wore burberries and British warms without rank badges. He spoke to one in a shoe shop in the High Street, taking him at first for a very new second loot, with his smooth pink face and incipient moustache; and seeing that he was buying a pair of lace-up Norwegian field boots, advised him to choose a slightly oversize pair, to wear with an extra pair of socks, loosely, to keep the feet both warm and dry in the trenches. The youth, who could not have been more than eighteen, said, “Yes, I found that to be a good idea,” and went on with his purchases, which included a leather jerkin with sleeves. To try this on he removed his burberry, to reveal a major’s crowns and a Military Cross riband on his tunic. At the sight Phillip, who was waiting to buy a pair of string gloves, drifted to the other end of the shop.

Now, in badgeless driver’s coat, the brass buttons of which had been replaced by leather ones, booted and spurred, he mouched about the town, ending up in a bookshop. There he discovered
The
Oxford
Book
of
English
Verse,
and opening it at random, read

He stood there transfixed, reading stanza after stanza.

His eyes hastened down the page to the damozel’s answer:

But the final answer was the division between life and death.

Black depression struck him. There was no union in the spiritual world. Lily was gone for ever. But at least he would have the poem. “I’d like to buy this book, please.”

The bombazine-black girl did not smile, she had a waxen face. What had happened to her? Some Keechey betrayed her? More likely she had grown up in fear. Her avoiding eyes
discouraged
conversation. He went from the shop to the darkness of the picture palace, followed by tea in the Angel, and reading in an armchair before the fire. He would like to be Lily to the thin little pale girl in the bookshop.

When the bar opened, he went in. The blue-eyed girl, the younger daughter, remembered him, to his surprise. “What’s the book?”

He showed her the poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

“I wondered why you were so quiet!” He dared not talk about poetry; and felt himself to be bombazine-black aloof. There was only one Lily.

Other officers came in; she sparkled, laughed with them; he felt hopelessly out of it. They wore new riding boots, obviously ready made like his own, but not taken in to fit at the top; while, worst of all, the instep side of their toe-caps showed rips of spur-rowels due to clumsy walking. They were unaware of themselves laughing heartily as one mimicked the chief instructor, the Guardee colonel whose broken neck was supported in a steel cup, his one eye glaring and his spine in a steel corset; they mocked him, calling him an old dug-out, and the girl laughed with them. When she went away for a moment into the office, he swallowed his drink quickly and left before she returned.

That night, after mess dinner, he read more of the poems, and played his gramophone; and then sat down to write a long letter to Desmond. Again and again he stopped, and thrust each fresh attempt into the tortoise stove, feeling that nothing would overcome Desmond’s closed mind.