'Lost it when I was wounded…'Member Jimmy telling me to take the—thing off before we went out wire-cutting that night or it would rouse the whole—front line?'
'Yes, his language always got thick when there was a job on.'
And the talk went back to Jimmy.
Tim reclaimed his coat in the hall and they said good-bye on the steps.
'You'll come to us for your leave,' he said, making a statement of it, but glancing anxiously at Kif.
'Thanks very much,' said Kif, and Tim ran down the steps as the dinner-bell rang.
Kif went down the stairs to the basement dining-room rather sorrowfully. He did not feel that the world was coming to an end because Barclay was going out of his life. He had too great a faith in the good world in front of him for that. But to have lost both Jimmy and Tim was certainly going to make a difference. He had the feeling one has when the party is over; to-morrow may be full of promise, but the moment is desolate. He had the hump. Nothing more heroic than that.
What he could not be expected to know was the fact that it was the scales of his own life, not Barclay's, that he had tipped out there where the periwinkles grew.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tim, in view of his coming promotion, had extended leave, and the Barclays were still in the Isle of Wight when Kif left Laythwaite. They wrote urging him if he would not come to them to use the Golder's Green house where Alison still remained, but Kif was not yet sufficiently accustomed to the usages of polite society to use a house in the owner's absence. It savoured to him of cheek to go and stay there alone, as if he owned the place. He wrote instead a stiffly polite little note, stiff not from intention but because of the baldness of its phrasing. Kif had naturally none of the epistolary arts. He did not, it is true, use the meaningless stereotyped sentences so beloved of his class. He said straightforwardly what he wanted to say and left it at that. They were his own words, not a peculiar form of English used solely for letter-writing. But he had not the knowledge to make what he wanted to say graceful. Mrs Barclay handed the flimsy indelible-pencilled pages over the breakfast table to Ann, with a little deprecating smile.
'Dear boy,' she said.
Ann found something peculiarly offensive in the tone of her mother's remark. There was patronage, of course, and a kindly excusing of short-comings, but there was something more: a sort of regulating and emphasising of her own position of patroness in view of the deplorably obvious lack of the graces on the part of her protégé. So Ann felt; but Ann had probably not risen on the proper side that morning. She read the backhand lines—Kif wrote a schoolboy hand, but the letters did not sprawl or lie up against each other in the usual fashion of the little educated—in a black rage. She had a disgraceful desire to hit her kindly always-in-the-right mother. Just because he doesn't spend six pages being clever, or telling her how wonderful she is, she thought savagely. Why, he's the only boy of his sort we've known who wrote an individual letter. But she wouldn't see that, of course. She never thought how he would have stuck out of the herd if he had had the right sort of upbringing. Why, the very words on the paper had more personality than nine out of ten of the would-be clever ones she was so pleased with.
The mere sight of the stubborn, unflourishing handwriting brought the boy so vividly before her that it was as if he had been personally snubbed by her mother's remark.
'Please don't worry about me. I'm all right. I can look out for myself.' No, of course her mother wouldn't revel in that sort of stuff. She was piqued, that's what it was. So she had to condone the crudity to show she wasn't. Ugh! If it had been a girl she wouldn't have bothered about her at all.
What she might have said in her black mood was prevented by the tardy arrival of her brother. He kissed his mother, who was gathering up her letters preparatory to leaving the room to answer them—or previous ones. It was typical of Margaret Barclay that, with time her own, she spent the most wonderful hour of the most wonderful days being animated on hand-made paper with her back to the window. Ann, with whom he had already had an argument over the tenancy of the bathroom, he greeted with cheerful opprobrium, and in his sunny presence she relaxed and blossomed. For weeks he had been a being she did not know; moody, distrait, undependable. Looking at him now, rummaging among the dishes on the sideboard to the accompaniment of a running commentary on their merits, one would say he had not a care in the world. Only to the being who knew him best the difference was visible. The lazy acceptance had gone from his eyes, they had a lost, half-afraid look sometimes that it hurt her to see.
'And kedgeree!' he said. 'That's the third morning running. There must be an unlimited supply of stale fish in the neighbourhood.'
'You're growing very particular,' said Ann. 'Who are you that you should look a boarding-house dish in the mouth?'
'True, O Queen! Live for ever. But I cannot pretend to illusions that I am bereft of. I have seen so many wheels go round in the last two years that I mistrust mechanics. If you don't call that mechanics,' he held up a lingering spoonful of the glutinous mess, 'I'd like to know—'
'Be quiet and get on with it. It's a glorious morning, and it will be half over before you are at toast and marmalade if you don't hurry…
'Hurry? Nothing doing. That's another thing I've lost.'
'What?'
'My capacity for hurrying. No one hurries in the army. Come in to Ventnor with me,' he added as he sat down with a plate of bacon and eggs.
'Wouldn't you rather walk the other way? It's a dream of a day for March.'
'I would, but I want to shop.'
'Oh, Lord! Not more ties!'
'No, it isn't for myself—don't look so surprised, it isn't tactful—I just feel moved to buy someone a present this fair day. And you need not look so expectant either. You don't enter into it except as secretary of the advisory committee. Honorary.'
'Oh, well. As long as I am allowed to hang over the counter and say Oo. Who is it for, and what is it?'
'I must have notice of the question.'
'Oh, all right, keep it to yourself if you want to. I am that rarest of birds, an incurious woman.'
'Myth,' said her brother indistinctly through a large mouthful.
No—phenomenon. There's a letter from Kif.'
Tim laid down his knife and fork and put out his hand for it. For a little there was silence. Ann sat finishing her coffee and watching the wistful look come back to her brother's eyes. Was it just the war, she wondered? Just the strain and awfulness of things. Or was there a girl? He had never mentioned a girl, which meant that if she existed she wasn't the right sort. How terrible! Her Tim. She was beginning to incline to the girl theory. There was this business of the present. And he couldn't possibly have worried so much merely about taking a commission—a thing that all his friends had done long ago. Of course he had said he didn't want to, but that was just his old lack of self-confidence. He had always been like that, letting other people do things while he looked on. There must be another explanation, and the only explanation was a girl. Perhaps her presence at the buying of the gift was to give him his opportunity to introduce the subject. If so, then she must be decent about it and try to understand. She wouldn't be one of those harpies whose talons are fixed for ever in their male belongings so that they are dragged unwillingly at their chariot wheels. Terribly mixed metaphor. Harpies and chariots.
Tim finished the short letter without remark and was absent-minded for the rest of the breakfast. As they walked into the town they were still silent. It was a still high blue morning that in summer would have been pleasantly appropriate, but which in this leafless March seemed a God-given thing of wonder. Something in the man and the girl, both so susceptible to impression, responded to the atmosphere of the day as a cat stretches itself in the sun; and deep in them both was the aching regret that a wholly beautiful thing rouses in those who appreciate it. Even in the broad stability of the days before the war they would have been victims of that ache; now, when all human experience was thist
ledown before a wind, the poignancy in beauty was very near the surface. So they walked in silence until the streets of the town roused them to friendly trivialities.
Tim led Ann into a watchmaker's and Ann followed, thinking: 'If only he'll tell me about her! I wouldn't mind what she was like if only he'll cell me.'
She could and would not ask questions. Ever since their nursery days they had respected each other's reserves, a habit which had the effect of giving value to their confidences and in some queer way reducing these reserves to a minimum. There is in human nature a perverse desire to give a confidence which we know will be well received but never asked for. Much of the complete understanding and good-fellowship which existed between Tim and Ann was due to their mutual light-rein methods.
Ann heard Tim say: 'I want to see some men's wrist watches—silver.'
In her surprise she blurted, 'Is it for a man?'
Tim, who was inspecting the display under the glass of the counter, took a second to assimilate this, then he turned his head in quick surprise to look at her, and his eyes were the laughing mischievous eyes of her brother of nursery days, the small boy who had found her out. 'A mere man,' was all he said, but as the assistant approached with the watches he added: 'I'll give you due warning of the other kind. And I won't take you with me to the buying thereof.'
Ann was so filled with relief at the revelation and annoyance at her unwonted betrayal of herself that Tim had made his choice before she came out of her abstraction to ask: 'Who is it for, Tim?'
'It's for Kif. Do you think he'd hate a square one? It's by far the nicest.'
'I shouldn't think so. Kif is no conservative. In fact I should think the most original shape ever invented wouldn't be too original for him. What has happened to Big Ben? He was rather attached to it, wasn't he?'
'Yes, but he has lost it.'
'Well, this should comfort him! Is it his birthday?'
Not that I know of.'
'It's rather nice of you, Tim.'
'Nice of me!' His pleasant mouth twisted in what was nearly a sneer. 'This is the merest conscience money—and paltry at that. Let's go and have coffee.'
'But you've only just had breakfast.'
'Art criticism is thirsty work. I haven't considered the rival beauties of Swiss and British for nearly twenty minutes without developing that sinking sensation. We will have coffee—with cream in it.'
Over the coffee and the small hard cakes which were all that a war-time establishment could supply they dawdled until nearly noon. A slant of sunlight fell across the clothless table and drew a heady scent from the four daffodils stuck mathematically into a glass vase at the table's centre. In the drowsy warmth both achieved a measure of happiness. There is no girl, Ann was thinking. No girl. I've been a fool. Meeting trouble halfway. A fool. He isn't that sort. Dear Tim.
The result of Tim's meditations was to make him bring out the little white packet and unwrap it. Together they eyed the watch in a mesmeric quiet. When Tim had turned it over several times Ann put out her hand for it, and she in turn fingered it absently; laid it on her wrist, dangled it from a first finger, held it in an embracing palm, gazed at its shrewd elongated face. Tim's hand came out for it again, and she surrendered it wordlessly. He laid it gently in its wrappings and thoughtfully and with infinite care parcelled it up. With as much deliberation as if it were for a mistress, Ann thought, watching the lingering fingers. No as though he were burying something, she thought abruptly as he put the lid on. Laying a ghost. What made her think of that? Horrid thought.
Tim asked for the bill and together they went out into the sunshine.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
From April 1917 until November 1918, Kif was in France; an insignificant private of a battalion with an enviable reputation, moved back and fore, careless and acquiescent, across the old battlefields until their very familiarity bred a bastard kind of affection in him, and the disappearance of a gable here or a tree there was a matter for amused concern on his return. He was led up the uncurving roads, pavé or rutted, trundled over the country in railway trucks, bucketed about in motor lorries, ignorant always of his destination and nearly always indifferent. The important things of life were whether his supply of cigarettes would hold out until next day; whether the Q.M.S. would agree that his boots were not what they had been; whether there would be a letter or a parcel for him; who would win the hundred yards; whether the sector they were taking over would be cushy or otherwise, and if otherwise which were the 'unhealthy' places. But the only really important thing which happened to him in all that time occurred just after he returned from England and hospital.
The battalion were out of line. It was a chill mournful evening with a Scotch mist that wavered damply about the billets and made one think of firesides and hot toast, toast dripping with butter and generously overlaid with marmalade—the mushy kind, full of gleaming peel. But there were no fires. With luck there would be a stove somewhere. The new draft inspected, the Sergeant Major said: 'You'll find most of the company over in the Y.M. Your billet's the third door down on the left.' Kif dumped his kit thankfully in the dim deserted house, full of the ghostliness that personal belongings have in their owners' absence, and made for the Y.M.C.A. hut.
A thin golden line drew a square round the blind of each window and a pleasant hubbub came from within. Kif pushed open the door and savoured it all gratefully: the stove, the lights, the voices, the tobacco smoke, the click of billiard balls, the jigging of a mouth-organ, the flags, the evergreens belying their reputation. 'Hullo, Vicar,' said someone, and he crossed to the far corner and subsided among a group who might bring him up-to-date in regimental history. While they talked his eye wandered over the hut in search of old cronies, but there were none. He knew less than a dozen faces in all that crowded hut and of these only three had a name in his mind. Jimmy dead and Tim gone; it was going to be a dud time. He knew the back of the chap playing billiards, but he couldn't remember his name. He watched the fair head with its upstanding hair and the sloping muscular shoulders idly first and then with attention. Who was that? And where had he seen him last? He wished the fellow would turn round. Every time he moved a picture swam into his mind and broke before it became a whole. The unknown straightened himself abruptly and the picture rushed together until just as he was on the point of recognising it, it faded. It was connected with something exciting, unusual. Had it been a scrap somewhere? Kif took the cigarette from his mouth and with narrowed eyes concentrated his attention on the problem. But into no picture of a trench mix-up did the supple smooth-moving figure fit.
The unknown laid down his cue and turned round, his game finished. He was a complete stranger. No, he wasn't, then. He was—he was—he was the boxer who had knocked out the 'curry-comb' that night at Salisbury!
The fair boy came easily towards them, feeling in his tunic pocket for his cigarettes. And that is how Kif met Thomas Carroll, commonly known as Angel, partly because of his beautiful colouring, partly owing to the suggestion of his name.
It was a month before Kif was admitted into even the outer courts of Carroll's friendship, and much longer before they reached the stage of boon-companionship. It was not that Carroll put any premium on his value as an acquaintance. When Kif told him that he had seen his triumph in the ring he seemed unimpressed; Kif could read not the faintest gratification in his face. And when Kif mentioned the fact of Carroll's prowess to others he found that the company had up till now been unaware of it. It was not from any sense of superiority, then, that Carroll kept Kif at arm's length. His withholding seemed to be due rather to a queer caution and reserve which was noticeable in all his dealings with people and was completely lacking in his dealings with things. Even when intimacy had been established Kif was often conscious that the comfortable quality which had distinguished his friendship with Jimmy and Barclay was missing. You could never bet on what Carroll was thinking or feeling as you had been able to with the others. He was to all appearances frank, he was
good-natured, he could be amusing both in private conversation and for public delectation (his most popular moments were those in which he 'did' the various officers for the benefit of whoever had the luck to be present); he was, as might be expected, a good man in a scrap was a good friend—that is to say he saw that no one pinched your share of the food when you were busied elsewhere, and if part of your equipment was missing at a critical moment he lent you his and pinched someone else's until the crisis was past. But he was incalculable. In spite of everything he remained an unknown quantity. And the comfortable sensation was lacking.
Carroll had enlisted the week after the Salisbury tournament and had been in France for six months when Kif rejoined the battalion.
'You weren't a professional?' said Kif, remembering that the bout he had witnessed had been an amateur one.
'No, but I would have been if I hadn't joined when I did. I was just going to be.'
'What was your real job?'
Carroll cast him a swift glance. 'An agent.' he said. He did not volunteer any further information and Kif shied away from the subject. 'A bookie's tout or something,' he thought. This conclusion was strengthened by the fact of Carroll's intimate and extensive knowledge of racing. That and boxing constituted two strong ties of common interest between them, and though Carroll asked frankly when the spirit moved him about Kif's previous mode of life Kif left it to him to proffer details of his own; and that Carroll never did.
His biggest concession was to give way to Kif's importunity and to teach him the rudiments of the game of his heart. Whenever they came out of the line he and Kif would retire to some approximately deserted place and he would put Kif through it. After six months of such stolen moments he was moved to rare expression of approval. 'You're not half bad,' he said. And Kif could have fallen on his neck.
In the early spring of 1918 they spent a leave together in Paris and made the gilt tawdriness of it sheer gold with their youth. The dreary sand-bagged Paris of war-time did nothing to shake the throne that London held in Kif's heart, but there were moments when, the pale spring sunlight falling suddenly from the wide Parisian sky across the squares and the bridges, he paused approvingly in the ploy of the moment, awakened to a half-realisation of the beauty of this war-haggard queen. 'A bonza place,' he said, still using Travenna's phrase as the superlative of praise.