Free The Golden Virgin by Henry Williamson

often tipsy father. What a grind his life had been from the start: how many thousand times did Father say he had walked over London Bridge to the office, that very office which he himself could never return to after the war, if he lived until after the war? Father taking long stridesover London Bridge, on the same worn paving stones, thirty thousand times was it? Without a friend in the world—Father who had once spoken so happily, Mother had said, of having a friend in his son. And what a son: selfish, cowardly, a liar, deceitful: better if he had been killed.
    He lived again the glassy, beyond-fear feeling of the attack on that Sunday, the second day of the battle, across the Lens—La Bassée road, when most of the Cantuvellaunian crowd had copped it. Poor old Strawballs, Jonah the Whale, O’Connor, and all the old faces that had ragged him after he had set fire to the Colonel’s Times during one guest night, for a joke. It had not been the drink he had taken, for he always knew much clearer what he was doing when tight than when he was sober. What a bounder they must have considered him. Now, like cousin Bertie, they were all dead on the field of honour.
    What did it really mean, on the field of honour ? Father spoke of honour, as though it was part of life, his own life, for instance. Well, if living like that was honour, he was quite content to remain as Father had often told him he was, lacking in all sense of honour. Field of honour —that ghastly mess at Loos!
    “Bring me another spot of old-man whiskey, will you?” He would wait until the winter was over, and then apply to go back to the Gaultshires. He lay back in the armchair, eyes closed, legs crossed at ankles, hands folded on chest, resting himself in the terrible beauty of gun-flashes filling the darkness with light.

Chapter 3
NEW WORLD
    On the following Saturday morning Phillip’s company commander, a quiet elderly captain, asked him if he would care to take him to Southend-on-Sea in his motor. Captain Kingsman explained that he had to go on duty, to inspect a detachment of the company, and the cost of the journey would be borne by an allowance of threepence a mile, recoverable from Eastern Command via the Orderly Room.
    “You may as well have it as a hired driver,” he said, “and if you care to spend the night at my place about a dozen miles away from the salubrious mud-flats, you’d be most welcome.”
    Phillip hesitated, for he had been imagining himself driving up Hillside Road, in the glory of his motor car, and perhaps daring to ask Helena Rolls to come for a ride with him. Then Wigg across the breakfast table said, “May I propose myself for a lift as far as Southend, Captain Kingsman? I’m on leave since last night. Or would three be a crowd?”
    “You must ask Maddison, it’s his motor,” said Kingsman.
    “Yes, certainly,” replied Phillip, “there’s room in the dickey. And thank you for your offer of hospitality, Captain Kingsman.” He felt depressed at the prospect.
    It was a fine morning, and when he brought the Swift up the drive, a fourth man was waiting beside the other two. He wore an eyeglass, and was bending and straightening a whangee cane as he stared straight before him. Phillip recognised the red pug-face and pale eyelashes and hair of Cox, with whom he had been on a three-weeks’ course at Sevenoaks when first he had been gazetted, in the spring.
    The presence of Cox, waiting with the others, made him shy. He remembered the way Cox had scorned him, after an unsuccessful walk (for Cox) up and down the main street of Sevenoaks, Cox rattling his whangee cane at girls, to attract them. Cox’s irritability had increased with his non-success, which he had said was due entirely to Phillip’s presence ‘putting the birds off’.
    “I don’t suppose you remember me, you one-piecee bad boy?” Cox said, with defensive challenge.
    “Oh yes I do,” replied Phillip. “You had no success with your wood-pecker rattle,