Kif Page 3

  In the warmth of the railway carriage he grew sleepy again, and for the first half hour watched a strange country wheeling by in a mildly interested somnolence. A fat elderly countrywoman seated in the middle of the opposite seat regarded him with obtrusive benevolence. She had cheeks like the apples in her own orchard and round china-blue eyes. Her grey-brown hair was parted in the middle and sleeked down in a thin shining enamel under a degrading and meaningless erection of net, lace, wire, feathers, sequins and flowers which was probably the pride of her heart. She sat clutching to her bosom a well-filled basket, though the next stop was a good hour away. It rested uneasily on the steep escarpment of her lap and every now and then slid slowly and was rescued by its owner in a convulsive hitch. With the air of one invaded suddenly by a new idea she now started a search in this receptacle and after some exploration produced a crumpled little paper bag. She unrolled the top, gave a reassuring glance at the contents, and with an embarrassing disregard of her nearer neighbours she strained billowing over her basket and proffered the bag to Kif. Kif, amused and gratified at the marked preference, smiled at her, awkwardly inserted his big hand into the trifling scrap of crushed paper and with infinite difficulty withdrew a sweet.

  'You're young to be serving,' she said, offering the sweets to the soldier on her right, but keeping her eyes on Kif.

  'I'm eighteen.'

  'Oh, dear, dear. Just a baby. What about your mother? What does she think?'

  'Haven't got one.' Her eyes reminded him of Mary.

  'And are you going to the front now?'

  'Not me,' said Kif comfortably. 'I'm going on the spree.'

  This left her rather in the air. She looked doubtful, and was obviously moved to warn his motherless innocence of the dangers that awaited him, but did not feel equal to it in face of such an audience.

  But she had broken the ice of railway-compartment good manners and presently the conversation became general. Under cover of the soldier opposite Kif—the recipient of the old lady's belated charity—said to him:

  'Going to spend your leave in London?'

  And they talked together, the desultory unaccented talk of strangers who have yet a common bond. Kif found that his new acquaintance was almost more unattached than he himself. He was an Australian who, beyond the larger ports of Britain, knew nothing at all of the country. In spite of the martial bravery of a Cameron kilt, he was, and always would be, a sailor. He had been the mate of a wind-jammer which put into the Clyde in October. Overcome by the prevailing fever and fired by several drinks to a sublime pitch of military fervour he in one mad moment turned his back on the sea which had been his world literally since his birth, thrusting his freedom royally if insanely into the maw of an insensate machine and becoming a thing of no account to be chivvied about in strange duties by infantile lance-corporals with the down still on their cheeks. That the bitterness of the inevitable awakening had not drowned his worth was obvious in the three stripes which adorned his upper arm.

  All these facts Kif learned severally and in the course of time. At the moment he saw only a 'Jock' who regarded him with childish eyes, whose colour reminded him of heather honey—or was it wet sawdust?—and whose mild expression was astonishingly contradicted by the long line of the ruthless mouth marked with the faint perpendicular lines of old cuts. He looked with his fresh colouring and dreamy eyes ridiculously like a baby in a perambulator until one noticed his mouth; when he smiled, too, his teeth showed broad and short with a queer sawn-off look that was somehow cruel.

  Kif liked him; liked his quiet soft voice, his half-shy air and the suggestion that hung about him of things seen and done. And he in his turn liked the boy with the bold dark face and eyes that could laugh so readily at the sentimental vagaries of fat countrywomen. When he discovered that Kif had no plans beyond staying 'at a Y or somewhere' he fell silent, and when they tumbled on to the platform at Waterloo, two stray mortals in a purposeful world, he said:

  'Look here, I'll show you London if you'll keep me away from the docks. Is it a bargain?'

  'It's a bet!' said Kif after a moment's surprised pause, and together they went out into the streets.

  Travenna—for that improbably but actually was the Australian's name—decided against a Y.M.C.A. 'I've had enough of the barrack-room for the moment. I know a woman who'll take us in. I used to stay with her when we were in the river and I had time to burn.'

  He took Kif to one of those little streets of two-storey houses below London Wall. A woman answered his knock—a middle aged woman with a frizzy Alexandra fringe and a forbidding expression which was due more to absence of mind than to presence of intention.

  'Hullo, Mrs Clamp!' he said, 'can you give us a room?'

  She looked at him coldly for a second or two. Then her beady black eyes broke into twinkles and she beamed welcome and amusement.

  'Well, my! well, my!' she said, 'if it ain't Mr Travenna! Well, you are a one!' she added' holding the hand she had shaken and using it as a lever to push him away from her for the better examination of him. 'And you do look a treat in them Scotch clothes. Bit of a change from nyvy, hy? And why isn't your friend a Scotchman too?'

  This was her polite way of including Kif in the conversation.

  'Me? I got knocked over in the rush,' said Kif.

  'Weren't in time in the queue, hy? Well, well, come in and 'ave something to eat while I see about your room. Of course you can 'ave a room. Changed days an' no mistake,' she went on as she ushered them into a front room. 'There's Arthur somewhere in the country'—the country to Mrs Clamp was a nebulous region the only positive quality of which was that it wasn't London—'getting the most 'orrible indigestion trying to eat horse. It ain't in human nature, I 'olds, to assimilate stuff like that. In sausage, maybe, I wouldn't wonder. But not in slabs. Now, I'll cook you something you can eat. I bet you aint had a steak an' onion like mine for a bit, hy?'

  She disappeared in laughter at the heartfelt sally her remark had provoked, delighted to be cooking for hungry men again. Before she married a Quartermaster and gave four sons to the sea's service she had cooked for more fastidious palates with entire success and equal enthusiasm.

  Travenna sprawled on the minute sofa while Kif fingered the curiosities that crowded every horizontal surface and overflowed on to the walls.

  'What do you want to do first?' asked Travenna. 'It's your call.'

  'I just want to mooch round first and then I want to go to a theatre.'

  'That's a good programme.'

  'And I would like to see some racing if there is any near.'

  Travenna whistled. 'That's not in my department. Never happened on any. But I'll certainly go racing now it's been pointed out to me. We're going to have a bonza time.'

  That the time was a bonza one is proved by the fact that Kif spent the whole of the rest of his leave in London. It was perhaps the happiest week in his life. Every day was a succession of new things, of ambitions achieved. Things which he had wanted and which had appeared to be vain dreams six months ago suddenly crystallised to reality. And the reality was in most cases better than his dreams. London which in the first hours seemed drab and ordinary had become before he left it the all-satisfying thing it is to its lovers. Travenna with his colonial desire to see things and his native readiness to do anything once made a companion after Kif's own heart. He was a mass of contradictions, but fundamentally he was a sentimental child. And in some of their expeditions they were ridiculously like a couple of good children. They spent an instructive morning being solemnly conducted over the Tower, and a very hilarious afternoon at the Zoo. They gave tea to a couple of girls who ogled them as they were wiping their eyes in front of the monkey-house, and bade them farewell outside Selfridge's after having paid their bus fare home, since they had booked seats for a musical comedy and had no intention of 'wasting the evening on a pair of skirts', as Travenna remarked. That Kif's nights were spent in blameless slumber in one of the beds at Mr Clamp's was not due to any de
sire for chastity on his his part, but to the direct intervention of the wind-jammer's mate, who knew the most fashionable dives from 'Frisco to Hong Kong and who was not going to have it said that any boy found knowledge in his company.

  So much has been written—and charitably condoned—concerning the conduct of final leaves that I feel it behoves me to present this picture of a typical evening at the Clamp establishment. Kif and Travenna had come in hilarious and slightly elevated from witnessing a revue so soaked in military sentiment and studded with patriotic tableaux as to be unbearable to more sophisticated palates—Kif had borne the sentimental parts for the sake of the spectacular and Travenna the spectacular for the sake of the sentimental—and after a large supper, retrieved from the stove where it had been left to keep hot, and eaten among the curios, they had retired for the night. Travenna was in bed and Kif was trying on his kilt. The secret conviction that one would adorn a garment considerably better than one's neighbour extends from crowns to cast-off trilbys, and though more blatant among women is by no means peculiar to them.

  'It droops at the back,' said the critic from his pillows. 'You'll have to stick out behind more.'

  But Kif was not listening. He was wrestling with the difficulty of beholding an adequate portion of himself in the minute swinging mirror on the toilet table. He would adjust its angle and retreat hopefully a few steps only to advance again and patiently persuade its stiff and too-sudden joints through a microscopic arc. After several futile attempts he mounted a chair and tried to solve the difficulty on Mahomet's principle with recalcitrant mountains. This gave him for the first time an excellent view of his be-spatted feet but of nothing else. He sat down on the chair and laughed helplessly.

  'If you sit on my pleats wrong ways on I'll put you to sleep for a month,' warned Travenna.

  'Can you box?' asked Kif, suddenly interested.

  'No,' said the ex-mate, 'I can hit.'

  'Oh, well, I can shoot, myself. But I'd like to be able to box.'

  'Look here,' said Travenna, not interested in mock warfare, 'I'll work the mirror for you if you go down and get that other bottle of beer.'

  Kif assenting, he got himself out of bed and solemnly worked the mirror up and down while Kif delighted in a fragmentary but continuous reflection of himself.

  'You're a sport,' said Kif. 'It's a fine rig-out. I wish now I'd been firmer and joined a Highland regiment. But I couldn't leave the Carnshires now. There aren't any flies on the Half-and-Halfers.'

  'It still droops at the back,' said Travenna. 'Buzz off and get the beer.'

  * * *

  Kif, in spite of his country upbringing and ancestry—or perhaps because of it—was a town lover, and London laid her spell on a willing victim. After the first hours of vague disappointment he had capitulated with the suddenness of one who has for a moment failed to recognise a friend in some new garb. From a bus-top he surveyed his kingdom and found it good. From the street level he surveyed it and found it almost familiar. In all his perambulations, in all his crowding new experiences one quality singled him out from the army of countrymen who come to view London for the first time. Kif never gaped, mentally or physically. Even he himself realised that everything was surprisingly as he had expected it to be. And he drew as much satisfaction from the fact as the gaper does from his wonder. His calm acceptance of things which had never before entered his actual experience was due partly to his reading, which if indiscriminate had been sufficiently copious, and partly to a constitutional lack of awe. Kif's bump of reverence was, to say the least, ill-developed. He strode the alien pavements full of a little warm chortling joy that London after all was only this. He had the feeling of having come home.

  On the third day Travenna announced that, having exhausted the more obvious pleasures of the town, they would now go racing.

  'If there is any near London to-day,' amended Kif doubtfully.

  'If there isn't we'll go where there is some,' said the Australian.

  Mrs Clamp, coming in with the breakfast tray, brought a morning paper, and was drawn into the discussion. Where was Kempton Park? How did one get there?

  She replaced the cover which she had been in the act of removing from a large dish of bacon and eggs and surveyed them mock-sorrowfully.

  'So that's the latest?' she said to Travenna. 'As if you 'adn't lost enough fortunes what with poker and what not. An' 'orses are a deal wuss than cards, that they are.'

  'Are they?' said Travenna, interested. 'Well, as I haven't touched a chip since I left Boston, I think I'm due a little gamble. They don't play cards in the British army. Only kid's games.'

  'Well, if you take my advice you'll either stay at 'ome or else leave your pocket-book with me. If you don't lose it betting you'll lose it the other way. There's a nasty lot goes racing.'

  'You seem to know a lot about it, mother.'

  'Oh yes, I been to the Derby many a time. But that's different.'

  'How, different?'

  'Well, the Derby ain't racing in the ordinary manner of speaking. The Derby's all right. But Kempton! 'Ere, 'ave your eggs before they're cold.'

  'Well, it seems my education's been neglected in some ways, and that's going to be rectified this very day.'

  'Don't forget to leave your vallybles behind and don't say I didn't warn you,' she said as she went out. A second later she thrust her head in again to say: 'And don't back the favourite.'

  Halfway through breakfast Travenna's mind took one of its childish and unexpected turns.

  'I'm damned if I'm going to a social occasion in this damned uniform,' he said suddenly, laying down his knife and fork for the better considering of the situation.

  Kif looked up in surprise. 'Why, I thought you liked it?'

  'I like it all right in its proper place, but I'm damned if I'm going to a race-meeting in it.'

  'What can you do?'

  'Haven't thought yet. Tell you after breakfast.' He resumed his eating with an indignant expression on his face which would have been funny to a less concerned observer than Kif who was afraid, not knowing Travenna, that the plans for the day might be brought to nothing because of this unforeseen whim of the Australian's.

  But half an hour later the sitting-room was strewn with the garments of the male members of the Clamp family which their delighted hostess had drawn from moth-ball cupboards. They lay across the sofa and hung, limp and grotesque, from chairs, like marionettes drained of their stuffing, each still keeping strangely the impression of its wearer's characteristic. Mrs Clamp introduced them after the manner of Mrs Jarley, and eyed them with the complacence of a terrier who has produced a bone, a conjurer who has proved the miraculous capacity of a hat. Travenna with his chin tucked in stood in the middle of the floor like a bull about to charge, while his mild golden eyes went back and fore over the array. At last he picked up some navy blue garments from the sofa. 'This may do,' he said, and was making for the door when his gaze in passing fell again on a grey broken-checked cloth known as Glen Urquhart. He hesitated in his stride and without remark gathered the grey suit to him.

  'Come along, Kif,' he called from the stairs. 'Come and see the fun.'

  'Shout when you've got the first lot on, and I'll conduct a general inspection,' said Kif, and retired into the scullery with Mrs Clamp, where he dried the breakfast things in spite of that good lady's protests and much to her admiration.

  He hung the last cup on its nail, spread the towel carefully to dry and disappeared up the stairs two at a time like a small boy released from school. He entered the bedroom just as Travenna was in the act of hurling a grey-checked waistcoat into the far corner by the washstand. The grey trousers which he was wearing outlined too lovingly his heated person.

  It's a mystery to me,' he said to Kif, 'how such a fine upstanding pair as old Clamp and his missis produced such a set of under-sized sissies as their sons seem to be.'

  His indignant eye together with the clinging trousers were too much for Kif. He subsided on the edge o
f the bed and laughed tearfully. And Travenna after a moment's hesitation joined him.

  'What do you want trousers for when you have a kilt?' Kif asked presently, sitting up and drawing a khaki coat-sleeve across his wet eyes.

  'I am going,' said Travenna, with a pause between each word and an edge to his speech that his platoon knew well, and that slovenly deck-hands had known of old, 'to Kempton Park as a private individual—as a gentleman. As myself in fact. Not as Number 123456789 of any army in the universe. I am now going out to buy a suit, and you are coming with me.'

  In the Strand Travenna bought himself a complete outfit and was inclined to be offended that Kif would not accept his offer and let himself be garbed afresh at his friend's expense.

  'What's the use of me getting myself up like a liner captain ashore,' he observed pertinently, 'if you're going to hang on to these togs?'

  Kif felt the truth of the argument, but was immovable. He hardly knew why he refused. It was partly pride, partly shyness, partly a half-born and unacknowledged loyalty to the uniform which had released him from slavery. He longed to see himself clothed as Travenna was clothed in delicate brown cloth and fine shirting, to see the effect on himself of these trousers which hung with so ravishing a line straight to the thick smooth brown shoes. And yet he refused, and could not have told why.

  He even suggested to Travenna that, since by his sartorial glory he had raised himself out of what he called 'plating class', they should go separately to the races. This restored Travenna's good humour. He cuffed Kif lightly on the side of the head. 'Come on,' he said, and left a bowing shopkeeper raining refined blessings. They walked all the way to Waterloo and Travenna admired himself blatantly in every window.

  But Kif from the minute he entered the railway carriage forgot all about clothes. Even Travenna's passage-at-arms with the stout elderly gentleman who thought that he (Travenna) ought to be serving his king and country instead of going to a race meeting faded into greyness beside the dazzling fact of another ambition about to be realised. And nothing in the realisation damped his happiness.