Lucifer Before Sunrise

by Henry Williamson

  “I hope we see your otter, Chooky,” said Jonny.

  “Ah, ’bor!”

  As they crept quietly forward a slight whispering sound came to their ears. A family of small birds was flitting through the branches, hanging upside down as they peered for insects, and talking to each other. They were long-tailed titmice—mother, father and nine or ten young, aerial gipsies who would remain together until the spring. They seemed to make a gossamer chain, linked by faint chinking cries as they flitted, one behind the other, away into the wood.

  The two followed them, unspeaking, their boots occasionally cracking a twig fallen across the path. Phillip knew the scene well, but to the boy it was mysterious and thrilling. At other times, Phillip reflected, when he had walked there, an over-occupied farmer had been hurrying through, perhaps after bullocks which had broken out of the meadow; or with mind pre-occupied with details of electric fences to keep the stock from roaming over the airfield; of sheep beset by green Spanish fly. Then there was the poacher who came early on Sunday mornings from Durston a mile or so along the coast road—a young man ‘in reserved employment’ who declared his intention of drowning any Luftwaffe pilot he found upon the shore near any rubber dinghy—and poached Phillip’s pheasants for the black market.

  No doubt the excuse would have been, if he were caught, that his act was a protest against the ‘facinist’.

  Would he ever feel again as this small boy now was feeling? To Jonny a long-legged spider with a pink body walking under a gossamer from one branch to another was a sight both mysterious and wonderful. Then he was standing on the river bank under an old ash-tree, watching a school of roach making waves as they swam upstream. “Do you think we shall see your otter, Chooky?”

  He had to tell Jonny that the old dog-otter wasn’t there any longer. One of the villagers given permission to shoot pigeons in this wood had, during the past week, seen the otter suddenly in front of him and raised his gun and shot it. Phillip’s guest had taken it back to an outhouse, and flung it down there, to skin later on; and only by the merest chance had Phillip known of the incident. Otter skins were fetching £4 each at that time. The villager had looked at him with surprise when Phillip had asked him to shoot only pigeons when he went there again. “But what use is an artter?” he said, a puzzled look on his face.

  *

  Rain fell all the next week. Anxiously he watched the rising level of the river. Everywhere water was running down the valley: from the furrows of brown ploughlands, in tracks of rubber-tyred tumbrils coming off sugar-beet fields. Lanes were little water-bournes, so were the sides of roads. Black-mossed pantiles were musical with drippings.

  All drained into the little Banyard chalk stream until it was swilling bank-high above the level of the meadows. Its surface was whorled with kaleidoscopic colours of oil and crude carbolic acid poured into the grills of village road-drains meant to carry only rainwater, but which the cottagers used as cess-pits. Deadly effluents from the airfields—including photographic chemicals—were killing the life of the stream already polluted by hundreds of drains in a town through which it flowed.

  As Jonny and Phillip slithered upon the river bank, waves rolled by the wind lapped almost to the welts of their shoes. Below the bank stretched the new wheatlands with plants which had scarcely grown during the past fortnight. Would the river rise higher and pour over the bank and drown them?

  An official of the War Agricultural Executive Committee had been dubious about the tide-sluice solving the problem of those meadow-lands becoming waterlogged. Certainly it would keep back some of the water returning up the dyke when the sea-doors were closed below; but what about water draining there from the higher lands? The fairly dry condition of the meadows in the last two winters had been due to little rain having fallen. Village wells and springs had been low in consequence. The river had remained at summer level all the previous winter, and the meadows hardly got wet. But in 1944 all of Europe, as in Götterdämmerung, seemed to be drowning.

  Yet Phillip was not worrying unduly about the delicate green points rising out of the spongy unevenness of the black soil before him. One of the lessons he had learned was to put those things out of mind which could not be helped. While this habit—it seemed to him to be sloth—was developing in him, he used to feel, at odd moments, a sense of guilt, and then of defeat akin to death. But in truth, it was progress.

  *

  “If the river comes over the bank hundreds of thousands of gallons a minute may spread over all the meadow, Jonny. However, the ducks will enjoy it. There are thousands of wildfowl in the bay. Our meadows shall be their sanctuary, won’t they? I really don’t want to shoot any.”

  The boy looked disappointed.

  “The theory among wildfowlers in the village is that decoys and traps of Holland have been out of action owing to the breaches in the dykes caused by the R.A.F. bombing. So the wildfowl are coming to our East Coast in thousands where in other years they have come in hundreds.”

  “I wish I could shoot one,” said Jonny.

  The innocent moon was now past its full shine; the tides were being drawn lower behind the main sluice-doors in the far sea-wall. There the wind was piling up sea-water, which pressed back the doors, holding up the river flood-water. By the edge of River Wood the water was five inches below the bank-top. If the water ran over, how would it drain away? Had he not levelled the guts and channers which had drained the ‘lows?’

  *

  Hoody crows—the Denchmen (Danishmen) of the wildfowlers—stood among the watery wheat-drillings. Herons, too. Were they after wire-worms, or seedling corn? He shouted at them out of habit and waved his stick, though he was too far away for them to bother about him. They merely glanced up before working on. Jonny and he sloshed and slithered over the black soil amidst the fine-drawn green points. The birds flapped up lazily and perched in distant trees, waiting for the nuisances to go away. But what Phillip wanted to find out was if the new tide-door at the end of his section of the Old River was holding the water back.

  All was well—for the moment. The main sluice-doors in the far sea-wall were obviously open, and the sea-tide lapsing, for the water-level behind the tide-door was dropping back. A line of grassy litter on the very top of the frame revealed how high the water had pressed before lapsing. There was barely half-an-inch of unwetted wood at the top: while on the inner or wheatfield side of the door the dyke-water had risen scarcely five inches, or nearly three feet below the water on the down-side.

  “It works!” Phillip yelled with glee. “We’ll see a crop of wheat on the meadows in summer, ’bor!”

  “Ah, thet we will, Chooky!”

  A flock of widgeon flew overhead, followed by half a dozen mallard and a pair of teal. The old twelve-bore grouse gun stood in the corner of the parlour, by the grandfather clock; the new Gallyon twenty-bore lay in its leather case. When they got home Lucy said that ‘Ackers’ bringing the milk had told her that he had seen many ducks in the dykes between the meadows.

  Phillip did not want to shoot ever again.

  A blizzard fell out of the sky as he was returning from market in the Ford 8 saloon. There were two Redpoll heifer-calves with him, each within a jute sack to prevent it walking about on the back seat. He was driving along the coast road when he ran into a wind so strong that at first he didn’t realise what was happening. The engine seemed to be seizing, for on a road he knew to be level the car was slowing up. He had to change into second gear. The petrol indicator showed the tank nearly to be empty. He began to wonder if there would be enough juice to get home in second gear, for the engine was tinkling. He stopped, meaning to look at the oil dip-stick. Upon opening the door his mouth was almost blown open by the blast which was threshing thorn-hedges and screaming in telegraph wires. The entire sky before him was black.

  He got back into the car, his clothes riddled by cold air, his face stung by sleet which swirled and slid on the road before a goose-feather descent of snow. For some time he sat b
ehind a solid grey windscreen, while behind him the calves blared and struggled to be free. When the blizzard had swirled away the countryside was white, and he wondered as he went on if he’d get the car through the drifts before him.

  What a sight when he got to the farm meadows lying below the road and the river! The distant sea, piled up by the wind against the tidal sluice-doors, had stopped the flow of the river, which now was brimming level with the banks. But the wind had stopped in time, and even as he peered the water began to move downstream.

  ‘Ackers’ was waiting in the cowhouse, beside the calf-pens he had made so neatly for his charges. When the calves were snug in a box, Phillip went home with thoughts of thorn-logs blazing, deep leather armchair, slippered feet, a mug of tea. First he put away the car (about a cupful of petrol left in the tank) into the excellent new garage built by the village carpenter near the Studio, and went indoors. There were the thorn brands flaming on the hearth, the leather chair, his carpet slippers, kettle steaming on iron crook, teapot on table. He sat down. The last of the sugar-beet had gone to the factory: no need to think about that. He had not been able to do any back-end ploughing. That couldn’t be helped.

  He lay between rest and rumination (a vice, said Arnold Bennett) when he remembered a promise to take Jonny sledging on the Home Hills as soon as the snow came.

  The afternoon was already darkening, and he was tired. Cattle Market was always a place he visited only with reluctance, perhaps because he was always in a hurry, or because the massed and plaining discontent of so many animals, and strange intent human faces and raucous cries absorbed all his energy. However, a promise must be kept, especially to a child.

  Looking through the lattice window to the white hills across the valley he saw in the dusk a small black shape descending fast. It hit the well-known bump and turned over. Two dark figures—Jonny and—who could it be?—picked themselves up and ran down to the sledge at the bottom.

  Boy Billy, home on leave!

  Billy and Jonny went shooting together on the Monday: I would not shoot on a Sunday. Jonny was too young to carry the .410, but keen to see a gun go off, and we might as well have ducks for dinner. We went on the meadows where the snow made a crunching purr under our boots. It was freezing, and our footsteps were clear and denned in the morning light. We saw where many birds and animals had walked. Their tracks were as clear as our own.

  The first thing Billy pointed out to Jonny was the number of hares on the meadow. He could tell their prints from those of rabbits by the length of the lollop and long thrust of the hindleg which, he explained to Jonny, scooped a little groove in the snow each time the leg was lifted out and forward. Led by Billy with the gun, we followed him up and across the Scalt, where the hares had gone along their regular ways. We entered the Bustard wood by south-east corner, coming from the frozen sugar-beet toppings which lay under snow.

  Many hares had sheltered in the wood. We discovered where they had crouched in their forms: this one by the edge of a bramble patch, that one under the fallen branch of an elderberry, a third in a tussock of cocks’-foot grass. All the tracks leaving the wood were in the south-west corner, where the trees sloped down to the Steep. Here was shelter from the wind.

  We saw no wildfowl in the grupps that day. Poachers had been after them. We found cartridge cases on the bank. They hadn’t even bothered to pick them up. Jonny counted thirty-two.

  Billy went back by train that night. He had been posted to a bomber squadron which, he said, was operational. I offered him the locket, which held a lock of his mother’s hair, but he said at once, ‘No thanks’. I felt his refusal was because he felt he must stand alone—outside the family. I have had that feeling ever since 1914.

  Chapter 31

  CHRISTMAS 1944

  Jonny liked to explore by himself; and every day during the holidays he was off somewhere alone.

  As the winds blew colder many hares limped down to the meadows, seeking shelter under the sloping river-bank. The bank extended in the shape of a horse-shoe from west to east. Under its lee, further protected from the north-west by thick bushes of thorn and bramble, Timid Wat and his friends foregathered, Jonny could see. Their squatting places were immediately apparent by the blood-orange stains in the snow; where they had staled. Dozens must have crouched in the warm lee of the bank.

  He flushed a woodcock, followed by others flapping out of snow choking the long grey-green grasses of the sea-wall. They were tired, it was not fair to shoot them after the long hazard across the North Sea.

  Jonny carried a stick, which he pretended was a gun. So he did not point the stick at the woodcocks.

  One arose almost from his feet with a faint whinnying cry, as though of anguish. He watched its dark pointed wings flickering away as it twirled and pointed through the grey air towards the River Wood. A second arose with a whirring like that of a partridge, and he saw its long beak as it turned in the air and made its downward point two hundred yards farther on, across the river by Hubert’s wheat stacks which had been badly torn about by the gale. Hardly had it pitched when an owl arose, and on slow yellow-pink wings began to flap in silence along the river bank, over the rough grasses of the farther slope.

  “Oh!” cried Jonny. “What a lovely farm this is!”

  The owl came quite near him, and dropped suddenly, as though on a mouse or vole.

  This bird, Jonny was sure, was not the white or barn owl which lived in the ruined tower of the Old Manor. He knew that owl because it had a gold back streaked and laced with ash-grey. This strange owl was pink on the back, so what could it be? It was rather like Dad’s porcelain owl Dad had bought with his first week’s Fleet Street earnings soon after the first war. Dad said it was in a shop in Bond Street where they sold Copenhagen potterv, so the owl he’d seen might be a Danish owl.

  Strange or rare birds often came in winter to that coast. Many were shot to be sold to collectors. Jonny knew that in the summer a pair of quails trying to nest in Dad’s Brock Hanger field were shot by the Durston poacher. He had heard Horatio Bugg say that he had got £4 from a local collector, a gentleman very proud of his rows and rows of birds in glass cases.

  His boots crunched upon the river bank, snipe arose before him in twisty flight and with screaky cries. All the meadow was frozen, so the snipe sought feeding by the riverside. The heron, as usual, saw him long before he saw the heron. It oared itself up on slow, wide wings, three hundred yards away, and rowed its grey skiff away to the marshes.

  When he got down to where the bird had been standing—easily visible by the long broad-arrows of its toes—Jonny found the large silvery scales of a roach on the bank. The heron evidently had been banging it to kill it and then had rubbed it in the snow.

  By the River wood he saw the best sight of all: the broad five-toed spoor of an otter, beside the mark where its low body had dragged through the snow. So another had come up the river! It looked to be a young dog-otter, for every now and again it had turned on its neck and shoved itself along on its back, enjoying the feel of the snow against its spiky hairs. Like a spaniel, an otter loves rolling in the snow, he thought. Had it been after the wildfowl in Old River? He walked there slowly, and was startled by a sudden rush of wings as a score of mallard arose and, gaining speed above the treetops, wheeled away to the east. Jonny couldn’t resist raising his stick-gun. Bang! Bang! A drake and a duck fell on the meadow. With delight he picked them up to take home—two leaves.

  He crossed the ice and crisp snow of the meadow, for one of his purposes in going there was to look for an axe Dad had mislaid somewhere while clearing the meadow hedge in the autumn.

  It was not in the hollow ash-tree where usually it was kept out of the rains. But the otter was. Hissing and scrambling, its whiskered flat face giving one swift intent stare before it fell out of the dry ledge where it had been sleeping. Jonny heard it pushing along the ditch.

  “Ooh!” exclaimed Jonny, his eyes wide. “Dad’s new otter in my tree!”

&n
bsp; *

  When the ground was in temper Phillip ploughed the arable, and for exercise helped ‘Ackers’ to feed the heifers in the Woodland Yard. They were Red Polls bought as calves during the past three years. The Aberdeen-Angus bull had gone. His successor was also hornless, but with red curls between his ears. Rufus and fourteen of his young wives and brides to be were fairly snug between cliffs of straw and hay within the south-east corner of the Bustard covert. Trees and straw kept back the spears of the East wind and the bludgeons of the North.

  One of the places where Phillip used to find relaxation was in the bullock yard at the corner of the Bustard field. He did not care for the view outside, but preferred the shelter of the yard itself. Therein he seated himself on a wooden rail, straw stack at back, and felt the contentment of the Red Polls to be his own temporary feeling.

  When he first saw it, the yard among the trees was a wreck, half hidden by nettles and elderberries. Its roof of rusty corrugated iron sheets, on rafters once supported by posts and bearers, had slid down on the rotted frame. The rails had dropped off the decayed posts which had fallen under a weight of ivy. When it was rebuilt and snug, he could feel the life of the nettles, the wood-boring insects, wrens, lesser-spotted woodpeckers, even that of the rusty flakes of ancient hand-forged long nails—what life had gone by, was going by all the time!

  And what life was passing in the bombers. Night after night they thundered high above the clouds, squadron succeeding squadron, until hundreds had flown away over the North Sea: ‘terror raids’, the German Rundfunk declared, town after German town—the targets, as Billy had told them, were always the working-class suburbs—phosphorous and fragmentation bombs—being reduced to broken flesh and rubble.

  *

  From the top of one of the straw-stacks built around the yard as protection from the wind, he saw over the marshes, and the sea beyond the sandhills of the Point. Yes, the view was fine; but the eye of the farmer saw only too clearly below him the stiff yellow clay of a sucked-out field with its thin barley-stubble darkened by thicker stalks of vast thistle-colonies cut with the corn at harvest. The sight told him for the hundreth time that one could not clean arable without stubble-cultivation, and roots grown in rotation: that roots could not be grown without good muck: that neat stock in yards without linseed cake did not make good muck.