The Power of the Dead

by Henry Williamson

  He stood in the sun, irresolute; then going through a side-door beside the neglected croquet lawn—both he and Lucy were waiting for a chance to restore and level the grown-out turf—he entered the parlour; and stopped abruptly.

  Hilary was sitting in the armchair, doing his cross-word puzzle; while, held between his legs, was Billy. The child was striving to crawl away, heaving with red face which, turned in his father’s direction, showed imminent tears of hopelessness. Phillip felt enervated; the sight recalled his own feelings of desperate weakness when his uncle used to hold him on the lawn at Epsom, chuckling at his puny efforts to escape.

  “No!”

  At the cry Hilary looked up. “What’s the matter?”

  “Shall I take Billy, if he’s annoying you, Uncle?”

  “Of course he’s not annoyin’ me. Billy and I are gettin’ along famously, aren’t we, you young rascal?”

  “I rather fancy he wants to go to the lavatory.”

  Hilary uncrossed his legs. Phillip held out his arms, but the child gave him a mournful look before hiding his face on an arm and lying still on the hearth rug. Rusty the spaniel looked up, wagging his tail-stump, then crept to lie beside the child.

  *

  After supper Hilary lit two joss-sticks and stood them in a pot upon the chimney shelf. The ends fumed slowly; a pleasant scent spread into the room; bringing to Hilary an almost poignant memory of his early life in the Far East; and particularly of his first return home, just before the Old Queen’s Jubilee, with souvenirs of travel, including lotus flowers (in paper) from the Feast of Homeless Ghosts, during the Seventh Moon. The lotus lanterns, each holding a tiny lighted taper, were launched upon the moonlit waters to guide lost souls to heaven. He had brought home a boxful, meaning to sail them on the Longpond, in the company of his parents, brothers and sisters: but he had found the estate sold, his mother forsaken by his father, and the old home in disintegration.

  The shock of that homecoming was still active in memory. Hilary walked alone to the Longpond, to return and pour himself a stiff drink from one of the two bottles of the special malt whisky he had brought with him, and kept hidden in his portmanteau.

  *

  A beam, the trunk of a medium-sized oak shaped by the strokes of Elizabethan adzes, crossed the parlour of the farmhouse. On first seeing it, Phillip had spent a whole day in ‘feeding’ the wood with linseed oil. The beam gave a feeling of enduring strength, although its sap-wood was riddled by the death-watch beetle.

  The walls of the farmhouse were thick, the new plaster smooth; but it had been distempered too soon, and after a few weeks had flaked here and there. The stone floors were liable to sweat; and were cold, even in summer, to the feet. Other defects became apparent. The bathroom, put in by a local builder, was too small. It had been part of a bedroom. The walls were of asbestos sheeting, a mere box. The bath, a second-hand affair of heavy enamelled iron and mahogany, had been carted from a Victorian country house which had been occupied by the military authorities during the war. The house had been bought by Hilary’s agent and gutted for the panelling and fittings.

  The bath was deep and it took most of the contents of the hot-water boiler to bring the water-level one-third up the sides. The flue of the boiler had been led into one of the wide, wood-burning chimneys, wherein the fumes of coke now wandered, to drift erratically with the wind. In the south-west gale the coke burned yellow-hot, causing the copper tank to rumble, while steam from the safety pipe bubbled through the cold-water tank in the attic. When the wind swept from the downs, eddying about the elm spinney to the east of the house, the fire went dull and sometimes out. It was not wise to think about preparing a bath without listening to the B.B.C. weather report. When the copper tank rumbled, look out! The water was liable to fizzle and spirt from the heavy brass tap, with its lever-like handle; again, when the N.E. blew, the boiler went sulky, according to Mrs. Rigg, who helped Lucy about the house. The water was tepid when one got in, to feel the cold iron under the soles of the bather’s feet; the bather being Lucy, for Phillip always had a cold bath in the morning.

  Even so, the cold tap was temperamental, like the hot-water boiler. When opened full-bore the water was liable to flood over the rim of the bath very quickly. It was stiff, to stop dripping; fortunately Billy could not turn it on.

  Hilary, upon introducing them to the place the previous June, had explained that it must serve until markets improved, since the yield from his investment was already swallowed up by more urgent repairs to the estate.

  He repeated this intention on the morning after his arrival. “I’m prepared to forgo, for three years, any return on my money, Phillip. I regard this farm as a capital investment for the future, which means your future, provided all goes well. To put everything in first-class order now would result in an inverted pyramid. The agricultural market won’t stand capital improvements just now.”

  “What’s an inverted pyramid, Nuncle?”

  “Spending all one’s capital at once, as Lucy’s brothers have done in their so-called Works. And don’t call me ‘Nuncle’. I’ve told you before that I don’t like it.”

  “Sorry. It slipped out. ‘Nuncle’ is the nickname of the king, or the lord, in some of Shakespeare’s plays.”

  “Well, you’re not Shakespeare. Now please pay attention. If we can hang on through this present slump—and, as I said, I’m prepared to—and you learn to do your job properly, you’ll live to reap the benefit of what I am doin’ for you. But put your heart into it, and chuck trying to write novels. Aunt Viccy tells me they’re rotten.”

  “I agree. I wrote them. But what are we two against so many?”

  This joke, in imitation of G.B. Shaw’s reply to a solitary shout of ‘Rotten!’ from the gallery, after Shaw had held up his hand for silence following enthusiastic cheers and clapping at the first night of Arms and the Man, missed fire.

  “Well, you yourself have told me that your books have sold only a few hundred copies all together, so why not regard this writing business as belonging to the past?”

  “That’s exactly where it does belong to, as a fact.”

  “Good. I’m glad you see the sense of it, Phillip. Now to get down to brass tacks. You will pay the half-yearly rent to the agent, Captain Arkell, at his office in Colham. My bank will continue paying sixty pounds a quarter into your account until next Midsummer, after which we shall be in a position to review the situation.”

  “Well, thanks very much, but I think I can manage without the allowance.”

  “If you’ll kindly let me finish what I was going to say——”

  “Sorry.”

  “There’s Lucy to be considered, remember. After all, she comes of a good family, and it won’t do to have her going about looking like a field woman. Also, you’ve got a position to keep up now. The Maddisons were here in the fourteenth century. That reminds me, I see you’re wearing a signet ring with some sort of crest on it. Whose is it?”

  “It’s the Turney crest.”

  Hilary had his doubts about the so-called Turney crest. According to his brother Richard, old Turney was not entitled to a coat of arms.

  “Well, it’s your mother’s family, and as such you’re not entitled to wear it.”

  “It was my twenty-first birthday present during the war.”

  “Who’s idea was that?”

  “Mine.”

  “Why?”

  “Many of the officers I knew had signet rings, so I thought I’d like one. Father said he didn’t pay the armorial bearings tax, so I wasn’t entitled to the Maddison one.”

  “Uncle John has several rings belonging to your grandfather, and I’ll ask him to let you have one. It will cost a guinea a year, if you wear it. Anyway, such things are out of fashion since the war, with crested envelopes and writing papers. They belong to the last century. Now tell me, have you had many callers?”

  “A few, all of them Lucy’s relations.”

  “Of course you’ve returned the c
alls?”

  “Lucy has.”

  “What sort of cards have you got?”

  Phillip opened the drawer in the table, and showed the packets.

  “H’m, Day & Co., Bond Street. What made you go there?”

  “They were a wedding present from Lucy’s father.”

  Soon after the marriage, when they had just settled into the farmhouse, a parcel had arrived with a London postmark. Inside were three packets of ivory pasteboard, one of large cards, and two of smaller cards, engraved and printed by hand from copper plates.

  Mr. and Mrs. Philip Maddison, Skirr Farm, Rookhurst, Colham.

  Mrs. Philip Maddison

  Mr. Philip Maddison

  “Why didn’t you let Mr. Copleston know in time that your name was spelt with two ‘l’s?”

  “I’d no idea he was going to have them done.”

  “Well, I suppose as they’re a wedding present one shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “The gift horse was followed by a bill.”

  “What, from Lucy’s father?”

  “No, from Day & Co. However, it was a kind thought of Pa’s. Perhaps he thought if it was left to me I might get some cheap ones done with fancy letters, all twirly, every other inch a gentleman, in fact.”

  “He’s an old man, you must remember. Old men forget little details.”

  A butterfly wandered through the open window, and out again.

  “Tell me, have you done any fly-fishin’ since you’ve been here?”

  “I really haven’t had any time. Also, I find I’m more interested in watching birds and fish.”

  “You used to fish, I remember.”

  “Yes, before the war. But since then, somehow, I don’t want to fish, or to shoot.”

  Hilary had bought, in March of that year, a thousand two-year fish from a hatchery on the Thames. Five hundred brown trout had been put in the brook, and the same number of rainbows in the Longpond, an artificial lake filled by the spring-head of the brook gushing out below the downs.

  “If you don’t fish, and it gets about that you don’t, poachers will clear out the stock, you know. You should learn to fish with the dry fly, and get some trout for Lucy’s breakfast. What sort of a rod have you?”

  “I haven’t any rod, Uncle.”

  “I’ll let you have one of my split-canes. I did think of going out for the noon rise today, but it’s rather late in the season, and the fish will be preparing to spawn. Have the papers arrived yet?”

  “Yes, Uncle,” said Lucy, coming into the room. “They didn’t forget your Post.”

  “Ah, thank you, my dear.”

  He didn’t feel like fishing; he was tired, his nephew always seemed to have that effect on him; so settling into the leather armchair, a whisky-and-soda to restore him, he read his paper, friend of many years, before switching on to hear the midday weather report.

  The anti-cyclone was continuing; good, he would stay another day, and perhaps get Lucy to carry the net for him on the morrow. She must learn to fish, if Phillip was such an ass as not to enjoy some of the best dry-fly water in the county.

  *

  Hilary had always been an early riser. Phillip found him standing by the Ash pool soon after 7 a.m. the next morning. The cows had already been brought to suckle the calves in the yard, their tracks wandered through the red and blue dew-glints on the grass. Hilary was content; he had walked round the farm the previous evening and seen that all the corn-ricks were thatched. The sides had not been raked clean, they were decidedly ragged; but that would have been a waste of time, with all the thistles in the corn. He had decided that the arable must be ploughed quickly, and mustard sown. Mustard would hold the pheasants, he told Phillip.

  “It’s a catch crop, and provides good cover. Also it’s useful as feed for a ewe-flock, before the tups are put in. A sort of aphrodisiac, if you know what that means.”

  “I’ve read about them, but thought they were a pornographic invention.”

  “Not at all. The most sought-after among African natives is powdered rhinoceros horn.”

  “I always thought that was a fourth-form joke. Have you had any luck?”

  Hilary looked at his nephew sharply, suspecting sarcasm. “What do you mean?”

  “Have you caught any fish?”

  “Oh yes.”

  He showed Phillip a long, slim trout in his basket.

  “It’s a hen, I’m afraid. Pricked the tongue—no use putting a fish back when you see blood. Got it on a large badger. One of the native fish. No yellow spots, you notice, which the stew-fed hatchery fish retain until they assimilate a full gorge of summer flies.”

  “You know,” Hilary went on, “I’ve an idea that we should regard this farm as in hand mainly for the sporting it provides, for the next year or two, anyway, until markets improve.”

  “That’s what the foreman was telling me. He’s afraid of losing his job, I think. Can you tell me why a Conservative Government doesn’t conserve British farming?”

  “Because we’re mainly an industrialised nation, dependent on our export trade, Phillip. We also lend money abroad, in the form of loans. Part of the interest on those loans comes back in the form of foodstuffs——”

  “Then a Conservative Government is a government mainly of usurers?”

  “That’s a catchpenny Labour phrase, Phillip. It doesn’t alter the fact that Great Britain, despite the war, is still financially strong. We export the products of our heavy industries all over the world, and of course we require to be paid for what we sell. There’s a great deal of British capital tied up in Argentine railways, for example. So we take a part of their agricultural products, in the form of maize, wheat, and frozen meat, which are sold in the City for sterling and so provide the interest to the stock- and bondholders.”

  “Money comes first, then; in other words, the interests of the rich?”

  “Money is merely a token of energy, properly applied. Now don’t bother your head with matters you don’t understand. And the sooner you get rid of all this socialistic clap-trap, and apply yourself to hard work here, on the land where you belong, the sooner you’ll get your reward. By the way, how are Lucy’s brothers doing with the Workshop?”

  “Not too well at the moment, I’m afraid.”

  “D’you remember what I told you when I came over in the spring, just before your marriage to Lucy?”

  “Yes, you told me, before they properly got started, that they were bound to fail. I’m afraid you were right, Uncle.”

  At the unexpected concordance, Hilary remained silent. Having dried the fly on amadou, he began to wave it gently to and fro, in order to spread the long fine hairs bound to the shank by yellow silk. Then, giving it a touch of odourless paraffin from a little bottle with a box-wood cap to the cork, through which a brush was fixed, he waved the fly again.

  “That will make it float, with the hackles resting lightly on the surface. Now don’t let me keep you from your work,” he said, pulling out enamelled tapered line.

  “Before I go, do you mind one more question—it’s not about politics. Do you think the farm economy can afford a tractor?”

  “You’ll have to make do with what you’ve got for the time being, Phillip. I’ve looked at the range of tractors. They’re no good. They’re cumbersome things, and their weight pans the ground. D’you know what that means?”

  “Yes. A few inches under the top-soil there’s a hard pan of chalk which has been neutralised by carbonic acid brought down by the rains of centuries.”

  “Where did you get that from?”

  “I’ve been reading The Farmer & Stockbreeder regularly.”

  “Good man. I agree that later on, bit by bit, we may have to break that pan, but it will be a gradual process.”

  “Well, I’ll be off. I mustn’t spoil your fishing.”

  “No great hurry. I think you should know that I’ve gone into the matter of tractors with Arkell fairly thoroughly. We’ve looked at the Fordson, t
he International Titan, and the Saunderson, and agree that they’re all in the experimental stage. For one thing, their weight disposition is unsound. They tend to rear up under load. On this hilly land they’d be dangerous. You can’t beat horses to plough with. The movement cracks and crumbles the furrows, if you notice. There’s a lea-breaker still serviceable in the barn, by the way, you might try your hand with that.”

  “Yes, I’ll do so, Uncle. Breakfast in an hour’s time?”

  “The fish won’t rise any more after the sun gets over the hanger. I’ll be leaving about ten, and if I can I want to take back a basket of trout for your Aunt Viccy.”

  Hilary returned with the solitary trout. After breakfast he said, “I’ll be back for the shooting in late October or early November, according to how the leaves fall. I’ve discussed all matters concerning the farms with Arkell, and he’ll pass it on to Hibbs, who will tell you. The arable will be scarified before ploughing, or cultivated as we say here, and mustard be broadcast. If sown soon, it should be well up by the time we shoot. After the shooting it can either be fed to ewes, as I’ve said, or ploughed in. I think, for next season, we’ll probably bare-fallow all your upland fields, the marginal land. You’ll have a small acreage for oats and feeding barley, and roots of course, for the stock. But Arkell will let you know all particulars through Hibbs, as I’ve said. Hibbs will continue to come round regularly as before to keep an eye on things.”

  “I see. By the way, if it isn’t a secret matter, do your other farms pay? Or is that a delicate question?”

  “Not in the least. I’m glad you take an interest. They’re not showing a profit yet, and won’t for three years. We may have to sell the ewe-flocks—this is confidential, mind—I don’t want any trouble with the shepherd. With the sheep gone, the policy will be to grass down as much acreage as is practicable, for milk and stock rearing. That will reduce considerably the labour costs all round.”