The Power of the Dead

by Henry Williamson

  “I was lucky to be in a county regiment which was one large family. I suppose that was a substitute for a more or less unhappy childhood. I was glad when the war ended, in one way, but sorry in another.”

  “The party was over?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Talking of parties, I do hope that when you come to London you will let me know, so that I can arrange one for you.”

  “I shall, certainly; but I can seldom get away nowadays.”

  “I can understand how happy you must be. I suppose it is fairly rare for husband and wife to be exactly suited.”

  Phillip wondered if he knew about Barley. “Did you know Lucy was my second wife, and not the mother of Billy?”

  “I’d no idea.”

  Phillip told him his story, while the fire was made up, and the glasses refilled.

  “Well, that’s my dilemma. Art is a private world, I suppose. One seeks it from loneliness. But when I was with Barley I felt so clear and happy that I never wanted to write about the war, or anything else belonging to the past.”

  Piers said presently, “But Lucy, surely, loves you? Those lips, those eyes——” He went on in his level voice, “I’ve never found a girl I want to do more with than get her into bed.”

  It was 2 a.m. when, under sharp stars, Piers took Phillip home in his green racer over roads crackling with ice.

  “Out tomorrow, Maddison! Meet at the beech hanger, zero hour ten ack emma, haversack ration.”

  “Zero hour ten ack emma. Message acknowledged, Tofield.”

  Lucy was in bed, but awake. “I’m so glad you’ve got a friend at last,” she said. “It must be fun, ski-ing. I’ve always wanted to do it. Perhaps we shall together, one day. I’ve left you some sandwiches in your room, and a Thermos of coffee.”

  “Thank you. Good night, dearest Lucy.”

  *

  The beech hanger was sealed in the north-west side by snow lodged there during the blizzard. Here under the skyline the flakes had whirled in eddy, and in the wind’s delay had formed a tall and whitely carven cliff at the edge of the wood, beautiful with flowing lines as a Rodin sculpture. Upon the bare topmost branch stood a raven, floating off with a low krok-krok-krok of warning as they stomped near. Then about face, to fly down the borstal in travelling clouds of snow, faster, faster, head and shoulders well above the tops of the hedge on either side. It was marvellous to glide downhill with the keen-breathed wind thrumming in one’s ears; faster and faster, with apprehension about the bottom, where the lane curved sharply to the left.

  Fortunately the gate at the bend was open, and a friendly dung-heap by the cattle-shed made an appropriate buffer.

  The next day Piers brought a letter to Lucy from his mother. Lady Tofield asked to be allowed to drop formality, she had heard such delightful accounts of their little boy from Piers, and would they all come to tea on the morrow. The three went over to Field Place, and sat before a great fire with a back-stick of half an ashtree as thick as a man. Lady Tofield was quiet and gracious, she seemed to be much taken by Billy, but often, in a pause in the talk, to be away in thought. Later, from Mr. Hibbs, Phillip heard that she had never got over the death of her elder son, who had died at two years of age.

  Piers came to supper on the last evening of his holiday, and Phillip read some of the otter book to him while Lucy made a nightshirt for her coming baby on the other side of the hearth. Piers said afterwards that it was most moving; and when Lucy remained silent he turned to her, “Don’t you think so, Lucy?”

  “Yes,” she said, while the colour came into her cheeks, and she looked on the ground.

  *

  Captain Arkell rang up and invited Phillip to a ‘tree-shooting party’. They had three fine Douglas firs—he called them stands—in one of the woods, and the forester wanted scions to be taken from their topmost branches, to be grafted on to stocks already planted in the nursery.

  “I don’t know if he told you, but Sir Hilary is going into the costs of replanting the Forest with mixed hardwoods and conifers. The Forestry Commission give grants, in approved cases, of £2 for soft woods and £5 for hard woods, per acre. A year or two back we laid out a nursery behind Haylock’s cottage.”

  Phillip took along his 12-bore. Piers did not shoot, he arrived on skis. Haylock the keeper had a bag of brass cartridges loaded with swanshot—fifteen to the ounce. Smaller shot, he said, would maul the tips, which must be broken off clean.

  They took turns to shoot at the ends of uppermost branches. Down floated dark green feather scraps. The cleaner tips were selected by the forester and laid endways in a wicker basket. While Phillip was raising his gun, the keeper saw a red squirrel. “Get’n, zur!” he cried. Phillip let it go. Somewhat disturbed, Haylock explained that it would cut off the tips of the growing grafts.

  “They’re de’ils for my saplings,” said the forester.

  “When will they be grafted? After the thaw comes?” Phillip asked Captain Arkell.

  “Grafting of scions is usually done just before sap-rising. Until then, they’ll be kept in an ice-house.”

  They saw some roe-deer at one end of the wood, small animals which fled in a flurry of snow. The agent explained that they were strays from some park, since the war. The new plantations, when set out, would have to be fenced with wire-netting five feet high.

  “It’ll cost a pretty penny if the whole Forest is to be replanted and fenced off, sir,” said the forester. “Reckon forty pun the acre will hardly see it done, fencing, planting, and cuttin’ out. There’s nigh on four hunner acres to the Forest, then there’s the scrub clearing, and blastin’ of the old stubs.”

  “Planting is a long-term investment. Spruce parcels mature at forty years, and can be regarded as capital for death duties.”

  “And the oaks and beech, Captain Arkell?”

  “The beech normally takes a century to reach maturity, the oaks about half as long again.”

  “So my uncle is looking ahead. What will happen if all land is nationalised?”

  “I imagine there will be compensation—of a sort.” And on the way back Captain Arkell mentioned that the War Department was considering an extension of military training ground, and one of the areas under consideration was, he understood, the upper area of the vale in a line extending north-east from the Longpond to a mile beyond the Rookhurst Forest.

  “Does my uncle know about this?”

  “I don’t think so. Nothing is official, you understand, so I think it better not to mention it at the present time.”

  *

  Soon after the thaw, when Piers had gone back to London, Lucy and Phillip helped to graft the scions. It was between the rising of the sap and the flushing, as the Scots forester called the time of leaf-breaking. He did the grafting, while Phillip carried a tray of scions, and Lucy a basket with softened bees-wax and lengths of bass. The forester worked fast. He made a T-cut on the side of a sapling, then opened the bark to lay bare the cambium, before holding the cambium of the scion to the cut. The bark enclosed it, then it was bound with bass and covered with wax to exclude air.

  The needles of each scion had already been cut back to a dozen above the bud, the upper needles trimmed like a fighting cock’s pinion feather, and dipped in warm wax to seal the ends. Thus the sap would enter the scion and thrust forward its growth. Eventually each scion would bear ‘fruit’, otherwise cones holding strong seeds for planting out in the nursery.

  “How many years before the saplings will start life in the forest, Mac?”

  “Och, several.”

  “I suppose Billy will be paying my death-duties with these scions, Lucy,” said Phillip as they walked home.

  Chapter 5

  ROSEBUD

  Soon after she returned from the nursing-home with her baby, Lucy went to bed with fever and micturition pains. The doctor came out and later a bottle of medicine was collected at the ’bus stop on the main road. Phillip nursed her, preparing simple food; milk, boiled eggs, and bread and b
utter. The baby appeared to have a bowel or stomach infection. Its stools were thin and yellow. Since it always cried after being at the breast he gave it bottles of diluted cows’ milk and sugar added. The baby still cried, as though in protest. The doctor’s advice was to get it into good habits by feeding only during the day. “Put it in a room by itself, and let it cry itself to sleep,” he said. Phillip tried this for an hour, and then took on the job of night nurse.

  Peter, as the mother called the baby, lay on its back across the father’s thighs at night, while the mother was supposed to be sleeping to keep up her strength. It continued to cry after the first few sucks at every bottle. It could keep down nothing. Dill water was tried; its mother’s breast; a stick of barley sugar; a dissolved soda mint; diluted Swiss milk out of a tin. Screams; froth; screams; choking—the father standing by with feelings of helplessness while it was apparently about to choke, or worse. Supposing it sucked, during a paroxysm, stomach froth into its lungs? He carried it about the kitchen with its head hanging over his shoulder lest this happen, up and down where the dark waited all around the sad little flame of the candle. The baby quietened; the father lowered himself into a wooden chair, slowly placing the mite, with its death-like pallor, across his knees until it lay upon its belly. No use; it cried again, its face distorted, its screaming tearing into him. What could he do, beyond praying voicelessly for help, in the dark cavern of the kitchen warmed by two circular rings of blue flame behind the mica doors of the chimneys.

  In her bedroom upstairs Lucy lay still, to preserve what little strength she had. She heard him saying, “Poor baby, poor baby, please don’t cry. There—there.” Tap tap. “Up it comes. That’s better, isn’t it, little fellow?” How history repeated itself, she thought, recalling what Mother (Hetty) had told her of Phillip’s father nursing him when he was born, until the right food, the milk of a jenny-ass, had been found. She was wondering where such milk could be got when she heard Phillip stop his pacing of the kitchen floor, and his voice muttered, “That’s it. That’s what you need, my son. Donkey milk.” She felt warm with happiness, they did think alike. In the morning she must write to Grannie; Ennis would know where to get some. She kept this idea from Phillip, lest in his impetuous way, he set off at dawn; and he must get some sleep.

  As soon as Mrs. Chychester heard of the situation she wrote to Phillip inviting him to see her at her home. He had not shaved for a fortnight, he was growing a beard again.

  “Do you think I should shave before going to see Grannie?”

  “I think you look very nice with a beard.” She thought it helped to offset his thin, rather delicate appearance.

  To Shakesbury he went on his motor-bicycle, to hear a proposal that Miss Priddle, who had nursed Lucy’s mother through her last illness, would, she felt certain, look after Lucy and the baby, should he approve the idea.

  “I would be so glad if you would allow me to arrange this, dear Phillip, as a small return for all you have done for my grandsons.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Chychester, it is most kind of you.”

  She leaned forward to take his hand. “Oh, but why do you not still call me ‘Grannie’? Now let me ask Ennis to bring you some tea.”

  Neither Mrs. Chychester nor Mrs. Rawlings, her lady’s-maid of fifty years, appeared to have noticed the beard. He felt, as always in that house, at his best.

  In due course Miss Priddle arrived: a raw-boned, thrusting woman of about fifty years of age, with a thin nose ending in a sharp point between two watery eyes. The first thing she did was to complain of Mrs. Rigg’s presence in the kitchen. “I won’t have her dirty ways about me, I can manage best by myself.” So, with the departure of Mrs. Rigg, Phillip thought it might be more sociable—or civil as Uncle John would say—if in such a small house he suggested that they have their meals together; but very soon he ceased to digest any food while Miss Priddle was in the room, she was so emphatic in her dislikes.

  “What do you think about this idea to have the common children’s school in Shakesbury fitted with wash-basins and a place where wet overcoats can be dried in winter at the tax-payers’ expense? I consider it disgraceful! Why, some of the little creatures come from back street homes where they’ve never seen a bowl of clean water! And here we are giving them all this luxury for nothing! Don’t you think it is a perfect scandal?”

  He made the mistake of replying to these emphatic opinions seriously, with the result that Miss Priddle assumed a haughty silence. The food remained half-eaten on the table. Soon he made an excuse to go to his room. There, unable to bear his feelings, he sought relief with Lucy.

  “She’s feeding the baby on boiled cow’s milk. He can’t keep it down. Boiling kills all nourishment.”

  Lucy managed to get him to see that Miss Priddle knew what she was doing; his thought took another line.

  “‘Spectre’ West said, ‘The slums have died in Flanders’. He meant that conditions for poor people would be different after the war. They’ve remained the same. Will the eyes of the stay-at-homes never be opened? Oh, why aren’t I writing my war instead of ‘Peregrinations in search of an Otter’—for that is all it is. Why am I ‘farming’? It’s all a waste of time and money. As Hibbs said——”

  “I know how you feel,” she replied, lying there with a yellow face that awoke fear in him: for Barley dying had had that look on a face more wasted. He took her hand, it was hot, not cold, thank God.

  Her voice went on gently, “Try not to let it affect you. I am sure that if Miss Priddle was younger, and had to do with poor children, their well-being would be her first concern. She was the one who looked after Mother, you know, until she died.”

  “I’ll try and be more sympathetic towards her.”

  The efforts were not successful. There was the matter of the oil stove. Under Miss Priddle’s management the kitchen was frequently filled with floating smuts.

  “I wonder if the wicks should be turned low when first lit, Miss Priddle. The vaporiser is then cold, you see. Then, as it gets hotter, it draws more oil up, and this turns to gas and burns with an intense heat. The increasing heat——”

  “I’ve seen plenty of oil stoves before I came here!” declared Miss Priddle. “I wasn’t born yesterday!” and out she went.

  Alas, youthful good intentions for the improvement of age were lost in the smell of oil-smoke the next morning; and running down to the kitchen he saw flames rising nearly two feet above the enamel chimneys of the stove. The iron frame was too hot to touch; a gallon tank of oil was fixed to the base above iron legs. It was warm, nowhere near flash-point, so he called Miss Priddle to see what was happening, pointing out that the temperature of the oil beneath was gradually rising to flash-point. She turned on him with stony fury of face and said the wicks had been turned up deliberately to spite her.

  “You want to burn us all up! I know all about you! I’ve got my copy of The News of the World home, for all as likes to see what you are! You went to prison after the war was over, for arson, we all know about that!”

  When he was calmer he said to Lucy, “I begin to see what Father meant, years ago, by my action in not standing up for my family. I suppose that one wretched example of my conceit, in shielding that idiot Tom Ching in nineteen nineteen will follow me through life, like the incident of the pilgrim ship in Lord Jim. There’s another thing—why does she throw all the rubbish into the hedge outside the kitchen door? I’ve put a new dustbin there—part of ‘a new world after the war’. Don’t you see there’s a connexion, as Willie said? Not only should Great Britain be one nation, regarding its people and resources as one for and with the Empire, but everyone’s aim should be to improve, improve, improve!”

  Miss Priddle complained to Lucy that he gathered her garbage at night, and buried it. He cleaned the glazed earthenware sink of grease, bacon rinds, and tea-leaves when she was not about.

  “Is it my kitchen, or is it not? Did your Grannie send me here to look after you, Miss Lucy, or didn’t she? I won’t
have any man trying to teach me my business! If it wasn’t for you, and your dear dead mother, I’d pack my bag and leave immediately, that I would!”

  “I think my husband is afraid of germs,” said Lucy, weakly.

  “Well then, let him look to the cows’ milking, and the dirty udders they bring home to the cowshed, instead of finding fault with my kitchen and scullery——”

  “I think the herdsman does wash them before milking, Miss Priddle.”

  “Yes, in rainwater from that insanitary water-butt, all a-wriggle with red worms.”

  Lucy said to Phillip, “Try not to let little things worry you, I’ll soon be able to look after the house myself, so be patient a little longer.”

  “Yes, I’ll concentrate on my writing. I want to re-create the early summer scene on the Chains of Exmoor. Remember how we waiked there on our honeymoon, that day? The heather and ling were in flower, and the furze—purple and gold. I’d never dare to use those words in my description—but they would be true.”

  “You carried me for miles through the heather, when I had a blister.”

  “It was those heavy marching boots I forced you to wear.”

  “They were Lotus boots. I’ve still got them—they were a bit small, I’ll admit. I’m keeping them for Billy.”

  Avoiding kitchen, scullery, and Miss Priddle, he spent most of his time in the small writing-room, going on the motor-bicycle to Colham to buy bananas, chocolate, and biscuits. While in the town he asked the doctor to take a specimen of Lucy’s blood, or whatever was needed to test for typhoid. The doctor said, “She’s got cystitis, that’s all. It will clear itself up when the warm weather comes. Keep her well wrapped up, meanwhile. Nurse Priddle is a bit of a dragon, I know, but she’s sound.”

  Then, abruptly came the climax: the village talking about a robbery. Phillip first heard of this through Ned the bailiff. Apparently one afternoon Miss Priddle, wheeling Billy in the mail-cart round the village, had stopped at door after open door to complain that ‘that awful man, who had been in prison for arson’, not only tried to burn them all up, but had gone to her bedroom, opened her trunk, and stolen ten pounds in notes. That was the reason, she declared, why he had not gone downstairs for his meals.