The Power of the Dead

by Henry Williamson

  “They weren’t in any danger, Phillip. And they’ll learn what to do next time.”

  The motor ran on at 35 m.p.h., leaving a cloud of dust of chalk and flint behind it. The doves had a nest in one of the thorns on the slope above the winding lane; Phillip had visited it several times, he knew the birds as his own. He thought of Jefferies’ essay read recently in one of the books that had belonged to cousin Willie, Pigeons at the British Museum, describing the scholars within the dome, while London’s pigeons were outside.

  They have not laboured in mental searching as we have; they have not wasted their time looking among empty straw for the grain that is not there. They have been in the sunlight. Since the days of ancient Greece the doves have remained in the sunshine; we who have laboured have found nothing. In the sunshine, by the shady verge of woods, by the sweet waters where the wild dove sips, there alone will thought be found.

  And while being driven back, slowly from the station along the same route, sitting between Lucy and Irene on the back seat, he felt that his mother, in front and holding Billy, her small, childlike face a-dream, was unlike his father because she could get beyond memory, she was able to feel that the beauty of the early summer evening was really part of her present life: that it was never too late. W. H. Hudson in Nature and Downland had said that Jefferies was ‘slain by cruel fate before his time’: like Jefferies, Father had never been free within himself unless he were away from streets and houses, away from memories in the sunshine, or under the stars.

  To be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it.

  And in an essay on going by train to Brighton, away from wearisome London, Jefferies had written:

  The dust of London fills the eyes and blurs the vision; but it penetrates deeper than that. There is a dust that chokes the spirit, and it is this that makes the streets so long, the stones so stony, the desk so wooden; the very rustiness of the iron railings about the offices sets the teeth on edge, the sooty blackened walls (yet without shadow) thrust back the sympathies which are ever trying to cling to the inanimate things around us. A breeze comes in at the carriage window—a wild puff, disturbing the heated stillness of the summer day. It is easy to tell where that comes from—silently the downs have stolen into sight.

  Was Father doomed, like Jefferies? Was that why Mother looked so frail and worn?

  He leaned over the folded hood and, touching her shoulder, said as he pointed to the grey-green slopes, “Jefferies said, ‘There is always hope on the hills’.”

  “Yes, yes,” she exclaimed, and momentarily the thin, worn face took on a gentle, abstract look.

  “What a pity Father didn’t come, Mother.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” she sighed. “He nearly did, you know.” Dickie had wanted to come; but since neither Phillip nor Lucy had mentioned him in the letter he had felt unwanted; and had withdrawn once more into his armour of pride, saying, Well, I have to be at the office, you know.

  “I did think of asking him to come, too, but felt he would refuse, Mother.”

  “Oh, what a pity. Then the three brothers would all be together again.”

  “I’m afraid Uncle John’s rather poorly. He’s in bed with bronchitis.”

  *

  Mrs. Rigg, the amiable, dumpy little cottage woman who enjoyed herself immensely in the kitchen, helping Lucy with invariable cheerfulness, had the dinner ready for them on their return. It was roast shoulder of lamb, ordered by Hilary in a letter to Mr. Hibbs, who had brought it with the wages that morning. To help Lucy, Hilary offered to carve when Mrs. Rigg came in with the large Willow Pattern dish which, since there was no sideboard in the parlour, was put down at the head of the table. This was an oaken affair, nearly twelve feet long, built some centuries ago.

  At one end of the table stood the yew-wood chair which, once belonging to his grandfather Turney, Phillip had intended to occupy as host; but unknown to him, Lucy had already accepted Hilary’s offer to carve. Seeing him standing there, examining the edge of the carving knife, Phillip kept in the background while Lucy, left alone, exclaimed, “Oh, do sit down anywhere, won’t you?” Then, seeing that ‘Mother’ and Aunt Dora were hesitating—six places had been laid, with rush mats between knives and forks—she recovered from her fluster, due to Phillip’s sudden withdrawal, and said, “Mrs. Lushington, will you sit next to Sir Hilary? ‘Mother’—let me see—oh, you’ll be on the other side, of course.”

  “Which is your place?” asked Hetty, appealing to Phillip.

  “Where would you like me to sit, Lucy?” Phillip enquired, with exaggerated politeness.

  “Why not at the other end of the table?” replied Hilary.

  “I rather fancy that’s Lucy’s place, sir.”

  Before his uncle could reply Phillip went forward and drew out the chair for Lucy; then, a little ashamed of his attitude, he helped Dora to sit down before seating himself beside Irene, with whom he had hardly spoken so far. He had looked forward greatly to her coming, feeling that it was a link with the old days; but she appeared to be aloof. Could it be only that Billy, on seeing her, with Irene’s arms held out to him, had turned away to watch the train?

  Now, sitting beside her, he said that children grew to their parents, and others, gradually. “I mean, Billy—at the station——”

  “Of course, my dear P.M. It must be so strange for him, so many faces high above him.” She smiled into his face.

  “Yes, Billy likes to feel free, and usually tries to squirm away when I lift him up.”

  Irene thought that he took after Barley in that but all she said was, “I hope he won’t be ‘temperamental’ at the christening tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” said Lucy. “Although it will be rather a lot of strange faces. For him, I mean,” she said, recovering herself. “He will be all right by tomorrow, with Uncle John here for lunch, and my father and brother. Oh yes, Piers is coming too, isn’t he. Billy will feel at home with us all by then.”

  “Piers is a neighbour of ours, Irene. He’s my best friend, and is the other godfather,” explained Phillip.

  “D’you mean Piers Tofield?” asked Hilary, pausing in the act of making a good thick cut into juicy meat under a crisp brown skin.

  “Yes,” replied Phillip. “He’s the only decent fellow in the neighbourhood.”

  “I’m so glad you have a man friend,” said Irene. “Does he farm, too?”

  “Not exactly. His father’s a City gent, whose land adjoins ours. I haven’t met him yet. It’s rather a long story, there was almost a family feud with the Tofields, two generations ago. Good material for a novel one day, perhaps. Everyone suitably disguised, of course, like the characters in Thomas Morland’s Crouch-end Saga, but no satire, which is the refuge of the destitute.”

  The shoulder of lamb was from the Dorset Horn flock; it went well with Hilary’s favourite Chateau Latour claret, of which he had brought six bottles, in addition to the Dublin stout, and a couple of bottles of his preferred brand of malt whisky.

  Towards the end of the meal, when Hilary had gone to the ‘throne’, Hetty took the opportunity to ask Dora, who had had nothing but a cup of beef tea, about her charges.

  Dora smiled a weak smile and said, “Oh, my Babies occupy my days, you know. Indeed, I would not know what to do with myself without them.” She turned to Irene. “Both my charges are now approaching eighty years of age, the elder is blind, and her sister is liable to delusions, usually at the full of the moon. At other times they are the dearest little children imaginable.” To Hetty, “Our District Nurse is very good, so I am able to leave them for a while now and again.”

  Swallowing his fourth glass of wine, Phillip pushed back his chair and cried out, “I’ll be back in a moment. Don’t go away. I’d like you, Aunt Dora, to hear what I wrote in my note-book after my visit to you last year.”

  When he came back, Hilary was seated at the table.

/>   “Here it is. ‘Two pawns on a chessboard, virgin figures dressed in black early Victorian clothes: timid, impulsive, young-girlish manners: two butterflies gone black with protective colouration after escaping in vain from the dark killing-bottle of early lovelessness. Not even the light of Hellas can save them now.’”

  Silence followed these words. There was a knock on the door: Mrs. Rigg came in to pile the plates on the trolley. When she had gone away, followed by Lucy to see about the strawberry tart and cream, Dora said to Phillip, “Surely you are not intending to write about my ‘Babies’, are you?”

  “What I’ve just read is no reflection on you, Aunt Dora. After all, the killing was achieved before you knew them. Who were their parents, I have often wondered. Although it isn’t important, except to explain how they came to be what they are. Were they smuggled away, to be hidden for the sake of Victorian ‘respectability’? ‘Farmed’ out as lost little children, to cower all the rest of their lives in Dostoieffskian dreads and fears—like Mavis,” he said, to Irene. “My elder sister, who calls herself Elizabeth in a desperate attempt to grow a new and happy personality——”

  “Hush, Phillip,” said Hetty.

  “Mother, are you still ‘hushing’ me? Surely we’re all grown up here, and can face the truth? After all, we have it on the highest authority that only the truth can make an integrated personality. This is also Freud’s belief. Some people abhor Freud. He is a Jew of genius, like Jesus of Nazareth. What a pity, Aunt Dora, that you haven’t read cousin Willie’s notebook. He was a great man.”

  Hilary pushed back his chair. “I consider the subject to be a poor one, and I for one will not sit here unless you apologise at once to your aunt for those idiotic remarks.”

  “Very well, I apologise, Aunt Dora.”

  This prompt acceptance appeared to upset Hilary the more. He sat, breathing deeply. The silence was broken by Lucy’s voice saying gently, to Hetty, “I do so hope it will keep fine for the christening tomorrow.”

  “Oh yes, I am so looking forward to it.”

  “Don’t forget that we want rain to bring up the small seeds,” remarked Phillip. “‘The gentle rain, that down doth fall from heaven.’ Still, I hope it won’t rain tomorrow.”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” said Dora, looking steadily at him.

  “Don’t worry,” he replied, “my talent, like the rest of my generation, is buried,” and taking the note-book from his pocket, he removed the page and tore it up, putting the pieces in the fire.

  *

  Rookhurst parish church was built of dressed flint, with lime-stone coigns; the Norman tower, holding six bells, was stubbed by a steeple not unlike the tower of Clayborough which was such a landmark above the sea near Malandine in South Devon. Whenever Phillip saw this likeness, he sighed; but the fresco on the north wall within, that of the giant Saint Christopher, gave some kind of fortitude. This coloured painting had recently been discovered, or rather uncovered, after lying during nearly four centuries since the Reformation under a score or more coats of lime-wash.

  Sitting with the others under the vaulted chancel, waiting for the village children’s Sunday school to end, Phillip wondered if Piers’ theory of Saint Christopher was true: that the Neolithic giant, seen from the road north of Dorchester one day, club in hand and genitals in full pride, was the base from which the figure had been borrowed. The demi-god of the Neolithic people, fructifier of the Great Earth Mother, who carried a club forty yards long with which to bash out the brains of the Celtic newcomers, had been transformed by them to Helith, an idea borrowed from the Greco-Phœnician symbol, Heracles, Piers had said at luncheon. The Neoliths had not feared death; the Celts had feared both the living and the dead; the Christians tried to bear the burden of all and to love both, Aunt Dora had replied.

  While they were discussing it, Phillip saw light in Dora’s face; she obviously liked Piers. He had been charming, in his modest manner, to Nuncle, Uncle John, and Pa in turn, listening attentively to all they said. Irene, too, had brightened in his company.

  Now it was time to stand at the font. The godfathers and godmothers, on behalf of the infants, duly promised to renounce the Devil and all his works. The baby was held at the font, sleeping despite the drips on its skull covered by dark hair, its eyes closed. Thus Peter was changed into Hilary Copleston, an utterly strange happening watched with puzzlement, concern and finally alarm by Billy, who suspected that the giant on the wall was going to take the baby away afterwards. When his turn came to be changed into William Lushington Beare he tried to struggle out of the parson’s arms, and, his legs being held by Nuncle, turned a tearful look on his father, shouted in sudden rage of betrayal, and collapsed sobbing.

  After the service, and a cheque for two guineas discreetly given to the vicar, together with a pound note for the Ringers’ Fund, Phillip sought the child, who as usual had gone into a corner. Only when more tears had fallen, as from a broken resolve to stand alone, did Billy allow himself to be picked up by a parent whose emotions were as water spilled in the font. The father’s cheek-bone rested on hair the hue of ripe barley, which lay warm and soft to his quiet caress. The child yielded, face hidden, an arm went round the father’s neck, soon to be followed by the other arm. Hetty watched with shining eyes near to tears; and when her son said, “Grannie, will you carry the baby, because I must look after my best boy?” she felt that her prayers had been answered.

  “Now Peter has got two real names, Billy darling,” said Phillip. “So have you, Billy—you’re a big boy now, William after Uncle John—Lushington after your other Grannie, and Beare after the Forest below the downs—where all those pretty pink flowers are, for Beare means ‘wood’, the man of the wood, the tree man.”

  Billy connected the wood logs in the writing room with the beer barrel, and said, “Me Pin, too?”

  “Yes,” said Phillip, thinking that Billy had enough to go on with for the time being.

  The bells in the tower were now ringing out. After tea, Phillip urged Pa and Ernest to stay to supper, then he would be able to invite Piers as well. Pa was quite happy to stay; apart from enjoying the jolly party, he had no love of Miss Calmady’s so-called cooking. In due course they all sat down at the refectory table, for Billy had been allowed to stay up, sitting beside new Grannie Lush. Hilary again carved; Phillip asked him if he would be so good as to do this while the table was being laid, thus restoring the initiative to himself.

  “I’d half a mind to ask Uncle John to do the carving, Lucy, but thought he looked rather tired.”

  “Yes, poor dear. Aunt Dora says he ought to try a cure by fasting.”

  “I must find time to take him for walks on the downs. I know it isn’t the same thing when one forces oneself to take exercise.”

  “Oh, do ask him. He’ll love it.”

  “I shall. I say, isn’t this fun? Our first real party.”

  “I’m so glad you’re happy, Pip.”

  Lucy, at Phillip’s direction, had put Piers next to Hilary at table; Piers seemed to know a lot about sailing. By a lucky shot he had asked Nuncle if he had ever rounded Cape Horn; and so interesting was Nuncle’s account of the six-master’s attempt to make the passage, finally to be put on course for the Strait of Le Maire, and so to the open South Atlantic, that soon all the eleven faces around the table—including Billy in what had once been Phillip’s high chair—had turned to listen.

  In his late middle-age, had he not lacked imagination, he might have been able to extend sympathy for the younger generation: instead of merely passing on the criticism he had received, so harshly, in his early period at sea. With imagination he might have communicated some of the truth of his experiences, for he had lived an adventurous youth, of which he seldom spoke. When (for example) going round the Horn in winter, during his first voyage on the ’Frisco run, it had taken three weeks, with three masts fallen and cut away by axes, to round that terrible black headland, with the vast fissures in its face clotted by centu
ries of salt. Day after day and night after night the ship had stood off a lee shore, Hilary joining the crewsman aloft, a hundred and forty feet above the deck, in darkness; thrusting himself up ratlines of ice to edge his way along a yard and to claw at stiff canvas threshing and booming and cracking in a full gale, his feet burning with pain upon an unseen foot-rope. After three weeks they had rounded the Horn, to run before the wind almost under bare poles until on awakening in his bunk he had been dazed by a glowing porthole, for the sun was above the mountains of Chile. Before them lay the great swells of the open South Pacific; running before breezes bearing strange scents all the way to Valparaiso, where they put in to refit.

  When Nuncle ended his tale Phillip said, “I wish I could write as well as you can talk, Uncle Hilary,” words which induced Ernest, hitherto silent, to say, as though from the deeps of his being, “I went round the Cape twice during the war,” while his face took on a dusky pink hue.

  When the guests had left and the others gone to bed Hilary said to Phillip, as he was lighting some joss-sticks on the shelf above the fire-place, “Young Tofield has plenty of ability. I wonder what caused him to play the giddy goat with that set—what is it the papers call them?—those young people in London.”

  “Oh, I suppose it is their sense of fun, Uncle Hilary.”

  “Well, some of their acts I’ve read about are downright bad form. That bogus marriage, with a bogus priest, for example. They even sent invitations to their parents. That reminds me, I’ve not yet heard from either of Lucy’s brothers, no word of thanks for finding them free passages to Australia.”

  “I must apologise for not writing to you again, after they had left.”

  “Has anyone heard?”

  “Lucy had a letter. Tim said they had an important job electrifying Sydney, or something.”