The Power of the Dead

by Henry Williamson

  He picked up his letters. There was one in a slightly flourishing handwriting. He tore it open and saw within the signature Thomas Morland.

  “We’re invited to stay with them tonight, Lucy. In Hampstead. How about it?”

  “Oh yes, if you’d like to.”

  “How about Pa and Ernest? Will they be all right in the hotel by themselves?”

  She laughed, she coloured a little. “Oh yes, I think they’ll be able to manage.”

  The next envelope was from Nuncle. He flipped it aside. “I think I can guess what he has to say. Open them, will you?”

  A letter from Piers. “He sends his congratulations for the day and says he’s afraid he can’t manage to get to the Aeolian Hall, but hopes to see us later on at Rookhurst.”

  “Good.”

  “A letter from Mother. She says will meet ‘Spica’ under the clock at Charing Cross station as arranged. Who is ‘Spica’, Pip?”

  “An old friend of mine, Tabitha Trevilian, a girl I was in love with in nineteen twenty, when I was a hack in Fleet Street.”

  There were two reasons for asking Spica to meet his mother: the one, he didn’t want either of his sisters there; the other, that his mother and Spica would appreciate one another.

  “I’d love to meet her.”

  “She’s a fine young woman.”

  He felt optimistic enough to open Nuncle’s letter. A glance at the two typewritten sides of the paper was enough: he refolded it into the envelope and put it in his pocket.

  The journey proceeded in silence for a couple of miles before Lucy noticed that he was sitting up straight beside her, knees close together, arms folded across his chest. Thinking that he was cold she asked if he would like the side-curtains put up.

  “Oh, I’m all right, thanks.” Then he said, “You’d better read Nuncle’s letter.”

  Hilary wrote that he would not be able to go to London for the presentation as he was temporarily indisposed. He hoped to spend a few days, if well enough, with them when the mayfly was up. It was now imperative that he, Phillip, make up his mind about what he intended to do with his life. A writing career was, at best, precarious; but apart from that, as he had said before, it demanded a life of comparative inaction, while farming was a constant involvement in practical affairs. He was not a rich man, much of his capital was locked up in the estate, and had charges upon it concerning the present and future welfare of others beside himself, namely the Aunts—Isabella, Victoria, and Theodora. In addition, there were burdensome tithes to be paid away. Agriculture at this period in its history was in the nature of a depressed industry, as he must have realised by now. In short, a decision must not be put off any longer; and he wanted Phillip’s answer by midsummer.

  When she had read the letter he waited for her to speak. When she said nothing, he clenched his hands and struck his fists together several times, while taking a deep breath. “Can’t you give a lead sometimes?”

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  With an effort to control contrary feelings he replied quietly, “Would you mind very much if we gave up the farm?”

  “I’m ready to fall in with anything you may decide.”

  “Can’t you, for once, say what you would like? Shall we, or shan’t we, give up the farming idea?”

  “Perhaps if you will be happier writing, then it may be best to tell Uncle Hilary.”

  They were driving through a valley with a trout stream visible now and again. A gang of hoers were preparing to start work in a field. Coats were off, sleeves being rolled: obviously this was ‘taken work’. They were their own masters, ready to work long hours up and down the pale green lines of seedling roots.

  “Men work much better when they are their own masters.”

  “I absolutely agree.”

  This was a new Lucy. “But do you like living at Rookhurst?”

  “Oh yes, very much. But then I don’t mind much where I live, so long as you are happy.”

  A kestrel was hovering over an old, unbroached hayrick. Its black-streaked breast of chestnut brown was distinct in the eastern light, which revealed every slight curling of its pinion feathers. As the car passed, it half-rolled, like a scout ’plane before going into a dive, and glided away over the field of tillered wheat.

  “I really want to write my war trilogy, Lucy. I see myself sometimes living in Scotland beside a trout stream and catching finnock, as they call the small sea-trout. I’ve never caught a seatrout. In fact, I’ve hardly ever fished with a fly. In Scotland it would be fun, with the midnight sun.”

  “Yes,” said Lucy, thinking that he had not fished once in all the time they had been at Rookhurst. Poor old boy, he had always been too tired after his work, particularly when he had been writing.

  “Or Ireland. The coast of Connemara. Going about barefoot. Just fishing and writing.”

  “Oh, I would love Ireland. Pa and Mother used to go often, you know. Lough Corrib, wasn’t it, Pa?”

  “Hey?” said Pa, turning his head, so that the thin grey hair under his cap was stirred by the wind.

  “Phillip was saying that he would like to go to Connemara.”

  “Ah, Galway. Those beggars burnt down cousin Roger’s place in the trouble. Moorpark was a jolly place to spend the summer. Not much good for arable farming, I fancy, Phil. Horses, yes, if you like ’em.”

  “I’d like to write a book about fish.”

  “Plenty there still, in the loughs of Connemara.”

  Ireland; the wild and rocky coast; peat fire and white-washed cabin. The simple life, going barefoot. All the same, it was a bit of a wrench to think of giving up the downs, the beech hanger, the coppices, the brook, the Longpond. Also, it would be running away; deserting Uncle John, and his new lease of life. The poor old boy lived in Billy and the baby; and he and Lucy were so happy together.

  If the dead lived on in their old places, would not Willie be rejoicing, and Barley too, that they were all there together?

  And the thought was poignant; he relapsed, became heavy with a recrudescence of grief. No! He must not think of the past, he must hold on, and rise above his weak inner self. It could be done with a new routine. Be like Trollope; write by the clock—no more, no less. Oh, things would be much better now that he would no longer be dependent on Nuncle for money. Ideas for his novel sequence arose in his mind.

  First, the general idea.

  Illusion in 1914; chaos in 1915; disaster in 1916; deadlock in 1917 until the way was found at Cambrai in November; tremendous peril early in 1918, but the front held in balance—and so to the victories of the late summer: Passchendaele reached in a 5-mile advance in one day. All that had gone before had led to the smashing of the Siegfried Stellung, and the way open to victory. Haig had held on in the exceptional wet summer of 1917 at Ypres, according to ‘Spectre’ West, after being told by Pétain, in confidence, that over forty French divisions down south were in passive mutiny. That was why Haig had not broken off the battle of Third Ypres. Duty, duty, duty.

  *

  Before they had started out that morning, Phillip, fearing an unexpected delay, such as a traffic hold-up, had suggested to Ernest that they leave the car at Reading and go on by rail. This they did shortly after 10 a.m., catching a train to Paddington, and thence by taxi to the Strand, and the Adelphi hotel, seen in bright daylight to be a somewhat dingy sort of place, with its entrance facing north away from the Thames. Having seen Pa and Ernest settled, and made arrangements to pay the bill on the morrow, there arose a problem.

  “Do you think we should take our bags to Hampstead now—or after the show? Where can we leave them?”

  “Why not here?” suggested Pa.

  “Ah, good idea.”

  That decided, there were four hours to fill in.

  “Shall we ‘spy out the land’, Lulu?”

  Saying goodbye to the others, they crossed Trafalgar Square, stopping to look at the pigeons, and then strolled up to Piccadilly, asking a policeman the way to Bond St
reet.

  “We must reconnoitre the enemy territory.”

  There was a feeling almost of preparation for going over the top. He tried to find interest in various pictures in the windows fronting galleries, until unexpectedly he found himself outside the Aeolian Hall.

  “The big dugout under the church at Graincourt, in the reserve Hindenburg Line. It was like a liner underground, with an electric light plant still being worked by the Germans. As soon as they knew they had to carry on, the engineers tactfully revealed that the whole place was mined, and the main switch was connected to the detonators.”

  “How clever of them to arrange that.”

  “When we arrived the sappers had already cut the leads.”

  They returned to the Strand where Lucy said she would like a cup of tea, so they went into an A.B.C. and shared a pork pie with compôte-de-fruit to follow. He picked up an evening paper left on a table and saw on the front page his own photograph with the caption that the prize was to be awarded that afternoon for The Water Wanderer.

  “Someone’s earned thirty bob by jumping the gun. I wonder if it is Felicity Ancroft, that girl I told you about, Lulu.”

  They drank coffee before leaving the shop to sit by the fountains in Trafalgar Square. Then, at 2.30 p.m., leaving the narrow light of Bond Street for the comparative darkness of the Aeolian Hall, where his ‘civilised’ nervousness—as he thought of it—returned. They were met at the top of some stone steps by a young man with a mass of hair like canary feathers who led Phillip into an anteroom where a number of people were standing. There he recognised J. C. Knight, the poet and editor of The London Apollo, who presented him to Miss Corinna Arden, a tall elderly lady with a bright, virginal manner; then to other members of the Committee—to a clean-shaven, rather bland-looking man with a square face in which was fixed a rimless eye-glass; a smaller dark man with a gentle, lined face and cleft chin denoting sensibility, and two other people whom he barely noticed, for by now he was wondering what had happened to Lucy; and as the minutes dripped away he began to feel she might be lost. And would Mother have missed Spica at Charing Cross Station? Supposing he had written Victoria Station, where Spica would arrive from her home in Folkestone?

  J. C. Knight was talking to a Georgian poet who had won the Grasmere Prize some years previously, for a book of poems called The Queen of Sumeria. He now earned his living by reviewing books, writing critical essays, and anonymous contributions to Fleet Street gossip columns. It was he who had telephoned the details of the award to the evening newspaper.

  The youth with canary-feather hair reappeared with Thomas Morland. Knight led Phillip to him.

  “Do you know Phillip Maddison?”

  Morland replied, “Oh yes, he’s staying with us,” and Phillip thought that Knight appeared to be momentarily abashed.

  The next distinguished visitor to enter was an old man with grey moustaches and keen friendly face. Phillip recognised the General who had spoken to him in the ranks of the London Highlanders during the final inspection before they had left to join the B.E.F. in Flanders in September, 1914. Dare he speak to him? He hesitated; then it was too late, many people were now passing through into the hall proper. He could not find Lucy. Dare he look inside the hall—or would his absence be discovered? Supposing they wanted to present him to the General? He returned to the ante-room, and saw Knight looking at his watch.

  “Will you find yourself a seat at the edge of the gangway about half-way down the hall,” he said to Phillip. “And come up to the platform when your name is called?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “A press photographer for an evening paper wants to take some photographs of you now, with Thomas Morland.”

  Phillip repressed his anxiety about Lucy; and afterwards, his sight dazed by the camera flash, entering the hall, with its red upholstery and clusters of electric light bulbs, he made out Pa and Ernest seated with his mother and Spica about a dozen rows from the back; and there was Lucy in the second seat from the gangway.

  “I’ve kept the end seat for you,” she smiled.

  “How thoughtful of you.”

  She replied, to his slight disappointment, “Oh, it was Spica’s idea. She thought you might like to be free to go forward when your name was called.”

  Many people were now passing down the aisles. Among them, striding briskly, entirely buoyant, was Margot Asquith, with a beautiful, fair-haired young woman.

  Spica moved to the back of his seat. “Well, my dear, I have always known this day would come.”

  He turned to see her brown eyes steadily upon him. What was she thinking, Could you but have trusted me? Or was this an idea from his own thought-grievance, distorting her simple gesture? He felt her brooding upon him; it was a relief when she moved back beside Mother: she cared too much, like Mother.

  Now the platform was being crossed by members of the Committee. Was his regimental tie straight? Should his jacket be loose, or held by the middle of the three buttons? And the bottom button of the waistcoat undone? But he had nearly forgotten to twist the signet ring Uncle John had given him!

  The round part must be inside the palm, the ring twisted as he had worn the ring given to him for his 21st birthday. He had reversed it before leading the raid into the German front line near La Boisselle in early June, lest the flat circle give a glint in the light of flares as they crawled to the wire.

  People were clapping. Thomas Morland was walking to the centre of the platform, holding a sheaf of typed papers in one hand. Holding up his chin, he began to speak clearly, throwing his voice to the back of the hall, every word like a dart at a dart-board. He was speaking of the novels of Hardy, the work of W. H. Hudson, and Gilbert White of Selborne, and their concern for the preservation of wild life. A woman just in front turned to her companion and said, “I thought it would be a book about the sufferings of animals when I heard he was to give the prize.”

  Now he was for it. Morland was speaking about the book. Whatever was he saying … “The theme of The Water Wanderer is that the elements conspire together, on the face of the waters, to produce the species, with the force of love, to produce beauty: that wild animals are pure and heavenly, confined as they are within the limits of their instincts, that they are entirely loyal, thus preserving their pristine beauty; while Man, as the vehicle to contain the Imagination, is capable of flights of the greatest generosity, or descents to the most profound villainy and degradation imposed upon himself, his fellow men, and in the destruction of the essentially innocent species. This book is a work of stupendous imagination fortified by endlessly patient observation.” The woman turned again to her companion and said, “I’ve never heard of him, have you?” as his name was called and he was on his feet and gliding down the gangway past side-turned faces and up the steps and across the platform behind the seated Committee to where Miss Corinna Arden was standing to give him an envelope, to shake his hand, and he bowed his head and thanked her, and still grinning went back the way he had come. As he recrossed the platform a hand stayed him; there was a whispered question from the dark lean man of the Committee, Would you like to make a speech? He knew that this was more than a suggestion, but now he was less than ever himself, and the ‘stupendous imagination’ was grief, despair, and longing to join her in the life beyond. They were clapping; they expected a speech; he must either speak or move away, not stand still, so he said ‘Thank you’ again to Miss Arden, who had moved to her chair, and was hesitating, and ‘thank you’ to the audience of hundreds of pink faces; and then he hurried away to the steps against a scatter of clapping and jumped down from the middle step and went back to his seat three-quarters of the way down the hall.

  Miss Arden was now filling the hiatus, stemming the feeling of anti-climax among the audience: why, why, why didn’t someone tell him before that he would be expected to make a speech. The fluttery voice of Miss Arden was speaking of a ghostly otter following ghostly salmon up an immortal river and it was all over.


  So soon was it all over! People were getting up to go out. Then Spica over his shoulder was telling him that a famous war-poet was sitting just behind him; he sat still, hoping that the poet would not hear her words. When at last he looked round, as though casually, the poet was, to his relief, walking to the exit.

  Then, seeing his old Colonel standing under the platform head and shoulders above all others, Phillip went down to thank him for coming. Lord Satchville moved to him to offer congratulations, saying from his great bearded height that he had managed to break away during an interval from the debate in the House of Lords to share in the honour paid to the Regiment. His cousin, the Duchess, he said, was much interested in wild life and he had given her a copy of the otter’s story, and perhaps he and his wife would pay him a visit during one Saturday to Monday when he would take him over to Husborne to renew acquaintance with the Duke as well.

  “Is your wife with you, Maddison? Perhaps you will introduce me to her?”

  Phillip fetched Lucy; and while she was talking to Satchville his mind was a kaleidoscope of mind pictures—the summer of 1918 at the Duchess’ hospital, blinded by mustard gas and walking in the park with his guide Lady Abeline; then it was the summer of 1908, and with his sisters and Mother, his cousins Polly and Percy and Uncle and Aunt, he was walking under tall fountains of gnats down a long grassy ride between lofty holly hedges, watched by keepers in brown livery and brown bowler hats. He saw again the lodge-keeper in his black claw-hammer coat and tall silk hat with the cockade at the side, opening the great iron gates through which they entered to see fallow deer and emus down the glades, gnus and emus and golden pheasants, and in the park the herd of bison and beyond them were very small deer, Père David deer, near the yaks, and Uncle was telling them that the domain wall was twelve miles round the park …

  And he did not want to go back, to stay with Colonel Satchville, it could never be the same again, now that he had changed, and had begun to think; but he said, “Thank you, Colonel, it will be jolly to see Husborne again. I suppose all the hutments have long since been removed from the park?” No, no, he thought, I must not go back, never, never, never.