The Power of the Dead

by Henry Williamson

  “There she is. Let me do the talking, my Mad Son. Now, not a word, mind,” as a salesman approached.

  “Good morning, Major,” the salesman said brightly. “How did your conversion run? Nice little job, I thought.”

  “No soft soap, my lad. I’ve come to talk brass tacks. My pal here wants a small nippy car, with a roomy body, and a decent hood on it. But not that brown fabric Peugeot, no dam’ fear. That crock was here the week before last. What’s wrong with it, come on now, don’t give me the old patter. What’s it worth? Sixty pounds? Don’t be silly. Sixty quid for that body, looking like a cockchafer on wheels? Don’t tell me it didn’t sell because they all want a saloon during the finest summer since nineteen twenty-one. Don’t give me that line about saloons. Anyway”—with a wink at Phillip, “let’s hear the engine.”

  The salesman pulled out the choke and charged the cylinders; then with a jerk got the engine firing.

  “Four cylinders, six horse power, sir. Two years old, and only one owner.” He smiled. “To be honest, the owner was a lady.”

  Bill Kidd pushed up the hand throttle. Blue smoke came from the exhaust.

  “Any pistons left, old boy?”

  “Like to try her?”

  “Any saw-dust in the gear-box?”

  “I’ll have the lid off if you like.”

  “What’s the compression like?” asked Phillip.

  “Fairly good, sir. The scraper-rings may be a bit worn, but it’s a simple matter to replace them. The engine doesn’t smoke after she’s warmed up.”

  “No bloody oil left, you mean.” Bill Kidd drew Phillip aside. “Let me do the buying, I know these car copers. They’re all bastards.”

  Phillip took the wheel with some trepidation. It was years since he had driven a motorcar. He started off slowly, and went the first hundred yards in bottom gear, then changed to second gear, driving on with more confidence. Seeing before him the Houses of Parliament, he turned in by one gate, meaning to try the reverse gear in the wide space beyond, but was stopped by a policeman.

  They went down to the Embankment, and found a street leading off which was empty.

  “How do you like the feel of her, sir?”

  The blue smoke had now stopped. “Are we out of oil?”

  “Ah, that little joke, sir. I’ll show you the dipstick when we get back. Apart from that, how does she strike you, sir?”

  “I like her very much.”

  The chief point was that the car would fit into the narrow space of the cart-shed; he had taken the measurements before starting out. After reversing in the empty street, they returned to the garage.

  “She rides well, don’t you think, sir?”

  “Most comfortable.”

  “They know how to make springs in France. High clearance too—eight inches.”

  The dipstick was examined.

  “I’ll buy it.”

  Bill Kidd did not seem to be put out that the deal had been made without him. Phillip gave the salesman a cheque, telling him that he would leave the ’bus—already called Cockchafer in his mind—until the cheque was cleared. Bill Kidd had a talk with the salesman in the office before joining him; and while they sat in Otazelle, Cabton said, “Getting his rake off, no doubt.”

  “Well, why not?”

  “Well, I’m much obliged to you, Bill,” he said as they drove away. “You must let me pay you for the petrol for the journey up.”

  “Don’t insult me.”

  “Well, I hope you got something out of the salesman.”

  “I don’t make money out of my pals.”

  They drove up Whitehall, the driver moving the throttle of Otazelle up and down to create the illusion of a powerful racing car. “Where do you want me to drop you?”

  “Where do you want to go, Cabton?”

  “Oh, I’m not particular.”

  “Up the Strand and turn off at John Street, for Adelphi Terrace, Bill. I’d like you to meet my agent, Anders Norse. We’ll have lunch at Simpson’s. You’ll be my guests.”

  Afterwards he said goodbye. “Anders and I have some business. Thanks for the lift, Bill. Good luck, Cabton.”

  Kidd took him aside. “Who’s this dago who’s planted himself on you? You want to watch out, old boy. First Plugge and now this bloke—they’re nothing but bloody scroungers.” He looked almost affectionately at Phillip. “Bill Kidd knows what he’s talking about, you know. Well, so long, and thanks for the shackles. Remember our old quarterbloke, Moggers? See you at the regimental dinner in the autumn, no dodging the column this time, midear.”

  *

  Anders Norse had a new office, and a secretary, in a side street off the Adelphi. When the contract for the trout story had been signed he said, “I have a feeling that there’s going to be a revival of interest in the Great War. What about your own book?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Anders. I’d have to go away somewhere, and live by myself for some months to finish it.”

  “What about your cottage in Devon? Have you still got it?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “It’s the only way to write, I think. But I suppose the farm takes up all your time?”

  “Well—in a way. There are certain cross-currents——”

  “Of course, writing is a whole-time job. D’you remember Anthony Cruft? He’s left London to bury himself somewhere in the country and write a book. I expect you know that Virginia, his wife, has left him?”

  Phillip nodded as though to himself. “Oh, before I forget, Anders, I’ve given a cheque for sixty pounds to Mews Motors, of Westminster, and would like to take the car away today. Do you mind if I give your name as a guarantor that the cheque is all right?”

  “Of course. Ring them up from here, why not.”

  On the way to Westminster on foot Phillip called in at the Coal Hole, half hoping to find Felicity there. Instead, he saw Archie Plugge, pint pot in hand. He told him about the new ’bus, adding that he was going home by way of the South Coast to call on Martin Beausire; and left before he could be drawn into a round of drinks.

  Arrived at Mews Motors, he saw that the body and windscreen of the Cockchafer had been polished.

  “I’ve filled the tank and had the oil changed,” said the salesman. “There’s no charge, of course. By the way, you do understand, don’t you, that this motor is not subject to guarantee? We are, after all, motorcar auctioneers only, and have so many vehicles passing through that it’s not possible to do more than see that what comes to us is road-worthy. But the Baby Peugeot isn’t a bad little ’bus. The second gear of this particular car is liable to slip out sometimes, so it may be advisable to hold in the gear-handle when going up some of those steep hills of the West Country.”

  It was a Friday, and being a fine day, there might be week-end traffic on the roads to the coast. He was advised to go by way of the Embankment to Chelsea, and over the river to Putney, then take the Dorking road through Leatherhead.

  “It’s a direct road from there to Horsham and Worthing. All the best, sir. By the way, you motorcar isn’t licensed. There’s time before Spring Gardens close——”

  “Oh, I’ll see about it when I get home, thanks all the same.”

  He soon got into the car’s ways. The disc wheels drummed like the flight of the July Bug, dumbeldore, or cockchafer. He considered what name should be used; and returned to Cockchafer, emblem of the Kaiser’s Foot-Guards. Cockchafer rode easily on her large tyres and long springs. He had brought his goggles, and went along with the windscreen open to feel the rush of air upon his face. Many times he rejoiced at his luck in finding just the right car for Lucy to drive. It’s maximum speed was 42 m.p.h., but it cruised happily at 35, battery charging 10 amps and oil pressure steady at 20 lbs. Only the faintest suggestion of pale smoke behind; and looking at the dipstick when he stopped in a valley between tree-crowned hills along the South Downs, he saw that the oil was up to the maximum mark and still clear. No blowing past the rings! He held each cylinder’s compression
against the starting handle. Gas sighed through the exhaust valves of each cylinder. He would have the engine decarbonised and the valves re-ground when he got home. He took off his coat and sang.

  *

  Martin Beausire liked having people about him while he wrote at a large desk upon which stood many columns of books, rising to three feet and more in height. He was confronted and flanked by books—review books, reference books, encyclopedias, a hundred-weight and more of books, constantly being consulted, changed, lent, given away, and sold. There he usually sat, holding a large fountain pen, one of half a dozen lying before him, mixed up with pencils, bottles of ink, telephone pads, engagement pads, and bookcases rising to the ceiling; pictures hanging in the otherwise bare spaces. Against one wall was a glass-fronted cupboard holding silver trophies and mementos of a sporting life. Upon the chimney piece—for Martin liked an open hearth—were hanging a variety of miniature shields of school, college and family coat-armour, the latter representing the millennium-old Saxon family of Boocer, rooted in the West Country, according to Martin, before the Norman upstarts arrived at Hastings.

  There were photographs of bob teams, ski-teams, rugger teams, tennis teams, running, high-jump, long-jump, rowing, cricket, and curling; Old Boy dinners; skating in the Fens; Martin following hounds on foot; Martin swimming; Martin running. Martin was no recluse; he lived a full life and liked his friends to be always with him as he wrote at his desk.

  It was after midnight on Saturday evening in Worthing. Phillip had gone to bed. Martin sat, pen in hand, writing a word or two; pausing before he added another word. It was a book about coal-mining sponsored by an association of young owners with the hope of promoting a New Idea of Industry: garden suburbs, swimming pools, sports’ grounds; whippet races, underground skills, courage, comradeship—an entirely new conception of life for men who spent most of their lives away from the sun. In a phrase of Mr. Lloyd George, ‘a land fit for heroes’.

  Many of these young owners had fought in the war, from which they had returned with the burning idea of comradeship between men and management. In this they were opposed by the ‘economic’ ideas of their fathers.

  Pinned half-way up one pile of books borrowed from the London Library was a curled photograph by flashlight of a dirty fellow with a black face and eyes like a sick eagle’s under a leather skull cap to the front of which was fixed a small electric torch. In his hand this grimy fellow carried a Davy Safety Lamp. One side of his dungaree overalls were partly white from chalk dust thrown too vigorously from his left hand as he had walked along the gallery of a mine in Wakefield, sweating as he thrust himself forward in the low hot tunnel beside a track of miniature steel rails. The chalk was thrown out, as requested, to reduce the risk of a spark struck by nailed boot on rock-fragment, and liable to cause an explosion 2,000 feet below the surface of the ground.

  Martin had worked a 4-hour shift below, at the end of a gallery. Most of the time was spent lying on his back and side at the cragging lip of a 19-inch seam of coal compressed between two layers of rock. He had crawled to the coal-face past pit-props which occasionally had given out sharp cracking noises; while all the time he had suffered because he was not at his home writing what he had seen. Now he was making up for time lost in travelling, prepared for a 20-hour shift at his desk.

  *

  Phillip, asleep in bed, heard a telephone bell ringing. He was immediately alert. Footfalls came up the stairs, a tap on the door. Horn-rimmed spectacles low on nose, Martin said in a very subdued voice, “Someone calling himself Piers Tofield wants to speak to you. He says it’s rather important.”

  Phillip ran down to Martin’s study.

  “Hullo, Phil. I’ve been trying to find you, to give you some good news. Congratulations on having a daughter.”

  “Thank you, thank you! Is Lucy all right?”

  “She looked extremely happy when I saw her an hour ago, after I’d taken her to the Shakesbury nursing home. A seven-pound daughter, dark hair, some weeks early.”

  “Thank you ever so much for telephoning. However did you know I’d be here? I didn’t know myself until this evening.”

  “I’ve been telephoning to various people, and at last thought of Archie Plugge at the Game Pie. He told me you were going along the South Coast, and said you might call on Martin Beausire.”

  “Well done. Where are you telephoning from?”

  “Skirr. Your home.”

  “What time was the baby born?”

  “Half an hour ago. Virginia and I called here on our way down to Devon, and Lucy gave us dinner. It was unexpected—the baby, I mean. So I ran her into Shakesbury while Virginia looked after Billy, who was a little anxious, and asking for you. Mrs. Rigg’s here, so don’t worry.”

  “What made you come down?”

  “Virginia and I want to find a furnished cottage near the sea, to spend the summer.”

  “You can have mine, at Speering Folliot. The Mules—he’s postman and sexton—have the key. No water or light laid on, I’m afraid.”

  “May we take it? We’ll rent it from you, of course.”

  “You won’t. May I join you?”

  “I’d like nothing more. Here’s Virginia.”

  “Hullo, Phil. What a lovely baby. I adore her. Lucy looks too, too radiant.”

  “Stay the night, won’t you. Take any bedroom. I’ll be home for breakfast. Give Piers my thanks, and some to yourself of course. I must tell the others here. Au revoir, my mermaid. I’ll start home shortly—it’s a lovely night.”

  *

  Cockchafer ran splendidly in the night air. Through Arundel and on to Chichester without a plug missing; past harbours and reedy inlets of the moonlit sea; up Portsdown Hill with its memories of Lucy and Billy lying in the sun on their way to Dover, all those years ago, soon after his marriage … he stopped the engine, and walked through the dewy grass. O world, O life, O time—but nothing of the past ever was found except in the mind; onwards, leaving Southampton on the left, and along the lonely road to Romsey. Here is the New Forest, deep dark woods and a filigree of leaves above yellow headlamp beams. Through a ghostly town of sleeping houses, and at last open spaces on either side of the road, a road sinking but to rise again, second gear slipping out—engine slowing as though over-heated—into bottom gear—and only a gentle seeming rise. That woman driver hanging on too long in a higher gear, and slapping piston-skirts against the pots. Up to the crest—and dawn coming in the east. Larks were singing. Afar lay the dark sheen of Salisbury, he was within rejoicing distance of home.

  Leaving Cockchafer in the lane, hood up lest it rain, he entered by a window and crept upstairs to the night nursery. The cots were empty, without bedding. He looked in Lucy’s room, drawers were open, a pair of shoes left on the bed. He cried out; no reply; was going downstairs when he heard the key in the door and Mrs. Rigg’s voice called behind the door held just open, “Anyone thurr? Ah, tes you, sir, I be very glad vor see ’ee!” She came in, breathless. “I’ve a-got thik childer auver to mine—they wor crying when Mrs. Madd’zn was took away by Mr. Piers—me an’ that young leddy stayed yurr with them, dear li’l boys they be.”

  “Where are they now—the lady and gentleman.”

  “They’m asleep in your room, zurr. And the childer be to my place now, zur, they’m quite all right, they be slaping side be side together on two pillors on th’ vloor, happy as kings they be, dear ’ms.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Rigg, thank you. No, I don’t want anything to eat, thanks all the same. I’ll wait here, on the sofa, until breakfast. I’ve got a car, and tomorrow, no it’s Sunday—this afternoon, if you like, I’ll take you all in to Shakesbury to see Mis’s and the babby!”

  He walked up beside the Longpond, now rosy in the dawn rising above the black line of the downs. He had a feeling that he could accomplish everything. His euphoria increased when, returning from the crest of the downs, he saw Piers and Virginia strolling to meet him.

  *

  On return
ing with Mrs. Rigg and the boys from the maternity home in Shakesbury that afternoon, Phillip had a shock when he answered the telephone.

  Hilary said that his brother John had had an emergency operation in order to examine an obstruction in the bronchus, and an advanced state of carcinoma was discovered. His voice was not steady when he continued after a pause, “It’s a landmark gone, Phillip. My brother—hullo, you there?”

  Phillip said with an effort, “If only I had taken him for walks. My damned writing’s made me utterly selfish.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I—I’m really most awfully sorry, Uncle Hilary. Please accept my sympathy in your loss. Yes, I’ll tell Lucy. By the way, she had a daughter early today. I was going to telephone.”

  “A daughter, you say. Give her my love. And accept my congratulations, old man.”

  “Thank you, Uncle Hilary. I’m sure Lucy will want me to send you her love—with mine, Uncle Hilary. We loved Uncle John.”

  “It’s the end of an age, Phillip.”

  “Yes, Uncle Hilary. I’m so sorry.”

  “We must pull together.”

  “Count on me, Uncle Hilary.”

  He went over to tell Lucy. “If only I’d gone for daily walks with John. Look how Pa recovered from your mother’s death when you and the Boys took him into your lives. Poor old John must have been corroded right through with loneliness, like an iron pipe with this hard chalky water.”

  “He knew how busy you were. Don’t forget that you always found time to go and see him, so there’s no need to reproach yourself,” she said, quietly.

  “I must make it up by looking after my parents and sisters. I shall invite Father and Mother to live at Fawley.”

  *

  Ever since Richard had retired from the Office at Midsummer he had been talking of finding a cottage in the country where he might end his days. Hetty, having him at home all the time, had felt more enclosed than ever. Yet during the journey from Paddington she felt she was on the way to freedom, with the imagined faces of Billy and Peter, and now little Rosamund, ever present in her mind.