The Power of the Dead

by Henry Williamson

  “Where may I telephone, Flanagan?”

  “Box over there, sir.”

  He asked for a trunk call to Lucy. After a while the soft voice said, ‘Hullo’. It quickened when he asked about the children.

  “I think I’ll remain up for a few days and start my trout book.”

  “Yes, do that. But don’t work too hard. You deserve a holiday. Oh, I’m quite happy. The little boys ask after you every evening, when I put them to bed. Rosamund is a pet, so good, and putting on weight nicely.”

  “Any news of Nuncle?”

  “Only that he’s coming in October. Oh yes, before I forget. Shall I invite Irene to stay here for the shooting week when Uncle Hilary comes with his friends? I think it would help things along, don’t you? I heard from her yesterday. She’s coming over from France at the end of the month—goodness, it’s nearly that now, isn’t it? She’ll be staying at the Ladies Carlton Club, she writes, her usual place in London, in case you want to see her. How do you like your new club?”

  “It’s rather romantic, in a way. I have an attic room and can see the lights on the Thames when I turn my head on the pillow.”

  “I am so glad. Do you know anyone yet?”

  “Oh yes, there’s Anders, Channerson the war painter, and lots of other famous people. I’ve met Archie Plugge here, but I don’t think he’s a member. I must invite him to supper one night. Poor old boy, he hasn’t got much money.”

  “Yes, do. Remember me to him, and to Mr. Cornelian if you see him.”

  “I’m going to see Edward Cornelian tomorrow at the Soho restaurant where they all go to on Fridays. I wonder how he’ll regard me.”

  “Oh, I expect he’s forgotten all about that. Have you seen Felicity?”

  “Do you think I ought to?”

  “Why not? She’s not very happy, and you might be able to help her.”

  Phillip laughed. “In what way, do you mean?”

  “Well, she doesn’t have much fun, I imagine, in the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I rather gathered from what she told me that she feels a bit out of it, with her mother having her own particular friend. What Felicity wants, I think, is to meet young people with tastes similar to her own.”

  There was a pause, then he said, “Young people, yes. I’m not young any more.”

  She replied, with a light laugh, “Well, if you see her, give her my love.”

  “By the way, do you think I ought to have a secretary?”

  “I certainly do.”

  “Felicity?”

  “Why not?”

  “You really do like her?”

  “Yes, I do. The little boys do, too—very much.”

  “Well, au revoir. I’ll let you know when I’ll be coming back.”

  He looked at the London directory, and found the telephone number; hesitated; then went upstairs to the bar to drink whisky. A little man with a long head was standing there, swaying on his feet several inches clear of the counter, his eyes half-closed, his hands hanging down by the seams of his trousers, which were crumpled like his coat. His starched collar was frayed, he was without a tie. An empty port glass, which had been full when last Phillip had seen him standing in the same place like an upright mooring buoy in slack-water, was turned down before him on the counter.

  He had been a gag-writer for a number of music-hall comics since 1902; he was still a gag-writer, spending nearly all his conscious hours trying to think of new jokes. For five years he had lived with despair and self-ridicule; and port wine, his only tipple, gave him some sense of what he thought of as Nirvana. The moving pictures had reduced the halls; now talking pictures were the coming thing, and he had sudden flashes of hope, and with each flash as he stood at the bar he asked for a small port, and slipped back into Nirvana.

  Phillip said to him, “Will you honour me by having a drink with me, sir?”

  The little man did not move.

  “He don’t hear you,” said the barman.

  Phillip swallowed his whisky and said, “Well, I must go,” and running downstairs went to the telephone box and asked for the Ealing number.

  “Hullo, Felicity?”

  He heard a sibilance; then an ‘Oh!’, as of relief. “I thought at first it was someone else.” He could hear her breathing irregularly.

  “Lucy sends her love.”

  “I was just thinking of her. How is she?”

  “Oh, very happy with the children, as usual. Did you get back from Rookhurst all right?”

  “I should have written to thank you—I did mean to——”

  “The Beausires are fun, aren’t they?”

  “I stayed three days with them. I see Coats is advertising your novel. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for tomorrow.”

  “I suppose you’ll be too busy to meet me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In London. At the Barbarian Club.”

  “Oh! Yes, of course I’ll meet you.”

  “How about tonight?”

  When she did not reply at once he said, “Perhaps you’re busy? How about lunch tomorrow?”

  “I’m trying to think. It’s all so sudden. Yes, of course I can come tonight. I’m alone here, Mummie is away for the night. So it doesn’t matter when I come home.”

  “Good. Where shall I meet you?”

  “I’ll be at the Underground at Charing Cross in half an hour.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  “It’s by the Embankment—not the Southern Railway station.”

  She could think, she could anticipate; she would help him in his work. They met gladly, and walked arm in arm along the Embankment to Cleopatra’s Needle.

  “This is where I collapsed eight years ago. I had a groggy lung.”

  “You poor dear,” spoken with almost the same intonation of voice as Irene’s.

  “I’m all right now. Devon and long walks cleared it up.”

  “I dream of Devon, and our walk on the Whale Back.”

  “I’ve never really realized how beautiful London is at night.”

  “I thought I was never going to see you again.”

  “I’m an icicle whose thawing is its dying.”

  “You’re not.”

  They looked at the Zeppelin bomb holes in the Sphinx.

  “My father was killed in the war,” she said in a shaky voice.

  “I’m sorry. You must have been very young.”

  “I just remember him.”

  A string of barges was going with the tide down-river: dim red lights, shadowy figures on the bridge by the big brass funnel of the tug.

  “They have to go so fast, to keep way-on in order to steer. It’s as swift here as the spring tides past Aery Point.”

  “What happened to your canoe?”

  “I abandoned it.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  “I abandon everything—before it abandons me.”

  They walked under the gas-lit Adelphi Arches.

  “Quite Dickensian, isn’t it? The Cockchafer is up here somewhere. But no-one would want to pinch her. There she is. And up above us the bright Strand, where my grandfather was run over by the brewer’s dray—let me see, it was in the winter of ’ninety-four—I was born the following April. So you see I am very old—thirty-four—and you are eighteen—a child.”

  “I’m not a child.”

  They climbed steps to Adelphi Terrace and stopped outside the Barbarian Club.

  “Ladies are allowed in. Would you like a drink? Coffee?”

  “May I have some beer?”

  “Better still.”

  Within the hall was a small divided space, the ladies’ room. Here sat Channerson, the war painter, with other men and a thin pale-faced girl whose continuous remarks in a pert Cockney voice were making him bellow with laughter. His hard eyes recognised Phillip, he said gravely, “Come and join us. May I introduce you to the Virgin of Soho.”

  The Virgin of Soho
waved a hand, and said to Felicity, “Hullo darling, what fresh cheeks and wind-blown hair. Stars in your eyes, too. Hope they get a rise out of your boy-friend,” at which Channerson’s hearty-hollow laughter again filled the hall.

  Phillip concealed his feelings by playing the part of a West End roué of fiction.

  “We’re going to drink champagne. Anybody wearing gilt dancing shoes? I’ve got a book coming out tomorrow, so let’s all drink to it.”

  The bottle came with a plate of ham sandwiches. Felicity appeared to be hungry. Other men from upstairs attracted by the liveliness‚ joined the party, ordering more bottles. At eleven o’clock the actors began to come in, some accompanied by women friends. Phillip told himself that this was life.

  “What time is the last train to Ealing?”

  “About twelve. But I’ll go now if you’re tired.”

  “I was thinking of you. I’ll see you catch the train, anyway.”

  The door opened and a tramp with a raggedly forked white beard and beaky nose entered. He stared with the tragic eyes of the very old, then with battered silk hat still on head went up the stairs. The next to enter was a heavy clean-shaven man who looked like a retired pugilist. He also stared at their faces before going to the lavatory. When Phillip went there the man was cleaning his shoes. He looked up and said, “You’re a new member, aren’t you?” His voice had a metallic accent.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you want to insure your keys?”

  “Keys?”

  The bald man took a ring from his pocket. The metal label attached to the ring was numbered, he said. For half-a-crown a year anyone finding the keys on that numbered ring would be rewarded by the insurance company when they sent them back.

  “I’m an agent,” he said. “Ain’t it worth it, gettin’ your keys back?”

  Phillip gave him half a crown and took the ring.

  “Aren’t you going to put your keys on it?” asked the agent.

  “I haven’t got any keys.”

  The bald man explained that he had insured the keys of over ten thousand people in Australia, New Zealand, and London.

  “I’m Zorago the contortionist,” he said. “I’ll lay an even dollar that you’ve never even heard of Zorago the Human Python.”

  “Yes I have.”

  “A long time ago?”

  “No. Quite recently.”

  At half-past eleven Channerson got up to leave with the thin Cockney girl called the Virgin of Soho. She came over to kiss Phillip, putting her lips on his and waggling the tip of her tongue in his mouth. He concealed his distaste. “What can you do with an elemental force?” said Channerson, chuckling. “Isn’t she a marvel?” Then he said in a quiet voice, “Do you know what it is to be poor?”

  “I saw the slums die in Flanders.”

  “Do you know my picture in the National War Museum?”

  “It is immortal.”

  The painter looked at him doubtfully. “Do you think so?”

  “I know.”

  Felicity had not heard what was said; but when Channerson held out his hand with the words, “We must meet again,” and added, “Give my regards to Piers Tofield when you see him,” before bowing to her distantly, she wondered if there had been perhaps some quarrel over Piers Tofield, of whom she had often heard, as the man who had run away with Anthony Crufts’ wife. According to Fleet Street many famous men, and women too, were homosexual and lesbian.

  *

  While she was in the ladies’ room Phillip leapt up the stairs three at a time to the bar, first looking in the supper room. Among the many faces were outbreaks of gaiety; he half-wished that he had not telephoned her, but had remained to join the fun. He went across to the bar, where the gag-writer was standing in the same place, a glass of port before his closed eyes; while at the other end of the counter stood the old tramp wearing a silk hat. Before him were ranged, in two rows, eight medium-sized khaki cigars—cheap Dutch ones—and six glasses of Irish whiskey.

  Phillip ordered one for himself, and the barman said, “Club Special, sir?”

  “Yes please.”

  While he was sipping it a man even smaller than the gag-writer came in, and going up to the aged man in the seedy frock coat said, “Hullo, Old O’Damn. How are you tonight?”

  “Go to hell.”

  Phillip thought this funny, and began to laugh silently to himself.

  “Be a sport, Old O’Damn, I’m not on the free list like you. You’ll only be ill if you drink all those drinks. You remember me, don’t you? I’m the librarian.”

  “You’re Tom Fool.”

  “Well then if you can drink all that whiskey, you can’t smoke all those cheroots.”

  “Go away, bloody boy.”

  The odd thing was that the librarian went away. Laughing weakly, but inaudibly, Phillip sat down in a chair with a short rounded back. Immediately the ancient man tottered towards him, and pointing a finger with a long and dirty nail at him, quavered, “You are sitting in my chair.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir. I thought it was club property.”

  “I am club property!”

  Phillip hurriedly left the bar, and went laughing down the stairs. What a wonderful place London was, when you knew people.

  Felicity was still away. He spoke to Flanagan, the porter, who told him that Old O’Damn was a famous character, one of the original members of the club founded in the middle of the last century.

  “He must be very old.”

  “Due for his century next year, sir.”

  “Does he live in the club?”

  “Some say he kips under the arches, others that he lives in a disused sewer what is bricked up and forgotten and what runs under the vaults of the Bank of England.”

  “All life is fiction, anyway.”

  He leapt up the stairs three at a time to the bar. The second little man exclaimed, “Ah, I was looking for you! You’re a new member, aren’t you? You didn’t come in for your month’s trial, did you? Doesn’t matter, you can stand me a drink now. I’ll have a Club Special. I’m the honorary librarian, you know. That”—he pointed to the ancient figure apparently asleep in his chair—“is Old O’Damn, I expect you’ve heard of him? I wish they’d also put me on the free list, I’ve been a member for over thirty years, and have looked after the library all that time. Here’s to your very good health. Welcome to the Barbarian Club. Oh, must you go? Isn’t it funny, everyone has to go whenever I come into the bar.”

  *

  They walked hand in hand to the underground station. The Thames sparkled with lights. A bright train roared in. How quickly it arrived at Ealing.

  “Let’s go this way, then we can walk home on the grass. Oh, but you’ll miss the last train back.”

  “I feel like walking all night.”

  They came to a short terrace of Victorian gabled houses. She switched on the light in the hall, and opened the door of the sitting room.

  “Oh.” She put her hand to her mouth.

  A man was lying on a sofa. He got up, a smallish man, with a clean-shaven face and grey hair brushed back from his temples.

  “This is my guardian, Mr. Fitzwarren,” she said to Phillip. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Felicity stayed with us in the West Country this summer,” he said to the smallish man.

  “So I heard. You’re farming, aren’t you?”

  “A pupil of sorts.”

  The older man removed a silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his grey cashmere suit, opened it to blow his nose loudly, then having folded the handkerchief carefully upon the ironing marks, replaced it in the pocket so that it showed a straight line. Then saying, “Excuse me,” he left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Phillip wondered why she hadn’t mentioned her guardian. I’m all alone here, Mummie is away for the night. Perhaps he lived there, being her mother’s friend, and she had not thought it worth mentioning. Yet she had been shocked to see him there: she had turned pale. And when
he had telephoned, I thought at first it was someone else. He felt dull, and thought to leave, but stood still, listening. He could just hear the man’s voice, a full continual growl. It went on and on. At last he went down the passage and tapped on the door of the kitchen.

  “I feel I mustn’t keep you up, Felicity. It’s after midnight, I think I ought to be going.”

  “I’ll see you to the door,” said the man.

  “Oh, don’t go,” she whispered, touching his sleeve, as the older man led the way to the front door.

  “Felicity hasn’t been very well lately, and her mother asked me to keep an eye on her while she was away. Mrs. Ancroft likes her to be in bed by eleven.”

  “I’m not tired, Fitz, and coffee won’t take long,” said Felicity.

  “Very well. Would you mind waiting in the sitting room, Mr. Maddison? I’ll bring the coffee. I have a small matter to discuss with my ward before she goes to bed.”

  He returned down the passage and found himself in the wrong room. A gas fire burned in the grate, on the shelf above were photographs; one of a smiling R.F.C. observer, others of school scenes, girls in gym clothes, and on the hockey field. There was a reproduction of Shelley’s face tinted with girlish colours, pink cheeks, brown curls, and blue eyes. A man’s black pair of silk pyjamas lay on the bed. On the dressing table was another photograph, of an elderly woman. To My Darling Girlie, from Mumsie. Evidently it was Felicity’s bedroom.

  He switched off the light hurriedly and re-entered the sitting room with relief. So that was the set-up: Felicity had left before ‘Fitz’ was due to telephone his arrival, to make sure that the coast was clear. It explained the sad look on her face at times. What should he do? Obviously she had transferred her feelings to himself—an escape from the frying pan into the fire, because he didn’t love her. Or did he? In any case it would be the same situation for her.

  ‘Fitz’ came in carrying a tray. She followed, her face was powdered. She gave him a timid smile as she put down a plate of petit beurre biscuits.

  “It was good of you to see Felicity home, Maddison. It seems that, as the last train has gone, you’ll have a long walk before you, unless you can find a taxi at this time of night.”