The Power of the Dead

by Henry Williamson

  “I wonder if I might wash my hands?”

  Felicity jumped up, “I’ll show you,” and led the way up the stairs.

  “Please come back when he’s gone,” she said before returning down the stairs.

  “Do you want to get rid of him?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  He drank too-hot coffee and arose to go. “Mr. Fitzwarren, if you’re going my way, perhaps you’ll show me the road to Shepherd’s Bush? It’s fairly straight once one is there.”

  Standing behind ‘Fitz’, Felicity shook her head at Phillip. He waited.

  The other man blew his nose, refolded the handkerchief, and tucked it back into his breast pocket.

  “I understand you are a married man, Mr. Maddison? Then why do you come here after this young girl when her mother is away?”

  “I merely brought her home. I’ll go now. Goodnight, Felicity.”

  The other man said, with a change of manner to the gracious, “I’ll come with you, and put you on your way.”

  *

  The morning papers were on sale in Piccadilly when Phillip arrived there. He bought copies and with a bundle under his arm walked down to Adelphi Terrace. The old man in the top hat was wandering about the main room.

  “Everyone goes to bed early nowadays,” he complained in woeful tones. “There are no Bohemians left.”

  Big Ben tolled three times as Phillip went up to his bedroom.

  In most of the newspapers there was a prominent review of The Phoenix. Nearly all the critics had taken the book as he had felt it. A few gave it the highest praise. I knew it would happen, he thought: Edward Cornelian was right.

  He looked in The Daily Telegram. Martin Beausire’s notice was disappointing. He wrote that he longed for a magic wand to wave and change all the human characters into animals.

  In the morning the hall porter said he was wanted on the telephone. Felicity asked if he had got back all right.

  “Oh yes, thanks. We said goodnight at Marble Arch. Did he come back?”

  “I don’t know, I went for a long walk by myself. Do you still want me to come to lunch?”

  They met outside Swan and Edgar’s in Piccadilly. Thence they walked to the Commercio in Frith Street, hoping to meet again Edward Cornelian. It was Friday, the day for the literary gathering at luncheon. The literati usually sat at a big table in the corner of an upstairs room, by a window. When they went into the room Edward Cornelian was already seated at the table, which was laid for a dozen places, alone. Phillip said good-morning, and was about to bring Felicity forward when the critic remarked that the table was reserved. So they sat at a small table for two. It so happened that on that day only three others came to the big table.

  Phillip remained in London. He was invited to dinner by Felicity’s mother, who rejoiced that her daughter seemed so happy, where before she had been moody and restless. A country life was the very thing for her, she said.

  The new book was a success. Ten thousand copies of the first edition had been sold, another ten thousand were at the press, and a further five thousand ordered from the printer. He met Felicity every evening, going to cinemas, the opera, and promenade concerts in the Queen’s Hall. He stayed for another week; his pockets were stuffed with Press Clippings, which came with every post. While nine out of ten were entirely favourable, two were bad. A North Country novelist reviewing for The Evening News wrote that Donkin was half-baked, while The Ecclesiastical Times declared that the book was an almost uninterrupted sequence of bad taste, wrong thinking, and blasphemy. It demanded to know what the publishers were doing in issuing the book, and reminded them, and the author, that there was such an office as that of the public prosecutor.

  “Excellent,” cried Edward Cornelian, at the round table. “You are in the tradition, my dear fellow. Hardy had the same sort of thing written about Tess, and again about Jude. Such critics, their senses repressed by pavements, are full of pretentiousness masking itself as religious sincerity.”

  *

  He stayed on for his regimental dinner. In the morning they walked on the Sussex downs. The year had entered the season of calm following the equinox: rest for cloud and air, an unshadowed sun. They lay on their backs above Beachy Head.

  Her hand sought his, and held it. At length he said, “Felicity, I must tell you something. I feel I can never love anyone ever again.”

  Ocean drew down the blue of the sky. She raised herself on an arm and said, “Your eyes are a deep blue, and O, so kind. Let me be your hand-maiden, if ever you want one.”

  She took his hand and kissed it before sitting up to look at him. She patted her lap, inviting him to lay his head there, and rest. Her face was shining, she was all sweetness, smiling expectantly. How Richard Jefferies would have loved her, he thought: Felicity in The Dewy Morn, inviting love, dreaming of a child perhaps.

  “You’re a nice girl, Felicity. You deserve a fine young man for a husband. You’re a kind girl, too.”

  He sat up and examined her face, intrigued by the tiny gold hairs on her upper lip.

  “I’ve never really looked properly at you before. Now turn your head sideways.”

  She had a straight brow, her profile was Grecian. He turned her chin to full face. The fair hair grew back from the forehead like Barley’s; but where Barley had been direct and clear and forthright in manner, Felicity was a little withdrawn, hesitant; appealing, under a subdued but continuous longing, for safety: to be lapped in loving kindness.

  “Which do you need more, I wonder? To be loved—or to love?

  “Both of course.”

  “But if you merely fell in love with me you might be in a worse position than you are with ‘Fitz’.”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t be. Anyway, I’ve done with him.”

  “Well, that’s honest anyway. Did he love you?”

  “He says he did, now.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “In a way, I suppose I did.”

  “Did you mind him forcing himself on you when you were fourteen?”

  “I thought I might as well make the best of it.”

  This frankness shocked him. He got up and walked down the sward towards the Cockchafer. She followed slowly. He waited for her, they walked on side by side unspeaking. When she could no longer contain her feelings she stopped, and staring at the ground said as though to herself, “If you don’t want me, I think I shall commit suicide.”

  He knew that feeling; it had in the past been his own. He held her in his arms, knowing that she was wounded to be needing love so desperately. He must be her friend and not abuse her.

  “Don’t worry, pet. We’ll always be friends.”

  “You’ll see me again, won’t you, before you go? And don’t forget your regimental dinner tonight.”

  She was happy again, so was he. They walked down to the Cockchafer hand in hand.

  *

  The dinner was in the Connaught Rooms. After the meal and the toasts the Colonel of the Regiment moved around, talking to men who once had worn khaki, and had been such great friends, and now saw one another but once a year, for an evening.

  It was a quiet occasion, for all remembered too much. Phillip, as a war-time acting lieutenant-colonel, sat at the high table, between two friends, one of whom had won the Victoria Cross in the penultimate month of the war, in the advance through the forest of Mormal. Ditchings had gone forward with a sergeant and a Lewis gun when the battalion was held up by a German rear-guard, consisting of a line of machine-gun posts. The two men had worked their way down a flank of the German line, knocking out one post after another—for the flanks had been left in the air, and so it had been almost a text-book exercise. Even so, it had opened the way for the Division to advance. Phillip asked Ditchings what he had felt afterwards, and Ditchings wrote on his menu card, Sleep-sleep-sleep. He had been sweated out, emptied away. No fear, no broken sleep—the German boys it was who died.

  When Lord Satchville came round to speak to those who had once been
his senior officers, he asked Phillip about his new book, saying he must read it, and what was the title. Phillip felt embarrassed, and began to stutter, for he knew that it held to a point of view that the Colonel would consider alien to the spirit of the Regiment: so he said it was only a novel, and then thinking what he ought to say, felt that words had gone from him. Ditchings spoke up and said it was a very fine book: then he too became silent; for he knew the gulf of suffering between the spirit of the Regiment and what actually occurred before, during, and after a battle; and of the two diverse things, which was of the greater truth? Service to England and Empire, that was the spirit of the Colonel; service to mankind, which meant the poor man, that was the spirit of cousin Willie, the theme of The Phoenix.

  “I must get your book,” said the Colonel.

  Hoping to ease the inarticulateness of himself, Phillip said the book was about an ex-soldier he had known, who had tried to bring a new vision to people—and he mentioned the name of a soldier-poet who had written some of the few truthful poems of the war.

  “Oh,” said Lord Satchville, “I’m afraid I don’t much care for the fellow.”

  “It’s rather a difficult thing, to be truthful about actual warfare, Colonel.”

  “He isn’t English,” said the Colonel, musingly. “His father’s family are Parsees, from Bombay.”

  “He was a very good regimental officer, Colonel, so I understand from those who knew him, and soldiered with him.”

  Lord Satchville was stroking his Viking beard, now turning grey, and looking sideways with his fading blue eyes at Phillip, who could feel the Colonel’s disappointment in his own diminishing sensations. The Colonel knew, he thought, of how he had failed after the war: that black period in his life when he had spent some time in prison. The Colonel changed the subject and spoke to Ditchings, asking after his family; he was the benevolent patriarch once more. Phillip began to wish that he had not gone to the reunion dinner: for the truth was, he could not bear to disappoint anyone, and yet knew well how his weakness or incapacity too often led to another kind of disappointment. For this reason he had made an excuse not to accept the invitation to stay with Satchville, and to revisit Husborne Abbey, although Lucy’s grandmother, Mrs. Chychester, had advised him to accept, saying she was sure that Lucy and he would find the visit enjoyable. How would the great man—great because of the strength of his simplicity—feel about a young man who “ceaselessly blasphemed against all the values a Christian holds dear,” according to The Ecclesiastical Times? He could think no further—the views of ‘Donkin’, the hero, were more in keeping with those of the outcast heir to the historic name and ducal estates of Husborne, the socialist Marquess who since youth had been alienated from his father, the Duke of Gaultshire, cousin to Satchville. A few pages of naturalistic prose and dialogue—how could they maintain themselves against the vision of the Abbey, with its immemorial traditions? How could his complicated consciousness fit in with the simplicity of such established assurance of life?

  “Ah, I must read your book,” the Colonel murmured affably, as he left the top table. “I have your otter beside my bedhead, and read a few pages every night before turning out the light. For me, it is part of England.”

  At these unexpected words, Phillip felt himself to be on the verge of tears.

  Afterwards he walked with two friends of the Regiment, both holders of the Cross—Colonel Vallum, and Captain Ditchings—to the Barbarian Club. They sat together over a drink at the bar; they parted, saying they must meet again at the dinner next year. He felt sad seeing them go. He walked on the Embankment for awhile before returning to his garret bed with the near-cardboard walls through which travelled many sounds. Two of the dining-room maids slept up there; the floorboards creaked as footfalls went slowly past his door. He lay in bed, wondering how bad a man he was becoming, having failed Nuncle, and then Lucy, and now it looked as though he had spiritually seduced Felicity. Why hadn’t he gone before it was too late. Yet he wanted her, as she wanted him. No: he must never betray Lucy.

  Midnight struck from Big Ben, down the river. One o’clock—two o’clock—

  *

  It was ten years since the Armistice: the war seemed deeper and darker in the imagination than during the actual days of that lost time: the faces of friends in uniform, against the smoke and intolerable crash of bombardment: faces around the piano in the ante-room: ever-gay, laughing faces round the table on guest-nights—these phantoms were more real to him than the living. One must never go back among the living: one must, for ever, say goodbye to old comrades, so that one might always see them with young faces, gay and carefree, in those scenes of the vanished world of the Western Front which could only be entered in silence and alone.

  Chapter 16

  ALL SOULS’ EVE

  Autumn moved serenely into St. Luke’s Summer, as the early days of October were called—that period before the moon begins to wax, before its full shine brings the first woodcock over the North Sea to the downs and the beech hangers; before the woodland leaves begin to drift upon the winds and gather in the waving weeds of ranunculus swelling the trout-streams of the meadows.

  The sheltering woods still showed the colours of autumn among their dark massed foliage.

  All the village came to the auction at Fawley, and a surprising number of people from the towns, as well as from neighbouring houses, and of course the farmers drove up in their gigs and traps behind cobs. Phillip was surprised to see Piers and Virginia: his friend in a grey Tyrolean felt hat and red-chequered shirt and Lederhosen, Virginia more conventionally dressed in tweed coat, skirt and blue beret. Piers had sold his Aston-Martin and bought an old £5 bull-nosed Morris two-seater, which looked as though it had been standing out in a field for a couple of years.

  Phillip spoke to many of the farm-hands—Joby the shepherd, Ned the baliff, Mac the forester, Haylock the keeper. He saw also Captain Arkell, and Mr. Tinker of the Rising Sun. There must be nearly two hundred people present.

  For the village people it was a holiday: at last they could see inside the ‘big house’ they had known, distantly and with awe, all their lives. There they were, clumping up and down the pale wooden stairs of the servant’s quarters, deal once scrubbed with sand, water, and perhaps home-made soap of fat and potash, until the grain stood out in lines. Now they were prying into empty rooms; moving in loose procession up the wide oaken stairway from the hall, to sit on Mr. John’s bed and try the mattress. As for the village boys, they were having the time of their lives, playing hide and seek down the dark passages.

  Sitting on one of the higher stairways he tried to assemble, in orderly procession, what tasks he had set himself for the immediate future. The accepted estimate was £1,450 to put the place in habitable condition. There were to be three divisions of the house, each self-contained. In addition, and before his parents came to live there, the gardens must be made ready for spring planting.

  After that, all decaying boughs of oak and walnut in the little park must be cut, the stubs painted with Stockholm tar. All rotten wood, and shreddings from the uprooted fruit trees burnt for potash to be added to the compost heap, or heaps, ready for those cultivations.

  The reconditioning of the game-house, on the north side under the big walnut tree, was not included in the architect’s specification. Perhaps in his spare time—perhaps with Father’s help, it might be converted for a study for himself—a place apart, where he could write? It was an octagonal building with a roof rising to a point. The walls were lined with lead and spiky with a thousand rusted nails set in rows, whereon game in the remote past had been hung. Ivy darkened the broken hand-made perforated zinc sheets covering the windows. The pitch-pine wood-work was sound.

  He must work at his writing. The money made that way must flow back to the estate. That was just. The heart of the land must be restored. He had many detailed ideas for the future, including a map of the estate to be painted on plaster to be rendered on the breast of the chimney piece
of the original barton hall; an electric light plant installed, with points (put in by Ernest?) for irons, small heaters, and of course a vacuum cleaner. A new septic tank was included in the estimate, also an artesian bore to be drilled. Captain Arkell had suggested a water-softening plant, and central heating by hot air. For the children, vita-glass in the nursery windows. Say £2,000 in all. Could he manage it?

  The prospect made him a little tremulous. First, the trout book must be written. But before that, he must study the ways of fish. He knew nothing about them, really. He could read books, of course. Perhaps he could write a short novel, all action contained within a confined space, like James Joyce’s The Dead; the story of one small maid at a New Year’s party in the servants’ hall—a girl based on Felicity. He began to imagine the young girl in cottage-made carpet slippers, dreaming of love; and being betrayed by a cold hearted fornicator. He must write it as soon as he could see a clear space before him. But the thought of all that must be faced before he could attain such a space gave feelings near to suffocation: he clattered down the wooden steps in nailed shoes into the sunshine to avoid his thoughts; for he must think only of his duty to the land.

  Already a start had been made. In the courtyard, flanked by stables, coach-house, brew-house, and adjoining laundry-house, were heaps of fine gravel and a stack of bricks. As soon as the sale was over and cleared away the builder was to start. In fact, he had already begun. Wandering into the house, Phillip saw that the tapestry panels of the drawing room, shut up for so long, had already been stripped, showing the wooden framework nailed against the wall of chalk-blocks. Through the open windows he watched the crowd moving about on the lawn outside, among the parallel heaps of worn bedding, puffed up by feathers, beside rows of uncomfortable-looking attic beds with rusty, chain-harrow-like mattresses. The prevailing hue of the bedding was suet-pudding grey, but unlike boiled puddings, the masses of ticking and feather-bedding were shapeless, giving the effect of having long been moribund. It seemed that innumerable repressions and sighful thoughts still hovered over them.