The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  “I’ll help if I can. What is the interview on?”

  “Do you think——. No, I’m awfully sorry, it is a ridiculous subject. I’ll go now, sir.”

  “Why not tell me?”

  “Do you think—— Well—my Editor asked me to find out if side-whiskers—as a fashion I mean—are—well—likely to return.”

  The Minister of Labour looked at him.

  “I mean—likely to be fashionable again, sir?”

  Another pause. Then the Minister said, “Oh, yes, I understand what you mean. Sit down, won’t you, and have a cigarette.” He noticed the trembling of the hand that took one. “What is your name?”

  “William Maddison, sir.”

  “Come with me, Maddison.” He led the way to the charts on the wall. “Do you see these, Maddison? They are the numbers of men who want work. Many of them are in despair. The great majority of them are ex-service men, Maddison.”

  “Yes, sir. Two years ago they were about to break the Hindenburg Line, now they are breaking their hearts.”

  “Well said, my friend! Well said! And yet, knowing that, you can come here to a man who is trying with all his heart to help these poor fellows, to ask him to give you material for an article on ‘Are Side Whiskers coming into Fashion?’”

  Willie attempted a joke about side-whiskers and beards coming into fashion owing to the number of unemployed who couldn’t afford to buy razor or soap. But the Minister was held by the irony of it, and apparently did not hear what was said, for he replied, “I am afraid I cannot talk to you about whiskers, Maddison. I am very busy, Maddison.”

  “Thank you, sir. I ought to have known better.” He went to the door, and said, “I know better now. There will be one more on that chart next week. Good afternoon, sir.”

  “Ah! That is a different story, Maddison. I will give you a real interview if you like, and will help you all I can; but side-whiskers! No, no! Don’t apologise again, my dear boy!”

  “I must thank you for giving me an idea for an article, sir.”

  “If I am not mistaken, I shall read it with the keenest interest, Maddison!”

  “If my Editor will print it, sir.”

  He returned slowly to Monks House.

  “What’ve yer got?”

  “A story about the great number of ex-soldiers who——”

  Bloom turned away. “You’re a time-waster. Go down to relieve the other Maddison outside Brixton prison. Tell him to come back here. Telephone the news-room if MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, dies. They say he’s getting very weak.”

  “How long do I wait?”

  “We’ll hold the final London edition for a fudge until midnight. Telephone me in any case at ten to twelve.”

  Poor MacSwiney is still hunger-striking in that terrible Brixton goal. I waited there six hours, until relieved by Willie. A few wild Irishmen Sinn-Fein patriots, waiting also. Here is classic tragedy in direct action. A great-hearted man being done to death by a system which lacks magnanimity. The police who guard the dismal prison are forced to be brutal. The only solution, as Willie says, is Christ. His spirit, or that which He died for, is everywhere, lurking in undiscovered, vague parts of the people’s hearts. The drift of the ages slowly uncovers it from behind fear. The only way is to know your enemy for yourself. Then in losing the world, one gains it truly. One is then free.

  I know this: I, who was once an atheist, have seen the spirit of Christ in No-man’s land, in the body of Father Aloysius, who was killed in the outpost line of the Schwaben redoubt four years ago.

  One day I will be able to publish what I truly have seen and felt.

  Willie quoted a wonderful phrase of Winston Churchill’s written after the Boer War: “The grass grows green upon the battlefield; but upon the scaffold, never.”

  Needless to say, neither of our stories was printed in the paper.

  Phillip left some country notes in a drawer in the office table before he left on Saturday night, and when he reappeared on the Tuesday Bloom called him in and said, pointing to the notes, “Did yer write this, Maddison, for the paper?”

  “No, it’s a private note.”

  “Tell yer what,” said Bloom, passing over the sheet of paper, “you write me a piece on the country about two hundred words and I’ll put it on the article page at the bottom and pay you a guinea and a half. Only not too many airy ziffers, mind. And tell ’em something!”

  After the first article, a description of the wild coast-line of Dymchurch, Phillip got a letter in the small, even writing he knew so well, and seeing it felt stricken, afraid to open the envelope: unable to face good news; unable to face bad news.

  Folkestone.

  Sept. 5.

  Dear Phillip

  Don’t think that you thrust unwanted affection on me. You see, dear, there is a part of you that to me is extraordinarily beautiful, and a tenderness such as I have longed for and never thought to find. Do you think that I who believe in you and who have held your head against my heart am without tenderness for you? Do you know that you never go forth in the morning but that I have wondered how the day will go with you, and that every night as I lie down I pray that you may be pure in spirit. If I had only known why you wanted to kiss me at Dymchurch I should have kissed you as I have always wanted to kiss you. But there is another part of you, call it egotistical, independable, what you like—against which everyone who likes you strives, and Mother is quite right when she says I am bad for you, because I am so like you that I understand a great deal, and though I know it is a wrong part of you yet I understand it in a way, too. Which is cruel of me because I know you could not possibly ever be happy until you have gone a great way further to conquering it.

  It is true: in this thing I am bad for you, and since the battle is all from within and is deadly hard if one cannot help, it is all the baser to hinder. That is why I say “No, Phillip”, because it is a woman’s business to help a man on and not to hinder through selfish desire.

  Mother told me to send you her love. Do you know these last days whenever she sits silent and I ask her what is the matter or what she is thinking about she says “Phillip”. She says come down again later on.

  At this point he threw aside the letter, striving to think what she meant. What was behind the generalisation ‘a wrong part of you’ which had to be conquered? Obviously they all thought he was wrong in something. What was that something? The fact that he could not accept the world as it was—including the manner in which news was concocted? He recalled Dr. Trevelian’s half-scornful, half-joking remark when he had pulled at his new butterfly tie, and found it was ready-made-up, and on elastic. “You nasty man——,” Dr. Trevelian had said semi-playfully, semi-seriously, a remark in keeping with the snobbish attitude of Punch, with its recent ‘joke’ under the caption of Fashion Note. ‘The correct wear with the celluloid collar is not one’s college colours but the gent’s natty, ready-made-up bow-tie.’ Punch, which made out every farm labourer and working man to be a semi-idiot, or at best a sub-species of homo sapiens. “You nasty man” … after he had bought his first bow-tie, hurriedly, knowing nothing about fashions … Dr. Trevelian who kept the wretched gentleman tethered in his house, the ‘idiot’ from an aristocratic family at the mercy of upper middle-class inverted snobbery. Shades of Lord Satchville! He had had nothing to say to Dr. Trevelian because he could say nothing to him. There was no link between them. Nor, really, with Mrs. Trevelian and her utter blankness of mind to The Hound of Heaven.

  “Damn them!” he shouted.

  Then calming himself, he tried to think. How much did Spica really understand? Could she not see that his real self was the one who had written about Dymchurch? Not the joking fool in dog-off-chain mood assumed to avoid the deadly conventional attitudes, the manner of good form without the matter, of upper middle-class Forsytes whom Galsworthy could not tolerate—Galsworthy’s own people, the Forsytes who had driven him into the wilderness. Property was the root of all evil for Galsworthy, or
rather the money of the arrivistes.

  Arriviste was a term Phillip had heard in discussions at the Parnassus Club, together with parvenu, literati, cognoscenti, and other expressions of the literary gentry.

  “Damn them!—damn them!! DAMN THEM ALL,” he shouted, and screwed up the letter. Then he picked it up again, and smoothed it out, reproaching himself for his callousness. Poor Tabitha Trevelian, she was still only a child. He read on, feeling distant from her.

  Work steadily for a month or two anyway. This is not because it is better for you mentally and bodily. And don’t feel lonely if it is any comfort to know that I think about you. Oh, my dear, I do so want you to be good and great. Sometimes I think how in two or three years’ time people will be acknowledging you as an author, and then comes a little whisper of a thought that the true character will be there.

  Dear Knight, if you ride with Strix Ulula for squire alone, do you not think that the lady at her window weaving her tapestries sends a loving thought to that little band as it goes by, since it surely goes to battle?

  Good night, Phillip. Bless you.

  Spica.

  Sept. 6. It has just occurred to me that I have behaved abominably at Folkestone. In the first place, no one knew who I was. Naturally, any mother would be rather suspicious of a fast and furiously emotional affaire with her daughter, having heard that more or less the same thing had happened with a cousin of theirs some months previously. Again, after the several times I stayed there I never bothered to write and thank Mrs. T. for her kindness. Frankly, I forgot all about it in the renaissance of my lyrical emotion since the end of the war. Then again, often I wanted to go out after midnight for a walk. I can quite understand how she has mixed feelings about me! I suppose this is what Spica means when she writes of my ‘egotistical, independable side’. Poor child—in standing up for me she must have had an awful lot to contend with—and yet I, in my blind individualism, reproached her for not sticking to me. Who the devil am I, anyway?

  I hate myself, loathing my gaucherie.

  Early the next morning Phillip awoke as usual at dawn, and turned to look at the liquid gold swimming between pearly clouds above the garden fence. The french windows were wide open, since he liked to go to sleep seeing the stars and hearing the leaves moving.

  Now there was a commotion among the small birds. Titmice were wheezing, blackbirds and thrushes scolding, robins going t’jit-t’jit. He thought it was a cat, possibly his father’s favourite Zippy, and flung a shoe at the fence. Then a reddish-brown object, with feathery, pendulous feet, flapped away across the grass. Strix Ulula! A tawny owl, roosting near him! Immediately his loneliness was gone, and joy flowed in like the light into the sky.

  It was his day off, and after breakfast he climbed the fence and explored the elm coppice behind his father’s house, seeing the owl perched against a trunk. The wide black eyes in the cranked head peered down at him. He hooted softly, willing the bird to float down and perch on his shoulder. But although he directed all his thought to the bird sitting there huddled in its feathers, there was no response.

  Earlier that year he had scattered bluebell seeds on the leaf-mould under the trees, with yellow goat’s-beard and rose-bay willow-herb seeds among the tangled grasses of the Backfield, hoping to bring back that which had passed away with his boyhood. This area of waste land of olden time had been enclosed by a builder when Phillip was eight years old; the idea of enclosure being that after twenty years the builder would be able to claim the six acres under a squatter’s title.

  Sept. 12. A beautiful day; the return of Proserpine with a baby in her arms, to gaze at the beauty, still dwelling in spirit, which faded at summer’s end to form new life—the seeds; the chrysalises under ground that shall be the butterflies of next summer; the floating spheres of dandelion bloom—heritage of the child image of Proserpine.

  Like Spring, the blue sky, swept of cloud by the wind—that spirit of fled flowers and dead animals—like April. I almost saw the white cloaks of the May trees, and heard the song of the chaffinch.

  (I am writing by paraffin lamp. It is dusk outside: 8.30 o’clock. An owl nearly flew in my open window, my tawny owl. It cried te-jeck, te-jeck, whoo-ick four times, then fanned away in silence over the Backfield. My heart-throbbed—my beautiful Strix Ulula come to me. I do like to think that he knows how lonely I am. Why does he call every night, as he flies across the open window? He has no mate to call or invite: why then? Does he somehow get vibrations of my thoughts, or rather natural sympathy? Has he looked in this room while I slept, and recognised a known and living object harmless to him?)

  I have paused five minutes. I do not know what to write. I am so happy. There is a man somewhere in the gardens down the road burning stalks and roots; a heavy fumous vapour drags itself through the chilling autumn evening. The smell is acrid, yet pleasant. A goods train is rattling on the line somewhere below, worn-out war-time rolling stock. Children, who have been kicking a ball about in the road two hundred yards away, are silent.

  I am so happy, I could write all night! Oh, the joy of thought; of lifting one’s ideas to the stars, projecting one’s spirit into the darkness with an owl!

  He stopped writing, suddenly exhausted. He had intended to copy it out, as a letter, and send it to Spica. But no, it was hopeless.

  The next day, a Monday, he went to Folkestone, ostensibly to say goodbye to Lionel Fairfax who was about to leave for his job at Accra. Arriving at the flat, Phillip was asked to stay to breakfast; then to spend the morning with them. It was extended to the afternoon, the evening. That night he took a room in a small hotel, but hardly slept. The next day he went to the station with Lionel and Eveline, and returned with her to the flat, meaning to go back to London at midday. It was Tuesday, he was due at Monks House. No matter.

  “Poor old boy,” said Eveline, “it’s not a very good job he’s got this time. Last time we sent him off, he was still soldiering, a year ago this month, remember?” Seeing the puzzlement on Phillip’s face she laughed, putting her hand on his arm. “Of course, it was Willie who saw Lionel off with me, to the Middle East! Oh Pillee, don’t look so rueful! That’s right, smile old boy, life is short, life is sweet, brother!” She became pensive. “Pillee, can you keep a secret? Cross your heart? Lionel has agreed to be divorced, and then I shall marry Naps Spreycombe. Remember him?”

  “I don’t think I ever met him, Eve.”

  “Surely you have? Oh, I’m mixing you up with Willie again. But wait a moment. I saw you when I was with Naps at the Victory Ball! Of course you were there, too! I remember now. So many faces crowding on poor little me! I was drunk, I haven’t the least idea what I said to you, Pillee. You turned up, didn’t you, to keep a promise! I was simply beastly to you. Poor, faithful Pillee!”

  “Oh, I deserved the snubbing, Eve.”

  “There you go, blaming only yourself! I was horrible to you, I remember now. Forgive me, Pillee my sweet. Yes, I’m going to marry Naps, and do you know why? He never hurts my feelings! I read that in Richard King’s article in The Tatler. Do you agree? He said that that’s his definition of true love, when you never hurt the beloved’s feelings, and he never hurts yours. So they feel quite safe with each other, and to adapt the words of Jackie Fisher, never have to explain, never have to apologise. It’s rec-reci—what’s the word, I never know it—reciprosicating, is that right?”

  “Yes, I agree, Eve.”

  “You look so sad, Pillee. How goes it with Tibby?”

  “It’s over, I think.”

  “Did you make love to her?”

  “In my own way, I did.”

  “Did you kiss her?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Did she ever hurt your feelings? Did she, Pillee? Look at me. I’m not being just curious, I want to help you.” He felt a second shock when she said, “I know you hurt her feelings, Pillee.”

  “Yes, I suppose I did.” Then, in despair, “But how?”

  “Were you always happy togeth
er, when by yourselves? Really happy?”

  “I think so. Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps you were too considerate! Always the gentleman!”

  “Can one be too considerate?”

  “Oh, yes, if one goes beyond nature. The trouble with you is that you are too nice, Pillee.” She helped herself to another whisky-and-soda. “And you don’t see how most women are cats, thoroughly selfish where their own desires are concerned. I know what I’m talking about! I’ve been a cat most of my life! I was always looking for the ideal man. You wait until the right girl comes along. I’ll tell you how you’ll recognise her when you do meet her. She’ll seem quiet and ordinary at first, and you’ll find things in common, more and more, also you’ll be at ease with her from the word go. You’ll feel ordinary, too, you won’t feel that you have to be on your best behaviour, to make an impression. You’ll be just your true self. That’s how I always feel with Naps. He makes me laugh, bless him. He was the first man in my life; I was a skivvy in his mother’s house, didn’t I tell you?” She sat up and said with mock pride, “I was assistant still-room maid, and felt very proud of myself!” She stretched like a cat, and went on, with a brilliant smile, “One morning I met the Heir face to face, and he asked me to get into bed with him. Which I did, thinking that it was the thing to do, since he was the ‘Young Lord’. But her Ladyship told the housekeeper to give me the sack, and out I went and married Lionel! When Naps came back I wanted to pay him out, so I played about to put him out of mind.” She drained her glass. “Yes, I’ve loved many men, including you, Pillee. Oh yes, I did love you, for a long, long time.”

  “I loved you, too, Eve.”

  “Help yourself to another drink, and come and sit beside me! That’s right! Now I can look at your blue, blue eyes. Oh, darling, don’t look so sad!” She kissed him on the cheek. “I want to comfort you, Pillee. If Tibby really loves you, she will come to you. Now rest your poor head, don’t think any more, just lie still.”