The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  She stroked his hair. He hid his face, he was crying. “Oh, you poor darling, you’re tired out! You’re shivering, you’ve got a chill! I’m going to put you to bed, and give you some hot milk with brandy, and an egg beaten up. No, you can’t go back to London yet, I won’t allow it! When did you last have a square meal? Yesterday at luncheon with us! You don’t know how to take care of yourself, that’s all your trouble! Aunt Lydia was saying the other day, ‘I can’t imagine Phillip ever enjoying a good plate of roast mutton, he just lives on his own and other people’s feelings’.”

  “Is that what she said?”

  “Her very words, my dear!”

  “Then I must be a sort of vampire——”

  “No more than most men to most women! Or most women to men! Now I’m going to put you to bed with a hot water bottle. Or is that too luxurious, because the men didn’t have them in the trenches?” She led him by the hand to a bedroom, and took off his shoes. “Now, in you go, and I’ll put on a kettle for some really hot water.”

  She covered him with an eiderdown, and went into the kitchen. He heard the pop of two gas rings, then she came back and got into bed moulding herself to him for his body’s warmth, one arm around his shoulders, with her free hand stroking his hair, drawing fingers over his forehead, giving an occasional light touch of lips on brow and cheek. When he ceased to shiver she kissed his eyelids and whispered, “Now I’ll fill the bottle, and give you a nice hot drink.”

  After an hour’s sleep Phillip awoke, and feeling optimistic, left for London, with an enduring memory of the kindness of Eveline now that she was truly in love—with another man, he thought gratefully.

  *

  For some time the paper had been adding to its circulation by running a whole-page instalment every Sunday of a description of life ‘behind the veil’, written ‘automatically’ by a spiritualist medium who was a curate of the Church of England serving a parish in the London suburbs. Once a week the medium entered the office, very quietly, his eyes downheld, his lean, ascetic, pale face appearing to be the more cadaverous with its side-whiskers. Unspeaking, he went at once into Bloom’s glass office, where the two conferred behind a closed door. He was seen to give sheets of paper to Bloom, who after the visitor had departed locked them in a drawer, later to take them away to be typed outside the office. No one on the staff knew what alterations, if any, were made by Bloom. Certainly other articles which came in were sometimes rewritten.

  One morning Bloom gave Willie the typescript of an article commissioned from a Professor Soddy on the need for slum clearance as a requisite for greater factory production. “Here, put this into decent English, but don’t bring in about War Graves.”

  “There is a connexion you know, sir, between war graves and a decadent financial system which allows nearly three million men to rot on the dole in Great Britain alone!”

  “There’s a connexion between everything on this earth, young feller, but this paper ain’t the earth.”

  While Willie was putting the Soddy article into shorter sentences Ownsworth said to Phillip, “Here’s a par from The Star about the Mystery Bride Cakes at Shoreham-on-Sea. Go down to Brighton and get a story about them, what they were made for, and if they were ever used in the Channel in the war.”

  Bloom interrupted to say, “When you’ve done that, go on to the Royal Albion and see Harry Preston. Say I sent yer. Ask to see a man staying there”—Bloom gave him the name written on a piece of paper—“who’s just sold some of ’is looms to the Japs for two pounds each. The Chief particularly wants to know about this, so now’s yer chance.”

  The Mystery Bride Cakes were lying on the Shoreham shingle tongue. Made of concrete with the local pebbles, and forty or fifty feet high, each rose in diminishing tiers upon a circular base of about sixty feet in diameter. The base was formed like a honeycomb, with hollow cells, cast hexagonally. The idea had been, he learned, to tow these floating towers out to sea, and when in position, to blow out the bottom of the cells with pre-fixed charges so that each tower would sink to the bed of the Channel, and there be anchored in a line stretching from Dover to Calais. For what purpose, he asked various men about the harbour. No one knew. It seemed obvious that they were to support, against the drag of tides, a steel anti-submarine net. The war had ended before they could be used.

  Asking about them again in a pub, he heard of how the concrete on its steel framework had been strengthened: by vibrating the concrete when it was still wet in the wooden forms, all air-bubbles were shaken to the top, and so the batch was given a cohesion several times the strength of ordinary concrete which, being full of air-bubbles, was the less strong thereby. And with only round, smooth pebbles in the batch, this extra reinforcement was essential.

  He remembered that only sharp Rhineland gravel had been considered good enough for the German pillboxes; he had seen great dumps of it lying outside Langemarck station after the advance, during Third Ypres, to the Gravenstafel ridge.

  Then he recalled that bees make wax from honey by getting into clusters and fanning their wings—vibrating—in order to cause it to form into wax. That was what bee-keepers said; but how did they know the bees weren’t shaking out minute air particles?

  He wrote the story sitting on the shingle; and taking a ’bus, returned to Brighton, where at the Royal Albion he was welcomed as though he were a famous writer. Mr. Harry Preston clapped his hands and said to a waiter, “Bring a bottle of good wine!” Then to Phillip he said he would go and find the man he wanted, leaving him to look at the photographs around the walls. There was one of Harry Preston himself, a diminutive figure with large bald head, standing beside famous boxers—Carpentier, Joe Beckett, Bombardier Wells, Jimmy Wilde; again, with owners of racing stables—Solly Joel, Lord Lonsdale, Lord Derby, and a Maharajah, among others. And there he was with Arnold Bennett, Charlie Chaplin, and H. G. Wells. Prominently among the photographs was one taken beside the Prince of Wales in a boxing ring. In others he stood beside famous actresses, actors; every kind of celebrity.

  The Cotton King from Rochdale asked what Phillip wanted. Aye, he had sold some of his looms. He could have sold to the knackers for two bob a hundredweight as scrap, but the Japs had offered to take each loom apart and crate the component parts and leave the floors as they were before the looms were put up. He knew nowt about what was to happen to them afterwards.

  “Well, sir, I presume you are going to continue in the cotton-spinning business?”

  “Oh, you do, do you? What makes you think I’m going to do that, young man?”

  “I’m sorry to appear stupid, sir, but I was sent here to find out what effect the re-erection of the looms in Japan will have on your business.”

  “I can tell you that straight away. None! For this reason. The war has shown us that asbestos has a great future in industry, and ah’m going to lead t’ way! Tell Lord Castleton he needn’t worry that we’re going to add to local unemployment queues, we’re going to shorten them! We’re moving with the times, young man! That’s why ah’ve sold off my old looms. Bad times in cotton means for us reinvestment in asbestos. My grandfather founded this firm, he was a farmhand who turned grocer then weaver, and his grandson is turning to asbestos manufacture! There’s your story, and it won’t be long before the name of Sam Turner will be known throughout the world!”

  *

  Bloom glanced at the Mystery Bride Cakes story and dropped it on the floor.

  “It’s no good. It’s too fanciful. We want facts in the Weekly, not fantasies. What else’ve yer got?”

  “Well, the facts about the sale to the Japs of those looms for two pounds each are simply that they were sold as scrap——”

  “We knew that. Now yer tell me what I’m to say to the Chief.”

  “Tell him that the sale heralds the start of a great new Lancashire industry of asbestos spinning.”

  Bloom turned away, his face sagging. “Don’t yer know the Chief’s got his knife into Lloyd-George? Don’t yer know ther
e are more than half a million unemployed in the North? Don’t yer know that the Japs are rival spinners who pay wages less than a third of what Lancashire ’as to pay? Here, Ownsworth, send the other Maddison down to get the story.” He hesitated. “No, send North.”

  To Willie he said, “I’ll give yer one more chance. Go down to Kent—Ownsworth will give yer the address—and get a story of four brothers who’ve turned their garden into a foundry for casting bronze angels and other figures for war memorials.” When Willie returned, Bloom looked at the result and cried out, “Listen to this, Ownsworth! Maddison proposes to scrap what he calls all the ‘self-righteous figments of the Old Men of Europe’ and replace their memorials with a group consisting of one wounded German, French, Italian, and British soldier holding ’ands. If that would cost too much, he says, why not put a German figure on British memorials, and a British soldier on German ones.” He turned to Willie, “What world do yer live in? This one—or the next?”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Bloom, God bless you,” replied Willie, holding out his hand.

  When he had gone, Bloom was silent, reflective. Then he said to Ownsworth, “‘There is death in that hand,’ as Coleridge said when he’d shaken the hand of Keats.”

  *

  When Phillip arrived in the office the following Tuesday morning the floor was littered with coloured pictures sent in for the Children’s Painting Competition. These were out of one sack; three other unopened sacks stood by the wall. They were being judged by the office boy, who to get through the job, after ripping open the envelopes, took a glance at each painting before dropping it on the floor. This attempt to increase circulation involved several thousand entries every week. And every Tuesday Phillip had suffered at the thought of so many little children, each one eagerly hoping for a prize.

  “Have you seen the Chief’s Bulletin?” asked Ownsworth with a grin, as he pointed with his nose at the typescript carbon-copy pinned to the inside of the door.

  The paper will have to be much more full of items and italic paragraphs in future. It has become obvious that the crushing increase of expenses will necessitate the devotion of more space to advertisements. I have held out against this procedure as long as possible, but we must either increase the price of the paper or increase the amount of advertising. Of the two expedients I am decidedly in favour of giving more advertisements. I doubt if the newspapers of Great Britain were ever in such a bad way as they are today. The selling up of Hassells is a sign of the times. I hear that other such sales are coming.

  We went into the astounding editorial expenses of The Weekly Courier yesterday and I cannot understand why Bloom, who is naturally for many and obvious reasons, a keen man of business (and is paid by results, and partly paid by commission on the profits) should encourage such wastefulness.

  In the case of The Weekly Courier it was put before me yesterday whether it should be reduced to twelve pages or should give more advertisements, but at Bloom’s present rate of expenses the paper can never pay in any circumstances.

  The Editor stood at the door of his glass cage and addressed the three men and one woman of the reporting team. He was as usual laconic and to the point. “Two of yer will have to go. I’m sorry but I can’t help it.” He went back to his desk.

  Phillip knew that one would be himself, and another the Anglicised-French woman reporter, Miss Vivienne Lecomte, a spinster half-way through life, who seldom was visible in the office, being on space for special woman-appeal articles. And so it turned out.

  “I’ll take yer Light Car Notes,” said Bloom to Phillip, “but after this week yer’ll have to go.”

  “Merely out of curiosity, may I ask how the fact of two unsalaried reporters leaving will help to cut down the ‘astounding’ editorial expenses, Mr. Bloom?”

  “Don’t ask me, ask the Chief! I’ll tell yer what, I’ll take yer to Heath Hosken, who does the serials, and ask him to look at yer novel. Are yer still writin’ fiction?”

  “Yes, but I don’t suppose it will be the sort of thing the public will want.”

  “Well, yer writin’ for the public, ain’t yer? Come downstairs and meet Hosken.”

  Mr. Heath Hosken was an educated man, quiet and kindly. He wrote serials jointly with his wife, with romantic scenes in France, and motoring on the “great open road”. He took the Tss home which Phillip brought up the next day, and after two further days said that it was the wrong form for a serial, which had to have a curtain at the end of every instalment, but it should do well with a publisher.

  Chapter 5

  FAITH, HOPE AND CLARITY

  Sept. 28. Willie, walking with me in the Adelphi Gardens this afternoon, suddenly fell down in a fit. He has been sleeping out at night on the Embankment, and eating almost nothing. An ambulance took him to Charing Cross Hospital, where I waited until he regained consciousness. He goes home to Uncle John (he asked for his father when he first opened his eyes) tomorrow.

  As for me, I am out of work but trying to free-lance. What hopes?

  I am held up over my country novel.

  Oct. 1. Cannot write. No inclination. Leaves of the forest trees changing colour: oak leaves buff; elms patchy yellow; ash streaked with vermilion.

  Oct. 5. What is the use of writing in this journal?

  Oct. 16. My first novel, the one I began at Shorncliffe, which Anders Norse says is ‘a beautiful book’—has been turned down by Rabbitsons. It is only fair to say that Anders had nothing to do with the Tss being sent there. I’m glad Rabbitsons won’t have it. Of all the slap-dash dismal-looking offices in the shade of St. Paul’s! Twice I went there, and waited ¾-hour on both occasions, having stated my business to a pig-tailed flapper who was eating sweets in the Enquiry Box.

  Eventually a fat, clean-shaven youth of 20 or so, pince-nez’d and with brushed back tresses, came out and condoled with me. I suggested to him that he would be sorry. He agreed that he might, saying that they had turned down Ian Hay. “But I haven’t read your book myself,” he explained. I imagined that it would not interest him, since he wore a blue serge suit, pink shirt and collar, and black butterfly tie. His face had the pink of a well-scrubbed pig’s cheeks—after the pig’s death. But I am prejudiced to write like this; I needed only to pull out that ready-made bow-tie on its elastic, in the manner of Dr. T., say “You nasty fellow!” to round off my snobbish superficiality.

  Anders is sending the novel to Dipp, Sons, and Peddle, publishers of medical books who are going in for fiction.

  On going home, I found a proof of A Devon Night, from Austin Harrison. Good!

  In Monks House today one of the Chief’s hard-baked Scottish business directors came up the lift with Herman L., occasional space-reporter on The Weekly Courier. He asked him if he was a Jew. Later Bloom said to Herman L., “You’re sacked.”

  “Why, Mr. Bloom?”

  “Because yer a Jew.”

  “But—aren’t you a Jew, Mr. Bloom?”

  “Yes, but the difference is that I’m a Jew with a contract!”

  This hard-headed Glaswegian edits some of the weekly two-pennies in the Conglomerated Press in River House. North and others in Monks House write occasionally for ‘Robbie’ Black. Black pays 15/-a column on condition that they pay him 2/6 a column secret commission. Black runs a Rolls-Royce and talks about ‘dirty little Yidds’—another robin furiously pecking its own image in a looking-glass.

  Oct. 20. There has been a FOR SALE board outside in the front privet hedge for a few weeks now. Mother says she has had a good offer. I gave her this journal to read. Mother—whom I imagine to have been like Spica when a young woman, but without Spica’s strength of mind—said that “Spica must have a beautiful and understanding soul”, and that she has many times a more genuine affection for me than I have for her.

  Oct. 22. It is foggy and cold: I shall soon be homeless (for I don’t like to ask to be allowed to go back next door).

  Nov. 1. Austin Harrison has published A Devon Night in The English Review! I get no paym
ent for it, but want none. MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, died on 25 October, in Brixton Prison.

  Nov. 7. Still doing Motor Notes, and have had two articles (£2/2/-each) in London evening papers. Fine day, so motored down to Hastings, for an essay on The Sea.

  Rough Notes.

  Ripples sliding and slipping in silver plashings on edge of shingle. Sea calm and level, ships seem to float on air just above mist-silver sea-sky line. Breath of summer wind, summer’s ghost wind grieving for lost migrants fallen in the sea, wind of swallows’ wings in memory.

  On the way home I diverted to Westerham and went into the Park where Desmond and I were so very very happy as boys together. ‘Only my own ghost to meet me by every hedge’.

  Notes.

  Dislustred gold of oaks in distance—birches graceful, white boles distinct—songs of robins—oval slips of willow leaves in water recently fallen, those sunken, brown or green—sycamore seeds twirling down with every drift of wind—reeds bent and like old Roman swords, or rather the spears of Britons thrown like Arthur’s sword into the lake—water clear and deep, sunlight showing decaying leaves, moist velvet—ripples of moorhens in the middle, silent and feeding—jay screaming like tearing linen—drooping arch of bramble, some leaves red and wine-stained—willow vands (Canadian) turning yellow-red, the colour of the sun through the mist, their buds sheathed with dot-like insects lying against them—no spiders, but an occasional wasp and bluebottle fly—elms yellow (lutreous) scales or flakes of gold dropping from the branches—wren like a moth fluttering silent through them, then chit-chit, the fieldfares and redwings are here. Flocks of goldfinches sip and twitter as I walk up the hill from the lake, to the solitude of the forest, silent save for a leaf falling, quite a noise when it was from a chestnut. I saw a big dandelion beside a withered mushroom in the rusted, saturated grass. Looking up under a beech tree, veins of each leaf were distinct, a rich brown, crisp—while above a family of longtailed titmice was roving.