However, all was well. Poppett, as the others called her, explained that she had been with the sculptor after he had done her head in his studio, and he had taken offence at Anders Norse for showing her his gold sovereigns. He was, she said, a jealous creature, and since she had been his guest she had left when he had abruptly got up to go; although she would much rather have remained with him, Phillip.
After drinking beer at an inn they set out along a lane, coming eventually to the woods. Here, in single file, silently, they followed Phillip’s lead down a drive, under half-bare trees—Broughton, a free-lance journalist; Otis P. Quick, an American newspaper correspondent; Poppett, walking gracefully—she was training for the ballet; and at the rear, seldom speaking, Willie.
So through the woods, and Poppett, Phillip thought, was their queen. When they came to the common beyond the last covert the queen was holding a hand each of Broughton and Quick swinging along beside her. At the Greyhound Inn near the windmill they stopped for half-pints. Poppett asked for ginger ale, to Phillip’s secret approval.
When they got to the chalk quarry they saw a hare, disturbed in its form down one grassy slope, springing away before them. Phillip asked them to stand still. Obviously it had missed its usual run, he said, perhaps its line had been crossed earlier in the day by fox or stoat.
“If that had happened, it would have sheered off sideways with a leap,” said Willie.
They watched it racing down into the arena beyond, where the chalk sides of the quarry were sheer.
“Come on!” cried Broughton, as the hare rushed all ways in fear, trying to leap up the precipitous sides, but always falling back. Broughton and Quick closed in on it, while the animal’s efforts grew more frenzied.
Suddenly Willie yelled, “Why don’t you bloody idiots leave it alone?” Quick, who was advancing with outspread hands, looked round as though startled. Just then the hare doubled back and passed between them, ears flat on head, great brown eyes staring back in terror as it sped away.
“Pardon me,” said Quick, “I thought we were hunting it.”
“Hasn’t enough blood already flowed on the face of the earth?” cried Willie, as he turned and walked away.
“No, don’t go after him, Quick. He’ll come back.”
Phillip had left some sticks to dry in the cottage, and soon had a fire going. When the flames were roaring up the chimney he went out and returned with Willie, who apologised for his bad temper. Sandwiches were eaten: four men and a girl enlivened by food and warmth, each man wanting to be favoured especially, but one entirely concealing the fact. They sat there until the sun went down beyond the lip of the quarry, the men sprawled upon the floor, the girl with her back to one wall, legs crossed at the ankle.
“Do you honestly intend to live here alone and write?” said Poppett, moving to Phillip’s side.
“Why not? It’s quiet, and no one ever comes here, except me.”
A noise came from the other room, like a hand tapping on a window. Willie and Phillip looked at one another, pretending to be alarmed. Poppett and the other two men refused to be scared.
“Pough, it’s only the wind,” said Broughton. He had a large face inclined to be spotty, but was sensitive and intelligent.
Phillip read a short story he had written about a falcon.
“Gee,” said Quick, “one of our American magazines will take that, I guess! It’s great, Phillip!”
Phillip hoped Poppett would say something; she was now lying with the top of her head pillow’d on his trench-coat against the wainscoting. But she made no comment. He heaped up the fire. Willie went outside into the dusk to get more sticks.
They asked about him, and Phillip said, “He’s a genius, I think. He can write brilliantly, but his mind is set on altering the entire way of thinking in the world. He thinks that Lenin has an affinity with Jesus, who was a revolutionary who failed.”
“I see Jesus as one who tried to get people to alter themselves, and so change their own world,” said Quick.
“So do I,” replied Phillip. “But you won’t mention what I said, will you, when he comes back?”
He felt alarmed when Willie did not return, and went outside to find him; but there was no sign of his cousin. Had Willie felt that the talk was too mundane, as he himself had felt it to be in the Trevelians’ house in Folkestone? Looking through the window he saw Broughton’s arm round Poppett. Broughton had bagged his place, damn him! With his other hand he was stroking her hair. Oh well, if she was like that——
He pottered about outside, while the rising moon’s glow made black the broken-down gate leading to the quarry. He realized that he was refusing to be one of a crowd about Poppett, to whom he was beginning to feel attracted; and after awhile went back with his armful of sticks. These kept the fire going, while he lay apart on a copy of The Observer.
“Why remain out in the cold?” Poppett asked. He joined the circle, sitting back to back with her and feeling confidence rising in him from that position.
The moon swam above the thorn-hedge and illumined the quarry. A pallor came through the broken casement. Quick, the American, lay on his back, talking as ever (he and Broughton had argued during most of the walk). His dark curly head lay on Poppett’s lap, and Phillip was aware of her left hand stroking it at regular intervals—a ration issue, he thought.
“I’m getting cramp,” said Poppett, after awhile. “Let’s change position.” Phillip then lay against the wall and Poppett settled herself against his chest. He put his arms round her, and leant his cheek against hers over her right shoulder. It was warm and soft. Twice she turned slightly and kissed him gently. During the walk she had told him that she was engaged to an Indian Army subaltern stationed at Quetta. By this time Phillip was a little doubtful about the validity of this engagement.
Broughton lay on Poppett’s right flank, his left cheek on her thigh, one hand on her skirt just above the knee—a strong point in the position. This party petting was quite new to Phillip; it was post-war freedom, apparently. Rather sweet, he thought.
The firelight lit the damp walls with their peeling paper; he felt a shared happiness. He quoted Jefferies’ “I should like to be loved by every beautiful woman on earth”.
Poppett said, “I should like to be loved by every man on the earth.”
He felt that they all understood what she meant. The conversation was natural, frank boy-and-girl stuff, free from mawkishness or direct sex-intention. All of them were a little starved of affection, and Poppett was their queen. As for his previous thoughts about the Indian Army subaltern at Quetta—they were puritanical and unworthy. This was innocent and—delightful.
“I’ve got another thing I wrote. Oh, but it will bore you.”
“What’s it about?” asked Poppett.
“A scene in the Café Royal in the winter of 1915/16. On two occasions I saw Tenby Jones, the painter, with a different model. I was with two beautiful mannequins from Debenham and Freebody’s, and Jones watched us.”
“Read it!” cried Poppett. “Tenby Jones wants to paint me.”
“Does he, by God!” exclaimed Broughton. “I know what that means!”
“So do I,” said Phillip.
“Well, why not?” said Poppett. “It’s a privilege to be painted by a great artist, isn’t it?”
“He paints in several dimensions,” suggested Phillip.
“What does that mean?”
“Well, in at least two directions. In two media, shall we say.”
“You talk in riddles.”
“While Tenby Jones does the riddling,” suggested Broughton, adding, “not if I know it!”
“Pouff!” said Poppett. “Come on, P.M., read your piece!”
He put the rest of the sticks on the fire, waited for flame to light the MSS, and then read in a low voice which became animated as the scene arose again before him.
The right arm of the painter with a red beard was extended protectively along the back of the plush settee, behind,
but not touching, the neck of the young model he was courting. He was apparently absorbed in the face, with its shining eyes, of his companion; but the foxy part of his mind was also watching a couple seated half a dozen yards away from him. He had been attracted by the carriage of the young woman when she entered with the beardless boy whose ingenuous expression revealed an unformed character.
The painter, a mature man, considered that the girl with the youth was about twenty years old, a virgin, and by the protective attitude shown towards her callow companion she was ready to fall in love with him.
The painter, known among the fraternity as the Lion of Chelsea, lived for beauty in art and nature, and found much of both, not unnaturally, in first the presence and then the bodies of young women. Yet he was no mere cold-hearted copulator; on the contrary, his instinct for procreation could only truly, that is delightfully, be aroused to action by the thought of fatherhood. About forty years old, he was said to be the father of over a dozen children by his wife and constant mistress, as well as other young women, none of whom when pregnant did he desert, or seek to avoid paternity; indeed, the mothers and their babies lived together for as long as it suited them: a natural tribe, wild and happy. Consequently, among the cold-hearted of the kind from whom he had fled in his youth the painter was held to be a feckless, immoral fellow. In return, he had rejected the criticisms of the respectable and puritanical, and employing for himself a reversal of their standards, regarded their judgments as a compliment.
The eyes in the bearded face held near that of the young model often glanced impersonally in the direction of the young woman who sat upright beside the tall, thin subaltern at one of the marble-topped tables. What a neck, he was thinking, what carriage of head: with what instinctive pride did she compose, and then hold herself!
He perceived a classic regularity of line in her features, a balance of bone and flesh.
He began to imagine her nude before him, so that he might achieve one of those inspirations of line, with charcoal upon cartridge paper, in search of which the life within him was dedicated. He could see the shoulders under the jacket—itself a charmingly slender copy of a man’s jacket—the full bust, the waist with the slight swelling of the belly, the curving fullness of the thighs created to draw forth, with everlasting anguish of life within the impulse, the gametes nourished by the blood of the male. A well-bred young woman; a calm, grave vehicle of female instincts, which were spiritual, as all beauty was spiritual.
What did the inhibited youth, avoiding her with self-reflective eyes, know of the passion which upheld in life the spirit of beauty? He and hundreds of thousands like him would dung with rotten death the fields of Europe, without ever having known the reason why they had been born——
“Hi!” breathed the model beside the painter’s beard. “A penny for them!”
“I am thinking of that young fellow, and how he is barred by his upbringing from accepting the gifts of nature offered instinctively by that young virgin.”
“How do you know she is a virgin?”
“I see in her face the naturalness of a child brought up with loving care by parents who respect one another. Now in the young man’s face I perceive Blake’s ‘marks of woe’, which have produced the puritan conscience. The puritan conscience is entoiled by romantic abstractions, the curse of art and life.”
“What does all that mean, my pet?”
“That I love you, my dove.”
The painter, his dove within one encircling arm, continued to watch with the eyes of a fox above the bracken of moustachios and beard. (Was his own father clean-shaven?)
The scene fades; maroons are heard off; the room empties, save for fox, dove, virgin, and romantic subaltern. A candle is brought by a waiter; anti-aircraft guns are heard; all electric lights go out; the candle is lit. It burns with its multi-images in the parallel wall mirrors.
A bomb is heard cork-screwing down; the air jumps, the candle flame claps out.
Silence; then mysteriously the candle flame creeps up the wick; again the painter is seen sitting there, with a new model, but similarly bright-eyed. And opposite sits the same young soldier, this time with two girls, and a Canadian in R.N.A.S. uniform. The painter recognises the original girl, the other is superficially pretty, and the soldier is attracted to her by reason of her romantic prettiness.
Painter, arm round model: “See, my dove, how the callow soldier stiffens his puritanically vacant face to the little bit of fluff—regarding the ignis fatuus for the substance. The substance being that brunette.”
“Oh, that’s Frances!” exclaims the model, and then claps hand to mouth. She whispers, “With Alice! They were mannequins in Debenham and Freebody’s when I worked there!”
“Hush, my dove. Let us watch the comedy.”
The Canadian flier orders brandies in a loud, Rocky Mountain voice. The girls sip their drinks; the flier tosses back his, and smacks his lips; the young soldier pours his down his throat, then makes an involuntary wry face.
“It’s only in his head that he thinks he wants Fluffy,” whispers the fox to the dove. “The ideal of all soldiery is a little bit of fluff. This bit has a price on her virtue: a register marriage, but vaguely, because it’s the fashion to be a war-bride. She’s playing him off Canadian granite, she’s a tease. He probably wants her in the mode of La Vie Parisienne. Little boys in khaki want to creep back, for a moment’s oblivion from deracination, into the womb. They seek release from the tensions of death-thoughts through sensation. Tenderness, life in the body, giving themselves to Mother Eve, who desires their seed for her children, no! They fear the darkness. So harlots increase in war-time, and sad little funny Bairnsfather pictures about better ’oles are popular.”
The fox touches the brow of the dove with the hairs of his lip. Her shining eyes gaze back at him, smiling as she turns her head to touch with her lips the wrist of his protecting arm. So she seals him for herself, and draws forth the magic incantation, “Would you like a baby by me?”
Her eyes close, her lips whisper, “I adore you. You are a lamb.”
All interest in the commonplace group a few yards away is gone. A miracle has occurred. The fox is now the lamb, ready to lie down with the lioness.
He folded the typed sheets and put them in his poacher pocket. “I thought it might one day make a scene for a play.”
“How thrilling! When I see it from the pit, I’ll tell people that I sat beside the author in a broken-down hovel in Kent!” said Poppett.
“It’s damned good,” said Broughton.
“Gee, you’ve got talent, Phillip!” exclaimed Quick.
“You’re a dark horse,” murmured Poppett, taking his hand and kissing it.
Through the open window came the mellow calls of wood owls hunting in faraway woods, then darkening clouds filtered a dim moonlight.
“How about getting back?” said Broughton.
“Can you wait a little longer for my cousin?”
They waited for Willie until after 8 p.m., then left, regretfully. At first they walked in pairs, Quick and Broughton in front and arguing again, Phillip and Poppett following, holding hands. Without intention on Phillip’s part they lost the others on Reynard’s Common, and entered the woods by themselves. As they swung along one of the rides through a covert Poppett said, “Look here, how much longer am I to call you ‘P.M.’? It sounds like Number Ten Downing Street. Can’t I call you something else?”
“How about A.M.? Or simply ‘you’? Or ‘Maddison’?”
“Oh, all right, you beast! Why didn’t you look at me in the Café Royal that time?”
“When you were with the sculptor? I thought you much too grand!”
“Rubbish!”
They walked through moon shadows of oak, chestnut, and hazel, walking level but a foot apart and unspeaking. At last, “Poppett, please call me Phillip.”
“Yes, Phillip.”
“Now you’ll simply have to come down to my cottage in Devon!”
&nb
sp; “I’d love to.”
“Why not, then?”
“Haven’t you got a bad name in the district? You know, lots of gay ladies from the town?”
“Hundreds!”
“How far do you go with them?”
“Oh—oh——” pensively, “we’re pretty good friends.”
“There was one, wasn’t there? That woman you call Pauline in that typescript of the novel you lent to ‘Sappho’?”
“Did Mrs. Portal-Welch let you see it?”
“Bits of it. Tell me, are you good friends now?”
“Our love affaire, dear Poppett, is ended. That is to say, we are on really good terms at last.”
“I wonder what you call really good terms——” Darkly, “I wonder if you understand women, Phillip!”
“‘The drive was dim with moonlight, and the sighful trees lost a leaf, then another leaf, as the dew-weight increased.’ Do you remember that in the typescript? It was an exact description of a walk through this very wood. Stop a moment and listen.”
They heard slight noises of wet leaves breaking off, and falling.
“I couldn’t come alone with you to your cottage, could I, Phillip? What would people say?”
“You see, it’s the dew which causes the stalk to break!”
“Oh, you are a beast!”
“‘What would people say?’ Well, we could be in a party! Then I’d not be responsible for anyone’s actions.”
“You are cautious, aren’t you?”
“Cautious! Wait until you’ve been on the back of my motor-bike, doing seventy-two on the level, seventy-eight down hills, and ninety over cliffs!”
“Ra-ther! I am a fast girl, didn’t you know? The faster you go, the better for me! I say, are we nearly at the end of the wood?”
“Not yet. When shall we go on my Norton?”
“The first fine day.”
Silence, while they swung along, hand in hand.
“Is this the end of the wood, Phillip dear?”
The Innocent Moon Page 14