The Innocent Moon

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by Henry Williamson


  “I try to be.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Fortunate youth! You have plenty of time in which to give it up!”

  “Yes, I suppose it’s an utterly unnatural occupation, sir. I mean, life goes on, moment by moment, each with its visual records, until the mind is like a junk shop. Sometimes I think that the difference between youth and age is merely the number of visual records that impinge. But I mustn’t lay down the law.”

  “Why not? Every other man and woman lays down the law, why not you? We couldn’t be in a worse mess, so a few more good intentions won’t matter either way.”

  “The world has always been like that, I suppose.”

  “Oh, no! It began with the idea of democracy, and the heresy that all men are born equal. Don’t you believe the world was always like that row upstairs!”

  “Well, sir, I mustn’t keep you from your work. By the way, is there a——”

  “You want the throne? Over there, down that passage.”

  Peering at a sheet of manuscript, the typist assaulted it with the index fingers of both hands, making the noise of a machine-gun as he filled up a blank afternoon—something to do—anything rather than confront the grey inner weight of loneliness.

  When Phillip returned to the drawing-room Poppett threaded her way through the crowd and said in a low voice, “‘Sappho’ is going to ask you to stay to supper to meet Violet Hunt, who liked your piece in the English Review, and I want to protect you from that literary praying mantis with the face of an angel. Listen. I’ve already agreed to go to Charley Underlight’s studio, and they said I might bring you. So will you tell ‘Sappho’ that you’re already engaged—but don’t say anything about me, will you?”

  “All right, but are you sure you won’t be bored with me?”

  “I shouldn’t ask you if I thought I would.” She lowered her voice. “Listen, Phillip. You leave now, and I’ll follow you. Wait for me round the corner by the ’bus stop. Then we’ll go to my flat. I’ve got some simply heavenly gramophone records I want you to hear!”

  Ten minutes later they were in a large studio annexe to a house in an adjoining road. Before she had gone to the literary salon—or was it saloon with all that tobacco smoke?—Poppett apparently had been re-doing the parquet floor surrounds with dark oak-varnish stain. The brush stood in water in a jam pot. He offered to continue the work, but she said not now, and they sat before the gas fire.

  He felt constrained, and said before he could think, “Do you paint your face also, Poppett?”

  “Are you trying to be rude?”

  “Not at all,” he replied, recovering from the shock of his sudden gaucherie to say, “I meant, surely when you dance on the stage you have to have some sort of make-up? But perhaps it’s done by a ‘dresser’?”

  “You know I’m not a ballerina! What you just said was an afterthought, wasn’t it?”

  “It was.” There followed an awkward and almost wretched silence. He felt they disliked one another.

  “You’re not at home at ‘Sappho’s’, are you?” she said.

  “I can’t be myself there.”

  “You’re very sensitive to atmosphere.”

  “Yes,” he said, and before he could think, began to stroke her hair.

  “I feel I want to purr,” she whispered. “What were you talking about to Barbara?”

  “Francis Thompson.”

  “Was that all?”

  “Yes. ‘Great Pan is dead’.”

  “Don’t stop stroking my head. I love it.”

  He felt quite chummy, but did not kiss her. She got up to play records of Petrouchka. Too soon it was time to leave for the Underlights’ studio. As he was helping her on with her overcoat she said, “Dam’ bad coat this, I look as though I am going to have twins.”

  “I have a son of twelve months old.”

  “I’ve got several illegits,” she replied, not to be outdone.

  They walked arm in arm under the street lamps. All he knew about Charles Underlight was his theatrical posters. When they arrived he heard dance music. And he was wearing tweed coat, riding breeches, fleecy camel-hair stockings, and nailed brogues, ready for a walk to the chalk quarry! (He had come prepared to ask Poppett & Co. to leave ‘Sappho’s’ party.) However, Mrs. Underlight soon reassured him. He danced with her in stocking’d feet.

  Afterwards he took Poppett to the Café Royal. “This,” he said, “is the very table where I sat when first I saw Tenby Jones with a model. It was in December, 1915. When is he going to paint you?”

  “Do you know, I’ve not the least idea!”

  “But I thought you said——”

  “Yes, I did, to tease Jimmy.”

  “Oh yes, Broughton.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “Well, I’m prejudiced, Poppett, for he likes my work.”

  “So do I.”

  “I’d no idea that you liked it!”

  “Brilliant, darling! That was a wonderful scene you read to us in the chalk quarry last Sunday. Jimmy has been talking about it ever since.”

  This was a new aspect of Poppett.

  They drank more coffee. She looked at her tiny wristlet watch. “I must fly, my sweet! My ’bus goes from Shaftesbury Avenue. It’s been lovely with you.”

  The night over London was fine, the moon shone above Eros.

  “May I see you home? I don’t want to leave you, you see! Let me call a taxi!”

  He sat still beside her, unsure of her now. “Do you mind asking the driver to stop at the end of Alexandra Road, Phillip?”

  They got out, and walked down the road. “Are you sure I’m not taking you out of your way, Phillip?”

  “Not at all.”

  They walked on. At her gate she said, “Would you like to come in for some tea? Don’t make a sound, will you?”

  He walked on the welts of his shoes, to avoid the tap of nailed soles, keeping in the shadows of the moon.

  Inside her flat there was still a smell of varnish. “Sorry about this, Phillip.”

  “I can smell only your Eau de Nil, is that it?”

  “Ah, the voice of experience! I’ll put on the kettle.”

  They sat by the gas fire waiting for the kettle to boil on the ring. “What’s that other manuscript in your pocket? Anything about me?”

  “Would you like to hear it?”

  “M’m!” She snuggled beside him. When he had read it she said, “You really did want to kiss me in the woods, after all! I thought you did. Now tell me, how do you know so much about Tenby Jones?”

  “I watched him while he was watching me,”

  “How often have you seen him?”

  “Twice in the Café Royal during the war, and once again in France. He was painting among the ruins of Albert when I passed on a wheeled stretcher to the Field Ambulance.”

  “Were you wounded?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Top of my thigh. Why?”

  “I just wondered.”

  “Thought it was elsewhere?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. Why do you keep looking at your watch?”

  “I’ve got to get home, and it’s some distance, about four miles from Charing Cross.”

  “I can give you a bed on this sofa, if you like.”

  “Well, thanks very much, but my parents might wonder where I am.”

  “Oh, that’s your trouble, is it? ‘Mother’s little boy’.”

  “Well, not exactly. I used to go home tight after the war, and my father was a bit of a nervous wreck, after being blown up by a Zeppelin bomb, and couldn’t sleep until he felt that everyone was safely in the house. We had some trouble, all my fault, and I promised to let them know if I was going to be late, or not going home. That’s all about it.”

  “Well, stay for another cup of tea, won’t you?”

  “Thanks. Now may I ask you a question? Do you love Broughton?”

&n
bsp; “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I do. He’s rather lonely, poor dear. Lost his father in the war, and six months ago his mother died under an operation. He was an only child.”

  “Ah, now I understand why you pretended that old Tenby Jones was going to paint you!”

  “Jimmy’s asked me to marry him, Phillip.”

  “What about the Indian Army subaltern?”

  “Oh, I made him up. He was useful to help fight off men with only one thought about girls in their head.”

  “I’ll keep your secret about Jimmy, Poppett!”

  “You’re a nice man, Phillip,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “You’re in love with that girl Tabitha, aren’t you? Surely she loves you, too?”

  “I can’t make her out, to tell you the truth.”

  “You shouldn’t try to make out a girl, Phillip. All a girl wants is stability and affection, love grows out of that.”

  Something rattled against the window pane. “Ah, there he is. He’s seen my light.”

  Broughton came in with a false smile on his face.

  “We’ve been to the Café Royal,” said Phillip, rising, “and have just got back.”

  “Yes, I saw your taxi.”

  “Are there many about at this hour?” It was nearly half-past eleven.

  “You might find one with luck,” replied Broughton, his face brightening.

  “I came over this afternoon hoping to find you and Quick at Mrs. Portal-Welch’s tea-party, and suggest that we all go to the chalk quarry again, hence this garb. Can’t we all go again another Sunday?”

  “‘Never the time, and the place, and the loved one all together’,” quoted Poppett.

  “‘The loved ones’,” murmured Phillip, lowering his gaze. “It was lovely for me, having you all with me—— Yes, I suppose Browning was right—‘Never the time, and the place, and the loved ones all together.’” He thought of Spica in the woods with him, and of Poppett, already part of the past. “Goodbye, dear friends,” he said, turning away to hide the tears in his eyes. “I’ll find my own way out, Poppett. Bless you both,” and he was gone.

  No taxi-driver would take him to Wakenham at that time of night, and he walked, arriving home just before 2 a.m. His father had gone to the office before he got up. He returned to London, to call at Anders Norse’s basement, and to find a letter from Spica, enclosed in a small packet.

  … I also return the crucifix. For the same reason that you now want it I had no intention of keeping it much longer when I asked you to still let me have it, on your last visit, or the last time I saw you at Folkestone. Only it is not always necessary to heap up pain, and I hoped that if I did not return it just yet it would not hurt so much later on. Dear little crucifix, treasure it very carefully for it is holy with the love of three people and has stood and stands for much.

  You should not say that I have no confidence in you; the crucifix even gives that the lie. What I say is that you are not yet ready to possess a woman all your own. You have not yet taken up your heritage of manhood. All your friends who love you try to tell you this but it hurts you and you will not listen. I hoped that I, who have striven to teach you as no one else has ever tried to show you, might one day show you, but that is denied. Perhaps someone else will succeed. Oh, my dear, why can’t you see. As you are now, you hurt yourself, you hurt others and you will eventually hurt your power of writing so that you will never do that which could have been in your power.

  Phillip, there is a door in our lives marked by a crucifix which has been shut. For the sake of all that lies in its beauty and sweetness behind the door, I do ask you most earnestly and yearningly, won’t you make a great effort to fight, that you may lose yourself, and in that loss loosen the fetters which bind your genius, and also come to happiness. May it be so, and so Goodbye,

  Spica.

  The following morning, passing the movie-palace in Leicester Square where some months before he had recognised an officer of his regiment in the uniform of the commissionaire, Phillip went in to enquire about him, and learned that Bill Kidd had left the job to join the Black and Tans in Ireland, as the ‘Special Police Force’ raised by Lloyd George to fight the Sinn Feiners was called; and that after setting fire with tins of petrol to a farmhouse in County Cork, where a gunman on the run was thought to be hiding, the farmer’s wife and children had been burned alive; for this Bill Kidd and his band were ambushed and killed by some of Michael Collins’s men.

  It had happened in the winter, so the story was old; but there remained Lauritz Melchior. Phillip wrote about him, and took the article to Monks House. Bloom read it, dropped it, and said, “‘Successor to Caruso?’ Well, confidence for confidence, I’m the successor to Samuel Pepys.”

  “Isn’t your paper interested in news of things that have really happened? Or does it all have to come out of your pail of old-fashioned dope?”

  “Now, now, enthusiasm’s all right, as I told yer, but this paper ain’t the Musical Times. If this busker pal of yours is so hot, why hasn’t Ernest Newman heard of him? D’yer read his column in The Sunday Times? Yer don’t? Well I do. The time to tell ’em about this tenor is when he cracks the chandelier at Covent Garden, or falls into the big bass drum. As I told yer, Maddison, enthusiasm’s all right, but you let it run away with yer!”

  “I’m a race horse, quite unsuitable to pull your weekly dustcart! And the fact is, the new world is running away from you!”

  “You ought to do well in fiction. Only mind them——”

  “Airy ziffers! Well, thanks for considering my story. Goodbye, B.B.! You know, I quite enjoyed my little canter with the old Weekly Courier!”

  “Well, I told yer when I first saw yer that I liked yer, and I still like yer, Maddison! And I’m glad to see yer perked up! Good luck to yer.”

  Bloom drew a hand from his pocket and held it out limply to be shaken.

  “Oh, by the way, Mr. Bloom. You remember the Bride’s Wedding Cake nonsense? Well, here’s the point. This is news, you know! If solid foundations of this new hardened concrete were sunk into London Clay, then they could build much taller buildings, as in New York, and so give more space in the City of London, and they could have gardens there, and lawns——”

  “Write it in a prophetic book, you’ve got imagination, write an H. G. Wellsian pattern,” said Bloom, to get rid of him. But Phillip had not finished.

  “Oh, before I go, Mr. Bloom. I see the Chief is after The Daily News, trying to get it to declare its net daily sale. It’s a circulation war, I know, now that The Daily Trident has passed the million mark.”

  “Well?” said Bloom.

  “The Daily Trident is advertising that it will give six full-page advertisements on its front page to anyone who will get The Daily News to declare its net daily sale.”

  “Why don’t yer try,” suggested Bloom. “Then yer could advertise yer airy ziffers!” and he turned away.

  Phillip went up to Bouverie Street. He saw the Editor of The Daily News. “Why don’t you declare the circulation of your paper, sir, and then advertise it every day for six days on the front page of the Trident! You’d have the laugh of Fleet Street, and if you printed some of your really good articles there, it would lure readers to The Daily News. I could let you have a really wonderful article written by a cousin of mine, who is working with the War Graves Commission, about the German Concentration Graveyard at the Labyrinthe. It’s inspired, a plea for Christian forgiveness by one who was much younger than I, and who won the Military Cross. He’s a genius, sir.”

  The polite and almost suave Editor smiled, and shook his head. “I’m afraid what you suggest is impracticable, but thank you for coming to see me.”

  Phillip went back to Monks House. There he told Bloom that the Chief’s offer was open to infiltration, with danger of his flank being turned, since, as it stood, The Daily News could declare its circulation and so claim six days’ free advertising. Bloom made no comment; Phillip knew he was a director of the Castleton Press.
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  He still hoped to help the Danish tenor, Melchior, who had had no engagements in London so far. He went round to Covent Garden and found the Opera House closed. From there he walked to Adelphi Terrace, where Anders Norse told him that J. D. Woodford had advised Hollins to accept his novel, and they had offered £25 advance against a rising scale of royalties.

  In great zest he returned home at once to tell his mother.

  Part Two

  JULIAN

  “Fierce midnights and famishing morrows.”

  Algernon Charles Swinburne.

  Chapter 7

  TO THE WEST COUNTRY

  “Oh Phillip, I think Father has something to say to you, dear.” She looked anxious. “Oh yes, and here’s a letter that came by this afternoon’s post, re-addressed from your cottage in Malandine.”

  The envelope contained an Invitation to an At Home in Inverness Terrace, from Mrs. J. D. Woodford for that evening.

  “What does Father want me for?”

  “Well dear, it’s not for me to say, but I am afraid that he thinks you are wasting your life, with nothing to do.”

  “But I have something to do, Mother! My novel is accepted for publication, and I’ve had another story taken, by the Royal Magazine! That’s about forty pounds in hard cash!”

  “Oh, I am so glad, dear! Do tell your father that, won’t you?”

  Richard started off before Phillip could speak. “I have told you before, I refuse to have my house treated as an hôtel. I consider, moreover, that your writing is merely an excuse to loaf, and to lead an idle life! For months you have been coming home at one and two in the morning, and I have been unable to sleep. You have been out of the Army now for eighteen months, and have had two jobs, both of which you have lost. Now I must ask you to leave this house at once!”

  “May I have your permission first to shave and dress, please? I am invited to a publisher’s party this evening.”

  “Another party? May I inquire when it is that you propose to settle down, and do some real work?”

  Having dressed, Phillip went outside to strap his bag to the carrier of his motor-cycle, then he returned to the sitting-room.

 

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