The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  There were several such birds, running quickly at the wave-foam line, suddenly to stand still, stare, and run on to pick up food.

  “How did you get out of it?”

  “I went to London specially to send a telegram to myself, saying I wasn’t coming for the week-end after all, and signing it with a Welsh name, because then it might look as though the title was one of Lloyd George’s hundreds of mushroom middle-class peerages. When I got back to the hotel I opened the telegram, and showed it with an appropriate air of carelessness to the manager. He said he would cancel the booking. I said, ‘Certainly not: his Lordship would never hear of it!’”

  Phillip watched the birds as they sped away over the breaking waves. “And did you pay?”

  “Certainly! Or rather, Father did! One has to pay for a title nowadays! Seriously, Father used to shell out a bit more freely in those days, when I was a young Knight of the Air. What are those birds? Don’t they fly in tight formation!”

  “There may be a rare colony here of the little ringed plover, Julian——”

  “Why do they fly like that, I wonder.” Julian pretended interest.

  “They keep close in, lest the falcon stoop and cut one out to fly it down.”

  “Ah, the tactics of the Red Baron! As I was saying, Maître——”

  Phillip began to be amused when Julian got to the point where his father appeared in the long bar of the Carlton—somehow the scene had become shifted from Bournemouth—where he was now with several of his London friends, among them well-known actors and actresses.

  “‘I have come to tell you,’ said Father, ‘the truth about my son. I hear he is representing me, as his parent, to be a rich man of title. That is a lie. I have, beside my pension, a diminishing income from royalties of books, which are of a technical nature, tables of logarithms in use by the Admiralty. My son is an unmitigated——’ Before he could go on, Phil, I got up and slapped him on the back, saying, ‘Unmitigated is hardly an original epithet; have a drink, Father.’ Aside to the others, I explained that the old boy was always like this towards the time of full moon. ‘Come, Father, you are more at home in the realm of pure mathematics than in here.’

  “‘You young blackguard!’ retorted Father. ‘Let me show you something!’ At least the old boy was decently dressed, Phil, I’ll give him credit for that, in tall grey Ascot hat, grey frock coat and trousers of Victorian cut. I waited while he fumbled for his spectacles, adjusted them on his nose, took a pull or two at his heavy grey cavalry moustache, and searched in his pocket for what I knew was coming. He waved it at me, peering through his steel-rimmed travelling spectacles, and looking up, was about to speak, when I got my burst in first. ‘You should pay your poker debts yourself, Father, then I wouldn’t have to do it for you!”

  Julian rubbed his hands together, laughing. “‘You’ve stolen——’, he said, glaring at me. ‘You’ve——’ ‘Oh, no, I haven’t stolen the plans of your rocket-gun which will bombard Berlin from Woolwich Arsenal, driven by perpetual motion and an inverted force of gravity, Father! Come, you should not be at large!’ I got up and took the old boy’s arm and led him outside to a taxicab.”

  “What was the bit of paper?”

  “It was merely one of Father’s cheques, to which I, to save him the trouble, had put my name at the bottom. My account at Cox’s was already overdrawn. Father is a good old boy under his bluff; and so the cheque was met, Phil. Am I boring you?”

  “Not at all. Tell me what happened to your friends?”

  “Oh, I saw them occasionally. I was caught out once, though. We were playing poker. Pat Somerset said to me, ‘You say you’ve been to New York, and stayed at the Waldorf Hotel, Julian; tell me, is it in the Fifth Avenue, Sixth Avenue, or Seventh?’ ‘It moves about,’ I replied. ‘You’re a bloody liar, you’ve never been to the United States!’ he said, and threw his whisky and soda in my face. He was tight,” said Julian contemptuously.

  “And what did you do?”

  “Oh, I picked up a leather fire bucket—it was in the Trout Inn, an old pub near Oxford, where a party of us had gone for the week-end—and threw it over him. Fortunately for me he was too tight to fight. Phyllis, who was living with him, was already bored, so we went off to London together in her Metallurgique racing car—she got it from an old boy who used to race at Brooklands, but never did anything owing to permanent wind-up—and stayed at her flat. By God, Phillip!” he cried, rubbing his hands again. “It was a damned fine life! Have you ever been in a bath with a damned fine woman? By God, you haven’t lived until you have, Maître! A nature lover, are you? Then for God’s sake start loving nature naturally!”

  When they arrived at Turnstone, Phillip saw with relief that it was ten minutes to closing time. Julian insisted that he was his guest and borrowed half a crown to pay for the bread and cheese, pickles, cigarettes, and beer.

  “Seriously, Phil, your story of Donkin is, so far as I’ve read, damned good. Oh, you’re all right, Phil! You’re a good fellow—but—well, sometimes you’ve got me beat. I cannot decide whether you talk very great sense or very great nonsense! By God, I’m enjoying all this!”

  “Time, gentlemen,” said the landlord; and once again Julian was striding a foot ahead of Phillip, turning his crash-scarred face, with its red moustache and incipient beard and thick auburn hair, upon him again and again. Very soon he began rolling the Chorus from Atalanta in Calydon off his tongue.

  “By God, Swinburne was a greater poet than Thompson! Swinburne is, by God, the greatest poet of all time! Just listen to this, from——”

  “Really, Julian, I can’t take any more of your barrel of Swinburne!” cried Phillip as he vaulted over a gate. Julian clambered over and followed, but was soon winded. Despite his appeals Phillip went on up the steep field, and looking back when nearly at the top saw Julian sitting on an outcrop of rock, gnawing the nails of his left hand.

  “Come back!” he shouted, but with a wave of his stick Phillip disappeared over the skyline.

  *

  They got into some sort of routine as the days went on: writing in the morning, walking in the afternoon. Phillip wrote again in the evening, when Julian usually went out, after giving the other some sort of encouragement.

  “Good luck to the masterpiece, old boy. It is a masterpiece—well—of a sort. It is Shakespearian—well, in a way. Er—could you manage a few bob, Maître? I want to pay the shoemaker for putting those tips to my heels this morning.”

  “I’ll settle with him.” Phillip was determined to have no more nonsense—or debts. After hesitation Julian tip-toed out clinkingly, softly closing the door behind him. Seating himself again at the rickety table before his solitary candle, Phillip took up the pen. Outside the eve-star shone beside the new moon sinking into the west. An owl called softly from the ridge of his cottage, answered by another bubbling on the church tower. As always, the sound thrilled Phillip; and then he was sad, thinking of Spica. But what was the use? Nature, the beauties of the countryside, must forever be his Love. Now to work!

  He had an article commissioned by the Editor of The Millinery Trades Journal, who had written to ask him for 1,200 words about birds and the Plumage Bill, offering 1½d. a line, and adding that he would not venture to restrict the subject, but would he write to the title of The Mating Time Millenary of the Birds? The Editor had, he said, once been in the employ of Messrs. Mallard, Carter & Turney, Ltd., ‘the firm founded by your Grandfather, Mr. Thos. W. Turney.’ Phillip did not show this letter to Julian, well imagining what sarcasm would be forthcoming when he read the title of the article.

  A wood fire blazed in the open range. That afternoon he and Julian had explored some woodlands a mile or so inland, and returned with two sackfuls of broken sticks. On the way down from the wood they had watched two kids being born. Julian had left after a few minutes, declaring that he had no interest in the result of capricious fornication; but Phillip had waited for half an hour or so, after which period the kids were skipping a
bout in the sunshine. A billy goat tethered near had been almost as interested as Phillip had been.

  “Why,” said Julian, at tea, “do you ascribe your own Wordsworthian anthropomorphic feelings to a goat? On the contrary, by the look in its whisky-coloured eyes, that goat was thinking of rape. If it hadn’t been chained up, it would have got at the nanny goat, in my opinion. What are you writing in your Journal this time?”

  “Nothing about you, dear boy!”

  Birth seems to me a beautiful thing: tender mother-love and the soft innocence of the new-born. I think human fathers should attend their wives’ confinements; it would help remove erotic-female-fictionalism in the head.

  Afterwards he had walked alone on the shore and watched the sun going down below the land. The sky colours changed every minute; first rufous, then vermilion, then tawny reflections on the clouds drifting up from the south-west. Soon these colours faded, and a purple vapour framed the sun, while eve-star and crescent moon glowed under clouds now moving in upon the land. It was sad to watch the dying of the day, it was lonely, and he hurried back to the cottage, optimistic as always that Julian would soon begin to feel the drive for self-expression in words. Now he had the cottage to himself.

  Sitting before his candle, he wrote on, happily; and was surprised that the candle burnt low so soon, and there was Julian standing before him. It was after ten, and he had written five thousand words, he told him.

  “Huh!”

  Julian regarded him, glowering within his bearskin, grunting now and again as he remained still, hands in pockets, chin sunken in fur, scowling terrifically. Phillip’s right hand was painful with cramp, his feet cold, his back ached, the base of his neck was sore, but he didn’t care. He went past Julian to take deep breaths of the starry air.

  “Huh!” was all Julian could say, when Phillip came into the kitchen again. “Huh!”

  “How nice of you to call,” said Phillip, imitating old Mr. Warbeck’s voice and stare. “What job have you secured today? Private secretary to Mr. MacCat what’s’name Tullus?”

  “Oh well,” replied Julian, with self-satisfaction, making a sort of deep, good-humoured growl in his throat. “You, I perceive, are your old self again, Maître! Good for you!”

  “I’ve written a marvellous chapter!”

  Dare he ask to be allowed to read it to him? The last time he had read a poem of Francis Thompson’s, Julian had snorted contemptuously when Phillip had misread gonfalons as gonfalcons.

  “And you want to read it to me, Maître? Well, old boy,” he growled benevolently, “you shall read it to me! You have a good voice sometimes when you’re coming out of yourself. You’re two distinct personalities you know, Maître.”

  “I’d rather you read it,” lied Phillip.

  “As you wish, old boy. May I offer you a drink?” He lugged a flagon from his pocket. They drank from the bottle. Recklessly Phillip threw the best part of a sackful of wood on the fire.

  Both were hungry. Phillip tore off a handful of bread, and thrust wads of it into his mouth with cheese and pickled onions, while Julian did the same before reading aloud what Phillip had written.

  He read slowly and distinctly; frequently he chuckled, sometimes he hit his thigh with his right hand as he rolled his head with laughter. “It’s frightfully good! It’s as good as Kipling! It’s better than Kipling!” Phillip felt that he liked Julian terrifically. With amusement he heard Mrs. Crang moving into her coal-house, a habit she had when wanting to listen through the mousehole in the thin lath-and-plaster that separated the two kitchens.

  They finished the beer, and afterwards went for a short walk, while Julian told Phillip more of his adventures in London during and immediately after the War. Free for the time being of his obsession, Phillip thought that Julian was most amusing, and begged him to write a novel of his adventures.

  That night it seemed unnecessary to undress, so they slept in their clothes; and although Julian was asleep first, Phillip did not mind his snores.

  They were up at 7 o’clock in the morning, and while Julian swished the lime-ash floor with water and mop, Phillip made the fire and boiled the porridge in the new double-cooker. The eggs-and-bacon were excellent; they threw the rind to the old cattle dog, who was now just bold enough to come inside for tit-bits, snapping them up before fleeing silently, tail down.

  “This is the life,” exclaimed Julian, wiping his lips rapidly on the back of his hand, and becoming intent again on Rousseau’s Confessions propped against the bread loaf. Phillip’s admiration for Compton Mackenzie’s style and wit deepened as he read more of Sinister Street supported by the tea-pot.

  They washed up the breakfast things, putting them in the top shelf of what was called the dresser. This dresser was made of three-eighth-inch tongued-and-grooved deal board, and was merely a big weak box two yards long, one yard deep, one yard wide, laid on its side. There were two shelves, hidden by curtains of cotton print. It was rectangular in shape; but if one leaned one’s weight on the end, it became a parallelogram; and the shelves, with their loads of crockery, boots, books, and jampots, were liable to fall aslant.

  Afterwards Phillip sat down at the table to write. Julian also sat down with pen and paper; he intended, he said, to revise his translation of Catullus. Phillip began his chapter deliberately, writing slowly and preciously, forcing the words. From the corner of his eye he saw that Julian’s face had assumed its Beethoven scowl as he fixed his eyes on the typescript. Soon Phillip was crossing out what he had written. It was aimless, leading nowhere, a description of football boots in an untidy row. He waited for an idea. Julian also was sitting very still.

  “Phil,” he spoke suddenly, subduedly. “I wonder, old boy—no, I don’t think I should—oh damn. Phil, may I read you some of my translation from Catullus?” He eyed Phillip doubtfully, as though remembering the joke about MacCat, and looked relieved when Phillip said, as though enthusiastically, “Please do!”

  In a deep, forceful voice Julian read his rendering of the love poems. He pronounced every word most distinctly, but without variation in tone. After two verses Phillip found that his mind had switched itself from his hearing. Julian went on, his voice earnest, deep, and rasping. Phillip glanced, while endeavouring to conceal the fact that he was wondering how many more unread pages lay on the table, at his notes made the day before.

  A boy in the village titted (knocked) the hats off the other children going into Sunday school; he threw milk at the farmer’s wife in her dairy behind the latchet window in the lower street; he found an old watch in an ash-heap and took it to the blacksmith to be repaired.

  Mrs. Crang said that a young married woman eating fruit in a haphazard way was a sure sign of pregnancy. This woman had taken tomatoes from the village shop, stealthily; and the owner of the shop, understanding, had pretended not to see it.

  A thatcher stood on a sort of small ladder, held to the thatch by steel prongs, called the standing-bittle, lest his foot britt the reed, and it rat (rot). An eighty-year-old man, annoyed because his neighbour had the foot of his ladder just inside his garden, without permission, rushed out crying, “If thee’t a man, put thee dooks up!” The neighbour, a cobbler, was a chapel-man, and refused to fight.

  A big woman weighing eighteen stone, mother of several children, living in a village some miles away, went to the doctor, complaining of a pain. She thought it was due to green rhubarb, eaten too early. A 7-lb baby was born two hours later, to the complete surprise of both its parents. That was during the War; the child now answered to the name of Rhubarb.

  “Well, Maître, is it any good?” Julian was asking anxiously.

  “Damned good, Julian! Your rendition is easily the best I’ve ever heard!”

  “How many other translations have you read?” demanded Julian.

  “I don’t need to compare your verses, they’re full of life, that is all that matters. By the way, I wonder if you would mind not biting your nails? Forgive me asking you again—but you did ask me t
o tell you——”

  Instantly Julian hid his hand under the table. Phillip felt like the governess Julian said he had had in childhood. According to him she was the original of Miss Frances Cornford’s fat white woman whom nobody loves who walked in the fields in gloves.

  “Of course I haven’t heard many translations of Catullus, but I like it, Julian, I like it, by God I like it, Maître! Revision will only mean an alternative rendering, I suppose? You should write original verse.”

  “I have.”

  He looked at Phillip suspiciously. The middle finger-tip of his left hand sought his mouth, and was again whipped under the table.

  “Well, I suppose I must get on with my damned Donkin story. By the way, I wonder if you’d mind standing by the stream when you come home at night, and not pissing up against our doorpost? I know it’s a village custom—our neighbours practise it regularly on their doorstep—but if you don’t mind——”

  Julian went upstairs to make the beds. His footfalls were loud as he paced to and fro overhead. Flakes of lime-wash fell from the thin ceiling floor-boards. Soon he came down the worm-eaten stairs, and tiptoed across to the door.

  “I think I’ll go for a walk, Maître, and leave you to it. I’ll be back for lunch at one-thirty. Can I buy anything for you?”

  “No, thanks. If you see the butcher, you might strafe him for sending seven pounds of mutton scrag when I ordered only two. Tell him I won’t pay for more than two. Also they tell me that he buys dead sheep from some of the farmers, but don’t tell him I said so.”