The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  “I really don’t care a hoot how much scrag the wretched fellow sends!” replied Julian, gnawing two fingers at once. “By the way, has Father sent——”

  “Yes. There’s about eighteen bob over from last week. Shall I pay the Ring of Bells ‘score’ for you? I don’t think you ought to run an account there, Julian. It’s only laying up trouble.”

  “You ought to go the whole hog and become a parson and tell me about what treasure I should lay up in heaven, Maître. Take a joke, old boy! Let me settle my own score, why not? It’s only about ten bob. Can you let me have it now?”

  “You’re treating me as your treat your father, Julian!”

  “Well, haven’t you placed yourself in loco parentis, old boy? Have a heart!”

  Reluctantly Phillip gave him a ten-shilling note. Yes, he supposed he was getting just like his father. Then he settled down to work. It was difficult to write: there was the lunch to prepare, although Julian wouldn’t be back until the ten bob, twenty pints, was gone. He pushed over his chair and set about scraping and peeling potatoes, onions, and carrots, tipping the lot into the remains of rabbit stew, crusts, sausages, and hunks of mutton scrag chopped up the day before on the chopping block. A handful of pearl barley, the remains of the porridge, a pint or so of water, and the cooker was shoved on the fire and left to cook itself.

  Julian came home as anticipated, at 2.10 p.m.

  “All in the pot is yours,” said Phillip, taking his thumbstick. “I’m going for a walk. See you later.”

  “Suits me, old boy. I shall begin my Ode to Swinburne when I’ve washed up.”

  At half-past six when Phillip returned he found the door open. The cattle dog jumped out of the window as he walked in. The fire was out, the pot overturned on the floor, rabbit and mutton bones strewn about. He encouraged the dog, which spent its life lying in the road outside its farm waiting to bark savagely at cows after their milking, to return and finish its meal. Slinking through the open door, it cracked up a rabbit bone swiftly, grabbed a mouthful of more bones, dropped them to seize others, choked, and then, seeing that Phillip intended neither to shout nor kick, settled down to a swift, uneasy prelude to indigestion.

  After relighting the fire, clearing up, and eating half a loaf of bread with butter and a whole pound pot of apricot jam, washed down by weak China tea from a quart jug, Phillip got out his journal from the uniform case, and prepared to enjoy communion with it. His pen scratched over the paper rapidly, describing the walk of that afternoon.

  March 27. This south coast of Devon is glorious even when it rains. It is so big and generous. Today I wandered beside the reedy lake behind the sand-hills, while lapwings cried through drifting mists. It is full of romance. I realised I was still as in boyhood, joying greatly in all wild places. When a straw-mottled owl flapped up in silence from some reeds, I cried aloud with happiness. Ah, I thought, I will come here later on and find his nest. Oh, ecstasy, I have never found a short-ear’d owl’s nest before. What will Percy and the others say? I remembered, with an aching feeling for Time gone for ever and for ever, that I was twenty-five; that dear old ‘Perps’ had stopped one at Flers, five long years before.

  I walked along part of the high cliffs, watching the gulls, and much happiness was there through my eyes. A raven sat on a scaur of rock and watched me, and I watched him through the Zeiss glass that I souvenir’d nearly four years ago. Four years ago! Then, instead of the evening star gleaming on the ocean-bed of sky when the tidal light of day had ebbed, the calcium flares arose into the darkness and with tremulous brilliance wavered to earth. Sometimes the pop-pop-pop of a machine-gun traversing to catch reliefs floundering and cursing in the mud, and the hissing whine of gas-shells came when it was quiet. One night I left the mess and walked beyond the village of Mory, and looked out over towards Cambrai. The Germans had retreated into their Siegfried Stellung a few days before. Ruddy and sudden fountains of light where shells were bursting a mile away, the high far throb of a twin-engined Gotha and the white flares diminishing north and south, yet rising everlastingly. I sat there for hours, held by the unrealisable aching vastness of the scene. Pin pricks of light over the distant trenches, faint womps!—the oval instant belch of howitzers in a quarry near me; the Hun high shrapnel, the bursting of his, or our, H.E., the bright smack-back of our howitzers pointing stunted barrels at the unthinkable stars. Sometimes as I watched a silence would hover over the battlefield like a kindly bird; and then nearer sounds would be borne up; the laughter of gunner officers in the mess made of canvas and splintered willow-sticks, the nasal shout of some cockney soldier washing up in a lean-to, the needle-squeaks of mice running through the clover at my feet, the rustle of a leaf, the rattle of a head-chain, the stamp of a mule. And in the dark solitude I would lose myself—and then the air would leap alight and rock and thunder, orange, vermilion, and white flashes and stabs, the long white stabs of the 18-pounders, red and green S.O.S. rockets soar above the German positions, the shattering bullet-fans of their machine-guns traverse the low darkness. Another raid, held up by their wire-belts; barrage and counter barrage. It was a strange earth, to which I could never accustom myself; and now it is gone as strangely.

  But to my journal proper.

  Today I watched through my Zeiss glass the peregrines flying swiftly above the fire-formed ruins of Valhalla, stooping at one another, touching beaks in the air with shrill chatter of joy, wings buffeting or embracing. I hoped to see a stoop at a gull, but nothing happened, except that an occasional gull pursued one, but was easily out-flown. The stoop, or dive, of the falcon is magnificent. They shut their wings and dive head-first at so steep an angle that it appears to be a perpendicular drop. It is not a swooping down, but a complete drop, as though freed from the force of gravity in a vacuum: a compression of sinew, muscle, bone and feather. I guessed the accumulated speed just before flattening out and zooming to be about 200 m.p.h.

  I saw a pair of swallows, a solitary pair. They are at least a fortnight early. Wheatears have come; pipits are fetching down song from heaven. Cormorants on the rocks below hold their umbrella-segment wings outstretched, to ease the wedgement of fish in their gullets; and to dry those wings. All mammals and birds like the warmth of the sun, I with them.

  Closing the journal, he swallowed bread, cheese, and pickled onions and went on with his novel. About two thousand words had flowed from his pen when he heard Julian’s footfalls.

  “There’s a dance at Turnstone, Phil, and I suggest we both go,” he said through the open window. “And I’ve a surprise for you. To whom do you think I have been talking in the pub? J. D. Woodford!”

  “What, J. D. Woodford down here?”

  “Yes. I said to him, ‘Oh then you know Phillip Maddison—my friend, whose first novel you recently read for Hollins? He’s only a few yards away, writing a sequel to that masterpiece of romantic inexperience.’ J. D. Woodford’s reaction was most amusing. ‘As a matter of fact, dear boy,’ he replied with almost unseemly haste, ‘since a toss I took in the hunting field six months ago, my memory has been liable to go phut at any moment. That’s why I’m down here in South Devon, doctor’s orders, Channel air recuperation and all that, you know. Keep my incognito, I don’t want it to be known in the very least, don’t you know, that I’m J. D. Woodford, author of the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy. Call me Porky, dear boy, everyone calls me Porky’.”

  “You’re making it up.”

  “I swear I’m not!”

  “What’s he like?”

  “A medium-sized man, with Alpine-shaped head, buck teeth, Charlie Chaplin moustache, and eyebrows like stag-beetles. Obviously a very great lover of nature!”

  “Well, J. D. Woodford must have disguised himself effectively from a long-headed Nordic type! I really don’t want to meet this swanker.”

  “Oh, he’s an amusing enough fellow, Maître. His one idea is to make as many people as possible tight in the shortest possible time. By God, Phillip, I’m damned glad I came down here!
It’s a great place! Come along, old boy, come to the dance! It’s a poor heart that never rejoices.”

  “I’m no good at dancing.”

  “Nor am I. Come on, ‘all is experience’!”

  Phillip looked at Julian’s face with disfavour. Obviously Julian had been reading his journal; also he didn’t want to prop up a bar and have to swallow cold beer. It gave him indigestion, and he was still afraid of another haemorrhage. Even so, it might be fun at a village hop. Jumping up, he put on his old trilby hat, decorated with shot-holes from his gun one afternoon when the two of them, after rabbits, had amused themselves shooting at the hat flung in the air.

  “I’ll catch you up, Julian.”

  His mackintosh cape hung on the nail in the flimsy staircase door, made of the cheapest wood and painted with the cheapest paint, putty-coloured, by the landlord. Fastening the cape—War Surplus Disposals Board cavalry—over his shoulders, he hastened after Julian in the cloudy starlight, taking deep breaths of the cool air.

  The Social Club room, where the dance was being held, was built above some small shops. It was reached by wooden steps, protected by a hand rail. Going up, Phillip saw through the open door a large oil-lamp hanging from the ceiling and shedding dusty yellow light on the red faces of the dancers. Older people sat sedately on forms and chairs round the walls. The Lancers was in progress; dust arose with occasional laughing shrieks of girls. At one end of the room a youth with long hair thumped upon a piano with yellow keys; at the other end a trestle table was laden with cream and jam cut-rounds, cakes, bottles of lemonade, tea urn, and a plate with coppers and some small silver lying in it. Phillip had half-expected a band with flute, fiddle, and old-fashioned serpent, as in Under the Greenwood Tree.

  Across the road two ponies were tethered to the iron ring in the wall of the inn. Looking around, he realized that he was an object of some amusement; youths had come to the door, he saw grins and heard tittering; and pretending to be unaware of them by a casual scrutiny of faces, went down to find Julian. At the bottom of the steps a shortish man nearly bumped into him. The stranger greeted him in the friendliest way, taking his hand and shaking it hard, while exclaiming, “Hullo, dear boy, how are you? Answer’s a lemon, what? What? Laugh and the world laughs with you. Come and have a drink! What, you don’t want one! Oh, rot my dear boy! Weep, and you weep alone! Go to blazes, go on! Come on, my dear boy, over the road and have one!”

  The stranger’s friendliness drew Phillip into the bar crowded with men, smoke, loud talk, and the warm air generated by bodies and two oil-lamps. His new acquaintance, wearing a check suit of horsey cut, pushed a way through to the bar, greeting many faces and being greeted with respectful good-fellowship. He called loudly for a pint of beer for Phillip, a double whisky for himself, and drinks for everyone in the room. Julian, pint in hand, stood in one corner, talking to several intently listening men.

  “Good luck, dear boy, jolly good luck!” gabbled the new acquaintance, offering a pint of beer. Julian’s description certainly fitted him: buck teeth, bushy black query eyebrows, and a moustache the waxed ends of which stuck up like the horns of a goat.

  “You must shave, dear boy,” he burbled. “Of course you must! Goo’ Lor’ yes. Can’t allow you to run about like this, of course not! What, a young chap like you with a beard! To blazes with the idea! Have another! Drink up, get on with the good work! Oh, rot, you haven’t got dyspepsia! Rot, I’m over fifty, dear boy, and have had three wives, and I haven’t had a day’s dyspepsia! Look at me. My motto is, ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you’. Goo’ Lor’, yes! Every time a coconut! Come on, drinks all round, landlord, fill up their glasses like blazes! You’re an author!” he yelled through the din.

  “I try to be.”

  “Well, no harm in trying, dear boy. None at all. Goo’ Lor’ no! Do you write under your own name? My writing name is not my real name, of course. Goo’ Lor’ no. Staying here incognito, dear boy.”

  Seeing Phillip’s remote look he poured a double whisky down his throat, and ordered another, which appeared to give him courage to say, “Naughty boy, telling your friend that you knew J. D. Woodford, and that he had read your book! However, forget it, dear boy, forget it, laugh and the world laughs with you! I’ll gladly help you if I can. Of course I can, gooloryes! Call me Porky, dear boy—that’s my nickname. Forget all about my being a writer. I don’t want it known—goolorno. Reminds me of my toss in the huntin’ field. Lost my memory, gooloryes. Keep the secret, dear boy, and drink up! Go to blazes, of course you will—landlord, another pint! A young fellermelad like you, too! Shave, dear boy, shave! Mustn’t run wild, you know! Goolorno.”

  As soon as he could Phillip got away, leaving Porky in the act of greeting someone else. Looking back, he saw a horny hand about to grasp the half-empty glass he had left behind. Entering the dance room as a shrill whistle pierced the noise, he observed a little man in a blue suit stalking up and down the floor, blowing his whistle again as he cried sternly, “Take your partners for the Waltz!”

  Standing near a bunch of shy youths against the wall he recognised the girl he had met on Malandine sands during the previous summer with Jack O’Donovan, and made his way to where she was sitting with other girls. “Shall we dance?”

  “All right.”

  “I hope you’ll forgive my wearing hob-nailed shoes!”

  “It’s quite all right.”

  “I’m living down here now.”

  “I know.”

  He told her how he cooked in the large double-cooker, rabbits, bacon, potatoes, pearl barley and onions in the same pot. She said that if he wanted eggs he could always get some at her father’s farm at market price: they were getting eightpence a dozen from the dealers, and he needn’t pay more. After the dance, which ended at midnight, he walked down the village street with her, saying goodnight at the wooden footbridge which led by a back way into the farmhouse.

  *

  Phillip avoided Porky as often as he could, now that the swallows had come back with blue skies. Not so Julian; and it wasn’t long before Porky refused to have Julian in the furnished cottage at Esperance Cove which he rented for £1 a week. Julian spoke with equal contempt of Porky. Phillip found Porky as difficult as Julian; drink made ordinary conversation impossible. In drink Porky spoke rapidly, disconnectedly, intolerantly, breaking into and ridiculing every remark Phillip tried to make. He imagined that a sensitive and perhaps repressed childhood had caused Porky to boast when he felt free among strangers. But Porky’s alcoholic boastings were boring, for underneath his Bohemian camaraderie he had a limited and conventional outlook.

  “Rot, my dear boy, rot! I was a commandant of a prisoner-of-war camp in Wales for three years, and you’re talking rot, utter rot! No prisoners were killed after surrendering in battle!”

  Another time he posed as a colonel of hussars. Also he had been in the workhouse for three weeks “on principle” (this to confound a remark Phillip made about the benevolence of the Old Age Pension). He had advised Lord Castleton how to run The Daily Trident, and also to buy The Weekly Courier—this after Phillip mentioned that the Chief had disliked Bloom, editor of the Sunday paper on which he had worked.

  “Rot, dear boy, you’re talking absolute rot! There never was an editor called Bloom anyway. Don’t boast, dear boy, don’t boast, it doesn’t become you! Calling Castleton, whom I know as well as I know my own face, ‘the Chief!’ As though you were playing Cowboys and Redskins, dear boy! Utter rubbish! And telling Warbeck that you knew J. D. Woodford!”

  It was all boring and a waste of life to be with Porky when he was half drunk. Mentioning fox-hunting, Porky flipped his hand in Phillip’s face. “I’ve been a master of hounds before you were born, dear boy! You don’t know a stirrup from a brow-band!”

  Phillip could not say anything without Porky either capping it scornfully or dismissing it contemptuously. When not diminishing his reluctant listener Porky would urge Phillip to drink up and get married, “get on with the goo
’ work, dear boy, get on with the goo’ work like blazes.” He quoted his own record and age as an example to be followed.

  “Brenda, dear girl, will shortly present me with another, my seventh, dear boy! She’s twenty-four, and I’m fifty-one—I get on with the goo’ work, gooloryes.”

  In the cottage where once or twice he invited Phillip to supper, Mrs. Tanberry, a gentle quiet woman, seemed perpetually anxious about her husband. The cottage was filled with dogs, which certainly loved their master. Any stray found a home with Porky; he was generous and kind to children, too. Phillip liked him for it; and foolishly tried to give the older man advice not to squander his money in the various pubs. Porky snapped his fingers.

  “You’re only a boy, my dear boy, only a boy!”

  Sometimes Porky would hire a car and drive around the coast, stopping at one inn after another and paying for drinks all round, and then cashing a cheque. Phillip went with him once, torn from his evening warm brooding over his book. Julian came too; inevitably he and Porky quarrelled: a miserable, worthless evening for Phillip.

  The regulars of the pubs Porky visited had only one attitude to this phenomenon: they followed him as they followed a herring or mullet shoal. Mr. Tanberry was ‘a proper gen’l’m’n’. He was said to be a millionaire. He had won the Calcutta Sweep. He was a brother of the ‘Earl of Cranberry’, and ‘wrote his name different because he wanted to be disguised’. Porky basked in these rumours, he lived them as realities.

  “As a matter o’ fac’, dear boy, I was born with the title ‘Honourable’ to my name, but don’t use it. These are democratic days. The war stopped all that nonsense.”

  Village folk, Phillip noticed, disregarded spelling: there were three brothers in the village, each spelling his surname differently: Prawle, Paul, and Preel, he told Porky.

  “Old custom, dear boy. My ancestor, Sir Walter Rally, spelt his name differently on different occasions, like me. I can’t spell either. No Eton boys could in my day, goolorno!”