He wanted to sing Is my Team Plowing? which was nearer his heart than the cherry hung with snow, but Sophy said, “I can’t play that one—besides, it’s not suitable. It does no good to brood on the dark side of life. It’s time you forgot the war, my dear.”
“It isn’t altogether the war, Sophy.”
“Then tell me what it is.”
“It’s those two Irish patriots, who fought for England on the Somme, and are now to be hanged.”
“But they are murderers! They shot Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in cold blood!”
“If he had been a German General, and they had been Belgians in the war, we would now call them patriots and heroes.”
“I don’t think you know what you are talking about.”
“Henry Wilson never fought in any war, he told lies to Lloyd George about Hubert Gough, our Fifth Army Commander, who was sent home during the German attack in March, 1918. I don’t believe in murder, of course, but I don’t think hanging will do any good. Revenge never does. We should be magnanimous.”
“I’m going to make tea, then send you home. You look very tired.”
When a pot of tea had been made she said, “Will you partner Annabelle in the Queensbridge Tournament next week? Very well, I’ll enter your two names when I go in tomorrow.”
When Annabelle had gone to bed she said, “Draw up your chair now the children are tucked up and asleep, and tell me what’s worrying you. I can see you have something on your mind. Is it anything I have done? No? Then why have you been holding me off all the evening? What’s bothering you, child?”
Was she acting? Perhaps not; but he remembered Denis Sisley’s warning. “I’m rather preoccupied by a literary problem,” he dissembled. “It’s the alternation between the sun, I mean ordinary life, and the moon-like state, as it were, one must get into, and hold, if one is to believe in what one is doing.”
“You need not worry,” she said quietly. “That book you are writing now will be a best-seller. She’s a real woman, that heroine of yours—or should I say siren? What I can’t understand is how you know so much about women. You must have known someone very much like your character Pauline. What will the original think, I wonder, when she sees herself in a book?”
“It’s practically all imagination!”
“There’s one thing that makes me a little uncertain, if you don’t mind my being quite frank? Your hero Donkin seems a little unreal, he seems to belong to no class. Where did you get the idea of him?”
“Oh, he’s a mixture, from various sources.”
“Has your Mother read the earlier book?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Surely you sent her a copy?”
“I think I did.”
She laughed. “What a vague young man you are, to be sure. By the way, when your mother arrives, you will bring her over to see us, won’t you? When are they coming?”
“I think they’re coming tomorrow.”
“Don’t you know?”
“Mother wrote that she hopes to come, but she may not be well enough to travel.”
“Has she been ill?”
“No, but she’s not very strong.”
“Oh, I am sorry. I expect she will be tired after the journey, so why not bring her and your sister over to supper? They won’t have time to prepare anything in your austere abode. Has she seen your cottage yet?”
“No, this will be her first visit.”
“Well, I’ll send a car over, if you like, and arrange with the driver to take you all back afterwards. Will they be coming a long way?”
“By the morning train from Paddington.”
“Do they live in London?”
“In Kent, not far away.”
“We used to live just outside London—at Blackheath. Do you know it?”
“Oh, yes. I used to live near there.”
“Oh, where?”
“Oh—not far from Brumley. It’s all built over since I was a boy.”
Damn her curiosity, he thought, while remembering the snobbish remark about the middle-aged woman, “not out of the top drawer”, whom Dr. MacNab had “let in” the tennis club, together with himself and the Selby-Lloyds, without approval by the committee.
*
“Mother, first let me tell you about the Selby-Lloyds. They’ve bought the Kingsmans’ place at Tollemere—you remember I told you about Captain and Mrs. Kingsman, in the winter of 1915? The Lloyds have only been there two years, but the point is that before moving to Essex they lived quite near Wakenham, at Blackheath, in fact. I told them, by the way, that you lived ‘near Brumley’, so whatever you do don’t mention Wakenham.”
“Are you ashamed of us?” asked Doris.
“I wish you would try and understand, Doris. I’ve started my own life down here, and I don’t want anything of my past to be known. After all, it’s only three years since I was in—well, you know what I mean——”
“Oh, I’d never refer to that, dear! That’s over and done with.”
“Well, you never know, Mother. The other day I let out that I used to be a Boy Scout, and patrol-leader of the Bloodhounds—you remember you let The Kentish Mercury have a photograph of me, in 1918? So please be careful. Mrs. Selby-Lloyd is very clever at asking questions. I can baffle her, but you’ve not got my guile, Mother.”
He took the eggs out of the saucepan, and put them in four china cups.
“I hope Bob will like the bedroom I’ve fixed up for him. Will he be long? The eggs will get hard soon. No, don’t go and fetch him, please, Doris! After all, there’s no hurry.” He looked at his wristlet watch. Sophy would be expecting them in two hours’ time.
Hetty had not seen Phillip looking so nervous since what she always thought of as ‘that terrible time’ three summers before, when he was entangled with a married woman at Folkestone. Was it happening again with this lady he had mentioned?
It had been a stifling journey from Paddington, ten to a carriage and people standing in the corridors. Hetty had not been able to get a seat facing the engine, she had eaten nothing for fear of one of her bilious attacks. For weeks she had been counting the days to August, anticipating the happiest holiday with her son—a calm, peaceful time in a dream cottage in an old-world village amidst flowers and song-birds far from the madding crowd; and here was Phillip, anxious and strung up, and so thin—so different from the picture she had formed of him from his letters.
“You will remember, won’t you, Mother?”
“I’ll try to, Phillip.”
“Thanks. You see, I’m rather keen on the younger daughter, and still have to make my way.”
“Of course, Phillip, I understand perfectly.”
He cheered up at once. “Well, Doris, how’s the school job at Eastbourne going?”
“I’m leaving.”
“What?”
“I’ve resigned.”
“But it was only your first term, wasn’t it? What’s happened?”
“I can’t stick the other mistresses. They’re unfriendly, and snobs.”
“In what way?”
“It’s nothing, really,” said Hetty. “Doris thought she would like to be nearer home.”
“That’s only one reason, Mother.”
“Tell me why they are unfriendly, and snobs.” He recalled his own reception at Heathmarket in 1915, when he had not been able to see how his own crude behaviour had affected others.
“Well, it came to a head when Bob came down on his motor bike to see me. I had the day off, and we were going along the promenade, on the way to Beachy Head, when we passed the girls in my house coming home from church. When I got back that evening the headmistress sent for me and ticked me off. She said that some of the girls would probably write home to their parents and say what they had seen, and anyway it had let down the tone of the school.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her that Bob was my fiancé, of course, what was wrong with that. She replied that if I could not s
ee the point about what she called the propriety of the matter, then she must ask me to give my promise that I wouldn’t be seen on the back of a motor-cycle again.”
“Did you give the promise?”
“No, I saw no reason to. I repeated that Bob and I were engaged to be married, and she said that that was not the point. She gave me a lecture, saying that no one else of the staff would dream of riding on the back of a motor-cycle, whatever her relationship to the driver, and if I couldn’t see her point, she would have to ask me to leave at the end of the term. So I wrote out my resignation then and there.”
“Well, you know, Doris, I think she was right.”
“Well, I can’t agree. Some of the other mistresses had already refused to speak to me in the common room. They were beastly. That’s being snobbish, if you like!”
“You know, Doris, there is a saying, ‘Other peoples’ feelings are as important as one’s own’.”
“Then why don’t you apply that to Mother’s feelings? Why should she have to pretend that she lives elsewhere?”
“I’ve tried to explain, Doris. It would be awful if they found out that I’d been in prison.”
“I still don’t think that justifies you in asking Mother to tell lies.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right. Please don’t wait for me, I’m just going to telephone from the post office. I won’t be a jiffy. Hullo, Bob, everything all right?” He waited while Bob stuttered his thanks, then hurried across to ask Miss Potts if he might use her new telephone. “I want to get on to someone at Turnstone, staying at ‘Belle View’.”
“Mrs. Selby-Lloyd, isn’t it? I’ll get the number for you.” She waited while he spoke.
“Is that you, Sophy? How are you? Oh, yes thank you, they had a good journey. At least—Mother didn’t, I’m afraid. She asks me to give you her compliments, and to say that she has had a rather fatiguing journey, and a splitting headache, so will you forgive her for not coming over tonight?”
Sophy’s voice—was it tremulous under her easy manner?—“Oh, I am so sorry.” Pause. “Let us know if we can do anything, won’t you? No, of course you haven’t put us out. Do give your Mother my good wishes for her recovery, won’t you? We’ll see you tomorrow for the tournament, shall we? Very well. Thank you for telephoning, old man. Good-night.”
*
At ten o’clock Doris said goodbye to Bob Willoughby and then walked with him to the cottage where he was lodging. It was a clear evening, the sunset still lingered in the North-west. They stood outside the garden gate talking in low voices so long that Phillip went to tell them that it was now nearly twenty to eleven, and would they mind postponing the rest of their talk until the morning? Bob said, “Of course. Well, good-night, Doris,” and turned away; while Doris went back with Phillip in silence until she said, “You’re getting just like Father!”
“Perhaps, but the villagers go to bed at ten o’clock, Doris.”
Aug. 25. Three people riding in a hired Ford car, squeezed into the seat at the back. Sophy on left, Annebelle on right, I in the middle. We were returning from the last day of the Tennis Tournament at Queensbridge. Annabelle had been my partner in the mixed doubles. During the afternoon we had seldom spoken: Annabelle appeared to ignore me. Was it girlish coquetry, because she was certain of my affection, and therefore she does not care very much; or perhaps it is her inability to feel love for me? We lost the semi-finals. Annabelle usually plays well, but in her women’s singles she played badly, and when she came off the court, looking tired, I said to her, with self-torture, in one of those impulses of truth-in-reverse that slip past one sometimes, “You are an idiot to lose, Annabelle,” and she passed to the dressing-room without a word.
We drove back in a drizzle of mist, seeing the grey Channel in patches from the high ground. Dark clouds passed overhead. The weather had broken. We were wrapped in thick rugs. Under the rug I sought Annabelle’s hand and held it. She clasped my hand firmly. I felt like singing for joy; Annabelle returned my feeling! She is telling me she loves me, I thought. I assumed an expressionless face, and looked away over the sea, feeling a hypocrite, yet feeding for a little while on hope and love. Sophy appeared to glance several times at the concealing rug during the journey. Her face lost its usual animation. She looked tired and worn. I said to her, “Your hands are cold; let me hold them, Sophy.” She shook her head, without glance or smile, and looked away. Sophy knows I am holding the hand of Annabelle, I thought; she cannot speak, she cannot force herself to say anything, she is cut to the heart with loneliness. What was to be the end of it? I felt if it went on like that much longer I should not be able to stand it. We ended the journey with me sitting with folded arms looking neither to left nor right. When we got to Belle View Sophy said, “I wonder if that boy remembered to pump up the water. No, the wretch hasn’t. You ought to have a hot bath, Annabelle dear, and then go straight to bed.” She looked in the silver box on the table. “That idle youth has taken most of the cigarettes, too!”
I offered to pump up the water, saying that the rain would also fill the tanks over the out-house.
He lit the fire in the furnace and pumped for half an hour with the semi-rotary pump, thinking that there were three weeks before Annabelle went back to school: he must make some excuse to go away, and write, write, write. Perhaps he could find a deserted cattle shed with a loft over—a linhay—and write there during the day. Or a cave, perhaps, among the raven-haunted crags of Valhalla.
It was too late to clear the stove-pipe, which was choked with soot. So the water took too long to get hot, and the bath was postponed until after supper, which Sophy prepared while Annabelle lay down on the sofa under a rug. Queenie was away on a visit to Pompey, otherwise Portsmouth. Marcus the small boy was spending the night with a friend who lived near Queensbridge. Phillip wondered if Sophy had arranged this so that she could be alone with him. He must watch his step.
After supper Annabelle said she didn’t want a hot bath. Sophy filled her hot-water bottle from the kettle on the kitchen hob and gave it to her. Annabelle clasped it to her stomach, then with burning cheeks and dark eyes looked steadily at him. Did she love without knowing it, did she mean to tell him that she loved him and would be patient, and wait for him: or was he seeing his own abstractions in her eyes, as with Spica long ago?
He kept his gaze down, and Annabelle went to her mother, kissing her good-night. “I’m honestly too tired to have a bath, Mummie.”
“Good-night, darling,” said Sophy. “You’re a good, sweet girl.”
He held himself still. Had some decision been taken about him? He waited for more; but Annabelle, with a murmured good-night, went to bed. Sophy and Phillip sat by the fire. A few minutes later she filled her own bottle and said, “Well, I must go to bed. Stop here if you want to—it’s warmer than your cottage, isn’t it, old man?”
It seemed strange to be called old man by Sophy.
“I think I’ll go now. I’m rather tired, too.”
“Yes, it will do you good to get some sleep. Good-night.”
Sophy was gone: for the first time in many evenings she had deliberately and obviously turned away without even a handclasp. Had she and Annabelle both agreed to fade themselves out?
With a feeling near to desperation he arrived at Malandine with his white flannels clotted with mud, and kicking them off got into pyjamas and settled in his valise bed—the cold of the lime-ash floor being insulated by newspapers. Then hearing his mother’s voice calling him softly from above, he crept up the stairs on bare feet.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“Oh, yes. Sorry about the rain.”
“How did the tournament go?”
“Not so bad. What did you do?”
“We spent a very happy day on the beach, Phillip, and got back before the weather broke.”
“I felt I had deserted you all.”
“Oh, we were quite happy. Are you sure you aren’t wet?”
“Hardly at all.”
“Oh, no thanks. The rain’s outside, anyway!”
Lying in his valise, he tried to recall what Sophy had said at tea in the pavilion. What was it she had said? Now he must get the exact words, the exact tone of voice, the exact look in her face: now then: Teatime, Annabelle on his left, Sophy pouring tea on his right. Three tables away Captain Normanby, an acquaintance of the Anglian Brigade in 1918 at Felixstowe—Indian Army, dark, stern-looking, a real cave-man. Playing in the semi-finals with steel-wire racquet: terrific smash. Sophy saying, “Oh, do tell me who he is. I saw you speaking to him. You knew him in the War? Do you know if he is married?”
“I don’t think so,” he replied, to say something.
Then Sophy said, “Feel better, Annabelle? There’s a chance for you after all.”
Did Sophy watch his face as she spoke those words? Her mouth was slightly open, as though she was a little breathless. He knew that attitude, she was like it when she was tender about a new hatched duckling cupped in her hands, or bending down by a small child playing in a puddle alone on the sands. But breathless now lest he realise she was dissembling?
A woman at the next table, a Club acquaintance, had said, “They say that he’s engaged to the Wannop girl, who partners him in the mixed doubles.”
“Oh, the one with the thick ankles. Poor old Annabelle, never mind, dear. A broken heart’s soon mended. Besides, one never really loves at your age—it’s all imagination!”
Aug, 26. I do not appear to be able to compete on the world’s terms. That is the cause of my failure, again and again. As with Julian, too: he is neither of the world worldly, nor wholly of the Imagination. My sort dreams with eyes open. Conrad’s “terrible tyranny of a fixed idea”, in other words. Reason tells me that Annabelle is not my kind, since we have little in common. Spica was nearly my kind, but she stops short through prejudice. She has definite opinions. I have only Imagination—I am will o’ the wisp—ignis fatuus, marsh gas, exhalation of rot and decay—“living in the past”. Query: Is madness complete “all imagination”? In nature, is all poetical talk and feeling unnatural? Except when it attracts for the purpose of coitus?
The Innocent Moon Page 33