The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  “It must be the mountain air,” continued Bevan.

  “Yes, dear Bevan,” replied Phillip. “And the gentians.”

  Chapter 21

  SUMMER’S LEASE

  At last, at last they were coming! And for the entire month of August! He read and re-read Irene’s letter.

  I think you will have to wait for your Barley until she is twenty-one, dearest P.M., for as a bolting wife, as I suppose I must consider myself, I have no legal right to consent to her marriage to you while she remains a minor. If I attempt to do so, her father would, perhaps, apply to the English court to have her made a ward in Chancery. As you know, she was seventeen last January, so it may seem a fearfully long time to have to wait, but I need hardly tell you that she is no sentimental miss, easy come and easy go——

  Four years to wait, what did it matter? Also—tremendous jubilation—as a writer he could work anywhere! He thought of a chalet in the mountains, stacks of split ash-wood under wide eaves; fishing for trout in rushing torrents; of goat’s milk to drink and rye-bread, butter, and honey to eat. Barley in the holidays, peaks along the sky, the mountain flowers.

  *

  At last, at last he had a companion to walk with him above the cliffs. Jack O’Donovan—Julian Warbeck—Annabelle—none of them had ever gone the whole way with him to the spiked savagery of Valhalla.

  “I used to wonder if I were a sort of Flying Dutchman. Nobody was ever really at ease with me, Barley,” he said, walking effortlessly beside her. They looked down at glass-clear water four hundred feet below. “Now we see it in play around the rocks, reflecting the summer sparkle, but below lie the bones of ten thousand drowned sailors. It’s really a dreadful coast. You see, when the ebb-tide sets down Channel and the south-west blows up Channel, ships bound for Southampton and London River are pushed this way. In the old days of sail, many a Finnish windjammer and Chinese tea-clipper broke up down there. Fishermen at Esperence Cove say that the big crabs and lobsters have grown on corpses brought in by the tides. But the crabs don’t have it all their own way. There are lots of octopuses, which throttle them with their tentacles and peck into their shells, sucking out all the flesh.”

  “We must go down and get some crabs, Phillip!”

  “What, climb down here?”

  “We can sail or row round from Esperence Cove! It’s quite safe, on a calm day.”

  She could see that he was apprehensive, and taking his hand said, “I’ll look after you.”

  A school of basking sharks lay a quarter of a mile out to sea. And walking on towards Valhalla, they saw seals swimming underwater among dim shapes of fish. They came to the craggy precipices of Valhalla.

  “Barley, I do wish I had known you three years ago, as you are now, I mean. I used to go to the Doves Nest in the gallery at Covent Garden. It was wonderful, lying right up in the gods, on that semi-circular ledge which joined the curve of the ceiling, and listening to Beecham conducting his ‘grand’ season, the first after the war. Tristan—Lohengrin—Parsifal—the Ring of the Niebelungs—Delius—Stravinsky—Charpentier—Puccini! If only you had been with me then!”

  “We can still go.”

  “Ah, but it wouldn’t be the same.”

  She was puzzled; she kept silent. Part of him was still remote from her; and she suffered a little, but held the feeling away from him.

  “When I used to go down to the Embankment after the opera, there were rows of ex-soldiers lying on single sheets of newspaper laid on the paving stones under the arch of Waterloo Bridge. Others sat all night on the seats under the plane trees. They had no work, no homes, and I suppose no hope. But that wasn’t ‘news’ to my editor, Bloom. It was commonplace—a couple of million or so with nothing to do. It was, in a way, much better in the war. At least they had friends to muck in with then. I want to write about that time—but I don’t seem able to get clear——”

  Before and below her were fantastic shapes of rocks upheaved in layers by ancient fires, worn and fretted by air and water during thousands of centuries. To her it was a delightful place: she saw in the splinters and torn layers of rock the likenesses of petrified galleons, prehistoric animals, the profiles of shattered giants—all images of her childhood reading. To her now it was a happy summer scene—ravens croaking above shifting winds, precipices echoing with wailing cries of gull and kittiwake, whose cast breast-feathers trembled in the warm breezes, caught in mats of withered stone-crop holding to flakes of schist embedded among the roots of thyme and sea-thrift——

  “You look so sad, Phillip.” She patted the dry earth beside her. “Come closer.’’

  She kissed him; heard him sigh. Did he see only the sad relies of faded spring? If only he could feel that all days and seasons were equal! She had a clear feeling of being all herself, with neither body nor memory, but of beauty only, when she was with him.

  He was thinking, If ever I were to lose her——

  “You will be careful when you go up to the Col d’Aubisque when the snow falls, won’t you, Barley?”

  “You will be careful when you scorch at seventy on your Norton, won’t you, Phillip?”

  “I get the shivers even now when I think of how you might have tried to follow me that day—— If you had lost your foothold on that loose walling of the Corniche, last Easter, as I dreamed, I don’t know what I should have done.”

  “You should not have gone there, you bad boy! I shan’t let you act the goat in future! Oh yes, I know you meant to be kind, by going over to see Annabelle.” After a pause she added, “Annabelle loved you, I think.”

  “No—she was in love with love.”

  They wandered along the cliff path, seeing the same world together. He looked down at a cove far below, and felt no fear. “And I used to be terrified of heights!”

  She took his hand. “You are yourself with me, Phillip.”

  “You take after your father, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know, really. He is impatient with slower minds. I am not.”

  “Do you love your father, Barley?”

  She nodded. “Daddy was often cross with Mummie, but never with me.”

  “I used to think that the Viking could never fit in with the Celt. My parents are so opposite. My father comes from Viking stock, my mother from small round-headed Gaultshire people, plus a bit of Irish.”

  “You have the Irish colouring and temperament. Mummie’s Viking. Daddy’s like you, a Celt. That’s why I love you. It’s in my blood.”

  How frequently the tears came into his eyes! She could feel them now on her cheek, and thought that he had much ice in him to be thawed. She would give warmth, warmth to him for ever. She held him against her heart, she was all his friends.

  *

  Phillip’s sister Doris and her husband arrived the following week, after a long and tiring journey from Romford in Essex, where they were now living. The journey took fourteen hours on their flat-twin Douglas motor-bicycle. Its maximum speed in top gear was about 40 m.p.h., but with the canoe-shaped side-car attached there had been much second-gear work, causing over-heating and the need to stop to cool down. Doris looked ill, Phillip thought, apart from the fatigues of the journey.

  Bill was his usual kindly self, ready and willing to help in every possible way. He got up early and made a pot of tea before cooking breakfast with Phillip. He was always attentive to his wife’s wishes; but his stuttering seemed to be worse.

  One evening as they were walking over a grass field looking for mushrooms, the two girls at the top end and the men at the bottom end, Willoughby told Phillip that the marriage was one in name only: but he was—fingers to mouth to hide the contortion of speech—p-p-prepared to wait.

  “I suppose she is still haunted by Percy’s death. Good heavens, it’s seven years since the battle of the Somme! I can’t forget it, either. Do you ever think of the war, Bill?”

  “Sometimes. But I don’t think it is P-Percy being killed, so much as s-s-something to do with your father.”
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br />   The sun had gone down below the hills of Bodmin moor, fifty miles to the west-nor’-west. Phillip walked up the field to his sister. She was standing alone, looking at the sky.

  “I think a sunset is sad, don’t you, Phil?”

  “I used to, but not now.”

  “Ah, you’re lucky! You’re free, living down here.”

  “It’s a question of mental, not body freedom, I think.”

  “Don’t you ever think of Mother?”

  “Yes, of course. And also of Father.”

  “I wish Mother would leave Father. He’s killing her, inch by inch.”

  “Do you know Housman’s poem, beginning,

  ‘Comrade, look not on the west

  ’Twill have the heart out of your breast,

  ’Twill take your thoughts and sink them far

  Leagues beyond the sunset bar …

  Friends of blood and bone are best.

  Comrade, look not on the west.’”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  “I wish you and Bill could be happy.”

  “Has he been discussing me with you?”

  “No. But I can see he’s very nervy, and very fond of you. I thought perhaps that you could not forget Percy.”

  “He must have been telling you something!”

  “Doris, please listen. You’re the bravest one in the family. I always remember how you stood up to Father, when you were very little, defending Mother. You said you had a big knife, and were going to kill him. How old were you? Three? He beat you, but you would not apologise. And you didn’t cry. I was blotted out, I couldn’t even cry. I was feeble, sapped by secret grief by that time. And so became ‘very naughty’, and wild. And anchored myself, as it were, to an ideal—Helena Rolls. It was unreal love, all a figment of the mind. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I think so. But aren’t you and Barley——?”

  “Oh dear, it’s rather hard to explain. I can confide in you, but you won’t, or can’t, confide in me.”

  “There’s nothing to confide, Phillip.”

  “Doris! What would you want, if you could wave a magic wand and have it?”

  “I’d like to have a house in the country, Mother with me, and lots of small children from unhappy homes to teach and bring up.”

  “Don’t you want children of your own?”

  “I shall never be able to have any.” She turned away.

  “Why not, Doris?”

  “I’d rather not discuss it, if you don’t mind.”

  “Well, discussion is good for the soul, you know.”

  She faced him. “Why didn’t you ask Mother down? Don’t you want her any more?”

  “I thought she was going to Switzerland with Elizabeth.”

  “Only because you haven’t asked Elizabeth here.”

  “Well, you know very well we don’t get on, Doris.”

  “Still, blood is thicker than water, you know!”

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  “Don’t you want Barley to see her?”

  “There’s plenty of time. But apart from that, Elizabeth and I haven’t a word to say to one another.”

  “Have you forgotten Alfred Hawkins, and how you told Father that he and Mavis, as she was then, were lying in the grass of the Backfield? And what Father said to her, so that she ran away from home, and was found half-dead on the Hill, long after midnight?”

  “No, I have never forgotten it. Father said to her, ‘I don’t love you any more’, and that, I suppose, corroded her.”

  “It was the cause of her having fits! Father is—well, you know what he did to you! And now you stand up for him, at Mother’s expense! I know, you see, how you agreed with Father over Mother’s new sink! Now if you please, I’d rather not discuss it further. I’ve got a headache.”

  *

  It was a glut year for mushrooms. They ate them with bacon for breakfast, with rabbit stew for supper, with fish soup of wrasse, pollock, and codling caught off the rocks for luncheon. Doris bottled mushrooms in brine for the winter, to be taken home for her mother.

  One morning there was a letter from Tabitha Trevelian saying that she was staying with an uncle and aunt at Dartmouth, and suggesting that she come over for the day and see him. He asked Irene what he should do.

  “But why not, P.M.? If she refused you—how long ago is it, three years?—you have nothing to fear!”

  “I didn’t want her to feel, well—unhappy.”

  “Then why not treat her not as an old flame but as an old friend, and say you very much want her to see Barley? If she’s what you say she is, and I’m sure she is, then she’ll be flattered.”

  Spica arrived by ’bus. They picnic’d on the sands. Spica did not bathe, so Phillip sat with her when the others were in the water.

  “You look frightfully well, I must say,” she told him. “What a beautiful girl Barley is! You’re a very lucky man, and I hope you know it!”

  “Somehow it feels too good to last, Spica——”

  While Irene and Barley were preparing high tea in Verbena Cottage, he took Spica to see where he lived.

  “I’ve always pictured it much as it is, Phillip. I expect Barley will want to make it a bit more comfortable for you.” She looked at the soap-boxes and other furniture. “Will you live here when you are married, do you think?”

  “Oh yes, always. Barley likes it. I hope to buy it one day.”

  She made as if to take his hand and said, “I’d like to make the wedding ring, if you’ll let me. I’m working for a goldsmith now, did I tell you? What are Barley’s initials? Would you like them engraved inside the ring with your own? Think it over, and let me know,” as they went back to Verbena Cottage.

  Irene had made a mushroom omelette, and watercress sandwiches. The sun, still high in the west, shone into the room. Never, he thought, had he seen people so happy. It was sad that Spica had to go: if only they could sit there forever, laughing and talking. But the bus left at six. On the way to the stop Spica said, “I’ll do a brown owl, too, if I can manage it—although it will be rather small. Your names perhaps—linked by a cross? Yes, that would be better, the simple thing is always right. Phillip X Barley, how about that? Well, goodbye. I have so enjoyed myself. You look a different man, you know, quite changed from the haggard creature I used to see at Folkestone.”

  The large eyes, brimming with tenderness, looked down at his face from the top step of the ’bus, an open affair with wooden seats. “You know,” she said gently, “I always thought that you and I—one day——”

  The engine roared, he waited until it was round the corner; and stood transfixed for a moment, feeling the sadness of all human farewells. How quickly the summer had passed; already the wheat was in stook, casting lengthening shadows upon the stubble. Tomorrow Bill and Doris would set forth for the long journey back to—what? And although Irene had taken the cottage for another fortnight, soon they too would be gone, like migrant birds following the sun.

  *

  One September morning he was sitting in his cottage when the postman brought a letter addressed in a hand which always seemed to bring a flow of life with it. He opened the envelope eagerly; but after reading it sat still, wondering how he should reply. When Barley came in he was still sitting there. “What’s the matter?”

  “Willie, my cousin, is unhappy. He loves a girl in North Devon, and she loves him, he says, but her mother’s dead against him. He says it’s all his own fault, yet whatever he says or does can’t alter the situation. There’s a desperate strain in the letter which alarms me.”

  “May I read it?”

  “I wish you would, Barley, and tell me what you think.”

  When she had read the letter she said, “He needs help. Shall we go today and see him?”

  “We’ve arranged to go to Dartmouth this afternoon, with your mother. It’s her last day, we can’t very well leave her alone.”

  “Mummie won’t mind.”

  “It�
��s a long way to North Devon and back.”

  “You don’t really want me to see him, do you?”

  She was persistent. At last he said, “You might fall in love with him.”

  “Oh, Phillip, is that what you think of me! Can’t you see from the letter he’s almost desperate?”

  “I suppose I once wrote like that to Spica. Her reply was, ‘Your letters are so piteous.’ Of course, I didn’t really love her. Surely, if this girl, Mary Ogilvie, really loved Willie, and he really loved her, he wouldn’t write like that?”

  “But he does write like that, and so needs friendship all the more. The fact that you and Spica weren’t suited made you all the more unhappy while it lasted.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “So I think you should go and see your cousin now. Leave me with Mummie if you’d prefer it that way.”

  “But we must spend our last day together! I’ll go and see Willie next week.”

  And when they were gone he wrote to Julian Warbeck and invited him to do the walk over Dartmoor again, “for the sake of old times”. Julian came down by the next train, and the following day the two walked across Dartmoor and arrived at Willie’s new cottage on the edge of the Great Field beside the estuary on what turned out to be the penultimate evening of cousin Willie’s life.

  Sept. 26. I hardly know what to write. We sat up all night of the 23rd; W. left us at dawn on 24th; he did not return, and last night his body was found off Crow Shingle Spit. Tomorrow is the inquest.

  Sept. 27. No question of suicide was raised in the coroner’s court at Barnstaple. The facts were barely stated: W.M. had gone to say goodbye at the Ogilvie’s house, Wildernesse, and presumably went on to Crow Spit to get a salmon boat to ferry him over to Appledore. But the nets were “off”, and no boat came up with the flowing tide that night. A flare was seen on the Sharshook ridge, the gravel island in mid-estuary, from where the netsmen usually shot their draughts during the legal season. Burnt pages of his MSS. were found the next day on the tide-line. Verdict, Found drowned.

  I had already telephoned to Uncle John. I have made arrangements for the coffin to go by train to Rookhurst tomorrow, for the funeral. I go with it.