Their shadows drew in as the moon rose up. Ghostly pale upon the skyline to the south, as they came near the sea, was the stump spire of Clayborough church, reminding him of the Hospice on the Wytschaete ridge on Christmas Eve, 1914.
“You were seven years old then, Barley. It was very cold that night, but now you are with me it is warm, warm!” He laid his cheek against hers. “You hair is all moonlight.” He bowed to the moon, then embraced his little girl once again. “All true poetry is love, Barley.”
They went on, hand in hand, swinging arms together so that the bags caused them to sway about. They swung the bags at one another, playfully; then, bags on heads, started a race. She fell while trying to catch hers, he was all concern, and insisted on carrying both her bag and herself, keeping this up for a quarter of a mile when he went into a field and tipped her gently over his head upon a half-cut hayrick. After a rest they played leapfrog around the rick, then humped up bags and went on.
At Malandine no one must know who they were, so they walked with short synchronised steps, as though a very old woman was shuffling past the lighted cottage windows. Up the short hill to the pump, creeping down past the Crang’s window, Barley going on while he stopped to knock and ask for the key.
“Why, it be Mis’r Madd’zn come! Plaize to come in, and zit by the vire, zur!”
Mrs. Crang said, “If us’d knawed you was comin’, us’d had a vire put in for ’ee. You’ll catch your death o’ cold, slapin’ in a damp bed!”
“’Ave ’ee’d zupper, zur? You’m welcome to what us’v got, you knaw that.”
“I’m not hungry, thanks very much, Walter. I’ll soon get a fire going. I just called in for the key.”
“You be in a master hurry, midear! Don’t ’ee want vor zee Moggy?
“Thurr ’er be, by th’ vire.”
“I’ll come back later.”
Fortunately there was some driftwood on the hearth. First, a blanket over the kitchen window, and then to light a candle, watched silently while the flame crept up the wick, giving off sparks of dust and sputtering out with a dead moth embedded in the grease, the room again a dark cavern.
Other candles were lit; and while Barley put the groceries and bread in the crate-like cupboard behind the damp printed curtains, Phillip lit a fire. Pitcher to pump, on tip-toe, pre-arranged double tap on door, creeping in. So far so good, all done without a word exchanged. Then the whisper, “I’ll go up to the pub and get Rusty. And then some milk down the street. Lock the door after me, open it only to my double tap.”
As he went along the village street there fell from the air a curiously remote pealing of bells, and looking towards the church he saw a light in the splayed west window. Pausing in the shadow of the churchyard wall he heard the harmonics of each bell-note softly following in the pause after the clapper-stroke. It was the most gentle ringing of the quartet of small bronze 16th-century bells in their oaken cage that he had ever heard.
It seemed that each of the four bells was subdued, one pausing to allow the other to sound its harmonics as an echo: a strange effect in the moonlight, as though each note was of the body of the metal, and its following harmonic the departing soul. Too fanciful, he thought; and was the more startled a few minutes later to hear from the landlord of the inn that the muffled peal was being rung for Mr. Tanberry, who had died three nights before, and this was the practice ring for the funeral on the morrow.
“’A was found lyin’ in the stream, zur. And ’a had taken only a glass of whiskey, too, in my house. ’A zaid ’a didden feel very well, and went oomwards soon afterwards.”
Phillip hastened back with the news. “I ought to go down and see his wife. She may need help.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“We’d better go in and see the Crangs first.”
They went next door just as Walter Crang was opening a bottle of whit ale.
“I’d like vor drink a health,” he said. “To Mis’r Tanberry, God rest his zoul. I’ve a-kep this yurr bottle for best part of two year, and ’twas full of raisins when I put’s down in th’ backhouse, and they’m all gone now, all ate away. ’Tes clear, you zee!” He held the bottle to the light.
After a drink of the pale yellow ale everything became free and easy for Phillip. “I’d like you to be the first to know that we were married this morning!”
Another toast was drunk; then Mrs. Crang offered to air their blankets, and to lend a pair of sheets. “You’ll know them, Miss Barley, aw, what be I sayin’, I beg your pardon, you’m Mrs. Madd’zn now——”
“Please call me Barley!”
“No, ’tidden my place vor call ’ee that; Miss Barley you’ve always been to us yurr, so Miss Barley you’m still, midear! Wull, as I was zayin’, you’ll be ’omely like in these yurr sheets, for your Mother gived them to me when she left, when was it now, nearly two years and a half ago! My, how time flies! I can mind you then, beside Mr. Madd’zn, I could zee then one was made for t’other, I said zo, didden I, Walter?”
“Aye, us both zeed it comin’, zur, and I be very plaised that you both be man and wife, beggin’ your pardon, zur.”
“Walter Crang,” said Phillip, turning to Barley, “has the most beautiful manners of any man in the village. It is I who ought to beg his pardon, for not letting him know we were coming! Old soldier of the Devonshire Regiment, I drink to you! May you never fade away, like they raisins in this yurr wasp wine!”
*
Under the moon, shrunken small with a blue gleam, they went down to see Porky’s wife, with Rusty on the petrol tank. Mrs. Tanberry wept with relief to see them. It was a sad sight, the small children in the kitchen, while in the sitting-room, still faintly smelling of burnt tea-leaves, lay the coffin in the light of a small oil lamp. They learnt that Porky’s brother had come down. He was staying the night at Queensbridge, after telling the widow that the money Porky had received every month, and so often had squandered, would be continued from the family trust fund, based on a Tottenham factory making tobacco pouches of rubber.
So that was Porky’s origin, and the source of his many imaginative character parts—another London suburb! A classless man, feeling himself at home among labourers in pubs, buying popularity with beer. And now the kind and rather helpless little man was lying in his coffin, the-dear-daddy-please-come-back whispering little daughter looking at him from the door. And he thought of the time, in the Ring of Bells, when Porky had told him that he would like him to be godfather to his baby boy—and he had not turned up at the christening, not wanting further to be involved with Porky’s erratic life.
“Do stay to supper, won’t you? I have a lot of food in, for tomorrow, if anyone wants it. There’s plenty of ham—Father’s other two children, by the first marriage, are coming tomorrow. It’s—” she caught her breath—“two-thirty tomorrow.”
He sat the little girl on one knee, and hugged her during supper, while the smaller boy sat on Barley’s lap. The big-eyed, solemn baby boy clung to her when they had to go, and the little girl held Phillip tight, saying, “I love you, gentleman.”
Barley, after a whisper to Mrs. Tanberry, carried the mite up to his cot and put him to bed. Then it was the little girl’s turn, Phillip undressing her and tucking her in.
Returning to the cottage, they saw lights in the windows. Mrs. Crang was about to tidy up the place. The oil-lamp, its chimney cleaned by newspaper, was shining on the kitchen table, blankets were airing on ceiling joist nails. A candle winked in each bedroom, some rather faded chrysanthemums stood in a pitcher at the top of the stairs.
“Walter axed me vor give ’ee this bottle of whit ale,” said Mrs. Crang as she left. “’Twill make ’ee spark!” she laughed.
“Good, we’ll drink it!” said Barley.
Mindful of the ease with which sounds passed through the thin lath-and-plaster partition between the adjoining cottage bedrooms, Phillip had intended to move the double bed into the smaller room; but to move now would be a criticism of Mrs.
Crang’s kindness; and if he moved it later, the noise of removal, let alone the banging on rusty joints and sockets of the cast-iron frame, would be heard. It could be done on the morrow, when Mrs. Crang was out.
While his bride unpacked, he sat on his camp-bed in the smaller room in a chiaroscuro of candle and moon, seeing Porky in his mind, or just outside his mind: a grave and earnest Porky, hanging in spirit to the old haunts of the body by means of another’s imagination. Perhaps Porky did not know he was dead, and was wondering why he was seeing Phillip as in a dream. With sinking heart he realized that Porky was more prominent in his mind than Barley: the dead more alive than the living. Did he belong irrevocably to ‘Spectre’ West and other friends of the Great War who had gone into the darkness which he saw as the light behind all life?
Imagining old times, he found he was irritated by the happy talk between Barley and Mrs. Crang in the next room as they made the bed together, spreading the Irish linen sheets Irene had given to her when she had left in fear of the Swede coming suddenly, impelled by the tensions of hopeless love.
Hopeless love as vain as moonshine, love ruined by dream, by the terrible tyranny of fixed ideas for which Willie had died, and in dying had broken the heart of Mary Ogilvie. Was that his way, too: a moon-feeling stronger than any feeling for anyone or anything else in the world of sun?
When Mrs. Crang departed, Barley came and stood before him. “I know what you’re thinking, so I’ll air your flea bag in case you want to be left alone.” She rolled it up and took it downstairs, with the bottle of whit ale.
Taking the candle, Phillip opened his journal.
“Drive thy plow over the bones of the dead” wrote Blake, and not, he inferred, over the bodies of the living. But the artist draws inspiration from death and the passing of time, the compost of life——
She came softly up the stairs, passing him and going into the other bedroom. All thought faded, he sat staring at the paper, feeling blank; then began to undress, possessed by contrary feelings. After awhile, hearing no movement from the adjoining room he went in, surprising her as she stood naked, holding a night-dress.
“Want any help?”
“Look at this,” she laughed. “I usually wear pyjamas, but Mummy ordered this from Swan and Edgars.”
“It goes over the head,” he replied, pulling it from her and dressing her, while wondering why he had no feeling other than pity for her almost sad naturalness. She was so young, she was a child, she knew nothing about life, she was waiting on his own feelings, which were blank. But the silk of the dress drew him, it was warm under his hand.
He had not seen perplexity—doubt—in her eyes before. He was remorseful, and to reassure her said,’’ I think it’s beautiful, Barley.”
“Honestly?”
“Yes, it’s lovely, silky and soft.” He held a fold to his cheek. “I haven’t felt silk like this since I was a child, when I had a piece of my mother’s old petticoat in my cot. My great fear was that I might lose it.”
“And did you?”
“Father took it away, to make me ‘more manly’.”
“How old were you?”
“Oh, about two years.”
“I wish I’d known you then!” She kissed his cheek. “You’re cold, come to bed, and I’ll warm you!”
He threw off the rest of his clothes and got in beside her. In the light of the moon reflected from the ledge of the small window he could see the head upon the pillow beside him, the eyes looking at him as though all her life shone there.
“Phillip.”
“Yes, Barley?”
“Do you really love me?”
“‘True love is likeness of thought’. Do you remember?”
“Yes, I do. And do you remember what I told you before you crossed over the Col d’Aubisque?”
“You said, ‘I am all your friends’.”
“Phillip, are you ‘all my friends’, do you think?”
“You feel lonely with me, don’t you?”
“Sometimes. But only because I, too, have lonely thoughts.”
“Tell me, Barley.”
“It’s about Mummie and Daddy. I want to bring them together, but can’t think how to do it. Daddy is very ill indeed. Do you think that will bring them together?”
“Oh, Barley, I love you so much! You know, I often wonder how I can bring my parents together. Perhaps if I had been killed——”
She held him in her arms, whispering, “I knew what you were feeling. Your mother told me that you used to ask to hold her hand, through the bars of the cot beside her bed. Then your father stopped it, and you lay still, she said, and never asked for her hand again. Poor little Donkey Boy.”
Her use of the childish nickname, memories of his mother whispering, Do lie still, Sonny, otherwise Father cannot sleep, subdued his feelings; he felt himself going away from her; but when she kissed him lightly above the eyebrow he returned in spirit to her, saying, “Poor old Father, he was usually overworked, and that made him irritable. Mother once told me that he used to bring home extra work in the winter, and sit up half the night, addressing envelopes for eighteen pence a thousand.”
“It isn’t good to be overworked, is it?”
*
He was happy, the past fled away in her warmth, his feet worked like a cat’s in release of the tension of so many vain thoughts. The rim of the moon, moving out of a filigree of winter branches, gleamed in a corner of the casement window.
“There is something strange about the moon,” he said. “I really think it has a power upon the spirit of all things on the earth. Do you know the books of Rudolf Steiner? He felt that very strongly. Sowing corn on the waxing moon, sensing the influence of the moon’s rays. After all, look how women are ruled by the phases of the moon.”
She whispered in his ear, “Sometimes when I walk under the moon I see the dream faces of children.”
“You are like a wild bird,” he said. “You accept the truths of nature—most people merely fumble after them, after they’ve destroyed nature, otherwise the wild part of themselves.”
“You opened my eyes to beautiful things, Phillip. So I couldn’t help loving you.”
“Francis Thompson has an image in his Sister Songs about the power of love, Barley.
‘In all I work, my hand includeth thine;
Thou rushest down in every stream
Whose passion frets my spirit’s deepening gorge;
Unhood’st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream;
Thou swing’st the hammers of my forge;
As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all the labouring surges of the world.’”
He grew protective, taking her head upon his shoulder, and touching with his lips her forehead, discovering the neat line of hairs upon her eyebrow. He leaned over her, kissing again and again the strange small feathery eyebrow, and then her eyelids, her cheeks, and plucking at the corner of her mouth as he had plucked at the silk of her night-dress, while one satisfying thought mounted above all.
March 1934—March 1961
Florida—Devon
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© Henry Williamson Literary Estate, 1961
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ISBN 978–0–571–32262–6
The Innocent Moon Page 50