A Test to Destruction

by Henry Williamson

  The wedding. P. was in white wearing her gt-g’mother’s lace veil, and carrying a spray of lilies. G. was in uniform, with the M.C. Dozens of small dark farmers, most of them Turneys, black beards, bowler hats, with old-fashioned broadcloth claw-hammer coats, starched collars and dickies, and grey ties. I felt a bounder in my yellow silk tie, bought as a protest against the drab life of a soul-destroying suburb. Thought of writing a novel called Soot, but satire is superficial, therefore untrue; all human characteristics, as ‘Spectre’ used to say, come from environment.

  No shortage of food among farmers. The wedding breakfast was spread over three rooms connected by open doors, reminding me of Hindenburg Line at Graincourt—hams, sausage rolls, chickens, a baron of beef, mince pies, cream meringues, jellies, blancmanges, chocolates, biscuits, cheeses. Napkins tucked in necks, the old clod hoppers knew how to do themselves well. I tucked in mine, and felt less a snob.

  At the back of my mind a vague feeling that all was not well with Polly; and when later, after she had changed into a going-away tweed coat and skirt, she said to me privately, in the little conservatory where withered bunches of grapes hung above us, that she might need my help one day, I felt that, underneath her calm appearance of strength, her heart had broken when I more or less jilted her in September 1916, at the time when the telegram came that Percy was killed, and Doris and I saw her off at Euston.

  Weds. 5 Nov.

  Saw Jack Smith. I remembered him as a quiet, rather lonely boy walking home from Wakenham Road School down Ivy Lane, always by himself. He lent me Edward Carpenter’s Towards Democracy. Most of the sentences in every page were heavily underlined with purple copying-pencil. He asked me to go to their party next Friday evening. He lives with his younger brother and sister in the Randiswell Road in one of those yellow-brick houses built about 1904.

  Thurs. 6 Nov.

  Walked alone over the old places, and through the woods. Along Shooting Common, and through Brumley and down to Cutler’s Pond and so home. Noises of motor-buses, cars, hooters etc. spoiled the tranquillity. I walked through Randiswell in gathering fog, eyes filled with sulphurous specks, which affected my breathing. I felt exhausted, and was sulky and rude to my patient, silver-haired mother. I am conscious of being a perfect swine, but can’t help it. Her cheeks seem to glow, and she always eats humble pie. I feel hurt as I write; eyes are brimming—yet why am I conscious of the pig I am, and still remain reserved and curt?

  Thought all day of ‘Pauline’ … and wondering if I shall attempt to portray her as the iconoclast or not, later in the book. No, I don’t think so. I find my thoughts still dwelling on her. Girls like her are filled with ‘earth’ force, the life-force, vital as the sun’s ray; that is why they have such a terrible sway over men. At the other extreme, poets have the spiritual fire within them; they are of the aetherial force, perhaps of the after-life. Who knows? God help the clashing of earth and spiritual forces.

  I realize that the pain is still deep within my heart. And Eve? Never remembers. The sun’s warmth comes again; I may die tomorrow, still the sun will shine. At times I nearly despair. However, I have my work to love—my book. Now for more of it!

  Fri. 7 Nov.

  The Smith’s party was pretty awful. Gas fire, cuckoo clock, oleographs of Pear’s Annual Faunteleroy child figures on walls, etc. We sat around playing Consequences, Charades, Hunt the Slipper (jokes about smelly feet, etc.) and other wearisome games. When the ‘ladies’ went out to get supper, Bob Smith the young brother, said ‘Come on’ to the men and at once they got into a huddle like flies in an attic—except that numbed flies crawl and these men hastened to clot around Bob—eager for what I wondered. An exchange of smutty stories! Jack the elder brother stood aloof, a smile on his face as he glanced rather pathetically at me. I behaved badly, no doubt, also keeping aloof and not troubling to conceal my dislike of this aspect of lower middle class depression or repression. When I spoke to Jack, he asked me rather timidly what I thought of Edward Carpenter, blinking slightly as though fearful of possible derision on my part. I thought it was thin, rather vacuous stuff, the work of a self-enclosed man without real urge to write of the world as it is, with true understanding of opposing forces always in play in nature; but I said Carpenter struck me as one who had seen through the dross of civilization. His face lit up, and glancing round he whispered, “Don’t tell the others about it, will you? They won’t understand.”

  Tom Ching came in later, after the pubs had closed. He said his mother had come out of Peckham House, cured, but was v. frail, after a stroke. I walked home with him, he comparatively sober, and rather boring, as he kept saying that he had no friends. “I get such strength from you,” he said. I didn’t say that what he got from me I felt I had lost. He asked if we could go for country walks together, he wanted to know more about nature, hardly knowing one bird from another. We arranged to walk on Sunday, and explore the Randisbourne above Cutler’s Pond to its source.

  Had the Nunhead dream again and awoke to see Father by my bed asking what was the matter, why had I been groaning and muttering to myself. I apologized, said it was probably due to indigestion. He said it was more probably because I had nothing to do, except to lie in bed half the morning, turn night into day, etc.

  “You should have gone back to the Office!” he said, querulously.

  I asked if he had to bring that up now, when the matter was finished.

  “Yes, I do! You were in receipt of full pay for nearly five years, including annual increments, and if you did not intend to go back, the honourable course was to have paid back the money.”

  I said I would pay it back, and he went away.

  Downham is now second-in-command of the Wine Vaults Lane branch, under Hollis, old Howlett having retired. Some hopes for me, under D., who must know I know that Teddie Pinnegar nearly shot him for wind-up in Sept. 1917, at Proven. I bear no ill-will to D., but he must dislike me more than before, for knowing what I know about him.

  Richard had the morning of Saturday away from the office—the fifth of six Saturday mornings a year given to each of the staff.

  Breakfast was to be an hour later than usual, at 9 a.m. It was a sunny morning, free of mist and fog; the south-west wind was blowing. Phillip was up in his room, shaved, washed, dressed, and reading over, with some excitement, what he had written the night before. Breakfast was not yet ready. Hetty had laid the places in the sitting-room, the french windows of which had been opened by Richard to bring in the warm morning air.

  Before going down, Phillip opened the top of his bedroom window, and looking out, saw his father below watching Zippy with a mouse. In the kitchen his mother was putting the hot plates on a tray, the eggs and bacon, a special treat for the two men, being already in the chafing dish.

  “I’ll take the tray down for you, Mother. Are the plates wiped underneath?”

  “Oh dear, I nearly forgot! Thank you, dear, for reminding me. I’ll just make the tea, and bring down the kettle in a minute. Now where did I put that cloth?”

  “Leave it to me. You bring down the tea.” He wiped the plates, then peered into the oven. “That’s where the specks fall from, you know. This oven contains the mural memorials of a thousand cremations.”

  “Yes, I’m always trying to find time to scrub it out. Oh, how I miss Mrs. Feeney! She went on working when she had that influenza, you know. And I never went to her funeral! I would have one of my bilious attacks at the time, wouldn’t I?”

  “She was a lovely person, Mother, she had impeccable manners. I always admired her—no, I took her for granted. Still, we all have to die sometime. I’ll take down the tray now.”

  He put it before her place at table, with the silver-plated chafing dish, kept warm by boiling water; and going to the open windows, said “Breakfast is ready, sir.”

  “Thank you, old man. I’ll be along in a moment. I want to make sure that the cat does not lose its mouse.”

  “Isn’t it dead yet?”

  Zippy
was enjoying itself on the lawn, and Father appeared to be enjoying himself equally. The cat would roll on its back ecstatically, clutching the mouse with its paws; and then, flinging it away, lie still while the mouse ran away for its life. The ‘wee tim’rous beastie’ had got so far as the path below the steps when the cat sprang again and hooked it up in its claws, and was rolling once more upon its back when Hetty appeared at the door.

  “Oh, please kill it, Dickie!”

  “Why?” He looked at her. “May not the cat have its sport?”

  “Please kill it.”

  “Why must you always be so sentimental?”

  She turned away, with trembling lips. Phillip breathed deeply, to control his own feelings. He tried to think: Did his father gain what his mother lost, as the cat with the mouse? Or did she thrive on suffering, as Father had once accused her of doing, ‘like a Christian martyr’? He must try and keep his own feelings in balance, resist feelings of hardness towards Father’s apparent callousness.

  The cat bounded away, and when it dropped the mouse on the concrete path leading to the back door he saw it was a short-tailed field-vole, with little white nipples—obviously a female who had young somewhere in a grass-ball nest. Its fur was wet, he could see that its life was ebbing fast; big or little mammal, the feelings of all were basically the same. He clenched his hands as he saw his mother’s face, turning away from the feld-grau vole crawling in a slow zig-zag, as though its spine were disjointed.

  “Why not kill it, Father, and put Mother out of her misery?” he managed to say.

  “Oh come, Phillip! You, a colonel once commanding men, to talk like that!”

  The cat rolled on the concrete, watched by Father with what seemed to be simple happiness. Then it squatted on its paws, tail twitching with little jags of lust, watching the vole trying to climb one of the creosoted boards of the fence. While it was hanging there by its paws, a foot from the ground, Mother came back to the open window.

  “Oh, do let it go, please do, Dickie! Or kill it——” Her voice was weak.

  “It’s sport for the cat!” repeated Richard. “It’s the cat’s nature.”

  “Oh, I cannot bear it,” she said, and went away again.

  Phillip followed her into the house, his breathing restricted, his father’s voice calling after him “Your mother didn’t object to eating those birds you brought home from the Husborne shoot, did she? The fact is, your mother takes every opportunity to object to what I do, or if it isn’t what I do, it’s how I do it!” Then almost amorously to the cat, “Poo-or Zippy! Would they take away your mousie then, poo-oor Zippy.” He bent to tickle the cat’s stomach, drawing back his hand from the claws. “Naughty, Zippy!”

  The cat sprang up, then meeow’d weakly at its master, blinking eyes when Richard half playfully, half angrily, cuffed its head.

  Phillip went away from the window to the front room, where he saw his mother sitting in her armchair, her eyes bright with unshed tears, her cheeks faintly flushed, her body seeming smaller than when last he had seen her sitting there, in what was supposed to be her very own chair. He had seldom seen her in it, and never when the children had been in the front room on Sunday afternoons, for usually he and Mavis had made a rush for it.

  “Phillip, I can’t bear it any longer! I have my nervous headaches almost constantly now.”

  “I know how you feel. I often feel just the same myself. Father doesn’t understand. We all fail to understand one another, it seems. Look how beastly I was to you when Desmond and I came back from Folkestone that day.”

  “I was afraid you were going to ruin your life, Phillip.”

  “I know, Mother. But it is not always good to interfere. Yet I understand, Mother, how you felt.”

  “Thank you for saying it, Phillip.”

  He stroked her forehead with his fingers, the first sign of affection he had ever given her; she took his hand, and pressed it to her bosom; and felt his movement to withdraw it. To cover her feeling she said, “Do you see where I’ve put your Order, Phillip? Under that glass dome, where the waxed fruits used to stand? It looks so beautiful, oh I am so proud of it. One day you will want to give it to your wife; until then, I’ll keep it for you.”

  “Oh, Mother——”

  Seeing his face, she went on, “Are you sure you feel all right, Phillip?” She thought she must not talk about the war. “I expect you want your breakfast. Oh dear, I hope I have not let the plates get cold! It’s silly of me to be so upset over a mouse, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not silliness, Mother. It was the same feeling for which Father Aloysius lost his life on the Somme. Father does not understand about the war,” he muttered. He wanted to be alone. “I don’t think I could eat breakfast, thank you.”

  “Oh do try and eat something, dear. If you don’t, it may upset Father, and he is so looking forward to his little holiday.”

  “Yes, I understand, Mother.”

  The next day, Sunday the 9th of November—first anniversary of the Red Revolution in Germany—was one to be remembered in the Maddison family for the rest of the members’ lives. It began much as usual, all discordance subdued until, at mid-day dinner, as Richard was about to carve a half-shoulder of ex-frozen Australian sheep he saw a black speck on the top plate. Putting the plate on one side, he pointed to another example of his wife’s carelessness: a trace of dried mustard remaining on the rim of the second plate from a previous meal.

  “Who brought in these plates from the kitchen, I would like to ask?”

  “I did,” said Doris.

  “Oh, it is all my fault,” said Hetty, “I really must get some glasses.”

  “Why cannot Doris do the washing up, pray? Or does she, too, need spectacles?”

  “Doris has so much to do, Dickie—she is working very hard for her degree——”

  Phillip carried the plates back to the kitchen, followed by his mother, while Richard sat behind the cooling week’s ration of meat, obstinately determined to punish himself and all concerned by refusing to allow it to go back into the oven.

  “It’s no good, Phillip, I try to please your father but everything I do upsets him. I can’t go on any more,” said Hetty, behind the closed door.

  “Come on, let’s get the plates clean. Give me that kettle of hot water. You dry, Doris. Now, Mother, you should never think in terms of pleasing anyone.”

  “Hear hear,” said Doris. “Father isn’t worth it.”

  “I said, anyone. It’s wrong primarily to try to please people.”

  “Mother isn’t so selfish as you,” remarked Elizabeth, who had followed her sister out of the dining-room.

  “What I mean is, one should put the job first, Mum. That way one becomes an artist.”

  “Oh yes! Hark at you!” said Elizabeth. “That’s what you think you are, don’t you? Putting all those ink-blots on Father’s card table upstairs, while waiting for inspiration! Just you wait till he sees what you’ve done! And why don’t you go to bed before he does? It worries him, and that affects Mother.”

  “I walk at night, to get some peace and quiet for my writing, if you must know.”

  “Is that why you wear that yellow tie, to be seen in the dark? People in Wakenham laugh at you, do you know that? You and Julian Warbeck—both of you going to be great writers, I don’t think!”

  “Have you been telling people about my writing? I wish you would mind your own business!” He peered into the oven.

  “As I said, it’s coated with the effects of many a burnt offering, I’ll scour it out tomorrow. Make way, Elizabeth!” as he hastened out of the kitchen with the plates.

  Feeling easier by his son’s moral support, Richard went on with the cutting—the art of carving, he remarked, was in abeyance until rationing was ended. At last all were served; knives and forks taken up; cat in position beside the master’s chair. The meat was not so tough and tasteless as he had feared.

  “You may not long remain the only member of the family to be entitled to
wear a medal, Phillip,” he said, amiably. “Perhaps you have read in the paper that they are talking of giving the Victory Medal to the Special Constabulary?”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t time to read the papers, Father.”

  “Oh! I should have thought that a gentleman of leisure like yourself would have all the time in the world.”

  “Now you come to mention it, sir, I think I did read somewhere that the Birmingham City Ironmongers have struck a Water Guard Medal, for helping to guard the City water supply ‘from malicious interference and contamination by enemy agents’—smoke from the profiteers’ factory chimneys a possibly. It has a moire, or pale blue riband, I understand, and an inscription, ‘Brummagem contra mundum.’”

  “Ah, no doubt you are feeling very superior, Phillip! Well, while I do not know about Birmingham, I do know that guarding anything in the war called for constant vigilance, especially during the long hours of darkness.”

  “Ah yes, spies signalling to Zeppelins, and all that sort of thing,” replied Phillip with a straight face.

  “Well, they did, you know! They had many ingenious ways of giving information to their masters in the Wilhelmstrasse.”

  “I suppose German spies could have signalled the whereabouts of the water by placing dead fish at the side of the reservoir, revealing a phosphorescent perimeter?”

  Hetty laughed. Phillip’s grave manner reminded her of her brother Hugh. But he must not go too far——

  “So you still take this spy business lightly, I see! Well, I can assure you that the high authorities, who presumably knew what they were doing, took quite a different attitude.”

  “‘The high authorities’—the ‘Frocks’—save us from ‘high authorities,’ Father. The Fifth Army was nearly obliterated because Lloyd George and Co. refused to send out sufficient reinforcements in January 1918, to the B.E.F., until it was almost too late. We were starved of troops, which were deliberately kept at home, a million and a half, although it was known what was coming. Perhaps Lloyd George will get the V.C. for that, as well as the Birmingham Water Guard Medal!”