A Solitary War

by Henry Williamson

  “Jolly fine shoot, I say,” said Teddy to Phillip as they led the way across the pasture to the boundary of the Brock Hanger, to climb the steep chalky slopes among the beech trees and reach the edge of the Lower Brock field, with its thigh-high mustard—that stalky, tough, unploughed and unploughable mustard which on Matt’s advice had been left to ‘hold the bards’.

  Walking round the edge of the Lower Brock they came to the Great Bustard Wood.

  As Phillip said later, had it been a fine day the sport of that drive would have been considerable, for the twenty acres of mustard had attracted pheasants from many fields around. But at the time all he saw was the frightful spectacle of plants three feet high, bedraggled and part-rotted by frost after most of them had shed their seeds; and now for years to come those seeds would be growing in the corn, helping charlock or wild mustard to choke the barley crops. Why had he not ploughed it under when he had wanted to, when it was only a foot high in September? Matt’s ‘hold the bards’ idea had been like an ichneumon fly on his winged purpose to help give that poor, exploited soil a little humus. And now, the fall ploughing missed. Spring ploughing would cause most of the sub-soil moisture to evaporate, also the sticky soil would have neither rain nor frost to help refine it to the soft, loose tilth that barley needed for an even and continuous growth. Oh, why was he so weak that he could never order his own life and work but always be a vehicle for the ideas of other people?

  Drenched figures pushed through the jungle of mustard, to drive the birds into the Great Bustard Wood. Six of the eight guns were set at sixty-yard intervals around three sides of that central wood. The beaters, accompanied by the two remaining guns, went to the far end of the Bustard field, there to about-turn and spread out across the field, to drive any birds from hedge or stubble before them into the wood.

  Weeks previously Luke and Phillip had scattered tail-corn and weed-seeds, from a threshed stack, among the trees of the Great Bustard. Teddy, too, had gone among the trees, broadcasting what he imagined to be pheasant feed—some mustard seed discovered in a sack in the granary and taken without asking.

  “Yar’ll see,” Luke said, “there’ll be a lot o’bards that we drove out of the mustard hiding in the Bustard. Do you send that Mr. Vinegar to flank the beaters with us, and another gun on the opposite flank, to get any bards breaking back.”

  So Teddy and a Fusilier walked to the far end of the field, while the six remaining guns faced the pines of the lower edge of the wood, standing well down on the grassy Scalt field. It was the best stand of that little shoot, with the northern view behind them of meadow, marsh, and sea; and before them dark green pines.

  The rain held off. They waited. Some rested on shooting sticks. Across the unseen stubble beyond the far boundary of the wood the beaters moved slowly.

  Phillip was waiting on the Cold Old Land, a pightle narrow and sloping between Great Bustard Wood and Meadow Wood below.

  Were there any birds to come out? Had they been in the mustard, driven into the wood? Minutes passed. No sound of urgent crowing, no rocketting of wings. Not even a pigeon flew out and across the Cold Old Land.

  *

  A wan white disc appeared to be moving through clouds to the south. The vapours polished it to silver, to quicksilver, to gold—the sun burst upon the day. How warm and welcome its rays on face and body! He drew a deep breath and felt the dullness lifting from him with the buoyant air.

  Glowing now in sunlight was the yellow of the mustard below the slope of the Cold Old Land. There was his sheep-fold, snug between the two woods; hurdles enclosing an uneaten square of mustard for the ewe flock in the evening. Oh, that piece of the farm was now good! Before, the pightle had grown only grey thin grass, thistles, moss, and ragwort: now, fine feed for sheep. How good and healthy looked that mustard, the grazed patches nicely covered with dung. He resisted a desire to give a sharp shout of relief. Oh, things would come all right, things weren’t so bad. Lucy had written that Tim’s new house was a dream, and the children were happy in their new schools——

  Yet once again he realised how—away from confining house-life, and in the open air—mental burdens usually dissolved themselves. The entire farm would one day be in order. He would hold on; be like Haig when it seemed that Ypres, and so the Channel ports, would be lost. When he had first come Luke had said that nothing would grow on that ‘cold old land’, and advised against ploughing. Even ‘Lordy Nelson’, the one-eyed labourer, had agreed. Phillip could hear the words in his head now: he could mimic the tone of ‘Lordy’s’ voice perfectly on occasion. I’ve a-worked here thirty years and more, and even under old Buck, the best farmer this land ever had, better than the old Karnel, this land warn’t no good. Cold old land, it wor. Yet it had a southern slope. What was the mystery of its infertility?

  *

  Phillip had ploughed the three acres of the Cold Old Land and received £6 as subsidy from the Government. After cultivating he had drilled mustard in spring and broadcast some basic slag, then folded sheep on the mustard, which had looked not too bad a growth. He had ploughed the pightle again in September of the same year, and drilled it with wheat in October. Hardly a plant had remained on those acres after the following winter. Cold old land it certainly was. The seed had germinated in November, but had made no growth. Most of the plants had died in the wet and sickly rains of December and January. He had dug out plants and looked for signs of wire-worm—teeth rasping root-stocks away—had found none, only decay and rottenness. For a third time the land was ploughed and sown with mustard during the following July; and now in December it was a thick healthy crop and his ewes were eating it off night after night, and running on the sward of the Scalt field by day. His plan was to plough after the sheep had fed it off, and drill barley there in the spring. He would show them that the Cold Old Land could grow a proper crop.

  As he stood there in the noon sunshine of that December day of 1939 there came from the wood the exciting rocketting of wings and grating cries of cock-pheasants. Almost at once birds were flying out in two and threes—frenzied circular sweepings of wings and long tails rippling as they climbed to clear the tall trees of the Meadow Wood below. High birds indeed! The reports of guns were all around the higher unseen field, for most of the birds were flying straight through the northern pines and over the semi-circle of guns on the Scalt. None came Phillip’s way. He stood there, glad that his visitors would not be disappointed, happy to stand in the sunlight amidst the glowing flowers of the mustard—doing nothing.

  The line of beaters had not yet entered the Bustard wood. He could see Teddy advancing among them, to take any birds breaking back. The upper half of Teddy advanced over the skyline hump, on the edge of the wheat-stubble. More cries, more shots, Teddy turning away from the beaters, hurrying down the slope towards him, to stop in the area of mushings of cloven feet and dark green droppings which were to transform the Cold Old Land.

  “My G-god,” he cried. “What a beautiful shoot you’ve got! It’s the best in England.”

  “I’ll go to the top, Teddy.”

  From his new stance he watched Teddy. He was a good shot. Other birds were crowing and wing-whurring among the trees above. Then a near clatter of wings as a pheasant flew out of the hedge between the two fields and he saw it tumble, and while it was falling he heard the crack of Teddy’s Purdey. Another bird flew out, a cock this time, grating urgently. It flew higher and faltered and there was another crack and it flew on and then somersaulted in the air and fell cart-wheeling and the report reached him after it had thudded on the stubble.

  He braced his feet, opened his gun to see if it were loaded, snapped the breech, opened it again and pulled out the cartridges, glanced down barrels to see if they were clear (for they were somewhat worn and a dead leaf in the end of one might have caused a burst) then reloaded and stood ready. He shifted the strap of the leather cartridge bag over his shoulder to feel less encumbered. More shots on the right flank, out of sight. More cries of beaters.
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  They had now reached the edge of the Great Bustard Wood. He heard tapping on the boles of the trees of sycamore, oak, and ash. Teddy had now moved rather too near him, so Phillip moved up the Cold Old Land, nearer the ragged thorn hedge, to keep seventy yards from Teddy. Then with alarmed screeches two cocks flew above the tall, ivy-dark trees. They rose in flight, coming his way. He fired at one and missed, but as it passed directly overhead he swung up his gun and leaned back with a feeling that he was throwing the shot up at the bird which he did not see because it was stroked out of sight by the barrels: and when the barrels had stroked over the bird he pulled the trigger and knew at the same moment that he had hit it.

  Somehow he could usually hit a high bird in that difficult position, though when he took aim on more obvious and more direct shots he usually missed. He could hit teal flying fast overhead by stroking their visual images with the end of the barrels, but never when he turned and fired deliberately at or after them.

  “Good shot!” cried Teddy as the cock pheasant crashed into the Meadows Wood.

  More pheasants were corning out of the trees—singly, in twos and threes, in fours and fives. Fifty or more must have left already—birds that had run and crept out of the wet mustard of the Brock. More shots came from over the crest of the field. Shouts from the beaters were now almost continuous. Five cocks flew overhead and he shot two in the air at once.

  “Good shot!” cried Teddy, again.

  He moved to the top of the Cold Old Land, reloading. Teddy followed. A woodcock flapped out low, changed direction, and sped towards Teddy. Crack! It tumbled. Pigeons beat out of the wood, one being fired at by the gun over the ridge, then Phillip took a crack at it, and hit it, but the thick feathers resisted the No. 6 shot and it flew on, to receive a barrel from Teddy. It faltered, but flew on again, slowly. Phillip watched it fall nearly half a mile farther on, into the swedes at the other end of the field below the New Cut.

  Later he sought and picked up the pigeon. Its crop was bulging with clover leaves which the bird had plucked from the layer of that field, which was to be hay the following summer. It was a rock dove, one of hundreds of thousands immigrating from Scandinavia. Each bird pecked about half a pound weight of green crops everyday.

  This drive through the Great Bustard Wood was the best of the day. When they had collected the birds and laid them out for Billy and the improver to lay in the cart, the guns sauntered down to the Home Meadow, while the beaters went through the long and narrow wood that bounded it.

  Pheasants ran before them. Many escaped. The wood was thin. There was little cover. They got seventeen at that stand, and thirteen more from the densely overgrown and tall willow of the Decoy. Water-hens, hard to hit unless one were used to their slowness, flew out. Five fell. Moorhens and dabchicks were numerous, doing damage among the young barley plants in spring. The moorhen was a clever bird, using its brains to escape being driven into the open. Phillip saw several perching in the willow branches. One bird refused to fly out. It squatted inside a mass of twigs in a thorn tree and sat there while the beater struck the tree a yard away from the bird.

  “Shall we let it be?” Phillip felt the bird deserved its freedom.

  A kestrel flew over. “Don’t shoot it!” Teddy’s gun was lowered.

  Then to the Osier Carr at the end of the meadow, where cows had broken the wire-strands of the fence and the osiers were in places fractured and stripped. Another job to be done—fence repaired—for the half acre of osiers would be needed in war-time. However, it was not the time to think of such things. Eye must not tell Brain all it saw. Within Brain dwelt Mind, both angel and fiend, crucified and crucifying.

  *

  Mrs. Carfax stood in the workshop. A tablecloth covered the carpenter’s bench. Flowers filled the silver bowl of Naval Occasions. There was a steak and kidney pudding in its basin enwrapped with table-napkin. A tureen of Majestic potatoes baked in their jackets. Half a Stilton cheese. Cold game. A ham. On a sidetable were bottles of beer and whisky. Jugs of coffee. A plum cake.

  The beaters in the hovel had bread and cheese, beer and cake; and when Phillip had seen they were all comfortably eating, he returned to the workshop and joined the others. The Cabtons did not appear.

  They went out to shoot again after lunch, ‘Yipps’ carrying her 20-bore, but it rained, and was dull, so they gave up, and went back to the workshop at 3.30 p.m. and got ready to depart.

  The bag was 82 pheasants, 4 woodcock, 2 teal, 3 snipe, 5 pigeons, 7 rabbits, 10 moorhen, 4½brace of partridges—a comparatively poor day, for many birds had been missed owing to the rain. The guests left with a cock and hen pheasant each, and the uniformed Fusiliers, as they saluted Phillip before getting into their camouflaged car, said it was the best day they had had since the war.

  He kept a cock and hen for the Cabtons, meaning to give them as a present when they departed. But where were they? He went down twice to the Corn Barn during the next three or four days, but each time they were away somewhere. This was a relief, for as he became deeper in his book, he dreaded more and more to be in the presence of those who by nature were antipathetic. But his feelings of regret were unnecessary; for A. B. Cabton was quite able to make up for what he doubtless considered to be a deficiency on Phillip’s part, as was apparent on the following Tuesday morning.

  Two days before this, on the Sunday, Luke said to Phillip, “Did you give that man staying in yar caravan leave to shoot over your land? Father see them both this mornin’ comin’ down the Home Hills with guns under their arms. And Father see them the other evenin’ shooting at roosting bards.”

  “Aye, they did an’ all. They shut a cock standing on the grass of the Home Hills.”

  On the Tuesday morning Cabton appeared at Phillip’s cottage door, saying he was leaving. After enquiring if the caravan had been comfortable, Phillip asked him if he had been shooting.

  “Yes, I have.”

  “What have you shot?”

  “A pheasant here and there.”

  “Sitting birds, too, weren’t they? I think you might at least have asked leave before you did so.”

  “Asking doesn’t get me very far with you, does it?”

  From his tone of voice it seemed that Cabton felt he had been treated rather badly. Cabton went on, a rough edge on his voice, “The trouble with you is money. You’ve been going wrong for years. Money, money, money, that’s what rules your life.”

  The face of Cabton’s wife appeared over her husband’s shoulder.

  “Come on, Cabton. Don’t talk to him! He isn’t worth it. Come on, leave him.”

  “You’re obviously finished,” went on Cabton, with contemptuous superiority. “Everyone knew it when you joined up with Birkin, but you haven’t realised it. I could see it happening years ago. No wonder Lucy left you. And Felicity. You’re in the mess you’re in entirely due to your own fault, only you’re too blind to see it.”

  “Have you got any friends left anywhere?” added Mrs. Cabton, still peering over his shoulder.

  For a moment the world dissolved about Phillip, he could feel only his own oblivion. But the feeling passed, and he went out of the door, to where thick blue smoke was issuing from behind the old saloon car with its soggy tyres, brown cracked safety glass in windows and screen, lichen-like tufts and curls of warped fabric body. Through the unclear glass he could see several long tails of pheasants flung on the back seat. The smoke of the engine thickened, the vehicle moved with a grating of gears down the street, it turned the corner, and was gone.

  He went back to his cottage, possessed by a searing impulse to end his life then and there; but when he had overcome this mood he seated himself at the table, and went on with his book about the early days of the farm. Suddenly he thought what he should have done: loaded his gun and blown the back tyres of Cabton’s hideous rusting wreck to tatters! He laughed at the idea, and found he was writing easily.

  Chapter 9

  TEDDY IMAGINES £9,000

  Teddy ha
d found some old bricks, and with these he heightened the hearth by nine inches and after that it was possible to sit round a small wood fire in the parlour. There was some life in the room, listening on the wireless to a concert of Wagner’s music from Berlin. Billy and ‘Pinwheel’ (the nickname given to the quick, bright improver by Luke) had gone on bicycles to the pictures at Crabbe.

  Only the fire-glow lit the room. The two men lay back in armchairs, feeling the contentment of rest. Mrs. Carfax sat in the little room adjoining, the fire of which burned well in frosty weather, but the door had to be kept closed to prevent a drag of smoke down the parlour chimney. Even the flues were in egotistical conflict, mused Phillip, thinking of Cabton’s spoken criticisms of himself and of his unspoken criticism of Cabton: of Mrs. Carfax’s of himself: of his, unspoken, of her. Teddy—no, he could not feel criticism of old Teddy. He had been a loyal comrade-in-arms, dismissed his command of 286 Machine Gun Company owing to his, Phillip’s, error after the battle of Bourlon Wood. Both had been ‘stellenbosched’—sent home. He was a dear fellow. But the chronic lack of rendered and settled household accounts was more and more worrying. Phillip had given Mrs. Carfax two cheques each of ten pounds, on account of the share of ‘Pinwheel’, Billy and himself; but he knew nothing of what the Combined House hold was costing. The overdraft was creeping up in red figures at the bank. The bank manager had written for a statement of his assets.

  Then the music of the Flower Garden in Parsifal took him away to a world of dream in which beauty, nobility, loyalty, and truth were one. He lay back in his chair, feeling that one day this truth would be paramount in the world.