A Solitary War

by Henry Williamson

  “I shall be with you in a moment, Mrs. Treasure.”

  “Goodnight, Penelope. Thank you so much.”

  *

  Upstairs in River View by the little three-legged table Desmond said he wanted Phillip to do something for him. Without further explanation he asked him to sit at the table and type a letter which he would dictate.

  “I’m not a very good typist,” said Phillip, seating himself at the table, typewriter open, awaiting with concealed amusement Desmond’s dictation.

  “Mildred knows about you, and has read some of your books, which I gave her.”

  “Who—er—is Mildred?”

  “The girl I told you about. Now to begin—ready?”

  “Ready.”

  My dear Mildred,

  I feel I know you well, having heard about you from my old friend Desmond, who is staying with me as I type this letter—

  “Is the letter supposed to be from me?”

  “Yes. My idea is that you shall invite Mildred to come here, with her child, and to accept, on behalf of my work, a half-share in the profits, on the understanding that I will manage the farm and she will look after the house-keeping.”

  “I’ll do that in my own words, Desmond.”

  So, my dear Mildred, in all seriousness I ask you to consent to see Desmond just once more, so that you and he can talk over this project calmly and with a businesslike foundation. With every good wish for the coming Christmas and a prosperous and Happy New Year, I remain, Yours very truly,

  “Now if you sign it,” concluded Desmond, “and put it in an envelope and address it, I’ll post it tomorrow. Have you got a stamp, old man?”

  “Yes, I think I can manage a stamp.”

  When this had been stuck on, Desmond said that he must go back to London the next morning, but the trouble was, he was out of funds.

  “I wonder if you could cash me a cheque?”

  “You catch me at a wrong moment, I’m afraid. I don’t think there’s more than a few shillings in the cash-box just now.”

  Desmond then asked if he would lend him his fare back to London.

  “Yes, there might be just enough for that. I’ll look at the box in the morning.”

  “It’s only two pounds,” said Desmond. “I always travel first-class.”

  Phillip wondered if he himself, in the past, had ever been so devoid of sensibility. Was it because Desmond had regarded him as a sort of fixture in his life, in place of his father? After all, from the age of nine years, when he had joined the Bloodhound Patrol, Desmond had been following his lead—until the break when Lily Cornford had come into both their lives. Until then, Desmond had always fallen in with his plans. That was the situation: Desmond had accepted him in all things, including money. When Desmond had grown away from him, he had no further use for the father substitute.

  In the morning he took Desmond to the station to catch the 8 a.m. train to London. When he returned he resumed his writing on the three-legged table. The weather was by now intensely cold and he wrapped himself in blankets with a double sack of straw round his feet.

  There was nothing else to do but write: to live in the imaginary world of his book.

  He got no reply to the letter posted to Mildred. Nor did he hear from or see Desmond ever again.

  Chapter 12

  THE GIRL FROM THE WOOLTOD INN

  About eleven o’clock in the morning Teddy came over to the dug-out kitchen of River View with a cup of tea and a plate of bread, butter and marmalade. He was his usual cheerful, kindly self. Phillip thanked him, once more making excuses for not coming to breakfast in the parlour.

  “I am like a broody hen. If I see others, I am liable to affect them adversely. Also I must keep clear and single-minded for this book.”

  “That’s okay by me, old boy. Your pal gone?”

  “I have a feeling I won’t be seeing him again. He’s in a jam.”

  “We’re all in a jam, if you ask me,” replied Teddy. “The whole bloody lot of us in this country. We don’t know where the hell we are. Well, I mustn’t stop the ‘genii’ working, as ‘Yipps’ calls you. As though you came out of a bloody lamp. Pantomime stuff.”

  “I do partly come out of a lamp,” said Phillip.

  He lifted his feet out of the straw and went to the corner cupboard which he had bought from the village baker for twelve shillings. It was a tall deal cupboard, well-made in the late eighteenth century. On one of the curved shelves within stood a japanned oil lantern. He lifted it down, and stood it on the table. “One day I shall write about this lantern.”

  “I haven’t seen a bull’s-eye lantern like that since I was a kid,” exclaimed Teddy. “Well, I never. Where did you get it?”

  “It belonged to my father. He called it his dark lantern, after Sherlock Holmes, I think. He used to collect moths at night. He once saw a Camberwell Beauty, very rare, and married my mother partly because she was born in Camberwell, then a village. He, like me, suffers from fantasies.”

  He took a cloth cap with fore-and-end peaks from the cupboard. “He gave me this ancient deer-stalker cap, too. It was his father’s.”

  He put the cap back in the cardboard box, which was strewn with moth-balls.

  “You could wear that, you know, for duck-shooting. Why don’t you come out with me sometimes, Phillip? I miss a lot of birds flying at the other end of the meadows. Those guns in the sunken barrels beyond the boundary get a lot, judging by the reports. Let me try the deerstalker on, will you?”

  “Be careful. It’s rather frail.”

  “What else have you got in that cupboard? By jove, an old motor horn. Pity the bulb’s cracked. You know, I love old things like that.”

  Hiding a silver hip-flask of whisky behind his grandfather’s diaries in the cupboard, Phillip said, “I bought that motor-horn at an auction down here somewhere, with a lot of old brass taps in a heap, for a couple of bob.”

  “Is your father still alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mine died years ago. Where is your father living, Phillip?”

  “In Dorset. He returned to the county of his birth after my mother died. He’s a solitary, like most of his family. One aunt lives in Essex, in a cottage; another lives at Bournemouth, also alone; a third lives with her maid in a house at Lynmouth. She’s the best of the lot. Aunt Dora used to be one of the pioneer suffragettes, but got worn out hunger-striking and being forcibly fed in prison. She’s now thoroughly ashamed of her German part-ancestry. Odd how people change into reverse as they wear out, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t know you had German blood.”

  “Württemburg grandmother. I think I’ll get some colza oil, and write at night by the light of this lantern. It’ll keep my hands warm.”

  “A real old hermit, you’re becoming. Well, I’ll leave you to it. ‘Yipps’ got on to me again last night for doing damn-all. Well, I must go and give the ‘tarkies’ their morning feed.”

  At eleven o’clock, thought Phillip.

  *

  Specks of sleet wandered down past the window. Shutting away thoughts of the ménage next door, and of the bleak exterior landscape bound by frost, he entered the world he was re-creating in his book: a scene of summer, jack hares racing over the downs, the green gallypot calling in the beech hanger above Fawley. Exterior circumstances became insubstantial in his living. The men carried out what work could be done on the farm—routine feeding and littering bullocks; cutting and laying of hedges; scooping water from the river into an antiquated water-cart on wobbly cast-iron wheels; creosoting worm-eaten beams and rafters under tiled roofs. All he had to do was to hand over to Luke the wages each Friday. The items were in the book which Luke brought to him.

  One afternoon on returning from the post office he surprised Mrs. Carfax in the downstairs room of his cottage. She had opened one of the lower drawers of the desk which stood along one wall. She took a small jar of Tiptree jam, one of a dozen in a box he had bought for Lucy’s Christmas present. />
  “Well, ‘Little Ray of Sunshine’, why do you look like that? I want something extra nice for Penelope, she’s coming to tea.”

  “That box of jam is a Christmas present for Lucy. The Household jam is in the seven-pound pots I bought—two dozen of them—from the Army and Navy Stores just before you came. There’s plum, greengage, marmalade, apricot, damson.”

  “And all of it cooking jam. Penelope has been so hospitable to all of us, so you might let her have some of your own jams, after all the kindness she has shown you,” and ‘Yipps’ departed with a pot of quince.

  Phillip breathed deeply, inspiring, and respiring, slowly, before continuing to write at the table until he was cold from head to shoulders, from feet to ribs. Electric fire-bars were unobtainable. He walked with a sack up to the Home Hills and picked up frozen sticks under the pines. On returning he relit the fire, then worked on with his feet in the straw until twilight, when through the frost-fern’d window he saw Penelope, in fur coat and sheepskin bootees, arrive with her two dogs. He imagined her sitting in Lucy’s boudoir with ‘Yipps’, talking about—what were they talking about? Wild birds? ‘Yipps’ didn’t know a tree-sparrow from a hedge-sparrow, or a redshank from a greenshank.

  In preparation for the night he filled the dark lantern with a mixture of paraffin and engine oil (remembering the colza oil of boyhood), and set it on the table. It threw a yellow slanting beam on the paper. He imagined his young, brown-haired father writing by it, addressing envelopes in the front room of the little house by the railway cutting, as Mother had told him one day when he had got up through the bathroom ceiling trap-door of the new house in Hillside Road and discovered the lantern, with boxes of butterflies, a fishing rod and old tackle in one of the uniform cases hidden in the loft. Poor lonely father. He must send him some bacon and butter. He saw himself as a jack-in-box small boy, up in the loft, spoiling many of Father’s butterflies and taking his things without permission. No wonder he had been beaten for telling lies and stealing.

  He was warming his hands on the dark lantern and recalling many scenes in the smell of the hot japanned metal when a figure wheeled a bicycle past the window. He thought it was to do with the kitchen, and went on with his work. ‘Yipps’ and Penelope were having a little party together, so he remained where he was, although he would have liked a cup of tea and bread-and-butter.

  The snow-pallor beyond the window was now more deathly. He was hanging blankets over the windows when there was a knock on the door. Teddy came in. “Sorry to interrupt you, but there’s a girl friend of yours in the house. She says she’s come to look after you. She won’t give her name. She says she’s cycled up from Suffolk.”

  “Is she very dark, with staring blue eyes?”

  “They look pretty dull to me.”

  “It sounds like Laura Wissilcraft!”

  “Is that her real name? Who is she?”

  “I thought she might be a sort of genius, and met her on my way up here to look at this farm before I bought it.”

  Teddy’s voice took on a diplomatic softness. “Well, perhaps you’d better come in, old man.”

  Left alone, Phillip got the flask of whisky from the cupboard, put it in his pocket, and went into the farmhouse parlour, to recognise the girl from the Wooltod Inn sitting in the leather armchair and stroking the golden retriever. There was the remembered pale face, pale with despair, lips tight in fortitude, the blue eyes set darkly beyond. Seeing him, she got up from the chair and pointing an arm cried, “Oh, why do you lie to me? You wrote that your wife had gone away, and you were unhappy, and I find you here with these Society ladies!”

  After this accusation she sank back in the armchair, an action which partly displaced the groaning bitch. Billy and ‘Pinwheel’ began to talk about tractors as they sat on the bench along the table. Maude and May, the two fifteen-year-old village maids, appeared from the kitchen ostensibly to take a tea-tray. They gave the stranger curious and half-frightened glances.

  “Undoubtedly, Billy, crawlers pan the sub-soil less than horses or the ordinary heavy tractor wheel.” ‘Pinwheel’ gave a swift glance at Phillip’s face.

  “Ah, ’bor,” said Billy, wisely.

  Phillip said, “If I had known you intended to bike all this way, and be so concerned about me I wouldn’t have written such a morbidly realistic letter.”

  Mrs. Carfax and Penelope, with her two well-behaved thin white dogs, came out of the adjoining room. At once ‘Pinwheel’ rose to his feet, followed by Billy. The girl continued to mourn in the armchair. Then suddenly jumping up, she cried, “What are all these people doing here?”

  Penelope said to Mrs. Carfax, “Well, it was so kind of you to ask me. And may I change my mind? I think I would like to come to dinner. Hullo, Phillip, how goes the book?” Without waiting for a reply she turned to Mrs. Carfax and said, “I’ll come back at about a quarter-to-eight, is that all right?” and with a smile over her shoulder to Billy, Penelope went out of the door.

  Phillip followed her upon the treacherous darkness of the path. “Can you see your way? Do be careful, it’s so slippery for crepe-rubber soles.”

  “Thank you, I can find my own way, the moon is rising,” and Penelope went down the road.

  He returned to the parlour. “Have you had any food?”

  “Food!”

  “Well, you know, when one is exhausted one’s thoughts get dark and depressing. You have bicycled a long way. Do you mind if my friend and I have some tea, ‘Yipps’? It’s rather late, I’m afraid—”

  “I’ve already asked her to have tea, but she refuses.”

  ‘Yipps’ went into the kitchen. She came back with polishing cloths and a large tin of Whaxshine.

  The thin elderly bitch retriever, despairing of less than half her armchair, curled herself shakily beside an oil stove. She stared sadly at her mistress, and let out a howl. Billy burst into laughter. ‘Pinwheel’ gave him a stern look. Billy ran out of the door. ‘Pinwheel’ followed.

  The occupant of the armchair looked up, pointed at Phillip and cried, “Who are all these people?”

  “I’ll tell you when you’ve had some food.”

  “How can you talk of food! Oh!” and once again she hid her face in her arm.

  ‘Yipps’ followed Billy and ‘Pinwheel’, leaving the two alone in the room.

  Phillip pulled the flask of whisky from his hip pocket.

  “Have a drink,” he said, drawing up a chair. “Laura, please help me. Things are not what they seem here.”

  “You deceived me.”

  “That’s what everyone’s thinking. It’s not altogether true. I hoped there might be something between us, when I read your letters. You are a writer, you know, all your feeling is in your head.”

  “You lied to me,” she repeated, and made to get up, only to collapse again into the saddle-bag chair.

  “You’re exhausted, Laura. Do help me. This household isn’t what it seems to you. There’s a lot of unhappiness here. Please try to understand.”

  “Your Society friends!”

  “Anyway, I don’t know how long Teddy Pinnegar and Mrs. Carfax will stay—”

  “You say that, and yet you are on the best of terms with them!”

  “Only on the surface. One day you will understand others, by understanding yourself. You will, one day, then you’ll be a good writer.” He faltered. “I don’t know. I’m not able to cope, really.”

  “You don’t have to sleep in a room with a snoring grandmother, and feed pigs all the time.”

  “The dead can also haunt the living.”

  “You are thinking of your dead wife all the time, the first one.” He was relieved by this sign of divination. “Well, you have perception of character. Use it for writing with compassion about others.”

  “William Blake wrote, ‘Drive your plough over the bones of the dead’.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you also said, ‘An even higher authority said, Let the dead bury their dead’.”
Her expression had changed, it was the eyes, which held a lambent glow.

  “How old are you, Laura?”

  “Does age matter?”

  “It does, I’m afraid. The ‘real’ me is very nearly gone.”

  “Only the essence of personality matters. You are the same as you always were, if only you would let vourself tell the truth. Why did you send me that letter saying your wife had gone, and you were lonely?”

  “I am lonely. Everyone here is lonely, too, if only you would believe it. But I’d be less lonely if only you would come out of your dark self, inside your mortified self, to meet me. Your poems are lyrical, so are your letters. So is my work. So we’re really the same. Have some whisky!”

  “Whisky!”

  “It’s a food, the essence of barley. You’re exhausted after your ride.”

  He drank half a quartern. “That’s better! I’m exhausted, too, but not so far down as you are, on the black rocks below the crashed boulder of Sisyphus. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again’. Use your head, Laura, arise and whistle like the wings of a pheasant when it’s disturbed by poachers. You’ve got a poacher’s name, d’you know that?” He drank more whisky. “One of my fields is called the Nightcraft, it’s where poachers net rabbits and partridges on moonlit nights.”

  “Why are you talking like this?”

  “I’m trying to get you out of the peat, you smothered laurel tree!”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I do understand!”

  “I love you.”

  Her eyes held a clear, a shining sapphire blue light as she looked at him. He felt in his blood an incipient thrill. He tried to suppress this broadcast of seed by saying, “If I were in your shoes I’d feel absolutely hopeless, too. What a hell it must all seem, after your long journey and the hopes of finding your fate, or your love, or a companion for your mind, driving you on. A migrating bird, flying north for love—to fulfil its life purpose—you’ve fallen into the sea, soaked and clogged with black oil-fuel. What a grave, sweet name yours is—Laura. We’re much alike, Laura. I must write, or perish, so must you. It’s our only salvation.”