A Solitary War

by Henry Williamson

  Closing the door he pulled the blankets over the windows and settled to write. Day after day, night after night, in the same little room, with freedom for his thoughts: safe from the world within the confining distempered walls and white-washed ceiling: warmed by the glowing bars of the electric radiator. When the blankets shut out the day he felt an added security. Pipe alight, pen and paper on table before him; the radio set at elbow, with its range of European countries and their music.

  At midnight Billy was often awake.

  “Goodnight, Billy. Feeling better?”

  “I’m okay, thanks. Dad. I say!”

  “Yes, Billy?”

  “What was my real mother like? Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you, truly I didn’t.”

  Phillip sat on the boy’s bed. Billy’s voice was becoming suddenly harsh at times. He was adolescent. Phillip felt shy of him, as Billy was beginning to be shy of his father.

  “She was a heavenly person, Billy.”

  “Dad.”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you mind very much if I joined the Royal Air Force Cadet Corps, if the shooting war really starts?”

  This was a shock. He said equably, “I don’t see why not, old chap.”

  When the doctor came he said, “There’s nothing wrong with your boy. The thermometer is broken.”

  Chapter 18

  A BREAK AT LAST?

  It was nearly the end of January. During the past weeks Phillip had had occasional brief glimpses of Teddy Pinnegar and Mrs. Carfax in Penelope’s saloon car, with Penelope at the wheel. Once he came upon them sitting motionless in that cream-coloured automobile on the sheep-walk beside the marshes. Had Penelope taken them there to initiate them into the delights of bird-watching, and found them alien to that wild place? There the three sat, still and unspeaking, in the motorcar beside the furze bushes where passerine migrants rested after the long journey across the North Sea. They stared ahead, as though unseeing, as he hurried past them.

  There was nothing he could do on the farm. The arable was set hard in frost. He went on with his writing. The book was three-quarters done. The hedge-clearing around the Scalt was going on slowly but steadily. Axe and slashers would remain blunt whether he were there or not—unless he sharpened them himself during the dinner half-hour that took forty-five minutes. He was unable to approach them, they didn’t care whether the tools were blunt or sharp. They knew the treadle-grindstone in the hovel was there for their use. It was never used.

  Long ragged lines of dark brushwood lay on the snow of the field, a pleasing sight. He avoided looking at the split branch-ends on the stubs. Let them get on with it. He must keep on writing. The book drew him to the climax as a cat to her new-born kittens.

  Then one day he heard from Matt that Penelope had gone away.

  “Them two, Mr. Vinegar an’ his friend, are left alone in the house. Yar’ll see,” said Matt, “things will come a’ right. Do you wait an’ see, master.”

  Phillip asked no questions. He had no hope, save for his books. He lived in the scenes of ancient sunlight. It was a hopeful, happy book.

  Much time in the yards every day was still being absorbed by the getting of water from the river. The system of engine, pump, tank, pipes and artesian well, installed two years, was still unusable. Ice was solid in the pipes. Had it ever been otherwise? The war, the white fields—they had been so always. The old life under the sun was dead.

  To lessen the power of winter frost he had asked Matt, during the autumn, to twist bonds of straw—ropes of about an inch in diameter—to be wound around the pipes. This Matt had done, making a neat and pleasing job of it. But at the beginning of the hard weather he had yet again failed to drain both tank and pipes after using them. Ice had solidified over a hundred feet of galvanised inch-piping.

  Considerable time and trouble had been spent in a vain attempt to find where, along that hundred feet of piping, the stoppage was. Once when Phillip had stayed at No. 2, The Glade, the straw-bonds, made to last fifty years, had been ripped off by Luke, and the blow-lamp taken from the workshop to heat the pipe. But for an hour or two while it was being used, the blow-lamp was spluttering and no good. The tiny hole in the vaporiser-head, whence a fine spray of petrol was supposed to issue to be turned instantly into a roaring point of blue and lilac flame, was choked with carbon. Luke had disregarded Phillip’s warning that the petrol must never be turned on until all the methylated spirit had burned away, thus fully heating the vaporiser.

  The flame of the spirit, which was wood alcohol, he had explained, was a pure flame. Unlike petrol, it would give off no unburned residue of carbon to float as smoke into the air. Petrol had a smoky flame: and if the least particle of carbon were to form in or near the tiny jet, it would obstruct the spray of petrol.

  “So never turn on the tap until the very last of the spirit has burnt away, Luke.”

  The blow-lamp being out of action, Luke had had the idea of making torches of the straw bonds, and holding them against the pipes. Flaring and sparking but giving little or no heat they had merely blackened the galvanised zinc-protection of the pipes. This had been a morning’s work for three men. The ice remained in the pipes, the straw-bonds were ruined. And since the sledge with the flimsy tongued-and-grooved runners was broken, something had to be done to bring drinking water to the cattle in the yards.

  After some discussion with his father and the two other men employed on the farm—and not stood off by Phillip, who felt this to be the last thing he must do—Luke had remembered an old iron-wheeled cart with a zinc tank mounted on it standing under the chalk quarry almost entirely overgrown by elderberry trees ever since the end of the Great War. This vehicle was dragged out of its hide and used in an attempt to ‘hull’ (haul) water from a hole broken in the ice of the river. The horses, unable to surmount the break in the river-bank, had pecked and slithered about before falling down and breaking the half-rotten shafts of the antediluvian water-tank whose pig-iron wheels had been cast about the time of the Crimean War.

  What to do now? The boss wouldn’t miss another length of his store of tongued-and-grooved planking. The tank was pulled out of its frame on the cast-iron wheels, and mounted on flexible skis. Luke’s ‘patent’ worked! They weren’t in no muddle!

  The water slopped from the ‘patent’, although several sacks were covering the tank lashed to the ladder nailed to the planks. It took the best part of each morning to haul water to the yards; but they weren’t in no muddle.

  Phillip abandoned his writing to try to unfreeze the new galvanised water-pipe. He searched first for a piece of steel-wire fine enough to probe and so clear the jet of the blow-lamp. He tried all the ironmongers’ shops in Great Wordingham and Yarwich, but no steel-wire pricker had been small enough. It was one of the first of the war shortages. For the first time he heard the phrase ‘in short supply’. The Primus prickers, together with the lamps, had come from Norway.

  “Why not take the bullocks and the horses and the cows to the river to drink, Luke?”

  Luke stared at him. “Blast!” he said. “I nivver thought of that! I told you we’d be in no muddle, didn’t I? I like that idea of yours, we’ll do it if you like. You’re master.”

  The problem was solved. Horses and neat stock were taken to the river, the ice was broken, they drank.

  *

  People were skating on the levels and drains of the Fen Country. The roads were dangerous. After the first fall of snow there was a slight thaw, turning snow to slush. Then a frost-wind fixed the slush into ridges and ragged tracts hard to walk on. Rubber tyres, worn smooth, slipped and spun. This did not stop Phillip once his mind was made up to take Billy to Lucy and the others. They would start early next morning and drive slowly with chains on the back wheels. Then he would get to No. 2, The Glade, by daylight. The roads would be deserted. It would be an adventure, through a white forsaken Brecklands mile after mile until they came to the dark areas of towns.

  The self-starter wou
ld not work, although by now six local garages had ‘put it right’. The draining of the radiator did not let out all the water. The drain-plug was not at the lowest point. Water remained in the phosphor-bronze pipe leading to the water-pump below the radiator base. It was solid with ice. There was a plug in this pipe, a hexagonal nut. It had been made round by some mechanic who had not bothered to find a box-spanner to fit it, using instead what Luke called a screw-hammer. The thread of the plug being stiff, to prevent it working loose during the motion of the engine, the ham-handed use of a monkey-wrench had rounded and ruined the nut. It was burred, immovable.

  The only thing to do was to lie under the engine on one’s back and melt the ice in the bronze pipe with the blow-lamp. But he could not light the blow-lamp: for since the attempts to unfreeze the water-pipes of the cowhouse Luke had tried to clear the jet by the use of some sharp spike, which had gashed the jet so that it wouldn’t function.

  Phillip was lying, muttering to himself, by the open workshop door when Teddy’s feet suddenly appeared underneath the opposite running board. He had come to borrow some petrol, he said. This seemed a moment to ask about the money for their telephone calls; Phillip had already written two notes to Teddy about this, and now he felt himself to be a real nagger as he said, “I’ll sell you a couple of gallons if you like, the amount will be credited to the farm account.”

  Pinnegar paid for the petrol.

  “I hope you didn’t mind my reminder about the telephone trunk calls, old boy.”

  “It’s none of my affair what ‘Yipps’ does, Phillip.”

  “Let me have the can back, will you? They aren’t obtainable now, and we need this at harvest time.”

  “Okay.”

  Feeling relieved by his own firmness, Phillip took his thumbstick and set out to walk the four miles to Crabbe, following the sheepwalk beside the marshes. There in a shop he bought a small wire brush, of an old fashioned pattern. The very thing. The stiff steel wires were fine enough to enter the jet of the blow-lamp. Hurrying back the way he had come, he cleared the jet and after heating the vaporiser with methylated spirit, pumped in the petrol. It worked. His relief was great. Now for Lucy and the children at Gaultford!

  When the water-pump was freed he brought jugs of hot water from Mrs. Hammett’s cottage and filled the radiator. This freed the pistons, but the engine wouldn’t fire. So he set about pushing the car down the slope before the Corn Barn, and when it was moving he jumped in but still the engine would not fire when he let-in the top gear.

  The men were summoned to help. Luke had Beatrice standing by in readiness to ‘help yar ’Agle’. Back she went up the slope and past the Corn Barn to the hovel. Getting into the driver’s seat Phillip said that if the cylinders didn’t fire before reaching the end of the run-down he would set fire to the old ’bus and then jump into it.

  Matt, Steve, Billy the Nelson and Luke all pushed behind and on the flanks. Phillip let in the clutch. They pushed the harder. Still the engine didn’t fire. The Silver Eagle became a leaden vulture, then a torpid whale. More hot water. Sparking plugs heated by blow-lamp. Once more down the slope. She fired. Jumping out, leaving the engine at 1,500 revs., Phillip shook hands with his deliverers, and promised them a duck each for Christmas. Then he drove the car to the top of the slope, left the engine covered with corn sacks, and hurried away with Billy to Mrs. Hammett’s.

  *

  Among the letters beside his plate was one which, upon opening, gave him a shock. The enclosed letter-heading was embossed Arrowsmith Publicity with an address in Piccadilly. Would he consider writing a story for a film around the subject of British farming? Go to London at once and Mr. Arrowsmith would be greatly in his debt … pay all expenses …

  At last! This would save the family, the farm! Then he thought, I can’t do it. What I know they won’t want. British farming films were weak, silly, unrealistic. Chawbacon and Gaffer Jarge stuff. What he could write was the true story of farming—the obvious struggle against nature, the hidden struggle against the money system, importing cheap foreign food sold in London for sterling to pay the interest on foreign loans. The City with fatted hearts, the country pauperised. Basic conflict between town-mind and soil-mind.

  He showed the letter to Mrs. Hammett.

  “It sounds good,” she said, serenely. “Have your luncheon now, Mr. Maddison. If you are going to take Billy to his mother, why not go on to London from there, and see the gentleman?”

  Of course he could do it! He telegraphed to Lucy that they would be arriving that evening with good news. He arrived at No. 2, The Glade, before dusk after an uneventful drive over forsaken roads. Chains were not needed. Driven at a steady thirty-five in the country and twenty-five through the towns, with brakes never used, the Silver Eagle did not skid once, though at times the driver had a feeling that he was steering a boat rather than a motor car.

  It was a happy evening with Tim and the family, and the next morning he went hopefully to London by train. Tim had suggested fitting a brass drain tap in place of the spoiled octagonal nut on the water-pipe below the base of the radiator, thus to cure all stoppage by frost.

  “You go by train to London, and I’ll have it ready for you when you come back.”

  *

  Chettwood, features editor of The Daily Crusader, had been responsible for suggesting Phillip’s name for the farming film. He was a friend of the publicity agent, Arrowsmith who had an office in a building just off Piccadilly, where a film-producer Pierre Poluski also had an office.

  One morning Mr. Poluski had stepped across the landing of his first floor office at the corner of Urbeville Street and Piccadilly to ask Mr. Arrowsmith, the publicity agent, to find him an author capable of writing for him a film on British farming. “I have been reading in the Briddish papers how farmers are now in the Front Line, and Digging for Victory. Farming is news, Mr. Arrowsmith. I have a really big idea for a great picture about Briddish farming.”

  He went on to say that he had a further idea, which was to get a grant from the Ministry of Information for his picture. “I have also ‘an angel’, Mr. Arrowsmith. Now I shall want a good writer.”

  “I think I can find you one. Can you give me, say, one hour?”

  Arrowsmith spoke to Chettwood on the telephone, and thus the producer learned of the existence of a writer whose name, he said, meant nothing to him, but he would accept the assurance of Mr. Arrowsmith that the writer had made wonderful strides in Briddish farming. When in the course of more talk Poluski learned that the writer was a friend of Donald Cannock, a film-star whose box-office appeal was as great in the United States as it was in Britain, Poluski said, “Get him! Get him quick, Mr. Arrowsmith. Get him before some of those vultures that hang around Wardour Street copy my idea and snap up this Mister—this Mister Maddison who is a great friend of Donald Cannock.”

  Donald Cannock, he knew, was under contract to Cosmopolis and got twenty-six thousand pounds each picture, which was tops.

  *

  Arriving by train in London, Phillip went to his club and booked a room. His appointment with Arrowsmith was for a quarter to three. Precisely at that time he presented himself.

  Mr. Arrowsmith said that he ought to say at once that he knew nothing about Poluski, except that he had made one or two films which had been moderately good and moderately successful.

  At three o’clock Mr. Pierre Poluski entered the office. After some small talk he invited Phillip into his office.

  The name of Poluski, Phillip noticed, was not on the door, but the name of a limited company. Noticing his glance, Mr. Poluski said, “A friend has been good enough to loan me the use of his office. But do not think that I am therefore, what would you call it, a beggar? Now look here, Mr.—Mr.——”

  “Maddison.”

  “Mr. Maddison. There was something about you I like from the first moment. Something genuine about you, I said.”

  Phillip thought that it was perhaps because he had got himself up as a hayseed. H
e was wearing a threadbare tweed coat, with thorn-rips carefully patched, a jersey, corduroy trousers, and brogue shoes. Mr. Poluski himself looked Savile Row, with only a touch of the Fifty-shilling Tailors about the broad, padded shoulders. He seemed a youngish man, with a guarded kind of enthusiasm, as though his spirit were a little enfleshed with his body. His hair looked as though it were trimmed every day while his spatulate nails were being manicured. Phillip felt a slight uneasiness due to the too-easy manners of the man before him. However, he did his best to look like genuine.

  He must have succeeded, for the next moment, Mr. Poluski said, “Yes, I said there was something genuine about you I like from the start.” He gave a quick glance at the tweed coat. “And at once I have a hunch you will be able to write me a good story. Farming is news to-day. I have a feeling there is something like in the Front Line about you. What do you think of”—he picked up a new book from a pile of new books on his desk, and glanced at the name on the cover—“A. R. Watling?”

  Feeling himself now properly in with the film world, Phillip told Mr. Poluski that he thought there was something genuine about A. R. Watling.

  Mr. Poluski took another cigarette from the jade box on his desk. He lit it with a gold cigarette lighter, then asked Phillip to take a cigarette. Phillip thanked him and took one. He fumbled for a match until, as though recalled from some deep thought, Mr. Poluski flicked his lighter.

  “Now I put all my cards on the table, Mr. er—er——”

  “Maddison.”

  “Sure, sure. Mr. Maddison. Well, Mr. Maddison, the Ministry of Information is prepared to subsidise the film industry, for approved films which will put the Briddish Way of Life before the world. Now farming is coming before the Briddish public as an important thing. It is getting a lot of publicity. What do you think of——” as he picked up another new book, and glanced at the cover—“Hadrian Toll?”

  Phillip said he thought Hadrian Toll was a genuine sort of writer.