A Solitary War

by Henry Williamson

  “Too bad it’s come again, officer. We thought we’d finished it for good, last time.”

  “We’re still on the wrong side, sir, in my opinion.”

  “We may yet not be, officer.”

  “I hope you’re right, sir.”

  “Goodbye, old soldier.”

  *

  Christie was an ex-famous literary critic. His fame had waned since the death of D. H. Lawrence in 1930. It was Christie who had invented the term creative criticism. He had known Hardy and other giants of the literary world. To him had come inscribed copies, from the author of the early novels in the sequence À la recherche du temps perdu. A young bank clerk called T. S. Eliot had sent Christie the first collections of his poems. Christie, one of the earliest friends of D. H. Lawrence, had lived to see himself described as ‘a great black bug sucking away the life’ of D. H. Lawrence in the Collected Letters of that harassed and lacerating writer now dead.

  Phillip, just before he was married to Lucy, had wanted to make himself known to Christie, who had a London Office up some ricketty stairs in the Adelphi. He had gone to the famous littérateur, as the term was in the early ’twenties, to say, I am the Unknown Soldier, in my keeping is the spirit and ethos of the Great War. I am the writer foretold in your essay The Lost Legions, which I read in The Athenaeum. But when a voice behind the door called ‘Come in’ he had gone away, saying he would come again.

  It had been too tremulous an idea, in 1924, to confide to anyone.

  Christie was one of the founders, with the Rev. ‘Dick’ Shepperd, vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, of the Peace Pledge Union, a company of wraiths and traumaturgists which were not of this world. He had left London when the war had come again; and now, on the borders of Suffolk and Essex, occupied a largish Victorian house standing within a dozen acres of semi-parklike land. Now it was filled by evacuated families from London.

  Several hundred men, women, and children were sitting quietly at trestle-tables when Phillip arrived. I am not hungry, thank you, but yes, thank you, I would like some coffee. He followed Christie, accompanied by wife and lady secretary, to their wing. There, while coffee was being made, he explained his difficulties.

  “Come with me,” said Christie.

  They went to see the Community Farm manager who suggested, with a smile, that all Phillip’s difficulties would be solved if the Farm Community transferred its live and dead stock to Deepwater Farm.

  “You see, our house and cottages here are to be taken over by the Government, for evacuees. And we have very little land to farm here. Only the garden, and what you see.”

  “What is your live stock?”

  “Not much at present. A couple of cows, some goats, and hens.”

  Phillip, imaging the faces of Luke and Matt on beholding the goats, tried not to laugh. He said he would think it over; and when Christie returned to his study, went with the manager to see what he called the Communiteers.

  “We’ve got some good lads.”

  The afternoon was calm and sunny. The German army had gone straight through Ypres. The old Somme battlefields occupied without a fight. Soon they would have the Channel ports. O God.

  “We run the farm here on a profit-sharing basis. So far there aren’t any profits, but we get our keep and ten bob a week for pocket money.”

  “Ah.”

  Young men in town clothes were lounging about. They appeared to be superior to the situation in France. When Phillip asked what was the latest news from the B.B.C. a fat young man with red hair and round face fringed with beard said scoffingly, “Oh, the British Army is running away, as usual.”

  Resisting a reply of, Why aren’t you there to help, Phillip said, “I rather fancy that Hitler will make a peace offer to Great Britain and France. Europe’s real enemy is Stalinism, which doesn’t mean the Russian people. Let them build with their great resources, but east of the Ukraine. Then let Europe build a United States, under the combined resources of Germany and France. Our sphere of resurgence is in the Empire. If we build, rather than frustrate, there will be peace and work for all, for generations.”

  When later he repeated this idea, Christie shook his head, sadly.

  “Regeneration can come only through a change of heart in the individual. I’ve been re-reading D. H. Lawrence. He foresaw this collapse. He rode on the crest of the wave of death.”

  The image seemed to send him into himself. Then turning to Phillip, “Come into my study.” When they were alone he said, “Help me with the magazine. You take the tail, I’ll take the head. You have much power in you, but it will all be lost if you consider the causes of war only politically. Let us sow the seeds of regeneration, through the soil, together.”

  He walked about the room, quoting the verses of Wilfred Owen,

  ‘What though we sink as pitchers falling

  Many shall raise us up to be their filling.’

  “Do you know what that means, Philip?”

  “Yes, and what an exact image it is! I used to draw water from a shallow well behind my cottage in South Devon. If one let go the handle, the cloam pitcher sank slowly down. One had to bare one’s arm to recover it, if the sleeve wasn’t to get wet. The pitcher became suddenly heavy above the surface.”

  “Yes, it’s a heavy task to fill others with righteousness.”

  “All Owen’s verse has a precise, factual sense, every word is in the spirit of reality. Birkin has the same vision, which he translates into the letter of reality.”

  Christie, still wandering about, murmured, “We can’t be saved by politics alone.”

  “The world is too far gone for saints. We need action, to follow the spirit.”

  Christie turned and putting his arm round the other’s shoulders, cried, “No!” He stared into Phillip’s eyes. “Be my friend. I’ve never had a man friend. Be my friend, Phillip!” He hugged with sudden emotion. Rather child-like, thought Phillip, made still. He knew that Christie had been at odds with his father. He had never surpassed his father, now dead. The regenerating warm flow had never flowed from son to father.

  That evening he returned home.

  *

  The weeds on the meadows were so high and numerous that he could not pass the northern boundary of the farm without sighing. The water of the stream was running black from the mud-pullers farther up the valley. He went into the farmhouse, where Lucy was working. He saw crumbs and jam marks on the table, and a crust lying under it apparently tied to a piece of string fluffy with dust. From upstairs came the steady brushing of a carpet.

  “Why don’t you show Mrs. Valiant how to use the vacuum cleaner?”

  He had bought this machine from Tim, who had had it on hire-purchase with most of the other furniture in his hire-purchase house. Phillip had worried about this house when Tim was about to leave it; for Tim had discontinued his life-insurance policy, taken out in Australia six years before, when he had come home to England, simply by not keeping up the premium payment. He had not told Phillip of this at the time. So when he was giving up No. 2, The Glade, which had nearly half an acre of land at the end of the road, Phillip had urged him to try and sell it, saying it was worth more than the £650 nominal value before the war. If Tim just went away and did nothing, he would lose his £25 deposit, as well as the house and all the weekly payments. So Tim had found someone in the factory who gave him £25, whereupon the house was transferred in the friend’s name. This friend also took over the furniture, except those family pieces which had been stored.

  “Mrs. Valiant doesn’t like the Dynalux, she is used to brush and pan.”

  “But brush and pan will soon remove the nap on the Wilton carpets. Besides, it takes so much time to brush it. There is a suction fitting in the vacuum cleaner, which will take up any dust. Down here, too; these mats have only to be turned over, and all the dust beneath sucked up. Mrs. Valiant sweeps in the old way. Up floats the dust, which has to be removed by a duster.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but Mrs. Valiant is a spl
endid worker, and doesn’t waste a minute, I assure you. I think it’s better, really, to take people as you find them.”

  “But that’s precisely the trouble with the country today! The old ways of thought still rule! Can’t you show Mrs. Valiant how to use the thing?”

  “Oh bother, I’m just in the middle of making a cake for Jonathan’s birthday party. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow,” said Phillip, and went away feeling a desperate loneliness. So did Lucy, but without the desperation.

  *

  On the following day he went to the Village Recreation Hut opposite the farmhouse. There was a meeting called to form the Local Defence Volunteers. He went with inner reluctance; his heart and soul were away, among ghosts passing below the Golden Virgin of Albert. Ancre valley, Loos and Hindenburg Line, Langemarck and Poelcapelle! The wailing of Strombos gas-horns at night and the lily-white flares rising over the watery morass: all the agony, the waste, and the wisdom from those nights and days come to this mass of faces in rows—

  In a quick glance as he went into the hut he saw that the Rector, an old Navy chaplain, was there, and the Methodist blacksmith brothers. One or two other village and cockle-strand faces he recognised: but not Horatio Bugg. Most of the men there were between fifty and sixty years of age. He scarcely looked at them, he did not feel himself to be part of the village, he was still what they called a foreigner.

  Steve, his red-headed labourer, who was present (but not Matt or Luke) had told him a day or two before that there had been questions about the Alvis (‘your long black car’) with the ‘German eagle’ on its bonnet. Horatio Bugg, said Steve, was the leading ‘detective’ down at his yard. “What does he want to go away so often for? Isn’t the village good enough for him? Eh, whatsay?” And the deaf ear had been protruded to catch the answer in Steve’s quiet voice. “Don’t be so soft. Harn’t you got a wireless set?”

  The assembled men sat on wooden forms awaiting the arrival of Major Christianson-Cradock, who was going to tell them what to do.

  *

  Phillip had been once or twice to Major Cradock’s house before the war. Cradock had explained several things in an unusual manner of frankness which Phillip had found to his liking; and yet there had been a queer reservation behind the apparent frankness which had puzzled him. Cradock had said, fairly soon, as they sat before his fire, “The trouble with both of us is that we are fundamentally exhausted.” He then recounted the fact that he had stayed with his battalion, always returning after several wounds, until one day he began to flinch when shells came over.

  “I was then commanding my battalion and said I wanted to go home. I said I was finished. They offered me a step in rank, to train men behind the line. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be a brigadier-general. Send me home. I’ve had enough.’ I’d had four years of it, and couldn’t stick any more.”

  Phillip had been told (by Major Cradock) that he had been recommended for the Victoria Cross. He already had the Distinguished Service Order and bar, and the Military Cross. He was a real soldier, a proper hero; no jack-in-the-box courage like himself on that occasion in March 1918, when over a hundred German prisoners had meekly allowed themselves to be captured.

  “I’ve no land, I’ve got no capital. If you want to let the Deepwater shooting, I’ll take it from you.”

  “I’ll let you know, Major.”

  Luke had told him that Major Cradock wanted to know him only for the shooting, but Phillip thought this idea was a peasant’s view of things. And yet when, later, he had told Cradock that he wanted his own shooting, Cradock had dropped him. Later still, he had refused Phillip’s invitation to shoot.

  Cradock had made a point of telling Phillip that his family had been established in the county for a thousand years—coming over as Danish freebooters and turning colonists, he said. Lucy told Phillip that some people spoke of him as the Pirate, because of his occasional thrusting dictatorial manner. Phillip thought that this came from a man having had to drive himself hard in the war, from Le Cateau in August 1914 to nervous exhaustion after Passchendaele in December 1917.

  After the war Cradock had worked with his hands, helping to build his own house in the traditional style of brick and flint. He was a fine carpenter, a man of high craftsmanship. When his first wife died, he made her coffin.

  “We’re too much alike, I suppose, Lucy. It’s my own fault that I haven’t got on with the Pirate. Or perhaps, since we both lack composure, each feels the unreality of the other’s self-drive. Possibly it’s because he’s a Viking, and I’m a Celt, to whom Normans are still displaced persons.”

  *

  Major Christianson-Cradock on his feet, bulky of body, faded blue of eye, weathered of face, speaking almost roughly.

  “If you don’t defend your homes, no one else will. I’ve had a signal from the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, and I propose to read to you that part of it which has a direct bearing on what I’m here for: to form a local Company of Defence Volunteers. Here is the relevant part of the signal from the Commander-in-Chief. ‘We have got examples of where there have been people definitely preparing aerodromes in this country. We want to know from you what is going on. Is there anything out-of-the-ordinary happening in your district? Are there any out-of-the-ordinary people?’ Well, as I said, a local company of Defence Volunteers has been formed. Certain undesirable elements are not wanted. Those are my instructions. Any questions?”

  He sat down. Phillip, feeling that the speaker had had him in his mind as an undesirable, stood up.

  “The first rule of the patriotic party to which I belong is that if any other nation attacks Britain, then every member of our party will fight to defend our country. As far as the ‘secret aerodromes’ idea concerns Hereward Birkin’s party, it’s all wind-up——”

  He had got so far when shouts and cries above a spontaneous growl of hostility overbore his words. “We don’t want you!” cried someone. Roar of agreement. Phillip sat down, shaken by the mass-feeling against him. Uproar by Communist mobs was usual at a Birkin meeting; stones, half-bricks, razor blades in potatoes flung in the face; coshes, chairlegs wound with barbed-wire. But from the men of the village hostility was unexpected.

  A corpulent individual in a faded blue serge suit then got on his feet. He had a large florid face and might have been between fifty and sixty years old. Whitish curly crinkles of hair covered the top of a broad and sloping forehead. He had thick lips. He was the canteen manager of the camp, of which Major Cradock was the commandant. In a rapid, high-pitched voice he cried, “I protest against this man in our midst who has repeatedly blasphemed against God, King, Country, and our poor dear lads in France.”

  A renewed roar greeted these obviously rehearsed words, for as suddenly as he had got up the speaker had sat down. Phillip’s dominant feeling was surprise that such a charge against him could be accepted by anyone. Yet there it was: the ridiculous was becoming the dangerous. He stood up.

  “The G.O.C.-in-Chief and his ‘secret aerodromes’! Where did General Ironside’s ‘Intelligence’ get its reports from? Fleet Street? This sort of loose talk is creating alarm and despondency—”

  Further uproar broke out. Phillip stood still. When it subsided he said, turning to Major Cradock, “As one old soldier of nineteen-fourteen to another, I give you my word that what the canteen-manager said is a damned lie!”

  In a loud voice for all to hear, Cradock cried, “I don’t care if it’s a damned lie or not, I believe it,” and turned away.

  Phillip left the hut and crossed the road to the farmhouse. Lucy was knitting a child’s sock.

  “Cradock knows my views, and used to agree with many of them, about the country being decadent, and why. He’s windy, so is ‘Tiny Tinribs’ at Horse Guards in London. Chief of the Imperial General Staff indeed! Six foot four inches in his socks, and ten feet tall on a horse! ‘Tiny Tinribs’ don’t know his stuff!”

  “Oh, I expect it will calm d
own. By the way, before I forget, someone calling himself Gerald Ruche telephoned from Fleet Street and asked for your comments on the news that Sir Hereward Birkin has just been arrested. I left the receiver off.”

  Phillip put it back. “That’s the chap Chettwood wanted to bring for a week-end last year. He writes the gossip-page, he’s a left-wing intellectual. If he rings again, quote me as saying that Birkin is one of the truest patriots in England.”

  Saturday, May 25

  At 2 a.m. I was awakened by a cry of Action! from the searchlight on Pewitts. Sounds come distinct across the valley. Beams crossed the sky. Above low clouds came the drone of aircraft. I heard later it was a Jerry, following some of our Whitleys showing lights as they flew towards the S-W. I listened, and some minutes later heard a deep crump. I thought of David and Rosamund at school.

  B.B.C. early news said Vimy Ridge taken. Memories of the attack in the snowstorm of 9 April, 1917. If only the Germans had been treated with magnanimity in 1918. But as Arnold Bennett would have said, It isn’t a magnanimous world.

  Mrs. Cheffe rang up in the morning and said she was closing the school, taking her own children to Devon, and would we fetch Rosamund and David. We went over in the Silver Eagle. David cried “Yippee!” and did his final turn of going up the wide stairs on all fours, stretching himself out on the landing and then rolling down to our feet.

  More arrests under Defence Regulations, Section 18b. Some of Birkin’s Headquarter members pulled in. Also Major Bohun-Borsholder and others I met with Colt at that meeting in Fleet Street, including members of the Anglo-German Fellowship, the Link, etc. Admiral Sir Barry Domville, who commanded the 3rd Cruiser Squadron in the first war, has also been imprisoned. London seems to be as windy as our little local lot.