A Solitary War

by Henry Williamson

  Monday, May 27

  To London to propose article for Chettwood.

  Some of the members in the Barbarian club were offensive, notably one of the elderly tankard boys at the bar. He is an ex-manager of the Aeolian Hall, originally admitted to the Club because of his wife—a singer. He used to embarrass me in the days of my flush of literary fame, with flattery; now he spluttered about his grandsons at Dunkirk, his purple face thrust near mine. “You ought to be locked up!”

  In the evening I took Chettwood to dinner. Gerald Ruche (‘Mr. Pepys’) came with him, wanting to hear what I said. I told Chettwood I would write an article to be used by him when Hitler has conquered France: that Hitler didn’t want to invade England, but would offer peace again on the October 1939 model: that Soviet Asia absorbing Central Europe and later Western Europe ‘after the two white giants had bled themselves white’ was the real menace for Britain as well as for Germany, and Hitler’s particular nightmare: that France would be done for inside a fortnight. Both listened, neither commenting, seeming rather scared and serious. Chettwood asked what else I’d write, but I didn’t tell him. Not because of caution; I can’t discuss a thing until I’ve written it. I did tell them however that they might have to fight in the army, and both looked startled.

  As we parted Gerald Ruche lifted the lapel of my jacket, under which was the party badge. His look inferred that discretion was the better part of valour. Scores of prominent members have now been arrested, following Birkin to prison. He said, “Do you mind if I say something about your not being pulled in yet, in my column tomorrow?” Chettwood said, “Oh no, you can’t do that.” Ruche seemed momentarily surprised: his ‘objectivity’ has obviously diminished his personal sensitivity. Perhaps he has suffered horribly as a child, and armoured himself in righteousness. His pale face and slightly puffy body (for a comparatively young man) is a key to his mental outlook.

  Among other things Chettwood told me that General Ironside had been replaced by General Dill as C.I.G.S., but I can hardly claim credit for that!

  Next morning I went down to Kent to fetch Peter from his choir school, which last September had been evacuated to an old and rather stuffy Tudor house. Twenty boys in bunk-beds in each room with a small lattice window-opening. All merry and bright. Peter introduced me to his especial friend, a small boy who wore spectacles, the usual Eton jacket, had a wide toothy grin and nickname of ‘Shrimp’. Peter seemed equally happy to stay or leave. We crossed over by the Gravesend ferry and got home in the evening.

  Thursday, May 30

  Belgium has given up. The bungaloid-tabloid-respectability-pornographic-leery-sneery papers call King Leopold a traitor. What bad taste some of the younger newspaper men have: all the defects of bricks-and-mortar industrial-mentality without the purge of hard body work. Pry, deny, decry, sensate. A year or two back they were yelping at Baldwin because he told the truth that no British government asking for rearmament would remain five minutes in power. Recently these same manikins were saying that Baldwin was a Blimp who let the country down for not rearming. Now they smear the Belgian King as traitor, even coward. They ought themselves to fight through such a campaign—not be mere long-distance rumour-writers with hot hotel-meals and warm girl-friends, or boy-friends, to escape to. Only soldier-artists are qualified to write of war; only what they write would not be printed—now. In thirty years’ time all present day ‘thinking’ will be forgotten, all rotted down: perhaps to be as compost for a happier united Europe.

  Most of the B.E.F. have been rescued at Dunkirk, by hundreds of little English boats. I longed to be there, to be of some real use, in positive action, with Scylla. More arrests under 18b. When will my turn come?

  Saturday, June 1

  A case in the papers to-day of an alleged member of Birkin’s party being asked to join the anti-parachute defence force in order to get a rifle and ammunition with which to shoot his fellow-countrymen. So the witness declares: the witness being the man who, the report said, had, on the suggestion of the local police, joined the Imperial Socialist party. Of course the ordinary public can know only what it hears or reads in the newspapers, and in almost all cases the exact opposite is the truth.

  I am, by now, probably regarded as a traitor. So far I have laughed at them; but when I read of such things as the foregoing, obviously a frame-up with the good old agent provocateur creeping out of ‘crime’ fiction into British life, I begin to wonder how I shall end up: ruined farm and family? Perhaps even shot in the back by some tortoise-minded patriot?

  A petrol-bowser came to-day and sucked all the petrol out of our 250-gallon tank by the tractor house. This is a precaution and justified. Only 10-gallon lots may be kept on farm premises now.

  Lady Birkin writes to say that she is trying to carry on the weekly paper, Union, by herself. My immediate impulse was to go and help her; but I knew it should be closed down. Its publication can do no good at this time. (Nor would my proposed article.) Lady B. had a baby a few days ago, and writes that she is now weaning it, she expects any moment to be arrested and taken to prison, and has a small bag packed in readiness. I wrote and advised that Union should cease publication. Birkin told me a month ago that he was carrying on to provide a platform for the people, should they need someone to speak for peace. In his words (to me when I thought of flying to see Hitler just before the war broke out), ‘The curtain is down’.

  Friday, June 7

  Sugar-beet on the Bustard a good plant. We put on 5 tons of pressed London sewage, plus 5 cwt. of balanced fertilisers, per acre. Barley on the Scalt patchy. The field had 3 cwts. of sewage sludge per acre Two patches where the plants are thin: chalky soil. I plan to cover these with more mud and reeds pulled from the dykes next September or October. Soon it will be haysel; there is a wonderful ‘shear’ on Steep field.

  Hearing that Horatio Bugg had been making more remarks about me, I saw him in his yard and told him he would have to face an action for slander if he were not more careful.

  “Oh no!” he said, cockily.

  “Well, wait and see.”

  “No, you wait and see!”

  “You’ve read too many crime novels,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he said, “but you wait and see. I’m telling you, mind.”

  He was really so mild about it that my anger went. He is a naïve character, and I can’t help liking one side of him. He dodged the last war, and so retains a sort of innocence.

  Saturday, June 8

  French retreating from the line of the Somme. The British newspapers talk of an ‘imminent German collapse’ in France, because they are over-running their communications and simply not knowing what dangers they are running logistically. But the game is given away by the pronouncements that England and France will ‘never conclude a separate peace’.

  Hundreds of members of the Imperial Socialist Party have now been ‘detained’.

  Sunday, June 9

  To-day Lucy and I lunched with Lady Breckland. I found her much disturbed by the news. The Holland invasion has upset her, and the tales of treachery by Germans in Holland. ‘They were the guests of the Dutch,’ she kept repeating. Her son was with the Grenadiers at Dunkirk, but she did not mention it. On the way back we went to see Runnymeade, who had several times rung me up recently, asking me over.

  Stefania Rozwitz, with whom I have had arguments occasionally (egged on by ‘Boy’, in order to watch the fun) was staying there, having come from London.

  She hissed at me as we entered the door, ‘Traitor! Liar! Impostor! Spy!’ and went out of the door. I was a little shaken by this volte face.

  With a sort of weary drawl Runnymeade said, “I can only regret the decay of good manners which seems to be general nowadays,” as he poured me out nearly a glassful of gin, most of which I managed to tip out of the window when he was not looking.

  He asked me several questions, with iterated request not to ‘let him down’.

  In what way, I asked.

  First, Was I
in Hitler’s pay?

  I said no, nor any other man’s pay. Had I served in the British Army? Yes.

  “Now I come to a more personal question, Maddison. Did you tell anyone I was a drunkard?”

  I tried to explain the circumstances of my having had too much gin and whisky last Christmas, at the cottage he took me, Mrs. Carfax, and Teddy Pinnegar to. I told him how I had apologised to Mabel, and had hoped she would be more discreet about it than I had been. I said it was a remark as stupid as untrue, a betrayal of hospitality, how I had regretted it at once, and ever since. Then I apologised to him and got up to go. R. said he’d given orders for dinner, so we stayed. Stefania didn’t show up.

  Lucy and I went home in the dark, passing through several barricades hastily made across the road—coils of barbed-wire, farm-carts, sheep-hurdles, old rusty implements, tree-trunks, etc. We were stopped once by the weak shining of a torch. The battery was run down, it gave but the feeblest red-yellow glow. I was asked by a friendly country voice for our identification cards. The Silver Eagle was examined, we were allowed to pass. Silent figures with loaded shot-guns were beyond the barrier.

  On returning home, I left the car in the yard in front of my cottage.

  In the morning I saw that it had been daubed with large white swastikas—one on the scuttle, one on the tank, two on either side of the bonnet. This must have been done before our journey back from Runnymeade’s last night. I wonder what, had the guards possessed an efficient torch, would have happened had they seen, suddenly, a low black open car approaching with swastikas showing white. Shocked by fear, they would have yelled the alarm and fired. Lucy and I might have had our heads blown off; church bells been rung; the Eastern counties, perhaps the entire country, might have been put into an invasion panic.

  I painted out the swastikas with black enamel at once, because the car was standing just inside the gate, in full view of any passers-by.

  Tuesday, June 11

  We cut our hay on the Steep and the northern end of the Bustard. A good crop, though slightly overblown. Too ripe. Luke’s idea is to cut for bulk, not quality. Sick of arguments, I gave way to him over this.

  The news is grave. I listen at night to Rome, to Berlin, to London. One day a terrific drama must be written out of all this. Even so, I find myself everlastingly drawn two ways: the sad needlessness of the war, from the people’s view-point, combined with a heavy feeling that my country seems to be going down. But for the Channel, we would be done for, like France. Indeed, only the sea saved us from Napoleon and the effects of the London bankers scuppering his European-union idea.

  In France, a million Communists called to the colours in 1939 gave the closed-fist salute on being paraded. The French Government arrested the legally-elected Communist deputies of the Chamber and shipped them to Devil’s Island. Divided by class and political parties, France falls. Paris lived as middle-men; the peasants of metropolitan France feared, disliked the towns. Paris put money, pleasure first; France fell. Hitler was only the precipitating agent.

  I wrote to Runnymeade and thanked him for a pleasant evening, saying I hoped his friendship towards me hadn’t caused him too much embarrassment, and that I felt it for the best to keep away until the present international misunderstanding had blown over.

  If I spend the war in prison, at least it will give me a chance to write all those books I have lacked detachment to tackle, so far.

  Wednesday, June 12

  As I was sitting on the tractor to-day, drawing the old Albion grass-cutter through the hay of the Bustard, a little rain fell. It stung my eyes. It left small dark smudges on the skin of my forearms and knees. It speckled the grey tank of the tractor. At home smuts were on the new paint of the cottage windows, on the white roses in bloom in the garden.

  Far away across the sea the oil-tanks of Ghent have been flaring with those of Calais and Dunkirk. The sky was heavy with drifting smoke, high over the summer scene.

  ‘Mr. Pepys’ writes that Lady Birkin, in Holloway prison, had sent a letter to a friend asking for a hot-water bottle. (Information from tipped prison wardress?) Ruche writes further that he is proposing to open a fund for providing a hot-water bottle for her Ladyship in prison. Any offers, his column concludes.

  The pains of milk-fever are perhaps greater than most unmarried men realize, especially when a mother, after arrest without charge, and without hope of trial (for Magna Charta, Habeas Corpus, and the Bill of Rights have been suspended) lies in solitary confinement wondering about both baby and husband.

  Chapter 24

  JUGGED HARE

  Phillip returned from the hayfield, where he had asked Luke to turn the swathes with the tedder. The day was becoming brighter and hotter. He was expecting a new hay-and-corn elevator to arrive at Crabbe station, and had telephoned to make enquiries. It had arrived. Good! He would send Luke in with a horse. It was nine o’clock, he had been out since seven. Things were going well, so he returned to the farmhouse.

  While Lucy was cooking his breakfast he went outside to listen to the nightingale in the lilac bush by the draw-well. He was leaning on an arm of the frame supporting the roller and chain which in former days had raised wooden buckets from the well when five men walked into the yard. He knew at once why they had come. He stood still. The leading man gave him quick glances. He had a large, pinkish face. All the five men wore felt hats with turned-down brims. The leader, with the open pink face, had his right hand in his coat pocket. Other hands went casually to pockets as they stood, two before him, two on either side, one behind him.

  “Is your name Phillip Sidney Thomas Maddison?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have an order for your detention under Section 18b, paragraph a, of the Defence Regulations.”

  “I wondered when you were coming.”

  “You’ve been expecting us, then. Why?”

  “The papers for days have been printing names of members of the Imperial Socialist Party who have been arrested, and I wondered if my turn was coming.”

  “Then you are a member of the Imperial Socialist Party?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will have to come with us. You should pack a small bag for immediate necessities only.”

  He felt distress behind the kaleidoscope of his thoughts lest the hay, the good clover hay of Steep and Bustard fields, be left to bleach away its goodness; or, if Luke picked it up sappy, it would go mouldy in the stack.

  “I’ll come along in a moment,” he said, meaning to tell Lucy what to do about the hay; and also thinking to change his clothes. He wore only vest and shorts. The pink-faced man followed immediately behind him through the kitchen into the parlour.

  The other two men on his flanks. Obviously they were taking no chances. He felt calm under his discomposure about the hay. He wished they wouldn’t behave like that. It was unnecessary.

  “Where are you going?” said the pink-faced man.

  “To tell my wife about the hay. If it’s not treated properly when I’m away, the cattle will starve next winter.”

  Lucy was mending a pair of Billy’s overalls. He told her quietly that he was going away, and she must do the best she could with the farm. He was sorry to have it put upon her, especially at this time. Did she remember what he had often told her about the hay being either brown and bleached, or green and mouldy?

  Lucy looked dismayed. Then she said, “Oh!”

  Suddenly he thought wildly, O Christ, is it all going on like this to the end of my life? Controlling himself, he said, “And there is the new elevator at the station to be fetched. Tell Luke, will you, to fetch it. You and Billy must do the best you can.” He heard his voice from far away.

  His things, he told the detective-sergeant, were in the adjacent cottage. He went through the kitchen to go there. They followed closely. The face of Mrs. Valiant looked pale and thin. He smiled at her. The garden which he had not yet been able to begin to tidy up was still a tangle of nettles and buttercups and old bicycle frames and w
heels and heaps of broken glass and crockery deposited over the hedge at the bottom by Horatio Bugg, whose garden adjoined. This was the real England: not Birkin’s: not his own little books, or Ralph Hodgson’s Song of Honour, or Shelley’s poems, or Wilfred Owen’s, or the prose of Richard Jefferies, or the music of Delius. The real England was based on the deflowered Thames below the Pool of London.

  He walked up bare narrow wooden stairs. Lucy was about to follow to help him pack when the detective-sergeant moved swiftly in front of her, to follow close against his back, hand in pocket.

  He wanted to say, I am not the sort of person who will draw a gun, or run away; but he said, “I call this my lighthouse room,” while hoping that they would not look under the blue carpet where he had hidden back numbers of Union which he wanted later on for a record of the time he was living through.

  It did not take long to put pyjamas, slippers, dressing-gown, with razor and toothbrush into a bag. He said, “If you’re going to make a search, I’d better tell you now that there’s nothing here, or anywhere else, of a traitorous nature, to be discovered. There are many manuscripts and books, for I’ve been a writer for twenty years. My life is an open book—in a way, I suppose.”

  To Lucy he said, “Will you please give these gentlemen every help, and explain where the keys are. They’re all labelled. They are in the top middle-drawer of the tall-boy. Show them how to open those three little top drawers—you know—they open when you press the wooden catch underneath. And there’s a lot of manuscripts and letters in tea-chests in the workshop.” To the detective-sergeant he said, “The manuscripts have been there since nineteen thirty-seven. Mice have eaten into some. May I take a pen and paper with me? I want to revise the latest manuscript of a book I’ve written about this farm.”