The Phoenix Generation

by Henry Williamson

  “Sir, I can sleep anywhere—on the ground under the stars, if necessary. At Mons,” reflected Rippingall, “when we arrived on that Sunday afternoon, we all bathed in the Canal. What a relief after those Hommes forty, Chevaux Huit railway trucks. As I was saying, we were all enjoying ourselves in the canal, when suddenly, on the skyline, a row of horsemen was presented to our wondering eyes. The Alarm was sounded. Every man back to his unit was the order. There the Uhlans were, lances and flat-topped helmets, beating it back to Berlin. I slept that night under a G.S. waggon,” he added, inconsequentially.

  The first thing to do in the field was to make a map of it. With the leather-cased tape borrowed from Pa, Phillip measured the lengths of the hedge boundaries while Rippingall took bearings with the prismatic compass. The field lay almost due south, facing the Channel. Behind the northern hedge stood a semi-ruinous beech plantation. This he hoped one day to buy and replant with oak, the native tree of the seaboard country.

  They had brought sacks and sleeping bags in the car, with kettle, trivet, and frying pan. It was cold in the tallet, the loft over the cattle shed. The fire below filled it with smoke. So they kipped down by the fire. At dawn Phillip got up and walked about the hilltop. Above the plantation Polaris shone, coldly but faithfully, six lengths from the beam-end of the Plough. The earth had revolved since he had climbed to the tallet, so that the constellations of night appeared to have moved from east to west. The moon, too, had come up from below Dartmoor, which lay north, and now was descending to the ocean whose great pulse came from the moon. How strange that the moon, captive in her own serene orbit, ruled not only the tides, but all phases of human life. As Richard Jefferies had written, the sum of all nature was maintained in the beauty of Eve, the great earth mother: in the tenderness and sympathy of woman extending far beyond her own species. If man was the essence of the sun, woman was the essence of the moon, which ruled the menstrual or monthly phases of woman—the ‘flowers’ of the Victorians, the ‘curse’ of the Georgians. Why the ‘curse’? Was it from the Garden of Eden: the fall: the serpent’s wisdom: or some visionary forecast or prophesy that woman would one day rule the world, as the female dominated in the lesser worlds of ants and bees? The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine——

  He had brought the saplings with him from the weedy nursery of the Fawley Estates. Rippingall and he had dug them up at night. The War Department would only let them grow wild and then probably uproot and burn them.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Hullo, old soldier. How did you sleep?”

  “Mustn’t grumble, sir.”

  Day after day Phillip and Rippingall dug holes for the saplings, stood them in, spread the roots, shook soil over them gently so that the rootlets would have no checking air-spaces. Then each hole was filled and trodden down firmly before the soil was tumped hard with a post to prevent evaporation.

  Phillip was not used to physical work, of shovelling and bending down hour after hour. During the first days before the rhythm of body work was established, there was a confusion of mental dross due to the changing metabolism of the body. In physical stress it seemed that the world as he had encountered it was largely a mosaic of lies. Most of what had been told to him and said of him in the past was untrue. The figment of his old headmaster often reappeared to tell him he was the worst boy in the school; and now, ironically, according to a recent letter from the same source, his achievements in the literary world had added lustre to that institution which was proud to number him among its Old Boys. And the spirit of the school, unwittingly, had failed to recognise the talent which now was applauded.

  But that was the dross of thought. Mankind learned painfully, by trial and error. It was a good life. The digging and planting cleared his blood, and so the mind. He became optimistic. The light had broken through the darkness of England, and of Germany too. There would never be another Great War.

  “Time for tea, old soldier.”

  Every day was of the same pattern. Phillip made a fire of sticks and boiled the kettle. While the autumnal afternoon was absorbed in a dull quietude of solar decline, Rippingall made toast of brown bread, butter, and bloater paste. The tea warmed Phillip, sudden joy expunged the querulous fatigue-thoughts of the last quarter of an hour. Food was important. How fortunate he had been, how kind in intention his parents had always been. Likewise his old headmaster: how generous of the school to welcome him back as one of its alumni! And greatest of all he had the friendship of one whose faith was based, like Barley’s, on pure intelligence. He imagined Melissa’s face, calm and steadfast in its own beauty, a spiritual love like that of Matilda Wesendonk for Richard Wagner. Now he would be able to re-create scenes and faces passing through his mind no longer in fatigue like a much-worn and patched film through an old bioscope. The spirit of Barley had come again into his life. Here in this field, here on this very sward had they lain side by side, at this very place where the blue flowers of wild chicory bloomed every summer. And now her spirit was intertwined with that of Melissa, for both were of the same essence.

  *

  Ernest arrived one day at Monachorum to tell his sister Lucy that their father was dead. Since his bronchitis Pa had been sleeping in the glass-walled annexe to the sitting-room of Down Close. Ernest said he had found Pa lying on the floor when he went downstairs that morning. His eyes were fixed in a stare, his face had a look of suffocation. Had he tried to get to Ernest in the night? There he lay, having tripped over the thick cord of his dressing gown. There was a bruise on his forehead. His hands were half-shut with trying to claw himself up from the parquet floor of discoloured deal.

  Ernest told Lucy these details in a voice unaffected by emotion. What was worrying him was not so much Pa’s death—after all he was eighty-two—but what would become of himself now that ‘those thieves’ of the Legal Reversionary Society would have all the family money.

  Three days later Pa was buried beside his wife in the small graveyard of the smaller Saxon church above the river. At least, Ernest thought his mother was buried there; her grave had no stone; the only mark was an overgrown flowering-currant bush. This bush also served for Pa, since brother and sister agreed that Pa would not want a stone on his grave either.

  “What will happen now, to Ernest, Lucy?”

  Phillip knew that Lucy’s three brothers had sold their reversions years before. As for the house, which had belonged to Ernest, that carried a first and second mortgage. The family trust had provided the money for both mortgages. The trustees were members of the Copleston family, together with the so-called family solicitor; for the legal business, or firm, had changed hands twice since Pa’s marriage settlement was made. Ernest having declared that he had no money, the mortgagees took over Down Close, with its two acres of garden and the Works which had been built on part of the land, and put it up for sale. Within a few days it was sold. Phillip asked Lucy how much Ernest had got for it.

  “Nothing, according to Ernest,” said Lucy. She went on to explain that the only offer for the whole lot was seven hundred pounds, which Ernest had accepted.

  “But it’s worth far more than that. What did Ernest mortgage it for?”

  “I think Ernest said seven hundred pounds.”

  “But there is the second mortgage, of three hundred pounds, which you provided.”

  “I don’t really know anything about it, Phillip.”

  So Phillip abandoned his tree-planting and sought out Ernest, who was reading Cohen on the telephone in the coach-house of Down Close.

  “That was the only bid, so I sold it.” He muttered, “I’ve had just about enough of those thieves.”

  “But, Ernest, you signed the reversion deed, after all.”

  Ernest would say no more, so Phillip went back to Monachorum.

  “I think he means when the Boys sold their reversions, they signed away all and any moneys which might come to them, and now the lawyers are claiming the legacy from Aunt Andromeda which she promised to Erne
st when her lady’s maid died. The lady’s maid had the interest during her lifetime, then the money was to go to Ernest. Her maid died a month before Pa, and now they say Ernest has no right to it.”

  “But a legacy isn’t a reversion.”

  “I don’t really know, but Ernest did sign for everything that might come to him, one way or another.” Lucy looked flushed. Why could not Phillip let Ernest get on with his own affairs? It was Ernest’s own lookout if he lost his money.

  Phillip went into Shakesbury and saw the house agents who had sold Down Close.

  “I must admit I was surprised when Mr. Copleston told us to accept the offer of only seven hundred pounds. He asked us to find a buyer some time ago, and the only offer was from Mr. Solly, the farmer down the lane.”

  From the house agents, Phillip went to see the farmer, who lived in the lane beyond Down Close. Mr. Solly weighed about eighteen stone although he was not very tall. He was jubilant about his good luck.

  “I wor prepared to go to sixteen hun’erd, my bid was in for years, cor’, wasn’t I surprised-like when Mr. Ernest let it go like he did.”

  Phillip motored back fast to Monachorum. Ernest was staying there with Lucy.

  “Why didn’t you try and get the bid raised, Ernest? Solly tells me he was prepared to go to sixteen hundred pounds.”

  “Oh, I was fed up with the whole business. After all, that was the only bid.”

  “But the house was worth more than seven hundred, otherwise the trustees wouldn’t have allowed that second mortgage of three hundred. And the money came from Lucy’s share of the marriage settlement. The fact is, you owe her three hundred. What are you going to do about all that machinery in the Works? Those lathes and other stuff, as well as the gas engine, are bolted to the concrete floor of the Works, and so don’t comprise landlord’s fixtures. Would you like me to go to London, and see the family solicitors? I’m sure there must be some mistake about your having signed away any legacy from elsewhere, as well as the reversions.”

  “I thought about going up myself.”

  That evening Phillip and Lucy had the house to themselves. She told him that Ernest, who had always been considered a confirmed bachelor, had met a girl while following the local otter-hounds. They seemed to like one another, for he had gone down for the week-end to meet her mother.

  “Has she got any money?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “I sound like a bad, acquisitive character out of Jane Austen.”

  “Oh no, my dear.” Lucy smiled uncertainly. “But I do wish sometimes that you would not take on other people’s troubles.”

  Ernest came back looking glummer than ever. Only when asked did he mutter, “If I lived to be a hundred years old, I’d never see eye to eye with those thieves.”

  “Ernest, will you let me arrange for you an auction of the machinery and other things not included in the mortgage?”

  After a reluctant silence Ernest said, “Oh, very well.” So the machinery, including a milling machine and a 3-inch lathe, together with the original wooden workshop, bolted on a brick sill, which Pa had built for his hobbies, went for auction and fetched nearly five hundred pounds. This sum, without a word of thanks, Ernest pocketed; and soon he was to be seen, by a surprised Phillip, coming down from his bedroom in Monachorum house wearing evening dress. For the first time in his life, at the age of thirty-five, Ernest was going to a dance; and a slap-up affair too, the County Ball. His partner was the girl he had met during the previous summer at a meet of the otter-hounds. More surprises were to follow: Ernest had bought a set of golf-clubs, and a jacket of Lovat tweed with plus fours.

  “What about Lucy’s money, Ernest?”

  “Lucy did not lend me any money,” replied Ernest, in an even voice. “What those thieves did with our family money is not my affair.”

  “But you borrowed three hundred pounds on a second mortgage. The money came from Lucy, via the trustees.”

  Ernest muttered, “I’m not responsible for what the trustees did.”

  When next Phillip went to London he called at the solicitors’ offices. Yes, the trustees were, under the Act, personally responsible for making good any losses in a trust fund.

  “So Ernest Copleston received five hundred pounds out of the sale of the effects of the place, did he? I’m glad you told me this. We can recover the three hundred from your brother-in-law, Mr. Maddison.”

  “Well, as I told you about the sale of the machinery in confidence, perhaps nothing more should be done about my wife’s three hundred. Oh, by the way, did Mr. Copleston leave a will?”

  The solicitor rang a bell. When the will was put before him he read it and said, “… the testator’s property to be sold and the proceeds to be divided among the four children. Otherwise we must get a valuation for probate, I suppose? From what I can gather the old gentleman left very little. Would it be under a couple of hundred pounds do you think? In that case the estate will not be required to pay death duty.” Then he said, “I am personally very sorry for your brother-in-law. He arrived at this office every morning for three days, and sat outside in the waiting-room, and refused to budge. All he said was ‘I’m not going to go until those thieves have repaid me my money’.”

  “They are an unworldly family. Well, thank you for what you have told me.”

  “What will he do, have you any idea?”

  “Oh, continue to live with us I suppose.”

  Ernest was not happy at Monachorum. He mooned about the house, his face showing no feeling, as ever. Once and only once Phillip tried to ask him what was the matter. Ernest stood still, then after an interval said, “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

  Lucy told Phillip later. Ernest had fallen in love, but neither he nor the girl had any money.

  *

  Phillip found it difficult to write while Ernest mooned about: and after Christmas he returned alone to the field, where the Gartenfeste had been built by a mason, a carpenter, and Rippingall and himself as general labourers. The upper storey, the old hay tallet, had been replaced by an oak frame. Windows and new roof timbers and upper floor were of Canadian pine. The lower room, below ground level, was lit by windows just above ground level, like the splayed slits of a German pillbox in the Salient. The walls and floor were of waterproof concrete. For warmth there were rush mats on the concrete floor. The walls were plastered. This underground room was heated by an open hearth with a chimney back which was part of a cast-iron hot-water boiler, fed from a tank in the loft. The boiler gave water to the scullery and also to radiators along one wall. Phillip had fitted the lower room with book-shelves, and the dug-out, with its grass-level views of sky and distant sea, gave a feeling of freedom and light.

  There were many rabbits in the field. They gnawed the bark of the saplings, so Phillip put up posts with wire-netting cylinders round the little trees.

  One January night, when he was alone in the field, it blew a gale, and in the morning when he climbed out of the dugout by way of the Columbian pine stairs to the loft above he saw that many of the little trees were lying dishevelled. Walking among them he found that every other tree had been spun and loosened by the storm which, according to his portable wireless set, had raged directly across southern England, throwing thousands of great elm and oak trees all the way to London. Two days later the north-east wind brought snow, and in the morning the entire landscape was white, and the tops of the beeches in the plantation north of the field arose above a white cliff. The wind had carved it with flowing lines of sculpture. It was like the winter when he had learned to ski with Piers on the downs above Rookhurst: now a region, in memory, of defeat, scarcely to be recalled without the stillness of a sigh.

  The skis were in the Gartenfeste. He took them down and ran beeswax over the runners with a hot iron. He was alone on the world’s top, leaning on ski-sticks, the points of his yellow skis elongating his feet. It was the first time skis had been seen in Malandine. A local photographer took hi
s picture when Phillip called at the shop for a bread loaf. Soon he was on the way back to the world’s height, walking with plumping wooden feet most of the way, and up the steeper slopes nearly splitting himself as he made herring-bone tracks to prevent slipping backwards. It was good to feel fingers, numb with cold in the village, now glowing with warmth that filled his entire body with a feeling of being able to live for ever.

  More snow fell at night. No stars were to be seen; he was entirely shut off in a world soundless but for the slight falling sighs of the flakes of snow. Towards midnight, while he crouched over flames in the open hearth of the dugout, the frozen winter of 1916, in the valley of the Ancre, came back in splinters of soundless terror, that those scenes were gone forever. He must go back to his home, to Lucy and the children, and sit with them around the hearth in the sitting-room.

  The little trees, each about two feet high when last seen, had been hidden under humps of wind-streamed snow; but so heavy had been the second fall that only the top of the six-foot palisade gate was visible the next morning when he tried to open it. With rucksack on back he got through the hedge after some difficulty and ski-ed down the next sloping field in a travelling wave of snow until, attempting to skim over the hedge he was thrown over abruptly, one ski-point having caught in a twisted stem of furze. The ankle was painful. After disentangling himself he forced himself to trudge back to the sunken lane and follow the turns and bends down to the village. He went faster and faster, his head and shoulders well above the hedge tops of the lane which normally were more than a man’s height below the fields on either side. In the excitement of gliding downhill with the keen wind thrumming in his ears, he forgot the pain in his ankle until, at the sharp bend at the bottom, it gave way and he slid sideways into a stone bank, with a snapping noise.

  The ankle was not broken, but the point of one ash runner. Unfastening the rawhide thongs he abandoned both skis and started to hop to the village by the aid of the sticks. He spent the night in the cottage of Walter Crang, his neighbour of just after the war. The next morning he pulled himself into his open car and went home.