The Cabtons were sleeping in Phillip’s writing-room. He had explained to them that as Becket Scrimgeour and Brother Laurence were in the only spare room, he hoped they would not mind that his room had only a single couch-bed. Cabton, taking charge as soon as he had looked around, had removed the mattress and put it on the floor. Then he had piled the bed-frame with sheep-skins brought from his motorcar. “Gert and I are used to roughing it.”
Phillip had thought to walk about under the stars and see the dawn in, keeping vigil for his mother; but the image faded, the late November night soon dragged without purpose, like any ordinary sleepless war-time night; so he returned to his home and, wrapped in his grandfather’s coaching greatcoat, tried to sleep on the landing carpet.
It was cold, a draught was coming from under the closed door of the boys’ room. Rats began to trip up and down the bare oak treads of the stairs. They must have smelt the uncured sheepskins. They came through the broken floor above the cellar. There was a second colony of rats which entered the house by way of the bathroom hole under the waste pipe. Usually the bathroom rats went exploring on the ground floor, while the cellar rats went outside in the garden below the children’s night nursery for biscuits. Now both colonies were apparently after the sheepskins. Which was which, he wondered. One lot seemed to be playing, or courting, on the landing; the other lot to be running races above the ceiling.
He could not sleep. His brain, part-poisoned by the bloodstream polluted by the mixture of drinks in belly and gut, began to churn up past mortifications, miseries, thwartings, work undone, misjudgments: all the compost of the past which only by writing and transmuting would, he knew, move away out of his mind. The two grandfather clocks downstairs wheezed and struck four within a second of each other. This was a coincidence, for he had not wound them for years. Once they had been his pride, in those days of solitary living followed by the blissful year with Barley. He had washed their flower-and-bird painted faces twice a year, at the summer and winter solstices, and oiled the worn brass wheels and cogs, pinions, bearings; pulled up the weights before breakfast every morning. Rippingall had wound them up, after days of stagnancy, for the party. Mother was dead. He had longed for her death, to free himself; but death had brought no relief. Now, lying cold and sleepless, he entered the coffin to lie beside her, seeing but a brittle relict of herself lying there, part of the eternal patience of the earth’s suffering before its final dissolution.
Oh, Mother, I have been a bad son, I have not been kind to you: even the nurse had to write a line to me asking me to write to you. O Christ Almighty, even when she had moved ever so slightly in bed she broke her thigh-bone, which was rotten with the rays of radium needles used on a hopeless case. He saw her groins pocked by burst tumours: Passchendaele craters in miniature, the water turned yellow by British lyddite shells, the Salient pocked and repocked beyond the death of every worm and beetle as the shells spouted and respouted every ounce of putrid soil and flesh and litter of the parade grounds of Europe. That is true, anyway, for all wrong living in Europe erupted into the Great War. Oh, Mother, are you with those spirits of love and grace which are called angels? I must not think of the letter of reality. One day I shall write a novel about your life and Father’s, I’ve been thinking about it for years and flinching from the task. At least it will not be critical and satirical as once I intended. If only I can write the simple natural truth it will be understood by everyone in the world. But shall I ever be free to write it? Mother, I hope I get cancer, I feel you want me to be with you in the grave. No, no, I am allowing myself to be possessed by bad spirits. I shall write my book with love and understanding, I swear to you I shall.
The vision went out of him as the clocks raced one another to be the first to strike six times. It was that damned Algerian wine which had given him such gurgling turmoil in his guts. It was what Becket Scrimgeour said the Foreign Legion drank before going cafard, or mad-smashing-killing. No more poison, wooden case of six bottles delivered free from a firm at Ratcliffe Docks for ten shillings.
Becket Scrimgeour was groaning and coughing downstairs in the children’s day nursery. Phillip thought of getting logs for the fire in the sitting-room, which seldom went out in the autumn and winter on its foot-high bed of ash, but he lay still, half-asleep, cold in the small of his back, clammy hot in legs, after many turnings over, enwound by the Ulster coaching coat which he had found, surprisingly mothless, in one of the big black coach-trunks in the Fawley lofts. At last the grey lifeless light of dawn. He got up, soused cold water on face and hands, and went down to the sitting-room fire. He got some logs, passing Rippingall curled on sacks in the kitchen. Two empty Algerian bottles lay beside him.
*
At nine o’clock Lucy, Felicity, and Melissa had breakfast on a polished refectory table. Brother Laurence had already shaved and bathed. Becket came in tousled, red-eyed.
“How did you sleep, Becket?”
“Bloody awful.”
“What happened?”
“Those cushions fell on the floor, leaving me jangling all night on the wire mattress.”
“I thought you were composing after the manner of Schönberg,” said the friar with a smile.
“How did you sleep, Cabton?”
“Not much better. You want to get rid of those rats.”
“Which ones?” asked Becket Scrimgeour.
“The trouble is they come in whenever they fancy the idea,” said Phillip.
“I was hardly asleep after the rat race when you put on the gramophone—this place is a madhouse,” said Mrs. Cabton.
“And when you stopped playing those records, I could hear you snoring,” added Cabton.
“Your rats seemed to be remarkably tame,” said the friar. “One sat up at the foot of my bed and washed its face.”
“That’s more than some of the guests here do,” remarked Becket.
“That’s the rat the children call Dippy Dan, mon père. Dippy Dan originally came after Garibaldi biscuits. He tried to take one whole down into his tunnel, which is too small. He spent a lot of time trying to drag it down, until gate-crashers came up and helped him, and themselves.”
After breakfast Melissa, finding Brother Laurence alone, asked him what he thought of Phillip’s books. The friar divined that she meant Phillip himself, and replied, “He has great natural faith, and a terrible honesty that his occasional sophistry or doubt cannot destroy, and a kind of child-like simplicity that is the only thing that saves us all from being downright wicked. And I have a steady respect for his work and faith in his future.”
“I am so glad to hear that, Brother Laurence. He needs friends more than most men, I think.”
“Friendship is the word, Melissa. He himself is a loyal friend, I know.”
Brother Laurence, driving an old Renault car which he called the Toad, left later with Felicity.
“That friar is bogus,” said Becket to Phillip. “I asked him what Order he belonged to, and he said ‘Laurentian’. I’ve never heard of it, nor has anyone else. I bet he sleeps with Felicity. I saw him kissing her this morning, in the sitting room.”
Yes, thought Phillip, all we say about others is a revelation of ourselves.
The Channersons departed after breakfasting in bed. The Cabtons remained for lunch, and stayed on for tea. Once again the old routine was to be heard from Phillip.
“What are your plans for your holiday, Cabton?”
“Oh, we never make plans when we are on holiday,” replied Cabton, with a lazy smile. “We believe in taking things as they come. Why don’t you try doing that, Phillip? You’re screwed up half the time. Why don’t you give yourself a break?”
“I think I’ll take your advice.”
*
Over the Gartenfeste a drift and delicacy of sleet was wandering down the wind. There was an expressed letter from his father forwarded from Monachorum, telling of the day and time of the funeral. With this letter was one from his sister Elizabeth who wrote that the do
ctors had experimented on poor Mother with radium needles although she was a hopeless case from the first. The specialists’ fees were nearly a thousand pounds: she hoped that Father would not try to get the bills paid out of Grandfather’s trust, which would now be shared by the three grandchildren. Would he speak to Father about it when he came up for the funeral, as ‘you are the only one of his family he likes. You are his favourite.’
He motored at once to London. Cousin Polly Pickering that was, turned up from Beau Brickhill. Her mother was too frail to come. Mrs. Bigge looked sadly out of her window as the coffin was borne to the motor hearse. Cousin Arthur and his sisters from Surrey came with their father, Uncle Joe. The large white face of Mrs. Neville was at her window in the flat below Hillside Road. The sides of the grave were smooth yellow clay. Phillip dropped the first handful of soil on the coffin. Mother was now with her father, her mother, her sister Dorrie, and Uncle Hugh. Uncle Joe, the last of that family, stood beside Phillip, looking humble and gentle. His sister Elizabeth wore the new black coat and skirt, payment for which she had demanded, Phillip thought, from Mother which he had covered by paying his cheque into Mother’s bank. He thought no more of it; obviously how to pay such respect to Mother had worried Elizabeth very much. Anyway, the money was only a slight return for all Mother had done for everyone in the family. He took his father aside afterwards and said he would like to help him pay the medical expenses; his father said, “Thank you, my dear boy, but it is my duty to do that. Will you come and have lunch with us at Beeveman’s in the High Street?”
“Father, I am so sorry, I must go back to London, do excuse me. I have some work to do. Thank you for inviting me, but I must go.”
He walked back to London along endless streets, thinking that he should have gone to lunch with his father and sisters, and not deserted them at the time of their distress. I might have drawn them together, now it is too late.
He went home the next day and learned that Rippingall had wandered off. The emotions of the past weeks had exhausted him. He had drawn out his savings from the Post Office, and got drunk in Shakesbury, where he had been taken in by a war-widow. She had a pension, which she would lose if she remarried; after some hesitation and doubt she agreed—according to a letter from Rippingall to Phillip—to marry him.
Phillip wrote and wished him luck, and sent him £10 as a wedding present.
115 San Remo Parade,
Westcliff-on-Sea.
2 December, 1936
My dear Phillip,
I was indeed pleased and surprised to get a letter from you. You say you only got my address when I wrote to your father after the funeral, about which nobody in the family told me. I think if you had wanted it Dickie or Elizabeth would have sent it to you at any time.
Your letter is most interesting, but I read between the lines that you are a disappointed man in your family life, more or less. I am very sorry whatever the cause. You know we must give and take, and make allowances in every way. Dickie and your dear Mother never got on well, he was selfish and very exacting, then he was of a most jealous nature, and he resented strongly the attention Hetty gave to her babies. He said she neglected him and he was very sorry for himself. Poor Hetty had a sorry time when Dickie left the office and for some reason I could never determine he went to bury himself in the country, where we had all lived as children, not very happily I fear, since Papa was of a spendthrift nature. My poor mother could never say anything to please Papa, just as Hetty failed likewise with Dickie, and she did try, she told me, with tears in her eyes.
He had no sympathy if she was not well, so naturally she kept any ailment to herself, including the last and fatal illness, until it was too late. Poor fellow, Dickie is now a very sad man, and misses her greatly, as I expect you know.
I hope your new venture is going to be a success in every way. At first it will be hard, uphill work, but I am sure it will pay in the end. I hope your books will bring in plenty of money to fill the gap while you are reconstructing the farm.
With my love, and every good wish that 1937 will be a great blessing to you in every way,
Your affect: Aunt Belle.
There was a note from Brother Laurence. He wrote that Phillip had undertaken a great physical task on the land, but this was good, because it would help to clarify and simplify a greater spiritual task that lay before him: a clarifying of values that the peoples of the Western world needed.
Even in the terror of ordinary living we are wrung and rent and scorched and temporarily destroyed by the emotions whether of love or hate, anger or ecstasy, fear or resentment, but we can have all purged by the pity and terror of great art, and thereby find ourselves, like the phoenix, living in the spirit once more. You know this, you always have known this, and with this knowledge you have a strong spirit that will lead you past calamity, derision and despair to the Faith.
All great art is grown out of the predicament of man. All creative effort destroys the peace of the flesh, the warring of the flesh, only to clear the way for the flowering of the spirit of creation. D. H. Lawrence knew this, while he rode on the crest of the wave of death. Shakespeare knew this, and Beethoven, Bach, Michelangelo, Mozart, Homer, and all the major poets. You know it, you have always known it. You cannot escape the presence of these values, the presence of what is sometimes called the Holy Ghost.
It was a winter of grief and dismay in a world decaying. An issue of Birkin’s weekly newspaper arrived from Piers in London. In big black type STAND BY THE KING.
Under the winter stars of the western hemisphere many voices were encircling the world. Among them was that of the abdicating King of England. His voice was preceded by another voice—the same gruff, wreathing voice which had announced the results of the General Election through loudspeakers during half the night at Mr. Gordon Selfridge’s party.
“This is Windsor Castle. His Royal Highness Prince Edward.”
Phillip wondered if the voice that followed would break; but he knew it would not. Three—four—five words. Then the voice had to pause to gather fortitude, like a man alone climbing a Himalayan Peak.
Afterwards Rosamund, sitting on her father’s knee and examining a half-crown, asked what the words meant round the head of the old King.
“George the Fifth by the grace of God King of Great Britain.”
“And the other side, Dad?”
“Defender of the Faith and Emperor of India.”
“Why has the new King gone, Dad?”
“He grew up on the battlefields.”
*
And now nearly time to pack up and pull out for East Anglia. But first he must see his father off from Southampton on his world cruise. Richard had bought a ticket in the Arandora Star, together with a new wardrobe of clothes, including his first dress suit.
“It’s rather a tumbledown house on the farm, Father. Lucy and the children will remain in a Dorset cottage she has rented until I’ve got it more or less in order.”
“Will you be on your own, old man?”
“Ernest, Lucy’s brother, may come with me.”
“Well, I hope you won’t lose on the land what you’ve made from your books. Au revoir, Phillip. Thank you for coming to see me off. I’ll write to you.”
Ernest said to Lucy, “I suppose I may as well go with Phil, as remain here.” He added, “At least until I hear from Fiennes and Tim about joining them in Australia.”
Richard wrote, while lying nauseated in his cabin during the crossing of the Bay of Biscay, Never again, old chap. I am returning overland from Gibraltar. I will never find my sea-legs at my age.
“One more for the community, I suppose, Lulu. He’ll make a good gamekeeper. There’s a lot of wild birds on the farm, also a duck decoy.”
The gamekeeper didn’t last long. At Gibraltar the sun was shining, the gale had abated. Richard made friends with other passengers. A postcard of the Rock, with a large monkey staring in the foreground, said, I am a new man, this is a wonderful life.
/> How Mother would have laughed!
*
The Abelines had gone, masons’ trowels rang in the Abbey, the Yacht Club was empty, yellow willow leaves lay resting on the bines of crowsfoot endlessly weaving in the cold spring-water of Flumen Monachorum.
Part Three
WAIFS & STRAYS
Chapter 11
‘DENCHMEN’
Phillip and Ernest had arrived with a caravan, but owing to the cold weather were living in what was called the Old Manor. At night the east winds echoed down the halls and passages, for the seventeenth-century house was ruinous in one wing. Indeed, the entire building was in a condition nearing dilapidation.
From 1915 to 1918 it had been occupied by soldiers. Compensation for damage—floors pulled up and doors taken off hinges, panelling ripped off for firewood; smashed plaster, broken lavatory pans, fallen ceilings—had not been used to restore fabric or interior. The owner, believing that England was finished, and that the future of the white man lay in Africa, had departed with all his capital, to farm in Kenya.
The Old Manor and its lands had been bought by a group of local speculators—clerks and lesser tradesmen of the decaying coastal town of Crabbe. What remained of the interior was gutted. Doors, panelling, fire-backs, fire-dogs, the chimney-piece of the main hall, an Italian plaster ceiling were sold. When Phillip bought the property the Old Manor had been standing empty for a decade.
Phillip’s billet, as he called it, was in one of the smaller rooms of the second or top floor. This room had been chosen because of a small open hearth, upon which had been heaped, when he first saw it, the remains of many seasons’ jackdaw-nests. Sticks filled the fire-place, sheep’s-wool, grasses, even paper spread out across the floor of heavy oak planking. When all this rubbish had been stuffed into the hearth, on the principle of kill or cure a match was applied one night; smoke poured out, dimming the stars. Flames in the chimney thundered. They had pails of water ready for any falling carbon crusts.
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