The Phoenix Generation

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The Phoenix Generation Page 32

by Henry Williamson


  “No, but I can learn. You will give me a job then? You see, I’ve already resigned from Schwarzenkoph’s.”

  Hurst was taken down to help dig chalk to spread on the potholed farm roads. Gravel was to be brought later to cover the chalk. Phillip was about to leave him working under Luke the steward, when the young man, dropping his pick, ran after him and said, ‘Just a moment, sir, I must tell you this. No doubt you’ve heard of Captain Bohun-Borsholder, one of the biggest landowners in Kent? Well, I know him. He too was a member of the I.S.P. and is now completing evidence that Birkin is deliberately sabotaging any attempt to form a real national socialist party in Great Britain, by discrediting his own party in the eyes of everyone in this country. Major Borsholder told me the reason. Birkin is in the pay of the Jews!”

  On his return Phillip said to Ernest, “Hurst is a crank.”

  “Ah,” said Ernest. He was designing an alternative to a duck’s-foot cultivator. Phillip intended to plough all the arable of the Bad Lands; to let the fields lie fallow, and when weeds—chiefly thistle and charlock—sprang up, to cut them below the furrows by cultivation, and to follow this with finer cultivations by replacing the duck’s-foot tines on the spring-loaded tine-holders with new tines shaped like spread wings of a bird. These would slice all roots and eventually the arable would be weedless. Nitrogen and sun would restore the fertility. The fields would then be rolled by a heavy Cambridge roll, and mud and rotting rushes, dug from the choked dykes on the meadows, spread with other compost from weed-heaps.

  There were nearly two hundred acres of arable. A thousand tons of compost would, he hoped, be available in one year’s time for this purpose.

  It was a 30-cwt. lorry. With chalk to be spread as well, at the rate often tons an acre (half the cost to be borne by a grant from the new Land Fertility Scheme) this job would take some time. Three thousand tons in all to be transported and spread by the steward, Brother Laurence, and Hurst.

  The hare became a tortoise, and after the day’s roadmending got on with the job of decorating one of the rooms in the Old Manor. He broke off to revert to a hare, his mind racing to write an article about the farm’s progress. He was still the hare when towards midnight he finished a script for the B.B.C. in the weekly series, English Family Maddison. Then to blind the next afternoon, after digging all the morning, to London in the Silver Eagle, and return in the small hours. The work must be done, it must be done, it must be done, cried the hare with staring eyes.

  *

  Jock Kettle was taken on as a community member. For a few days he worked with pick and shovel, loading and driving the lorry. Then he drove only, refusing to help load. His driving every hour to and from where the chalk was being laid on the roads was less than half a mile.

  One afternoon Hurst suggested that they should hold a meeting in Yarmouth.

  “Jock will help to spread the idea of the regeneration of the soil of Britain, beginning with Labour Camps for the unemployed. We can establish the first one here.”

  “Well, he might also shovel some chalk for us occasionally. What else will he say?”

  “Oh, he will know when he gets the feel of his audience.”

  They drove to the market place in Yarmouth. There Jock Kettle got hold of an empty herring barrel.

  “You’ll see how he uses it, Phil, to get a crowd.” Jock Kettle was a slim dark man with thin humorous lips. He spun the barrel in a tight circle, causing passers-by to watch. He changed to a figure-of-eight, skilfully flinging the barrel at the arcs of the figure. Then checking, he set up the barrel, climbed upon it, and opening a packet of chewing gum held it up to look at it, shook it by his ear, tossed it up and caught it in his mouth. After chewing with exaggerated face movements he pulled out a long string, and wound it back with his tongue.

  “I see some young men before me, young men of the greatest fishing port on the East coast of Old England. I see trawlers tied up in the basin, rusting away. Gulls are the mourners at the funeral of Yarmouth fishing. I see older men in threadbare coats. rotting on the dole. In my journeys about so-called Great Britain I see the same disease in all our once-great industries. We all know that East Anglian men have the hearts of lions and are the first to volunteer in a war. Are they to die upon the battlefields of Europe, to preserve the same rotten, worn-out system that enriches the few, the fat men that control this country with their millions, while we rot on their dole? And what is this dole but something to keep us quiet, and remain in virtual slavery, until war comes and you exchange your freedom to rot on the dole for another freedom to die under machine-gun fire and rot on the battlefield as your fathers did before you. While at home the old folk and the little ones burn up under bombing by aircraft at night?

  “Ah, I see some comely lasses over there! Ladies of the herring industry—what is left of it—because it does not pay the moneybag men to keep it going—they bring in cheap tinned fish, caught and processed by sweated labour, paid one third of even the miserable pittance you lasses get here in Yarmouth. Yes, ladies, you should be the mothers of bonny bairns instead of the unmarried mothers of the dead! I tell you that unless we rise up in this country, war will come, and for what reason? They will tell you it will be to preserve your homes and parents and children. Who are they? The men who control this country, who have most of the money, the Jews! They will drive the goys to the slaughter, in order to tighten their hold on world finance! Down with the Jewish commissars! The Yids! Down with the moneylenders! All history reveals the Yid to be the yeast that ferments revolution, who turns one Christian nation against another Christian nation. The Yids are orientals whose god is the Golden Calf, the graven image of the moneylender with his sixty per cent interest! God help anyone who gets in a moneylender’s clutches! Who financed the revolution against Charles the First—executed by Cromwell—where did Cromwell get the money from, to pay his soldiers? Shall I tell you? From two Yids in Holland. And what did they get for lending the money? A promise to let the Jews return to England, after being expelled by Edward the First three hundred years before. Nobody in Europe wanted the golden tapeworm of Judah in the body politic——”

  “What are you, a Communist?” shouted someone. “We don’t want your sort here!”

  “Nor do we want any Facinists!” cried another voice.

  “Well, well, well,” replied Jock Kettle. My friend over there thinks I am fascinating! Thank you, sir.”

  “One of Birkin’s lot I meant.”

  “Birkin? The Bleeder? Nay, don’t let’s spoil an honest session with mentioning the unspeakable in pursuit of the ridiculous, as Shakespeare says. Any more questions?”

  “Is that your lorry over there?” asked a policeman. “It’s after lighting-up time. May I see your licence, please?”

  “It’s my lorry. I’ve got the licence,” said Phillip.

  Particulars were taken. In due course he was fined ten shillings. By that time Kettle had returned to London. He left without notice. He wasn’t in his room in the morning. Later in the day a police van stopped by Horatio Bugg’s petrol pump. They went into his house. A desk had been forced open, a number of pound notes had been stolen. Dusting revealed no fingerprints. Bugg declared that over £79 was missing.

  “The Old Manor is a thieves’ kitchen in my way of thinking,” he remarked to all who stopped to speak to him.

  As was to be expected, Hurst’s attitude changed when he had to hand over his ill-kept account books. His manner became critical. He derided the community farm idea in the Hero—one of several pubs so-called in the district after Lord Nelson of Trafalgar. Horatio Bugg was only too eager to tell Phillip what ‘the Denchman’ had been saying. Phillip ignored the gossip. Once Hurst pointed to the words painted by Ernest in small white letters on the left side of the lorry, and in sardonic tones read them aloud slowly, in Phillip’s hearing, “P.S.T. Maddison Esquire—ha ha—Deepwater Farm, Crabbe. They say in the Hero that Phillip is bogus.”

  “My brother-in-law,” Ernest replied in his s
low distinct voice, “has held the King’s commission, and since he is also Lord of the Manor, either condition qualifies for the style of esquire.”

  “I was only joking,” said Hurst.

  *

  Soon after Brother Laurence and Felicity arrived, Ernest said he must return to Dorset, giving the excuse that he must go and pack up some things for Australia.

  “Well, come back if you have to wait for your passage,” said Phillip. “Your help will make it all the sooner for Lucy and the family to join us here.” Ernest had done some good work in what was left of the kitchen. A new sink now replaced the heavy, chipped, and cracked earthenware horror. The bathroom would have to remain as it was, and be filled by water-carrying until the pipes were either cleared or replaced.

  “I shall miss you, Ernest, my dear old fellow.”

  “Ah.”

  By its appearance that bath had been put in about the time of the Great Exhibition of 1864. The tiled floor was laid in a pattern of swans and nymphs. Every tile was bashed and cracked, presumably by the conscripts of 1916–1918. The bath itself was deep and badly chipped, too. Green water-drippings from the taps disfigured it. Its large cast-iron lion-paw supporters rested upon sheet lead which had a rolled parapet to retain splashes and lippings-over upon entry of rotund and sporting bodies—now mouldering somewhere in the churchyard.

  On returning from the railway station, Phillip went down the road to get some petrol, Felicity sat beside him. She was to take over all accounts from Hurst; and one of her new duties was to get a signature from Horatio Bugg, in the Petrol Book, for every gallon used in car and lorry.

  “You’ll probably find Bugg very curious,” he told her. “He’s like a village dog, ever on the lookout for something interesting. ‘Ah, here be somp’n, the foreigner with a young maid.’ That’s Bugg, by his pump. Notice how he throws out his chest and metaphorically cocks his leg on my near side front wheel. Squirt-squirt, his thoughts pass behind his pince-nez spectacles.”

  True to form, Horatio Bugg peered at Felicity, then he asked, “Are you an actress?”, as he unhooked the hose-pipe.

  “Yes.”

  “Where do you act?” as he inserted the nozzle in the filling column of the tank.

  “Oh everywhere.”

  “Then why don’t I know your face?” as he worked the rotary pump.

  “I usually wear a wig on stage.”

  “Ah, Shakespeare I suppose?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “‘Tom Fool knows more than Tom Fool tells,’ isn’t that what they say?”

  “Do they?”

  “I could tell a tale or two, you know, if I wanted to open my mouth.”

  “Now will you sign my petrol book, please, Mr. Bugg?”

  “Ah ha, now I know you’re the new secretary, I guessed as much when I saw you. I hope we’ll be good friends and neighbours.”

  Not long afterwards Horatio Bugg made a formal call.

  “Here is our friend from the village,” remarked Brother Laurence, standing by the caravan door one morning.

  The caravan rested among the pine trees growing above the chalk quarry. Below were the premises. Jackdaws were nesting in old rabbit-holes in the top subsoil above the chalk and flint layers.

  Phillip and Felicity sat inside the caravan. He was reading the typescript of an article. She writing in the farm diary.

  “Mr. Bugg is a fly,” said Phillip, reading on. But he could not connect with the words. He waited for the visitant to arrive. He tried not to feel aversion to the weak face, badly shaven, pince-nez spectacles, shapeless cloth cap with greasy band, dirty white rag around neck which failed to conceal a goitre.

  “Hullo. Thought I’d come to see how you’re gettin’ along.” Without waiting for an invitation Horatio Bugg climbed in and sat down.

  “You bought that lorry too dear, did you know that?” He paused to fill his pipe with thin hair tobacco. “Those diddecais are out to do anyone. We don’t like them around here, you know.” He took matches from his pocket. “Or Denchmen, for that matter.”

  “Captain Maddison is rather busy at the moment,” said Brother Laurence.

  “Busy, I can see he’s busy,” replied the intruder, lighting his pipe. “Don’t let me interrupt you,” he said to Phillip. “I’m always ready to do anyone who’s stowed up a good turn.”

  Phillip had written his article beside a dead pine tree while Brother Laurence had been getting breakfast. It was a description of a tree-creeper which had made its nest in a branch split by lightning.

  He folded the article and gave it to Felicity. She put it in a foolscap envelope and was addressing it to the literary editor of the Crusader when the visitor spoke again.

  “They say you are going to turn the Old Manor into a Roman Catholic community or somep’n. Is that right?”

  “We’re roadmenders at the moment.”

  “Well, I know that, I’ve got eyes in my head. I hear most of what’s going on in the district down by my yard, you know.”

  He puffed contentedly. “There’s a rich lady living in the village, a titled person, and she came to ask me what you were going to do here, and how it would affect the wild birds she likes watching. You may have heard of her, Lady Penelope Carnoy. She prefers it all wild, you know, like the other birdwatchers who come here to study on the marshes and roundabout.”

  Every suck at his pipe now made an uneasy bubbling noise. “As I was saying, now your lorry is broken—what, didn’t you know? Mr. Hearse come to me to get him a second-hand gearbox saying the old one gave out.”

  “Damn that fellow,” said Phillip, “I told him not to tip off any more chalk that way.”

  “So I thought you might like to buy my motorcar to carry on with. It’s in perfect condition except for a dud battery and four flat tyres. These can easily be replaced by second-hand ones. It’s a Chevrolet and used to belong to the Ranee of Sarawak, who came here to stay with Lady Penelope to study wild birds.”

  When there was no reply Horatio Bugg turned an ear, augmented by a hand, listened awhile, then exclaimed, “I can’t quite hear you, I’m a bit deaf.”

  “I must go to the post,” shouted Phillip, waving the envelope.

  “No need to shout, I’m not that deaf.”

  Horatio Bugg seemed to have trouble with his pipe. The split bowl was enwrapped with adhesive rubber tape. He stopped sucking to say, “I suppose you know all about that Invisible Ray working on this coast to stop German aeroplanes coming over to spy out the land? It stops the magnetos of all motorcar engines, too, did you know that?”

  “Is that why your car won’t move?”

  “I told you it needs a new battery, that’s all.” Horatio Bugg sucked hard. No smoke issued from between his lips. “I suppose you can’t lend me a pipe cleaner, can you? No. Well, I can sometimes clear it by blowing.” He blew hard, and a shower of sparks dropped out. “What did I tell you? That’s cleared it.”

  “Mind you don’t set fire to the caravan, it isn’t insured.”

  “Not insured? I can arrange a policy for you. I’m an agent, as I told you when you set fire to your chimbly.”

  “Well, we must be off,” said Brother Laurence.

  “Where are you going, anywhere in particular? If not, I’ll come with you. I’ve got nothing to do at the moment. Is that the German eagle on the radiator?”

  “Brummagem.”

  “Hey?” said the other, cupping an ear. “Speak up, if you don’t mind. Just a minute,” as he struck a match to try to relight the gurgling compost of ash, wet threads, and nicotine poison left in his pipe.

  “I said ‘Brummagem’!”

  “Well, that’s hardly polite, is it?” He turned to Felicity, “And in a lady’s presenqe. I suppose you help him as secretary, don’t you?”

  “That’s right. I’m the dogsbody.”

  “You found a dog’s body?”

  “Yes.”

  Horatio Bugg began to ask more questions when he saw the two men goin
g towards the “German” motorcar.

  “Is that monk with you a well-known order, or what?”

  “He’s a Laurentian friar, devoted to poverty.”

  “Poverty, eh? Well, he’s come to the right place. Where did he come from?”

  “From God.”

  “Oh, so you’re religious, I see.”

  “That’s right.”

  Phillip was removing the green canvas covering the sports car standing under a pine tree. He took his usual care to get the canvas straight on the ground before walking round to fold it precisely section by section. It had belonged to his uncle Hiliary, who had sold it to him with the caravan before going to live abroad with his wife.

  Horatio Bugg watched the ritual of folding as he stood by the splintered stump of the dead pine, tapping out his pipe. The tree-creeper’s nest was in a crack in the wood. Phillip saw with concern that the mother bird had flitted off her eggs.

  The heavy cloth, impregnated with preserving chemical, took some time to be folded. It was half-done when Horatio Bugg, seeming to come out of a trance of tobacco juice, went forward and said, “Let me give you a hand.”

  “That’s very good of you.”

  When the cloth was folded Phillip started the engine on the handle. He ran the engine to warm up the oil, and then got in to wait for Brother Laurence, who had returned to the caravan with the 2-gallon galvanised water can. There was about a quart left in the can, and the friar returned to empty it into the kettle.

  “That’s a rum’n,” said Horatio Bugg. “You save even water.”

  With Felicity beside him and Brother Laurence in the tonneau, Phillip drove slowly in reverse over the hump at the edge of the wood. Buried under the turf lay the remains of an old wall which, he had been told by Lady Breckland, was the remains of a Roman fort or look-out against Viking invaders. Lady Breckland had recently called to ask him to join the Imperial Socialist Party. Phillip had demurred at first, then had agreed out of politeness. He had demurred because he was overworked and at times his mind was near distress at the thought of all the work that had to be done. Now Hurst had broken the lorry and road-making would be held up, he thought as he drove slowly over acid-thin grass to the top drift which led to the road a quarter of a mile away.

 

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