The Phoenix Generation

by Henry Williamson

  When the deserts of the world were all irrigated, to grow fine crops as in California, where would the eremite, the hermit, go?

  Tom Cundall, his old schoolfellow, who had recently died of t.b. following war-time exhaustion as a Camel pilot in the R.F.C once wrote, The world is too far gone for saints. Would the last saint become a militant saint, and go down into history as a bloody-minded tyrant?

  Should he write to Brother Laurence, and ask him down for the week-end?

  *

  “Well, to be frank I don’t particularly want to hear what Birkin has to say,” said Penelope briskly. “Daddy says he is a wild man.” She went on, “I saw some duck on your meadows this afternoon. That may mean hard weather coming. I fancy some were eider. They come down from the North, don’t they? And there was an all-black little fellow with a wispy black crest. I’ve been trying to identify him.” Volumes of Gould and Thorburn lay on the table. “It was too small for tufted duck, or scoter. And as I said, completely black.”

  “Could it be a smew?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, Phillip.”

  “I thought I saw a marsh harrier on the end meadow, Penelope.”

  “Yes, I heard one comes there. That frightful man at Bly collects rare birds, you know. Beast. Mrs. Treasure tells me that he paid that wretched poacher at the inn at Durston four pounds for a pair of quails under your Bustard Wood last summer.”

  “He puts down currants with bamboo splinters in them, to choke them.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Jakes, who wants the rabbits.”

  “Don’t you let him have them. He’s a poacher, too.”

  “So I’m told. But Conger, at Durston, is honest.”

  Mrs. Treasure came in with tea. “Help yourself, Phillip. I must identify that black duck.” She took up a heavy volume.

  “No, I don’t think it could have been a smew,” she said, after some minutes’ search. “Is Lucy going on Sunday?”

  “Yes, she wants to hear Birkin. She asked me to say that she’s got a ticket for you, if you want to come.”

  “That’s another matter, of course. Before, I did not think it right for you to be seen with me.”

  During tea the telephone rang. “If it’s Daddy, please don’t speak. He’s rather concerned about any men in this house. No need to go—Oh, you know where the throne is, don’t you?”

  Phillip, having made this excuse, came back some minutes later.

  “Daddy wanted to be reassured that I had not bought that land,” she said. “Apparently he saw an article of yours, about land being the cheapest for a hundred and fifty years. He was anxious, lest I should have seen it. He asked to be remembered to you.”

  “Thank you. I thought he was charming.”

  Penelope was gay, she looked so young. “Daddy runs a bank, among other things. People calling to see him throughout every day, at precisely fifteen-minute intervals. He has no other life, poor darling. Well, Phillip, give Lucy my love, and thank her for asking me for next Sunday. I simply can’t stand the cold in an open car—Ninian sold my saloon as soon as we were married, and bought one of those huge Bentleys, and I’ve never been properly warm since. So tell Lucy I’ll take my car, and if she cares to come with me, it would be fun. Goodbye, and don’t work too hard.”

  Phillip had three tickets to spare, so he telephoned several acquaintances, but all refused. Finally he asked Matt and Luke if they would like to come. They demurred.

  “Birkin isn’t the devil, you know, and there are points of view other than that of the Daily Herald.”

  “I know that, master,” said Matt. “But I got to be up five a’-clark tomorrow to feed me calves. I ken take two more good’ns when you go to market. Cherry’s got a good bag yet.”

  “How about you, Luke?”

  The steward made no excuse like his father but said simply, “I dursen’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s what they’d say down to Yard”—otherwise by the petrol pump owned by Horatio Lord Bugg, as the dealer was now called among the family.

  “I’ve half a mind to ask Horatio.”

  “Tes the night we do football pools,” explained Matt. “Horatio comes to ours.”

  “What, on Sunday? Gambling? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Matt.”

  “Now look-a you a-here, Master——” began Matt seriously,

  but Phillip cut him short by hugging him and saying, “I’m only joking, you know that. Enjoy your little Sunday flutter, Matt.”

  “—there be a God above, and there be a Devil here below,” said Matt, not to be put off. “An’ I don’t see no more wrong in football on Sundays, than in going to church or chapel,” and he gave Phillip a full look of his dark Brythonic eyes.

  *

  Lucy said she would invite Felicity and her father down to spend a few days with them, and telephoned to their cottage on the coast near Chelmsford. The next day they motored up in the Toad. Felicity said she would be quite happy to look after the children.

  Early on the Sunday evening the four set out, Lucy beside Penelope within her cream saloon car; Phillip driving with Brother Laurence, both enjoying the feeling of an open cockpit with the stars overhead, well-wrapped in leather coats, goggles and flying helmets. The windscreen was flat, for the night was frosty.

  In the dim light of stars in a black sky they passed the aerodrome with its hangars housing the new dark green Blenheim bombers, its windows of the officers’ mess and men’s quarters lighted up. Through huddling villages, the headlights illuminating flint and brick walls; past fields of plough and stubble and great heaps of whitish-yellow sugar-beet beside the road: a winding road, rising and falling in gentle undulation until the straight with the woods and coverts of Sandringham, and so to the long carr-stone wall enclosing Breckland Park. Turning right-handed they entered the main road to the town, and were upon the straight and fast stretch leading away through trees to a hill-crest whence could be seen the lights of Fenton spread out below. Phillip had been there once or twice by daylight; the place gave a feeling of having been partly submerged in the floods, and then left to dry again, but with the damp and water-marks remaining. Like many another little port on that coast, it had a feeling of failure about it, despite its rows of modern houses and sporadic new industries run, he had heard, on overdrafts. As for agriculture, seventeen million pounds were owed by the farmers of the county to the banks.

  *

  The Corn Hall stood back from the Square. Motorcars were parked irregularly before it. The Hall shared the obsolescent look of the town: too big for the shrunken modern harvests. Two or three dozen policemen stood near a gathering of about a hundred people waiting outside, hands in pockets and collars of shabby overcoats turned up.

  The two men waited for Penelope’s car, and went into the hall with the two women. More people than Phillip had anticipated were sitting on benches and chairs. He felt exhilarated. There was a feeling of life, of excitement in the air. As they walked to the reserved seats in front he got the impression of many mixed stocks or races in the audience; round-faced Dutch, dark long-headed Huguenot, ruddy big-faced Dane, small-sized Saxon with fair hair, fair-haired Scandinavian, square-headed Teuton, thin-necked Celt, small round-headed, black-haired ancient Briton. Interbreeding during the centuries since the Nordic invasions, augmented by immigration of continental fugitives had cast clear a minority of racial types, while diminishing the hybrid majority, like the smaller grains of tail-corn which came through the sieves during threshing. Here and there sat a man or youth with more assured glance; the head corn.

  “I think you’ll be surprised by what you hear,” he said, with happy confidence, to Penelope.

  She did not reply, but wrapped her chinchilla coat about her. Phillip had brought a rug to tuck round the feet of the two women. “Don’t you feel something in the air, Penelope?”

  “Only the cold so far,” she replied, with a faint smile.

  “You wait till Birkin speaks.”r />
  “Oh, I’ve heard a lot about him.”

  “What the newspapers say about Birkin is entirely misrepresenting.”

  “I seldom read newspapers.”

  Lucy smiled at Phillip. “I’m quite excited,” she whispered.

  The clock on the wall of the Corn Hall pointed to ten minutes to eight. Stewards with armlets of red, white, and blue were moving up and down the aisles, selling pamphlets and party newspapers.

  “I’ll be back in a moment,” said Phillip as he got up, having seen ‘Boy’ Runnymeade in the front row. “Come with me, mon père.”

  “Hullo, Maddison. I thought I’d see you here,” said Captain Runnymeade in his drawling, slightly thick voice.

  “I’m glad you could come.”

  “Who’s the blonde beside your wife?”

  “Lady Penelope Carnoy, a friend of Lucy’s.”

  “Bring her over to the cottage one day and we’ll have a party. Is she one of Birkin’s lot?”

  “No. She is only really interested in wild birds.” Seeing Runnymeade’s eyebrows lift he said, “Have you met Birkin?”

  “I knew his father in the regiment. He was a bit of a waster, so I’m not surprised that his son is a bit of a bolshy.”

  “May I introduce Brother Laurence.”

  “How d’you do. Sit down a moment, and tell Stefania all about your boy friend, Maddison, while I talk to Brother Laurence.”

  Phillip remembered Stefania Rozwitz at the Castle, ballerina assoluta with the Russian dancers. Now she was choreographer and producer with a London team. She had changed. Her voice had a gruffness about it. Her once-dark hair was brass-coloured, drawn back over her brow and held by a kerchief. He supposed her to be about forty-five. Slight dark hairs sprouted on her upper lip and chin. She looked strong, compact, and vital in a confused sort of way. He felt on the defensive in her presence.

  “So you are now an admirer of Fascism are you, ‘Farm Boy’?”

  “I’m for Birkin and a Greater Britain.”

  “And you?” Runnymeade said to Brother Laurence.

  “I’m here as an observer, Captain Runnymeade.”

  Phillip moved away to talk to Lady Breckland, who introduced him to a woman wearing the same sort of grey silk blouse under her coat, with the small silver badge of the party in the lapel. She bore a name which had ruled the East Anglian farming world, by prestige of two great ancestors, since the land-reclaiming days of the eighteenth century.

  “Mrs. Cheffe has just started a school for young children,” said Lady Breckland.

  “You must come over and see my school, Mr. Maddison. Do introduce me to your wife, won’t you?”

  When the two ladies had gone and the four were seated once again Penelope said to Lucy, “Mrs. Cheffe’s husband is selling off some of his land. I do so want to buy ten acres of it, but Daddy won’t let me. He says that land is the worst investment. I was telling Lucy, Brother Laurence, about a house I want to build. My father is the solid banker, and never speculates. Phillip, when is your man coming? It’s ten minutes past eight. Is there a committee? I don’t see any chairs up there.”

  The platform was empty but for a table with a glass and jug of water. Against the wall behind was draped a large Union Jack rising almost to the roof. Without warning the tall figure with a slight limp walked out of the door beside the platform. Immediately the floor of the hall seemed to rise with many people on their feet, waving arms in salute, and cheering. Phillip turned round to watch them. Their faces were alight with happiness. Birkin climbed on the platform, smiling and acknowledging their cheers. He stood quite still in front of the table, thrusting out his chin, and breathing deep, as though to take the feeling of the people. Then under the cheers and the clapping there was a growing roar, hard and deep, and at this Birkin drew himself up and, with one hand clasping the back of the other before him, stiffened to immobility. His face was set, looking to the back of the hall.

  Meanwhile other heads were turning round, towards the massed booing. Stewards began to move slowly down the aisles. At length the noise died down, and Birkin shifted slightly to begin his speech. “Fellow Britons——” he cried, when someone yelled from the middle of the hall, “Smash his head, make a proper job of it this time, the enemy of the proletariat!” and the booing began once more.

  Pointing an arm towards the din, and standing erect, Birkin said, “The people come here to listen to me, and not to you. You can ask any questions you like after the speech, but you will keep quiet while I am speaking, or you will go out.”

  The outcry started up again, a voice roaring, “We’ve as much right to free speech as you have, you bleeder!”

  Raising his arm again, Birkin said quietly, “Put them out.”

  The stewards, most of them small men, ran down the hall, one muttering as he passed, “You’re telling us, guv’nor.” Then began a new noise, which was at first puzzling. It was a continuous clattering, as though hundreds of muffled fire-crackers were exploding. Still never having moved from his position on the platform, Birkin said in an easy voice, “All right, keep your seats. This happens every time, though it is very rnild tonight. You have an opportunity of seeing how badly we behave, according to the papers.”

  There was a wave of relieving laughter. The clattering in the middle of the hall continued. Then two stewards passed up the gangway, dragging another steward by his armpits, his head down and covered with blood. The toes of his shoes were scraping on the floor. He had been knocked unconscious by a chair.

  The clattering noises were made by chairs used as weapons against the stewards. Gradually the noise grew less. Phillip heard the sound of large double doors being unbarred and unbolted. There was a noise of scuffling, then oaths and shouts, with banging and kicking on the door from outside. People began to clap and cheer. The statuesque figure had looked straight to the back of the hall while the injured steward had been dragged to the room behind the platform. Phillip saw the white-banded caps of St. John Ambulance men.

  The speaker began by saying quietly that the Government elected by the people must have the power to rule. That was denied them at present, because Parliament did not rule. The Money Power behind Parliament ruled. What did the Imperial Socialist Party intend to do when it came to power by the will of the people? The first thing it would do would be to pass an emergency measure to prohibit capital going abroad. Then all foreign holdings, gradually would be realized, and the money brought back in sterling, to Britain. This would be done gradually in accord with the rise of new productivity at home. Gradually Britain would withdraw from World Trade—which meant International Finance—and have a ring fence of sterling around Britain and Empire. Every raw material needed for modern industrial civilisation was lying in the Empire. These raw materials would be brought to Britain, to be returned as manufactured goods. Thus Britain would have no price-cutting competition to drag down the living standards of the people. The genius of the people, the work capacity of the people would create the new wealth by which to acquire the raw materials to be returned as manufactured goods to the peoples of the Empire.

  But what was stopping them doing it? International finance, which exploited where it saw the biggest profit. Britons were enslaved. For a thousand years unconquered by any foe without, they had been subdued by the foe within.

  For an hour and a half most of that audience of between two and three thousand people believed that it was possible to create a modern Britain which would have fine new roads and rebuilt villages, with water, light, and drainage; towns with a population partly educated in the countryside when young and believing that the work they did afterwards was truly and directly for their country. Everyone would work, great reward would come only to great talent, and privilege would end. They saw fine housing estates and no more building speculation, they saw their children glowing with health and vitality, their young people natural in sexual impulses, without furtiveness or the corruption of shame and repression. They saw ships going to the col
onies with motor-cars, tractors, machinery, and other fine English things, passing ships bringing grain and fruits and raw materials from the finest Empire on earth. Those ships passed other ships, flying other flags, and saluted them in friendship; for the financial interests that directed them were not international, but nationally controlled and therefore did not clash, but existed side by side in harmony. No more consumption crises, factories idle and men out of work because there was too much for people to buy, and therefore no more work, and therefore no money to buy the too-much. No more trade-wars between rival industrial groups called nations!

  The only rivalry would be that of the works of peace, for art would truly serve the peoples of the earth, each with its authentic national inspiration, and therefore of a natural truth and beauty. All this was possible, if only people believed it possible, and set themselves in the resurgent modern spirit to make it real.

  Birkin ended in a frenzy of appeal, calling on them to believe that what their fathers had died for in Europe a generation before was not only possible, but indeed inevitable if only they would themselves move out of the twilight of an obsolescent economic system into the sun and the truth of national resurgence. For while they hesitated, divided among themselves, the more they would continue to be subdued by forces which, in the end, would bring about their ruin, and the loss of that Empire for which their forefathers had striven in the glory and faith of Britain everlasting.

  The passionate power of the speaker brought many to their feet, singing the National Anthem with fervour. When it was over Birkin went to inquire after the injured steward, who was a shop-assistant at thirty shillings a week.

  As they went out of the hall, Phillip heard someone say to Captain Runnymeade, “Same old speech!” while Runnymeade replied, in his thick and slightly mocking voice, “I’ve heard some balderdash uttered in my time, but never such demagogic rot in all my life. I came to look at him because I knew his father, but——” and then people came between him and the back of Runnymeade’s check coat.