The Gale of the World

by Henry Williamson

  “Is that you, Elizabeth?”

  “I’m Phillip. Phillip Maddison, Aunt Dora,” he replied, still kneeling by the open letter-slit.

  “I thought you were not coming until next month, Elizabeth. I must ask you to wait until I can set down the lamp.”

  Bolts slowly withdrawn, slow rattle of chain, key squeaking. He stood up. The third family apparition he had seen that month stood beside four feet of The Times Literary Supplement piled against the wall.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Phillip, Aunt Dora. Your nephew.”

  “It is very late to call. I am just going to bed.”

  “I’m so sorry. May I call sometime during the day—any day to suit you. I have come to live on the moor, near the hut circles.”

  “Why have you come here?”

  “I must not keep you, Aunt Dora. Goodnight.”

  He drove over the high-arched bridge which spanned the river, and at once before him was the remembered hill which rose left-handed up and up through trees growing on the almost sheer sides of the glen footed by white foaming waters far below. He was making for Barbrook and the remembered narrow lane past a water mill which led to the heather common across which stood the shepherd’s cot. It was bottom-gear work, he must be careful not to over-rev the old engine. He stopped past the sharp right-hand bend to Lynton, and leaned on the stone-wall, listening to the dull roar of unseen waters.

  There was a strange, chuckling noise rising out of the glen, perhaps of multitudinous echoes from unfallen leaves among the oaks and beeches of that dark abysmal place, where Shelley had walked with Harriet Westbrook, a wife magnanimously married to save her from a harsh father—but not strong enough to save from a suicide’s death by drowning when the poet had gone off with Mary Woostonecroft to Italy—and his own death in the waters of the Gulf of Spezzia. Poor innocents all.

  That dark chuckle coming up from the Glen: he remembered the same unearthly sounds arising from the Pass of Roncesvalles during that moonlit walk with friends, years ago, from Spain into France: the year he had found Barley. The same innocent moon was shining over the high peaks of the Pyrenees—which in the following year drew upon the estuary of the Two Rivers that great tide which drowned cousin Willie, a few miles from where I am standing now. This is my land and sea of ghosts, an extension of my greater phantasmagoria of the Western Front, where only the wan light by which poets live can transcend terrible nights of fire and flare upon that livid wound across Europe’s no-man’s land which drained, then, and once again as now, all Europe.

  “It’s all too much for me alone!” he shouted to the wind. “How can I hold to the old war in one head, and the terrors of mass-man of the second war! Blood calling to blood, not for resurrection, but for revenge! And when the whole world may be destroyed, become as the moon, the tottering lady of Shelley’s prophetic imagination.”

  *

  Farther on, at the head of the glen, now a small coombe with lesser trees of willow and alder beside rock-white waters glittering with the pale fires of the crookback moon, Phillip came to the grey stone straddle of a pack bridge. In his exhausted state he missed the way, by turning left-handed over the bridge instead of to the right: to find before him a sheer stony lane, no more than an ancient sled-track, rising on naked rock to the appalling summit called Beggar’s Roost. If the engine blew up, it blew up. Slithering and slewing at full throttle, with tyres nearburning, he flogged the engine in a skidding slow crawl, sometimes crab-wise, to the summit, and over the last hump, stopped to the thundering boil of the fanless-engine. The Silver Eagle relied on speed into rush of cold air through honeycomb of radiator, to cool block bored for the six cylinders and pistons. He waited until the boiling ceased, and only then did he dare to press the starter button. Was the magneto burned out, or the platinum points of the contact-breaker? Or the spring? His heart waited. The engine fired! Onward slowly: chassis springs laid, resilience gone, steel become iron. Even steel dies, returning to ancestral crystals.

  *

  Sirius shaking rainbow fires over the black line of the moor, so he must be going south, but whither, dimly knew. Down and down, skidding on shillets, coming to another pack-bridge over one of the many brooks, or waters, breaking down from the northern slopes of the moor. Uphill once again, until he topped the rise and descended to a wider, wooded valley noisy with swift confluent streams. The stars swung round, Orion was bright before him over the roof of a grist-mill.

  Round a rising bend, and abruptly a chess-board of window lights in what appeared to be a castellated building. And driving on slowly in second gear, he came to the end of the stony track, and by the dim farmhouse on the left knew where he was. Dare he risk the springs—or engine sump—over the heather and furze of the remembered common? What if he hit a concealed rock? Why hadn’t he reconnoitred the way during his first visit? Very slowly, in bottom gear, engine little more than idling, driving on hand-throttle, feet on clutch and brake pedals ready to stop. And so, without mischief, he passed the site of a group of Bronze Age hut circles, beyond which stood the shepherd’s cot.

  And there was a pale glow upon the heather. He watched the rising of the eclipsed and fretted ruin of the moon while recalling with melancholy its shaded rim seen rising over London rooftops from Laura’s attic window—then with the shock of memory cried “Bloody fool!” at himself. For, standing beside her, he had started to tell her how he had seen the same moon when full, rising out of the Flanders plain to silhouette the Bavarians coming up in masses to attack Messines ridge on Hallowe’en, 1914. He meant to tell her how the moon had been an object of terror, of his world lost … but no longer—because he had met her: that when she came down to the shepherd’s cot it would be shining with a gentle, companion light, for both of them, warm flesh and clear spirit together. But she had broken away, crying You are dead and don’t know it while pulling open the door to run down into the street. He had followed her, walked beside her on the pavement, she unspeaking all the way back to her street door; let herself in with her key and leaving him outside.

  There was a bottle of whisky in the corner cupboard. He drank from it; and feeling better returned outside to say aloud to the moon, “Attend me, all my dear comrades of the Greater Love War!” Then to write in his note book.

  I must never allow my personal constrictions with Elizabeth to occlude the truth that she is lonely because loveless as the hunch-backed moon. Did Richard Crookback stutter? My poor moon, deprived of its full light by mother earth—withered, dead. Stutter-stumbles eternally through the sky; lifeless, childless.

  Open door casting wan shadow on lime-ash floor. He lit the cold wick of the candle in its latten stick: faithful friend. The moon gave her wasted light, rising to challenge taper. Match to dry furze sticks in open hearth. Kettle on lapping crook. Thank God I washed up plate, cup, knife, fork and spoon before I left. I must eat, a duty to keep the mind calm. Lay supper, be tidy—plate, knife, mug, spoon—I and my father, Richard Maddison—are you with me, poor father, from your glass jar of ashes and coffin nails on the chimney shelf?

  Then another shot of whisky, imagining Cousin Willie to be with him—“Your health, old boy!”

  Switch on radio.

  Late night news from the American radio in Occupied Germany, facing the Russians.

  Ten Nazi leaders, ‘not one uttering a word of regret as he went to his death on the scaffold’, hanged at Nuremberg. Scaffolds erected in gymnasium under ten fierce electric lights. Ribbentrop held his head high. Handcuffs removed, hands tied behind back. At scaffold, “State your name!” Followed American officer up steps. Feet bound. “Have you any last words to say?” In ringing voice cried, “God protect Germany!” Black hood over head. Noose adjusted Crash—bump. Rope hung tautly through open trap. Eerie sounds as rope cracking as it swung to and fro. Twenty minutes passed, then doctor pronounced death.

  Three scaffolds; one used, two held in reserve. Field-Marshal Keitel. As on parade. Shaved, washed. “I call on
the Almighty that He may have mercy on the German people. Over two million went to their death before me. I now follow my sons. All for Germany!”

  Interval for smoking. French and Russians exchanged cigarettes, Americans puffed at their own.

  Kaltenbrunner. Slow walk. Efforts made to save his life after a cranial haemorrhage were unsuccessful. Dressed all anyhow. “I have served my German people and Fatherland with willing heart. I regret crimes committed in which I had no part. Good luck, Germany”.

  Alfred Rosenberg. Followed by two padres but declined their services.

  Frick in check sporting suit, scowled at guards, yelled, “Long live eternal Germany”.

  Streicher burst through the door, and was thereafter held and forced across floor to scaffold. Roared, “Heil, Hitler!” and later, “Now to God! The Bolsheviks will get you next!”, to the guards. Then, “Adele, my loving wife!”

  Sauckel refused to dress, taken to scaffold screaming, “I pay my respects to American soldiers and officers but not to American Jews! I die innocent! God protect Germany, and my family!”

  Field-Marshal Jodl. Smart, soldier-like. “I salute you, my Germany!”

  Seyess-Inquart. Limping, tired, formal. Executioners were Woods of U.S. Army; Pierrepoint the elder, Britain’s own.

  Having made a fair copy of hastily scribbled notes, Phillip went to bed supperless, thus failing to sleep except in snatches, and lying open to the Furies. The only thing to do was to light a candle, and write.

  Herman Göring shot down Manfred Cloudesley over Mossy Face wood at Havrincourt in 1918. He saw that his enemy, who had killed nine of his Richthofen Staffel pilots, had the best surgeons and treatment in hospital. This morning Göring committed suicide. Better to have died on the cross, old Knight of the Ordre pour le Mérite.

  The same moon hung above the broken roofs of London as ‘Buster’ Cloudesley left his club in St. James’ Street and walked in the direction of Old Compton Street. There was little traffic. Petrol was still rationed; old motor cars had yet to make top prices in a sellers’ market. He had some stored in various places in the Home Counties, having bought half-a-dozen Rolls and Bentleys during the 1940–41 blitz on London, paying no more than £200 each, at their various mews and garages. Their owners’ insurance policies did not cover the risk of damage by riot, civil commotion, or war.

  “What a ‘Peace’!” he said aloud. Bananas were news. There was a half-page photograph of a bunch in The Daily Crusader. Ah, the whirligig of time! There was Wallington Christie, once of the original Peace Pledge Union, urging, in his literary-philosophical quarterly magazine The New Horizon that the Allies drop the atom bomb on Moscow!

  ‘Buster’ had read the article while flying back from Norway, and thought it was merely the swing of the pendulum in the life of a man starting out as pacifist and ending up prang-merchant. Herbert Morrison, Home Secretary, pacifist in War One and fire-eater in War Two. There was an old Tolstoyian type living on Exmoor, vegetarian conscientious objector when young, Home Guard hero in War Two (given an all-wooden dummy rifle lest he knock off one of his chums). My father, who collected five gongs in War One—including the Cross for his lone fight against the Richthofen squadron in 1918—threw them out after the Armistice, and went into reverse to a watery grave.

  ‘Buster’s’ pale moon-shadow slanted away from his moving feet, a Doppelgönger knocked askew, moving always apart from his marionette-like walk. I am encaged like the remains of Europe.

  Those emigrant Yanks letting Russia into Eastern Europe—strategical ignorance of top-brass Pentagon, following the tactical ineptitude of Eisenhower, desk major when the shooting war started. Stalin sitting pretty with most of the German scientists of the Baltic experimental station in the bag. Soon the Ruskies will have the know-how about rockets, and then—a fallen-out England carcinomatical sans all mammalian life—birdless, treeless, even flealess, surrounded by a bitter sea.

  ‘Buster’ stopped, regarding his shadow. An ever-torturing mental picture inhibited all his hopes of Laura. He saw her blue eyes bulging with sexual frustration as she got out of bed to take benzedrine pills, she coming back quietly to say Darling it doesn’t matter. I want to look after you, but will you mind if I make love to Phillip?

  She make love! He cursed her image: and moving his feet into reverse, returned to his club.

  Ah well, matriarchy was on the way. Maybe there would be foxes, birds, trees and fleas again in Old England!

  *

  In the morning Phillip walked down to Lynmouth to buy his weekly rations and collect letters marked Poste restante. He sat on a stone wall, below which the river rushed amidst great boulders.

  My Prospero!

  I must be honest with you, and myself, if I am to be good for you. Why, perhaps, I am difficult in that I am like Brunnhilde, ringed in flame; and perhaps charred within. You have read Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, and so you will know the cause of the problem of Nicole, the schizophrenic wife of Dick Diver. Well, the same cause here. Although Nicole was paternally raped at sixteen years, I was at eight. But truly, I did not pick you from a father-fix, but because I knew you were me inside. I knew it at a glance, and I hoped you would penetrate behind my Gorgon-mask.

  Darling, I hope to join you soon, when the moon, which I talk to every night as I retrace our foot-steps along the Embankment, is full. O, Dian’s heavenly light, so serene, so calm with all wisdom! I thought of you as I watched it rising, and your poor little lost-boy stutterings to me, so war-bloody-minded the other night! I hope to see you soon, for I must earn my bread and margarine, and by so doing help my dear ‘Buster’ as his part-time secretary. At the moment I am looking after a little friend, who looks like sixteen but is twenty-eight. She may, later, go to work at ‘Buster’s’ place with me. Beth married a sadist who broke her, he aborted her again and again, she wanted a child, he forced her to take a lover and she pretended to have one, while he used to whip his mistresses. Then he gave her drugs to stop her worrying but really because he wanted her to die. Her baby was started before she fled from him and it died last year when it was four. A darling little girl, and ever since my friend has been suicidal.

  Now for a secret (I know I can trust you, a prieux chevalier). This morning I stood outside a London prison where they were to hang my little friend’s husband. We both wore slacks, she with her long brushed hair hanging down her back, sobbing and wringing her hands. I wept too. When we hang others we hang ourselves.

  You would like Beth, Phillip. As I said, she may come down with me shortly, but for the time being I must remain in London. I know you will regard all I’ve written in confidence. There are many girls like Beth in London, alone and dying for want of loving kindness. She is so sweet and kind, she still grieves for her husband even after his sadistic murder of that poor prostitute whom he got to write a suicide note before he turned on the gas, after he’d given her those pills, but he left his finger-prints on the tap as you may have read in the papers.

  There’s something very wrong with our civilisation. Perhaps if we had lost the war we might have revived as Germany did under Hitler in the ’thirties. London is now a terrible jungle, the jackals are on top.

  When I first came here, after the war, I got a job with a man who said he was a photographer. I knew nothing of London. He had a studio and one day he appeared in a black brassière and things and begged me to whip him. He cried when I stopped. He grovelled! I fled, while he screamed at me to be a Christian! London is full of fairies, queens, and oddments. No, I don’t intend to put them in my books, not like that anyway. I see them through a prism, not as you do, through a glass darkly. That sort of art died in your war, it died before the big battalions began to disinherit the earth. You are really the unknown soldier, miraculously reprieved—or are you the Flying Dutchman? O I love you so, I’ll die if ever you leave me. I don’t care if you’re ninety or nineteen, you’re my sweet darling Phillip and I want to be with you in the country. I love the sea and walks,
and to live a very quiet private life, very slow tempo. Do you know I prayed, after I met you, to God to thank Him for sending you to me.

  Piers, poor boy, is in deep trouble. He is sleeping in my bed while I write this by my candle, a solitary gleam meditatively moving its light slightly one way then the other as though in unison with your presence hovering about me. No, Piers and I didn’t make love, or rather try momentarily to out-range our derangements and tensions through coitus. What a word! Snaky. Poor boy, he is broken by his wife having left him. He spoke so restrainedly to me in the Medicean, and mentioned you, and I told him of my ride on my cycle up to your farm during the phoney war and back again next day after I’d flung the food-money you gave me at you, or rather I skidded the coin, what was it, a crown, over your shiny refectory table. I went to London soon afterwards, and later, during the blitz, joined the Q.A.N.S. I loved living in a community of nurses, and men being healed after wounds and burns. Didn’t you like your war, too, because you were with the chaps?

  All my love, darling Phillip, from Laura.

  P.S. I have just heard on the wireless that they have hanged all those loyal generals and others at Nuremberg. Weep no more, my Prospero, for the sins of the world! Your staff shall never be broken, your books never sink deeper than plummet sound: never, never, never while this machine is to your Laura.