A Solitary War Page 20

  How strange the light in her eyes. She was letting him see her unguarded soul: the mouth now so gentle, the blue eyes so tender. Then she had turned away her face, and resumed her attitude of dejection.

  “Have a nip of whisky, Laura! Be a sport. It’s food.”

  “Food!”

  “When I was your age I used to feel as you do now over a girl called Helena. It was a terrible and unreal feeling consuming my life—a Venus-fixation. I think if my parents had been able to be in harmony, and my father given me ‘animal warmth’, I should never have suffered from that possibly psychotic fixation upon the face of a girl that I hardly knew. Do you understand?”

  “My father interfered with me, that’s why I had to sleep with my grandmother.”

  So that was it. This girl with ‘the enlarged and numerous senses of the ancient poets’, would die in her season without sexual love. Words alone would never open up the acid peat-bog of her entombment. The French said, ‘Drive a nail out of your heart with another nail. She needed sexual love to drive out the fixation of vampiric lust …

  And yet—was it only that? He thought of his early trembling start in a new consciousness, of the near-overwhelming ecstasy and loneliness of those early days of 1919 when he had cut himself off from his ‘family’ in the Regiment. Had he not rejected all Service life and duty after the war: avoiding all parades, remaining in his cubicle until sent for by the Adjutant. The Colonel had understood: he had recognised one who was suffering from the degeneration of courage, after five times out of hospital and five major infantry battles on the Western Front. And so to demobilisation: and a grey, lonely, unknown world of Civvy Street.

  Wild eccentric action to no purpose: idiotic practical joking, satire and withdrawal to conceal the inner tremulous voice whispering a mission as from the spiritual world of the dead. Could he have responded to someone telling him in those days what he was telling her now? Did he, too, not dream of love? Agonisingly? And the only release was in sublimation—his writings. And here was this wingless turtle dove seeking plumage and likeness of flight in—a phoenix.

  *

  The circular flame of the oil-lamp by which the old retriever bitch had curled herself was sinking. The animal looked with bleared and hopeless eyes towards the leather chair, then uttering a groan of defeatism it worked a bony spine into a tighter circle and prepared to suffer perpetually the draught moving over the rush mats of the floor.

  “Why are you with these painted women?”

  “Oh, come, Laura! Surely you know that most working girls nowadays buy lipstick in Woolworths. These people are ordinary people. There’s no need to be afraid of them.”

  He remembered how, when first a private soldier, officers had seemed to be supra-human personages out of another world; as indeed they had been to the timid and self-encysted youth. And suddenly he felt as though all his blood had been drawn out of his body. She was not a laurel, she was a blackthorn from which blossom could not break.

  “Well, supper won’t be long. Rest here. I must do some writing now. I always write now, so please excuse me.”

  He went back to his cottage where he returned the silver bootlegger flask of whisky to its museum but could do no writing. He felt petrofact—this was no Laura, this was Medusa.

  *

  Teddy entering from out the darkness said, “It was simply marvellous to-night, Phillip! I got two teal, three mallard, and a black duck with white on it. I don’t know what it is. Well, how have you been getting on? Done any more writing? That girl is still sitting in the chair.”

  “I suppose I should never have answered her letter.”

  “You know what they say, don’t you, ‘Never put pen to paper’. In my case, though, I ought to have seen that my lousy partner did. Come down to The Hero and have a drink.”

  While they were in the pub ‘Pinwheel’ came in. This nickname, Phillip thought, suited him, whatever a pinwheel was. He put an arm round the young man’s shoulder.

  “What is a pinwheel, Teddy? I mean, apart from our dearly beloved improver here?”

  “I can tell you,” said Teddy. “It flies round rapidly when certain cogs of a clock start turning to strike the hours.”

  “Something certainly seems to be flying round rapidly at the moment.”

  “I say, sir,” said ‘Pinwheel’, “if I may say so, we have a remarkable addition to what the village calls ‘the convalescent home’. And she’s not bad looking, in fact she could, if she took the trouble, be a remarkably good-looker.”

  “She only wants one thing doing to her,” said Teddy. “Now’s your chance, ‘Pinwheel. I’d try her myself, but I doubt if I’ve got a shot in the locker. We mustn’t be late. ‘Yipps’ has prepared her spécialité de la maison‚ roast duck and orange salad. Don’t hurry, Phillip. I can’t drink beer, unfortunately. It would save me a bit if I could.”

  *

  Penelope arrived for dinner without her dogs. Billy was dressed in his best school suit, a little short in leg and arm. His hair was slick with water. He had borrowed a tie from ‘Pinwheel’. Mrs. Carfax had changed her usual hacking coat and jodhpurs for a jacket and skirt of light-weight tweed. She looked cold. Penelope wore the same sort of clothes. Teddy had on a sand-coloured tweed suit. Phillip wore corduroy trousers with a thick jersey.

  While they continued to stand there the soup was brought in. Seeing this, the yellow retriever got into a begging position, holding up her paws and looking hopefully not at the table but at the leather chair still occupied by the visitant. As nothing happened, the bitch dropped on four legs while looking in some dismay at her mistress.

  “Do come and join us, won’t you?” said ‘Yipps’, to the girl in the chair, as she flashed a party smile.

  “You don’t really want me.”

  “Considering I have just invited you, your response seems to me to be a little odd. There is a place laid for you.”

  “Come on, poet, sit beside me,” said Phillip.

  The visitant did not move.

  “Lady Penelope, will you sit there?” said Mrs. Carfax.

  Phillip knew that Penelope would be in the draught from what Teddy called his private staircase if she sat at the head of the table, despite the battery of electric reflectors slowly cracking the near square leg of the dark brown, straight-grained oak refectory table. Also, the head of the table was his place.

  “If Penelope sits at the middle of the table I rather fancy it will be warmer there, ‘Yipps’.”

  As though she had not heard this Penelope went to the head of the table and sat down.

  “Teddy, will you sit next to Lady Penelope? ‘Pinwheel’, would you like to sit next to me?”

  “I’d be delighted,” exclaimed ‘Pinwheel’, revolving swiftly.

  “Billy, come on my other hand, will you? I have left the two places in the middle for the genii, if they can bring themselves to sit with such ordinary mortals as ourselves.”

  At this Phillip, who always felt a fuller man after some liquor, began to laugh, as he stood in the middle of the room.

  “Come on, Laura,” he said. “Give me some support. Everyone feels a bit lost inside themselves until the nervous batteries are recharged by food.”

  “Have some soup, it’s just the thing, turkey broth,” said ‘Yipps’, coming to his rescue with another flashed smile.

  “Food!” cried the girl. “Oh!”

  “You may be a genii like Phillip, but even so, you can’t do without food, you know. Come on, be a sensible person and sit up.”

  ‘Yipps’ took her a bowl of soup. The girl remained slumped in the chair. The retriever, chin on chair-arm, looked hopefully at the bowl, then with ruined eyes at her mistress.

  “All right, Deirdre, you shall have yours at the proper time. It’s all so very upsetting, isn’t it, darling?” The bitch gave a little whinney.

  Meanwhile Phillip, still standing, was finishing his plate of soup. Maude and May came in to clear. They reappeared with the dish of duck, a b
owl of orange salad, another of chip potatoes, and brussels sprouts.

  Mrs. Carfax was determined not to be beaten.

  “I say,” she cried. “Won’t you really try some duck? Come on, my dear girl, we’re all friends here. There’s a war on, upsetting all our lives, but let’s try and forget it, shall we?”

  “Have some whisky, I say,” exclaimed Teddy. “You are thoroughly frozen after your long cycle ride up, that’s all the matter with you. How many miles was it? Forty? A drink will put new heart into you.”

  “I heard that a crested lark was seen on your meadows,” said Penelope, turning to Phillip and speaking with sudden brightness. “They are rather rare, I believe. Has anyone here by any chance seen it?”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t,” replied Phillip, “I rarely see any birds nowadays.”

  At this, ‘Pinwheel’ stared up at the ceiling.

  “Please come and sit beside me, Laura,” said Phillip, turning round on the form. “Come on, Laura Wissilcraft! What a marvellous name. I see a hut in a wood at night, a poacher, and hear pheasants’ wings whistling away.”

  ‘Pinwheel’ and Billy began to talk about calves, comparing the merits of Friesians with Redpolls. Halfway through the meal the girl jumped up and cried out wildly, “I suppose you think that a poacher should be out there, in the kitchen?” and subsided.

  “Considering that you have been asked innumerable times to sit here with us I think that remark to be inappropriate,” said Mrs. Carfax. “And ‘Little Ray’s’ reference to poaching is beyond me.”

  “Esoteric,” suggested ‘Pinwheel’. “Am I right, sir?” to Phillip.

  “Right for a pinwheel.”

  “Have some port, Laura,” suggested ‘Pinwheel’, turning round. “Warm your inside.”

  Phillip had opened and decanted the last bottle of Cockburn ’74. It might as well be swallowed now as at any other time. There had been a keg of port in the granary, as well as the bottles; two gallons of wine maturing in the wood. That, too, had been laid down for Peter’s twenty-first birthday: but while the bottles had been lying on their sides on the brick floor, the keg had been locked in the cupboard below the gun racks behind glass fronts. When he had picked the keg up he had staggered backwards. The keg had seemed to fly out of the cupboard, it was so light. It was empty, yet with no sign of the bung being drawn. Not a drop inside it. The entire two gallons appeared to have evaporated. Also a bottle of whisky, kept for very cold evenings after late ploughings, had vanished. Had some scrounging soldiers from the Searchlight Camp on Pewitts’ got into the workshop? It certainly had nothing to do with Teddy. Quite apart from that, the decanter of port should have stood on a sideboard, or at the head of the table, ready to be coasted clockwise. Phillip dreaded lest ‘Pinwheel’ seize it and pour out a glass. And yet—what did it matter?

  Apfelstrudel and mince pies followed duck. Coffee. Surely Laura would have a mince pie and coffee? But she remained still and silent.

  *

  So far during dinner Penelope had spoken to Phillip hardly at all, and then only in a voice of conventional politeness. After dinner, in a desperate attempt to bring some sort of unity of thought or feeling in the room, he played on the gramophone a record of Kirsten. Flagstad as Brunhilde singing farewell before Siegfried’s funeral pyre. The music appeared to affect the visitant, for her face was hidden in her hands.

  When it was ended he said, “Please listen to something of the same spirit as the music,” and put on a record of Birkin speaking quietly. To Phillip it was so brave, so clear, so revealing, that surely all present must be moved by the words.

  We count it a privilege to live in an age when England demands that great things shall be done, a privilege to be of the generation which learns to say what can we give instead of what can we take. For thus our generation learns there are greater things than slothful ease; greater things than safety; more terrible things than death.

  “Claptrap,” said Mrs. Carfax.

  Our aim is nothing less than a revolution in the spirit of our people. The proud words ‘I serve’ shall live again.

  He lifted off the needle-arm.

  “I haven’t met him,” said Teddy. “What is he like, Penelope?”

  After a pause she said, “I didn’t really notice. Well, I must go now. Thank you, Mrs. Carfax, for a most interesting evening.”

  “But, Penelope,” said Phillip, “didn’t you like him when he spoke to us, you remember, afterwards, at Lady Brecklands’?” He lowered the needle-arm.

  We have lit a flame that the ages shall not quench. Guard that sacred flame, my fellow countrymen, until it illumines Britain, and lights again the pathway of mankind.

  Billy stood by the open door. Phillip said he would see Penelope to her home. They went down the moonlit street in silence. At her gate he asked if he might speak with her for a short while.

  “By all means,” she replied. “On the understanding that neither politics nor the guests in your house are discussed.”

  They went upstairs to the blue room. Mrs. Treasure was there, to tuck the rug round her mistress on the couch by the fire.

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Treasure. I shall not be long, if you will feed the dogs for me.”

  At these words the borgois left with alacrity, and the door was softly shut behind the housekeeper.

  “May I first clear up a possible misunderstanding, Penelope? That is, I have no guests in my house.”

  “Are they not your guests?”

  “Laura Wissilcraft is, I suppose.”

  “I am afraid I do not see any possible misunderstanding, Phillip. On the contrary, to me, and to others, the situation is only too clear. Do you mind if I speak frankly to you?”

  “Please do.”

  Penelope said that she had known him for a little more than three years, and had listened to him often during that time. She had sympathised, and believed that circumstances were against him, and not Phillip against circumstances.

  “I have worried for you, always believing that in the right environment you would be happy in your work, and so help to create happiness in others around you. I considered you were associated with muddlers and incompetents. In your political activities I thought you were merely eccentric, but I don’t want to say anything about that, although it has a bearing on it—the self-will that must always have its own way, and would embroil others in its own aura, while resenting the consequent embroiling. I hope that doesn’t sound too confusing.”

  “It’s what I’ve often thought myself.”

  “Well,” went on Penelope with an attempt at cheerfulness. “May I make a suggestion? You have often given me your confidence, and I have respected it; and I’ve done my best, not to advise you, but to reassure you in what you feel you must do. I’ve watched and spoken to those who know you well and who, despite everything, wanted to help you, but for various reasons found it impossible—Ernest Copleston, your brother-in-law, brother Laurence and Felicity, Lucy the mother of your children, and now Captain Pinnegar and Mrs. Carfax. Who is to be the next, your friend Mr. Neville? At least I will waste no sympathy on him, for I have seldom disliked anyone more. Do help yourself to a drink, won’t you?”

  Penelope’s voice was now brisk. “As I see it, this is your final chance to pull yourself up. I’ve seen what happens to people who allow fixed ideas to dominate their lives. It usually ends in their own ruin, and in unhappiness for those whose lives are involved with them. Particularly if they are brilliant people. I myself have suffered from it, and watched the wretchedness of others involved in it, too, so I know what I’m talking about.”

  Phillip was thinking of Richard Jefferies. And his letter to Penelope, which she said she had burned, containing the phrase, Of course he had an awful life—then, one word, which Penelope said was syphilis. What had he written—if only he could think back to the act of writing that letter to her—

  “Now, as I see it, the principle of a harmonious life is based on give and take,” continued P
enelope, briskly. “These two you have brought down here are fundamentally decent people. I like them, I approve of them. I don’t like giving advice, but you asked me, so I’ll say exactly what I think. For the next six months you must try to stick it out with your new friends, and learn in that time to master the defects of your own temperament. It’s entirely up to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Think for a moment of what they feel and think about it. Have you considered that Mrs. Carfax has given up her home to come down here and work for you as an unpaid housekeeper? She isn’t used to such a life. So it’s up to you to show appreciation of what she is doing for you.”

  “Yes.”

  “If ‘Yipps’ does blow upon the wood embers in the fireplace with the bellows, as you once told me, ‘raspingly’, what is that to you? Fire is a beautiful thing, you say. A wood fire should be treated with respect, you say. But isn’t that making an idol out of fire? Fire is a good servant, but a bad master. Anyway, it’s a means for heating a room. Isn’t it an expatiation on the trivial, or ‘pimmining’ as Mrs. Carfax says, to regard a wood fire as though it were a sacred thing? And if it upsets you to see bellows used the wrong way up, surely it hurts the worker of the bellows to feel that someone is silently disapproving? What does it matter, anyway, if the bellows are held upside down?”

  “Well, the weighted flap doesn’t close the air-intake hole, and you don’t get any air to blow the fire with.”

  “Then why object to Mrs. Carfax using them upside down, when there’s no air coming out, raspingly or otherwise?”

  “I suggested that if the bellows be held the other way up, and used slowly, the fire is then not forcibly fed, like a chicken in a battery. Also, the embers, or the fire’s capital, are not unduly exhausted.”

  “Well, you appear always to have an explanation for everything, but it is always from your own point of view. I have listened to you on innumerable occasions, and have heard, also, the points of view of others, including Mrs. Carfax and Mr. Pinnegar. So I see the situation in the round. You really must not feel put out if others have ways or even mannerisms different from your own, or because Mrs. Carfax has taken to using Lucy’s old tweed coat to stop a draught under the door. Economy is economy, and Mrs. Carfax is practising economy; as for Lucy’s old tweed coat, if she’d cared that much about it, wouldn’t she have taken it with her? And why this sudden consideration of an old coat, when often the opposite of consideration was shown to the owner of the old coat during all the years that the old coat has never been worn? It shows a lack of a sense of proportion, don’t you think?”