A Solitary War Page 4

  The sky was grey: more rain fell: but they went on ploughing, until at last Luke said he was doing no good. His horse-drawn plough was not scoring; it was clogged. The next day, a Sunday, Phillip continued alone, and the field was finished just before moonrise. Early on Monday he started harrowing, but rain fell and stopped work. He hesitated to drill the wheat, but the seed was bought, and corn-seed dressed with mercury powder was likely to die after a year. Also the mercury powder, killer of spores of ergot or smut disease, would render the grain poisonous for feeding.

  On November 2nd the wheat went in. Usually the McCormick Sow-All drill was drawn behind the tractor, but the land was too wet for it, so Luke hitched the horses to the long pole and sowed the seed alone. Afterwards in a dry period Billy, sitting on the tractor, pulled the two-horse roll, with two zigzag harrows hitched on behind.

  As Luke and Billy finished, it began to rain again. It was a cold rain from the north-west; heavy showers beat down for two weeks. Every day Phillip reproached himself that if only he had worked harder, the chalk and the muck would have been spread earlier, and by Old Michaelmas Day the wheat would have been in; and by mid-November it would have been an established plant. When he looked down the drills over a dull and rain-smoothed tilth he saw lines of yellowish-green points wavering to invisibility. Perhaps the soil lacked nitrogen? The rootlets had not found the muck? Or the heavy rains had washed all ammonia into the subsoil?

  In that cold and wet land they made no growth. Successive lashing rains stuck particles of earth on the points. At the beginning of December Luke said, as he was carting straw to the bullock yards, “I knew that wheat wouldn’t come to anything, because you told me to mark out the ploughing on a Sunday.”

  There followed the inevitable argument between Hare and Tortoise.

  Hare: “You still think that Sunday work is condemned from on high?”

  Tortoise: “I’m sure no good comes of Sunday labour. I’ve seen it again and again.”

  Hare: “But we’ve had exceptional rains. The ground is cold and sodden.”

  Tortoise: “It is and all.”

  Hare: “Do you think that God sent the rains to punish me, then?”

  Tortoise: “I mean that Sunday work can come to no good.”

  Hare: “There may be wireworm in this field, or a little brown beetle someone told me of. Do you think, if it is, say, the frit fly, that this insect is an agent of Jehovah?”

  Tortoise: “Well, the bloody frit fly can work seven days a week if he’s a mind to! But bugger me if I like Sunday work! Weesh Toby! Weesh!”

  The old horse turned obediently to the left, then stood still.

  Hare: “What about milking cows and feeding stock on Sunday?”

  Tortoise: “That’s different.”

  Hare: “Would you milk cows and feed our bullocks on Sunday if your father fell ill?”

  Tortoise: “If you ordered me to, I’d have to.”

  Hare: “You wouldn’t do it for the sake of the farm?”

  Tortoise: “Only if you ordered me to. It’s your farm. Get-oor’n Toby, get-oor’n!”

  The tumbril went on down to the yards.

  Phillip had hurt Luke’s feelings, his pride. He realized that his scepticism had offended the labourer’s code based on a score of centuries of labouring: that he had, in effect, derided the first charter that gave a man one day of rest every week.

  Luke’s face had looked drawn. Perhaps it was the cold. It was striking into his own back. The sky was sunless. A shadow lay over the world, the shadow of a war of ideas alike upon the continent of Europe as upon the acres of ‘the Bad Lands’.

  Chapter 3

  A NEW START

  Very soon the top road which Phillip had toiled to remake two years before was being destroyed by the constant passing of motorised rubber wheels. Materials for building huts arrived, and searchlight equipment. Craters appeared in the new surface. Rain filled them. Lorry wheels scattered stone and gravel into the hedges, grinding away the chalk binding. Every time a packet of fags was needed by the sergeant, wheels raced along the drift, down the hill to the village shop, and back again. These were poor quality soldiers. Rotting lumps of meat were flung outside the camp. Broken glass and tins strewed the hedge. Mongrel dogs without collars chased Matt’s sheep on the Home Hills. Eggs in the hens’ houses vanished.

  During the first fortnight two of the new field-gates were smashed, the gate-posts thrown down. Below on the coastal road a truck hauling a gun crashed into the new woodshed wall of the farmhouse, and cracked the flint structure. It had been built less than a year before. Lucy inside the parlour heard the crash, but did not think to go outside to see what had happened, much less take the lorry number and the driver’s name. As soon as Phillip heard of it he telephoned the local policeman, who traced the truck with its brick-smashed lamp and crumpled wing to the anti-aircraft artillery camp. Phillip telephoned the Commandant, who promptly declared this was no legal proof and rang off. Phillip pointed out to Lucy the crack running down the new wall so carefully built by the one-man village builder.

  “Look, the crack passes through rounded flints and bricks alike. This wall is now dangerous. It leans—look, please—four degrees out of the horizontal. It might crush a child. The Commandant refuses compensation because we did not get the evidence at once.”

  It was a queer war. No bombs had fallen on England or France, none on Germany. Phillip said to Horatio Bugg, at the village petrol pump, that he hoped it would remain so, until the British and French governments called off the war.

  “I’m patriotic, I don’t agree with your lot under Birkin,” replied the dealer.

  Phillip had the bad habit of addressing the family assembled at the supper table. He felt the children must be as bored as Lucy was to hear the words rambling like a hare over the fields of his mind. His audience consisted of Billy and the two smallest boys, David and Jonathan. Rosamund and Peter were away at boarding schools; Peter at a Choir School in London, Rosamund at a little girls’ school in the old stables of a country house a few miles away along the coast.

  “If it continues like this, the only hope for peace is to withdraw from the war, and let Germany and the barter system consolidate a self-sufficient Central Europe, with a raised standard of living for all in Europe. German cars and tractors—implements and fertilisers—radio sets—synthetic hot water bottles—glass and films in exchange for wheat, barley, beet-sugar, wool, leather, tobacco and oil of the Balkans. You see, Billy, Germany has mainly a sandy soil and cannot grow all her own wheat. That is why they eat rye bread, for rye grows on the poorest soil. In remote ages the Germanic migrations were caused by this lack of wheat-growing soil. So, in an industrial age, Germany must export or die, as Hitler said: for only by exporting can they, as in the old days, get wheat. That problem will remain fundamental: a great nation on a scalt soil. All the ersatz or substitute materials we’ve heard of were made because Germany had no gold with which to buy raw materials. When Hitler came to power there was less than three million pounds in gold in the Reichsbank. So Hitler built a system based on the team-spirit, in order to win the struggle for markets against the gold resources which dominate her industrial rivals.”

  “Don’t let your food get cold,” said Lucy.

  “Can they make an ersatz Jerry bomber?” asked David.

  “A large part of it, I expect. Such as plastic glass for rubber substitute in insulating electric wires. In future lots of things will be made from beans and fibres grown on the farmers’ fields. This new science is called chemurgy. Plastics, for industry, will come from the soil. The farmers of the future may grow all that is required. You see, Lucy, peace in Europe can come only through union in one economic system. The United States of Europe are overdue. It is either that, or the Sovietisation of Europe. Birkin for years has said that if war comes, only Bolshevism can win. But what hope has his voice raised against the clamours of the golden giants?”

  “More gravy?” asked Lucy. “Bil
ly, pass Dad’s plate up. Oh, were you speaking to me, Pip? I am so sorry, I thought you were talking to the children.”

  “Don’t bother about what I say. You’ve heard it all before, anyway. The alternative is a shooting war—millions of dead——”

  “Yes, I’m afraid war is never a good thing. Jonathan, get some more milk, will you? It’s on the kitchen table.”

  “Don’t forget to close the door, little oaf, the cats put their paws in the jugs and then lick off the milk,” added Billy, before turning again an eager face to his father.

  “I was listening, Dad,” said David. “I was telephoning, see, with the spoon, which is speaking to a target plane. I was asking if they had seen any glass Jerry bombers.”

  “With engines made of plastic straw,” suggested Billy over his shoulder.

  “Hush,” said Lucy, with a glance towards the head of the table.

  “Oh, let him joke,” replied Phillip, the irritation of fatigue in his voice. Ypres—Loos—Somme—Passchendaele—and now this——”

  *

  Lucy, too, was beginning to look weary. It was cold in the room. Winter had come early. Outside the air was grey and dour with frost forming of damp valley vapours. Whenever a fire was lit Phillip had to let it burn out at once. There was another living-room adjoining the parlour, but half its size. This room, supposed to be Lucy’s boudoir, had a small open fireplace. Whenever Phillip tried to start a fire in the parlour his fire would draw cold air down the boudoir chimney and cause Lucy’s little room to fill with smoke. If she attempted to light a fire in her hearth while Phillip’s fire was burning her smoke would travel across the floors of both rooms, apparently preferring to go up the parlour chimney. David declared there was an old witch up there, determined to put a wicked spell on them. But with the parlour fire out, Lucy’s fire would burn brightly and the smoke of her thorn logs went up her chimney. So Lucy and the children sat at night in the boudoir, while Phillip, writing in the parlour, put on his overcoat and sat at the table with his legs in a sack of straw.

  Four hams hung on the chestnut beam crossing the ceiling of the parlour. Also on the beam was a small model aircraft, two horse brasses, and the bound and knotted spray of big wheat heads from one field—a corn dolly of the first harvest. It gave to visitors an illusion of jocund farm-life … until they saw the face of the farmer. Phillip was ashamed of his face, ashamed of the poor show he had made of everything. He was now in debt, for all journalistic work and B.B.C. talks had ceased at the outbreak of war.

  “Ugh, I don’t like ‘the Bad Lands’,” David once said. “There’s ratses everywhere.”

  Fortunately there were no rats in the farmhouse—as yet; but Phillip was too occupied to attend to the chimney. He worked long hours every day, seven days a week. The chimney was too wide: it needed to be pulled down and rebuilt.

  One afternoon when he came home, cold and bleak from sitting on the tractor, the sight of the untidy Children’s Room in the adjoining cottage caused him to complain. The children sat silent. Yes, he thought, I am becoming like my father to my mother. The thought added to his guilt, and when David said, “You go away, we don’t want you here,” he picked up his side-bag, holding an empty Thermos flask, and walked out. Then turning, he flung the bag against the latticed window, and went back to the farm premises, his thoughts bitter. But no—he must not seal himself away from his children. When he returned he saw that David’s eyes were red with weeping, while Jonathan the youngest looked woeful.

  “I have told David he must never speak to you again like that——” Lucy was saying, when he interrupted her. “David was truthful. I am sorry for my bad manners. I’ll go and wash, and be back in a minute or two.”

  *

  Knowing how happy Lucy always had been with her brothers in the past, Phillip wrote to Tim, her youngest brother, who had returned soon after the outbreak of war from Australia. Tim now had an engineering job in Gaultford, forty miles north of London. In the letter Phillip suggested that perhaps the best thing he could do was to sell the farm and the stock, make over the money in a trust fund to Lucy, dye his hair and rejoin the army.

  My capital has been spent, the bank overdraft is increasing, I can no longer subsidise the farm with literary earnings, and the royalties from my old books are negligible. All contracts for broadcasting were cancelled on the outbreak of war. Newspapers are printing small articles, and cutting down their staffs, so that outside contributors are not wanted. As for writing books, ideas are suspended as the war itself between the old world decaying and the new world unrealised. I did hope to write a book about a wild goose, to be followed by another about a hybrid roseate tern on this eastern coast; but first the farm must be put in order, a settled life created, and the presence of a deputy-cum-trustee to take entire charge of the farm when the time comes for me to be a whole-time writer.

  If your brother Ernest and I had been able to hit it off together, we might by now have been on the verge of making a good thing out of the farm, for markets are stable, and prices fixed. The farm was bought and partly restored for such a phase that we are now entering nationally. Ernest lacked all business sense, so I had the idea of a community farm. More amateurs and eccentrics: the idea was not practicable. And now I foresee our family life disintegrating before my eyes. It is all my fault, I am a poor leader. Everything in our cottage seems dirty and untidy. The children at the village school learn little or nothing except ‘words’, as Lucy calls them. And I myself am copying them, or they me.

  He felt feeble as he concluded this letter to his brother-in-law. Yes, it would be best if the family left, and he rejoined the army.

  He went to London, saw various officers at the War House, was passed from one to another, and returned home weary, knowing he was unwanted. A reply from Tim awaited him.

  *

  In a straggling, near-illegible hand, Tim advised Phillip to sell out. Farming, he wrote, was coming into its own, and since the reasons for becoming a farmer were no longer valid, the way was clear. With increased values of implements and land and stock, the venture ought not to have lost any money. And if Phillip wished, he would gladly give a home to Lucy and the children. There were good schools in Gaultford, and he would always be pleased to see Phillip whenever he cared to stay there. He was living a lonely life, he added, and would welcome all or any of the family.

  A few days later Phillip heard from an old friend with whom he had served in the Fifth Army during 1916 in Picardy and the following year in the Ypres Salient. Teddy Pinnegar! Those wonderful days together in 286 Machine Gun Company!

  Teddy said he had read an article by Phillip in a London evening newspaper some time before the war, wherein he had learned that he had tried to form a community farm without success. Teddy Pinnegar declared that he had had considerable business experience, and if he could sell his interest in an engineering company, he would have a little capital. He liked the country and country pursuits. Would Phillip consider taking him as a partner?

  That evening Phillip talked matters over with Lucy, and the upshot was that he wrote and invited Teddy Pinnegar to come down the following week, saying he was unable to offer him a bedroom, and recommending a hotel in Crabbe. Pinnegar telephoned asking if he might bring a friend who was ‘experienced in housekeeping and domestic economy’. Lucy prepared a dinner with which to greet them after the journey from London.

  “I first saw Teddy Pinnegar in the train to Grantham in October nineteen-sixteen, after I’d come out of hospital and was rejoining the Machine Gun Corps. I can see him now, in a sloppy trench-hat, salmon-pink breeches, and riding boots with swan-neck spurs.”

  He told Lucy that they had been together in the Machine Gun Training Centre at Harrowby Camp and had met together nearly every night at the town, either in the bar of The Angel, or the Theatre Royal. Life in that vast community was exciting and good; though, in retrospect, damned foolish.

  “There was a night when half-a-dozen of us entertained the chorus of a r
evue with crème-de-menthe and whisky, and I, completely blotto, was carried back to camp as the winter dawn was breaking. I was semi-unconscious for the next twenty-four hours. We were a lot of wild boys. Once a party of us was in the stage box at the theatre, cheering and having a fine old time. Luckily for us old Brendon, the Assistant Provost Marshal, didn’t see us when we threw a half-tight subaltern nicknamed Goody on the stage. Every week at that time drafts were leaving for France, for the casualty lists were long, and we made the most of the only sort of life we knew.”

  Later he said, “I wonder if I should meet Teddy Pinnegar again? You see, he is, or was to be, a character in my novel of the Ancre Valley in December nineteen-sixteen, Messines in June ’seventeen, and all through Third Ypres to the Cambrai battle in December nineteen-seventeen, when I was invalided home for the fourth time. So I don’t want my mind pictures blurred by a—well, a stranger. I really live you know, in a world long-vanished—a world of ghosts. Pinnegar and I may be unrecognisable to one another now. We’ll be careful where we were careless—heavy with the responsibilities of life, when before we were light of heart. Anyway, since those days I’ve changed entirely.”

  “He might turn out to be the one you’ve always needed to take care of all the business details, Pip. I’ve always known I was not the one for you.” She flushed: she was thinking of her cousin Melissa, in whose presence Phillip was a different man. And when she called him ‘Pip’ it was with a light heart, because she was thinking of Tim, and a new life with him. Lucy had not changed since she was a young girl, happy with Pa and the boys.

  Over a cup of tea she said she would do anything to help him. “If by going away with the smaller children it would lighten the feeling of all of us being a burden upon you, of course I’ll go away.”