The Phoenix Generation Read online

  *

  There was no St. Martin’s Little Summer that November, it was washed away in rain, rain, rain. The springs broke early, soon the river was swollen, but never turgid, swilling bank-high and drowning, below the park, the water-meadows which gleamed grey and cold with the reflections of low clouds dragging past in the sky.

  Billy, the elder boy, was now rising five years. He and Peter and tiny tottering Rosamund had their nursery in one of the damp downstairs rooms, all of which burned coal in early Victorian grates. Phillip missed the open hearth of Skirr farmhouse, and went to the Steward’s office behind the Abbey to ask permission to uncover the wood-burning fire-place in the large square sitting room. This grate, like the others, threw out almost no heat since it was virtually a hole through which flames roared into the cavernous chimney enclosed behind a square of thin cast-iron.

  “Cold air is sucked under the doors the more fiercely the flames roar up the chimney. And just as James Watt watching a kettle boiling got the idea of harnessing steam, so our sitting-room fireplace gives the idea of a refrigerator combined with an oven, for while the flames draw the cold air to freeze the back of the body, one tends to be roasted in front.”

  The Steward laughed and said he would send round the Clerk of Works.

  This individual, upon arrival, told Phillip that the house had once been three cottages in a row, but a century before had been made into one for the then-Steward’s occupation. Phillip thought that in those days the iron hearth must have appeared to be a most genteel thing, burning gentlemen’s coal instead of the common oak or beech sticks which still smouldered under the iron crocks and hanging kettles of the cottages upon the estate.

  “I suppose all social aspirations are in a sense anti-social,” he said to Felicity, when the Clerk of Works had gone. “Look at this great black shell, entirely anti-social. The more coal we shove into it, the more scoured of warm air becomes the room.”

  At night while tawny flames edged by smoke roared up the chimney to join with the remote thunder of the gale above the square exit of the blackened tun, he and Lucy and Felicity drew up their chairs and thereby were in the more concentrated bore of cold air feeding the flames. Lucy usually went to bed early. She felt sad, while concealing the feelings that her dream of herself and Phillip being like her father and mother—inseparable and hardly wanting any visitors—was not to be.

  And every day the valley views were dissolved in rain. Every walk by the river, now swirling past the stick-matted trunks of the willows, was ended for Phillip with sopping trousers and squelching shoes. Trying to dry his legs before that early Victorian grate, while he waited for the mason to come, was a nightly act of frustration, for he winced from the idea of making a complaint as the weeks went by and no one came to open up the hearth. At last he wrote to the Steward, apologising for not having said during the interview that of course he would pay for the work to be done.

  The elderly Clerk of Works reappeared one morning and gave Phillip more local history, mixed with scandal of the previous century, and at last took his leave, saying that he would see what he could do. Phillip gave him his idea of what the back of the open hearth should be, not straight up, another warmth stealer, but with a back built to slope forward until four-fifths of the frontal area of the fire-, or rather flame-place, was reached; then it should go back sharply in order to allow the flow of flame to take itself up the chimney, passing the smoke-box where the slope joined the ascent of the chimney proper.

  “I’ve been reading about this in the Country Gentleman’s Magazine,” he explained. “It’s the same with water. There’s always an eddy at a bend of a river, I’ve noticed, where the water tends to travel backwards. And so with air. In a straight-up old-type open hearth, the hot air revolves just under the lintel, and in turning round causes the smoke to bounce off the hot-air ball, and into the room.”

  To this the Clerk of Works made no reply. He hadn’t understood a word of it.

  A week before Christmas a mason arrived and Phillip repeated his idea of what an open hearth should be: it must have a back sloping forward, then sharply back. No gate-crashing cold air must be allowed up the chimney.

  “Aye, zur. I’ll ’ave ’e out in no time,” and bringing a pick the mason took a swing at the cast-iron shell and then lugged it out in a cascade of soot and mortar dust. Sheets were brought down from off the children’s beds to cover chairs, table, and bookcase.

  There was a worn blue Delabole slate before the hearth, and Phillip knew that this would conduct the heat from the fireplace and make it pleasant to stand on in his socks, after writing, which usually made his feet cold—November, 1914: the flooded Diehard T-trench under Wytschaete ridge——

  “So leave the slate. Delabole slates are wonderful things. They warm the farmer’s feet in life, and stand guard above his skull when he’s dead. I’ve got to go to London now, to give my first broadcast. I’m scared stiff, like the poor old farmer under the stone, because I’ve got to do it without a script—you know, all written out and read from a script, I mean—but this is to be without a script. Have you got a wireless set?”

  “No, zur. Us poor men can’t afford it, like the gentry do do.”

  “Good. Then you won’t be able to hear what a fool I make of myself.”

  This made the mason laugh, and he forgot the idea, which was to leave the splendid slate, worn by centuries of feet on winter nights, in position.

  Phillip left before dawn the next morning, to be able to rest in the Barbarian Club before the talk, which was one of a weekly series on Tuesday nights after the nine o’clock news. Richard and Hetty listened, and found it embarrassing; for Phillip had stopped on the way at a friend’s house, and had drunk claret most of the day, with various cheeses; to arrive only a short time before he was due on the air. He had rehearsed his talk on the way up so many times, each with a variation, and when the green light changed to red in the studio he felt hopelessly mixed up. The producer, a Scotsman, stared at him almost with anguish; then after a gulp of water Phillip began.

  “It was G. K. Chesterton who wrote, I seem to remember, that Noah said, while in the Ark, ‘I don’t care where the water goes, so long as it doesn’t get into the wine.’ I live by a river—er—a trout stream—usually I walk—or—er—rather splodge by the river, looking for signs of life—I am almost duck-footed, and quack before meals——”

  Richard told Phillip afterwards, when he called at Hillside Road, that he had to switch off because there were so many er-er-ers, and he could not bear the feeling that his son was so nervous.

  When Phillip returned to Flumen Monachorum the slate was gone. In its place was a concrete slab, two days set.

  “But I told you I wanted the slate left, Felicity. Damn it, wasn’t that enough? Why didn’t you remind the mason? Where is the slate?”

  “He broke it up with his pick before I could stop him.”

  Her face was made-up. She had been eating little or nothing for days, and drinking only a glass of lemon juice and water every morning, in the hope of losing some of the fat she had put on, almost to her horror: for she had been vain of her figure, and was now fearful of losing it.

  “But it takes a lot to break up a slab like that. It could only be broken up by scores of blows. So what do your words mean, ‘before you could stop him’?”

  “I was in my room, typing your notes about the river, and I didn’t hear anything.”

  The new hearth had been much in Phillip’s thoughts during the cold wet drive from London. It had rained at Chiswick, he had not stopped to put up the hood, longing to get home, to relax before the new hearth, flaming with beech logs. She stood there, feeling numb that he was cross with her.

  “Where’s Rippingall?”

  “I’m afraid he’s not very well.”

  Phillip went to the boiler room. There lay Rippingall, blotto. When he returned to the sitting-room Felicity said timidly, “Shall I get you some tea?”

  “Billy at least migh
t have helped. He knew.”

  Billy and Peter, who had hurried out of the kitchen when the headlights had flashed across the window, sat beside his feet as he stood, still in soaked leather flying coat and fur collar, before the cold dull hearth. He felt a sense of shame at his outburst now, for his arrival had had the effect of making their faces so animated. He saw Billy hang his head, before the boy turned away pouting. Then Peter came and stood at his knee, looking up innocently into his face. Billy caught his father’s eye and frowned, before going out of the room.

  “Dad,” said Peter. “It wasn’t Billy’s fault. Billy was up to school, Dad.”

  The nursery door was ajar; it moved; he saw a face under tousled black hair looking earnestly at him out of very dark eyes. Rosamund was inspecting him, finger in mouth. The head disappeared, the door moved back, then round the corner came a crawling object which pulled itself up to his knees and stood there, continuing its stare. This object made a noise like hur-hur when he picked it up and, opening his coat, sat down with Roz on his knee and hugged her. She turned round and almost threw herself on his chest, burying her head in its warmth.

  The concrete hearth was not entirely set. With a piece of stick he gouged the outline of a trout in the cold grey gritty stuff. There were stones in the concrete and some made the engraving unsmooth, and when he dug them out with Rosamund’s help, left the grooves rough. He worked on his knees, the child silent beside him, while Peter watched earnestly. When he had finished, observed all the time by the little girl, he looked round, uncramping his back, and saw that Billy had returned.

  “Billy, I’m so sorry. I beg your pardon. Of course you were at school.”

  “It don’t matter.”

  And giving his father a mournful look Billy hung his head and again went out of the door. Phillip wondered how much of Billy’s attitude came from the fact that he had been told, some time before, by a woman who came to look after Lucy when she was ill, that Lucy was not his real mother.

  But this was not the cause; it lay in his own inability to give the child the warmth of his body, in love. Oh God, was he passing on the mort cordum to his son, as Lucy’s father had passed on the mort main to his children? The dead-hand of laziness, of selfishness, of lack of imagination, which had been the cause of the once-great Copleston family estates coming down to the derelict Works in the garden at Down Close? But who was he to criticise, he who had thrown away all but the house, that shell of a family, at Rookhurst?

  “Billy, Billy, come and help me make a fire. Billy, Billy, come back, you are my best boy.”

  “Billy is, y’know, too,” said Peter, staring up with his mild gaze.

  *

  It turned out to be a good hearth for burning wood, throwing out heat and giving contentment to legs stretched to the mass of beech ember and flame, while the kettle of cast-iron gently steamed as it hung from the serrated lapping-crook. Occasionally he grilled steaks and bloaters over the glowing embers, eating them beside Lucy and Felicity. Alas, that the mason’s hammer had cracked up that old slate slab. It had been a lovely thing, blue and gentle, hollow with so many stocking’d feet resting on it, and mellowed by fat-spreckles jumping out of a score of heavy frying pans and roasting spits of the past. The new concrete slab was without feeling: even the fish did not give it baptismal life: to Phillip, it was a symbol of post-war soullessness.

  On New Year’s Eve he invited Rippingall to sit with them and share a couple of bottles of champagne. Except for the one lapse the house-parlourman had behaved impeccably; he had dug the garden, polished the silver plate (left to Lucy by an ancient spinster aunt—delicate Caroline spoons and forks, coffee-pot and teapot, salt cellars, pepper pots, candelabra, asparagus tongs, cheese-scoop, etc.) and ‘made himself generally useful in the house’, as Lucy told Pa.

  When not on duty Rippingall was to be found in the boiler house, which he had fitted up with shelves for books, and pictures torn from old illustrated magazines of actresses, generals, battleships, and photographic scenes of the Great War. Sometimes the reedy strains of an accordion, muffled by the warped oak door, floated into the kitchen. Rippingall was singing to himself in a nasal voice as he boiled water over a methylated spirit lamp for his nightly mug of cocoa. He had a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, and was a great reader. Phillip’s novels about Donkin, he declared, were the real stuff.

  Rippingall, with the points of his moustache held in a fixed position by pomade hongroise, was a man of gentleness, deep feeling, and understanding. After awakening from that drunken stupor he had wept, saying that he had betrayed the whitest man he had ever known. He would devote his life to Phillip, if only given another chance; he would renounce liquor for ever. Poor Rippingall, said Phillip to Lucy, he must find life with an author even duller than living in the dark background of a vicarage, the incumbent of which was low church almost to Calvinist simplicity, believing literally in the constant war between Heaven and Hell; and with the temptations of Hell there could never be compromise.

  *

  Now it was the start of another year.

  “Ring out the old, ring in the new, ring out the false, ring in the true … ‘for God reveals Himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world’. Rippingall, you old sweat, a man must break his principles now and again, to show that he is master of them. Who said that?”

  “It sounds like Thomas Carlyle, sir.”

  “I’ve never read Carlyle.”

  “I must confess that I myself have but the slightest acquaintanceship with the Sage of Chelsea, sir.”

  After that first lapse, Phillip made Rippingall sign an agreement that provided for his wages to be paid into a fund which Rippingall could use only at the age of sixty. Even so, he felt that he had let down Rippingall, allowing him only five shillings a week for pocket money. On odd occasions, chosen by himself, Rippingall got into his dress suit in the evening, and rewaxed the ends of his moustaches to points which, to the low church vicar, must have resembled the horns of the Devil himself. Never a glass of beer had he taken, true to his promise, since that one lapse.

  “On this New Year’s Eve let us drink to Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, Rippingall. What a wonderful suit you are wearing. I wish I had one like that.”

  “One of the Captain’s” said Rippingall. “He gave me, as was my perquisite, all his wardrobe when I relinquished my post at the Castle.”

  Phillip understood that Rippingall had worked as valet and, at times, companion to ‘Boy’ Runnymeade. He had been his opponent at billiards, snooker, cards, chess and picquet, with the ultimate job of the day of hauling his master upstairs and undressing him on the bed—a confidential job, for Captain Runnymeade had a fixed dread of appearing drunk before the other servants. On leaving his service at the Castle, Rippingall had taken with him a score or so of suits, shirts, shoes, etc. which had been replaced that year, as annually, by new patterns.

  *

  The next morning, in bowler hat, yellow goatskin gloves, whangee cane, and brown shoes patterned all over with holes and shining like glass, Rippingall, having brushed himself free of boiler-room dust and withered potato fragments, lit the remains of his cigar of the night before and set off to wish the Reverend Mr. Scrimgeour the compliments of the New Year. Rippingall wore the 1914 Star, with bar, on the lapel of his pepper-and-salt jacket.

  “How do you do, everything all reet?” he greeted the parish priest, who was about to leave on his bicycle to go the rounds to some of his aged parishioners.

  The vicar, moving his new Raleigh bicycle—a present from his congregation—between them across the front door to prevent entry, caused Rippingall to lurch to the other side, but he recovered his stance with the aid of the cane bent like a bow.

  “Go away, you’re drunk again. Why have you come, you silly fellow? Been dismissed, as you deserve, no doubt. And do not smoke when you address me.”

  “This——” replied Rippingall, removing the cigar from between yellow teeth and inspecting
it “—is a weed, known first to Sir Walter Raleigh, whose name is spelt, but not pronounced, like your bicycle. Our West Country still shelters Rawleys, your reverence, not Rallys.”

  “Go away, you impertinent fellow. And don’t puff smoke in my face. I told you never to come here again.”

  “All reet, all reet,” retorted Rippingall with spirituous amiability. “I came to wish your reverence the compliments of the season, together with——” puff, puff—“a Happy New Year.” He added, “In my father’s house are many—bicycles——”

  “Leave these premises at once!”

  Rippingall spun round, recovered, and pointing the whangee cane upwards with one hand, removed the brown bowler with the other and said, “I will go——” puff, puff—“to my father——” puff, puff—“who is in heaven.”

  As January’s dull windows and leafless trees repeated themselves, so the form of Rippingall was in decline. Like most people of irregular sensibility, caused by an early malformation of the will and usually known as artistic temperament, Rippingall became untidy. He could be very smart indeed when in full starch, wax, and tail; but his bedroom was a mess, his kitchen—for Miss Kirkman had left her situation before Christmas—in disorder. He was ail-anyhow. Phillip felt that he had let-down Rippingall, given him a formless example—almost nothing to live for. Lacking someone to keep him in order, by example, Rippingall was reverting to the bottle. His sink was a greasy mess of old tea-leaves and potato-peelings. Glasses came on the table with the water-stains of porridge and bacon-fat residue.

  Phillip became more and more critical of Felicity and one day she departed, while he was in Colham, leaving behind a letter saying that she felt her presence was only a hindrance to him, and an obstruction to his writing.

  *

  Staring at the choked drainpipes under the lawn, the untidy cupboards, the chaotic woodshed and boiler-house, the scatter of toys everywhere in the day nursery—a room which Lucy said she liked to look “lived in”—Phillip told himself weakly that he needed order and competence about him so that he could do his writing, and keep on doing it, without strain. That work was for the future, the tidying up of human minds by ‘enacting a full look at the worst’, in the past; or rather the growing of young minds in a way entirely different from the past. What was needed, he told Lucy, was a revolution—but without bloodshed. Yet he knew that it must first begin with himself; while it seemed there was nothing to begin it with.