The Phoenix Generation Page 9

  He saw a flat-bottomed boat pushed into the reeds below. An old man was fishing. Was everything normal for him? The war but an interruption in a life of trade, a profession? Did he think only of money as the true basis of life?

  He sat still, longing for love. The fisherman was using bread-pills for the roach which roamed in shoals from the Menin to the Lille gates. The border of ground, under the ramparts where the boat was moored, was tilled with dwarf beans and potatoes. It looked to be his allotment; he had finished hoeing weeds, and was now enjoying a pipe and the watching of his quill float. Did he see only reed, water, lilies, his quill and the peaceful evening sky above the cultivated fiélds of dark brown soil east of the city; hear only the impatient horns of motorcars passing under the Menin Gate … the confident song-chatter of the warblers in the reeds?

  The old man looked up.

  “Soldat, M’sieu’? Anglais? Revenu?”

  “Oui, Monsieur.”

  “Sale boche fini, hey?”

  “Bon soir, Monsieur.”

  That night he could not sleep.

  *

  Through the open door of her room Mrs. Ancroft heard her daughter turning and turning in bed, and sometimes it sounded as though she was crying. Once she went in, and stood by the bed, summoning up resolution to whisper, “Are you all right, Girlie?” When there was no answer she went back to her room and, lying in bed, prayed that no harm had befallen her innocent child.

  Her daughter had been born during the year of King George the Fifth’s succession. When the child was barely out of her third year the marriage had come to an end. Shouting with anger at his wife, calling her every hateful name that came from the years of his frustration, and, towards the end, hatred, her young husband had picked up the terrified child and shaken her, threatening to hurl her out of the window unless her mother altered immediately what he had often called her obstructive mentality. I never want to see you again! and putting down the child, who was too shocked to speak, or utter any sound, he had left the matrimonial home for ever.

  The war came the following year. Mrs. Ancroft’s three elder brothers at once were commissioned in the militia, or reserve battalion of the county regiment. The eldest was killed at Zillebeke in 1914; the second at Festubert early in the following year; the third was reported missing after the flame-attack at Hooge Château in the Salient in 1916. Meanwhile she had learned that her husband had joined up, and after service at home, had transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. He had survived the war. Mrs. Ancroft meanwhile had thought it best to tell her little girl nothing about her father. He was, in his deserted wife’s eyes, ‘a mixture of half-saint, half-devil.’ How else could he—who had obviously loved his little girl from the time that she had first smiled at him, to be taken upon his lap and fondled—how otherwise could he have behaved with such fiendish cruelty as to pick her up and shake her violently in order to spite her, the mother? He had been indulged as a small boy, certainly, by two of his aunts, who had made themselves responsible for his upbringing after his parents had died of typhus in India, while he was at a private school in England.

  Mrs. Ancroft had refused to divorce him. He had made over all his wordly goods to her; and when she had last heard of him, he was working in the Congo as a lay-brother among an order of friars which called themselves Laurentians.

  *

  Mrs. Ancroft, in a weak moment, had told her daughter that her father had died in the war.

  She had had a proposal from Mr. Fitzwarren, a widower, but had held firmly to her principles regarding divorce, despite a clear case of desertion. It must be stated that, to some extent, she had been helped to maintain this attitude by the knowledge that the name by which ‘Fitz’ was known was an assumed one; and that he had not fought in the war.

  Altogether her life had continued in a vacuum: a wasting sense of loss was never far away from a consciousness fortified by her faith, by her loving care for Felicity, and the belief that in the end she would be with her brothers.

  Phillip was writing to Felicity,

  Near St. Julien, opposite Triangle Farm, at a place called Vancouver, stands the Canadian Memorial, but for me it is the memorial for all the soldiers in the War. It faces towards Ypres, not towards a vanquished enemy as do so many of the memorials to be seen in France today, such as the Gallic cock crowing triumphantly on a broken cannon at Roclincourt, or the caribou roaring eastwards from Beaumont Hamel, or the defiant artisan-soldier standing firm and fierce at Lens.

  Do the dead feel cock-crowing triumph over the dead? No; the colossal head and shoulders of the soldier with reversed arms emerging from the tall stone column has the gravity and strength of grief coming from the full knowledge of old wrongs done to men by men. It mourns; but it mourns for all mankind. We are silent before it, as we are before the marble figures of the ancient Greeks. The thoughtless one-sided babble about national righteousness or wrongness, the clichés of jingo patriotism, the abstract virtues so often parasitic on the human spirit fade before the colossal figure of the common soldier by the wayside.

  The genius of Man rises out of the stone, and our tears fall before it.

  Chapter 4

  SCYLLA

  When Felicity’s mother returned from seeing the family doctor she telephoned Mr. Fitzwarren, asking him to drop in on his way home from the office.

  “I cannot talk over the telephone, for reasons which will be obvious when I see you. Yes, you were right, I am afraid. I can still hardly believe it.”

  When the two were together she said that Girlie was in her fourth month of pregnancy, and that the father was an American she had met in London. He had come to Europe on a travelling scholarship and was now back in the United States.

  “The awful part about it, Fitz, is that she says she did not love him. How can it be true? A chance meeting at a Chelsea party, she says.”

  “It looks to me as though she’s covering up for someone else, Nora.”

  “Phillip Maddison, you mean? Oh, why did I let her go down to work for him? I knew she should have stayed in London until she had had a chance to mature.”

  “We must make sure who the father is, old girl. Let me talk to her. Where is she?”

  “Upstairs in her room.”

  “D’you mind if I go up?”

  “My dear Fitz, you are one of the family, you are my trustee and executor when I’m gone——”

  When Mr. Fitzwarren knocked on Felicity’s bedroom door she was sitting on her bed writing a letter, and at once hid pad and pencil under her pillow.

  “Come in.”

  “I’ll not beat about the bush,” he began, while the phrase aroused erotic thoughts. “Who was it? Maddison?”

  “No, it was an American, I think.”

  “You think? Were there others then? How many?”

  “I don’t remember. I’d had too much to drink at a party in Chelsea.”

  “When?”

  “In the summer. I forget the exact date.”

  “My poor darling.”

  Mr. Fitzwarren sat himself beside her and put his arms protectively around her shoulders. The propinquity of young flesh aroused him; soon he was fondling her breasts while kissing her neck. She put up with this for a space before removing the arms gently.

  “Haven’t you still got some feeling left for me, eh?”

  “I’m fond of you.”

  “You used to love me.”

  “I suppose I did. But love isn’t just sex, you know.”

  “It often begins like that. After all, it’s the natural way. Romantic love is an illusion. I suppose you imagined yourself in love with Phillip, after reading his book? I read it—the tinge of self-pity here and there probably aroused protective feelings in you. But that isn’t love, my pet. You did let him have you, didn’t you?”

  “I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell Mummie.”

  “All right, I’ll promise. No—don’t tell me. I knew already who it was. The point is, you’ve got to get rid of it a
s soon as possible.”

  “I’m not afraid of having a child. I’d love it. But I don’t want to hurt Phillip in any way at all.”

  Mr. Fitzwarren told himself that his promise was not valid, since she had not told him that it was Maddison. He pretended to be sympathetic, while erotic desire arose to possess her again.

  “Of course you don’t. I shouldn’t have loved you as I did, if you’d been a hard little creature,” he said, unbuttoning her blouse. “Would you really like to have the baby? I’m not the jealous type, honestly. If you marry me, that will give the child a father, and I love you so much that I swear I’ll care for it as though it were mine.”

  He put his hand over her heart, but did not knead her breast again. “God, you are lovely. How I’ve missed you, darling. Don’t go back to that chap. I can get you a job in London, and we can be married at a register office as soon as you’re twenty-one. I suppose it will be a shock for Nora, but much better than having an abortion.”

  He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. He saw himself in a generous, almost noble light. At the same time he thought that the baby would hold her to him, and he would have someone always in his bed, years younger than himself, who would be middle-aged about the time that he started to become impotent. A splendid idea, to be looked after in his old age.

  “Why are you crying, honey?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you tell Phillip about me?”

  “A little——” She added, “I had to. He found out.”

  “How could he find out without your telling him?”

  “He guessed when he saw me home that night two years ago. If you remember you were waiting here when we returned. You both left together.”

  “Did he creep back afterwards? Did you let him sleep with you?”

  “Of course not. He wouldn’t have done such a thing. He’s an honourable man.”

  “Oh, I see. The perfect, gentle knight, is he? Well then, I take it that it was Phillip who put it across you?”

  “No he didn’t, if you want to know. It was all my fault.”

  “You’ll marry me then, darling?”

  “I can’t tell you yet, honestly.”

  “Don’t be upset, Baby. I’m with you, remember. Not a word to anyone, mind.”

  He resisted running downstairs.

  “Well, did you manage to influence her in any way, Fitz?”

  “Oh, I think so. I pointed out that her present infatuation with a charming experienced man couldn’t possibly last, and that she’d spoil her chances of marriage if she insisted on having the baby.”

  “She is a minor, we must not forget, Fitz.”

  “What we need, Nora, is another doctor beside our own to certify that she is either mentally or physically unfit to bear a child, and the way is clear. Then she can come home here and get a job in London and no one will be any the wiser.”

  “What I’d do without your moral support, I just don’t know, dear Fitz. Ah, there’s the front door. Well, I must answer it.”

  “Let Felice go, why not.”

  “Felice? I’ve never heard you call Girlie that before.”

  “Oh, I’ve always thought of her as Felice, since she was small. Such a happy child she was always—felix, felicis—‘producing happiness’. It was in a cross-word puzzle some years ago, I recollect.”

  “I thought it derived from felix, a cat, fruitful.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. No. The felidae is a genus of fissified carnivora—lions, tigers, pumas, et cetera. My cross-word mind,” he laughed.

  “It’s hardly a moment for levity, Fitz, surely?”

  *

  Phillip was walking down the garden path.

  “Oh, hullo,” said Lucy, blushing. “We wondered where you were.”

  “I went to the Ypres Salient.”

  “Didn’t Felicity go with you?”

  “No. Isn’t she here?”

  “We came back and found everyone gone and the house empty.”

  “What about Rippingall?”

  “I haven’t seen him either. Oh, before I forget, your post is on the table in your room.”

  He ran upstairs and searching through two score of letters tore open an envelope with Felicity’s writing.

  My Dearest,

  I hope that my sudden departure has not put you out too much. I hoped you would return after my very foolish act and tell me I was forgiven. Of course you could only be but upset but I do promise you that I did truly feel that the shoes gave me a feeling of such tenderness when I held them in my hand, for I could see the shape of the feet which had worn them, and sense the balance, too, for sole and heel were evenly worn, not like my own clumsy feet which tread down the backs of all my shoes.

  Now I have a confession to make. As I think you know, I have been imagining that the tightness of my frocks was due to laziness and perhaps eating too much, so I was going to have a sauna bath before writing to ask you if you would give me another chance. But Mother thought that I was not well, and in need of a tonic, so we went together to our doctor who told me that I was over three months gone in pregnancy. My periods have always been irregular, due to something that happened when I was very young, so I was not unduly worried, when I was more late than usual.

  I have discussed it with mother, and told her that the father is an American who was a temporary member of the Yacht Club, and I had a brief affair with him before he returned to the United States. So while it is my dearest wish to have a child while I am young I have decided that with so many responsibilities weighing upon you, and considering that Lucy will have more to bear with now that she too is to have another little one, I must fall in with my mother’s suggestion that I have an operation.

  At the same time, I feel it is not right to do so without letting you know of my intentions. Will you send me a little note saying that you approve, so that my conscience may be clear?

  Who knows, it may be my fate to follow her whose shoes I was about to cast away in so ungracious a manner; if this is to be, I pray that it will not be a cause of grief to you. But if a homeless ghost has any love left in its wanderings upon the battlefields where my father lies, mine will be watching over you, dearest of friends.

  Felicity.

  The next letter he opened seemed strangely to add to Felicity’s letter. It was signed Bro. Laurence. At once Phillip thought of Rippingall’s ‘rascal monk’ by the river, who had made enquiries about Felicity. The writer declared that he had read all of Phillip’s books, and had been deeply moved by The Phoenix. He went on to say that he had come recently to call on Phillip, finding himself in the neighbourhood of Rookhurst, but had not realised he was so busy. Might he propose himself for a brief visit later on, when perhaps Mr. Maddison might be able to see him? With the letter was a page of what the writer called ‘random impressions’, which he hoped would not be taken other than in the spirit by which they were written: if, however, they did offend, he hoped Mr. Maddison would forgive him for his good intentions.

  Your hero, Donkin, believes that by a change of thought the blind will see, the selfish will love, the cruel have pity, and the dead of the war will rise again. He is wrong, and fails; for although all he meets are stirred for a moment and see with his vision, he is cast out and dies; the living are unchanged, the dead remain dead. But he is also right, and succeeds, for the act of the artist-misfit-messiah, which in this world can only be symbolic, is reality in the kingdom which is not of this world.

  I beg that you will not consider this letter from a stranger to be merely impertinent, but I was coming to see you in your house recently when I heard your cries, and realising that you were in some distress, I went away. May I therefore, with trepidation, make a confession about myself when I was a younger man, and thought that by a change of thought, like your Donkin, I could alter the attitudes of those about me. All I can say now, with respect, is that there are deep things in us, and you know what they are as well as I do. Something flows into us that e
nlarges our personalities and when that flows out of us our personalities shrink. At the moment you are void of this something, so your personality is rather shrivelled——

  Phillip put the letter aside, feeling that it verged on the impertinent. He read it through again. No, it was pertinent. The writer had divined what he himself had seen in the character of Donkin. He was opening another letter, from his New York publisher, when Lucy came into the room.

  “I think you had better read this,” he said giving her Felicity’s letter.

  Lucy read it and said with a wavering smile, “Of course she must have her baby if she wants it, don’t you think so.”

  “I must tell you that there wasn’t any American, it was me.”

  “I thought it might be,” she replied, now more sure of herself. “Oh well, it can’t be helped now.”

  “Do you mind very much, Lucy?”

  “Well, I suppose it will steady Felicity to have a child,” and she laughed a little, blushing.

  He showed her the letter signed Bro. Laurence. She said, “Isn’t it good?”

  “Yes, I wonder why he asked where Felicity was living.”

  *

  At dawn next morning Phillip set off for London, driving into the sun rising over the Great Plain. At Staines he went into an eating house for breakfast of coffee with eggs and bacon. He had some time to wait. At half-past nine, telling himself that he must always keep calm, he arrived at the house on the edge of Ealing Common. Felicity came to the door.

  “Oh, I am so glad you’ve come!”

  “I’ve been with Piers in Flanders.”

  “Yes, I had your letter.”

  She kissed him, he kissed her. Taking his hand, she led him into the sitting-room. “Mother, this is Phillip.”

  “How do you do. I think you’ve met Mr. Fitzwarren, Mr. Maddison? Come, let us be seated” she said, as though brightly. “Have you just arrived from the West Country? The country must be at its best just now. Have you had breakfast?”