A Solitary War (17 page)

She seemed not to have seen the retriever bitch; but obeying her, he got up, lifted out the animal, sat down with it in his arms, and settled down to be the animal's mattress. Feeling wanted, Deidre sighed happily.

The black cast-iron kettle hanging from the serrated and
smoke-crusted
lapping crook on the chimney bar was softly simmering.
‘Yipps' went into the kitchen, got a jug of water, filled the electric kettle, and plugged in the lead.

“It takes seven minutes for this kettle to boil,” she said. “The element is furred thick with this awful hard water. You ought to be living in the Old Manor, you know, not this steward's cottage.”

At last the copper kettle, with its green acid stains, was steaming. Phillip's thoughts were with Lucy. Was she having a cup of tea with Tim at that moment?

“You look tired, ‘Little Ray'. You need sugar, it provides energy. Don't you usually take it?”

“It's rationed, and the children need it more.”

“Well, they're gone now!” she replied, sharply. “Except Billy. I'm really concerned for that boy. All he talks about is suckling calves. I saw him returning one of your precious pails the other day. Rattle, bomp! it hit the concrete. So there you are! What is the boy going to be when he's grown-up—a cattle drover? A pail basher?”

“As long as he doesn't become a Cut Price Prince with a chain of shops and a suite at the Morchester, that wouldn't be a bad idea.”

“Can't you be serious for a moment? You're wasting your life here, you know.”

“All life is a waste, in one sense.”

“Ooh, you men! You're slippery as eels!”

He wanted to go to his cottage and write his book. It was a book of optimism and hope, of the natural zests of farming land. He had to drive himself to write it against the deadly feelings of not knowing how his self-created
impasse
would end. He was a unit of a divided continent which had lost direction.

“Supposing when Billy is grown-up the poor little fellow doesn't want to be a farmer at all? Where is he then?”

“But why shouldn't he want to be a farmer? And in any case, if he's trained naturally in body and mind——”

“You mean as a labourer.”

He could not further keep his feelings out of his voice. “What is wrong with being a labourer? A labourer on the land is the backbone of the race.”

“Poor Billy—no mother, no schooling. Were you happy with his mother, who died so young, ‘Little Ray'?”

“‘Yipps', you know what the death of a loved one means——”

“Yes indeed, ‘Little Ray'.”

They sat in an easier silence before the fire. At last he said,
“About Billy's schooling, I believe in education for character, not academic knowledge. We need to begin again, in Britain and Empire, as pioneers, but with the motto of the Prince of Wales who was kicked out by Money. That motto is ‘I serve'.”

“Poor Billy. You and he—‘orphans of the storm'.”

“‘Yipps', the storm may blow all away before its over. We're at the beginning of a war that's going to alter the entire conception of life. Look how people are flocking to the countryside now. Teddy is right in what he says. When food gets short, everyone will want to buy a farm. That is the basis of his idea to provide a sort of funk-hole for rich men's sons on the land—there'll be a lot trying to turn farmer to dodge service in the army.”

“At least they will have had some education before they go as pupils on a farm. With such young men Billy might very well feel inferior. Oh, if only you would use properly the good brain God gave you!”

“I can't believe that Billy would be inferior to the pallid, lanky youths returning by train from the grammar school, or from
somewhere
more expensive.”

“Doesn't the fact that Billy's supposed to be the son of a gentleman mean anything to you?”

“He's not the son of a gentleman, he's the grandson.”

“Well, I think it is all a great shame! The trouble is, as Penelope told me only this afternoon, there is very little of the real person left in you.”

“That's what Cabton said.”

“Don't mention that creature to me. Ugh, cleaning his nails with that horrible knife! Well, I can't get anything definite out of you, that's certain. Does it ever occur to you that you get people here to work for you, use them, and then get rid of them when you've no more use for them? Oh yes, I know all about them. First there was Ernest, your brother-in-law. Then there was Felicity, and a Roman Catholic priest, and those horrible fascists. And now that child Melissa. Not to mention Teddy and me. Well, nothing I can do seems to please you. I've never been treated anywhere else in my life, as I've been treated since I came here! As for Billy, I can tell you it worries Teddy and me considerably, the future of that poor child. More tea, ‘Little Ray of Sunshine?”

“No, thanks, ‘Little Ray of Table Shine'.”

“But usually you have two cups at night.”

“I won't tonight, thanks very much.”

It was freezing again, he didn't want to awake about 1 a.m. and
lie in bed an hour or so before deciding, wearily, that he would have to get out and grope for the pot.

“Then you'll be thirsty later on and will want some, and accuse me of being uneconomical the next moment. At least, you'll think so, even if you don't actually say so, won't you, ‘Little Ray?”

“I won't have any more tea, thank you, ‘Yipps'.”

She poured him out a cup. “There, you don't know your own mind. So I will decide for you.”

“Okay, as Teddy would say.”

“Why didn't you say so at first, instead of pimminin', eh? Oh, it's like a vault in this room.”

Sitting down again she seized the bellows and blasted the embers with the spout thrust into their heart. Sparks and grey ash shot and floated in the smoke-black hollow of the bricks.

“If Teddy goes, will you take me as a partner?” she said, blowing less violently but still wasting the life of the embers. “I have a few thousands to spare. I can't see poor little Billy neglected so. I feel for him as though he were my own son. Rupert will be coming home from his prep-school in a few days, and Billy will have a friend. With the money of a half share you could send him to school, and he and Rupert could enjoy themselves here in the holidays. What do you want for a half-share, two thousand, isn't it?”

He replied with forced lightness of tone, “Of course, I'm not sure it is exactly two thousand, ‘Yipps'. That's only what I valued the stock and covenants and tillages at—including the sugar-beet, and this year's corn, in stack and barn. It may be less than that sum, I can't really say.”

“Well, no need to be pimminin' over minor details, ‘Little Ray'. Doesn't my offer solve two problems at once?”

It creates two more problems, he thought. “May I think about it when I have talked to Teddy?”

“It has nothing to do with him. He has no capital.”

“Then perhaps the sensible thing to do is to sell the farm and have an auction, ‘Yipps'. I'll go back to the army, in the ranks.”

“Don't you ever think of me? All my things are here, and my house may be let by now!”

“But surely you said that it was in the market anyway to be let furnished before you ever thought of coming down here with Teddy?”

“I don't wish to hear any more about it!” she said, and crouched to the blasting of the embers.

“I—I think I'll go and throw a dart with Teddy. Well, if I
don't see you again, I'll say Goodnight now.” But ‘Yipps' had gone behind her shut door.

He walked down the village street to his cottage. All was dark around and before him, except for two wavering spots of light no bigger than halfpennies. Voices. Dim spidery outlines—Billy and ‘Pinwheel' coming home from the talkies at Crabbe.

“Hullo, Dad.”

“Hullo, sir. I wonder—may I have a word with you, sir?”

“Come to my cottage, ‘Pinwheel'.”

Seen by electric light behind 1918 army blankets, the improver's eye was bright.

“It's about a cottage, sir. I was wondering if I could, in my spare time, which seems excessive, sir, help Captain Pinnegar do up your new cottage? Then perhaps I might—purely as a service cottage of course—have this one.”

“So you want to be on your own?”

“Frankly, sir, I feel that I cannot sit at your groaning board, as a passenger, any longer. I'm not paying my way on the farm. I speak only for myself, sir, but I have eyes in my head. If you'll forgive my saying so—the farmer is getting nothing out of the present organisation.”

“‘Pinwheel', you are a good fellow. Let me show you the books of ‘the Bad Lands'.”

The farm books—trading accounts, capital account—were now kept meticulously. Phillip went over them item by item. “Well, that's the situation, ‘Pinwheel'.”

“I won't comment, sir, on your confidence, which does me
honour
, if I may say so. Things are in the red, I agree. But I would like to say one thing—if this were a dairy farm, with all the meadows you have, and the steep fields—‘the Bad Lands', as you call them—put down to grass, or seed mixtures for milk, and the cows folded on them, and perhaps a milking bail taken out to the fields—well, your farm should produce, every year, a nett profit equal to more than half the entire capital value of the land at the price you paid for it, sir. Fifteen hundred a year.”

“You would like to see it producing milk, and a pedigree herd?”

“I would very much indeed, sir. And I don't think it would be too difficult. The concrete roads through your yards are done. The cowhouse floor is done—there is a dung and liquid manure passage, I see, hidden under Matt's private
archeologically-preserved
inside dungstead. Your artesian well is bored, water is
laid on throughout the cowhouse. It only wants to be used. There are plugs in the horizontal pipe leading from the tank for drinking bowls to each stall. I see wonderful possibilities, sir, of a rising annual profit to eighteen hundred or even two thousand pounds.”

The effect of ‘Pinwheel's' practical enthusiasm on Phillip was one of slightly antagonistic helplessness. He observed this reaction upon himself, and thought that it was due to habit: during the past three years, almost every day had been such that his mind was set to confront the spirit of negation.

“There's another reason why I thought of a cottage, sir. I really want to get married, for that is the proper base from which to work. In the immediate past”—he grinned—“I didn't know which of two girls I liked best.”

“Calf love, perhaps, ‘Pinwheel'?”

“Well hardly, sir. I've slept with both of them on and off, so I know them basically, so to speak. But I'd never choose a wife unless she rang my upper bell, so to speak, sir, as well. You know, all feelings at all levels at once, and the finest feeling is not just sex, sir, but freedom of the spirit. I'd never choose a wife who didn't ring my upper bell, sir.”

“So you're a bellringer, are you? Do you believe in seducing virgins, ‘Pinwheel'?”

“Good lord no, sir! That's sex-in-the-head. Besides, nowadays a boy and a girl seduce one another. I take a poor view of sexual deceit in any form, sir. So do all my friends, both girls and boys. We never sleep with anyone we don't love, sir. Mere sex is an over-rated pastime, from the sense of frustration it is liable to engender. And that impedes efficiency, or the sense of well-being.”

“Did you learn all this at the Wye Agricultural College?”

“Partly, sir. After hours, if you know what I mean. We used to discuss it in one another's rooms. Only very occasionally, of course. It can be very boring as a theoretical subject, not to say aseptic. It's the practice that counts, sir.”

“Ah.”

“I'm afraid I haven't made my meaning clear, sir. What I mean is, surely it can't be wrong to want to stroke a beautiful girl, sir. It gives me extraordinary pleasure to stroke hair—the curve of the neck sir, and the ear disclosed by lifting the curls. Most beautiful. Then the limbs—the wrist particularly, and the elbow. The arch of the instep—and just above the knee. The ribs, sir—I've spent hours stroking a girl's ribs.”

“How much whisky have you been drinking, ‘Pinwheel?'”

“Three half-quarterns, sir. That's my limit.”

“I'd no idea the new generation was so abstemious.”

“We owe quite a lot to you, sir, you know. Your Donkin tetralogy, especially.”

“A few, here and there, ‘Pinwheel'. God, I sound like a phoney fogey.”

“Not at all, sir. And your readers, sir, are here, there, and everywhere.”

“Three half-quarterns, you said. Could you perhaps hold just a wee dram?”

“Certainly, sir!”

Phillip got a bottle out of a drawer and poured two drinks.

“Cheerho.”

“Cheerho, sir.”

“So you want to get married, ‘Pinwheel'. You know, I think you'd make a good dairy manager. But the War Agricultural Committee wants us to plough up grassland for corn. I doubt if they'd allow us to develop as a dairy farm. However, it's a fine idea. Have you told anyone else?”

“Only one person, sir. As a matter of fact, she is not one of the girls I mentioned just now. There has been no love-making between us. I feel so confident about her, that I'd marry her tomorrow if she'd have me. And after only one meeting, sir.”

“Love at first sight, ‘Pinwheel'?”

“Instinct, sir. The trouble is, she's in London, and must know a lot of chaps. She's a wizard girl. I'm afraid most beautiful girls attract me, but after meeting this one, I
know
,
sir, that she is the only one for me.”

“You're fortunate, ‘Pinwheel'.”

“May I tell you who she is, in confidence, sir?”

“If you wish. I usually forget names, so you'll be quite safe.”

“But you know her, sir. And she has a very high opinion of you, sir, if I may say so.”

“One of my ‘fans'?”

“Yes, sir. She is Melissa Watt-Wilby.”

*

The next evening when Teddy Pinnegar took down his
twelve-bore
and cartridge belt Phillip said at once, “Would you like to go on the meadows, Teddy?”

“Are you sure you don't mind?”

“You add to the gaiety of nations, Teddy. Besides, aren't you
spending every morning and early afternoon in decorating the upstairs rooms of the ‘new' cottage for me?”

Thoughts of that ‘new' cottage made Phillip feel weak. All private building had ceased, and the one room downstairs, the kitchen, was hopeless. It was as cold and damp as the circular bricked draw-well. There were hundredweights of moisture in those old brick walls, put up long ago without damp-course; particularly in the north wall, against which the coastal road outside rose nearly three feet above floor level. The plaster was covered with a sort of mildew where damp had brought out the lime in the mortar.

As for the heavy worn pavers of the kitchen floor itself, many of them had been cracked by someone in the past bumping logs in which a blunt axe had probably been stuck. These pavers were black with a sort of slime. The cold struck up from them. And the bigger the wood-fire burning in the cavernous open hearth, from which the cracked and rusty cooking range had been levered out, the greater the draught across the kitchen floor.

The room was a dungeon. Teddy did not attempt to paint the matchboard panelling against the road-wall. The wood bulged with the cracked patterns of dry rot. Behind the layers of paint, which held the panelling from falling, the deal boarding was brittle. One slight kick, and an area fell away. It was a dead room. The last occupant's wife had died in it.

The name of River View, bestowed in past hopefulness, was still discernible in faded white letters on the broken-down gate leading to the road. But the labourer had lost his job in the depression; his wife, fed on tinned skim milk, marked
Not
for
Infants
,
had died of tuberculosis; the labourer, so long out-of-work, had lost hope. At last he had ceased to till his garden. It was the last despair before going into the workhouse.

The cottage had been standing empty, until Phillip bought it. “They've found a mugg,” declared Horatio Bugg, the rabbit-skin and meal-sack merchant of the petrol pump. “He paid eighty pounds for it. It's only worth sixty. Ah, why did Phillip Maddison buy it? He told me he was going to fill it up with concrete and make a pill-box of it ready for when Hitler comes.”

Phillip had indeed pulled Horatio Bugg's leg with those words. But what he wanted to do was to dig up the old pavers and put down a three-inch batch of water-repellent cement, and a wooden floor on top, after hacking off all old plaster from the walls and replacing it with the same water-proofing cement. Then to skim plaster on the walls.

The upstairs of River View was divided into two small bedroom by a flimsy partition of match-boarding reinforced by layers o wall-paper. During the summer before the war Phillip had bought a wide metal window framed with thirty-six panes of glass, each a foot high and nine inches wide. The village bricklayer had removed the old wooden window from the southern wall and replaced it with this ‘lighthouse' window which now filled almost the entire Southern length of the bedroom.

The sunshine poured in. Another metal window had been let into the eastern wall, bringing light to the inner bedroom. So there were possibilities in River View, for during that summer the wood partition between the two bedrooms had been torn down; a new frame of two-inch by two-inch studs fixed; and to this heavy insulation boards, made of pressed shavings impregnated with cement, were nailed, and plastered smooth. It made a firm wall.

There were possibilities of a decent cottage, if only the job could be finished. Phillip had not asked ‘Pinwheel' if Melissa had accepted his offer of marriage; she had not written to him, beyond a short note of thanks for her week-end; perhaps she had not been able to tell him.

*

Morning after morning Teddy had been going upstairs to the bedrooms of River View to paint slowly and quietly sills,
wainscotings
and doors, all in cream paint.

The larger of the two rooms, with its lighthouse window, had an immediate view below of the garden. Beyond the heaps of tins and bottles tipped on to the vacant garden site in the past by Horatio Bugg was the river, then a small paddock adjoining a butcher's slaughter-house, which must have been the River View of olden time. Now it was a dumping place of sheep-skulls, bullocks' jaws and horns hidden in summer by nettles, docks, and other rank weeds.

Ancient cankered apple trees sprawled in the garden, above attenuated and wild cabbage plants which grew, as though sick, among Horatio Bugg's trash dumps and rusty remains of various abandoned bicycles.

*

Winter was now set hard outside upon the valley scene; but clothed anew in cream paint and distemper, the lighthouse room glowed when the sun shone.

Yes, ‘Pinwheel' should have his old cottage up the street. Phillip brought up a horse and tumbril, and helped by Teddy and ‘
Pinwheel
', began the move one Saturday afternoon in late December
of that year of 1939. He was sorry to leave the downstairs room of the old cottage where he had sat at night for over two years since selling the Old Manor. It was a well-balanced room, taller than most cottage parlours. The eighteenth-century date, with the builder's initials, was carved on a stone set in the flint gable-end facing south—a pleasing gable, stucco'd with white pebbles from the sea-shore, and edged with brick. The roof had a pitch more acute than most of the local cottage roofs.

It was the lowest of three cottages in a row, which he had rebuilt soon after coming to Deepwater Farm. They had been condemned as human dwellings; now they were dry where before they had been damp; light where they had been dark. The bedrooms were taller, with new roofs. The walls were sound where they had been cracked. Yet the casement windows, new three years before, were already showing signs of falling to pieces from faulty joinery. Some of the tiles of one of the roofs had blown off in a gale. Snow and rain came through the bituminous felt overlaying the rafters, where the pointed shoes of the young man laying the tiles had broken the felt.

To Phillip, the reconditioning of the condemned cottages had been costly, using most of his capital for no return, since the rents, eighteen pence a week, landlord paying rates, were in line with other service cottages in the district. To Horatio Bugg, the reconditioning had been a mystery. New cottages, with septic tanks and water, could have been built cheaper on a new site somewhere on the estate. Ah ha, he got the idea! These cottages were on the road which led from the only deep-anchorage harbour on the East Coast between Thames Estuary and Humber!

To Phillip, the cottages were now Maddison's Folly. But to some others before the war the rebuilding did not appear as a failure. In the top cottage lived Mrs. Valiant with her husband, a man who had laboured on a neighbouring farm for almost half a century. With them were her son and daughter-in-law. There were four bedrooms in Top Cottage, and two downstairs rooms. Mrs. Valiant had come to Phillip, begging to be allowed to occupy the cottage, saying that where she lived it was so dark and damp.

“The Council condemned it years ago, with the others beside it, but nothing wor' done. They make promises, then they say there is no money to carry out the promises. Oh, please, do give me a chance, sir!”

Phillip had intended the two upper cottages to be kept as
service-cottages
: for a farmer without service-cottages was impotent to hire
new men, who expected to live in his cottages. But Top Cottage had stood empty; and Mrs. Valiant looked to be a neat and tidy woman, with a sensitive face that he liked at once, so he had yielded to her plea. He told her that he could not allow any
hen-houses
or rabbit-hutches to be erected in the garden; and, as the paths had been relaid with new gravel, and much time spent on clearing the gardens of broken bottles, tins, and other rubbish, he did not want them to degenerate into what they were before he came, and would they please not throw coal-ashes and cinders there?