A Solitary War (19 page)

“We thought after the last war that would happen, you know,” the weary voice replied through the open door. “When I was farming in Essex, I went broke in the depression. Farmers could not afford even to plough their lands. When my tractor business
failed I bought a saw-mill, but my partner let me down. Then I got pneumonia, and had to sell out at a loss. My uncle helped me again, and I went to Rhodesia, and had a tobacco farm, near two other fellows, both ex-soldiers, one of them a gunner like myself. They went broke, too, I think, in the bad years. I remember I sold one of them a bath. After that I went south to the Cape and bought a hotel, but that wasn't much good. It was the worst of the depression by then, and I lost most of my remaining capital. Then my son died and my wife and I drifted apart, and I met this girl I told you about, and we had a child, but she left to go home to be with her mother.”

“Does she still love you, d'you think?”

He asked the question to find out how experienced Desmond was: if he still had—as he looked to have—a conceit of his own male infallibility.

“I feel it all the time that she loves me, and is suffering equally with me. I can feel the etheric waves passing from my spirit to hers.”

Phillip didn't know what to say to that: he knew the dull pain and hope and perplexity of one seeking, in spirit, lost love.

“She and I were deeply in love, and I can't believe she has changed. She is younger than I, sixteen years in fact. A man younger than I wants to marry her.”

More pages turned of
The
Oxford
Book
of
English
Verse.

After a deep sigh, Desmond's voice asked, “What's your farm consist of?”

He told him; and of the dilemma of Teddy and ‘Yipps', whom Desmond had met at dinner.

“How can that fellow succeed at farming, when he's starting nearer fifty than forty?” said the weary voice from beyond the doorway. “I've only seen him for an hour or so, but it was apparent at once that he has no drive. Look here, let me look round in the morning, will you? I've got an idea. I won't tell you now, I'll think about as I lie here.”

“You don't mind if I go to sleep?”

“Oh, no. What time to you get up?”

“About seven. In four hours' time. Is that too early for you?”

“Oh, no. I never sleep. I read
The
Oxford
Book
of
English
Verse
all night. It helps me to forget. Do you still like the music of
Tristan
and
Isolde
?”

“Yes, it still brings back my own black, burnt-out sun. The Bayreuth Festival records are stored down on the farm premises
somewhere. I say, do you mind if I close the door? The light stops me sleeping.”

“Not at all, old man. Don't let me worry you.”

Phillip got out of bed and before gently shutting the door looked round it and said, “Goodnight, Des.”

“Goodnight, Phil.”

How strange it sounded, the old-time address. He was glad Desmond was there.

Before he fell asleep an idea came to him. Perhaps his old friend was the partner he had been needing? The thought was like a rescue flare suddenly seen by a man swimming in darkness miles from land. But the light died away almost at once. He couldn't face any more trouble.

Melissa drifted through his heaviness. Thank God he hadn't committed himself to her, only to be inevitably abandoned as Desmond had been by his young woman. Love is sexual; William Blake wrote, ‘Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires'.

*

In the morning when he awakened he heard the soft turning of a page of the thin India paper of Desmond's book. Whether Desmond had slept or not he could not tell. Desmond ate nothing at breakfast in the farmhouse. He sat in one leather armchair while the old bitch lay in the other. He spoke seldom to Mrs. Carfax, but admitted that he felt the cold greatly after Africa. Poor Des, he was suffering both in body and mind.

Afterwards, in Phillip's cottage before a roaring fire of pine branches—which needless to say made the room feel colder, owing to those bloody draughts across the floor—Desmond said, “A partnership on a farm is the most difficult relationship in the world. Why, in Africa, partnership is a scientific thing! From the point of view of getting along, I mean. You may be the best of friends with a man, but the moment you set up in partnership there is conflict, however restrained. It's fatal, in the first place, even to live near your partner. One house at the near end of the farm and the other at the far: that's the usual formula. Even so, most men find it difficult to get on. Each wants a thing done his own way. Compromise ideas are no good, for in a compromise neither party yields the essentials of his plan.”

“As Napoleon said, ‘Give me one bad general in charge of an army rather than two good generals'.”

“Quite. As you are placed now, Phil, the position is palpably
hopeless. What does this man Pinnegar know of farming anyway? He just hangs about. What is he doing here? You tell me he's been here nearly two months and still nothing is decided. It's obvious that he's sponging on you. You asked me to be frank and I am frank.”

“Let's go round and see a friend of mine called Penelope. She knows all about the position here. You know, Des, your coming may be providential. You understand farming. I'll telephone and ask her if I may bring you.”

*

That evening they went round to Penelope's house. They arrived just as Mrs. Carfax was leaving. She also took her troubles to Penelope; so did Teddy Pinnegar.

“Her ladyship says will you go straight up,” said Mrs. Treasure.

Phillip led the way to the blue boudoir, where before a blazing coal fire Penelope was curled on the sofa, her two white borzois lying asleep on the end of it. She greeted them with the quiet and slightly vague manner she had learned by imitation of other young women in London pre-war society.

After Phillip had explained that Teddy's idea of a Farming College for thirty pupils paying nine thousand pounds annually was impracticable, and that the month's trial had become void owing to indecision, Penelope remained silent.

When she did not speak, Phillip said, “I've been wondering if Desmond is the partner I should have on the farm. If I may speak frankly before him, he seems to have a realistic view on the situation here. He has farmed his own land in Essex and South Africa. He tells me he failed in the general slump of nineteen twenty-three. Thousands of farmers went broke then, ruined by the repeal of the Corn Act. What do you think, Penelope?”

“I find it somewhat hard to make up my mind just at the moment,” she replied in a voice as impersonal as crushed ice. “Would you like some tea, or a drink?”

“Not at the moment, thank you.”

“If I came here,” said Desmond, in his slow, depressed voice, his eyes fixed on the hearthrug before him, “I should first have the soil of every field analysed to find exactly what it was deficient in, and therefore what it would and would not grow. I should convert the cowhouse for milk, and build up a herd, beginning with
tuberculin
-tested stock. Now is the time to buy. Later in the war prices will rise enormously. Phil is well-placed, really, although
he feels he has made only a failure here; and no wonder, with those two footling away aimlessly. Actually, he is well equipped. He bought on the ground floor, and now that everything is rising, his capital is appreciating. I would lay out the farm to be self-sufficient for a first-class pedigree dairy-herd, and four good men. Those meadows are ideal for ducks and geese, too. Poultry would be a profitable side-line.”

Penelope said in her most serene tones, “I find this recent suggestion, or rather development, a little confusing, Mr. Neville. Especially as I have heard it all before. Mrs. Treasure!” she called, and almost at once the housekeeper came into the room, bearing tray with decanter, syphon, and glasses.

“Oh, Mrs. Treasure, might we have some tea, please? Mr. Neville, would you mind helping yourself to a peg? And will you let the dogs out for me for their run in the garden, Mrs. Treasure? I shall not be long. Thank you, Mrs. Treasure.”

The dogs got obediently off the end of the sofa and followed the housekeeper out of the room and down the stairs. Soon muffled barking told that they were running around on the lawns below.

Desmond poured himself a drink and said, “To the new farm,” before swallowing. Phillip sipped his tea, wondering why Desmond was so insensitive to atmosphere.

“Have you seen this new bird book?” said Penelope to Phillip. “I thought that the photographs were rather fine.”

The dogs came in, and pushing past his legs collapsed before the fire in their established places.

“I shall be with you in a moment, Mrs. Treasure.”

“Goodnight, Penelope. Thank you so much.”

*

Upstairs in River View by the little three-legged table Desmond said he wanted Phillip to do something for him. Without further explanation he asked him to sit at the table and type a letter which he would dictate.

“I'm not a very good typist,” said Phillip, seating himself at the table, typewriter open, awaiting with concealed amusement Desmond's dictation.

“Mildred knows about you, and has read some of your books, which I gave her.”

“Who—er—is Mildred?”

“The girl I told you about. Now to begin—ready?”

“Ready.”

“Is the letter supposed to be from me?”

“Yes. My idea is that you shall invite Mildred to come here, with her child, and to accept, on behalf of my work, a half-share in the profits, on the understanding that I will manage the farm and she will look after the house-keeping.”

“I'll do that in my own words, Desmond.”

“Now if you sign it,” concluded Desmond, “and put it in an envelope and address it, I'll post it tomorrow. Have you got a stamp, old man?”

“Yes, I think I can manage a stamp.”

When this had been stuck on, Desmond said that he must go back to London the next morning, but the trouble was, he was out of funds.

“I wonder if you could cash me a cheque?”

“You catch me at a wrong moment, I'm afraid. I don't think there's more than a few shillings in the cash-box just now.”

Desmond then asked if he would lend him his fare back to London.

“Yes, there might be just enough for that. I'll look at the box in the morning.”

“It's only two pounds,” said Desmond. “I always travel
first-class.
”

Phillip wondered if he himself, in the past, had ever been so devoid of sensibility. Was it because Desmond had regarded him as a sort of fixture in his life, in place of his father? After all, from the age of nine years, when he had joined the Bloodhound Patrol, Desmond had been following his lead—until the break when Lily Cornford had come into both their lives. Until then, Desmond had always fallen in with his plans. That was the situation: Desmond had accepted him in all things, including money. When Desmond had grown away from him, he had no further use for the father substitute.

In the morning he took Desmond to the station to catch the 8 a.m. train to London. When he returned he resumed his writing on the three-legged table. The weather was by now intensely cold and he wrapped himself in blankets with a double sack of straw round his feet.

There was nothing else to do but write: to live in the imaginary world of his book.

He got no reply to the letter posted to Mildred. Nor did he hear from or see Desmond ever again.

About eleven o’clock in the morning Teddy came over to the
dug-out
kitchen of River View with a cup of tea and a plate of bread, butter and marmalade. He was his usual cheerful, kindly self. Phillip thanked him, once more making excuses for not coming to breakfast in the parlour.

“I am like a broody hen. If I see others, I am liable to affect them adversely. Also I must keep clear and single-minded for this book.”

“That’s okay by me, old boy. Your pal gone?”

“I have a feeling I won’t be seeing him again. He’s in a jam.”

“We’re all in a jam, if you ask me,” replied Teddy. “The whole bloody lot of us in this country. We don’t know where the hell we are. Well, I mustn’t stop the ‘genii’ working, as ‘Yipps’ calls you. As though you came out of a bloody lamp. Pantomime stuff.”

“I do partly come out of a lamp,” said Phillip.

He lifted his feet out of the straw and went to the corner
cupboard
which he had bought from the village baker for twelve shillings. It was a tall deal cupboard, well-made in the late eighteenth century. On one of the curved shelves within stood a japanned oil lantern. He lifted it down, and stood it on the table. “One day I shall write about this lantern.”

“I haven’t seen a bull’s-eye lantern like that since I was a kid,” exclaimed Teddy. “Well, I never. Where did you get it?”

“It belonged to my father. He called it his dark lantern, after Sherlock Holmes, I think. He used to collect moths at night. He once saw a Camberwell Beauty, very rare, and married my mother partly because she was born in Camberwell, then a village. He, like me, suffers from fantasies.”

He took a cloth cap with fore-and-end peaks from the cupboard. “He gave me this ancient deer-stalker cap, too. It was his father’s.”

He put the cap back in the cardboard box, which was strewn with moth-balls.

“You could wear that, you know, for duck-shooting. Why don’t you come out with me sometimes, Phillip? I miss a lot of birds flying at the other end of the meadows. Those guns in the sunken barrels beyond the boundary get a lot, judging by the reports. Let me try the deerstalker on, will you?”

“Be careful. It’s rather frail.”

“What else have you got in that cupboard? By jove, an old motor horn. Pity the bulb’s cracked. You know, I love old things like that.”

Hiding a silver hip-flask of whisky behind his grandfather’s diaries in the cupboard, Phillip said, “I bought that motor-horn at an auction down here somewhere, with a lot of old brass taps in a heap, for a couple of bob.”

“Is your father still alive?”

“Yes.”

“Mine died years ago. Where is your father living, Phillip?”

“In Dorset. He returned to the county of his birth after my mother died. He’s a solitary, like most of his family. One aunt lives in Essex, in a cottage; another lives at Bournemouth, also alone; a third lives with her maid in a house at Lynmouth. She’s the best of the lot. Aunt Dora used to be one of the pioneer suffragettes, but got worn out hunger-striking and being forcibly fed in prison. She’s now thoroughly ashamed of her German
part-ancestry
. Odd how people change into reverse as they wear out, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t know you had German blood.”

“Württemburg grandmother. I think I’ll get some colza oil, and write at night by the light of this lantern. It’ll keep my hands warm.”

“A real old hermit, you’re becoming. Well, I’ll leave you to it. ‘Yipps’ got on to me again last night for doing damn-all. Well, I must go and give the ‘tarkies’ their morning feed.”

At eleven o’clock, thought Phillip.

*

Specks of sleet wandered down past the window. Shutting away thoughts of the ménage next door, and of the bleak exterior
landscape
bound by frost, he entered the world he was re-creating in his book: a scene of summer, jack hares racing over the downs, the green gallypot calling in the beech hanger above Fawley. Exterior circumstances became insubstantial in his living. The men carried out what work could be done on the farm—routine feeding and littering bullocks; cutting and laying of hedges; scooping water
from the river into an antiquated water-cart on wobbly cast-iron wheels; creosoting worm-eaten beams and rafters under tiled roofs. All he had to do was to hand over to Luke the wages each Friday. The items were in the book which Luke brought to him.

One afternoon on returning from the post office he surprised Mrs. Carfax in the downstairs room of his cottage. She had opened one of the lower drawers of the desk which stood along one wall. She took a small jar of Tiptree jam, one of a dozen in a box he had bought for Lucy’s Christmas present.

“Well, ‘Little Ray of Sunshine’, why do you look like that? I want something extra nice for Penelope, she’s coming to tea.”

“That box of jam is a Christmas present for Lucy. The
Household
jam is in the seven-pound pots I bought—two dozen of them—from the Army and Navy Stores just before you came. There’s plum, greengage, marmalade, apricot, damson.”

“And all of it cooking jam. Penelope has been so hospitable to all of us, so you might let her have some of your own jams, after all the kindness she has shown you,” and ‘Yipps’ departed with a pot of quince.

Phillip breathed deeply, inspiring, and respiring, slowly, before continuing to write at the table until he was cold from head to shoulders, from feet to ribs. Electric fire-bars were unobtainable. He walked with a sack up to the Home Hills and picked up frozen sticks under the pines. On returning he relit the fire, then worked on with his feet in the straw until twilight, when through the frost-fern’d window he saw Penelope, in fur coat and sheepskin bootees, arrive with her two dogs. He imagined her sitting in Lucy’s boudoir with ‘Yipps’, talking about—what were they talking about? Wild birds? ‘Yipps’ didn’t know a tree-sparrow from a hedge-sparrow, or a redshank from a greenshank.

In preparation for the night he filled the dark lantern with a mixture of paraffin and engine oil (remembering the colza oil of boyhood), and set it on the table. It threw a yellow slanting beam on the paper. He imagined his young, brown-haired father writing by it, addressing envelopes in the front room of the little house by the railway cutting, as Mother had told him one day when he had got up through the bathroom ceiling trap-door of the new house in Hillside Road and discovered the lantern, with boxes of
butterflies
, a fishing rod and old tackle in one of the uniform cases hidden in the loft. Poor lonely father. He must send him some bacon and butter. He saw himself as a jack-in-box small boy, up in the loft, spoiling many of Father’s butterflies and taking his things without
permission. No wonder he had been beaten for telling lies and stealing.

He was warming his hands on the dark lantern and recalling many scenes in the smell of the hot japanned metal when a figure wheeled a bicycle past the window. He thought it was to do with the kitchen, and went on with his work. ‘Yipps’ and Penelope were having a little party together, so he remained where he was, although he would have liked a cup of tea and bread-and-butter.

The snow-pallor beyond the window was now more deathly. He was hanging blankets over the windows when there was a knock on the door. Teddy came in. “Sorry to interrupt you, but there’s a girl friend of yours in the house. She says she’s come to look after you. She won’t give her name. She says she’s cycled up from Suffolk.”

“Is she very dark, with staring blue eyes?”

“They look pretty dull to me.”

“It sounds like Laura Wissilcraft!”

“Is that her real name? Who is she?”

“I thought she might be a sort of genius, and met her on my way up here to look at this farm before I bought it.”

Teddy’s voice took on a diplomatic softness. “Well, perhaps you’d better come in, old man.”

Left alone, Phillip got the flask of whisky from the cupboard, put it in his pocket, and went into the farmhouse parlour, to recognise the girl from the Wooltod Inn sitting in the leather
armchair
and stroking the golden retriever. There was the remembered pale face, pale with despair, lips tight in fortitude, the blue eyes set darkly beyond. Seeing him, she got up from the chair and pointing an arm cried, “Oh, why do you lie to me? You wrote that your wife had gone away, and you were unhappy, and I find you here with these Society ladies!”

After this accusation she sank back in the armchair, an action which partly displaced the groaning bitch. Billy and ‘Pinwheel’ began to talk about tractors as they sat on the bench along the table. Maude and May, the two fifteen-year-old village maids, appeared from the kitchen ostensibly to take a tea-tray. They gave the stranger curious and half-frightened glances.

“Undoubtedly, Billy, crawlers pan the sub-soil less than horses or the ordinary heavy tractor wheel.” ‘Pinwheel’ gave a swift glance at Phillip’s face.

“Ah, ’bor,” said Billy, wisely.

Phillip said, “If I had known you intended to bike all this way,
and be so concerned about me I wouldn’t have written such a morbidly realistic letter.”

Mrs. Carfax and Penelope, with her two well-behaved thin white dogs, came out of the adjoining room. At once ‘Pinwheel’ rose to his feet, followed by Billy. The girl continued to mourn in the armchair. Then suddenly jumping up, she cried, “What are all these people doing here?”

Penelope said to Mrs. Carfax, “Well, it was
so
kind of you to ask me. And may I change my mind? I think I would like to come to dinner. Hullo, Phillip, how goes the book?” Without waiting for a reply she turned to Mrs. Carfax and said, “I’ll come back at about a quarter-to-eight, is that all right?” and with a smile over her shoulder to Billy, Penelope went out of the door.

Phillip followed her upon the treacherous darkness of the path. “Can you see your way? Do be careful, it’s so slippery for
crepe-rubber
soles.”

“Thank you, I can find my own way, the moon is rising,” and Penelope went down the road.

He returned to the parlour. “Have you had any food?”

“Food!”

“Well, you know, when one is exhausted one’s thoughts get dark and depressing. You have bicycled a long way. Do you mind if my friend and I have some tea, ‘Yipps’? It’s rather late, I’m afraid—”

“I’ve already asked her to have tea, but she refuses.”

‘Yipps’ went into the kitchen. She came back with polishing cloths and a large tin of Whaxshine.

The thin elderly bitch retriever, despairing of less than half her armchair, curled herself shakily beside an oil stove. She stared sadly at her mistress, and let out a howl. Billy burst into laughter. ‘
Pinwheel
’ gave him a stern look. Billy ran out of the door. ‘Pinwheel’ followed.

The occupant of the armchair looked up, pointed at Phillip and cried, “Who are all these people?”

“I’ll tell you when you’ve had some food.”

“How can you talk of
food
!
Oh!” and once again she hid her face in her arm.

‘Yipps’ followed Billy and ‘Pinwheel’, leaving the two alone in the room.

Phillip pulled the flask of whisky from his hip pocket.

“Have a drink,” he said, drawing up a chair. “Laura, please help me. Things are not what they seem here.”

“You deceived me.”

“That’s what everyone’s thinking. It’s not altogether true. I hoped there might be something between us, when I read your letters. You are a writer, you know, all your feeling is in your head.”

“You lied to me,” she repeated, and made to get up, only to collapse again into the saddle-bag chair.

“You’re exhausted, Laura. Do help me. This household isn’t what it seems to you. There’s a lot of unhappiness here. Please try to understand.”

“Your Society friends!”

“Anyway, I don’t know how long Teddy Pinnegar and Mrs. Carfax will stay—”

“You say that, and yet you are on the best of terms with them!”

“Only on the surface. One day you will understand others, by understanding yourself. You will, one day, then you’ll be a good writer.” He faltered. “I don’t know. I’m not able to cope, really.”

“You don’t have to sleep in a room with a snoring grandmother, and feed pigs all the time.”

“The dead can also haunt the living.”

“You are thinking of your dead wife all the time, the first one.” He was relieved by this sign of divination. “Well, you have
perception
of character. Use it for writing with compassion about others.”

“William Blake wrote, ‘Drive your plough over the bones of the dead’.”

“Yes.”

“And you also said, ‘An even higher authority said, Let the dead bury their dead’.” Her expression had changed, it was the eyes, which held a lambent glow.

“How old are you, Laura?”

“Does age matter?”

“It does, I’m afraid. The ‘real’ me is very nearly gone.”

“Only the essence of personality matters. You are the same as you always were, if only you would let vourself tell the truth. Why did you send me that letter saying your wife had gone, and you were lonely?”

“I am lonely. Everyone here is lonely, too, if only you would believe it. But I’d be less lonely if only you would come out of
your
dark self, inside your mortified self, to meet me. Your poems are lyrical, so are your letters. So is my work. So we’re really the same. Have some whisky!”

“Whisky!”

“It’s a food, the essence of barley. You’re exhausted after your ride.”

He drank half a quartern. “That’s better! I’m exhausted, too, but not so far down as you are, on the black rocks below the crashed boulder of Sisyphus. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again’. Use your head, Laura, arise and whistle like the wings of a pheasant when it’s disturbed by poachers. You’ve got a poacher’s name, d’you know that?” He drank more whisky. “One of my fields is called the Nightcraft, it’s where poachers net rabbits and partridges on moonlit nights.”

“Why are you talking like this?”

“I’m trying to get you out of the peat, you smothered laurel tree!”

“You don’t understand.”