Authors: Henry Williamson
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Top of my thigh. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
“Thought it was elsewhere?”
“I don’t know what you mean. Why do you keep looking at your watch?”
“I’ve got to get home, and it’s some distance, about four miles from Charing Cross.”
“I can give you a bed on this sofa, if you like.”
“Well, thanks very much, but my parents might wonder where I am.”
“Oh, that’s your trouble, is it? ‘Mother’s little boy’.”
“Well, not exactly. I used to go home tight after the war, and my father was a bit of a nervous wreck, after being blown up by a Zeppelin bomb, and couldn’t sleep until he felt that everyone was safely in the house. We had some trouble, all my fault, and I promised to let them know if I was going to be late, or not going home. That’s all about it.”
“Well, stay for another cup of tea, won’t you?”
“Thanks. Now may I ask you a question? Do you love Broughton?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I do. He’s rather lonely, poor dear. Lost his father in the war, and six months ago his mother died under an operation. He was an only child.”
“Ah, now I understand why you pretended that old Tenby Jones was going to paint you!”
“Jimmy’s asked me to marry him, Phillip.”
“What about the Indian Army subaltern?”
“Oh, I made him up. He was useful to help fight off men with only one thought about girls in their head.”
“I’ll keep your secret about Jimmy, Poppett!”
“You’re a nice man, Phillip,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “You’re in love with that girl Tabitha, aren’t you? Surely she loves you, too?”
“I can’t make her out, to tell you the truth.”
“You shouldn’t try to make out a girl, Phillip. All a girl wants is stability and affection, love grows out of that.”
Something rattled against the window pane. “Ah, there he is. He’s seen my light.”
Broughton came in with a false smile on his face.
“We’ve been to the Café Royal,” said Phillip, rising, “and have just got back.”
“Yes, I saw your taxi.”
“Are there many about at this hour?” It was nearly half-past eleven.
“You might find one with luck,” replied Broughton, his face brightening.
“I came over this afternoon hoping to find you and Quick at Mrs. Portal-Welch’s tea-party, and suggest that we all go to the chalk quarry again, hence this garb. Can’t we all go again another Sunday?”
“‘Never the time, and the place, and the loved one all together’,” quoted Poppett.
“‘The loved
ones
’,” murmured Phillip, lowering his gaze. “It was lovely for me, having you all with me—— Yes, I suppose Browning was right—‘Never the time, and the place, and the loved ones all together.’” He thought of Spica in the woods with him, and of Poppett, already part of the past. “Goodbye, dear friends,” he said, turning away to hide the tears in his eyes. “I’ll find my own way out, Poppett. Bless you both,” and he was gone.
No taxi-driver would take him to Wakenham at that time of night, and he walked, arriving home just before 2 a.m. His father had gone to the office before he got up. He returned to London, to call at Anders Norse’s basement, and to find a letter from Spica, enclosed in a small packet.
… I also return the crucifix. For the same reason that you now want it I had no intention of keeping it much longer when I asked you to still let me have it, on your last visit, or the last time I saw you at Folkestone. Only it is not always necessary to heap up pain, and I hoped that if I did not return it just yet it would not hurt so much later on. Dear little crucifix, treasure it very carefully for it is holy with the love of three people and has stood and stands for much.
You should not say that I have no confidence in you; the crucifix even gives that the lie. What I say is that you are not yet ready to possess a woman all your own. You have not yet taken up your heritage of manhood. All your friends who love you try to tell you this but it hurts you and you will not listen. I hoped that I, who have striven to teach you as no one else has ever tried to show you, might one day show you, but that is denied. Perhaps someone else will succeed. Oh, my dear, why can’t you see. As you are now, you hurt yourself, you hurt others and you will eventually hurt your power
of writing so that you will never do that which could have been in your power.
Phillip, there is a door in our lives marked by a crucifix which has been shut. For the sake of all that lies in its beauty and sweetness behind the door, I do ask you most earnestly and yearningly, won’t you make a great effort to fight, that you may lose yourself, and in that loss loosen the fetters which bind your genius, and also come to happiness. May it be so, and so Goodbye,
Spica.
The following morning, passing the movie-palace in Leicester Square where some months before he had recognised an officer of his regiment in the uniform of the commissionaire, Phillip went in to enquire about him, and learned that Bill Kidd had left the job to join the Black and Tans in Ireland, as the ‘Special Police Force’ raised by Lloyd George to fight the Sinn Feiners was called; and that after setting fire with tins of petrol to a farmhouse in County Cork, where a gunman on the run was thought to be hiding, the farmer’s wife and children had been burned alive; for this Bill Kidd and his band were ambushed and killed by some of Michael Collins’s men.
It had happened in the winter, so the story was old; but there remained Lauritz Melchior. Phillip wrote about him, and took the article to Monks House. Bloom read it, dropped it, and said, “‘Successor to Caruso?’ Well, confidence for confidence, I’m the successor to Samuel Pepys.”
“Isn’t your paper interested in news of things that have really happened? Or does it all have to come out of your pail of old-fashioned dope?”
“Now, now, enthusiasm’s all right, as I told yer, but this paper ain’t the
Musical
Times.
If this busker pal of yours is so hot, why hasn’t Ernest Newman heard of him? D’yer read his column in
The
Sunday
Times
? Yer don’t? Well I do. The time to tell ’em about this tenor is when he cracks the chandelier at Covent Garden, or falls into the big bass drum. As I told yer, Maddison, enthusiasm’s all right, but you let it run away with yer!”
“I’m a race horse, quite unsuitable to pull your weekly dustcart! And the fact is, the new world is running away from you!”
“You ought to do well in fiction. Only mind them——”
“Airy ziffers! Well, thanks for considering my story. Goodbye, B.B.! You know, I quite enjoyed my little canter with the old
Weekly
Courier
!”
“Well, I told yer when I first saw yer that I liked yer, and I still like yer, Maddison! And I’m glad to see yer perked up! Good luck to yer.”
Bloom drew a hand from his pocket and held it out limply to be shaken.
“Oh, by the way, Mr. Bloom. You remember the Bride’s Wedding Cake nonsense? Well, here’s the point. This is
news,
you know! If solid foundations of this new hardened concrete were sunk into London Clay, then they could build much taller buildings, as in New York, and so give more space in the City of London, and they could have gardens there, and lawns——”
“Write it in a prophetic book, you’ve got imagination, write an H. G. Wellsian pattern,” said Bloom, to get rid of him. But Phillip had not finished.
“Oh, before I go, Mr. Bloom. I see the Chief is after
The
Daily
News,
trying to get it to declare its net daily sale. It’s a circulation war, I know, now that
The
Daily
Trident
has passed the million mark.”
“Well?” said Bloom.
“
The
Daily
Trident
is advertising that it will give six full-page advertisements on its front page to anyone who will get
The
Daily
News
to declare its net daily sale.”
“Why don’t yer try,” suggested Bloom. “Then yer could advertise yer airy ziffers!” and he turned away.
Phillip went up to Bouverie Street. He saw the Editor of
The
Daily
News.
“Why don’t you declare the circulation of your paper, sir, and then advertise it every day for six days on the front page of the
Trident
! You’d have the laugh of Fleet Street, and if you printed some of your really good articles there, it would lure readers to
The
Daily
News.
I could let you have a really wonderful article written by a cousin of mine, who is working with the War Graves Commission, about the German Concentration Graveyard at the Labyrinthe. It’s inspired, a plea for Christian forgiveness by one who was much younger than I, and who won the Military Cross. He’s a genius, sir.”
The polite and almost suave Editor smiled, and shook his head. “I’m afraid what you suggest is impracticable, but thank you for coming to see me.”
Phillip went back to Monks House. There he told Bloom that the Chief’s offer was open to infiltration, with danger of his flank being turned, since, as it stood,
The
Daily
News
could declare its circulation and so claim six days’ free advertising. Bloom
made no comment; Phillip knew he was a director of the Castleton Press.
He still hoped to help the Danish tenor, Melchior, who had had no engagements in London so far. He went round to Covent Garden and found the Opera House closed. From there he walked to Adelphi Terrace, where Anders Norse told him that J. D. Woodford had advised Hollins to accept his novel, and they had offered
£
25 advance against a rising scale of royalties.
In great zest he returned home at once to tell his mother.
“Oh Phillip, I think Father has something to say to you, dear.” She looked anxious. “Oh yes, and here’s a letter that came by this afternoon’s post, re-addressed from your cottage in Malandine.”
The envelope contained an Invitation to an At Home in Inverness Terrace, from Mrs. J. D. Woodford for that evening.
“What does Father want me for?”
“Well dear, it’s not for me to say, but I am afraid that he thinks you are wasting your life, with nothing to do.”
“But I
have
something to do, Mother! My novel is accepted for publication, and I’ve had another story taken, by the
Royal
Magazine
! That’s about forty pounds in hard cash!”
“Oh, I am so glad, dear! Do tell your father that, won’t you?”
Richard started off before Phillip could speak. “I have told you before, I refuse to have my house treated as an hôtel. I consider, moreover, that your writing is merely an excuse to loaf, and to lead an idle life! For months you have been coming home at one and two in the morning, and I have been unable to sleep. You have been out of the Army now for eighteen months, and have had two jobs, both of which you have lost. Now I must ask you to leave this house at once!”
“May I have your permission first to shave and dress, please? I am invited to a publisher’s party this evening.”
“Another party? May I inquire when it is that you propose to settle down, and do some real work?”
Having dressed, Phillip went outside to strap his bag to the carrier of his motor-cycle, then he returned to the sitting-room.
“Goodbye, Father. I quite understand how you feel. One day——” His voice was untrustworthy as he held out his hand. With a surprised look, Richard got up and formally shook hands.
Phillip went to the front room. “Goodbye, Mother. Don’t worry.” He pulled on his trench coat, with its warm linings of
camel’s-hair and oiled silk. “I
know
I shall succeed! Please don’t worry.”
“I’ll try not to, dear. You will write, won’t you?”
“Yes, of course I’ll write!”
“And say something nice that I can show your father, won’t you? He feels lonely, you know.”
He kissed her goodbye. Only when the front door, with a multiple clicking of its several well-oiled locks, was shut behind him did he remember the B.S.A. air-rifle Father had swopped for his army revolver. He waited during a minute and then rang the bell shortly. His mother opened the door immediately. Tears lay on her cheeks, but she tried to smile cheerfully and speak in an ordinary voice. They embraced once more; then clutching the gun in its brown canvas case, he secured it with string to the tank of the Norton. In the tank were two gallons of petrol, enough for a hundred and forty miles. That would take him two-thirds of the way to his cottage. Petrol was expensive, four and six a gallon; but he had
£
3 in the bank, and the
£
40 to come.
The immediate problem was, Where to go? He thought of Julian. Having tested the straps of the bag on the carrier, he waved to the face in the window smiling wanly between the aspidistra and bowls of hyacinths and daffodils; and gripping the rubber-taped handlebars, shoved off down the road, to turn the corner and away up Charlotte Road and past the lighted church, the drumming beats of the engine heard against the music of the organ.
Julian was not in, but Mr. Warbeck was. Entering the sitting-room, Phillip said, “The guv’nor has sacked me!” with what he hoped was a devil-may-care expression appropriate to Julian’s father.
“Ah,” said the old gentleman, pulling his grey moustache, and regarding Phillip sombrely for a few moments. “That is most interesting: for I have been wondering for some time now how I can similarly rid myself of the incubus of that useless and plausible young gentleman—ahem!—whom I so proudly realise to be my son.”
The grey eyes under shaggy eyebrows were staring thoughtfully. Pulling one drooping moustache, the old man asked Phillip if he had had any tea.
“Thank you, but I won’t have any, thanks.”
“Nonsense, my dear fellow, nonsense! You mustn’t let a little
thing like a parental ejection interfere with an otherwise normal and well-ordered life! Julian would eat two teas in the same circumstances, I do assure you. Furthermore, you as a student of nature surely realise that one of nature’s laws is based on the principle of the activated hoof. Of course you want tea.” He rang the bell.
Julian’s aunt came into the room. “Hullo, Maddison! What a transformation! Washed, shaved, and dressed for dinner! The last time you were here someone said, I forget who it was—Dorothy Caldwell, I think, who was a W.A.A.C. during the War—yes, Dorothy Caldwell said, after you’d gone, ‘Is it safe to sit near Maddison? He looks properly crummy.’ She’d seen you and Julian coming back from sleeping under the haystack that morning. You went to see the stars, didn’t you?”
“Humph!” said Julian’s father. “Three stars, I suppose. That’s where my bottle went, no doubt.”
Sipping tea that was too hot, Phillip told them of his invitation.
“Do my eyes deceive me,” said the old gentleman, almost ponderously, as he leaned forward, “can it be that you intend to meet the intelligentsia, or as Julian would say, the cognoscenti, or as Harold the Critic would say, the literati of London wearing studs of
bone
in your boiled shirt?”
Phillip said that he had no other studs, whereupon the old man dropped his bantering tone.
“In that case I beg you to allow me to offer you the loan of a pair of gold studs. Seriously, my dear boy, this is an event in your life, and in spite of the general decay of manners since the War, I do assure you——” He went upstairs and returning said, “You’ll find them on the bathroom table. I left the light on.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’ll stay to dinner, won’t you?” asked Julian’s aunt when he came down dressed. “And there’s a bed for you. I’ve told the maid to light a fire in the spare bedroom.”
“Thank you very much, Miss Warbeck.”
“Here’s a key before I forget,” said Mr. Warbeck. “I expect you’ll be late—but, however late you are, however much row you kick up, however drunk you are, I do assure you it will make no impression whatsoever on this household! There is beer in the cupboard under the stairs, in case you bring the cognoscenti with you—at least, there are a couple of dozen quart flagons there at the moment, but should my son choose to return with any
of his sporting friends before you return, I can’t guarantee that any will be left.”
Phillip thanked him for his kindness, but said he had given up drinking; and also smoking.
“We heard a rumour; but we put it down to another of Julian’s charming little—shall we say fictions—now that you have a novel accepted by—let me see, a Scottish publisher, isn’t it—yes, we took it to be one of Julian’s innumerable fictions.”
Mr. Warbeck was seventy-five years old, and had married late in life. Julian was his only child. Mr. Warbeck’s wife had died when Julian was a little boy, and Julian had been brought up by a governess and a housekeeper, both elderly.
“I should perhaps explain—” the voice of the old man went on, with ponderous humour, “and you must realise that I speak only as an onlooker—and while assuring you of my sincere congratulations that you and your agent have extracted twenty-five pounds out of a Scots publisher—speaking as an onlooker, as I remarked, I am utterly at a loss to determine how you managed it. Even allowing for that curious and inexplicable thing, the public taste, I must say—only as an onlooker, please understand—that I am inclined to agree with my son Julian in this one thing, at least—amazing as it seems that Julian and I should have anything in common—that the fact of your book being published, or about to be published, leaves me, well, flabbergasted!”
“Don’t you take any notice of what he says,” said Julian’s aunt, giving Phillip a smile. “I thought the parts you read to us a month or two ago, the country descriptions I mean, quite charming.”
“Well,” said Mr. Warbeck, “honestly, m’dear fellow, I’ve read worse novels—and by Heaven the world is full of very bad novels——” He looked challengingly at Phillip. “Yes, I’ve read worse novels, but——” He paused, and added decisively, “Not often.”
Phillip tried to smile easily. He was foolish to have lent the old man a typed copy. Julian and his father were much alike. He thought to leave the house; and with a shock recalled that he had nowhere to go.
“I’m looking forward to reading all of it,” said Julian’s aunt.
“Oh, thank you.” His heart was bubbling again: ever since the haemorrhage, his heart had beaten irregularly. He was afraid to tell anyone about it; his fear was that at any moment
it would recur, and he would disgrace himself. The doctor had advised him to go away for a long rest in the country.
Julian’s aunt went on knitting. The coal fire blazed in the iron grate. The old unhappy thoughts returned: why was so much of the heat wasted; rich smoke going up the chimney, unburned power, to foul the air of the world? One day such things would be looked upon with amazement: such squandering of the things of the earth, such fouling of the air and light of the world.
How dreadfully hot it was, he could not breathe, his heart seemed to beat a double beat, and then a long pause wherein blackness came upon his sight. He sat still, gripping the edges of the chair, praying they would not notice him, shielding his eyes against the glare of the incandescent gas-mantle. With great relief he heard the voice of Aunt Julia saying, “It’s getting close in here. I’ll open the window!”
“No, let me!” Perhaps it was the heat, after all! The oxygen let into the room appeared to revive Mr. Warbeck as well as himself, for he continued his satiric attack on Julian.
“Tomorrow morning, no doubt about it, that delightful son of mine will return with a story of how still yet another publisher was impressed almost into making an offer for his Catullus translation, and will with his usual courtesy on such occasions suggest that he become thereby still more deeply in my debt; but the point, my dear sister, is that we three will, with any luck, be unmolested during dinner, when I propose to crack one of my last bottles of Veuve Cliquot in celebration of Maddison’s masterpiece of—h’m h’m, forgive an old man his joke—youthful incoherence, and—er, h’m——”
Julian did not appear. They dined. Phillip refused the champagne, though he felt ungracious in so doing. “All the more for me, my dear fellow!” remarked Mr. Warbeck. “Well, to your success, my young friend!” He held up his glass, and first smoothing out his grey moustache, drank the wine. Phillip had not eaten much, being afraid of indigestion. With relief he put the Norton under cover, and caught a train to London, arriving expectantly at Inverness Terrace at half-past nine.
*
At first he was disappointed when, his name having been called out, and after being received by Sir Godber and Lady Hollins and Mr. and Mrs. J. D. Woodford he was introduced to some people who were discussing royalties, the cost of paper and strawboards, the possibility of novels having to go above nine
shillings, and if the libraries would take them at such a stiff price. And the large advances best-sellers were getting—H. G. Wells had got
£
30,000 for his latest novel from Ernest Benn—that was enough to make any publisher cut down on new novelists. Agents were virtually holding such MSS up to auction among publishers; some were offering well-known names provided the publisher took a new author as part of the bargain.
Tarzan
of
the
Apes
was mentioned, “a fantastic hotchpotch about a wild boy brought up by apes”, which had gone the rounds; and now was a best-seller.
“It came to us,” said J. D. Woodford, with a rueful smile. “But I turned it down as too improbable!”
After eating many sandwiches and drinking claret-cup he felt happier, and talked to a dark, attractive man leaning against a wall with his hands in his pockets, who was a famous poet. And yet he did not know the difference between coltsfoot and henbane! Phillip himself had known it only a few weeks, since owning a copy of John’s
Flowers
of
the
Field.
Yet the famous poet’s ‘What is the difference?’ had seemed to be almost startling. Walter Ramal asking him what henbane was like! Phillip loved his poetry; it was truly beautiful, he was one of the rare ones. He told him so. “Your lyrical poems rank with Shakespeare’s!” The poet received this comparison with modesty.
“And you knew Edward Eastaway, sir? And to think that I, all unknowingly, was only a short distance away from him, on the ninth day of April, at the opening of the battle of Arras, in the snow!”
Four years ago: it was as far away as Agincourt. He went back to the buffet and ate another smoked salmon sandwich, imagining the sting of sleet in his face on that cold wild morning on the chalk downs before the Hindenburg Line.
Looking around, he saw a keen-eyed man wearing
pince-nez
spectacles, with a lock of hair over one temple, whom he recognised as J. C. Knight. “Forgive my speaking to you, but what do you think of Francis Thompson’s poetry?”
J. C. Knight peered at Phillip sideways and said, “Francis Thompson is a very great poet. I rank him with Milton. But it is unwise to try and compare poets, to say that this one is greater than that one. Each true poet is himself. No, I didn’t see your essay in the
English
Review.
Were you paid for it? All work worth printing is worth payment.”
Conversation seeming to have dried up, he went back to the
buffet. Thrills moved up his spine: he, Phillip Maddison, was among the great names of contemporary literature! He talked next to a man who had been badly wounded while serving with the Ulster division during the battle of the Somme, losing a leg; he, too, was recognisable from photographs in
The
Bookman
as Ninian M’Grape. Surely he was listening to the stuff of literary history when Ninian M’Grape was discussing with J. C. Knight the dramatisation by himself of H. G. Wells’s book
The
Wonderful
Visit,
a play which recently had failed. “It was over-produced,” said Mr. M’Grape, shifting his stance.