The Innocent Moon (19 page)

To Miss Violet Hunt, whose famous face he had often seen at Mrs. Portal-Welch’s receptions, he talked about Richard Jefferies. “He’s like grass,” she murmured, her eyes roving the room. “A little goes a long way. I much prefer Hudson.” He recognised a borrowed phrase, which she had transposed: for Conrad had written in praise of W. H. Hudson ‘he writes as the grass grows.’ The petrofact beautiful face was restless; the eyes never encountered his own. He was wary of her, and slipped away as Miss Rose Macaulay came to speak to Miss Hunt.

“Do you like Conrad?” he next asked a very quiet woman standing alone. She had gentle brown eyes, and a fringe over her forehead. “Yes,” replied Miss May Sinclair, simply. “And do you love Francis Thompson?” he asked eagerly. “A beautiful poet,” she replied. He felt safe with her.

He saw Mrs. Portal-Welch at the other end of the double room. Now that his book was accepted he felt that she was a dear; he must pay his respects. After all, she had always been kind to him, despite his satirical references to
her
novels upon occasion: a rather mean retaliation, really; he felt ashamed of his behaviour, and waited until she was free to tell her so.

“‘Many men, many minds,’” she said. “You are far too impressionable. What you need is a good woman to pull you into shape.” He felt like asking, “What shape?” but decided it was possibly ambiguous.

He stayed until the end, being the last to leave. Regretfully he said goodnight to Mr. and Mrs. Woodford and walked bare-headed, trench-coat unbuttoned, white silk scarf thrown carelessly round neck and over shoulder, in the direction of the bright glow of the town. Enjoyable the jungle of Piccadilly, romantic the lights of the river by the Embankment! He crossed over Waterloo Bridge and walked down a long empty street towards two far converging chains of lights, reassured by the sight of stars above
the Old Kent Road, noticing almost with pleasure the strange effect of houses built in steepening terraces below the heights of Nunhead—colonies of crustaceans left momentarily inactive with the ebbing of ocean. What else were people but sea-creatures taken to the land, from beyond where past and present and future were one? It was grand to be part of the flow of life.

*

When he opened the door of Julian’s house he heard heavy footfalls and shouting. Yes, Julian was home. Scarf and coat were slung on the coat-stand; he knocked and entered the sitting-room. Julian stopped an intensive pacing of the carpet and turned to look at him. His wide forehead, from which the hair was flung back in Beethoven disorder, was frowning; his under lip was thrust out. His father sat in the chair in the corner beside the fire, also scowling; but chiefly the expression of the old man huddled there was one of fatigued yet unrelenting scorn. His eyes were as steady in scorn upon his son as his son’s were upon those imaginary giants of the material world he was fighting on behalf of his beloved Swinburne.

“Once and for all,” growled Julian, “I tell you that Christianity is effete and outworn. The gospel of pity is against all natural truth. I speak as a pagan.”

“And you talk like a drunkard.”

Ignoring his father, Julian recited,

“Good evening,” said Phillip, amiably. There was no reply.

After a while Julian went to a sideboard, poured out some beer, and offered it to Phillip.

“If you’ll forgive me, chér Maître, I won’t. I have decided to drink only water in future.”

“Not even milk?” enquired Julian. “Then you have sold another novel, no doubt. Anyway, I drink to your success,” he said gravely, pronouncing each word with deliberate clearness. “Father and I were just discussing you,” he went on. “I congratulate you, my friend. You are in the tradition! The young genius has been thrown out of his father’s house! Excellent! Excellent!” He rubbed his hands together. “Well, old boy, seriously, I congratulate you!”

“Thank you, chér Maître! That is praise indeed!”

“Oh, well,” retorted Julian, not liking his own kind of satire turned on himself, “at least you’ve had a book taken. So you’re one up on me. Can’t I persuade you to have a little light ale after your storming of the citadel of fame?”

Mr. Warbeck was regarding his son intently. He said to Phillip, “You’ll notice, m’dear fellow, how my son’s old-world courtesy shows itself in the air with which he offers a fellow guest the beer of his host! Such a question of punctilio, however, does not apparently extend to the suggestion that I, as his host, albeit his parent, might care to be offered a glass of my own beer!”

“Now you know, Father,” said Julian, raising eyebrows and speaking as though with great courtesy, “that the doctor, to whom you pay regularly considerable sums of money, has told you not to drink beer after midday. You have to be careful of your arteries, you know, Father. Don’t glare at me like that, Father! I assure you you merely look extremely impotent. It is long past your bedtime, why not go to bed? Bed is for the old, beer is for the young—a natural law of life, Father.”

Phillip began to feel weary; the fire was blazing full in the black concave grate, no window open, no oxygen.

“Come, my dear father,” Julian was saying, “why not go to bed? All reasonable old men are in bed before midnight, I assure you.” He drained his glass; he opened another bottle. “Well, Maître, what did you think of the cognoscenti? Don’t forget to return Father’s studs by the way. I may need them myself shortly.”

“It seems to me a most unlikely event,” said the old man.

“You’re becoming more tedious than usual, Father,” replied Julian, evenly. “Now why not go to bed? Your guest will not feel you are neglecting him.”

The old man was staring at Julian fixedly.

“Honestly, Father, why don’t you go to bed? You’re becoming intolerably tedious. Your muttering and mumbling in the corner is not amusing.” He turned to Phillip. “I apologise for Father’s ill-humour.”

“What in the name of the devil——” began the old man, for there had come a thunderous knocking on the front door, accompanied by high-pitched almost hysterical laughter behind it.

“It sounds like old Basil,” remarked Julian equably.

“Well, I don’t consider myself an intolerant individual,”
replied the old man, “but I utterly refuse to have that four-flushing blackguard Basil back inside my house!”

Again the door was violently hammered by the heavy metal knocker. “I suppose you’ve been with him again tonight? Look here—I—I—I’m damned if I put up with his insolence further!” And seizing his stick, the old man walked out of the room. Julian emptied his glass and unscrewed another bottle. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “I wrote several sonnets tonight,” he said quietly. “Basil was expecting me in the Roebuck. But Basil bores me. I am going to write seriously, my friend. Before, I felt I was immature: I did not wish to add to the juvenilia of a weary world. Well, life’s full of fun, old Omar was right, Maître!” He rubbed his hands together. “I will live only for poetry, by God!” He swallowed a glass of beer. “How about you, Phillip?”

“No thank you, Julian.”

Mr. Warbeck and the midnight visitor appeared to be having an argument on the doorstep. Apparently he and Julian had been playing billiards. He claimed that Julian owed him some money, and had failed to turn up at the Roebuck to pay it.

Basil Lack, an infantry officer invalided from Gallipoli with dysentery, was tall and good-looking, with a charming manner. He had a reputation for being a billiard-sharper; Phillip had always avoided him, being a little wary of his friendly manner. Julian had told him that old Basil was married, that he had got rid of a fortune after which his wife had got rid of Basil, taking the children away and refusing to see him. Old Basil, said Julian, had scores of girls; he had a different one every evening; they fell for old Basil, declared Julian, because he appealed to their protective instincts. He was living with his grandmother, the widow of a brewer, who believed that he was much misjudged—he gets away with it every time, said Julian.

The hall door shut, and Julian’s parent re-entered the room. “That’s settled that gentleman’s hash,” he remarked grimly. “Never have I seen a man take to his heels so swiftly upon the approach of a bobby. The unutterable scoundrel, demanding money for what he called your debt of honour!”

“Old Basil is an intolerable bore,” remarked Julian, casually. “Have some beer, Father.”

“I am quite capable of getting my own beer for myself if I require it, thank you.”

Phillip felt suddenly exhausted. The world was growing grey again. He did not want to remain in that house. He had stayed
there once before, when the noises of snoring, heard through the wall in one direction from Mr. Warbeck and from another direction from Julian’s room had driven him to get up and dress, with visions of a haystack where he had dozed before. Julian had got up as well and gone with him three miles into Kent. Trees, hedges, and lanes glittered with frost that night; boots were bone-hard when they got up with the morning star to tramp across golf links to a coffee-house in a side-street where carters and others were having eggs and bacon.

Phillip decided to go down to his cottage. He had an electric torch he could tie to the handlebars. The battery would last, on the fast empty roads, to beyond Staines, where he would find a haystack.

“I do hope my going, now, won’t put anyone out.”

There were protests. They went to bed soon afterwards, Phillip to fall asleep at once, and to awaken optimistically at 7 a.m.

After a good breakfast it was decided that Julian should join him in his cottage. Mr. Warbeck proposed that he send two guineas a week for his son’s keep. They would share expenses, including rates, and the rent of one shilling and sixpence a week. Julian would have the balance of the two guineas for pocket money.

“We shall work hard, and walk a lot, and seek fame together, sir,” said Phillip to Mr. Warbeck.

“Humph,” said the old man.

*

Sunrise was behind him; the wet grey road ahead. He wore his old flying helmet, new ill-fitting goggles which let the wind into his left eye, trench-coat and field boots and breeches. The speedometer needle wavered between forty-five and fifty. His feet and hands were cold. He was chill for lack of food, but not hungry. The note of the open exhaust drummed pleasantly in his ears. He gave another pumpful of oil to the engine, and holding lightly to the left grip of the handlebar glanced over his right shoulder and down at the faint blue cloud diffusing away behind. This was the Great West Road, he was on the way to Devon! His right fore-finger slid open the throttle, and whacked the engine up to sixty. It was pleasurable to confirm once more the absence of vibration.

Basingstoke was behind, before him lay Andover. His leather gloves were sodden. Banging of fingers on thighs did not remove
the feeling as of thorns driven under the nails. He stuck it until Andover, where, finding a coffee shop on the right of the square, he sat down and ordered eggs and bacon and four cups of coffee in a row. This would save time. He must be at the cottage when Julian arrived. The Paddington train was due in at Queensbridge about 4.15 p.m. A cab would take Julian another twenty minutes to reach Malandine. He must get there by 4 p.m. to have a good fire going when Julian arrived.

Warm again, he went on, passing and overtaking occasional cars going westward, shoving open the throttle lever as he rocketed by to show them what was leaving them behind. Coming to the long straight undulating road leading up to Salisbury Plain he braced his arms, gripped with knees the rubber pads laced across the tank, lay low along the frame, and opened the throttle wide. The thorn trees went by in diverging blurs. Wind scooped tears from his eyes behind the goggles. The speedometer needle wavered at seventy-three. The engine’s power flowed smoothly along the grey rubber belt; he could hear the watch-like clicking of the fastener as it was flung around the shining inner flanges of the pulley. He closed the throttle slightly, and at a steady sixty, the sweetest period of the engine, he and ‘Falcon’ flew westward.

Julian was bringing with him his leather gun-case and gun; air-rifle; hold-all containing saddle, boot-trees, and bridle; two boxes of books; japanned uniform case containing his dinner jacket in addition to two civilian suits—one of blue serge made out of hard-wearing cross-woven barathea khaki cloth dyed blue, the other of tweed made by a tailor at Folkestone. The two suits had cost nine guineas each; he had not yet paid for them. He had an idea, from occasional jokes in
Punch,
that the correct thing was never to pay one’s tailor, for a few years anyway.

Now the road lay along the crest of the high ground, and a far view over the Plain fell away before him. To the right were painted iron buildings of a military camp spreading below and across grey-green country. He passed three dispatch riders of the Royal Engineers standing by the side of the road with their slower Triumph machines, and opened the throttle and fled down the hill, round a bend, and up another hill, to see Stonehenge rising out of the yellow grass about three hundred yards back from the road. He had come too far north.

He returned to Salisbury, where for the first time he went into the Cathedral, on tip-toe, leather helmet and goggles in hand,
down the middle aisle. Memory dimly told him that it had been built in the twelfth century, but it was an amazing piece of work, so vast, concise, and new-looking; people in those days, and for centuries before them, he thought, must have known all the truths of the spirit made visible by art.

When he went outside the rain was falling steadily—and that meant belt slipping in pulley while the engine raced; it meant water short-circuiting between sparking plug and cylinder-fins; and, at best, many hours of self-bracing rigidity against cold.

Meanwhile, a pint of beer was indicated! After that, a hot meal. He went into a pastry cook’s which had a restaurant over the shop, a room with old oak panelling and a big fire. There was a copy of
The
Daily
Trident
left behind on one of the tables, and taking it up he saw that the Chief’s declaration had been altered to exclude anyone having any connexion with
The
Daily
News
in regard to the offer to give six free pages of advertising to anyone who could persuade that paper to declare its circulation. Dear old B. B. Bloom; but he might at least have said thank you!