Authors: Henry Williamson
There were three other canvassers in the Estates Office. The senior, who called on the West End and City agencies, was a tall, upright man of about forty, with brown, receding hair kept short, small brown eyes without reflection, and a brown moustache brushed up at the end with a military suggestion. In spite, or perhaps because of his not having been a soldier (Phillip thought) Mr. Cusper presented an alert, military figure, in dark suit, umbrella, and bowler hat. Mr. Cusper’s second-in-command was a little younger, a rather nondescript figure in height and bearing, and as relaxed in his ready-made tweed suit as his superior was spruce. His voice lacked precision, he was inclined to be loose of mouth, his London accent, though not aitchless—he came from a suburb of old West Essex some miles beyond the genuine East End of London—was more pronounced than that of Mr. Cusper, whose vowels were by no means open. Yet Mr. Cusper said, suddenly one morning towards the end of March, “Pity Wilks speaks with a Cockney accent, isn’t it, old man? Not exactly a recommendation for the Estates Office!” To which Phillip replied with a non-committal “Ah”, while nodding his head vaguely.
This confidence, as from one gentleman to another, was followed by an invitation to supper at Mr. Cusper’s home in Kent. “We do a bit of singing, and are guilty of a musical swarry now and then. You like music, I fancy? Then come along, old man. We don’t change since the war. I’ll get an extra ticket for you, we’re having a visit from Soogia”—he pronounced the name with a hard
g
—“who’s giving a recital in the Town Hall. Very famous with her ’cello, you know. Right, come along on Friday, we’ll have a bite first, then sandwiches and coffee afterwards. Do you sing?”
“Well——”
“Right! Bring your music along, too.”
After the recital some neighbours came in. A lady played one of her own compositions on the piano, reminiscent of Grieg, and then Phillip was asked to sing. He had brought the sheets of only one song, and was about to get up with
The
Trumpeter,
when Mr. Cusper said he would warm up the room first. He led off with his own copy of
The
Trumpeter,
and sang it with such ringing tenor notes that Phillip felt he must conceal his sheet-music, and pleaded a sudden sore throat, accompanied by a bout of coughing. Mr. Cusper thereupon gave an encore, then he sang another song, followed by several more until Mrs. Cusper, in gracious tones, said she must now bring in the refreshments. After some more Grieg-like local compositions on the piano, it was time to return home.
March 24. Heard Madame Suggia playing ’cello at Brumley. Wonderful artist, Portuguese. Playing exquisitely, with passionate intensity, her eyes often closing. At one moment I saw a most marvellous expression of rhapsody, joy, intense surrender to the music she was creating. Her lips smiled; she was yielding herself to the yearning of the music. I tried to catch her eye, but she did not look at me. And even if she had,
cui
bono
? I want all beautiful women to love me—not physically, I mean—but with the divine passion that Wagner expresses in
Tristan
und
Isolde.
Ha! How foolish of me—I am an empty shell. No women look at me now. It is raining outside, beyond the open french windows. I rode back alone on the top of a ’bus, the soft rush of rain in my face, as I sat under the tarpaulin. Such a happy feeling, but God, how I long for love.
March 26. The lecture at the Parnassus Club was on
The
Necessity
for
Indignation
in
Literature,
which means propaganda and partial vision—by a Mr. Howlett. Afterwards I got up and advised young writers to take no notice of “Mr. Howlett’s dismal hootings”. Mrs. Portal-Welch defended the lecturer’s remarks, adding that “Mr. Maddison’s theories show that he is mentally underdeveloped”. I went out with others to the pub we usually go to, and there met an artistic fellow called Jack O’Donovan who is on the stage paper
The
Age.
He told me about the coming opera Season, and that Beecham was conducting a new opera called
A
Village
Romeo
and
Juliet,
which he said was by a composer I hadn’t heard of, who wrote very beautiful music. I look forward to this.
He told me that the place to go was in the gallery, on the right-hand side facing the stage, and get on the Doves’ Nest, just below the curved ceiling. The acoustics there were perfect, he said, and one could lie down.
(I cannot write with steadiness because my hand is so damnably “nervous”—Mrs. P.-W.’s criticism, how true is it that I am warped?)
I felt, as I walked on the hill, that I could not face being under a roof, so went to my seat along the crest, deliberately putting away all feeling until I arrived there, and then, breathing deeply, let myself go. It is so tranquil under the stars, I lie back on the seat and let the wind steal around my face, and through my hair, which is beginning to go grey just above my ears. Sometimes I feel I am breaking up rapidly, in a month I shall be 25.
It is peace, utter peace, on my seat on the Hill, in the starry darkness. The lights of earth twinkle so far away; the electric trams down in the unseen chasm of the High Street growl; passing goods-trains clatter and sometimes jolt in the silence—but I am far away, mindless in the sublime aether above me. Then, as memory corrodes me, my heart drops heavy, my spirit feels crushed. For where do I find people who think as I do? God above, I walk alone, isolated, my spirit in solitude; while every day takes me farther from Love, for every day brings death nearer. Somebody else at the Club, when I told her that one day I wanted to re-create my world of the war, said that I was morbid: that old word I heard in my youth, again and again.
Morbid!
Damn them all, what do they know of the thoughts that arise in me, of the search my subconscious self is always making?
I have realised that I shall never find companionship in any woman—that dream is gone. Shall I find it again in Nature, in new woods and meadows?
It is Spring once more, it is Peace—but where can I go? If I were a bird, I could fly to someone like myself, and find joy and a progression of the spirit. Nature is not enough. The birds don’t sing for me, the flowers ‘are sweet for themselves’—where then?
Phillip said to his father, “Would you like to read what I have been writing next door? It is a story of the country, and made up from all sorts of ideas, some of them are what you told me when I was a child. My book is probably no good. I ought to warn you that it got a bad report from the organiser of a literary club in London, in fact it was the lady who gave me her novel to read, the one I lent you,
The
Peninsula
.”
“Oh yes, Phillip, I read that story, it was quite good, in its way.”
“I told the author that, Father. But surely the bit where the scientist got hold of a wild bird and shaved off slices of its eyeballs was a bit far-fetched?”
“Oh yes, I remember, Phillip. He was a bit of a sadist, wasn’t he, that character?”
“But do you think anyone would
enjoy
doing that to a bird, Father? And, in any case, wouldn’t it be hard to
shave
off a slice of an eyeball?”
“Now you are asking me something I cannot answer, old chap! But modern surgery can do wonders, you know. An eyeball can be taken out and laid on the cheek, operated on, and put back, and successfully, so I understand. How are your eyes, by the way? Do you feel any effects from that mustard gas that blinded you, let me see, it must be two years ago, almost to the day, when we first had the news.”
“My sight is quite all right, thank you, Father.” After a pause, “I’ll leave the typescript for you to read, if I may, on your bureau. I think I’ll go to bed now. Walking miles every day on paving stones makes me quite ready for kip.”
“Can you spare me a moment?” Richard closed the sitting-room door. “What do you think of Doris, and her beau, Bob Willoughby? Night after night, almost without exception since she has come home for her holidays from that school in Eastbourne, those two have been closeted in the front room. I’m not inferring that there is anything underhand, you realise, but
what
can they find to talk about, all the time?”
“I rather fancy that Doris can’t make up her mind, Father.”
“But if she doesn’t want Willoughby, then why doesn’t she say so, like an honourable person, instead of leading him on like this?”
“Well, Father, I expect she is fond of him, but unable to decide just yet.”
“Then why doesn’t she say so?”
“It’s only speculation on my part, Father. I haven’t asked her. Please don’t think that I am any authority.”
“There is another aspect of the case, Phillip. Neither of those young people appears to have the least consideration for anyone other than themselves. What sort of marriage would it be, under such circumstances?”
Phillip thought this remark somewhat ironic; for if ever anyone put his own feelings first, it was Father. However, he must not judge; causes must always be seen with effects.
“Well, I feel I have stood enough,” concluded Richard. “I have to hang about down here, waiting for Mr. Willoughby to betake himself off, night after night! I don’t sleep well at the best of times, and I want to be in bed by eleven, but cannot go up until I have seen that the house is properly locked up.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Father.”
“Thank you, old chap. But you will be discreet, won’t you? No doubt they look upon me as an ogre, but I am used to that.”
“It’s difficult for most of us to see other than one point of view, Father. I think that is what is wrong with most writing. However, that’s only my own point of view. Good-night, I’ll kick out Bill for you right away.”
April 14. Four willow warblers eating the aphides on Mother’s rosebriar in the garden, grown from a cutting given her by Aunt Liz at Beau Brickhill. Skilfully beautiful little birds, they cling to a briar, and peck with their minute, pine-spindles of beaks with rapidity. They do no damage to the young leaves. Sometimes they flutter in the air, pecking quickly and nimbly the while. So, in this dreary suburb, I have some birds to watch when, weary and mentally ill, I return from my route marches through the northern suburbs. Among them great tits, blue tits, robins, hedge-sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes, and tawny owls at night (passing the elm regularly, my beautiful, soft-flying tawnies!). Sometimes a kestrel hangs over the wild grasses in the Backfield.
And
skylarks, spinning threads in the beauteous light of the sky.
A typical April day—violent showers. Many of the leaves of the hawthorns on the Hill were torn by the S-W blast. The gully gravel was green with them. Unsentient things they may be, but they will feel no blossom later on, their little life in sunshine and smoky air is over. Better to fall away in the midst of life, than to linger for inevitable autumn. Is it not better to fall when one is freshest, and not live on for disillusion? Surely flowers have awareness of their hues and scents; feel love for the sun, and the gentle airs that bring the bumblebee? Do they ever feel, in the dimmest way, that the glory of their being, the purity of light for which they strive upwards, has betrayed them?
April 26. Father found a letter in the Tss that Mrs. Portal-Welch included in the stuff of mine she returned. According to her the novel is bad; shallow; without skill, ‘wishy-washy and carelessly thrown together.’ Father said he had not read the note, and I believe him. At first my feeling was that it was better to die, since if my work is warped, morbid, shallow, etc., there is nothing to live for. But when I came back from the garden room to see Mother
she said, “Father thinks it is a beautiful book, and very idealistic.” He also said, “Phillip can write.” The odd thing is that I could not believe that his opinion was valid; he likes the romantic stuff in
Nosh
’
s
Magazine. If my stuff is like that, then Mrs. Portal-Welch is probably right. But is she?
I
can
’
t
tell.
I only know that I always try to write exactly as I feel.
May 2. A strange coincidence. I heard from Willie today, for the first time since I saw him last February. He is working in the old Hindenburg Line, south of Arras. He may come on leave soon. I was thinking about the country there, in 1917, when in Hampstead today, after taking a clipping from the paper about trout-fishing to Mr. Ernest. Owers the foremost Estate Agent there (having seen a fly rod in his office last time I called) I met my old groom of 286 M.G. Coy in the High Street. He was carrying a band-box with a lady’s hat in it. I gave him a drink, and he told me my nickname among the transport section was ‘Old Sticks’, from my long legs.
Later, at the Parnassus Club Mrs. P.-W. took me to task about the way Broughton and I rag the lecturers who are our guests, she said.
“One can excuse that sort of thing from Broughton, but not from you, who are a gentleman, P.M.” she remarked. Little does she know!
I met a dark, vivid girl at this meeting. After the lecture, given by a bank-clerk poet called Eliot, we talked. Her name is Tabitha Trevelian, and she is quite the nicest person I have met there, and loves the wild things. She has the quick movements of an active brain, and large brown eyes that hold a pinky light when she is eager over some idea. But God protect me from being involved again!
Just before dawn he awakened on his camp-bed and sat up, listening intently to a voice that had called his name. He seemed to float in a slipperiness of sweat; he felt that he had not been dreaming, or if he had, all sense of having awakened from dream or nightmare was gone. He had distinctly heard his groom’s voice calling him. He was aware of being in a tent; and that any moment the barrage would open up. He heard a nightingale singing in Mory Copse, and wondered what it would feel when the howitzers, dug in their chalk pits along the western edge, fired the first salvo.
He lit his candle, but could not see his uniform jacket. Where was his groom? Why had he taken away his belt and boots, and apparently breeches and tunic as well, when he knew that he wanted to go up among the small wheat in the wired-off field
and watch the opening of the barrage, the first attack on the Hindenburg Line south of Arras, by the Fifth Army?