Authors: Henry Williamson
A wood fire blazed in the open range. That afternoon he and Julian had explored some woodlands a mile or so inland, and returned with two sackfuls of broken sticks. On the way down from the wood they had watched two kids being born. Julian had left after a few minutes, declaring that he had no interest in the result of capricious fornication; but Phillip had waited for half an hour or so, after which period the kids were skipping about in the sunshine. A billy goat tethered near had been almost as interested as Phillip had been.
“Why,” said Julian, at tea, “do you ascribe your own Wordsworthian anthropomorphic feelings to a goat? On the contrary, by the look in its whisky-coloured eyes, that goat was thinking of rape. If it hadn’t been chained up, it would have got at the nanny goat, in my opinion. What are you writing in your Journal this time?”
“Nothing about you, dear boy!”
Birth seems to me a beautiful thing: tender mother-love and the soft innocence of the new-born. I think human fathers should attend their wives’ confinements; it would help remove erotic-female-fictionalism in the head.
Afterwards he had walked alone on the shore and watched the sun going down below the land. The sky colours changed every minute; first rufous, then vermilion, then tawny reflections on the clouds drifting up from the south-west. Soon these colours faded, and a purple vapour framed the sun, while eve-star and crescent moon glowed under clouds now moving in upon the land. It was sad to watch the dying of the day, it was lonely, and he hurried back to the cottage, optimistic as always that Julian would soon begin to feel the drive for self-expression in words. Now he had the cottage to himself.
Sitting before his candle, he wrote on, happily; and was
surprised that the candle burnt low so soon, and there was Julian standing before him. It was after ten, and he had written five thousand words, he told him.
“Huh!”
Julian regarded him, glowering within his bearskin, grunting now and again as he remained still, hands in pockets, chin sunken in fur, scowling terrifically. Phillip’s right hand was painful with cramp, his feet cold, his back ached, the base of his neck was sore, but he didn’t care. He went past Julian to take deep breaths of the starry air.
“Huh!” was all Julian could say, when Phillip came into the kitchen again. “Huh!”
“How nice of you to call,” said Phillip, imitating old Mr. Warbeck’s voice and stare. “What job have you secured today? Private secretary to Mr. MacCat what’s’name Tullus?”
“Oh well,” replied Julian, with self-satisfaction, making a sort of deep, good-humoured growl in his throat. “You, I perceive, are your old self again, Maître! Good for you!”
“I’ve written a marvellous chapter!”
Dare he ask to be allowed to read it to him? The last time he had read a poem of Francis Thompson’s, Julian had snorted contemptuously when Phillip had misread
gonfalons
as
gonfalcons.
“And you want to read it to me, Maître? Well, old boy,” he growled benevolently, “you
shall
read it to me! You have a good voice sometimes when you’re coming out of yourself. You’re two distinct personalities you know, Maître.”
“I’d rather you read it,” lied Phillip.
“As you wish, old boy. May I offer you a drink?” He lugged a flagon from his pocket. They drank from the bottle. Recklessly Phillip threw the best part of a sackful of wood on the fire.
Both were hungry. Phillip tore off a handful of bread, and thrust wads of it into his mouth with cheese and pickled onions, while Julian did the same before reading aloud what Phillip had written.
He read slowly and distinctly; frequently he chuckled, sometimes he hit his thigh with his right hand as he rolled his head with laughter. “It’s frightfully good! It’s as good as Kipling! It’s better than Kipling!” Phillip felt that he liked Julian terrifically. With amusement he heard Mrs. Crang moving into her coal-house, a habit she had when wanting to listen through the mousehole in the thin lath-and-plaster that separated the two kitchens.
They finished the beer, and afterwards went for a short walk, while Julian told Phillip more of his adventures in London during and immediately after the War. Free for the time being of his obsession, Phillip thought that Julian was most amusing, and begged him to write a novel of his adventures.
That night it seemed unnecessary to undress, so they slept in their clothes; and although Julian was asleep first, Phillip did not mind his snores.
They were up at 7 o’clock in the morning, and while Julian swished the lime-ash floor with water and mop, Phillip made the fire and boiled the porridge in the new double-cooker. The eggs-and-bacon were excellent; they threw the rind to the old cattle dog, who was now just bold enough to come inside for tit-bits, snapping them up before fleeing silently, tail down.
“This is the life,” exclaimed Julian, wiping his lips rapidly on the back of his hand, and becoming intent again on Rousseau’s
Confessions
propped against the bread loaf. Phillip’s admiration for Compton Mackenzie’s style and wit deepened as he read more of
Sinister
Street
supported by the tea-pot.
They washed up the breakfast things, putting them in the top shelf of what was called the dresser. This dresser was made of three-eighth-inch tongued-and-grooved deal board, and was merely a big weak box two yards long, one yard deep, one yard wide, laid on its side. There were two shelves, hidden by curtains of cotton print. It was rectangular in shape; but if one leaned one’s weight on the end, it became a parallelogram; and the shelves, with their loads of crockery, boots, books, and jampots, were liable to fall aslant.
Afterwards Phillip sat down at the table to write. Julian also sat down with pen and paper; he intended, he said, to revise his translation of Catullus. Phillip began his chapter deliberately, writing slowly and preciously, forcing the words. From the corner of his eye he saw that Julian’s face had assumed its Beethoven scowl as he fixed his eyes on the typescript. Soon Phillip was crossing out what he had written. It was aimless, leading nowhere, a description of football boots in an untidy row. He waited for an idea. Julian also was sitting very still.
“Phil,” he spoke suddenly, subduedly. “I wonder, old boy—no, I don’t think I should—oh damn. Phil, may I read you some of my translation from Catullus?” He eyed Phillip doubtfully, as though remembering the joke about MacCat, and looked relieved when Phillip said, as though enthusiastically, “Please do!”
In a deep, forceful voice Julian read his rendering of the love poems. He pronounced every word most distinctly, but without variation in tone. After two verses Phillip found that his mind had switched itself from his hearing. Julian went on, his voice earnest, deep, and rasping. Phillip glanced, while endeavouring to conceal the fact that he was wondering how many more unread pages lay on the table, at his notes made the day before.
A boy in the village titted (knocked) the hats off the other children going into Sunday school; he threw milk at the farmer’s wife in her dairy behind the latchet window in the lower street; he found an old watch in an ash-heap and took it to the blacksmith to be repaired.
Mrs. Crang said that a young married woman eating fruit in a haphazard way was a sure sign of pregnancy. This woman had taken tomatoes from the village shop, stealthily; and the owner of the shop, understanding, had pretended not to see it.
A thatcher stood on a sort of small ladder, held to the thatch by steel prongs, called the standing-bittle, lest his foot britt the reed, and it rat (rot). An eighty-year-old man, annoyed because his neighbour had the foot of his ladder just inside his garden, without permission, rushed out crying, “If thee’t a man, put thee dooks up!” The neighbour, a cobbler, was a chapel-man, and refused to fight.
A big woman weighing eighteen stone, mother of several children, living in a village some miles away, went to the doctor, complaining of a pain. She thought it was due to green rhubarb, eaten too early. A 7-lb baby was born two hours later, to the complete surprise of both its parents. That was during the War; the child now answered to the name of Rhubarb.
“Well, Maître, is it any good?” Julian was asking anxiously.
“Damned good, Julian! Your rendition is easily the best I’ve ever heard!”
“How many other translations have you read?” demanded Julian.
“I don’t need to compare your verses, they’re full of life, that is all that matters. By the way, I wonder if you would mind not biting your nails? Forgive me asking you again—but you did ask me to tell you——”
Instantly Julian hid his hand under the table. Phillip felt like the governess Julian said he had had in childhood. According to him she was the original of Miss Frances Cornford’s fat white woman whom nobody loves who walked in the fields in gloves.
“Of course I haven’t heard many translations of Catullus, but I like it, Julian, I like it, by God I like it, Maître! Revision will only mean an alternative rendering, I suppose? You should write original verse.”
“I have.”
He looked at Phillip suspiciously. The middle finger-tip of his left hand sought his mouth, and was again whipped under the table.
“Well, I suppose I must get on with my damned Donkin story. By the way, I wonder if you’d mind standing by the stream when you come home at night, and not pissing up against our doorpost? I know it’s a village custom—our neighbours practise it regularly on their doorstep—but if you don’t mind——”
Julian went upstairs to make the beds. His footfalls were loud as he paced to and fro overhead. Flakes of lime-wash fell from the thin ceiling floor-boards. Soon he came down the worm-eaten stairs, and tiptoed across to the door.
“I think I’ll go for a walk, Maître, and leave you to it. I’ll be back for lunch at one-thirty. Can I buy anything for you?”
“No, thanks. If you see the butcher, you might strafe him for sending seven pounds of mutton scrag when I ordered only two. Tell him I won’t pay for more than two. Also they tell me that he buys dead sheep from some of the farmers, but don’t tell
him
I said so.”
“I really don’t care a hoot how much scrag the wretched fellow sends!” replied Julian, gnawing two fingers at once. “By the way, has Father sent——”
“Yes. There’s about eighteen bob over from last week. Shall I pay the Ring of Bells ‘score’ for you? I don’t think you ought to run an account there, Julian. It’s only laying up trouble.”
“You ought to go the whole hog and become a parson and tell me about what treasure I should lay up in heaven, Maître. Take a joke, old boy! Let me settle my own score, why not? It’s only about ten bob. Can you let me have it now?”
“You’re treating me as your treat your father, Julian!”
“Well, haven’t you placed yourself
in
loco
parentis,
old boy? Have a heart!”
Reluctantly Phillip gave him a ten-shilling note. Yes, he supposed he was getting just like his father. Then he settled down to work. It was difficult to write: there was the lunch to prepare, although Julian wouldn’t be back until the ten bob, twenty pints,
was gone. He pushed over his chair and set about scraping and peeling potatoes, onions, and carrots, tipping the lot into the remains of rabbit stew, crusts, sausages, and hunks of mutton scrag chopped up the day before on the chopping block. A handful of pearl barley, the remains of the porridge, a pint or so of water, and the cooker was shoved on the fire and left to cook itself.
Julian came home as anticipated, at 2.10 p.m.
“All in the pot is yours,” said Phillip, taking his thumbstick. “I’m going for a walk. See you later.”
“Suits me, old boy. I shall begin my Ode to Swinburne when I’ve washed up.”
At half-past six when Phillip returned he found the door open. The cattle dog jumped out of the window as he walked in. The fire was out, the pot overturned on the floor, rabbit and mutton bones strewn about. He encouraged the dog, which spent its life lying in the road outside its farm waiting to bark savagely at cows after their milking, to return and finish its meal. Slinking through the open door, it cracked up a rabbit bone swiftly, grabbed a mouthful of more bones, dropped them to seize others, choked, and then, seeing that Phillip intended neither to shout nor kick, settled down to a swift, uneasy prelude to indigestion.
After relighting the fire, clearing up, and eating half a loaf of bread with butter and a whole pound pot of apricot jam, washed down by weak China tea from a quart jug, Phillip got out his journal from the uniform case, and prepared to enjoy communion with it. His pen scratched over the paper rapidly, describing the walk of that afternoon.
March 27. This south coast of Devon is glorious even when it rains. It is so big and generous. Today I wandered beside the reedy lake behind the sand-hills, while lapwings cried through drifting mists. It is full of romance. I realised I was still as in boyhood, joying greatly in all wild places. When a straw-mottled owl flapped up in silence from some reeds, I cried aloud with happiness.
Ah,
I thought,
I
will
come
here
later
on
and
find
his
nest.
Oh,
ecstasy,
I
have
never
found
a
short-ear’d
owl’s
nest
before.
What
will
Percy
and
the
others
say?
I remembered, with an aching feeling for Time gone for ever and for ever, that I was twenty-five; that dear old ‘Perps’ had stopped one at Flers, five long years before.
I walked along part of the high cliffs, watching the gulls, and much happiness was there through my eyes. A raven sat on a scaur
of rock and watched me, and I watched him through the Zeiss glass that I souvenir’d nearly four years ago. Four years ago! Then, instead of the evening star gleaming on the ocean-bed of sky when the tidal light of day had ebbed, the calcium flares arose into the darkness and with tremulous brilliance wavered to earth. Sometimes the pop-pop-pop of a machine-gun traversing to catch reliefs floundering and cursing in the mud, and the hissing whine of gas-shells came when it was quiet. One night I left the mess and walked beyond the village of Mory, and looked out over towards Cambrai. The Germans had retreated into their
Siegfried
Stellung
a few days before. Ruddy and sudden fountains of light where shells were bursting a mile away, the high far throb of a twin-engined Gotha and the white flares diminishing north and south, yet rising everlastingly. I sat there for hours, held by the unrealisable aching vastness of the scene. Pin pricks of light over the distant trenches, faint
womps!
—the oval instant belch of howitzers in a quarry near me; the Hun high shrapnel, the bursting of his, or our, H.E., the bright smack-back of our howitzers pointing stunted barrels at the unthinkable stars. Sometimes as I watched a silence would hover over the battlefield like a kindly bird; and then nearer sounds would be borne up; the laughter of gunner officers in the mess made of canvas and splintered willow-sticks, the nasal shout of some cockney soldier washing up in a lean-to, the needle-squeaks of mice running through the clover at my feet, the rustle of a leaf, the rattle of a head-chain, the stamp of a mule. And in the dark solitude I would lose myself—and then the air would leap alight and rock and thunder, orange, vermilion, and white flashes and stabs, the long white stabs of the 18-pounders, red and green S.O.S. rockets soar above the German positions, the shattering bullet-fans of their machine-guns traverse the low darkness. Another raid, held up by their wire-belts; barrage and counter barrage. It was a strange earth, to which I could never accustom myself; and now it is gone as strangely.
But to my journal proper.
Today I watched through my Zeiss glass the peregrines flying swiftly above the fire-formed ruins of Valhalla, stooping at one another, touching beaks in the air with shrill chatter of joy, wings buffeting or embracing. I hoped to see a stoop at a gull, but nothing happened, except that an occasional gull pursued one, but was easily out-flown. The stoop, or dive, of the falcon is magnificent. They shut their wings and dive head-first at so steep an angle that it appears to be a perpendicular drop. It is not a swooping down, but a complete drop, as though freed from the force of gravity in a vacuum: a compression of sinew, muscle, bone and feather. I guessed the accumulated speed just before flattening out and zooming to be about 200 m.p.h.
I saw a pair of swallows, a solitary pair. They are at least a fortnight early. Wheatears have come; pipits are fetching down song from heaven. Cormorants on the rocks below hold their umbrella-segment wings outstretched, to ease the wedgement of fish in their gullets; and to dry those wings. All mammals and birds like the warmth of the sun, I with them.