Authors: Henry Williamson
“P.M., I hate to bother you, but could you tell me if in your village I might find a furnished cottage immediately? Please be discreet, I’m so worried, and so sorry to trouble you. He—” indicating the cablegrams, “may appear at any moment.”
*
Sitting on the sofa beside her, he listened to her story. She was Anglo-Indian and married to a Judge older than herself. Phillip must understand that she could never
love
anyone but him; but she had gone away because they could not live together. Like his daughter Barley he was very quick mentally; but unlike Barley, he found fault with the slowness of others. After much unhappiness she had decided to return to England with her daughter
who must finish her education at home. Feeling unwanted, in a mood of despair, she had allowed herself to be sorry for a pathetic, childlike Swede in London who had fallen violently in love with her. She had gone off with him to Sweden, regretting it as soon as she started, but had gone through with it. Ivan was difficult, very temperamental, a weak man. He drank dreadfully. He had no money, his father had kicked him out of home after he had consistently neglected his job in the family match factory. Ivan had borrowed all her money. She had cabled her trustees for more, and Ivan took that. When there was no money to pay the hotel bills she decided that to remain with him would only mean deeper misery. She could not help him, an artist of sorts, because he wouldn’t help himself. When she told Ivan this he ran into the bedroom from the sitting-room and banged his face against the wall, in order to hurt himself and so excite further her feelings of pity which were already exhausted. With bleeding nose and weeping eyes he implored her not to leave him. He was so weak, in contrast to her husband, who was stable as felspar, that she felt almost contempt for Ivan. He took her ermine coat and pawned it without telling her. He took her jewellery and pawned that also. At last she left without her luggage, which was held by the Stockholm hotel until the bill was paid. She had just enough money to reach Harwich.
“And here I am., P.M., with Barley, until I can find a school for her.”
By this time Phillip was beginning to wonder if her story was a prelude to borrowing money from him; but as he had not yet been repaid by Porky, his reply would be truthful, if unbelievable: he had no money. However, the confession was not intended as a prelude to borrowing, and he felt himself to be mean, especially as she had been so trusting. And yet—how had Ivan the Swede found out her address, if really she had come so far to hide herself; but he asked no questions. He was shown several of the cablegrams. It was reassuring to realise that although he had in the past felt like Ivan, he had never written letters quite so wildly as these long cablegrams: at least he
had
written them, but never posted them, either to Eveline or Spica.
The extravagant wording of the cablegrams made him harden against the sender. He speculated vaguely, and with a certain pleasurable thrill, what would happen if Ivan were to walk into the room at that moment. Ivan might think that Barley, sitting arms folded and so still and self-contained beside him, was a
blind; but even if he didn’t, Ivan might shoot him. Ivan the Terrible! How old Julian would enjoy such a story! And imagining Porky, Ivan, and Julian together in the pub, he could not help smiling inwardly. And looking up, he saw that the girl was smiling at him. Had she divined his thought?
Irene too smiled, and said sadly, “Do you know of a quiet, secluded cottage in your village?”
“Yes, there’s Verbena Cottage, quite near mine, but considerably larger! I’ll go and make enquiries immediately. May I take Barley on a cushion on the carrier? I’ll take great care of her, and bring her back by six o’clock.”
Irene assured him there was no hurry; she had telegraphed because in her unhappiness she thought of him as her friend: he was so sympathetic, so understanding.
This was flattering. He saw himself jumping between her and a bullet; and the irony of the interpretation of his act by the vulgar-minded. They had tea as usual on the sands, while he basked in the sun in his new bathing dress and told her how Julian and he had come down to write in the cottage, and how it had not worked out like that. He told her about Porky, too, and she said that life everywhere seemed to be about the same since the War.
“I’ll see about that cottage in the morning, Irene.”
“What a kind man you are, P.M.!”
The next morning he sought the owner of Verbena Cottage, furnished and to let, and looked over it. “Would a guinea and a half a week be too much?” enquired the owner, a spinster lady.
“I’ll ask at once, Ma’m.”
It was down the hill and round the corner from his cottage, with a front garden, four bedrooms, two living-rooms, and kitchen annexe built on next to the bathroom. There was a rotary pump from a well under the kitchen.
With bathing dress tied to the handle-bars he swung up and down and around the twisting sunken lanes to Turnstone. Walking along the sands to Irene’s rock he saw Julian sitting beside her. They were laughing. Indeed, Julian was laughing loudly. His beard was shaved. Nearby, ‘Sailor’s’ rusty push-bike was thrown down, its front wheel in a pool of sea-water. The girl sat by herself against another rock, arms folded, legs crossed at the ankle, reading a book. She got up and ran towards Phillip when she saw him. “I’m so glad you’ve come, P.M.” She took his hand, and led him to the others.
“Ha, the village genius! Welcome, Maître!”
“Hullo, P.M. We were just talking about you. Come and sit down,” smiled Irene, spreading the rug beside her.
“Thanks, but I really ought to get back to work. I’ve dashed over to tell you that I think I’ve arranged about that matter you spoke of.”
“Thank you ever so much, P.M. You are such a kind person. You’re just in time for luncheon, we were about to go up.”
“It’s most kind of you, but I must be getting back. I have to write my weekly article for
The
Crusader.”
“Can’t you write it here? You can have the drawing-room to yourself, and it’s quiet in the hotel. Must you really go? Barleybright, darling, P.M. says he must go. Such a busy man suddenly, darling.”
“Please stay,” said the girl. “You can write your essay and then post it from here. The post goes out at half-past five.” She was by his side, seeming to have arrived there unnoticeably.
“I think I ought to go back, really.”
Julian looked at him with amused triumph. His red-brown hair was oiled and brushed back from his forehead.
“Oh, before I forget, Irene, here’s the address you wanted to know about.”
“Thanks ever so much! Barley and I will probably walk over tomorrow, and perhaps we may drop in and see your place? Sure you won’t stay?”
A light touch on his sleeve. “Do stay, please,” said Barley.
“I really must go.”
“Take me,” said the girl. “Then you’ll have to come back to dinner.”
Feeling foolish, hoping his behaviour would not be put down to jealousy, yet knowing it would be, he returned alone to Malandine. On the way back he tried to disentangle himself.
Was
it jealousy? Or merely a rebuff to his conceit? He had looked upon Irene as
his
friend; why had she taken up so easily with Julian? Was she another Eveline Fairfax? Anyway, she was not really his sort. Ought he to warn her about Julian? He decided to write her a confidential letter, telling her why he and Julian had parted—chiefly because of Julian’s debts in the village. After all, she must be hard-up after the way Ivan the Terrible had sold her furs, etc.
Having posted the letter, he returned to his upstairs writing table, with a view through the small window of the weeds in the
garden below. He tried to continue his book from where the writing had been broken off during the radiant summer weather beginning nearly three weeks before, but could not write; it was so quiet in the lime-washed room, so purposeless sitting there away from the sunlight.
He went down to see Porky, finding him subdued in an atmosphere of tea-leaf smoke, and spent the evening there, reading what he had written to his host, surely the most sympathetic listener and appreciator in the world—when he kept away from the pubs. It was one o’clock when he walked home, clear-headed and happy under the stars.
As he was lying in bed between eight and nine o’clock next morning Julian walked up the stairs into his bedroom. He told Phillip that he had met the postman, who had given him his letters. There were three; one in a thin, firm, flittermouse sort of handwriting that made him open the envelope over-eagerly, ripping it nearly in half, before cutting the rest of the flap meticulously with the rusty safety-pin which held a tear in his trousers.
“Listen to this, Julian! It’s about my essay in the
English
Review
! It’s from Walter Ramal!”
He read the letter aloud, and then said, “What about that, old boy!”
“Oh, quite a polite letter,” remarked Julian. “I suppose Mr. Ramal groans every day at the mass of manuscript sent to him for the self-advancement of scandent young writers hauling themselves up on his efforts. I could get a letter like that if I wanted to—only I wouldn’t want to. By the way, there’s a letter from Father, old boy. I suppose you would have no objection to handing over the doings to me? Or do you still wish to control the Privy Purse?”
“I bloody well do not!” Phillip replied, tearing open the letter, and reading it swiftly. “Your father leaves the disposal of the allowance to my discretion—so here you are. Two pounds. And if you’re wise, you won’t get into debt.”
“I never get into debt, Maître; but Father frequently does. Seriously, I am grateful to you for all your innumerable good intentions.” He was gnawing a fingernail, while eyeing the third envelope.
Phillip opened it carefully. “Hullo—‘Dear Man of the Sands——’.” He glanced at the overleaf signature. “It’s from Irene. Forgive me, Julian.” He read it to himself: they had
missed him, and hoped they would see him that day at the usual place.
You
are
a
queer
mixture,
P.M.,
but
both
Barley
and
I
like
you
—
if
you
will
let
us.
He was pleased, and to hide his feelings screwed it up lightly and threw it on the floor. The sun was shining brightly outside. Why was he lying in bed while chaffinches were singing in the elms, and swifts flying in under the thatch? He threw off the bedclothes, and pulled on his trousers.
Julian’s eyebrows arched themselves. “May I see Irene’s letter, old boy?”
“Oh, there’s nothing in it.” He sluiced his face in the basin of cold water and pulled a shirt over his head.
“Will you go over, do you think?” Julian asked casually. His voice became satirical. “‘Dear Man of the Sands’! God, you are a scream with that beard, Phillip! I was much amused by Irene’s account of your spectacular stage-suicide on the rock! She is an extraordinarily nice woman,” he added, gravely. “Don’t you think so?”
“Extraordinarily nice.”
“Why do you say ‘extraordinarily nice’?” challenged Julian.
“Why do you?”
Julian was wearing his brown suit and brown shoes. His hair was oiled and plastered back. “Well, Maître, I won’t disturb the flow of genius. How is the book going?”
“It isn’t. Life is greater than literature.”
“Yes: but only very, very occasionally. This may be one of the occasions, however. Well au revoir, old boy. I’ll leave you to it.”
On his motor-bike Phillip went into the town to visit a dentist. Between 1914 and 1919 his teeth had been entirely neglected, and probably needed attention now. Several fillings were necessary, and further appointments made. Passing a barber’s shop afterwards, he hesitated. Faces above pavements always jerked towards him, it was hateful to be stared at, and sometimes have the idiotic catch-word
Beaver!
called after one. He recalled Spica’s words when he had arrived at Cambridge during May Week…. “You do look a ruffian.” Should he? His friendly beard, so soft to stroke! It had almost a personality of its own. The occasional gold hairs, bleached by the sun, were pleasing.
While he was hesitating two girls came towards him, both very pretty. One was dark, and well-developed for a school-girl, he thought; she had a long plait of hair over one shoulder. The other, older girl was fair with blue eyes. He heard her say to the dark girl, “Go on, he’s yours, Annabelle!”; but before they came
abreast he said first, “No, it’s mine! Beaver!” and with the least glance at their friendly open faces—obviously visitors—he went into the barber’s shop.
“Hair cut, sir?”
“Shave, I think.” O damn; always in two minds—weak—irresolute. His beard, his lovely beard, was going to be cut off! Like a coward he did nothing to save it. Too late now—it was a mass of lather; then he was staring in the glass at the unpleasing pallor of a weak-looking face. Yes, a hair cut please. Snip, snip, snip—too late to ask for a trim. What an ugly head and face he had, with its sullen stare! While the barber’s back was turned he put out his tongue at the apparition in the looking-glass.
“A little brilliantine on the hair, sir?”
“Good God, no!”
“Very good, sir,” said the barber, obviously not approving the particular emphasis; so Phillip spoke about Charlie Chaplin. “I’ve never seen him in a barber’s-shop scene. Have you?”
“I don’t like Charlie Chaplin, sir. I don’t hold with anything vulgar—clean fun is what I like.”
“Clean fun and clean shaves, what?”
After lunch—bread and cheese and a small tankard of stout in an oak-beamed tavern—he sped away on the Norton to Malandine sands. Julian was there already. He greeted Phillip with “Hullo, ‘Dear Man of the Sands’,” in a loud satirical voice; at which Irene looked from Julian’s face to Phillip’s with a slight frown as of puzzlement.
Phillip felt constraint in her manner and soon made an excuse to leave. She made no attempt to persuade him to stay. Nor did she say anything about walking over to inspect Verbena Cottage.