Authors: Henry Williamson
Open windows and Mrs. Crang working cheerfully with scrubbing brush and pail, blankets and sheets airing on her garden line told Phillip that Verbena Cottage had been taken by Irene. In a hired car she and Julian had arrived for an inspection the afternoon before; and had left without coming to see him. He could not understand it.
Was
she another Eveline Fairfax?
He went for a swim at Britannia Bay, as he called it; and on returning past their cottage at six o’clock saw that they had moved in. Was it fancy that Barley had waved to him from the balcony in a subdued way? From his window he observed Julian, coming apparently with a message to Mrs. Crang, walking with unaccustomed briskness and wearing new white flannel trousers and a white shirt with roll collar open at the neck in Byronic style. A lilac sash or scarf was round his waist: this Phillip recognised as having been loosely knotted around Irene’s shoulders when she had cried “Hi!” to him on Britannia Rock.
About half-past eight o’clock, when it seemed that the evening meal might be over, he made up his mind to call upon Irene. With a salute to Mrs. Crang, on her way back from Verbena Cottage, he opened the garden gate and walked up the short cobbled path. The door was open. The knocker was stiff with rust, and his effort was not sufficient to make any sound; he tried again and to his alarm a loud and familiar-old-friend
Bang!
resounded in the empty room. Listening, he heard the noise of frying in the kitchen, and whispering. Then Irene came to the door, tall and slender and cool, and he realised his misgivings had been justified. With a blank face she said, “I think that the way you read my letter to Julian, after you had written to me about your friend’s shortcomings, is so disgraceful that I do not feel able to continue our friendship.”
He could not speak.
“I am grateful to you for finding me this cottage, P.M.; now we must say good-bye.”
He went away, hardly knowing what to do to ease the despair at his own foolishness in writing the letter; and after pacing his kitchen floor for an hour or so he went upstairs with the melodramatic thought of writing until he was dead. Forty-eight hours later he had written twenty thousand words of his book, had eaten nothing and drunk only water during that time. On the third day, a Sunday, Mrs. Crang knocked hesitantly on his front door and when he went down there she stood with a plateful of rabbit, cabbage, and potatoes.
“Excuse of me, but us thought you might like vor eat this.”
“Thank you very much, but I’m not hungry.”
“Oh, Mr. Maddison, how can ’ee deny ’ee’s stummick further?” Not wishing to appear to rebuff her kindness he accepted the plateful, wolfed it, and feeling cheerful again, went into the kitchen next door to thank the Crangs. There he ate
some prunes and custard; and learned that Julian was still lodging with ‘Sailor’, but having his meals with Mrs. Lushington.
“A proper lady, very kind, and with a
bootiful
li’l maid,” said Walter Crang. Tomorrow, said Mrs. Crang, a companion or lady-help was expected from Fishguard, but, she went on happily, she was promised the work of cleaning in the morning and washing-up. Wasn’t it lovely?
Walter Crang was out-of-work, there was no dole for that most ill-paid worker in Britain, the agricultural labourer; so the thought of the few shillings a week coming in made husband and wife happy.
From his window the next afternoon Phillip watched Julian, Irene, and the new lady-help getting out of the 1911 Argyll. Julian energetically helped the driver to carry in luggage. And the next morning at 7.30 as Phillip was cautiously stropping his razor he saw Julian banging mats against the wall of the raised garden. Seeing him, Julian walked over.
“How goes the masterpiece, old boy? Yellower and yellower? We heard of the starving genius stunt with much amusement.”
“What sort of man are you, Julian?”
“Ah, Maître, you don’t understand women. The better man always wins, remember!”
“I begin to understand
you
! I did
not
read to you that letter from Irene! You know very well I wasn’t aware who it was from when I opened it!”
Julian inhaled from his gold-tipped State Express cigarette with satisfaction. “Nor did I, Maître, so we’re quits! God, she’s got a marvellous figure! You haven’t seen her bathing, have you? She was married when she was seventeen, and is a poor old dear—— I, well, I like her!”
“Do you love her?”
“I’m very fond of her. What, after all, is love? A Francis Thompson dream?”
“Does she love you?”
“Well,” said Julian, rubbing his hands together, “if she doesn’t now, she will soon! You don’t know how to treat a girl, Maître. You’re not an adult yet.”
“Is one an adult only when one has committed adultery?”
Julian laughed. “You are an amusing chap sometimes, Phil. You are still adolescent, of course. You prefer little girls, like Lewis Carroll. Well, I must go now—I’m supposed to be helping
cook breakfast. It’s a damned fine life, Maître, if you don’t weaken! So long, old boy, more power to your elbow.”
Phillip went on the Norton to Turnstone, where, he saw with relief, several families were on the sands, come for the Easter holidays. He longed to speak to somebody, but forebore; and decided to go to Lynmouth to visit his Aunt Dora. With any luck he might find Willie in his cottage, too. Going back to the Norton he arrived just as a girl and a small boy were ending a slow-bicycle race. He recognised her as one of the two girls playing Beaver in the High Street of Queensbridge. Yes, the one called Annabelle. She was laughing and showing white even teeth as her plait swung about behind her blue serge gym dress. The two were balancing and wobbling, they clashed, mutually protesting that each would have won if the other hadn’t barged across, and recovering, the girl shoved her machine against the bank near the Norton and cried, “Come on, Marcus, let’s bathe!” She was turning to the sea when her bicycle fell against the Norton.
“How touching,” said Phillip. “Your old iron flings herself on the mercy of my Norton, the Prince of Speed.”
“Oh, is that yours?” She smiled widely. “I’m sorry,” she added, giving him a frank look.
“Good heavens, nothing can affect my Falcon! Besides, it hunts down and eats mere push bikes. Seriously though, it’s quite touching, to see a pedal bicycle falling in love with a motor-bike, a sort of Cinderella story.”
“I hope it isn’t scratched anywhere.”
“Oh, no. Scratching follows love, I understand. Please don’t worry in the very least! When you bathe, do be careful not to go near Britannia over there at this tide, there’s a sort of back swirl of current which can be a bit tricky.” He picked up the bicycle and made as if to throw it in the stream, then put it carefully against the bank. “Good-bye!”
He went back to his cottage. The sun was shining, several cottages had taken in families for the holidays. He thought he would play the fool, give them something to talk about, and went to see a farmer who had told him that he could ride his cob anytime he wanted to. That afternoon he rode along the sands, wearing his field boots, boned and polished, with his best fawn cavalry twill breeches with a tweed hacking coat. His hair was oiled and parted in the middle, his moustache, which had survived the shave, waxed up with candle-grease in Kaiser style.
Passing the rock where Irene was wont to sit he saw the school-girl with what appeared to be her mother and other members of the family having tea.
The next afternoon he rode over again, astride the same cob but riding bare-back and wearing old flannel trousers tied with string, old shrunken shirt, and his feet bare. Riding past the tea-rock, he heard a laugh, and waved at the girl but did not stop. Later, preparing to bathe, he asked the boy, who had sauntered over, to hold the cob while he went in to swim.
“Aren’t you going to undress, sir?”
“Good lord no! If I get wet, I’ll get rheumatism!”
“Would you care to have tea with us afterwards, sir?”
“But how does your mother know I’m not a bad character?”
“She said to me, ‘Is your friend a gentleman’, and when I said you were, she said, ‘By all means ask him.’ So will you, after you’ve had your dip? Oh, good. Our name, by the way, is Selby-Lloyd.”
Mrs. Selby-Lloyd looked very young to be the mother of almost grown-up girls, he thought—Queenie the elder had recently left school, and was just nineteen; Annabelle was sixteen, and Marcus twelve. They insisted that he stay to dinner at the hôtel, where they had the same drawing-room as Irene when she was there.
April 25. Annabelle, the hobbledehoy schoolgirl, is transformed in her bright red bathing dress. Her dark hair twisted up and tucked into a red cap, and where then is the captain of the hockey team? She is formed in an exquisite mould—nothing is noticeable. She is like a work of art whose artistry is entirely hidden. One does not think, What lovely curves, or, What fine texture of skin. One simply takes a swift glance and feels despair that such beauty is beyond one. Annabelle of course is not responsible for that beauty: she merely wears it as a flower bears its petals, or a bird sings its song.
As I walk across the sands to Turnstone my mind moves back in time, and I hear the nightingales singing in the woods of my boyhood. Peace, rest, beauty—the nightingale’s song: Annabelle wears that beauty in the shape of her body, in the brightness of her eyes, in the strength and whiteness of her teeth and in her sun-sweet smile.
I am now quite one of the family, and go over every day.
One morning when he had finished, with relief, his breakfast of the remains of a tin of bully, another of sardines, and some
dried-up cheese there was a tap on the door and Barley glided in, to stand still by the table.
“If you please, P.M., Mummie said I could come and see you if I wanted to.”
“True?”
“Yes. May I wash up for you?”
“Well, it’s a sort of ritual, Barley, thanks all the same. First paper, then sand from that bucket, then hot water. Like to put on a record while I do it?”
She put on Kriesler, and he thought the music seemed to fit her—so light of touch, gracious, almost apart from ordinary life, yet of its true essence. He noticed that her shape was beginning to show through her frock. “How old are you, Barley?”
“Sixteen, P.M.”
“I didn’t develop until I was sixteen, then I shot up like a lamp-post. However, don’t worry: Bernard Shaw said: ‘The highest creatures take the longest to mature, and are the most helpless in their immaturity’. I don’t mean that
you
are helpless, of course!”
She looked at him with a wavering smile before putting on another record, which was halfway through when the bare head of Annabelle passed across the open window. Joy leapt in him like a fountain turned on.
Pulling open the door, “Annabelle!” he cried. She remained seated on her bicycle, one hand on the coign of the wall, and turned her head. How fresh her cheeks, how bright her eyes, she had come to see him! “Come on in, Annabelle, and hear the gramophone!”
She sat still on her bicycle. “Oh, is that you? I thought you lived miles away!”
“See you later,” said Barley, and was gone.
“Come here, Annabelle! I’ve got a Kriesler record! Come on in!”
“What do you want?”
“I’ve also got something to show you—my horse-skin, which only arrived yesterday!”
Slowly, as though reluctantly, Annabelle pedalled to the cottage door. She did not dismount, but sat there, maintaining balance by holding to the door-post. Her colour was vivid; she was smiling, yet her eyes were steady upon him. There was a clatter of mudguards, and Marcus arrived. Ignoring him, Phillip invited in Annabelle to see the horse-skin. Marcus, since
he had not been asked, remained politely outside when Annabelle went in.
“Come up and see it, Annabelle!”
In her gym shoes and dark blue dress she went up the stairs. They sat on the edge of the bed.
“Oh Annabelle, I am so glad to see you!”
“Then why didn’t you come over to see us?”
“Annabelle, I am so fond of you.” He put his arm around her, and laid his cheek on hers, taking care not to breathe upon her. She brimmed with pulsing warmth. Her dark eyes in the shadowed room had the deep colour of wallflowers. Then she jumped up. “I must go!”
“No, Annabelle, no!”
“I must, quick, let me go!”
“No, not yet, Annabelle! You haven’t seen the horse-skin yet.”
“Yes, I have. What did you do with the rest of it?”
“I ate it. Sit still, Annabelle.”
“Shan’t!”
“You shall!”
“Shan’t! Really, I must go.”
“But why?”
“You look too much like a blinking old owl!”
“But you haven’t admired my horse-skin!”
“It looks scruffy to me.”
He sat apart from her, she sat demurely. “Where did you get it, truly?”
“Well, it’s rather a long story.”
“I guessed that!”
He moved nearer, she jumped up. Determined to show how little he cared, he led the way downstairs.
“But you haven’t seen my portrait on the wall. It’s by a famous artist,” as he invited her up again.
“Why should I come? Who’s the artist?”
“It’s signed ‘Swank’. Look, only just here!”
“You must have done it yourself, if it’s signed ‘Swank’.”
“Come here, Annabelle!”
“Shan’t!”
She returned, followed by Marcus, who said, “I’ve read your book. I suppose you were Donkin?”
“Well,
I
didn’t exactly go to a Reformatory.”
“What a pity,” said Annabelle. “It would have cured you
of spouting poetry. Don’t start him off, Marcus! Of course you’re Donkin!”
“I like
some
poetry,” confessed Marcus. “Especially John Masefield’s.”
“Oh, lor’,” cried Annabelle. “I’m going!”
“Hear my gramophone, won’t you, Annabelle?”
“No fear!” She got astride her boy’s bicycle, smiling at him. Her knee in the black school stocking was smooth and adorable. She remained, balancing in the doorway. “You old owl!”
“Donkin is partly based on a poor boy I once knew, called Cranmer.”