Authors: Henry Williamson
He kept his gaze down, and Annabelle went to her mother, kissing her good-night. “I’m honestly too tired to have a bath, Mummie.”
“Good-night, darling,” said Sophy. “You’re a good, sweet girl.”
He held himself still. Had some decision been taken about him? He waited for more; but Annabelle, with a murmured good-night, went to bed. Sophy and Phillip sat by the fire. A few minutes later she filled her own bottle and said, “Well, I must go to bed. Stop here if you want to—it’s warmer than your cottage, isn’t it, old man?”
It seemed strange to be called old man by Sophy.
“I think I’ll go now. I’m rather tired, too.”
“Yes, it will do you good to get some sleep. Good-night.”
Sophy was gone: for the first time in many evenings she had deliberately and obviously turned away without even a handclasp.
Had she and Annabelle both agreed to fade themselves out?
With a feeling near to desperation he arrived at Malandine with his white flannels clotted with mud, and kicking them off got into pyjamas and settled in his valise bed—the cold of the lime-ash floor being insulated by newspapers. Then hearing his mother’s voice calling him softly from above, he crept up the stairs on bare feet.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“Oh, yes. Sorry about the rain.”
“How did the tournament go?”
“Not so bad. What did you do?”
“We spent a very happy day on the beach, Phillip, and got back before the weather broke.”
“I felt I had deserted you all.”
“Oh, we were quite happy. Are you sure you aren’t wet?”
“Hardly at all.”
“Shall I boil you some hot milk? Just hark at the rain.”
“Oh, no thanks. The rain’s outside, anyway!”
Lying in his valise, he tried to recall what Sophy had said at tea in the pavilion. What was it she had said? Now he must get the exact words, the exact tone of voice, the exact look in her face: now then: Teatime, Annabelle on his left, Sophy pouring tea on his right. Three tables away Captain Normanby, an acquaintance of the Anglian Brigade in 1918 at Felixstowe—Indian Army, dark, stern-looking, a real cave-man. Playing in the semi-finals with steel-wire racquet: terrific smash. Sophy saying, “Oh, do tell me who he is. I saw you speaking to him. You knew him in the War? Do you know if he is married?”
“I don’t think so,” he replied, to say something.
Then Sophy said, “Feel better, Annabelle? There’s a chance for you after all.”
Did Sophy watch his face as she spoke those words? Her mouth was slightly open, as though she was a little breathless. He knew that attitude, she was like it when she was tender about a new hatched duckling cupped in her hands, or bending down by a small child playing in a puddle alone on the sands. But breathless now lest he realise she was dissembling?
A woman at the next table, a Club acquaintance, had said, “They say that he’s engaged to the Wannop girl, who partners him in the mixed doubles.”
“Oh, the one with the thick ankles. Poor old Annabelle, never
mind, dear. A broken heart’s soon mended. Besides, one never really loves at your age—it’s all imagination!”
Aug, 26. I do not appear to be able to compete on the world’s terms. That is the cause of my failure, again and again. As with Julian, too: he is neither of the world worldly, nor wholly of the Imagination. My sort dreams with eyes open. Conrad’s “terrible tyranny of a fixed idea”, in other words. Reason tells me that Annabelle is not my kind, since we have little in common. Spica was nearly my kind, but she stops short through prejudice. She has definite opinions. I have only Imagination—I am will o’ the wisp—
ignis
fatuus,
marsh gas, exhalation of rot and decay—“living in the past”. Query: Is madness complete “all imagination”? In nature, is all poetical talk and feeling unnatural? Except when it attracts for the purpose of coitus?
When I am silent and unimaginative, Annabelle is attracted to me. How can I become normal? Feel like ordinary people? Forget the war, and live in the present—before it is too late?
Poetry is cold, like the high snow-peaks; human love is warm, and of the lower places, literally so.
The rain falls steadily outside, little cascades from the thatch glitter with lightning.
At the tennis tournament he had made the acquaintance of two sisters whose mother lived in a villa at Turnstone. When walking above the cliffs between Valhalla and Valkyrie he had sometimes seen them on the rocks below, with long bamboo rods in hand and prawning nets. On other occasions as he had passed the elder girl in the lanes, riding astride a spirited hunter. It so happened that at the tennis tournament he and Annabelle had played against this girl, Jacqueline Carder, and her partner, a young man of moods who, half-way through the set, had begun to hit the balls wildly, the more so when the girl partnering him told him not to behave like an ass, finally declaring, as the set ended with him hitting the ball over the pavilion, that he was a bloody fool. Phillip imagined that the young man was in love with her, that the girl was the dominant personality, and fancy-free; hence the young man’s eccentric behaviour followed by pessimism and final self-destruction in her eyes.
He wondered if he himself appeared to the Selby-Lloyds to be more or less like that young man; and for two days following the tournament he kept away from them, giving himself the excuse that it would make Annabelle miss him. He rehearsed
in his head imaginary dialogues, always ending with her sudden surrender, such as: “My mother wasn’t very well, also I felt I might be in the way if I came over.” “Then you were not purposely avoiding me?” “Also: it seemed only polite that I should stay with my sister and brother-in-law, who are my guests.” “How considerate of you, Phillip,” as she took his hand. “You are so kind, and oh, I have missed you so!” But Annabelle hadn’t appeared; and alarm succeeded his imagined triumph.
On the third afternoon of his self-immolation he saw Jacqueline Carder cantering across the sands, to walk her hunter into the sea. He strolled over to her. “Hullo!” she called out gaily, and invited him to ride the gelding. He pulled up the irons; and jumping into the saddle, trotted off and then kicked it into a canter. After turning it in a figure of eight he went back to the girl and complimented her on her mount.
“Dear old Dum Dum,” she said, patting its neck. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, darling,” as she kissed its nose. “I say, Drummer—that’s what we all call you, from the noise of your old bike—I hope you don’t mind—come and have tea with us tomorrow afternoon. You know where we live? That house on the slope over there. Right, I’ll expect you.”
Thither he went the next afternoon, finding Jacqueline and her sister alone in the house except for the cook and a maid-servant. He stayed to supper of rabbit pie, followed by raspberry tart. Too late now to visit the Selby-Lloyds! He went back to his cottage feeling that he was creating his own doom: a fate that he could only escape by developing firmness of mind.
The next morning, while he was writing an article for Brex of
The
Daily
Crusader,
the others having gone for a walk “to leave him in peace”, as Hetty said, Jacqueline arrived on her horse at his open door.
“Come in, both of you, plenty of room,” he said, patting the neck of Dum Dum. She sat on the edge of the table while he played a record on the gramophone and offered her a glass of whit ale.
“It will amuse you, Drummer, to hear that mother had a letter when she returned this morning, warning her of the danger we ran when we invited you into our house! What have you been up to?”
He showed her a pile of manuscript, scored over, passages obliterated, minutely corrected in three different coloured inks. “This is what I’ve been up to.”
Seeing his face she said, “I say, I thought you’d think it damned funny. Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings!”
“Oh, not at all! But perhaps I ought to see your mother?”
“Do come and see us, whenever you want to.” She took the reins of her horse, which had been standing patiently looking at them through the window.
“My God, what cats some of the old girls round here are! Don’t take any notice of what they say. If I’d have thought it would upset you, honestly I wouldn’t have mentioned it!”
That afternoon he went to call on Mrs. Carder. She told him that she was getting up a Fancy Dress Dance in aid of the Girls’ Friendly Society, and one of her problems was how to fix up a ladies’ cloak-room in the village hall—this being the room where Phillip had first met an incarnation of J. D. Woodford in the guise of Porky.
“I wonder if blankets hung from the ceiling beams would serve as partitions? I have a number of lengths of tweed, which I’d willingly lend you, or help to fix them up, if you think——”
The next morning he worked with them, and was about to leave when Mrs. Carder said, “Now that you have been so kind as to do so much work for us, I think you ought to come to the dance, Mr. Maddison.”
“I’m not very good at dancing, also I haven’t danced for some years, Mrs. Carder.”
“Well, if you decide to come you will be very welcome. And do bring any friends—it’s all in a good cause.”
This gave him an excuse to go over to the Selby-Lloyds. Queenie had just arrived back from Pompey, with tales of the dances, the lights on the ships, the Admiral’s barge, the cattiness of some of the young wives. (How odd, he thought: Queenie was at times cattiness itself—another robin fighting itself in a looking glass.)
Queenie had had a ripping time, she said, and had a man in tow, ‘Brolly’ Weld, who was to arrive that evening in his Bentley. “You’ll like ‘Brolly’, Annabelle,” said Queenie, with a sly glance of pretended innocence at Phillip. “He’s called ‘Brolly’ because he doesn’t go down the gangway when going ashore, but goes over the side of the ship holding an umbrella, and swims to the Admiralty slip, where his servant meets him with his dressing-gown and suit-case in the Yacht Club.”
“Sounds the very kind of chap for a fancy dress dance,” said
Phillip, and told them about the hop got up for funds for the Girls’ Friendly Society.
“Who is giving it, Phillip?” asked Sophy.
“Mrs. Carder. She’s the mother of the girl Annabelle and I played against in the mixed doubles, when her partner fooled about.”
“Oh, that’s the girl who rides a hunter on the sands?”
“Yes—Jacqueline.”
“She’s a show-off,” said Annabelle.
“Jacky’s a jolly nice girl!” retorted Phillip.
“Oh, you know them, do you?” asked Sophy.
“I bet he got off with her,” said Queenie. “What an odd name—Jacqueline. Is she French?”
“Spanish—her ancestor was a wrecked grandee, after the Spanish Armada.”
“Liar!” said Annabelle.
“That’s what the parson says, anyway.”
“What does he know about it—he comes from the suburbs of London!” said Sophy.
“Anyway, I helped Mrs. Carder to fix up the ladies’ cloak-room in the village hall, and she invited me to bring my friends to the dance. So I thought I would ask you all to come as my guests. Fancy dress is optional. It’s also a flannel dance, and probably some of the holiday makers will go.”
“Oh lor’, trippers!” cried Queenie, “and friendly girls! How awful!”
“Well, thank you for inviting us, Phillip, but Queenie’s young man may arrive late, so she and I must remain here in any case. I don’t know about Annabelle, but she will require a chaperon, of course. Will your sister be going?”
He seized the chance, and replied, “Oh, yes!”
“Are you going in fancy dress?” asked Queenie.
“I did think of going as a Long-eared Owl, that is, if I can rig up something.”
Hoots of laughter from Annabelle greeted this reply, with counter-cheers from Marcus.
“You
are
a ninny!” said Queenie, with her soft, uplong look.
After tea Sophy said, “Now we ought to wash up, then I must dress the lobster for supper.”
Phillip volunteered to wash up, but they all helped. While at the sink he heard Sophy’s interior making slight rumbles once or twice, an effect he had often experienced from bully beef in
the old days of solitary munching at table. Queenie as she dried up beside her said, “You’re getting old, Mother,” with a titter.
“Oh, no,” said Phillip, “it’s a sign of extreme youth. Why, when you were a teeny queenie in swaddling clothes your interior economy was like a little cave when the tide fills it, all pobbly and gurgling. Anyway, it was I who was rumbling. I have a dog inside me, who warns me when a witch is about.”
Afterwards Queenie sat down to knit a yellow pullover for—but she would not say.
“‘Brolly’, I bet!” cried Annabelle.
Queenie had, in the past, worked on a yellow pullover for “dear old Bay”; but Sophy had finished it, Phillip remembered.
A combination of circumstances—Queenie’s seasonal excitement over ‘Brolly’, Sophy’s apparent relief at my championing her against Queenie, Annabelle’s state of dual feeling corresponding with mine produced a state of excitation when the conversation became almost exclusively feminine, with usage of sporting terms to describe an aspect of the art of love. I remember how Queenie had, on the first occasion of wearing the diamond ring of engagement to ‘Woppy’, now at the China station, spoken demurely of having used the gaff. The gaff is a sharp steel hook by which a salmon, after being played to exhaustion, is lifted out of the river or loch. The metaphor varied. “‘Brolly’s’ tongue was hanging out.” Before this, Brolly had “risen to the lure”. All this in amiable banter, and all coming, like my own emotions, from the head. Even so, it is the deliberateness of love being regarded as a chase, as a sport, that stills me—while at the same time I feel that my critical attitude is due to a Puritan upbringing, under the shadow of Uncle Hugh dying of syphilis. Or is the difference between us that the Selby-Lloyds are a happy family and therefore the more natural, while I am from an unhappy family, and therefore unnatural? Is it the mortified part of me that is the artist, striving to excel in a personal medium? Even as all new life arises out of death?
While Phillip was at the Selby-Lloyds’, Doris and Bob had been wandering along the tide-line collecting the feathers of gulls, curlews, and other birds. The idea was to stick these with glue—there was no time to sew them—on a hessian jerkin which was to be the body of the owl. Doris had also got, from the shop, some cardboard sides of a box from which to make a pair of wings.