Authors: Henry Williamson
“I must dye my face brown with iodine, and stick small feathers round my eyes, Doris. I’ll need a beak, too, can you
make one of cardboard? We’ll want some dark elastic to hold it in place. How can I get feathers to stick to my pyjama trousers?”
“You might tar an old pair,” suggested Bob. “Then roll in some feathers out of a pillow.”
Hetty began to laugh.
“It’s no laughing matter, Mother! Time’s getting on, you know!”
“Well, dear,” said Hetty, trying to keep a straight face. “If you tar some feathers to your legs, and the room is hot, won’t they come off on your partners’ dresses?”
“What, my legs? How awful! Anyhow, I haven’t got a partner!”
“Yes, but you’ll dance, won’t you? At least with Jackie? She is such a nice girl,” she added, inconsequently.
“How about glue?” said Bob.
Phillip began to laugh. “Supposing we get stuck together, and can’t be separated? What a story for Bloom! AUTHOR GLUED TO PARTNER, SEASIDE SOCIETY SCANDAL, ORNITHOLOGICAL RARITY PRODUCED. HAS EVOLUTION TAKEN A STEP FORWARD? I’ll see if the carpenter has got some glue. It won’t stink when it gets hard. Coming, Bob?”
The carpenter’s shop was shut and padlocked. After a visit to the Ring of Bells they went down to the Anchor Inn at Esperence Cove for some old rope-ends from the fishermen. A Long-eared Owl would not be complete without a mouse, as befitted a bird of prey. Then back up the valley road to the cottage.
The creation took more time than had been anticipated, and when Phillip set out for Turnstone the sun had gone down below the hills of Cornwall. Scorching down the winding sunken lane he met with some surprised and even startled faces as he fled past figures taking an evening stroll in the twilight. The lower half of his fancy dress consisted of pyjama trousers tucked into brown riding boots, the base of the upper half being a torn war-time sheepskin jerkin, to which masses of mixed feathers were stuck by seccotine. At the last moment he had decided on a white-washed face with burnt-cork circles round eyes surrounded by gummed-on bantams’ feathers.
Upon his head he wore a baby’s woollen cap pierced by two upstanding turkey feathers; while the unconventional effect was
enhanced by a moth-eaten lambskin enwound with old rope to make the shape of a rat, with tail of tow and black beer-bottle screw-stoppers for eyes, carried in his mouth.
His arrival outside the village hall was greeted by genuine cheers from boys waiting below. From within the hall came imitation Highland cries. A reel, to the music of a gramophone, was in progress.
By this time he had the gravest doubts of his appearance; but he couldn’t very well turn round and go back. He paused, irresolute. Would his pyjamas arouse consternation, and confirm what that old woman had written to Mrs. Carder? Telling himself to keep calm he walked up the stairs, and near the top waited for the dance to end, the while harvest beer-drinkers in the pub opposite came out to encourage him.
“Well done, Mis’r Masson, you look praper, midear! What be ’ee, a bliddy g’rt parrot?”
“What, be ’ee just out o’ bade (bed)? You’m equipped for the young leddies, I reckon!” Roars of laughter drowned other remarks. Now for it! He went into the dance-room, and uttered the melancholy call of the Long-eared Owl before presenting himself to his astonished hostess.
There was silence, broken by a ringing
Yoi-yoicks!
from Jacky. Grateful for this, he crossed the empty floor amid silence, and, bowing to her, sat himself down on a wooden form below the dart-board enclosed in an old motor-tyre. Jacky said, “’Ullo, Drummer, you’m a proper sight, you be!” and in the silence following this remark he heard an old woman with an enamelled face and fluffy white hair holding in her hand a lorgnette say loudly, “Why was that young man invited, I wonder?” as through her lorgnette she stared, somewhat owl-like herself, in his direction.
Assuming an air of complacent detachment, he sat there until the next dance began. “I’m afraid I’ve promised this one,” said Jacky, whereupon he stood in mock ease against the dart-board, overhearing the reply of Mrs. Carder into an ear-trumpet exchanged for the lorgnette, “My dear, he’s quite harmless. An original costume, don’t you think?”
“Pyjamas at a dance are not
my
idea of originality, Phoebe!”
There were Indian Rajahs, several Clowns, Milkmaids, one Lord Nelson, Swiss girls, Cowboys, two Charlie Chaplins, Jack Tars, a Harlequin, Redskins, etc. Mrs. Carder moved through them to Phillip.
“So you are an owl, are you, Mr
.
Maddison! Well, you are certainly original!” Later he heard her say to his critic with the ear-trumpet, “My dear, it’s a success, don’t you think? I managed to get three peeresses as patrons, and they’ve all come!”
He danced once with Jacky. She was eighteen years old, light of feet and lissom of figure. “You know, I felt a little doubtful about wearing my pyjamas!”
“You should have taken them off, then what a howl would have gone up! My dear, I’m damned glad you’ve shocked all these old jigs!” She glanced down at his boots. “Do you hunt?”
“You mean, in pyjamas?”
She laughed without restraint.
“I once fought a battle in pyjamas, but without boots!”
“Get out! You’m a bliddy liar, my dear!”
“It’s a fact!” He told her about the surprise German counter-attack at Cambrai in 1917.
“Why not come out next season with the Queensbridge? I’ll send you a card of the meets. You can hire a good hunter for thirty bob a day down here. There’s not much flying of hedges, it’s nearly all catting the banks.”
“I’ll certainly come out!” It would be the very thing to keep him fit in the winter.
They were dancing to a record of
Ours
is
a
Nice
’
ouse
,
ours
is
, played by the American Savoy Havana Band. This was to be followed by
Ain
’
t
We
Got
Fun
on the other side of the record; but in the interval he slipped away, and discarding his horrible headgear went back to the cottage to throw off the idiotic ‘disguise’ for normal clothes and then to call on Porky, to whom he gave an account of what had happened.
“You know who the old gel is, don’t you?” said Porky. “She’s the heiress of Nunn’s Nabob Shag!”
He went on to say that she was the more keen on morality at the moment because her husband had recently been gettin’ on with the good work. “Yes, Phillip, he put a young parlour-maid in the family way, a little matter which cost the old gel a hundred quid!”
“Who are the other people?”
“Oh, local bigwigs, y’know—wives of lawyers, doctors, a builders’ merchant or two—I shouldn’t let them worry you. Now, Jacky, she’s a real sport, goo’ lor’ yes—a jolly fine girl is Jacky.”
“Who are the peeresses?”
“One’s the widow of a Field-Marshal, the others are staying
here for the holidays. Nothing to do with the locals, really. Yes, Phillip, as I was saying, young Jacqueline Carder’s a sport! Best of the bunch! She had a rip for a father, y’ know. He’s dead now—he owned the town mills in Queensbridge, they tell me.”
Mrs. Tanberry asked Phillip if he had had any supper. “No? Then let me boil you an egg. You must keep up your strength, you know.”
“Yes, how’s the old bellows?” asked Porky. “That Warbeck fellow told us you had had a haemorrhage before you came down to live here. You see Dr. MacNab, of course? How’s your lung gettin’ on?”
Phillip was startled: he had not thought of Julian as a gossip.
“Did you read that Lord Castleton has died?” went on Porky.
“What!”
“Oh yes, it’s in
The
Trident
today. I’ll show you.”
There it was, in heavy black type—CASTLETON DEAD.
Having eaten the egg, he waited for ten minutes before leaving, to mourn his old Chief by the sea. Then he set off for the Selby-Lloyds, hoping that they hadn’t already gone to bed.
Peering through the lighted window in the garden, he saw that Sophy and Queenie were alone. Where was Annabelle? He withdrew hastily, feeling that such spying was unworthy: also, he might be seen. Then opening the door into the smaller studio built against one side of the house, he sat down in an armchair, fortifying himself before knocking on the door.
An open wooden staircase led up to the loft, which had been converted into a bedroom for guests. He imagined that he had the place to himself, and was therefore surprised to hear the creak of a board above him and a voice whispering, “Who’s there?”
Uncertain of the voice he said, “My name is Maddison, I’m a friend of the family.”
“Come up, Phillip. Don’t make a sound!”
“Who is it?”
“Annabelle! Only be quiet!”
He crept up the stairs and saw her lying in bed. He sat on the bed and her arm came to him and pulled him to her. As in a dream he felt her warmth on his cheek, her night-gown was warm, he kissed her as she kissed him pulse for pulse with short little offered kisses, seeming to want to cling to him while breaking off only to kiss him again. He hardly knew what was happening as with closed eyes he returned her kisses on brow and cheek and
soft skin behind the ear—kisses as blind and brief and compulsive as her own.
“Where have you been all this time?”
“I wanted to be with you!”
“Don’t tell anyone you came up here, will you?” She kissed him again, he glowed in her warmth, still in a dream.
“Of course not.”
“Now you ought to go. Mummy may come up any moment.”
“Are you ill, Annabelle?”
“Not really, only a bit run down, I suppose. I’ll be all right tomorrow. Now go, before they find you up here, you old owl, you!”
“Annabelle, I love you so. Do you love me?”
“What, love an old owl! Go! Go—do what I tell you, owl!”
“Good-night, Annabelle!”
“Go, owl!” She hid her head under the bedclothes; but his last sight of her as he went down the stairs in the dim light was of her face looking at him as she sat up in bed.
*
Midnight rolled from the church steeple. Phillip and Sophy were alone in the kitchen. He had told her of the dance fiasco, and was now trying to read
The
Times
.
“Aren’t you cold, all that way from the fire, child?”
He mourned the death of the great man with whom he had talked, admiring his courtesy and directness, only two years before, while working in Monks House. It was sad to think of that enthusiasm and vitality being strangled and distorted by insanity before being finally darkened out.
“I’m quite warm, Sophy, thank you.”
“You’re not very sociable, are you?”
He moved his chair six inches closer to hers, and went on reading.
“Must you sprawl on the kitchen table, on your elbow?” He sat up.
“I’m awfully sorry, I felt I was at home!”
“You have no respect for me, have you, you odd creature!”
“I have great respect for you!”
“Not too much, I hope!”
“Well, the right amount, as of one good friend to another.”
Wheedling and patient, as to a hound puppy being walked, she repeated, “Won’t you come and sit near me? Why are you always so tiresome, child?”
He moved his chair another eighteen inches nearer hers. She complained that they were still too far apart, so he moved his chair again and sat staring into the fire, seeing the eyes of Annabelle in the dying embers. Drowsily her voice asked him to be nice to her. He did not know what to reply.
“What’s troubling you, child?”
“Nothing.”
“But there must be something. You are always so
distrait
.”
“Nothing, really.”
“Is it anything I have done?”
“Good lord, no! You are always most kind to me!”
“But you don’t like me!”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then put your arms round me, boy.”
He put an arm on Sophy’s shoulder, telling himself he must be “master of the situation”, and thus prevent Sophy injuring herself. Also, to prevent injury to himself. All the while Sophy’s lips were fondling his cheek. He sat still, concealing his dislike of the familiarity.
“There is something on your mind, obviously. Won’t you tell me?”
“Oh, it’s nothing much. I owe a lot to Castleton. Did you read his last dispatch from Germany? At Cologne he said to the Burgomaster, ‘I don’t shake hands with Germans’. After that, his next article wasn’t published—suppressed by his own editor. He was mentally ill, you see. Worn out.”
“What has that to do with you and me?”
“Well, you asked me, and I’ve tried to tell you, Sophy. I owe a lot, indirectly, to my job in Monks House, after the war. There was something rather fine about Castleton.”
“What,
The
Daily
Trident
—that rag!”
“I meant Castleton. He was generous.”
“Is he the only one who has been generous to you?”
“Oh, no, he was one of many. Including you.”
“Stop fencing, child! Something is on your mind. Why not tell me?”
“Well, I’ve learnt one thing, and that is that ties which one day must be broken, should never be made.”
“Dear dear, that sounds rather like something out of your Pauline book! It’s like saying, bootlaces which have to be untied should never be tied, or necks that are bound to get grubby should never be washed.”
“Is
my
neck grubby?”
“No, don’t be alarmed! You are a clean little animal. But your shoes should be brushed occasionally.”
“Haven’t got any brushes.”
“Then buy some.”
“But seriously, Sophy, I meant that, on moral or ethical grounds, such ties that inevitably will involve human suffering and remorse, should not be made.”
Sophy threw her cigarette into the fire. “Don’t talk so, child! What has remorse to do with you and me?”
“I don’t know how to continue.”
“Of course you don’t! So why try?”
He talked about the poetry of Francis Thompson, but she interrupted with, “Words, words, words! You don’t like me, do you?”
“Of course I like you, Sophy. You have been most kind to me.”
“‘Kind!’ You avoid me, all the time. Why?” She kissed him lightly on the lips. “I do believe that you are afraid of me! Surely you know women at your age? You have a reputation for being one for the ladies, you know. Or don’t you know?”