Authors: Henry Williamson
“I know by heart your letter from the Duchess of Gaultshire's hospital at Husborne, Mr. Maddison, about Harry.” She bit her lips, hung her head, and wept. He covered her hand with his own, and with the other felt for his folded handkerchief.
“I'm very clumsy, Miss Gotley.”
“Oh, no,” she said, accepting the handkerchief as though it were her brother's. “I'm terribly glad it was you who wrote the letter. IâI've read it simply dozens of times. Thank you so much,” as she gave back the handkerchief.
“Harry was a wonderful help to me. May I call you Cynthia? Harry was an awfully good chap. Well!” he said, putting on a light tone of voice. “And you are Harry's sister! D'you know, I wanted to talk to your father, but felt that the war was taboo. I think it's best to know all about such things, so that people can feel free in their thoughts. I hope to write about that time, one day. The simply wonderful men one knewââ”
Before they left she said, “I think I must powder my nose. Thank you so much for the dance!”
“May I have another? Oh good! See you in the ballroom!”
At supper Sophy looked at him with new eyes. He and the General talked over the wine, finding much in common. Phillip found it easy to speak with understatement, in the manner of the regular officers of bygone days. A new spirit of camaraderie hovered over the table of light. The General opened another bottle of Veuve Cliquot.
“Here's to Hubert Gough, and the Red Fox!”
“What's it all about?” asked Annabelle, as the General raised his glass to Phillip.
“The hounds of Whitehall did what the Germans couldn't doâbreak up the mud-balled fox, General!”
“Poor Bay!” said Queenie. “Has Phillip been telling you about his latest short story? Stop him, quickly!”
“Yes, scrag him, someone!” cried Annabelle, giving Phillip a sudden smile. “Don't rag Phillip, dear,” said Sophy quietly, and then looked down because the photographer was holding up the camera. Phillip put his hand to his face
Flash!
a puff of smoke.
Queenie looked pleased; she would appear in
The
Tatler
.
*
The Post Horn Gallop which ended the ball was a wild scramble to the blowing of hunting horns and screaming
Yoi-yoicks
at 5 a.m. Then to bed, and up again at 8, the crick in his back gone, worked out in the sweat of lancers, foxtrot, and one-step; a decent mount this time, responsive, light-mouthed. The fox took them over stubbles and around heavy clays in ridge and furrow and on into oakwoods, a grand run east to the edge of the Forest of Epping, where quite by chanceâfor Phillip had lost the field and taken his own lineâhe was in at the kill with huntsman, one whipper-in, and two other riders. He was congratulated afterwardsâ“Very sportin' of you to have taken your own line like that”âand given the mask. He felt firmer, clearer, master of his own life. He offered the mask to Sophy, who had come out, riding side-saddle; and realized his dreadful mistake, when she said, with a slight blush, “Oh, you must keep itâit's in the Master's gift.”
“Yes, of course.”
His groom put it in a leather pouch and strapped it to his saddle. Later, walking among the foot-followers, he heard a woman saying, “Who is he? The Selby-Lloyd woman's son?”
“My dear, she's old enough to be his mother, I admit, but they say he's a gigolo!”
“A gigolo, how exciting!”
Cynthia Gotley had heard. He was shocked, he was stricken.
*
The next afternoon, over muffins and poached eggs Sophy said, suddenly, “You never told me you were a colonel in the war, Phillip.”
“It was an acting rank, for a short time only.”
“But you won the D.S.O., so Bay tells me.”
“Such things are a matter of luck, really.”
“Bay is going to show me the letter you wrote to Harry's mother, forwarded from the Fusiliers' depot.”
That evening she said, “If only you would write like that now, you'd be famous! Why don't you?”
Here was his opportunity to say what he had rehearsed many times in his head.
“You're right, Sophy! I'll go back to my cottage and start another book right away! Well, thank you very much indeed for the good time you've all given meâmay I come back later on?”
“Of course, child, you know you're always welcome!”
He had no wish to return to his cottage in the wet dullness of winter, so he went home to Wakenham, to enjoy the company of his mother, and go with her to the Old Vic, and hear Shakespeare. When his father and sister came home at night, he went to his room and wrote, before his own fire in candlelight.
One morning he visited Brex, now editor of
The
Sunday
Crusader
, a successful new paper which showed up the old
Weekly
Courier
for what it was, he thought.
“Are you making any money?” asked Brex, a little fatter and pinker now, but still with his old gentle charm.
“No,” said Phillip. He had sent Brex a copy of his first novel, but it had not been acknowledged.
“I read your book, Phillip. It was as anaemic as your short
stories are vital. I hope you’ve got a good agent who tells you the same thing. And never forget the writer’s motto—Faith, Hope and Clarity.”
Phillip went up the lift to the
Daily
office. He remembered Martin Beausire’s enthusiasm for his novel, and asking for him, was directed to a room like an attic at the top of the building. There stood Beausire, recognisable from his photograph, with one foot on a ladder, an open book in his hand, and another under his arm. He was a sturdy man with fair hair cut short, and powerful body.
“Of course I remember your novel, and your name!” said Beausire. “Particularly as you have adopted my line of country. I was born in the South Hams, where my forbears have lived for a thousand years. How good it is to see a countryman’s face in this ghastly place!” His arm enthusiastically swept around the room. “What are you writing now? More of your country stuff, I hope. I must look you up when I go down to see my parents. Do you walk?”
“Rather!”
A shorter sturdy man, looking like a younger brother of Beausire entered the office. But whereas Beausire wore light brown tweeds, the newcomer was dressed in leather breeches and jacket, old dun felt hat nearly shapeless, and he carried a thick nobbly stick. Beausire introduced him. Rowley Meek was unshaven, his eyes bloodshot.
“I’ve just come back to this accursed hotchpotch from walking in the Pyrenees,” he said violently to Phillip. “Now I must concoct six columns of trash by eleven pip emma, then I’m catching the midnight train to Newhaven and going back to the mountains, so don’t expect me to chatter about literary nonentities or balance a tea-cup on my knee while discussing Proust in your damned drawing-room, cretins!” and thumping across the bare wooden floor in his nailed trench boots he disappeared through a door.
“That’s ‘Sundowner’, I suppose?” said Phillip to Beausire. He got no reply. Beausire went to a table piled with books and began to write furiously. Other men were writing at similar tables. After hesitation Phillip turned to say goodbye.
“Who the hell are you?” growled Beausire, while continuing to write with a very thick fountain pen. “Wait there.” Phillip waited, while shouts came from behind the door where Rowley Meek had gone. Loud laughter followed. No one else in the untidy garret appeared to have heard. Girls with pale faces
went on typing. After waiting ten minutes Phillip got up and walked quietly across the floor, and was about to leave when Beausire, putting down his pen, growled, “Come here and tell me what you’re doing. Boy!” he cried over his shoulder. “Take this to Mr. Inskip at once with Professor Beausire’s compliments.” Then to Phillip, “What’s your name?”
“Don’t you remember? We met about five minutes ago.”
“Good God, do you expect me to remember what happened five minutes ago? I’ve reviewed six books since then. Tell me what you’re doing, and where, and how.” He picked up his pen, and pushed sheets of paper before him.
“Foxhunter, are you? Essex, what pack? I know them, I used to be an usher at Felsted, and followed on foot whenever I could.” He spoke now in a low level voice, hardly moving his lips, as though not wanting to be overheard. “Yes, I know the Queensbridge, I’ve run all over the South Hams with them. Where can I find you in Devon?” He wrote down the address; and then appearing to be oblivious of Phillip’s presence continued to write rapidly, covering a quarto sheet of flimsy in a large hand in about a minute.
*
Phillip walked up Fleet Street and turning off at Wellington Street lingered in Covent Garden, stopping by the Floral Street entrance to the gallery of the Opera House, while longing to see again everything as it had been years ago, all the old scenes and faces.
But
faces
fade
as
flowers
,
and
there
is
no
consolation
. He walked on and came to Long Acre. Where was the entrance to the old premises of the Parnassus Club? He had seen it only at night, and in winter; it was lost. Up narrow streets and he came to a market, where many stalls, laden with all sorts of oddments—furniture, pictures, books, brass hot-water cans and candlesticks, second-hand clothes, boots of every description, fruit, cakes, cockle and whelk stalls, coffee and sandwich bars—blocked the street while in the gutters lay torn paper, cardboard boxes, and other rubbish. People jostled on the pavements, in and out of the stalls. Then to the Charing Cross Road with its bookshops; and turning south he found himself in Lower Regent Street, and so to Piccadilly.
He stopped to look in a window where saddles, hunting whips, horns and other accessories of the chase were displayed among walking sticks with carved animal and bird heads and saw behind him, in the glass, a familiar figure, the straight back
under a neat coat, the curl-cluster of surely—Irene? Dare he risk a mistake of speaking to her in Piccadilly—supposing it were not Irene? Then she saw him.
“Hul-
lo
, P.M.! My
dear
P.M.! What are you, of
all
people, doing in London?”
They had tea in the Piccadilly Hotel and talked while de Groot played the violin, leading his famous string orchestra.
“Your Barleybright, do you remember her? She decided that she didn’t like her school at Eastbourne, but thought that Paris was tolerable, and is now on holiday with her Grannie in the Pyrenees, where she simply lives for ski-ing. We are not far from Tarbes—do come and stay some day, won’t you? You’re rather naughty, you know, you promised to come and see us when we were in Cornwall last summer, but you never came. Every morning she used to say, ‘I wonder if I’ll hear the beat of the Norton today, Mummie?’ She has the photograph you gave her, you on your old bike, always by her bed. She’s grown into a very personable young woman, let me tell you! They’ve chosen her for the Carnival Queen at Laruns this year, and she has lots and lots of beaux, but won’t look at one of them. See what you’re responsible for, P.M.!” He thought that she was a flatterer, and remained not so much on his guard as wary of her. There seemed little more to say.
“Well, I have so enjoyed seeing you again, P.M. I suppose you have lots and lots of engagements?”
“Oh, no, none at all. I usually walk about by myself.”
“But why, P.M.? Surely you have plenty of friends in London? Don’t you still belong to the Parnassus Club?”
“Oh, yes, I’d quite forgotten about it! It’s Thursday, and they meet tonight. I wonder who’ll be lecturing? It might be anyone from Shaw or Chesterton to Herbert Jenkins or the editor of the
Pink
’
Un
.”
“It all sounds most interesting to me!”
“Would you like to come, Irene?”
“I’d love to, P.M.! What time do you start?”
“About eight o’clock, at Caxton Hall.”
“Why not dine with me first, if you’ve nothing better to do? I know a quiet little restaurant in Soho, the Commercio. It’s half way down Frith Street, on the left-hand side going up from Shaftesbury Avenue. Will seven o’clock be too early for you? Very well, we’ll meet there, P.M. Oh, I nearly forgot—I suppose Julian won’t be at the Parnassus Club?”
“Oh, no, he’s not a member! I took him there twice, but he didn’t like it. Nor did they!”
“Well, that’s a relief, P.M.! He’s written to me several times, but I haven’t known what to reply. I expect you heard about that time we were at the Savoy? It was in all the papers!”
“No, I didn’t see it.”
She told him about Julian, whom she had met, for pity’s sake rather than for anything else, soon after she had left Devon. He had been considerate and amusing at first, but after the third bottle of champagne and half a dozen Napoleon brandies had become a frantic bore. Presented with the bill, he had signed it. The restaurant manager suggested that he should leave his address as well. That to Julian was “an intolerable insolence”, and while she had waited, in shame, he had gone to the manager’s office and kicked up a row, becoming more and more abusive and violent until the police were called. He spent the night in Vine Street.
“I was dreadfully sorry for his father, when I saw him next morning. The old man offered to settle the bill, and pay the costs. The magistrate said to Julian, ‘If this happens again and you come before me, I shall send you to prison for a very long time.’ And there was Julian, still in his dress clothes, patronising his father afterwards, as he talked to reporters. Well I must be off, I suppose. It’s been the most
lovely
tea and talk. Barley
will
be thrilled, and envious, when I write and tell her—she has your books by her bedside. We both
adore
your volume of essays—and that snapshot of you on that funny motor-bike you were so proud of, have you still got it? Seven o’clock at the Commercio, then—Frith Street, Soho—can you remember it, or shall I write it down for you? Then you’ll take me on to the Parnassus Club?”
When she was gone he was walking on air along Regent Street as far as Oxford Circus before stopping to ask himself where he was going. What did it matter? In two hours and a quarter he would be seeing Irene again. So along the bright lights of Oxford Street where he went into a gramophone shop, immediately to be arrested by music. What was it? He enquired after the other customer had gone, and had a similar record played for him—Fauré’s
Ballade
in
F
sharp
for piano and orchestra—heavenly music!
After a dinner of minestrone, veal cutlets, and a bottle of Chianti followed by cheese and fruit, coffee and kummel, they took a taxi to Caxton Hall, to be redirected to the new premises
of the Parnassus Club off Regent Street. This place had a bar at one end; two members were sitting there on tall stools, drinking cocktails from elegant glasses. Below the bar there were shaded lamps on small tables, a sort of drawing-room with armchairs upholstered in sateen with black and white stripes.
“The Club seems to have become modernised,” he said as they sipped coffee. “I remember when G. K. Chesterton came to the original room in Long Acre, to lecture on its dusty bare floor, someone afterwards asked him if he was the original rolling impulse which had made the rolling English road—he’s rather stout, you know. He took it as a compliment. I was an awful fool in those days, Irene. Two of us, particularly, vied with one another in trying to make outrageous remarks about the lecturers. After ‘Sappho’—Mrs. Portal-Welch—had lectured on
The
Function
of
the
Male
and
Female
Mind
in
Literature
I, like a damned fool, got to my feet, and after describing the function of the hagfish in marine life—it waits until another fish is hooked in order to eat its body, beginning below the tail and absorbing all until only skin and bony skull are left for the fisherman to haul up—I said, ‘That, I suggest, is the function of the Freudian Female Cognoscenti in literature today’.”
“That doesn’t sound at all like you, P.M.”
“Mrs. Portal-Welch had dismissed the novel I lent her in manuscript as ‘mere musings’, and said ‘What you want is a good woman’, so I suppose that was the reaction.”
“You don’t
really
like women, do you, P.M.? Something must have happened to you when you were little.”
“I never really got on with my sisters, or my mother——”
“Ah, I understand you now, P.M.!”
“Oh lor’,” he said, dropping his voice. “Do you see that woman who’s just come in? It’s the sister of Arnold Bennett—there’s another of my gaucheries!”
“What happened?”
“Well, just before I left London I invented a talk between ‘my friend Arnold Bennett’, who had said to me only that morning, I told them—hearing my voice with increasing alarm growing weaker and weaker—‘My dear boy, I shall retire from descriptive writing, I am outclassed by your work’—referring to the essay which Austin Harrison had published in
The
English
Review.
After the discussion a short woman in brown came up to me with half a dozen other women, and asked rapid questions: ‘Where did you meet Arnold Bennett? At his home?’ ‘Yes.’
‘Where was that?’ ‘No, it was in the street.’ ‘What street?’ ‘I forget.’ ‘At what time? How was he dressed?’ Having caught me out she said, ‘I was with him
all
the morning in Essex, I’m his sister!’ I had eaten no food that day, and while speaking had heard my voice as from a great distance. I suppose I was showing off, trying to attract attention to myself.”
“You poor lamb,” said Irene. “Well, one day Arnold Bennett might very well say the same thing to you!”
“Oh, my hat,” he whispered. “Here she is, coming towards us.” He stood up, with a diffident smile, ready to confess and apologise as she came directly across the room.
“Mr. Maddison, I have read your book! Now I understand that what seemed mere egotistical falsehood before, was really your imagination leading you on! I was very unkind to you once, you’ve probably forgotten, but I’ve meant to write and apologise to you many times! How nice to see you again!”
“But it is I who must apologise to you!”
“Mr. Maddison, it was a lovely book, and I’ve wanted ever since reading it to tell you so!”
“Well, it’s most generous of you! May I present Mrs. Lushington?”
She sat down beside them, and told him the news about some of the other members. Did he know that Poppett was married?