Authors: Henry Williamson
“To Broughton?”
“Yes, and they have the dearest little daughter! And have you heard about Lauritz Melchior? He’s singing at Henry Wood’s Promenade concerts on Saturday nights. And did you hear about Dr. Welch? I’m not betraying any secrets, for it was in all the papers. Poor man, he was so very lonely——”
Phillip saw again the figure at the kitchen table, typing away while hating Literature until in the end he ran off with a young housemaid, and inevitably having been forsaken, hid himself under a bush with his last hope, or love, upon the battlefield of life—a phial of prussic acid, found empty beside his body.
He felt nearer to Julian as he recalled their one and only walk along the cliffs, which had got so far as the Rock of the Valkyries, and his proud words flung into the wind above the ruinous precipice there,
Time changes the places that knew us,
Our loves into corpses, or wives,
While death and decay and derision
Make barren our lives.
Other members were now coming in, among them Mrs. Portal-Welch, wearing a gold and purple dress. She came up to Phillip, and said, as he was about to introduce Irene, “I hardly recognised you when I came in. You look so much less unhealthy than when I first met you. Obviously the West Country is good for you. I hope that you are looking about you for hard facts and not still merely musing!” with a glance at Irene’s face. “And who is this?” After the introduction Mrs. Portal-Welch went on, “Why weren’t you at the luncheon at the Ritz today? You should have been—I sent you a notice of it.” She turned to Irene. “We have a luncheon once a month, and invite our guests to address us. Today our principal guest was Marie, Queen of Roumania, who is also one of our honorary members. She writes stories for children, as you may have read in the newspapers. When she arrived, as I and Mr. Villiers-Stuart, whom you may remember,”—she turned her face to Phillip—“were waiting to receive her, I saw that she was accompanied by the Roumanian Ambassador, so I walked away. I am a republican, you see, and my principles do not embrace royalty as such, but only as individuals.”
Having established this, Mrs. Portal-Welch turned to Phillip and advanced to the next subject. “Our Club is to become international. The new name has not yet been decided, but it will represent”—she counted on the first finger of her left hand—“Poets, Playwrights, Publishers”—she touched the second finger—“Essayists, Editors”—she paused, and striking the third finger, concluded decisively—“Novelists!” She went on to say that the Club was organising centres in various European capitals. “And don’t forget to send your subscription!” she addressed Phillip again. “You owe for three years now! If you use our premises, you should help to support them, you know!”
“May I pay now, Mrs. Portal-Welch?”
“Yes. Our honorary secretary and treasurer is over there, you know Sherman Young, don’t you?” as she moved away.
“What a dynamic person,” said Irene.
Phillip paid thirty shillings to the gentle Sherman Young, and then invited Irene to have a drink. “Would you like to sit here, or at the bar?”
“Oh, at the bar, shall we? And may I have a brandy and soda?”
They sat near the two young men who had been there when they arrived, and were now talking as though they were on stage.
The taller of the two had a long bony face flanked by large ears. He spoke in a clipped, slightly fluty voice, modulated but meticulous. He was apparently telling his companion about his adventures on being called up towards the end of the war.
“My dear Trowel, imagine my feelings as I was being marched in that mob of nondescripts—or should I say noncondescripts—and realized that we were about to pass Daly’s! I would have died if Bertram had seen me, or any of my other rather grand friends. I turned my face away, and raised my right shoulder, like the hunchback of Notre-Dame! But fortune favours the knave, and within a month or so I found myself an ex-service man of sorts with a medal. As such I suppose I was entitled to apply to go up to Oxford, but I wanted to get on with my job.”
“You haven’t missed much, old boy. Since the war, Oxford is a shambles. I went up from my public school expecting to find the Oxford of Monty Mackenzie’s
Sinister
Street
: instead I discovered it to be a sort of military annexe, filled with ex-soldiers, all on government grants, and knowing nothing and caring less about the traditions of the university than the little boys they once were, wearing celluloid favours for the Boat Race. One lout actually carried a cushion because, he explained, he had a wound in his behind—probably got when he was running away! One morning he said to me, ‘Can you tell me where the doc. is? I’m going sick.’ I replied, ‘If you talk like that at Oxford, I shall be sick over you.’”
“Really?” replied the other, as he sipped his cocktail before saying, “Oh, before I forget, who was the ex-queen you were entertaining to luncheon today? Nowadays there are so many Jacks and Jills without their crowns—forgive me, dear boy, I must make a note for a lyric.” He pulled a small diary from his waistcoat pocket and wrote in it.
“Here’s ‘Sappho’,” whispered the other man.
“Just a moment, dear boy. Work before pleasure.”
Mrs. Portal-Welch was leading a young woman with dark hair and thick concave spectacles which diminished her eyes to small mournful points. She wore a green velvet hat with a purple feather, a green velvet jacket to match, and a long skirt of purple velvet from the hem of which the lower ends of black button boots protruded.
“Where is Robin Hood?” murmured the tall ex-soldier of sorts.
“Mr. Card, I want you to meet Mary Webb, who is going to make a name for herself with novels about real people.”
“Are there any, my dear Mrs. Portal-Welch?”
The young woman in velvet murmured something, and offered her hand. Mrs. Portal-Welch steered her to Phillip.
“And this is Phillip Maddison. I was telling him that the time for musings about nature is gone by. Have you had a love-affair yet?” she asked Phillip.
“Well, more or less.”
“Better more than less. Nature is lavish.”
“Well, if you don’t dissipate you can’t accumulate, as the crown-and-anchor financiers used to say in the Army.”
“Now you must meet Mr. Sylvester Card. He spent a summer with us in Cornwall, which he did not understand, but he’s the coming young man in the theatre. And this is Mr. Trowel, who writes about Oxford. Mr. Maddison,” she said to Mr. Trowel, “has a death fixation, and wants to write about the Great War.”
“Good God, whatever for?” asked Mr. Trowel.
“Oh, I suppose one’s past——”
“All things in the past belong to the past,” said Mrs. Portal-Welch decisively. “‘Drive your plow over the bones of the dead’.”
“Oh, do you think so?” asked Mr. Trowel, winsomely. “What about
Sinister
Street,
and
En
Recherche
du
Temps
Perdu
?”
“Backwaters, my dear boy. Out of the main stream of life. James Joyce has lost himself in the same bog. At least he wrote
Dubliners
before he died, artistically speaking. He ought to get rid of his wife. Read D. H. Lawrence. He at least is alive.”
“‘What does D.H.L. stand for?’” said Sylvester Card. “‘Please teacher, “Dreary Horrid Libido”.’” He took out his small pocket diary.
“You can do better than that, Mr. Card. Now I want to tell you about the project to extend the influence of the Club.” She touched the index finger of her left hand. “Playwrights—Poets—Publishers——”
Phillip led Irene away, quietly, until, reaching the stairs, they ran down arm-in-arm. Later, when they were supping at the Café Royal, she said to Phillip, “I suppose the Roumanian Ambassador came only to see Queen Marie safely to the Ritz. She is a little nervous, poor dear, and was probably feeling the
need of moral support to face so many famous writers in your Club.”
“You know her, Irene?”
“I met her once or twice, in some of my friends’ houses, P.M.”
All too soon it was time to say goodbye.
“Well, thank you for coming with me, Irene.”
“It is I who must thank you, P.M.! I have enjoyed the evening tremendously. You have our address in the Hautes Pyrénées, haven’t you? Do come and see us if ever you find yourself there. Promise?”
“Yes, rather! I wonder if I dare——”
“Tell me, P.M.!”
“On Saturday I thought of going to hear Melchior singing at the Promenade Concert. Would you care to come with me, that is, if you have nothing better to do?”
She took his arm and pressed it. “I can’t think of anything better to do than to be with you, P.M.!”
They arranged to meet at the Queen’s Hall on Saturday evening.
*
The next morning, a Friday, he called on Anders Norse in Adelphi Terrace.
“You’ve saved me a letter, Phillip. I was just going to write to you and send you copies of two letters I’ve just received about your work. The first is from my New York associate, the other is from Bailey of the
Royal
Magazine
over here. You remember that short story you sent me about the old man who had a favourite mouse? Well, you’d better read the letters for yourself.”
While Anders, with his red youthful face and white hair, filled a pipe, Phillip read the letter from New York.
All these stories are too tragic, and the subjects are distasteful to the public over here who read the better paying magazines. The mouse story is a literary gem, but no editor dare use it. I sent it to the
Pictorial
Review,
but it was a poor follow-up of the falcon story. I then tried the
Saturday
Evening
Post.
Lorimer liked Maddison’s fox story and published it as you know, but said also that this mouse story did not follow up. Do try and persuade Maddison not to be so selfish.
“Bailey of the
Royal
has bought it, as you can see,” said Anders, passing over the second letter. “He says he bought it because he likes it so much, but doubts if he dare print it.”
In the event of printing it I would feel obliged to cut or alter some of the provincial mannerisms of speech apparently in use among the lower orders in Devonshire.
“But that’s exactly the Devon labourers’ talk, Anders!”
“The public isn’t ready yet for realism, I’m afraid. However, I thought I would let you see what these editors said.”
“Thank you. But
I
think the public
is
ready for realism! If all these magazines go on feeding pap in the pre-war manner they’ll all die off! The war has altered all that, you know.”
“I agree. But in the meantime things are what they are. How’s the new novel going?”
“I’m re-writing it. It was too romantic.”
“People want to read romance, you know, to get away from their own restricted lives. Not that I’m all for that. It’s merely my business as your agent to tell you the state of the market. But you might bear in mind what is said in these letters. Now let’s go and have some lunch at Simpsons’s.”
*
The arena of the Queen’s Hall was pleasantly filled. Two pools in the floor, below a stone parapet, were filled with water, goldfish, and green plants lit by golden shadows of concealed lights. Melchior sang
The
Prize
Song
from
The
Mastersingers
and gave two encores after tremendous applause. Later in the Danish Club he sang to Phillip and Irene, who were taken to see him by Mrs. Portal-Welch’s daughter and another girl. Two Swedes were also present in the room, one of them a most beautiful dancer with the bluest eyes and fairest hair Phillip had ever seen. They said she was dancing at the Palladium; she glowed with light; the young man with her stood beside her, his arm barely touching her shoulder, a remote smile on his face as he dreamed of love. Melchior sang a song of Grieg for them,
Ich
liebe
du.
This was after a supper of cold meats and schnapps. Then he sang a comic song, which made everyone laugh except Phillip, who was still dreaming of
Ich
liebe
du
, while waves of emotion broke over him, but none of them for Annabelle. He dreamed of Lily Cornford, the only girl who had really loved him, who had died in a Zeppelin raid. The Swedish dancer was so beautiful, she moved with such grace; the most beautiful woman he had seen; but she was not Lily. He sat at the table, helping himself to schnapps, and when the waiter came to clear the table, without thinking he held the bottle firmly for a moment until he realised that Irene was laughingly removing his hand.
“How awful of me, Irene!” he said afterwards. “They must have thought me horribly ill-mannered!”
“Oh, no, P.M., you were enchanted by the beautiful music.”
*
During the hard weather that followed Phillip remained in his father’s house, writing in his bedroom overlooking the garden. During the day he and his mother lived a peaceful, comradely life; the house was his, he could move about as he wished, and feel no constriction. The two went for walks together, first taking the ’bus to Reynard’s Common, where among the birch woods and gorse brakes Hetty was as free in spirit as she had ever been. But with the decline of the day others returned from constrictions in office and classroom which Phillip and his mother had not suffered during the day.
Doris was now teaching locally, and living at home. Every evening Bob Willoughby came to see her, apparently for one more conference in the front room behind the closed door. Phillip knew what was happening; Doris could not make up her mind, against her spirit, to marry Bob. Nightly he came over from Purley, where he worked as an electrical engineer. There, as usual, “the two young people”, as Richard called them, sat for hours, talking in low voices. More than once Richard complained to Phillip of the late hour of “Mr. Willoughby’s” departure.
One night, when he had come down from his walk upon the Hill, Phillip was about to put his key in the lock when he saw figures behind the stained-glass panels of the door, and heard voices. The opening of the door would displace his father, who was standing facing Bob on the mat to the left; so he waited, distressed that Father’s voice had the high edge of nervous complaint which all in the family found so upsetting.