A Solitary War (38 page)
Authors: Henry Williamson
When later he repeated this idea, Christie shook his head, sadly.
“Regeneration can come only through a change of heart in the individual. I’ve been re-reading D. H. Lawrence. He foresaw this collapse. He rode on the crest of the wave of death.”
The image seemed to send him into himself. Then turning to Phillip, “Come into my study.” When they were alone he said, “Help me with the magazine. You take the tail, I’ll take the head. You have much power in you, but it will all be lost if you consider the causes of war only politically. Let us sow the seeds of
regeneration
, through the soil, together.”
He walked about the room, quoting the verses of Wilfred Owen,
‘What though we sink as pitchers falling
Many shall raise us up to be their filling.’
“Do you know what that means, Philip?”
“Yes, and what an exact image it is! I used to draw water from a shallow well behind my cottage in South Devon. If one let go the handle, the cloam pitcher sank slowly down. One had to bare one’s arm to recover it, if the sleeve wasn’t to get wet. The pitcher became suddenly heavy above the surface.”
“Yes, it’s a heavy task to fill others with righteousness.”
“All Owen’s verse has a precise, factual sense, every word is in the spirit of reality. Birkin has the same vision, which he translates into the letter of reality.”
Christie, still wandering about, murmured, “We can’t be saved by politics alone.”
“The world is too far gone for saints. We need action, to follow the spirit.”
Christie turned and putting his arm round the other’s shoulders, cried, “No!” He stared into Phillip’s eyes. “Be my friend. I’ve never had a man friend. Be my friend, Phillip!” He hugged with sudden emotion. Rather child-like, thought Phillip, made still. He knew that Christie had been at odds with his father. He had never surpassed his father, now dead. The regenerating warm flow had never flowed from son to father.
That evening he returned home.
*
The weeds on the meadows were so high and numerous that he could not pass the northern boundary of the farm without sighing. The water of the stream was running black from the mud-pullers farther up the valley. He went into the farmhouse, where Lucy was working. He saw crumbs and jam marks on the table, and a crust lying under it apparently tied to a piece of string fluffy with dust. From upstairs came the steady brushing of a carpet.
“Why don’t you show Mrs. Valiant how to use the vacuum cleaner?”
He had bought this machine from Tim, who had had it on
hire-purchase
with most of the other furniture in his hire-purchase house. Phillip had worried about this house when Tim was about to leave it; for Tim had discontinued his life-insurance policy, taken out in Australia six years before, when he had come home to England, simply by not keeping up the premium payment. He
had not told Phillip of this at the time. So when he was giving up No. 2, The Glade, which had nearly half an acre of land at the end of the road, Phillip had urged him to try and sell it, saying it was worth more than the
£
650 nominal value before the war. If Tim just went away and did nothing, he would lose his
£
25 deposit, as well as the house and all the weekly payments. So Tim had found someone in the factory who gave him
£
25, whereupon the house was transferred in the friend’s name. This friend also took over the furniture, except those family pieces which had been stored.
“Mrs. Valiant doesn’t like the Dynalux, she is used to brush and pan.”
“But brush and pan will soon remove the nap on the Wilton carpets. Besides, it takes so much time to brush it. There is a suction fitting in the vacuum cleaner, which will take up any dust. Down here, too; these mats have only to be turned over, and all the dust beneath sucked up. Mrs. Valiant sweeps in the old way. Up floats the dust, which has to be removed by a duster.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but Mrs. Valiant is a splendid worker, and doesn’t waste a minute, I assure you. I think it’s better, really, to take people as you find them.”
“But that’s precisely the trouble with the country today! The old ways of thought still rule! Can’t you show Mrs. Valiant how to use the thing?”
“Oh bother, I’m just in the middle of making a cake for
Jonathan’s
birthday party. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow,” said Phillip, and went away feeling a desperate loneliness. So did Lucy, but without the desperation.
*
On the following day he went to the Village Recreation Hut opposite the farmhouse. There was a meeting called to form the Local Defence Volunteers. He went with inner reluctance; his heart and soul were away, among ghosts passing below the Golden Virgin of Albert. Ancre valley, Loos and Hindenburg Line, Langemarck and Poelcapelle! The wailing of Strombos gas-horns at night and the lily-white flares rising over the watery morass: all the agony, the waste, and the wisdom from those nights and days come to this mass of faces in rows—
In a quick glance as he went into the hut he saw that the Rector, an old Navy chaplain, was there, and the Methodist blacksmith brothers. One or two other village and cockle-strand faces he
recognised: but not Horatio Bugg. Most of the men there were between fifty and sixty years of age. He scarcely looked at them, he did not feel himself to be part of the village, he was still what they called a foreigner.
Steve, his red-headed labourer, who was present (but not Matt or Luke) had told him a day or two before that there had been questions about the Alvis (‘your long black car’) with the ‘German eagle’ on its bonnet. Horatio Bugg, said Steve, was the leading ‘detective’ down at his yard. “What does he want to go away so often for? Isn’t the village good enough for him? Eh, whatsay?” And the deaf ear had been protruded to catch the answer in Steve’s quiet voice. “Don’t be so soft. Harn’t you got a wireless set?”
The assembled men sat on wooden forms awaiting the arrival of Major Christianson-Cradock, who was going to tell them what to do.
*
Phillip had been once or twice to Major Cradock’s house before the war. Cradock had explained several things in an unusual manner of frankness which Phillip had found to his liking; and yet there had been a queer reservation behind the apparent frankness which had puzzled him. Cradock had said, fairly soon, as they sat before his fire, “The trouble with both of us is that we are fundamentally exhausted.” He then recounted the fact that he had stayed with his battalion, always returning after several wounds, until one day he began to flinch when shells came over.
“I was then commanding my battalion and said I wanted to go home. I said I was finished. They offered me a step in rank, to train men behind the line. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be a brigadier-general. Send me home. I’ve had enough.’ I’d had four years of it, and couldn’t stick any more.”
Phillip had been told (by Major Cradock) that he had been recommended for the Victoria Cross. He already had the
Distinguished
Service Order and bar, and the Military Cross. He was a real soldier, a proper hero; no jack-in-the-box courage like himself on that occasion in March 1918, when over a hundred German prisoners had meekly allowed themselves to be captured.
“I’ve no land, I’ve got no capital. If you want to let the
Deepwater
shooting, I’ll take it from you.”
“I’ll let you know, Major.”
Luke had told him that Major Cradock wanted to know him only for the shooting, but Phillip thought this idea was a peasant’s view of things. And yet when, later, he had told Cradock that he
wanted his own shooting, Cradock had dropped him. Later still, he had refused Phillip’s invitation to shoot.
Cradock had made a point of telling Phillip that his family had been established in the county for a thousand years—coming over as Danish freebooters and turning colonists, he said. Lucy told Phillip that some people spoke of him as the Pirate, because of his occasional thrusting dictatorial manner. Phillip thought that this came from a man having had to drive himself hard in the war, from Le Cateau in August 1914 to nervous exhaustion after
Passchendaele
in December 1917.
After the war Cradock had worked with his hands, helping to build his own house in the traditional style of brick and flint. He was a fine carpenter, a man of high craftsmanship. When his first wife died, he made her coffin.
“We’re too much alike, I suppose, Lucy. It’s my own fault that I haven’t got on with the Pirate. Or perhaps, since we both lack composure, each feels the unreality of the other’s self-drive. Possibly it’s because he’s a Viking, and I’m a Celt, to whom Normans are still displaced persons.”
*
Major Christianson-Cradock on his feet, bulky of body, faded blue of eye, weathered of face, speaking almost roughly.
“If you don’t defend your homes, no one else will. I’ve had a signal from the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, and I propose to read to you that part of it which has a direct bearing on what I’m here for: to form a local Company of Defence Volunteers. Here is the relevant part of the signal from the Commander-in-Chief. ‘We have got examples of where there have been people definitely preparing aerodromes in this country. We want to know from you what is going on. Is there anything out-of-the-ordinary happening in your district? Are there any out-of-the-ordinary people?’ Well, as I said, a local company of Defence Volunteers has been formed. Certain undesirable elements are not wanted. Those are my instructions. Any questions?”
He sat down. Phillip, feeling that the speaker had had him in his mind as an undesirable, stood up.
“The first rule of the patriotic party to which I belong is that if any other nation attacks Britain, then every member of our party will fight to defend our country. As far as the ‘secret aerodromes’ idea concerns Hereward Birkin’s party, it’s all wind-up——”
He had got so far when shouts and cries above a spontaneous growl of hostility overbore his words. “We don’t want you!”
cried someone. Roar of agreement. Phillip sat down, shaken by the mass-feeling against him. Uproar by Communist mobs was usual at a Birkin meeting; stones, half-bricks, razor blades in potatoes flung in the face; coshes, chairlegs wound with
barbed-wire
. But from the men of the village hostility was unexpected.
A corpulent individual in a faded blue serge suit then got on his feet. He had a large florid face and might have been between fifty and sixty years old. Whitish curly crinkles of hair covered the top of a broad and sloping forehead. He had thick lips. He was the canteen manager of the camp, of which Major Cradock was the commandant. In a rapid, high-pitched voice he cried, “I protest against this man in our midst who has repeatedly blasphemed against God, King, Country, and our poor dear lads in France.”
A renewed roar greeted these obviously rehearsed words, for as suddenly as he had got up the speaker had sat down. Phillip’s
dominant
feeling was surprise that such a charge against him could be accepted by anyone. Yet there it was: the ridiculous was becoming the dangerous. He stood up.
“The G.O.C.-in-Chief and his ‘secret aerodromes’! Where did General Ironside’s ‘Intelligence’ get its reports from? Fleet Street? This sort of loose talk is creating alarm and despondency—”
Further uproar broke out. Phillip stood still. When it subsided he said, turning to Major Cradock, “As one old soldier of
nineteen-fourteen
to another, I give you my word that what the
canteen-manager
said is a damned lie!”
In a loud voice for all to hear, Cradock cried, “I don’t care if it’s a damned lie or not, I believe it,” and turned away.
Phillip left the hut and crossed the road to the farmhouse. Lucy was knitting a child’s sock.
“Cradock knows my views, and used to agree with many of them, about the country being decadent, and why. He’s windy, so is ‘Tiny Tinribs’ at Horse Guards in London. Chief of the Imperial General Staff indeed! Six foot four inches in his socks, and ten feet tall on a horse! ‘Tiny Tinribs’ don’t know his stuff!”
“Oh, I expect it will calm down. By the way, before I forget, someone calling himself Gerald Ruche telephoned from Fleet Street and asked for your comments on the news that Sir Hereward Birkin has just been arrested. I left the receiver off.”
Phillip put it back. “That’s the chap Chettwood wanted to bring for a week-end last year. He writes the gossip-page, he’s a left-wing intellectual. If he rings again, quote me as saying that Birkin is one of the truest patriots in England.”
At 2 a.m. I was awakened by a cry of
Action!
from the searchlight on Pewitts. Sounds come distinct across the valley. Beams crossed the sky. Above low clouds came the drone of aircraft. I heard later it was a Jerry, following some of our Whitleys showing lights as they flew
towards
the S-W. I listened, and some minutes later heard a deep
crump.
I thought of David and Rosamund at school.
B.B.C. early news said Vimy Ridge taken. Memories of the attack in the snowstorm of 9 April, 1917. If only the Germans had been treated with magnanimity in 1918. But as Arnold Bennett would have said, It isn’t a magnanimous world.
Mrs. Cheffe rang up in the morning and said she was closing the school, taking her own children to Devon, and would we fetch
Rosamund
and David. We went over in the Silver Eagle. David cried “Yippee!” and did his final turn of going up the wide stairs on all fours, stretching himself out on the landing and then rolling down to our feet.
More arrests under Defence Regulations, Section 18b. Some of Birkin’s Headquarter members pulled in. Also Major
Bohun-Borsholder
and others I met with Colt at that meeting in Fleet Street, including members of the Anglo-German Fellowship, the Link, etc. Admiral Sir Barry Domville, who commanded the 3rd Cruiser
Squadron
in the first war, has also been imprisoned. London seems to be as windy as our little local lot.
To London to propose article for Chettwood.
Some of the members in the Barbarian club were offensive, notably one of the elderly tankard boys at the bar. He is an ex-manager of the Aeolian Hall, originally admitted to the Club because of his wife—a singer. He used to embarrass me in the days of my flush of literary fame, with flattery; now he spluttered about his grandsons at Dunkirk, his purple face thrust near mine. “You ought to be locked up!”
In the evening I took Chettwood to dinner. Gerald Ruche (‘Mr. Pepys’) came with him, wanting to hear what I said. I told Chettwood I would write an article to be used by him when Hitler has conquered France: that Hitler didn’t want to invade England, but would offer peace again on the October 1939 model: that Soviet Asia absorbing Central Europe and later Western Europe ‘after the two white giants had bled themselves white’ was the real menace for Britain as well as for Germany, and Hitler’s particular nightmare: that France would be done for inside a fortnight. Both listened, neither commenting, seeming rather scared and serious. Chettwood asked what else I’d write, but I didn’t tell him. Not because of caution; I can’t discuss a thing until I’ve written it. I did tell them however that they might have to fight in the army, and both looked startled.
As we parted Gerald Ruche lifted the lapel of my jacket, under which
was the party badge. His look inferred that discretion was the better part of valour. Scores of prominent members have now been arrested, following Birkin to prison. He said, “Do you mind if I say something about your not being pulled in yet, in my column tomorrow?”
Chettwood
said, “Oh no, you can’t do that.” Ruche seemed momentarily surprised: his ‘objectivity’ has obviously diminished his personal
sensitivity
. Perhaps he has suffered horribly as a child, and armoured
himself
in righteousness. His pale face and slightly puffy body (for a
comparatively
young man) is a key to his mental outlook.
Among other things Chettwood told me that General Ironside had been replaced by General Dill as C.I.G.S., but I can hardly claim credit for that!
Next morning I went down to Kent to fetch Peter from his choir school, which last September had been evacuated to an old and rather stuffy Tudor house. Twenty boys in bunk-beds in each room with a small lattice window-opening. All merry and bright. Peter introduced me to his especial friend, a small boy who wore spectacles, the usual Eton jacket, had a wide toothy grin and nickname of ‘Shrimp’. Peter seemed equally happy to stay or leave. We crossed over by the
Gravesend
ferry and got home in the evening.
May
30
Belgium has given up. The bungaloid-tabloid-respectability-
pornographic
-leery-sneery papers call King Leopold a traitor. What bad taste some of the younger newspaper men have: all the defects of bricks-and-mortar industrial-mentality without the purge of hard body work. Pry, deny, decry, sensate. A year or two back they were yelping at Baldwin because he told the truth that no British government asking for rearmament would remain five minutes in power. Recently these same manikins were saying that Baldwin was a Blimp who let the country down for not rearming. Now they smear the Belgian King as traitor, even coward. They ought themselves to fight through such a campaign—not be mere long-distance rumour-writers with hot
hotel-meals
and warm girl-friends, or boy-friends, to escape to. Only soldier-artists are qualified to write of war; only what they write would not be printed—now. In thirty years’ time all present day ‘thinking’ will be forgotten, all rotted down: perhaps to be as compost for a happier united Europe.
Most of the B.E.F. have been rescued at Dunkirk, by hundreds of little English boats. I longed to be there, to be of some real use, in positive action, with
Scylla.
More arrests under 18b. When will my turn come?
June
1
A case in the papers to-day of an alleged member of Birkin’s party being asked to join the anti-parachute defence force in order to get a
rifle and ammunition with which to shoot his fellow-countrymen. So the witness declares: the witness being the man who, the report said, had, on the suggestion of the local police, joined the Imperial Socialist party. Of course the ordinary public can know only what it hears or reads in the newspapers, and in almost all cases the exact opposite is the truth.
I am, by now, probably regarded as a traitor. So far I have laughed at them; but when I read of such things as the foregoing, obviously a frame-up with the good old
agent
provocateur
creeping out of ‘crime’ fiction into British life, I begin to wonder how I shall end up: ruined farm and family? Perhaps even shot in the back by some
tortoise-minded
patriot?
A petrol-bowser came to-day and sucked all the petrol out of our 250-gallon tank by the tractor house. This is a precaution and justified. Only 10-gallon lots may be kept on farm premises now.
Lady Birkin writes to say that she is trying to carry on the weekly paper,
Union,
by herself. My immediate impulse was to go and help her; but I knew it should be closed down. Its publication can do no good at this time. (Nor would my proposed article.) Lady B. had a baby a few days ago, and writes that she is now weaning it, she expects any moment to be arrested and taken to prison, and has a small bag packed in readiness. I wrote and advised that
Union
should cease
publication
. Birkin told me a month ago that he was carrying on to provide a platform for the people, should they need someone to speak for peace. In his words (to me when I thought of flying to see Hitler just before the war broke out), ‘The curtain is down’.
June
7
Sugar-beet on the Bustard a good plant. We put on 5 tons of pressed London sewage, plus 5 cwt. of balanced fertilisers, per acre. Barley on the Scalt patchy. The field had 3 cwts. of sewage sludge per acre Two patches where the plants are thin: chalky soil. I plan to cover these with more mud and reeds pulled from the dykes next September or October. Soon it will be haysel; there is a wonderful ‘shear’ on Steep field.
Hearing that Horatio Bugg had been making more remarks about me, I saw him in his yard and told him he would have to face an action for slander if he were not more careful.
“Oh no!” he said, cockily.
“Well, wait and see.”
“No,
you
wait and see!”
“You’ve read too many crime novels,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said, “but you wait and see. I’m telling you, mind.”
He was really so mild about it that my anger went. He is a naïve character, and I can’t help liking one side of him. He dodged the last war, and so retains a sort of innocence.
June
8
French retreating from the line of the Somme. The British
newspapers
talk of an ‘imminent German collapse’ in France, because they are over-running their communications and simply not knowing what dangers they are running logistically. But the game is given away by the pronouncements that England and France will ‘never conclude a separate peace’.
Hundreds of members of the Imperial Socialist Party have now been ‘detained’.
June
9
To-day Lucy and I lunched with Lady Breckland. I found her much disturbed by the news. The Holland invasion has upset her, and the tales of treachery by Germans in Holland. ‘They were the guests of the Dutch,’ she kept repeating. Her son was with the Grenadiers at Dunkirk, but she did not mention it. On the way back we went to see Runnymeade, who had several times rung me up recently, asking me over.
Stefania Rozwitz, with whom I have had arguments occasionally (egged on by ‘Boy’, in order to watch the fun) was staying there, having come from London.
She hissed at me as we entered the door, ‘Traitor! Liar! Impostor! Spy!’ and went out of the door. I was a little shaken by this
volte
face.
With a sort of weary drawl Runnymeade said, “I can only regret the decay of good manners which seems to be general nowadays,” as he poured me out nearly a glassful of gin, most of which I managed to tip out of the window when he was not looking.
He asked me several questions, with iterated request not to ‘let him down’.
In what way, I asked.
First, Was I in Hitler’s pay?
I said no, nor any other man’s pay. Had I served in the British Army? Yes.
“Now I come to a more personal question, Maddison. Did you tell anyone I was a drunkard?”
I tried to explain the circumstances of my having had too much gin and whisky last Christmas, at the cottage he took me, Mrs. Carfax, and Teddy Pinnegar to. I told him how I had apologised to Mabel, and had hoped she would be more discreet about it than I had been. I said it was a remark as stupid as untrue, a betrayal of hospitality, how I had regretted it at once, and ever since. Then I apologised to him and got up to go. R. said he’d given orders for dinner, so we stayed. Stefania didn’t show up.
Lucy and I went home in the dark, passing through several
barricades
hastily made across the road—coils of barbed-wire, farm-carts,
sheep-hurdles, old rusty implements, tree-trunks, etc. We were stopped once by the weak shining of a torch. The battery was run down, it gave but the feeblest red-yellow glow. I was asked by a friendly country voice for our identification cards. The Silver Eagle was examined, we were allowed to pass. Silent figures with loaded
shot-guns
were beyond the barrier.
On returning home, I left the car in the yard in front of my cottage.
In the morning I saw that it had been daubed with large white swastikas—one on the scuttle, one on the tank, two on either side of the bonnet. This must have been done before our journey back from Runnymeade’s last night. I wonder what, had the guards possessed an efficient torch, would have happened had they seen, suddenly, a low black open car approaching with swastikas showing white. Shocked by fear, they would have yelled the alarm and fired. Lucy and I might have had our heads blown off; church bells been rung; the Eastern counties, perhaps the entire country, might have been put into an invasion panic.
I painted out the swastikas with black enamel at once, because the car was standing just inside the gate, in full view of any passers-by.
June
11
We cut our hay on the Steep and the northern end of the Bustard. A good crop, though slightly overblown. Too ripe. Luke’s idea is to cut for bulk, not quality. Sick of arguments, I gave way to him over this.
The news is grave. I listen at night to Rome, to Berlin, to London. One day a terrific drama must be written out of all this. Even so, I find myself everlastingly drawn two ways: the sad needlessness of the war, from the people’s view-point, combined with a heavy feeling that my country seems to be going down. But for the Channel, we would be done for, like France. Indeed, only the sea saved us from Napoleon and the effects of the London bankers scuppering his European-union idea.
In France, a million Communists called to the colours in 1939 gave the closed-fist salute on being paraded. The French Government arrested the legally-elected Communist deputies of the Chamber and shipped them to Devil’s Island. Divided by class and political parties, France falls. Paris lived as middle-men; the peasants of metropolitan France feared, disliked the towns. Paris put money, pleasure first; France fell. Hitler was only the precipitating agent.
I wrote to Runnymeade and thanked him for a pleasant evening, saying I hoped his friendship towards me hadn’t caused him too much embarrassment, and that I felt it for the best to keep away until the present international misunderstanding had blown over.
If I spend the war in prison, at least it will give me a chance to write all those books I have lacked detachment to tackle, so far.
June
12
As I was sitting on the tractor to-day, drawing the old Albion
grass-cutter
through the hay of the Bustard, a little rain fell. It stung my eyes. It left small dark smudges on the skin of my forearms and knees. It speckled the grey tank of the tractor. At home smuts were on the new paint of the cottage windows, on the white roses in bloom in the garden.
Far away across the sea the oil-tanks of Ghent have been flaring with those of Calais and Dunkirk. The sky was heavy with drifting smoke, high over the summer scene.