The Innocent Moon (12 page)

“Poor old boy,” said Eveline, “it’s not a very good job he’s got this time. Last time we sent him off, he was still soldiering, a year ago this month, remember?” Seeing the puzzlement on Phillip’s face she laughed, putting her hand on his arm. “Of course, it was Willie who saw Lionel off with me, to the Middle East! Oh Pillee, don’t look so rueful! That’s right, smile old boy, life is short, life is sweet, brother!” She became pensive. “Pillee, can you keep a secret? Cross your heart? Lionel has agreed to be divorced, and then I shall marry Naps Spreycombe. Remember him?”

“I don’t think I ever met him, Eve.”

“Surely you have? Oh, I’m mixing you up with Willie again. But wait a moment. I saw you when I was with Naps at the Victory Ball! Of course you were there, too! I remember now. So many faces crowding on poor little me! I was drunk, I haven’t the least idea what I said to you, Pillee. You turned up, didn’t you, to keep a promise! I was simply beastly to you. Poor, faithful Pillee!”

“Oh, I deserved the snubbing, Eve.”

“There you go, blaming only yourself! I was horrible to you, I remember now. Forgive me, Pillee my sweet. Yes, I’m going to marry Naps, and do you know why? He never hurts my feelings! I read that in Richard King’s article in
The
Tatler.
Do you agree? He said that that’s his definition of true love, when you never hurt the beloved’s feelings, and he never hurts yours. So they feel quite safe with each other, and to adapt the words of Jackie Fisher, never have to explain, never have to apologise. It’s rec-reci—what’s the word, I never know it—reciprosicating, is that right?”

“Yes, I agree, Eve.”

“You look so sad, Pillee. How goes it with Tibby?”

“It’s over, I think.”

“Did you make love to her?”

“In my own way, I did.”

“Did you kiss her?”

“Once or twice.”

“Did she ever hurt your feelings? Did she, Pillee? Look at me. I’m not being just curious, I want to help you.” He felt a second shock when she said, “I know you hurt
her
feelings, Pillee.”

“Yes, I suppose I did.” Then, in despair, “But how?”

“Were you always happy together, when by yourselves?
Really
happy?”

“I think so. Oh, I don’t know.”

“Perhaps you were too considerate! Always the gentleman!”

“Can one be too considerate?”

“Oh, yes, if one goes beyond nature. The trouble with you is that you are too nice, Pillee.” She helped herself to another whisky-and-soda. “And you don’t see how most women are cats, thoroughly selfish where their own desires are concerned. I know what I’m talking about! I’ve been a cat most of my life! I was always looking for the ideal man. You wait until the right girl comes along. I’ll tell you how you’ll recognise her when you do meet her. She’ll seem quiet and ordinary at first, and you’ll find things in common, more and more, also you’ll be at ease with her from the word go. You’ll feel ordinary, too, you won’t feel that you have to be on your best behaviour, to make an impression. You’ll be just your true self. That’s how I always feel with Naps. He makes me laugh, bless him. He was the first man in my life; I was a skivvy in his mother’s house, didn’t I tell you?” She sat up and said with mock pride, “I was assistant still-room maid, and felt very proud of myself!” She stretched like a cat, and went on, with a brilliant smile, “One morning I met the Heir face to face, and he asked me to get into bed with him. Which I did, thinking that it was the thing to do, since he was the ‘Young Lord’. But her Ladyship told the housekeeper to give me the sack, and out I went and married Lionel! When Naps came back I wanted to pay him out, so I played about to put him out of mind.” She drained her glass. “Yes, I’ve loved many men, including you, Pillee. Oh yes, I did love you, for a long, long time.”

“I loved you, too, Eve.”

“Help yourself to another drink, and come and sit beside me! That’s right! Now I can look at your blue, blue eyes. Oh, darling, don’t look so sad!” She kissed him on the cheek. “I
want to comfort you, Pillee. If Tibby really loves you, she will come to you. Now rest your poor head, don’t think any more, just lie still.”

She stroked his hair. He hid his face, he was crying. “Oh, you poor darling, you’re tired out! You’re shivering, you’ve got a chill! I’m going to put you to bed, and give you some hot milk with brandy, and an egg beaten up. No, you can’t go back to London yet, I won’t allow it! When did you last have a square meal? Yesterday at luncheon with us! You don’t know how to take care of yourself, that’s
all
your trouble! Aunt Lydia was saying the other day, ‘I can’t imagine Phillip ever enjoying a good plate of roast mutton, he just lives on his own and other people’s feelings’.”

“Is that what she said?”

“Her very words, my dear!”

“Then I must be a sort of vampire——”

“No more than most men to most women! Or most women to men! Now I’m going to put you to bed with a hot water bottle. Or is that too luxurious, because the men didn’t have them in the trenches?” She led him by the hand to a bedroom, and took off his shoes. “Now, in you go, and I’ll put on a kettle for some really hot water.”

She covered him with an eiderdown, and went into the kitchen. He heard the pop of two gas rings, then she came back and got into bed moulding herself to him for his body’s warmth, one arm around his shoulders, with her free hand stroking his hair, drawing fingers over his forehead, giving an occasional light touch of lips on brow and cheek. When he ceased to shiver she kissed his eyelids and whispered, “Now I’ll fill the bottle, and give you a nice hot drink.”

After an hour’s sleep Phillip awoke, and feeling optimistic, left for London, with an enduring memory of the kindness of Eveline now that she was truly in love—with another man, he thought gratefully.

*

For some time the paper had been adding to its circulation by running a whole-page instalment every Sunday of a description of life ‘behind the veil’, written ‘automatically’ by a spiritualist medium who was a curate of the Church of England serving a parish in the London suburbs. Once a week the medium entered the office, very quietly, his eyes downheld, his lean, ascetic, pale face appearing to be the more cadaverous with its
side-whiskers. Unspeaking, he went at once into Bloom’s glass office, where the two conferred behind a closed door. He was seen to give sheets of paper to Bloom, who after the visitor had departed locked them in a drawer, later to take them away to be typed outside the office. No one on the staff knew what alterations, if any, were made by Bloom. Certainly other articles which came in were sometimes rewritten.

One morning Bloom gave Willie the typescript of an article commissioned from a Professor Soddy on the need for slum clearance as a requisite for greater factory production. “Here, put this into decent English, but don’t bring in about War Graves.”

“There
is
a connexion you know, sir, between war graves and a decadent financial system which allows nearly three million men to rot on the dole in Great Britain alone!”

“There’s a connexion between everything on this earth, young feller, but this paper ain’t the earth.”

While Willie was putting the Soddy article into shorter sentences Ownsworth said to Phillip, “Here’s a par from
The
Star
about the Mystery Bride Cakes at Shoreham-on-Sea. Go down to Brighton and get a story about them, what they were made for, and if they were ever used in the Channel in the war.”

Bloom interrupted to say, “When you’ve done that, go on to the Royal Albion and see Harry Preston. Say I sent yer. Ask to see a man staying there”—Bloom gave him the name written on a piece of paper—“who’s just sold some of ’is looms to the Japs for two pounds each. The Chief particularly wants to know about this, so now’s yer chance.”

The Mystery Bride Cakes were lying on the Shoreham shingle tongue. Made of concrete with the local pebbles, and forty or fifty feet high, each rose in diminishing tiers upon a circular base of about sixty feet in diameter. The base was formed like a honeycomb, with hollow cells, cast hexagonally. The idea had been, he learned, to tow these floating towers out to sea, and when in position, to blow out the bottom of the cells with pre-fixed charges so that each tower would sink to the bed of the Channel, and there be anchored in a line stretching from Dover to Calais. For what purpose, he asked various men about the harbour. No one knew. It seemed obvious that they were to support, against the drag of tides, a steel anti-submarine net. The war had ended before they could be used.

Asking about them again in a pub, he heard of how the concrete on its steel framework had been strengthened: by vibrating the concrete when it was still wet in the wooden forms, all air-bubbles were shaken to the top, and so the batch was given a cohesion several times the strength of ordinary concrete which, being full of air-bubbles, was the less strong thereby. And with only round, smooth pebbles in the batch, this extra reinforcement was essential.

He remembered that only sharp Rhineland gravel had been considered good enough for the German pillboxes; he had seen great dumps of it lying outside Langemarck station after the advance, during Third Ypres, to the Gravenstafel ridge.

Then he recalled that bees make wax from honey by getting into clusters and fanning their wings—vibrating—in order to cause it to form into wax. That was what bee-keepers said; but how did they know the bees weren’t shaking out minute air particles?

He wrote the story sitting on the shingle; and taking a ’bus, returned to Brighton, where at the Royal Albion he was welcomed as though he were a famous writer. Mr. Harry Preston clapped his hands and said to a waiter, “Bring a bottle of good wine!” Then to Phillip he said he would go and find the man he wanted, leaving him to look at the photographs around the walls. There was one of Harry Preston himself, a diminutive figure with large bald head, standing beside famous boxers—Carpentier, Joe Beckett, Bombardier Wells, Jimmy Wilde; again, with owners of racing stables—Solly Joel, Lord Lonsdale, Lord Derby, and a Maharajah, among others. And there he was with Arnold Bennett, Charlie Chaplin, and H. G. Wells. Prominently among the photographs was one taken beside the Prince of Wales in a boxing ring. In others he stood beside famous actresses, actors; every kind of celebrity.

The Cotton King from Rochdale asked what Phillip wanted. Aye, he had sold some of his looms. He could have sold to the knackers for two bob a hundredweight as scrap, but the Japs had offered to take each loom apart and crate the component parts and leave the floors as they were before the looms were put up. He knew nowt about what was to happen to them afterwards.

“Well, sir, I presume you are going to continue in the cotton-spinning business?”

“Oh, you do, do you? What makes you think I’m going to do that, young man?”

“I’m sorry to appear stupid, sir, but I was sent here to find out what effect the re-erection of the looms in Japan will have on your business.”

“I can tell you that straight away. None! For this reason. The war has shown us that asbestos has a great future in industry, and ah’m going to lead t’ way! Tell Lord Castleton he needn’t worry that we’re going to add to local unemployment queues, we’re going to shorten them! We’re moving with the times, young man! That’s why ah’ve sold off my old looms. Bad times in cotton means for us reinvestment in asbestos. My grandfather founded this firm, he was a farmhand who turned grocer then weaver, and his grandson is turning to asbestos manufacture! There’s your story, and it won’t be long before the name of Sam Turner will be known throughout the world!”

*

Bloom glanced at the Mystery Bride Cakes story and dropped it on the floor.

“It’s no good. It’s too fanciful. We want facts in the
Weekly,
not fantasies. What else’ve yer got?”

“Well, the facts about the sale to the Japs of those looms for two pounds each are simply that they were sold as scrap——”

“We knew that. Now yer tell me what I’m to say to the Chief.”

“Tell him that the sale heralds the start of a great new Lancashire industry of asbestos spinning.”

Bloom turned away, his face sagging. “Don’t yer know the Chief’s got his knife into Lloyd-George? Don’t yer know there are more than half a million unemployed in the North? Don’t yer know that the Japs are rival spinners who pay wages less than a third of what Lancashire ’as to pay? Here, Ownsworth, send the other Maddison down to get the story.” He hesitated. “No, send North.”

To Willie he said, “I’ll give yer one more chance. Go down to Kent—Ownsworth will give yer the address—and get a story of four brothers who’ve turned their garden into a foundry for casting bronze angels and other figures for war memorials.” When Willie returned, Bloom looked at the result and cried out, “Listen to this, Ownsworth! Maddison proposes to scrap what he calls all the ‘self-righteous figments of the Old Men of Europe’ and replace their memorials with a group consisting of one
wounded German, French, Italian, and British soldier holding ’ands. If that would cost too much, he says, why not put a German figure on British memorials, and a British soldier on German ones.” He turned to Willie, “What world do yer live in? This one—or the next?”

“Goodbye, Mr. Bloom, God bless you,” replied Willie, holding out his hand.

When he had gone, Bloom was silent, reflective. Then he said to Ownsworth, “‘There is death in that hand,’ as Coleridge said when he’d shaken the hand of Keats.”

*

When Phillip arrived in the office the following Tuesday morning the floor was littered with coloured pictures sent in for the Children’s Painting Competition. These were out of one sack; three other unopened sacks stood by the wall. They were being judged by the office boy, who to get through the job, after ripping open the envelopes, took a glance at each painting before dropping it on the floor. This attempt to increase circulation involved several thousand entries every week. And every Tuesday Phillip had suffered at the thought of so many little children, each one eagerly hoping for a prize.

“Have you seen the Chief’s Bulletin?” asked Ownsworth with a grin, as he pointed with his nose at the typescript carbon-copy pinned to the inside of the door.