The Phoenix Generation (36 page)

“I shall miss you, Ernest, my dear old fellow.”

“Ah.”

By its appearance that bath had been put in about the time of the Great Exhibition of 1864. The tiled floor was laid in a pattern of swans and nymphs. Every tile was bashed and cracked,
presumably
by the conscripts of 1916–1918. The bath itself was deep and badly chipped, too. Green water-drippings from the taps
disfigured
it. Its large cast-iron lion-paw supporters rested upon sheet lead which had a rolled parapet to retain splashes and
lippings-over
upon entry of rotund and sporting bodies—now mouldering somewhere in the churchyard.

On returning from the railway station, Phillip went down the road to get some petrol, Felicity sat beside him. She was to take over all accounts from Hurst; and one of her new duties was to get a signature from Horatio Bugg, in the
Petrol
Book
, for every gallon used in car and lorry.

“You'll probably find Bugg very curious,” he told her. “He's like a village dog, ever on the lookout for something interesting. ‘Ah, here be somp'n, the foreigner with a young maid.' That's Bugg, by his pump. Notice how he throws out his chest and metaphorically cocks his leg on my near side front wheel.
Squirt-squirt
, his thoughts pass behind his
pince-nez
spectacles.”

True to form, Horatio Bugg peered at Felicity, then he asked, “Are you an actress?”, as he unhooked the hose-pipe.

“Yes.”

“Where do you act?” as he inserted the nozzle in the filling column of the tank.

“Oh everywhere.”

“Then why don't I know your face?” as he worked the rotary pump.

“I usually wear a wig on stage.”

“Ah, Shakespeare I suppose?”

“How did you guess?”

“‘Tom Fool knows more than Tom Fool tells,' isn't that what they say?”

“Do they?”

“I could tell a tale or two, you know, if I wanted to open my mouth.”

“Now will you sign my petrol book, please, Mr. Bugg?”

“Ah ha, now I know you're the new secretary, I guessed as much when I saw you. I hope we'll be good friends and neighbours.”

Not long afterwards Horatio Bugg made a formal call.

“Here is our friend from the village,” remarked Brother Laurence, standing by the caravan door one morning.

The caravan rested among the pine trees growing above the chalk quarry. Below were the premises. Jackdaws were nesting in old rabbit-holes in the top subsoil above the chalk and flint layers.

Phillip and Felicity sat inside the caravan. He was reading the typescript of an article. She writing in the farm diary.

“Mr. Bugg is a fly,” said Phillip, reading on. But he could not connect with the words. He waited for the visitant to arrive. He tried not to feel aversion to the weak face, badly shaven,
pince-nez
spectacles, shapeless cloth cap with greasy band, dirty white rag around neck which failed to conceal a goitre.

“Hullo. Thought I'd come to see how you're gettin' along.” Without waiting for an invitation Horatio Bugg climbed in and sat down.

“You bought that lorry too dear, did you know that?” He paused to fill his pipe with thin hair tobacco. “Those diddecais are out to do anyone. We don't like them around here, you know.” He took matches from his pocket. “Or Denchmen, for that matter.”

“Captain Maddison is rather busy at the moment,” said Brother Laurence.

“Busy, I can see he's busy,” replied the intruder, lighting his pipe. “Don't let me interrupt you,” he said to Phillip. “I'm always ready to do anyone who's stowed up a good turn.”

Phillip had written his article beside a dead pine tree while Brother Laurence had been getting breakfast. It was a description of a tree-creeper which had made its nest in a branch split by lightning.

He folded the article and gave it to Felicity. She put it in a foolscap envelope and was addressing it to the literary editor of the
Crusader
when the visitor spoke again.

“They say you are going to turn the Old Manor into a Roman Catholic community or somep'n. Is that right?”

“We're roadmenders at the moment.”

“Well, I know that, I've got eyes in my head. I hear most of what's going on in the district down by my yard, you know.”

He puffed contentedly. “There's a rich lady living in the village, a titled person, and she came to ask me what you were going to do here, and how it would affect the wild birds she likes watching. You may have heard of her, Lady Penelope Carnoy. She prefers it
all wild, you know, like the other birdwatchers who come here to study on the marshes and roundabout.”

Every suck at his pipe now made an uneasy bubbling noise. “As I was saying, now your lorry is broken—what, didn't you know? Mr. Hearse come to me to get him a second-hand gearbox saying the old one gave out.”

“Damn that fellow,” said Phillip, “I told him not to tip off any more chalk that way.”

“So I thought you might like to buy my motorcar to carry on with. It's in perfect condition except for a dud battery and four flat tyres. These can easily be replaced by second-hand ones. It's a Chevrolet and used to belong to the Ranee of Sarawak, who came here to stay with Lady Penelope to study wild birds.”

When there was no reply Horatio Bugg turned an ear,
augmented
by a hand, listened awhile, then exclaimed, “I can't quite hear you, I'm a bit deaf.”

“I must go to the post,” shouted Phillip, waving the envelope.

“No need to shout, I'm not that deaf.”

Horatio Bugg seemed to have trouble with his pipe. The split bowl was enwrapped with adhesive rubber tape. He stopped sucking to say, “I suppose you know all about that Invisible Ray working on this coast to stop German aeroplanes coming over to spy out the land? It stops the magnetos of all motorcar engines, too, did you know that?”

“Is that why your car won't move?”

“I told you it needs a new battery, that's all.” Horatio Bugg sucked hard. No smoke issued from between his lips. “I suppose you can't lend me a pipe cleaner, can you? No. Well, I can sometimes clear it by blowing.” He blew hard, and a shower of sparks dropped out. “What did I tell you? That's cleared it.”

“Mind you don't set fire to the caravan, it isn't insured.”

“Not insured? I can arrange a policy for you. I'm an agent, as I told you when you set fire to your chimbly.”

“Well, we must be off,” said Brother Laurence.

“Where are you going, anywhere in particular? If not, I'll come with you. I've got nothing to do at the moment. Is that the German eagle on the radiator?”

“Brummagem.”

“Hey?” said the other, cupping an ear. “Speak up, if you don't mind. Just a minute,” as he struck a match to try to relight the gurgling compost of ash, wet threads, and nicotine poison left in his pipe.

“I said ‘Brummagem'!”

“Well, that's hardly polite, is it?” He turned to Felicity, “And in a lady's presenqe. I suppose you help him as secretary, don't you?”

“That's right. I'm the dogsbody.”

“You found a dog's body?”

“Yes.”

Horatio Bugg began to ask more questions when he saw the two men going towards the “German” motorcar.

“Is that monk with you a well-known order, or what?”

“He's a Laurentian friar, devoted to poverty.”

“Poverty, eh? Well, he's come to the right place. Where did he come from?”

“From God.”

“Oh, so you're religious, I see.”

“That's right.”

Phillip was removing the green canvas covering the sports car standing under a pine tree. He took his usual care to get the canvas straight on the ground before walking round to fold it precisely section by section. It had belonged to his uncle Hiliary, who had sold it to him with the caravan before going to live abroad with his wife.

Horatio Bugg watched the ritual of folding as he stood by the splintered stump of the dead pine, tapping out his pipe. The
tree-creeper's
nest was in a crack in the wood. Phillip saw with concern that the mother bird had flitted off her eggs.

The heavy cloth, impregnated with preserving chemical, took some time to be folded. It was half-done when Horatio Bugg, seeming to come out of a trance of tobacco juice, went forward and said, “Let me give you a hand.”

“That's very good of you.”

When the cloth was folded Phillip started the engine on the handle. He ran the engine to warm up the oil, and then got in to wait for Brother Laurence, who had returned to the caravan with the 2-gallon galvanised water can. There was about a quart left in the can, and the friar returned to empty it into the kettle.

“That's a rum'n,” said Horatio Bugg. “You save even water.”

With Felicity beside him and Brother Laurence in the tonneau, Phillip drove slowly in reverse over the hump at the edge of the wood. Buried under the turf lay the remains of an old wall which, he had been told by Lady Breckland, was the remains of a Roman fort or look-out against Viking invaders. Lady Breckland had
recently called to ask him to join the Imperial Socialist Party. Phillip had demurred at first, then had agreed out of politeness. He had demurred because he was overworked and at times his mind was near distress at the thought of all the work that had to be done. Now Hurst had broken the lorry and road-making would be held up, he thought as he drove slowly over acid-thin grass to the top drift which led to the road a quarter of a mile away.

The letter was posted, the water can refilled. They returned; covered the car with the green canvas; and opened the caravan with all windows to clear the interior of a shaggy smell.

Brother Laurence said, “Would you like me to give a hand to the men remaking the lower road to the premises? We can use the horse and tumbril. Or, I can dismantle the broken gearbox.”

“Oh, good man! Will you remove the gearbox? As soon as we've finished the lower road, we must start the New Cut. Perhaps you'll see Horatio Lord Bugg about a second-hand gearbox for the lorry, as soon as you've got particulars of the old one, will you? Thank you, mon père. What should I do without you?”

The idea of the New Cut was to bring down swiftly the corn loads of all future summers to a stackyard site planned in the quarry near the Corn Barn. The steward had objected. He didn't want the boss to do a silly thing like spending money on a new road. He believed, from his late master's experience, that every penny spent on a farm was a penny lost.

“But on a level road cut there, Luke, there will be no accidents, as last year.”

The steward had protested that carting corn so much farther—up to half a mile from the field—to the premises down below—would mean a lot of waiting about for the men building the corn stack.

“A hoss-drawn tumbril load would take ten minutes or more, after leaving Great Bustard field, to get to the stack yard.”

From his experience at Fawley, Phillip realised that the margin between profit and loss even on good land was small; while on the Bad Lands—as his farm was locally called—any profit on a field of corn would easily be lost in the scores of hours while the stack-builders were idle.

“The Flying Column will save time, Luke. Also a level road will make muck-carting easier for you and your horses, at the back end.”

“I don't think it's necessary, that I don't. But you're master.”

Phillip tried to get Luke to see that the large green trailer, drawn by the tractor driven by his son Billy, could gather a second
half-load, which would not need to be roped in the ordinary way, for the wooden rails and lades of the trailer would keep the sheaves from falling out.

“The lorry and the green trailer together will comprise the Flying Column. This will keep the men at the stack ‘going'. Each stack, holding ten acres of corn, will be built in one instead of two days. And winter threshing in the new stack-yard only a few yards away from both water and Corn Barn, will be simplified.”

“Well, if 'twas mine, I'd keep my money in my pocket.”

*

When Phillip arrived at the farm premises, he found the men
standing
idle, while Brother Laurence was removing the broken gear-box.

Hurst had devised, together with the steward, another way of dumping loads of chalk. The chalk, which was being put out in heaps for later spreading on a field, was moist. It had clung to the sheet-iron floor of the lorry even when the body had been raised on the hand-screw tippers at a high angle.

Instead of getting it off with shovel and muck-crome, Hurst's idea was to shoot it off in one avalanche by putting the engine in low gear and suddenly letting-in the clutch. So the engine was revved up to its maximum and the clutch let-in abruptly. The gear-box was churned into nuggets of crystallised steel.

“It was worn out,” said Hurst. “Like democracy,” he added sardonically.

This was the second vehicle to be put out of action. The steward, using the large green trailer for a load of straw when littering the bullock yards, had backed the trailer while attached to the tractor. Phillip had often stressed that the trailer never must be backed: if backed, he said, the automatic brakes went on hard and wedged the brake-shoes against the drums. This locked the wheels, which were liable to shudder and cause a half-axle to break under the pressure of more than a ton thrust from the tractor. If a half-axle didn't break, the springs might be torn from the shackle-bolts.

“We won't be in no muddle,” said Luke. “Horatio here says he can get you a gear-box cheap to replace this one. An' he can get you an old spring to put in place of that worn-out one on the green trailer what broke itself. You don't hev to worry. We won't be in no muddle.”

“You're quite right. We're in a bloody muddle already.”