How Dear Is Life

by Henry Williamson

  “Yes, Mr. Hollis. This afternoon I’m going past the Salt Box, beyond Reynard’s Common, and I shall either go down into the valley below Biggin Hill, and look for woodpeckers in the beeches there, or continue onwards into Westerham, where I have permission from the châtelaine to roam all over the estate, and to fish after hay-cutting.”

  Mr. Hollis stared at him. “Where did you get that highfalutin’ word ‘châtelaine’ from?”

  “My father, Mr. Hollis, said it was the right term.”

  “Who are they, family friends? Wasn’t your grandfather a military man?”

  “Yes, Mr. Hollis, but I don’t really know them. I just wrote for permission to study and photograph wild birds.”

  “Westerham, did you say? Isn’t that where General Wolfe, of Quebec fame, was born?”

  “Yes, Mr. Hollis. There’s a statue of him in the village. But perhaps you know it? There’s a terrific hill before you get to the village.”

  “No, I can’t say I do, Maddison. How do you get there? Bicycle?”

  “Well, I walk part of the way now, Mr. Hollis, until I am round the bend, anyway.”

  “Round the bend? What bend?” asked Downham.

  “Round the bend of the terrific hill. Crikey, the first time I and my friend Desmond biked to Westerham, a year ago, we didn’t know what was coming, as we free-wheeled faster and faster, until we came to a right-hand bend too late to stop. I was in front, slewing about in the thick dust, and knew it would be fatal to put on the brakes. I had no idea it was such a dangerous hill, until I saw the country laid out below me like a sort of map. Golly, I went faster and faster, feeling like a bony skeleton out of the chalk suddenly fixed on a bike! I couldn’t steer, only hold the shuddering handlebars rigid and pray that the wheel-spokes wouldn’t bust. I felt I had no hair, only a skull. The bike felt thin as a knife rushing down before a white furrow of dust. You may not believe it, but my eye-lashes were actually turned in upon my eyeballs. Near the bottom, by some farm buildings, I saw a cross-roads. Phew! If a cart appeared——! I reckon I was doing quite sixty miles an hour by that time!”

  “Why bless my soul,” said Mr. Howlett, when Phillip had stopped talking. “I’ve let my pipe go out, listening to you.”

  “Well my lad,” remarked Mr. Hollis briskly. “I’ve a train to catch, so tell us quickly what happened at the cross-roads.”

  “We got over, just in time. A May Day procession of kids in white, and Boy Scouts, was about to cross as we hurtled by.”

  “You’ve missed your vocation, my lad,” remarked Mr. Hollis, putting on his straw-yard. “You should be in Fleet Street! Well, I must be off. Good-day to you all!”

  “I did think of going to Fleet Street, as a matter of fact,” said Phillip, when Mr. Hollis had gone. “I met Castleton some years ago, when I was still at school, and he asked me to call and see him when I left. But I never went.”

  “Where did you meet him?” asked Downham, sardonically. “Down by the Heybridge Basin, when you were wildfowling?”

  “No, as a matter-of-fact it was at Brighton. He was in a Rolls-Royce landaulette. What’s more, I can give you the number!”

  Phillip was telling the truth, but he felt guilty all the same.

  “Brighton!” remarked Downham. “Don’t tell us you were there with a bird!”

  Fool, thought Phillip; and assumed the false amiable smile he wore whenever Downham was chipping him.

  *

  When he arrived at the lake in front of a yellow house half-a-mile below the big red-brick Court, he saw thousands of mayflies lying on the surface of the water and fluttering in the air, while all over the lake big rainbow trout were rolling up and splashing to take the white flies. Sitting down on the stone-built edge, he watched shrimp-like insects crawling up the stones and the sedges by the verge, and knew from his reading that these were the mayfly imagines, their skins soon to split and a fly to crawl forth. The big trout, some nearly a foot and a half long, did not seem afraid of his presence; they came to within arm’s-length, showing their black spots, and when they rolled to take a fly, the pinky green sheen, as on boiled salt beef, was visible on the lateral line.

  This lake was private, of course, like the larger lake in front of the Court up the valley; his permit to fish was in the pond by the road, opposite the brewery; but watching fish was the next best thing to fishing. As the hay in the meadow was not cut, he did not cross over to look at the pond, which held coarse fish, and a legendary monster pike, but wandered off, along his usual round. The chain of small lakes up the valley, feeding the water-mill under the trees, were made by the damming of a water-thread, which was the beginning of the river Darent. The tiny brook ran at the foot of the beech wood, opposite the rabbit warrens. The trout in these smaller ponds were not so large, but they, too, were rising all over the clouded surface of the chalky water after mayfly. He sat and watched them, warm and happy to be in the sunshine, with a feeling of intense joy in being alive with so much beauty around him.

  A pair of sparrowhawks had a nest in the high top of one of the spruces in a plantation beyond the hill above the valley. The nest had been shot at by the keeper, several times, but it was built on an old crow’s nest, and the twigs were thick. Walking there, he longed to be able to climb up, and get one of the fledglings. He could hear them faintly mewing as he lay on the ivy under the tall spruce poles, shadowed below except where little freckles of sunlight came down in shafts. They would be flying, very soon now. Woodpigeons were cooing far away. The cries of jackdaws came from far up in the blue beyond the sighing canopies of the spruces. It was pure happiness to lie there, feeling himself to be part of England. He closed his eyes, he felt as though little golden bubbles were arising through him; and when he opened his eyes again, he saw a robin looking at him from a twig, not twelve inches away.

  His packet of sandwiches lay beside him. He put some crumbs on his open palm, and sat up. The robin flew to his knee, eyeing the out-held hand; then jumped upon it, seized a crumb, and flew away. The bird came back again, showing no fear.

  There was peace in the plantation. Shafts of sunlight speckled the ivy on the ground, growing over fallen limbs of the firs. The wind sighing in the tall tops of the spruces was like the sound of the sea, far away. The mewing of the young hawks was remote, too. The parent birds did not hunt in the plantation, but away in the beech woods, and along the hedgerows of the cornfields. The robin, perhaps, had not seen a man before.

  From the plantation, he walked to the keeper’s cottage. Near it stood an ash with a broken limb. In this stump of a branch was a hole where a white owl nested. He had taken one of the eggs in April, and now the young were hatched, squatting among many dead mice and voles which were left from the old birds’ dawn hunting. He wanted one of the owls later on. How lovely to see it, quartering the grasses of the Backfield, and perhaps on the Hill at twilight—his white owl, returning to sleep during the day in a special box in the elm!

  The keeper showed him a kestrel sitting in a disused ferret cage in his garden. It was an adult bird, with a broken wing. Would he like it? Phillip said, “Rather!” Into his haversack it went, a tightly compressed small falcon, with yellow legs and black claws, large liquid brown eyes. It was bluish grey on its back, its breast plumage being chestnut streaked with black. Its yellow scaley feet were clenched tight. The hawk’s beak could give a sharp cut, so take care, said the keeper. Fortunately in his pocket was a present for the keeper—a sixpenny packet of yellow perils, twenty Gold Flakes.

  With the kestrel in his bag, he set out for home. He would be able to shoot sparrows for it with his saloon gun, in the elm thicket behind the garden fence. Perhaps he could put the broken wing in a splint, and mend it; then the kestrel might fly wild, and return to him for food. It might even attract a mate, and nest among the chimney pots on his house. What fun that would be! With the kestrels, and an owl, he would bring wild life back to what Father called the lost province of Kent, now officially part of London.

>   Dreaming thus, he pushed his bicycle up the steep and lonely hill, his back hot in the ardent sun of young summer. On the summit of the Downs he rested, watching the swifts racing over green fields of hay and corn. The only sounds were their shrill whistling, the trilling of larks, a faraway cracked cuckoo-voice, and the burring of bees on hedgerow flowers. Far below lay woods and cornfields and meadows, in shadow and sunshine, extending to the Weald of Kent. How glad he was that he had not gone to Australia! Office life wasn’t so bad after all, with plenty of time in the evenings for tennis, and rides like this into the country. He liked being alone in the country best of all.

  Still, the fellows on the Hillies were fun to be with, the little band he went with sometimes, sky-larking after tennis, a grass court for which could be hired for twopence an hour. Helena Rolls sometimes played there in white clothes and shoes and stockings, with her friends from Twistleton Road, but of course he did not stare, or hang about; but passed on quickly when he saw them, as though bent on going somewhere. If she smiled when he raised his hat—as she always did—he was at once filled with elation, which lasted for days—until, suddenly, a lead weight dropped inside him, and there was nothing to be done about it; except to hope.

  With a sigh, he got on his bicycle again, and headed home, the kestrel in the haversack crouched taut, alive to every movement, thrilling and starting with shock of every sound, its wingless life burning away, burning, burning, burning, as it passed the lonely fields of corn and pasture on top of Biggin Hill.

  *

  Thursday night was the great weekly occasion on the Hill. The band played; then fireworks from the Crystal Palace, on Sydenham ridge to the south, arose into the summer’s soft darkness. While the band played, ere it was twilight, small boys stopped Phillip for cigarette cards of boxers and musical comedy beauties, motorcars and flowers, as once he had stopped what had seemed to be tall men for similar clean, radiant, coloured wonders—faintly smelling of delicious tobacco threads—depicting the series of Birds and Their Eggs, Fish, and Flying Machines. These tall men were still about, but looking quite different: they seemed to have shrunk, and many had pimply faces, barber’s rash, which he had not noticed before. He heard one of them, standing by the bandstand, straw hat tilted on back of head, say to another fellow leaning on his stick, “God, what a poxy hole! Look at all these snotty-nosed kids, like a lot o’ spadgers’ crap!”

  Phillip was hurt by the remark. Hitherto he had regarded the Hill as rather a good place to live beside. The two men looked a poor sort themselves; weedy. The one that had spoken had a face yellow-spotted with barber’s rash. Why then had he spoken like that about poor children? After all, it wasn’t their fault that they had been born where they were. Take Cranmer, for example. Cranmer, although poor, was at least a thoroughly decent chap. What fun they had had together, as Boy Scouts. It was sad how you seemed to drift apart from your old friends when you grew up. Cranmer, what days they had had together, in the old Bloodhound patrol! Cranmer was a sort of sparrow, a spadger.

  He wandered on the Hill, feeling lonesome. The cuckoo’s voice had cracked; another spring had gone. He was glad to meet some of the fellows of the band he belonged to, despite the fact that Tom Ching usually attached himself to them. Phillip knew that he was after his sister Mavis, and so trying to court favour with himself. Mavis was still at the convent in Belgium.

  Jack Hart, the bold bad Jack Hart who had been expelled from school, sometimes was to be seen, in Merchant Service uniform, his arm in his regular girl’s. If only he could be bold, like Jack Hart! Phillip still felt a mixture of admiration and fear for Jack Hart. Fancy blacking his father’s eye, when still at school, when he had been thrashed for taking girls into the sheepfold at night!

  Phillip still felt slight horror, mingled with envy, that Jack Hart had had carnal knowledge of eight High School girls before he was fourteen. Jack Hart was a black sheep; and yet he never told smutty stories, like Tom Ching did; he just pleased himself, and went his own way, always laughing.

  Phillip was glad that Jack now had a regular girl. It made him feel that he himself was not such a weakling, somehow, for not wanting to lie down on the grass with any girl. He was quite happy to be one of a skittering band, in the twilight, talking and joking, and exchanging badinage, with occasional couples of young girls. The girls on the Hill always seemed to go in couples, while the youths roved in a loose pack, sometimes, in the safety of dusk, singing songs in harmony. Phillip thought singing in the open air rather vulgar, until one moonlit June night he joined in. It was lovely to feel yourself only a voice in the timeless warm dusk, the evening star shining in the sky, the elms beginning to blacken against the sunset. Life seemed to be eternal, in such moments.

  Cousin Bertie sometimes came on the Hill. He never could make out what Bertie thought of him. Did he really think he was a bit of a tyke, as once he had called him? Bertie had never been, even in his young days, a ‘hooligan of the Hillies’, as he himself had been. Bertie played tennis, but with his own set, two of whom were the sort who were genuinely entitled to wear silk hats to church on Sundays, with morning suits, for they worked in the Bank of England. Bertie, who was a terrier in the London Highlanders, and a keen athlete, practised running on the Hill after dark twice a week—crunch of plimsolls on gravel, dim ghost suddenly appearing, scarce-audible panting, then fading away. Bertie also spent an evening a week at headquarters, boxing and bayonet-fighting in the School of Arms. He had wonderful muscles.

  Phillip had thought of joining to increase his muscles. Many of the men at Head Office were in the London Highlanders. Downham was. So, among the Hill-ites, were Peter Wallace, and Mr. Bolton’s son. Peter’s father, Mr. Wallace, had been in them too, a sergeant in the days of the Volunteers.

  “Why don’t you come along with me, as my guest, to a canteen sing-song, young Phil?” said Bertie, one evening, when Phillip, to his surprise, had been asked to make a fourth at tennis. “We want recruits, and apart from all else, it’s a top-hole club, with no subscription.”

  Phillip was much exhilarated that Bertie didn’t really look down on him. The two Bank of England men were awfully decent.

  “Yes, I’ll think about it, after my holiday.”

  “When are you going?”

  “In September.”

  “Any idea where you’re going?”

  “Not yet, Bertie. But it may be to Devon. Mother’s written to Aunt Dora, to ask if I can go to her cottage.” His voice dropped. “The trouble is, only don’t mention it to your friends, will you, we don’t know whether Aunt Dora was mixed up in that race-horse business, yesterday. So she may be back in prison again.”

  “All the best people are, anyway, young Phil! Well, so long!”

  “So long! And thanks for the game, Bertie.”

  “Delighted, old thing!”

  It was wonderful to be called ‘old thing’ by Cousin Bertie, and in the hearing of the two Bank of England men.

  *

  “Well, you know where good intentions lead to, don’t you, Hetty?” Phillip heard Father’s voice saying to Mother (it was always to Mother when he used that forceful tone of voice). “And that is putting it at its most charitable aspect. The real trouble with Dora is that she has too much spare time on her hands—you know the proverb, I dare say, about Satan and idle hands. Well, this Epsom business is the last straw. As The Trident says——”

  Phillip hesitated: if Father were in grumbling mood he would slip away, and see Mrs. Neville.

  “It’s about the Suffragettes,” Doris whispered to him, as he hesitated on the mat.

  “I know.”

  “Ah well,” said Mother’s voice, “it is all very sad. I think I shall write to Dora and urge her to give up her activities for her own sake. But perhaps it will sound ungracious if I do it at the same time that I inquire about Phillip’s holiday.”

  “Well, you must decide for yourself,” said Father; and his newspaper rustled.

  Phillip went down into th
e sitting-room.

  The letter was posted that night to Dora’s address in Old Ford, where she was helping to run the East London Suffragettes Federation. Before a reply could come, the very next day in fact, Hetty heard from Miss Martinant, a suffragette living in Charlotte Road, whose daughter was friendly with Doris (the daughter was, well—no matter, it would be wrong to allow it to make any difference) that Theodora Maddison would be carrying a banner at the funeral of Emily Davidson, who had seized the bridle of the king’s colt Amna, at Tattenham Corner, and been trampled on. Whereupon Hetty returned home at once to ask Aunt Marian to go with her to London, to see the funeral procession. Perhaps she might have a chance to talk to Dora afterwards.

  Hetty walked beside Aunt Marian to the ‘bus with some trepidation: for the outrage had caused much angry comment. They took a 36 to Vauxhall, and walked from there, in beautiful summer weather, to Hyde Park corner, where a crowd was already gathered.

  Hetty was afraid of crowds, and fearing for Aunt Marian, who was nearly eighty, she suggested crossing over to the park railings, to be near several policemen standing there, in case there was a crush.

  After waiting awhile, they heard in the distance the music of the Dead March in Saul. It was very solemn and sad; deeply, deeply sad. She thought of Mamma, of Hugh, of Jennie, of Mr. Newman—the dead in her life who lived with her yet, who now seemed to be faces watching, not in sorrow, but with happy gentleness.

  The leaves of the plane tree rustled overhead, so green, so lightly in the warm summer day; then as the procession came nearer, they seemed to be shaking with the heavy beats of the funeral music, the thuddings of the muffled drums. Glancing at Aunt Marian’s face, she saw tears running down her cheeks. But Aunt Marian held herself upright, her shoulders squared.

  She noticed in the waiting crowd banners and placards bearing slogans hostile to the procession. Quite near a lady in a big hat, expensively dressed, was giving away handbills. Hetty took one from her. It was headed Woman’s League Against the Suffrage. Aunt Marian said that she resembled the photographs of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, the great novelist. Hetty had read Robert Elsmere, and had been much impressed. She and Dora had read the book together, in the days at Cross Aulton. It seemed strange that the authoress should be against the Movement, which was really so idealistic. But Mrs. Humphrey Ward was rich, and probably knew little about the sufferings of the poor.