How Dear Is Life

by Henry Williamson

  “Are you sure she only stroked your hand?” enquired Little Freddy, in his high drawling tones, as he glanced around the office, looking like a dressed up dog in a circus. Deliberately he lifted up his nose and sniffed again. “Ahem, very suspicious, I must say——”

  Mr. Hollis coughed explosively. “Get on with your work, Edgar! What the devil are you grinning at?”

  Edgar furtively was holding up, for Phillip to see, a cut-out photograph of the feathered Parisienne with her leg extended from split skirt to golden shoe, doing the naughty naughty Gaby Glide.

  “You be careful, my son,” said Downham to Edgar. “Remember what the Bard says about groping for trout in strange waters.”

  “That’s enough of that sort of thing, I think,” remarked Mr. Hollis abruptly, as he scrawled his signature furiously. “Maddison, pay in, if you please.”

  “I say, what—what is all this?” asked Little Freddy. He stared at Edgar’s corner. “Haven’t I seen that bird in here before? What is it, a stork? And what is that thing like a little dog?”

  “Mr. Maddison’s clobster, sir,” replied Edgar briskly.

  “Good gracious me,” ejaculated Little Freddy.

  “Here you are, my lad,” said Mr. Hollis, handing over the paying-in book. “Edgar, I want you to take a note at once down to the Minories, and await a reply. You will tell them, of course, that you are waiting for a reply.”

  “Yessir,” cried Edgar, springing up, and smoothing down his diminutive silver-button’d jacket. He wore this with a peaked cap out of doors, the silver disc of the moon as badge in front.

  Phillip returned briskly from the Westminster Bank across the way, as Little Freddy was leaving.

  “Fop,” remarked Mr. Hollis, as the door closed. “Still, apparently he gets business for the Life Office.”

  Mr. Howlett was treading downstairs with his usual care.

  “Oh, Maddison, I’d clean forgotten about the territorial camp,” he remarked pleasantly. “Of course, both you and Downham will be going this year. When is it, in August? My word, that stoat’s scent is pretty strong. Has anyone else noticed it?”

  “Have we not?” remarked Mr. Hollis.

  “With your permission, sir, I suggest I take the first fortnight,” said Downham, “and Maddison goes when I come back. I don’t want to miss the Office Tennis Tournament, sir.”

  “It’s all the same to me,” said Mr. Howlett. “Will that suit you, Maddison? You’ll have your fortnight at the end of July in Devon, then another in Sussex after an interval of two weeks here with Mr. Hollis. There’s never much business in August.”

  “That’s all you know about it,” remarked Mr. Hollis, decisively. “With young Maddison here learning to type, it won’t exactly be a picnic for me. However, Horatius will hold the bridge, as always.”

  This semi-serious grumble was interrupted by the tobacco man with his bag slipping in; and the sight of twenty-four one-ounce packets of Hignett’s Cavalier laid out on the counter, eight each for the seniors, six for Downham, and two for Phillip, at fourpence farthing an ounce, brought general contentment to the office.

  As he went home, carrying bittern and clobster, Phillip thought of an answer about the tablet of soap. Why did he take it? “A year ago I used Pears Soap, since then I have used no other.”

  Chapter 7

  EXCURSION

  THEODORA MADDISON, a chronic hunger-striker, was released from Holloway Prison for the sixth time in the middle of June. Two of her teeth had been broken by steel goads forced into her mouth while wardresses held her down on the floor of her cell. After that, a doctor had squirted liquid from a rubber tube thrust up one nostril and down the throat into the stomach. It was like stuffing a turkey, he remarked for the hundredth time: a remark which made the wardresses, lips pressed in narrow lines, exchange bleak glances, for they were as sick of the remark as they were of the doctor; and as secretly sympathetic to the political prisoners.

  In addition to the broken teeth, Theodora’s left eye was injured. Just before her last arrest, for being likely to cause a breach of the peace in Hyde Park, she had been knocked down by a man, her face had been stamped on by another; helped to her feet, umbrellas were poked into her face by indignant bystanders.

  Now, free for awhile, she went with her great friend Sylvia to convalesce at Lynmouth. The cottage stood near the quay, above the river and facing the Severn Sea. There she hoped to gain strength for further effort in London.

  ‘For,’ she wrote to Hetty, ‘our victory cannot be delayed much longer. Unemployment is rising, every where are signs of unrest due to the malformation of the body politic—in the docks, in the factories, at the pitheads, in Ireland. The head of the body politic—the gross extravagance and immorality of the rich, with a few noble exceptions —is conjoined to a withered body: the extreme penury of the working classes, the hopeless destitution of the out-of-work. Our struggle will go on, even as the one in olden times, among the catacombs of Rome——’

  Within the envelope was a note for Phillip, in her minute writing, with its Grecian letters α, δ and ε mixed with English letters.

  ‘Do come, dear Boy, and stay for as long as you want to. Bring your rod; there are plenty of trout in the Lyn.’

  Wearing his new pair of five-shilling grey flannel trousers with his twelve-and-sixpenny Donegal tweed jacket, and carrying an old black gladstone bag with a small second-hand greenheart fly-rod bought at Sprunt’s the pawnbroker’s for fifteen pence, Phillip set out for his holiday. The excursion train was due to leave Waterloo shortly after 8 a.m.

  While people were still abed he walked down Hillside Road as the sun was casting long shadows of houses in the fresh cold air of morning. The seeds of the chestnut trees were balls of bright gold above the dusty surface of Charlotte Road. Randiswell was a-shine, empty and silent, except for two labouring men cycling to work, and the Borough water cart laying with pink permanganate spray the dust at the side of the road. Everything looked new, and clear, and calm.

  A whole fortnight of freedom lay before him, in a place which Father said was one of the loveliest in the West Country. Father had given him the bag, which being cracked in places, Phillip had had botched. Also some old flies in the leather case stored with other things in Grandfather’s uniform case in the loft over the bathroom. The gut was brittle and yellow, but the flies, said Father, might do for a pattern.

  “Blue Upright, Olive Nymph, and the dropper is a Pheasant Tail,” he had said, moving them with his pink filbert-shaped finger-nail. “I used them once, long ago, on the Lyn, and the trout took them readily. You might find it worth while to have them copied by a local fly-tyer.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  “And you are welcome to take my fly-rod, if you care to.”

  “Thanks all the same, Father, but I think my own will be enough.”

  There was sixpence change out of half-a-sovereign for the return excursion ticket from Waterloo to Barnstaple. This train would take much longer than the express, having to stop at so many stations; but that would make the journey all the more interesting. He had a packet of mutton sandwiches, half a pound of Garibaldi biscuits, twelve oranges. And of course his Civic pipe, with its satisfying crust in the bowl, and not one speck of loathed putty outside; for after a dozen boxing lessons, he was smoking again. The chaps on the Hill had agreed with him, comparing pipes, that it was a real beauty. It was also a personal triumph that David Wallace, on his recommendation, had changed to Hignett’s Cavalier from Murray’s Mellow Mixture. The two had more in common, too, since he had agreed that David’s Pioneer pipe, which had a silver band like the Civic, but an amber mouth-piece, was one of the best straight-grained bowls to be seen anywhere. Peter Wallace did not smoke; Peter was still aloof, rather curt; it may have been because he was in hard training for the bayonet-fighting championship.

  Besides the two Wallace brothers in the London Highlanders, there was Mr. Bolton’s son, quite old of course, being twenty-four; and cous
in Hubert, another aspirant for the bayonet-fighting cup given by Lord Cheylesmore. The tournament was to take place in the coming autumn. Perhaps when Willie came up from Rookhurst to work in the Moon he would join too; then there would be six London Highlanders living within a hundred yards of their corner of the Hill, surely a record!

  Sitting back in the third-class carriage, feet up on the seat opposite, bag and rod safe above, Nights with an Old Gunner open on lap, Civic well-packed and little skeins of smoke straying past the nostrils, Phillip felt joy within himself trilling, trilling, trilling.

  The train drew out of the dark station, and ran among hundreds of polished junction rails. Smoky London with its tall chimneys and rows and rows of grimy stacks was soon left behind. He was keen to see Brooklands, which Father said would be on the left side of the train after about half an hour. If his luck were in, he might see some racing cars rushing down from the banking to the Railway Straight, which lay beside the line. He knew Brooklands only from reading about it; and from imagining himself winning some fantastic race at enormous speed, gripping the wheel to control a skid, while in reality scorching on his bicycle.

  Nobody was racing on Brooklands track, which came suddenly into view beyond pine and silver birch trees. Still, it was a wonderful place. His eyes glanced about to get every detail as he stood at the open window, before the grey oval track rushed away backwards with the train gathering speed. Hurray! He was on holiday. He did a jig in the carriage, and then hung from the rack, turning himself inside out until a jingle of coins made a search of the floor necessary. Counting up his money, he found it all there. This decided him to enter his expenses in his pocket book; everything must be entered there, just for the fun of seeing how much he had spent by the time he got back.

  Every moment of the eight hours in the train was enjoyable: rushing past cornfields and over bridges, the approach to Salisbury and the thin blue pointed tower of the Cathedral; the long afternoon in the blazing sunshine, both windows open, and the many stops where people, all most interesting, got in, everything about them fresh—feathers on hats, leather gaiters, collars, ties, colour of bone buttons on jackets, breeches laced or buttoned—whether their boots and shoes were more worn at the heel or the side—how they were shaved or the kind of moustache or beard they wore, and why none of them seemed to be pimply, like so many faces seen in the streets of London (barber’s rash, Father called it)—rings on their fingers, the different kinds of watches and chains they wore. Every face and characteristic was fresh, so were the station names, barns, shapes of fields and hills and churches, the slow speech of porters, butterflies drifting in the open windows as the train stopped to unload, or shunt into trucks laden with brightly painted farm machinery; and most wonderful of all, a box of ferrets, in the guard’s van, pink noses and white whiskers, scratching claws.

  *

  After Exeter the fields of red-gold wheat seemed to have been saturated with the everlasting blaze of the sun; the earth red in fallow to have been burned in some great furnace. How far away seemed Wine Vaults Lane, and the rush-hour over London Bridge, how remote his old life about which vaguely hovering thoughts lay unresolved behind objects ever new and strange upon his sight and feeling. He had been standing at one or other open window more than six of the eight hours in the train, without one moment that was not of full interest. They stopped at Exeter, a city as remote as the sun, which made the top of the carriage hot to touch, and the wind coming in the open window as from the earth-red furnace.

  Thereafter the train ran in a valley with woods on the distant slopes of hills, sometimes approaching a river in a stony bed which turned away again in a deep-cut curving course and came back suddenly as the train thundered over a bridge, and he saw below green and white rushing water. The sun was now ahead of the train, when it had been behind all the way from Waterloo to Salisbury, thereafter swinging out in a great burning arc but never ceasing in brilliant blaze of harvest light, pouring down its beams of the hue of red-gold wheat, the red-gold sample of Squarehead that Uncle Jim Pickering at Beau Brickhill had let him trickle through his hand, and hold in his palm; tawny, warm-looking seed, burned that colour by the harvest sun.

  He took out a letter from his pocket and re-read it yet again. It was from Cousin Willie at Rookhurst, saying that his application for a post in the Moon had been accepted on the recommendation of one of the directors his father knew. He would be coming to London at the beginning of August. It would be tremendous fun when Willie came. Even Father was looking forward to it. Willie’s mother, he said, had been one of the loveliest women he had ever seen.

  *

  The river widened into sudden sullenness. It moved slowly, with scum on it, under oakwoods which came down to its steep sides, as muddy as the reaches of the Thames when the tide was out. Could they be near the sea? He leaned out of the window, and saw, faintly under the spiky western sun, a pale length of sand with heat-hazed hills beyond. This must be Barnstaple! He put bag and rod on the seat before him, alert with excitement.

  Aunt Theodora had written that he must stay in the train until the second stop, at the town station; and then change to the small-gauge Lynton train he would see awaiting the London train on the opposite platform. It would take almost two hours to Lynton, but the country was very beautiful, she said. Sylvia would meet him at the Lynton station, if she was not able to come herself, and bring him down to the cottage.

  He got into the miniature Lynton train. The engine looked like a green oblong tank, with a red cow-catcher in front. It had a big polished brass dome like an immense fireman’s helmet rising out of the middle of the tank. There were only three carriages, one of them almost all made of glass, the first-class one. He got into a third, and stared about him, at the swans in the river, wooden ships moored at the quay on one side, and the number of traps and carts drawn by horses on the road seen through the opposite window. There was only one other person in his carriage, an old farmer with mutton-chop whiskers and a square sort of bowler hat on his head.

  At last the tiny engine gave a discordant shriek of its twin brass whistles, and with much chuffing, and rattling of the carriage, started off. By the rapid chuffing it seemed to be racing, until by comparison with the people and houses outside it was seen to be creeping. The longer it took the better. To ride in such a train was an adventure which he would like to go on for ever.

  The engine puffed and huffed out of the town, and up a green valley with oakwoods on either side, and meadows thick with rushes, where sheep and red cattle grazed. It passed over very small bridges, and left whiffs of steam through cuttings like a story-book train. Once it stopped, for a bullock on the line. He saw large birds soaring in wide spirals far above a hill, and counted seven, one above the other, sailing serenely in the blue.

  “Good lord!” he said to the bewhiskered farmer opposite, “they must be buzzards!”

  The farmer grinned, revealing brown stumps of teeth. “Aiy,” he said, “they’m ’awks.”

  “Aren’t they rather rare?”

  “Noomye!” shouted the farmer. “Serradwads fessans us calls ’n.”

  He wondered what this meant. It must be dialect. It seemed appropriate with the name of the little station, SNAPPER, where the farmer, who was almost as round as a barrel, and seemed to have some of the contents of one inside him, got out. Head out of window, Phillip asked the guard what was the local name for buzzards.

  Turning to the same farmer, the guard shouted, “What be they birds up auver, Jem?”

  “Aw, they’m ’awks, I reckon! Us calls’n serradwads fessans yurrabouts, midear, it ban’t thik praper name, noomye, ’tes only what us calls’n yurrabouts like.”

  “Oh, thank you,” said Phillip, as puzzled as before, for he had not understood a word of it.

  The safety valve of the engine was screeching with the head of steam got up for the long haul to the moor. The engine driver had blown his whistle, and the train had started off again, when Phillip heard shouting, and p
oking his head out of the window he saw the figure of a parson running and waving his black shovel hat. The train stopped with a jerk.

  “Afternoon, Joe!” shouted the parson to the driver. “Billy Chugg’s bees have been playing again.” As he passed Phillip’s window, he stopped and said, “Hullo! I haven’t seen you before, have I?” When Phillip replied that it was his first ride on the railway, the parson said, “Get your things—no, leave them where they are, they’ll be quite safe—and come with me into the end coach. You’ll get a much better perspective of the curves from the tail. There’s a grand view of the Chill’em viaduct, in the declining sunlight. The infra rays reflect beautifully from the white Marland brick. Let me give you a hand with your bag.”

  While the driver waited, Phillip transferred bag and rod to the end coach.

  “Very few visitors know what to look for on this line,” the parson continued, seating himself opposite. The engine screeched once more; and making an enormous show of power and speed, rattled on slowly.

  “Once over Collar Bridge the gradient rises one in fifty for the next eight miles,” went on the parson, as he thrust a hand into a jacket pocket, pulled out what looked like a pinch of dust, and threw it out of the window. Phillip wondered why he did not stand up and turn his pocket-lining inside out by the window, if he wanted to clean it out. Instead, the parson removed the dust pinch by pinch, throwing each little bit out of the window.

  “You’ll notice we ricochet from side to side from here onwards. It’s a bore, but not due to any intemperance on the part of the engine, but to the eccentricity of the landowner in not allowing the engineer to follow the best levels when the line was first surveyed.”