Lucifer Before Sunrise

by Henry Williamson

  Then the copper came up to him in the street, and said:

  “You’d better take care.”

  “I always take care.”

  “Have you got the old licence out of your guts yet?”

  “You ain’t, by the look of you.”

  “You won’t get away with it always, you know.”

  “I’m busy,” Bert Close replied, and drove away. “He’ll get crowned one dark night, that copper.”

  In pre-war days of cut-price haulage Bert Close sometimes had had to overload both lorry and trailer in order to pay his way. However carefully he drove, he had break-downs. Springs and back-axles, usually. He carried spares and did repairs by the roadside. Once he lay underneath the lorry six or seven hours on end and then completed his journey. He never over-loaded whelks or winter cabbages because if they missed the market they would be a dead loss. The breaks usually occurred on return journeys, for regularly he brought a load of old tombstones back each time from London. One of his customers bought and sold them.

  “Yes, I remember, when we went to London together, Bert. I was surprised that there was black market in tombstones.”

  “There ain’t, guv. Only a shortage.”

  Phillip told him how bones from the ossuaries of the battle of Waterloo had been shipped to East Anglian ports to be ground in windmills as phosphate dressing for wheat.

  “Go on,” said Bert Close.

  “Are many other lorry drivers bringing tombstones back, Bert?”

  “Ask no questions, get told no lies, guv.”

  “Your lorry is very well maintained. How old is it?”

  “Ten years when the war come.”

  The lorry lived when at rest in a shed by the old makings, beside another just like it, built of spare parts from the knackers’ yards. Phillip had admired this duplicate built for the cost of a few pounds. With patience, both engines had been cleaned and painted red and green, the greasing nipples of the chassis touched with aluminium paint. Before he had met Bert Close, he had had a similar idea of buying a Silver Eagle he had seen in a car-breaker’s in Gaultford, which had been offered to him for five pounds.

  *

  Riding supinely, aching more in thigh bones, he thought of that twin Silver Eagle resting among the other derelict cars. Like his own, it was a 1930 model with six-cylinder, three-carburettor engine developing ninety-five horse-power at 4,500 r.p.m. And, as regards body-work and wheels, in better condition than his motorcar. But even as he considered the idea, the usual cold negation had come upon him. Would it not be just another useless, unused bit of junk about the farm? With the two ponies that no child yet had ridden, although they had been three years on the farm? Riding boots in wooden trees: saddles, bridles covered with dust and mildew: hundreds of books and manuscripts in tea-chests of three-ply wood, unpacked, unwanted, on damp brick floor of the granary: tennis rackets—table tennis equipment—skittles board—dart-board—fishing-rods—enamelled Hardy tapered-silk lines probably tacky and spoiled on the reels—Lucy’s knitting machine that had not been used for a dozen years—pieces of antique furniture standing about the farm buildings—and all the other things that were now virtually useless since no one seemed to care for them. They were all too occupied, too over-worked, too tired to do more than think of them after each day–night’s work.

  I had imagined myself painting the second Silver Eagle black like its twin, and thus having two cars; one for fetching calves and for towing the trailer, the other for pleasure. For they were hand-built motorcars of a famous vintage, and made to last for hundreds of thousands of miles. Since only one car would be on the road at a time one licence would serve, and one set of number plates, would serve for both. They would stand, two gleaming Silver Eagles, maintained in first-class running order, in the motorhouse to be rebuilt out of the ruinous turkey-house. O, that turkey-house! The rat-holes in its flint walls must be filled with concrete, and a new concrete floor replace the present unevenness of rat-cast chalk and earth. I had foreseen that as the war drained the financial strength of Britain, and left the country exhausted, motorcars would become scarce, with few new ones on the market; and spares of the Silver Eagle might be unobtainable.

  And yet—to have bought that twin would have meant acquiring one more self-reproach; so I bought only the self-starter, flywheel, and petrol-tank filler-cap. Bert Close had fitted the new flywheel to my motorcar, so that the self-starter spun it without that hoarse cock-crow which, before the change, had sometimes been taken as a challenge to Hawkeye, Billy’s ferocious cockerel ‘pet’. And sitting supinely beside Poppy, the rays of the low red-gold shining into my eyes, I wondered if perhaps parts of the twin had by now fallen upon the Rhineland, dropped by some youth of the Royal Air Force who later had fallen beside them.

  The sun had gone down.

  “Light me a blinder, Poppy.”

  Poppy passed it to her chap staring fixedly ahead.

  Phillip envied his direct outlook on life, the simplicity of his one-man world. He was his own mechanic and driver. Perhaps if Bert Close had another driver, and two lorries on the road, he would have lost his independence. When upon occasion Bert Close had driven a ten-ton lorry for a local firm (having no haulage job of his own for the moment) he would clean the lorry, a thing which the ordinary drivers never bothered to do. He would polish the copper pipes of the carburettor. From cylinder block and head he would remove with paraffin black oil-stains, and thickness as of dead gnats and flies from air-filter and radiator.

  They were going down a long curving hill. “Have you always been tidy, Bert? Excessive desire for tidiness, some critics have said of me, is a sign of neurosis.”

  “Go on,” said Bert Close. “Poppy, light me a blinder.” He inhaled; respired. “My dad died when I was a kid, guv, and an old chap looked after us. He used to belt me if I told a lie. He told me to be neat and tidy, and I did what he told me.”

  “I think some types are born tidy and methodical—the Nordic type, for example. Some Celtic types aren’t, as a rule. The two can’t live together. Sometimes I think I’ve got both types in me, in dissension.”

  “What am I, a bloomin’ Nordic?” cried Bert Close, suddenly exuberant.

  “No, you’re a dark Celt, perhaps a Frank, from Frankfurt.”

  “Blimey, little old ’Itler would be pleased!”

  Bert Close let out a piercing series of whistles through his front teeth, while simultaneously with his right hand banging rapidly the iron door of the cab, making noises like the beating of drums. So abrupt and vehement was his reaction that Phillip was startled, but the outburst had not been occasioned by his possibly pseudo-ethnological remark, but by the headlight sight of a long-tailed dingy white collarless mongrel dog which just managed to skip out of the way of the front wheels.

  “Poppy, my mouth-organ!”

  The driver held this in his right hand and played Danny Boy as he drove up a hill, steering with the left forearm laid across the wheel, while Poppy sang in a faint treble, to the accompaniment of music.

  *

  Now they were moving carefully up and along and down upon the winding grey roads of the West Country, the driver always showing care, never going faster than he deemed it safe for tyres and springs, never taking corners on the wrong side, never cutting-in, always signalling correctly to overtaking traffic. They were moving under the downs and beside arable fields where Phillip had ploughed his first furrow—land now covered by army hutments which had brought back the war forgotten during most of the afternoon.

  Under the stars the journey began to seem unreal. He had to restrain himself from telling the driver about the steep hills and sudden turns of this ancient and familiar country. He was pressed against the door, the bones of his thighs heavy aching. The driver was silent, so was the girl beside him. About fifty, perhaps sixty cigarettes had now been smoked. The driver was peering forward, crouched over the wheel, trying to see in the weak glow of masked lights the continual curves of the road under tall
trees and leafy hedges. They were going down a long hill, Phillip knew it well, why was Bert in bottom gear? Such caution must come from extreme fatigue on his part.

  “Shall I take a turn at the wheel?”

  “You’d turn ’er over.”

  “I know this road.”

  “Insurance. Must get there. Light me a blinder, Poppy.”

  They came to the bottom of the hill, and began to climb up the other side. The driver changed gear—to second, to top.

  “We’re going uphill now. Why did you change up?”

  “’Ow many blinders left, Poppy?”

  “About six or seven.”

  “Christ. How far off are we, guv?”

  “About forty miles.”

  “Wha’s time?”

  “Eleven o’clock. We’re going rather slowly, aren’t we?”

  No reply from tense features. Bert Close drove on as before. When the fag was finished he drew a final deep draw of it, flipped it out of the window, and exhaling smoke said very quietly, “Give us the old mouth organ, Poppy.” For five minutes he played Danny Boy. They reached the top of the hill, and were on the level. He changed to bottom gear.

  “We’re on level ground, Bert. I know this road!”

  “Can you stop a minute?” asked Poppy.

  “When we get to the top of the ’ill. Light me a blinder.”

  Phillip did not speak until the lorry stopped. He got out, being near the door. They were just over the crest of a hill.

  “Sorry—I was wrong about those gears.”

  “It’s your eyes, guv.”

  Phillip thought: Am I going blind? Delayed action of mustard gas in 1918?

  *

  Exeter was behind, it was past midnight, and raining. Figures waved, dim-seen in screened lights casting wan glimmer in water-streaked blackness and ever-lasting movement. Airmen from new station built on level ground above the hills. Two were perched on either step, by each door. Other figures suddenly loomed a few feet in front of the wheels, leapt away just in time.

  “No more!” barked the driver, “we’ve got to get there.”

  More shadowy figures entered the curtain of feeble light but to leap out again with curses.

  “Returning from leave,” said one of the passengers. “We get off here. Thanks a lot.” They vanished. Rain-streaked darkness remained. Descending to Queensbridge, turning right-handed. … Melancholy thoughts: Here I walked with Barley, in the moonlight, after our marriage at Caxton Hall. We carried our luggage, played games as we walked, sometimes leap-frog. All life is a dream.

  The engine boiling up lane seeming-narrow with grey-white masses of umbelliferous plants leaning out of hedge. Mudguards pushing through them. The last hill. Two hundred yards from the field a rear tube blew out. So did Bert Close.

  “Christ, why did I come?” he moaned, adding that his tyres would be ruined by the flints.

  With tactless but geological truth Phillip replied that there was not a flint in South Devon, for the rock formation was gneiss, schist, and old red sandstone.

  Bert Close replied, “I don’t want to ’ear about your nice shit and old red bollocks.”

  Phillip disciplined himself, impersonal help. Bert Close pulled out the spare wheel. Ferric-willed once more, “Get the handle, please. The tool box is unlocked. Give it to me, please. I’ll change the wheel in the morning.”

  Phillip walked on to open the gate. The entrance was narrow, sharply at right-angles to the lane.

  “Your best way in is to run up the lane and come back with left-hand down.”

  Bert Close’s restraint broke. London gutters gushed. Phillip kept silent. He was thinking of the fragile 5-gallon paint-cans filled with petrol splitting as Bert Close struck the stone hedge, reversing and going forward several times in the darkness. Flames. Death. My children.

  With a touch on wings Bert Close drove in, switched off engine, opened cab door, got out.

  In silence Phillip led them to the Gartenfeste, went up the outside stone steps and unlocked the door of the loft. On the oaken floor were rolls of coconut matting of the kind used as camouflage in the last war. He had bought them as wind-shields for sapling trees planted a dozen years previously. A springy mattress. Old blankets in a japanned uniform trunk. Pillows. Lighted candle.

  Bert Close took off cap, unrolled matting, spread it, lay down, pulled blanket over head. The shine of the candle hurt Phillip’s eyes. Saying goodnight to Poppy he went down the steps in his heavy leather coat. The stars were clear after the rain. Brr-brr. Were the enemy bombers throbbing in the sky, making for South Wales?

  Luminous hands of wristlet watch said half-past two. Bert Close had been driving for twenty-one and a half hours with one and a half hours for meals. He went into the basement room, built underground, walls plastered with water-repellent cement, lit fire in open hearth and sat down, trying to work out the average travelling speed, three hundred and thirty miles during twenty running hours: sixteen and a half miles an hour.

  He slept by the fire, in leather coat. When he awoke he thought of Melissa. Would she be visiting her aunt? He wrote a letter to her at St. George’s Hospital, saying he was staying at the field.

  Chapter 7

  ECLIPSE

  In the past two weeks’ issues of the local paper an advertisement had appeared under the Miscellaneous column:

  ANTICIPATE COAL SHORTAGE this coming winter by storing pyramid of Oak Poles in your garden, fuel reserve. Two ton (approximate) lots delivered Turnstone–Malandine district in July only, price 55s. Early application advised.

  Curious to see what replies it had brought, Phillip walked down the hill, and loitered until the village post-office was open. There was but one reply to the advertisement, from an official of the Board of Trade, warning him that as there was no such thing as an Approximate Ton any attempt to sell by a non-existent standard of weight would contravene the law. The writer of the letter added that he would be interested to hear any observations the wood-merchant cared to make on the subject. Phillip thought of asking him if he would care to accept, as a unique rarity for the Board of Trade Museum, an Approximate Ton of wood, to be preserved in perpetuity with other ersatz war-time exhibits; but on second thoughts he did nothing.

  On his return to the field the lorry was standing in the drive as before. He went to the outside stone steps of the Gartenfeste and discreetly called upwards. There was no reply; and he went away with a mental picture of two figures within the loft sleeping exhaustedly on coconut matting.

  It was a sharp clear morning, which might mean rain later. He went a score of yards away from the building, and sat down on the bank. But not to rest or relax: there was too much to think about. Petrol tins to be distributed and hidden in the plantations: food: the steep lane up by the wood with its choked little narrow entrance—if he could find it—to be cleared before they could start. Could they start? Would not the difficulties be too great? He felt cold. due to lack of sleep, but knowing that he could not sleep in the daytime.

  Difficulties? Yet somehow they were overcome. Everything was relative. He remembered how Lucy and he had laid the oak floor in the loft of the Gartenfeste some years before. The oak boards had been nicely fitted by the builder, when they had been green wood. Knowing how oak shrinks, he had asked him not to nail them down. They had shrunk a lot; and they had warped as well. Some planks had twisted into curves. Others had curled to the enclosed heats of summer. The job of laying the stubborn, writhen planks had seemed formidable. He had never before laid a floor. The village carpenter had lent him a cramp, explaining what it was. The first morning, all planing and fitting was most difficult. He sweated, after weeks of writing. Was peevish, and at times in despair. Lucy had been her patient self. At the end of the third day, work went smoothly, quietly, harmoniously, for by then he knew what to do, and so had no anticipatory fear of failure. What patience Lucy had shown…

  How simple those days seemed now; yet how difficult they had been seen to be at the tim
e. How ignorant he had been, his mind wrong-set to the working rhythms of the body.

  The proper time to accustom (otherwise to break in) the body to the slow, satisfying, non-mental rhythm of sustained body-work was in boyhood and early youth. Properly organised, made interesting, such physical education would alter the secret-mind-life of, and give calmness to, metropolitan man. Surely it was the only way to dissolve the crystallised, or petrofact, mentality of the towns. All boards of directors would know how to use, and learn how to enjoy using, the shovel and the spade; how to load sheaves on a waggon, know the knack of lifting four bushel sacks, hoeing turnips, shifting and spreading muck. Youth was the time to learn body-patience, the easy body-rhythm. For himself, he was part metropolitan waste-land—only part natural.

  “Only through understanding and realising oneself can one understand others,” he said aloud as a surprisingly cheerful Bert Close appeared round the wooden building, coming from the plantation of pines and beeches.

  “Quite right, guv. Lovely morning.”

  “Hello, Bert! I thought you were still sleeping.”

  “Bin lookin’ round. We ought to dump the petrol cans among the trees. I’ve mended the blow-outs. Didn’t like to unload until you came. Lovely up here, ain’t it?”

  “Sorry I was irritable last night.”

  “That’s what Poppy says I must say to you, guv. But I knew I could get here, in my own time, straight I did.”

  “Of course you were right to go carefully. I would have turned the lorry over, had I been driving.”