Lucifer Before Sunrise

by Henry Williamson

“You ain’t used to it, that’s all. I’ve learned to go steady. It gets you further in the end. Where’s the water pump, guv?”

  “Well and windlass over there, above those long grasses. The water will be about forty feet down at this time of year. There should be a stove in your loft. We brought a drum of paraffin, didn’t we?”

  “Poppy’s already got the oil-stove working up ours, guv. We must get some rooti.”

  “I’ve got some. Also possi. And bacon, eggs, and butter. In my basket. But no bergoo. That beats you, does it? I learned words of Hindustani from the old sweats in ninteen-fourteen. Bergoo is porridge.”

  “Poppy and me was talking it over, guv. She’ll do the housekeeping, and we’ll pay our whack, and you pay yours. I’ll unload the lorry after breakfast, then we’ll go down and look at the wood, shall we?”

  “Grand.”

  They had breakfast of boiled eggs and cold bacon in the loft. Poppy had already tidied it, and set the table.

  “Was the floor hard?”

  “Oh, it’s lovely,” exclaimed Poppy. Her cheeks were glowing. “Look at the view from the window! And it’s all so clean, the wood walls and roof, and the fresh air!”

  Bert Close produced his mouth-organ, and Danny Boy followed, peaked cap tilted. Then putting mouth-organ back in pocket, he lit a fag and said, “How about washing the old paws, and whisking away the old whiskers?”

  “The rain-water in the butts below is softer than the well-water. First, let’s get a rough idea of the day. Poppy, will you provide lunch? Use the cold bacon as you like. We’ll take the billy can and water to the oakwood, and make a fire for tea. Now, Bert, the idea is to cut long poles and bring ’em back every day. We’ll saw them up here, and store some of the logs in the woodshed. We’ll make a heap outside, and load them as we get orders. Someone in the village wants a dozen tons, at least.”

  Bert Close said, after a moment’s reflection, “I’ll get the gear out we don’t need to take with us.”

  “Have a cup of tea first.” Poppy gave them each a filled mug.

  *

  After breakfast they set to work. It was pleasant to work under Bert’s quick directions: a new life. They got the hood off, folded it, removed boxes of stores, spare parts of the lorry, and clothes. Each can of petrol was concealed under dry needles at the foot of a pine-tree. Tank of lorry filled, and chassis being greased, they drove down another lane into a valley of trees and so to a hillside oak-wood.

  It took them all morning to find the area of scrub-oak which Phillip had bought a decade before. The woods, extending around a hill, grew on the steep northern side of a valley which turned away from a small moor of heather and furze and bracken lying west of the Dart watershed.

  It was some years since Phillip had been there. He could not find his parcel of wood, among so many acres of trees. In search of it they crossed a culvert over a rapid stream, and went up a steep lane sunken by winter water-courses several feet below field and wood. It was somewhere in the wood which arose out of the hill-slope to their left. The wreckage of two small gates, choked by brambles, lay by what once might have been a track among the oaks. Now which gateway entered upon his piece, the upper or the lower? After several explorations he decided that it was the gateway higher up the lane.

  “Blimey,” said Bert Close, “how am I going to turn in there?”

  The sunken lane in which they stood was only two feet wider than the lorry. Trees met overhead, making a tunnel of green shadow. It was airless and warm. The gateway, even when cleared of growths of bramble, hazel, and ash, was hardly five feet wide. “How am I to back in there? Half a mo’. Let’s work it out. Blinder?”

  While they were lighting Woodbines an old dog appeared out of the wood. Phillip recognised the bob-tailed sheepdog as belonging to the farmer who had sold him the timber. The dog recognized him at the same time, and put its nose against his hand. He had fed it, all those years before, when first going to look at the wood. The chink of a mattock on stony soil came through spaces of green leaves and summer shadows.

  Last time Phillip had come, the farmer had been working in the field above the wood. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he told Bert Close.

  Accompanied by the dog, he walked through the trees, wondering how they would manage to cut down such thick trunks. The scrub-oak was usually thrown every twenty-one years, and his acre had been left to over-grow by a decade. He came to the edge of the wood. There in the field was the same old fellow. He left his hoeing and came down to where the lorry stood. He was not really old, but had always seemed the same to Phillip—a man with quiet blue eyes as serene as the sky and his own soul, a kind face that had accepted suffering gently. Phillip remembered a talk they had had about Jesus of Nazareth, when the woodman had brought a load of poles to his cottage during the hard winter when he had been living with Barley. He had charged only ten shillings. He was a simple, steadfast man because peace was in his own spirit.

  They walked together up a track almost obscured by nutbushes, and the woodman said, “Let’s zee, us might be able to recognize th’ marks of the bill ’ook where us marked ’n before.” And there were the marks in the trunks of two hollies, nearly obliterated by the rising sap of half-a-score years. “This be your parcel, zur. Now us comes up yurr, and us takes a line from this path to th’ aidge, and that be what us reckoned was ten rod, or a quarter of an acre. Now t’other remainin’ parcel be further up th’ill. ’Tes thissy way, plaize to vollow me, zur.” They followed the overgrown track, to where wild cherries were hanging in green clusters. Above the canopy of leaves a buzzard was soaring, its plaintive whistle coming down the sky. “Tes peaceful after Lunnon, I reckon?” said the farmer.

  “I’m farming on the East Coast now.”

  “Aw, you be up on the East Coast? What sort of land ’tes like up there? Be it hard to work?”

  “Some of it. Small rainfall.”

  “Aw, vancy that, now.”

  “We grow malting barley, sugar-beet, wheat, oats, fatten bullocks, and have a small flock of Suffolk-Oxford-Down ewes.”

  “Aw, ban’t that strange, now. Us’v be asked vor grow this yurr sugar-beet, you knaw, but I reckon ’tes a bit strange like for us down these parts.”

  “It’s just like mangold growing.”

  “Aw, it be, be ut?” The blue eyes seemed lost in wonder. “So you’ve left Malandine, tho’? I minds reading on th’ paper that you’d married again. I must tell th’ missus. I always mind that talk us had, midear, years agone, but I expect you’ve forgotten it.”

  “No, I remember it. Especially in these times.”

  They stood amidst shadow-maze on heads and faces. The faint, sweet cries of long-tailed tit-mice hunting in the branches came to them, and the whistle of the hawk soaring over the hill.

  “So you’m down in these parts again vor cut wood, tho’?”

  “Yes, a holiday.”

  “Tes hard work, you know, midear. ’Tes best in winter, when it ban’t so hot.”

  “Do us good. Sweat the vice out.”

  “Ah, hard work never killed a man yet.” He looked gently at Phillip. “Well, I’ll be gettin’ back to me roots. The thistles be getting master big this year, I’m thinking.”

  “Oh, by the way, if we enlarge the gateway, does it matter? And we may want to put a saw-bench just inside.”

  “Wull, if you put th’ postie back, ’twill be all right. And you’ll leave me the standards up yurr, won’t ’ee?”

  The standards were the straight single trees, not growing out from the stub-roots of previous cuttings. The standards were left, at every cycle of cutting, to grow into big timber. “’Tes me brother’s after me, you see,” he said, half-apologetically.

  “You’re what is called the tenant-for-life, I see.”

  “That be ut.”

  Phillip promised he would treat the wood as though it were his own. And with a quiet word to the dog, who gave Phillip’s hand another touch with its cold nose, the farmer went back
to hoe his roots in the heat-reflecting stony field.

  *

  After clearing the gateway with hook and slasher they sought a steep bank against which the lorry could be backed, whence to run tractor down the ramp of the hatch-board which had been Phillip’s bed for a few rainy minutes at the start of the journey. They found a bank. The tractor came off easily, Bert Close up. As it wasn’t licensed to run on the roads, and Phillip didn’t want any questions asked by any wandering policeman, he drove it down the lane behind the lorry, over the culvert bridge of the brook, and up the steep lane and so into the cleared gateway. Soon it was hidden safely in the depths of the forest, its rainproof cover secured against any sudden ocean rain.

  The next job was to dig away part of the stone bank to widen the entrance. Bert Close had discovered where, at the top of the lane, he could enter a field, reverse, and come down the lane again, so the problem of transport became simple. When the bank and the bushes of cob-nut growing on it had been cut away, the lorry could be reversed, tail-first.

  Just to feel they had made a start, they cut some of the little crooked oak-poles by the gate, stripped them of branches, and heaved them into the lorry. Both axes were blunt, though Phillip fancied his was sharp.

  “Rounded edge, guv,” said Bert Close, quizzing it. “I saw a grindstone in the garage. I’ll fit it up if you like.”

  They hid the parts of the circular saw in the woods, and after putting a sapling across the break in the bank to keep a smallholder’s cows from straying, returned to the field. The quarter load of poles was arranged as a wigwam beside the gate, where it was proposed to stack many loads.

  When they returned from work that afternoon, Poppy had the table in the loft set for supper. Afterwards they walked down to the sea, where the sands were set by thick posts of wood to prevent landings by air or water.

  The next morning, while they were on the way to the wood, it began to rain. The wheels of the lorry did not grip as Bert Close, coming down the hill, tried to back into the new clearing. He had to make about fifty gradual fore-and-back movements before the lorry-tail came square with the gap in the hedge. Then the wheels raced, skidded and slipped downhill on yellow clay.

  “Leave it to me, guv.”

  Getting out of the cab, Bert Close shoved the alleged kapitanleutnant’s cap on the back of his cropped head, and scowled at the wheels. Phillip awaited an unprintable criticism of his dilemma. It was still raining. And the day before, when a sudden shower had lashed down while they were felling, Bert’s face had looked black as the sky. Apparently getting wet was one of his dreads. Later he explained that he had caught neuralgia once or twice, badly, from getting wet. Phillip thought it might be need of dentistry, but said nothing. He didn’t mind getting wet. Nothing for him could ever be so bad as the frosty days and nights of that 1914 winter in the ‘Die-hard’ T-trench filled with water to the waist.

  “Get the tractor and chains, please.”

  While Phillip carried out the order, Bert Close got out the jack and raised the wheel nearest the bank. Then rocking the lorry, he threw it off the jack. He jacked the wheel again, and once more rocked it off. There was now a three-inch space between bank and right-end of tail-board. He fixed the chain round the lorry axle, thence to the tow-bar of the tractor. They strewed branches across the line the wheels would go; he got in the cab, started the engine; Phillip got on the tractor seat, and when the chain was taut he went forward in low gear and stopped when the lorry was precisely in position to receive the cut poles.

  “Good work,” he said.

  Bert Close made no reply. He looked grim. The rain was coming down steadily. Phillip knew that soon the sun would shine again, so was ready to work in the rain. Bert Close didn’t, and wasn’t. “Come on, guv, give us a hand.” The few poles cut were loaded on the lorry, he drove back in silence to the field. Inside the gate he abandoned the lorry, leaving Phillip to heave off poles by himself. Phillip didn’t mind in the least. It rained harder, he couldn’t get wetter. It was the suent Devon rain, warmed by the sun above clouds riding in golden glory from the Channel. Soon the sun would be shining.

  Root-growing in those parts would be no problem, he thought. What fun to farm in Devon, perhaps these very fields! He imagined the drought-dwarfed roots he had left behind on the biscuit-dry Lower Brock Hanger, the men perhaps at that moment striking at weeds with their hoes, almost like chipping rock; sweat pouring down Powerful Dick’s face. Dick the strong solid man, bearing the name of a family which had come over with William of Normandy. Dick the massive worker, running with sweat—for what ran off by day went back at night via The Hero pub. The old style of British working man, strong on the essence of barley.

  With those fancies he filled a pail with water, stripped off shoes and sodden clothes, and washed beside a larch tree no higher than himself. Suddenly the sun was shining, raindrops glinting red and blue on the green boughs set with tiny cones. He opened the door of the Gartenfeste, his wet footprints crossed the floor to the towel on the beam. Soon a stick fire in the hearth was blazing, while from the gramophone in the loft a voice was singing Summer Time from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess—soaring music, in harmony with silver-birch leaves glowing dreamily under a sky now creamy blue as a starling’s egg.

  They began at eight o’clock the next morning by clearing the stubs by the gateway. Then they laid the hatch-boards on a bed levelled in the leaf-mould, and upon these the saw-bench was screwed firm by carriage bolts. It was wonderful to work with someone properly experienced in his work. Phillip could scarcely believe that all was happening so easily. Bert Close worked with an economy of movement and strength, and for the first time in many years Phillip found he did not need to waste mental energy on slow resistent amateurism: a queer sensation, accompanied by a feeling almost of guilt that he was dodging a duty. For the first time in years he was fully himself; no longer a frustrated man.

  Axe-edges had been sharpened, metal of curved edges removed by grindstone, file and slip. They started after lunch seriously to throw the poles. It looked to be a formidable task. The shaded wood, the steep slope, the brooding heat, the tough boles growing out of the stubs in all directions, close together, in diameters from three to twelve inches. Phillip wore a shirt, shorts, and an old patched tweed jacket tied round his middle with string. After a dozen swings of the axe the string was untied, folded, put in pocket, jacket laid at foot of a standard oak. Another dozen strokes and shirt joined coat. It was sultry in the wood. Bert Close continued to work in thick dark trousers kept up by leather belt with great brass buckle—his father’s—blue shirt, peaked cap on back of head. Sweat glistened on his face flushed as though angry.

  Phillip’s axe-head weighed six and a half pounds. Bert Close’s was seven pounds. Soon crooked grey trunks were crashing downhill. Pausing in the muggy heat to look at the rest of the area they were to cut it seemed an awful lot. The sun was glowing behind thinning low clouds. It would be hotter later in the day. Bert’s face took on a grim look. They worked ten yards apart. Neither spoke. During pauses Phillip heard the strike of the farmer’s mattock in the field. He wanted to wander off, to look for a buzzard’s nest, to lie under a wild cherry-tree and gaze at the sky; but that would be fatal at the breaking-in period. He watched how Bert Close stripped branches from a trunk he had thrown by shortening his hold on the axe, and standing close to the trunk. Thus he controlled the arc of the short swing. Phillip copied him.

  By four o’clock they had cleared an irregular area, letting in the sun. The longer and heavier poles, some weighing two hundred-weight, were cut in half by Phillip with a Norwegian saw. Bert did not think much of that saw. He said the cross-cut would do it in half the time.

  “It took us half an hour on the farm to saw through an elm a foot thick with the old-fashioned cross-cut.”

  “It wasn’t sharp.”

  “I sharpened it.”

  “I’ll sharpen it. It wouldn’t cut butter. You oughter’v cut that elm through in three m
inutes. A lot of ignorant twots you’ve got on your farm, guv, if you don’t mind my saying so. They don’t know their job. It would drive me barmy, working with that lot of moaners. The circular saw wants sharpening, too. I brought a file. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “Do you mind if we saw what we’ve done to-day? Else we’ll be going back empty.”

  Without a word Bert Close picked up his cap, struck it on the back of his head, sought fag and match in pocket, lit, puffed, inhaled deeply; and turned away. Phillip was beginning to feel languid. Bert Close was feeling the heat too. All the same, why waste petrol returning with an empty lorry?

  “Poppy, any more char left in the can?”

  “It’s all gone.”

  Bert Close cursed.

  Phillip carried a heavy pole in silence, having first laid a plough-chain across the path. It was hard going with a twenty-foot 200-pound pole, swinging it slowly over and around the cut stubs. Bare shanks were liable to be scraped. He continued to carry pole after pole to the chain. Bert Close, after his fag was finished, got up and did the same. The afternoon sun was now ardent. Flies drinking their sweat. When the pile was a yard wide and high, Phillip fetched the tractor. He had to come up the steep loose slope of the path in reverse. Sometimes the wheels slipped. Bert Close fixed the towing chain to the top of the fore-chain holding the cord of wood, and Phillip started off downhill.

  Pull from the top caused the lower butts to dig into the soft ground, and plough a deep furrow of brown soil before the tractor stopped, its rear-wheels scrapping. Without a word Phillip got off, unfastened the pulling chain, and re-hooked the end of the lower section of the holding chain. Then he got back on the tractor and re-started. The upward pull lifted the butts. The bundle slew down the path behind the tractor, and so to the cleared space by the saw-bench. It was now nearly five o’clock, the hour agreed for work to stop.

  “Shall we saw this lot up now, or to-morrow, Bert?”

  “Saw it.”

  Phillip manoeuvred the tractor into position to drive the belt. It was awkward, root-stubs were in the way. Bert Close fixed the belt.