Lucifer Before Sunrise

by Henry Williamson

  “No.”

  “Then you make no claim?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “For what amount?”

  “I hardly know.”

  “I’ve looked round the roads. The material, I cannot call it metalling, appears to be unsuitable for traffic, your own included.”

  “It was the best we could get in nineteen thirty-seven, when we made up the roads, which are now ruined.”

  ‘Big Chief’ looked round to assure himself that they were alone, then continued in hectoring voice, “You talk of ruined roads, but let me tell you this! If Hitler’s tanks came, wouldn’t they do a great deal more damage, and what sort of claim would he consider from you? And after all, these fellows are defending your life for you! And here’s another point. Under Defence Regulation Fifty-Two, the Competent Military Authority—any troops, that is—can enter any land or building at any time, and you have no power to stop them. Therefore your point about the absence of a requisition order, made in your letter to my office, does not arise. Have you anything to say? You haven’t. Very well. Now we’ll look round together,” he went on, a trace of friendliness in his voice. “Of course it looks worse than it really is. When the dry weather comes, you’ll hardly notice the mud. It will turn to dust, and blow away! However, we will certainly allow you something for the pot-holes.”

  He took up gloves, cane, hat; and feeling the unreality of his own movements Phillip followed him out.

  A soldier-servant-chauffeur was waiting by an old saloon car. The car had been carefully cleaned. Phillip got in by invitation after ‘Big Chief’ had got in himself. They were driven to the lower road. The car swayed slowly, splashing through the chain of lagoons. Phillip realized that its springs were set, i.e. tired and flat, and the body took the bumps almost direct through the shackle-bolts. When they came to the area of dark mud lying several inches above the disrupted surface, where the turf of the verges had been churned with water and gravel, the driver changed to bottom gear. Thereafter the gradient rose and there was no water.

  The car stopped by the Corn Barn. They got out, walked up the gulley, and down again.

  “No, it isn’t so bad as it appears,” ‘Big Chief’ remarked casually. “Now we’ll take these roads in sections. Up the hill here, what do you consider a fair price for removing the mud? There are about two hundred and fifty yards. A day’s work for a man? Eight bob?”

  “Two days, at least. But we haven’t got the labour. We are behind with the sugar beet. And our lorry can’t get up now mud overlays the metalling.”

  “Everywhere is the problem of labour, my dear sir, thanks to those swine in Hunland.”

  “Can’t you get the Garrison Engineers to make up these roads?”

  He shook his red face, twice. “Very well, we’ll say two days labour. Now how many yards for dressing the surface of this stretch. We’ll call it No. I stretch. Two yards?”

  A cubic yard of gravel weighed about one and a half tons. Phillip tried to calculate. 250 yards long, multiplied by 3 yards, made 750 square yards. Gravel 2 inches thick was one eighteenth of a yard deep. Divide 750 by 18. He tried to work this out but his brain went blank. “It will require forty cubic yards at least to make it as it was before.”

  At this the Claims Officer turned away and cut the air with his short cane; tapped a long and polished brown riding-boot; turned round again, suddenly, to project his entire personality upon Phillip in a direct stare.

  “Now let me tell you this! The payment is ex gratia, you can accept it or leave it. I happen to be a chartered surveyor, and I say that five yards will restore this road to its former condition. Five yards, say at seven and sixpence a yard. Right?” He made a note of it. “Now what about these ruts on the grass? One day’s digging by one man should rectify them. Right?”

  “Two days.”

  ‘Big Chief’ raised the skin of where eyebrows had once been.

  “I wondered if I can plough the ruts level,” said Phillip. “And cultivate the churned waste. The grass anyway was old and tired. It was congested.”

  “Very well, two days.”

  For some reason, although Phillip felt that they had nothing in common, he was beginning to feel more at home with ‘Big Chief’.

  “Next item.”

  “Broken wire fence under that wood.”

  ‘Big Chief’ didn’t appear to walk. He stalked. Pink flesh bulged out of his collar.

  “H’m, pretty rotten wire. Rusted away. How do I know it wasn’t broken before they came?”

  “I claim replacement value?”

  “Very well. Replacement value. I have a roll of rusty wire, and it shall be delivered to you. Next please.”

  “Who’s going to erect it?”

  “You are. Next.”

  “The trees in the wood are torn and hacked about, some cut down.”

  “Nothing. Next.”

  “My sand pit is filled in, and is but a trash heap. Valuable, perhaps, as an item of agenda for the Society of Archaeologists in five centuries’ time, with its broken crockery and rusty corkscrew pickets, but for me, it spoils the building sand. It was a good pit and was in order before they camped here.”

  ‘Big Chief’ cocked an eye, and two hairs of a once-eyebrow. “How often do you take sand?”

  “Whenever we need it.”

  “H’m. Half-a-crown to dig it out. Next.” It had taken Steve and Phillip an entire day to clear it when they had been rebuilding the cottages.

  “This broken gatepost.”

  “Rotten at the base. Look—dry-rot! Nothing. Next.”

  “It was struck by a fifteen-ton lorry.”

  “It’s had its day. Quite rotten. Next.”

  “It should be replaced. My gate was all right before the troops came.”

  “Now we’ll take this road up here.”

  “No, that’s to be done by another unit, on this requisitioned site.”

  They went down-hill. “Now for these pot-holes. No. 2 stretch. A dozen yards should fill them. Three days to clear the mud. That’s what I’ll allow you. It’s quite fair.” He made a note.

  “It won’t restore the road as it was.”

  “What farm road ever is anything but pot-holes and muck?”

  “I have two photographs of this road—Before and After. I’ll show you when we get back to the cottage. We spent a hundred pounds making this lower road, and the top road.”

  “H’m. Twelve yards, at seven and sixpence a yard. Thirty bob for scraping mud. It’s quite fair. Next.”

  “It won’t be enough. I know what I’m talking about. I made the roads. I did the digging and spreading, and the paying!”

  “And I know what I’m talking about, my dear sir! I’ve made hundreds of roads! And I do the surveying and the costing. Next.”

  They walked to the granary. The missing door-space was pointed out.

  “How do I know there was a door there?”

  “I really cannot add to what I have said.”

  The landscape looked colourless, drab, untidy, meagre, decadent. The river swilled past with its filth from sewer and drain.

  “I have a witness.”

  “H’m. Well, say five bob?”

  “Very well.” The door had been a ledge door, six feet high, three wide, of inch-thick planking, with large hand-made wooden lock.

  “Next?”

  “My ewe-flock—compelled to lie in the swampy meadows—lame, some of them—most of them have died——”

  “Now, my dear sir, it happens that I’ve heard of your so-called ewe-flock from a local resident. I understand that your ewes were so neglected by you that last summer they were nearly eaten alive by maggots. If you persist in claiming for your neglected sheep, you might find yourself in serious trouble with the War Agricultural Executive Committee! And no doubt you know that poor farmers can be dispossessed of their land without notice.”

  A picture of Billy’s cockerel, Hawkeye, fighting the flock of turkeys two winters before, came int
o Phillip’s mind. This fellow had the bogus dignity of a stag turkey as it peered forward, cautiously, quietly, to give a sudden peck at a much smaller farmyard cockerel. Hawkeye, however, had been no ordinary cockerel. Daily he fought sixty gobblers, attacking against great odds as he ran forward, only to retreat before the invading semicircle of pale heads stalking forward, beaks ready to strike, little minds knowing no mercy, red jowls turning blue with indignation. It was always a losing fight for Hawkeye, mongrel smoke-grey and white cockerel, but always Hawkeye fought.

  The ‘Big Chief’, pendulous cheeks seeming to take on bluish tinge in the cold damp air by the river, said, “I don’t want to see the road up there. How long is it?”

  “Two-fifty yards.”

  “Say the same as No. i stretch. Anything more?”

  “Ruts over the clover layer.”

  “Roll ’em out. Won’t hurt your layer. Next.”

  “Those ewes which died in the swamps.”

  “I’ve already dealt with that. Next.”

  Phillip heard his thin voice saying, “The Home Meadow is badly poached.”

  “Then tell the police.”

  “I don’t mean by poachers. By cattle left on it, owing to troops on the hill grass. We rolled it last spring, and harrowed it. Our work is spoiled.”

  “It won’t hurt it to let the nitrogen in. Then roll it again. No claim for that. Nothing more? Right. We’ll go back to your cottage.”

  They walked to the car. There was a little mud on the heels of the ‘Big Chief’s’ field-boots. He put one foot on the fender of the car and beckoned the driver. The driver hurried up with a cloth and wiped off the heel. Then with the same leisurely indifference the ‘Big Chief’ removed the foot and put up the other foot. That too was cleaned. Then giving neither glance nor word to the driver he lifted off his boot and stood upright to adjust his Sam Browne belt.

  The lofty manner was slightly relaxed over a glass of beer in the parlour, while he made out the claim form. Phillip signed it.

  “When do you think the war will be over?”

  The ‘Big Chief’ looked at Phillip deliberately with his calculating pale eyes and said distinctly, “When we’ve ground those pigs into the mud”; and taking up gloves, cap, and stick, he called out “Good day!” and returned along the way as he had come.

  *

  Perhaps as one concerned with the saving of public money he did his job well, perhaps too well; for Phillip heard later that there were many complaints of how he dealt with farmers’ claims; and later still, that he had been promoted, and sent to North Africa. From the same source—the junior officer with the .410 gun—he heard that the ‘Big Chief’s’ job before the war had been the selling of small semi-detached villas of a housing estate on the hire purchase system with weekly payments extending over a quarter of a century.

  *

  In the last mornings of the old year the northern slopes of the Home Hills lay white with hoar frost, seen through the wide window as Phillip lay there impotently with a throat that seemed to be torn, while his body appeared to dilate about the room whenever he stood up. He did not want the doctor again, he told Lucy. As before, he could not rest, so got out of bed and went down to the farm. It seemed that his brain was pitted and churned, its old existence drowned like the cold and watery surface of the long road from Corn Barn to entrance gate. There his own horror was visible before him. But things had to be faced, it was no good running away from one’s own actions. Why had he been so weak before the Claims Officer? Feeble as one of the ewes which had lain down in the wet paddock and died? Should he not have seen, in a sensible manner, that the troops had gone to their allocated camping ground, the Sheep Walk at the edge of the marshes? He had deserved all he got. Well, he would at least face the ruin and not run away. With such clenched thoughts he passed the front of the Corn Barn, and coming round to the hovel, picking his way through ridges and valleys of mud, saw Boy Billy in the act of prising off brown wads of soil from the spud wheels of the tractor, with the special trowel provided for cleaning the wheels upon the grass of the Home Hills.

  It was too much. Crying out in a shredded voice, he ran wildly at his son, who dropped the trowel and ran away, shouting, “I’ll leave this bloody muckup, and join the Royal Air Force!”

  They ran under the quarry, and as he dodged upon the slippery loam at the base of the chalk face Phillip lost his foothold and fell. Instantly Billy checked and ran back to his father, to help him up and ask if he were hurt. Then he said, holding out his hand, “Let’s make it up, shall we, Dad?”

  At once Phillip’s rage was gone: his despair dissolved by this instinctive generosity. Billy was the flesh of his mother, that bright clear spirit he had loved in those faraway days of hope and confidence in living. They clasped hands; Phillip pressed Boy Billy’s head to his heart, kissed his hair; and without further words turned about and went back the way he had come, determined to make a fresh start.

  Chapter 12

  THE COCKERELS

  Bert Close, the lorry-driver friend, remained in his mind as one who, in a deteriorating world, could be relied upon. Though the sense of companionship with him was only partial, yet Phillip respected him because he put his best into the work he did. And so, just before Christmas he went to Crabbe, hoping to see him: he wanted Bert Close to collect six tons of pulp from the sugar-beet factory at Fenton. This amount was due from the returns of the beet already sent to the factory.

  There was more beet to be sent to Fenton; a farmer had to wait to send his loads in rotation. Pulp was the dried residue of the long, parsnip-type root of the sugar-beet. It was said to have the feeding value of oats. The stock needed this food badly. Farmers were allowed one and a half hundredweight of dried pulp for every ton of washed beet received at the factory from their farms. The freight charge by rail was eight shillings a ton to the nearest station, and then the sacks had to be loaded on lorries and brought to the farm: whereas the rate for delivery direct by lorry from factory to farm was six shillings. So he sought out Bert Close.

  When he called at his home he was told by his children he’d find him in The Schooner. The pub was crowded. Moving through smoke amidst lorry-drivers and others who had recently got ‘in the money’ on airfield construction—the lads with the flashy, pointed shoes and blue serge suits—he saw Mrs. Close sitting beside another woman on a seat by the wall. It seemed discourteous to move away to another part of the room after he had enquired of the whereabouts of Bert, so he asked if he might sit by them. Would they care for a drink? Both said they didn’t mind, and would have port and lemon. So he moved through the throng to the bar, to return with a pint of beer and two glasses.

  Mrs. Close’s companion had little to say, and he found very soon that what he said was of slight interest for them, so he made an excuse to leave and find Bert Close.

  At this time of the war, shortages were becoming severe, and Bert was a busy man. He waited by the door for ten minutes or so; and when he didn’t come he went back to where Mrs. Close was sitting with her friend, and bade the two goodnight, adding that he would send Bert a post-card.

  Mrs. Close, he felt, did not like him. Poppy was still working on the farm, and had told him that, although she had been ‘going with’ Bert for some time before he had met Phillip, Bert’s wife blamed him for the association. Poppy bicycled every morning past their house on her way to work, and sometimes Mrs. Close’s elder daughter ran out to spit in front of her wheel.

  Unknown to Phillip at the time, while he had been sitting on the wooden bench between the two women, a sailor was playing darts with some civilians who had come from Yarmouth to work at the local branch of an agricultural co-operative company. The Yarmouth warehouses had recently been bombed and burnt out and the workers transferred to Crabbe.

  Four or five of them were waiting outside in the darkness when Phillip went out of the inn. They enclosed the exit. He waited for them to move, and when they didn’t, asked to be allowed to pass. They pressed
closer around him. One said in a voice of assumed ferocity that all bastard ‘Fiff Columists’ should have their guts kicked out. Again he asked if they would let him pass, whereupon someone called him a sparrow-kneed bastard who ought to be chucked into the sea. It was a situation which might be solved by explanation, he thought, having seen that one of the men wore on his waistcoat the watered rainbow riband of the 1914 Star. He told him that he had served with the B.E.F. in 1914 at Ypres, up the Menin Road in Sanctuary Wood, with the Bill Browns, Goalies, and the Jocks of the 1st Infantry Brigade.

  The reply of the man addressed was to lead with his left hand at Phillip’s stomach. Phillip was ready for this, and hardened his muscles while slipping the jab on the fore-arm. The conventional hook to the jaw with his attacker’s right followed. Phillip moved his head sideways, the fist struck the brick wall. The man yelled to his mates to ‘put the boot in’. Soon Phillip was on the ground, clinging to one attacker, trying to hold him on top to protect himself from their blows. His head was exposed, and when they started kicking, everything went black after crushing sparks.

  He recovered to find himself alone below the wall, while beside his left eye a black-and-white snake seemed to be flickering, like the one he had seen on the night of Hallowe’en 1914, on the Messines ridge, after being partly buried by a Jack Johnson shell and helped out of the crater, shaking with terror, by a Carabineer.

  Back in the farmhouse, he found electric light painful, and went to bed. Lucy took charge, despite his protests that he didn’t want to see a doctor. The doctor pronounced ‘extensive haemorrhages’ in both eyes, and treated them with silver nitrate drops against infection.

  A little discomfort still remained when Bert Close came over an evening or two later. He said that the sailor playing darts in the pub had told the Yarmouth men that he was a spy, who should have been bumped off long ago, if the police hadn’t been frightened that, when Hitler invaded, he would have had them all shot. The sailor, he said, was sleeping with the woman who had been sitting next to his wife. She was married to the sailor’s brother serving with the 8th Army in North Africa.