‘I think not. There is only one window, and that’s on the passage where I never go, upstairs.’
‘A light was showing from that window ten minutes ago.’
‘I don’t think it can have been.’
‘It was.’ And the stern, puppy lieutenant turned to his followers, who clustered there in the dark.
‘Yes, there was a light there ten minutes since,’ chimed the followers. ‘I don’t see how it’s possible,’ persisted Sharpe.
‘Oh, well—there is sufficient evidence that it was. What other persons have you in the house—’ and this officer and gentleman stepped into the room, followed by his three Cornish weeds, one of whom had fallen into a ditch in his assiduous serving of his country, and was a sorry sight. Of course Harriet saw chiefly him, and had to laugh.
‘There’s Mrs Waugh, the housekeeper—but she’s in bed.’
The party now stood and eyed one another—the lieutenant with his three sorry braves on one hand, Sharpe, Somers, and Harriet in an old dress of soft silk on the other.
‘Well, Mr Sharpe, the light was seen.’
‘I don’t see how it was possible. We’ve none of us been upstairs, and Mrs Waugh has been in bed for half an hour.’
‘Is there a curtain to the passage window?’ put in Somers quietly. He had helped Sharpe in setting up house.
‘I don’t believe there is,’ said Sharpe. ‘I forgot all about it, as it wasn’t in a room, and I never go to that side of the house. Even Mrs Waugh is supposed to go up the kitchen stairs, and so she doesn’t have to pass it.’
‘She must have gone across with a candle as she went to bed,’ said Somers.
But the lieutenant didn’t like being pushed into unimportance while these young men so quietly and naturally spoke together, excluding him as if he were an inferior: which they meant to do.
‘You have an uncurtained window overlooking the sea, Mr Sharpe?’ he said, in his military counter-jumper voice.
‘You’ll have to put a curtain to it tomorrow,’ said Somers to Sharpe.
‘What is your name?’ chimed the lieutenant.
‘Somers—I wasn’t speaking to you,’ said Richard coldly. And then to Sharpe, with a note of contempt: ‘That’s what it is. Mrs Waugh must have just have passed with a candle.’
There was a silence. The wonderful watchers did not contradict.
‘Yes, I suppose that’s it,’ said Sharpe, fretfully.
‘We’ll put a curtain up tomorrow,’ said Somers.
The lieutenant would have liked to search the house. He would have liked to destroy its privacy. He glanced down to the music room. But Harriet, so obviously a lady, even if a hateful one; and Somers with his pale look of derision; and Sharpe so impassive with his pipe; and the weedy watchers in the background, knowing just how it all was, and almost ready to take sides with the ‘gentleman’ against the officer: they were too much for the lieutenant.
‘Well, the light was there, Mr Sharpe. Distinctly visible from the sea,’ and he turned to his followers for confirmation.
‘Oh, yes, a light plain enough,’ said the one who had fallen into a ditch, and wanted a bit of his own back.
‘A candle!’ said Sharpe, with his queer, musical note of derision and fretfulness. ‘A candle just passing—’
‘You have an uncurtained window to the sea, and lights were showing. I shall have to report this to headquarters. Perhaps if you write and apologise to Major Caerlyon it may be passed over, if nothing of the like occurs again—’
So they departed, and the three went back to their room, fuming with rage and mockery. They mocked the appearance and voice of the lieutenant, the appearance of the weeds, and Harriet rejoiced over the one who had fallen into a ditch. This regardless of the fact that they knew now that some of the watchers were lying listening in the gorse bushes under the windows, and had been lying there all the evening.
‘Shall you write and apologise?’ said Somers.
‘Apologise! no!’ replied Sharpe, with peevish contempt.
Harriet and Somers went back home on the Monday. On the Tuesday appeared Sharpe, the police had been and left him a summons to appear at the market town, charged under the Defence of the Realm Act.
‘I suppose you’ll have to go,’ said Somers.
‘Oh, I shall go,’ said he.
They waited for the day. In the afternoon Sharpe came with a white face and tears of rage and mortification in his eyes. The magistrate had told him he ought to be serving his country, and not causing mischief and skulking in an out-of-the-way corner. And he fined him twenty pounds.
‘I shan’t pay it,’ cried Sharpe.
‘Your mother will,’ said Somers.
And so it was. What was the good of putting oneself in their power in any way, if it could be avoided?
So the lower fields were cleared of corn, and they started on the two big fields above on the moors. Sharpe cycled over to say a farmer had asked him to go and help at Westyr; and for once he had gone; but he felt spiteful to Somers for letting him in for this.
But Somers was very fond of the family at Buryan farm, and he loved working with John Thomas and the girls. John Thomas was a year or two older than Somers, and at this time his dearest friend. And so he loved working all day among the corn beyond the highroad, with the savage moors all round, and the hill with its pre-Christian granite rocks rising like a great dark pyramid on the left, the sea in front. Sometimes a great airship hung over the sea, watching for submarines. The work stopped in the field, and the men watched. Then it went on again, and the wagon rocked slowly down the wild, granite road, rocked like a ship past Harriet’s sunken cottage. But Somers stayed above all day, loading or picking, or resting, talking in the intervals with John Thomas, who loved a half-philosophical, mystical talking about the sun, and the moon, the mysterious powers of the moon at night, and the mysterious change in man with the change of season, and the mysterious effects of sex on a man. So they talked, lying in the bracken or on the heather as they waited for a wain. Or one of the girls came with dinner in a huge basket, and they ate all together, so happy with the moors and sky and touch of autumn. Somers loved these people. He loved the sensitiveness of their intelligence. They were not educated. But they had an endless curiosity about the world, and an endless interest in what was right.
‘Now do you think it’s right, Mr Somers?’ The times that Somers heard that question, from the girls, from Arthur, from John Thomas. They spoke in the quick Cornish way, with the West Cornish accent. Sometimes it was:
‘Now do’ee think it right?’
And with their black eyes they watched the ethical issue in his face. Queer it was. Right and wrong was not fixed for them as for the English. There was still a mystery for them in what was right and what was wrong. Only one thing was wrong—any sort of physical compulsion or hurt. That they were sure of. But as for the rest of behaviour—it was all a flux. They had none of the ethics of chivalry or of love.
Sometimes Harriet came also to tea: but not often. They loved her to come: and yet they were a little uneasy when she was there. Harriet was so definitely a lady. She liked them all. But it was a bit noli me tangere, with her. Somers was so very intimate with them. She couldn’t be. And the girls said: ‘Mrs Somers don’t mix in wi’ the likes o’ we like Mr Somers do.’ Yet they were always very pleased when Harriet came.
Poor Harriet spent many lonely days in the cottage. Richard was not interested in her now. He was only interested in John Thomas and the farm people, and he was growing more like a labourer every day. And the farm people didn’t mind how long she was left alone, at night too, in that lonely little cottage, and with all the tension of fear upon her. Because she felt that it was she whom these authorities, these English, hated, even more than Somers. Because she made them feel she despised them. And as they were really rather despicable, they hated her at sight, her beauty, her reckless pride, her touch of derision. But Richard—even he neglected her and hated her. She was
driven back on herself like a fury. And many a bitter fight they had, he and she.
The days grew shorter before the corn was all down from the moors. Sometimes Somers alone lay on the sheaves, waiting for the last wain to come to be loaded, while the others were down milking. And then the Cornish night would gradually come down upon the dark, shaggy moors, that were like the fur of some beast, and upon the pale-grey granite masses, so ancient and Druidical, suggesting blood-sacrifice. And as Somers sat there on the sheaves in the under-dark, seeing the light swim above the sea, he felt he was over the border, in another world. Over the border, in that twilight, awesome world of the previous Celts. The spirit of the ancient, pre-Christian world, which lingers still in the truly Celtic places, he could feel it invade him in the savage dusk, making him savage too, and at the same time, strangely sensitive and subtle, understanding the mystery of blood-sacrifice: to sacrifice one’s victim, and let the blood run to the fire, there beyond the gorse upon the old grey granite: and at the same time to understand most sensitively the dark flicker of animal life about him, even in a bat, even in the writhing of a maggot in a dead rabbit. Writhe then, Life, he seemed to say to the things—and he no longer saw its sickeningness.
The old Celtic countries have never had our Latin-Teutonic consciousness, never will have. They have never been Christian, in the blue-eyed, or even in the truly Roman, Latin sense of the word. But they have been overlaid by our consciousness and our civilisation, smouldering underneath in a slow, eternal fire, that you can never put out till it burns itself out.
And this autumn Richard Lovat seemed to drift back. He had a passion, a profound nostalgia for the place. He could feel himself metamorphosing. He no longer wanted to struggle consciously along, a thought adventurer. He preferred to drift into a sort of blood-darkness, to take up in his veins again the savage vibrations that still lingered round the secret rocks, the place of the pre-Christian human sacrifice. Human sacrifice! he could feel his dark, blood-consciousness tingle to it again, the desire of it, the mystery of it. Old presences, old awful presences round the black moor-edge, in the thick dust, as the sky of light was pushed pulsing upwards, away. Then an owl would fly and hoot, and Richard lay with his soul departed back, back into the blood-sacrificial pre-world, and the sun-mystery, and the moon-power, and the mistletoe on the tree, away from his own white world, his own white, conscious day. Away from the burden of intensive mental consciousness. Back, back into semi-dark, the half-conscious, the clair-obscur, where consciousness pulsed as a passional vibration, not as mind-knowledge.
Then would come John Thomas with the wain, and the two men would linger putting up the sheaves, linger, talking, till the dark, talking of the half-mystical things with which they both were filled. John Thomas, with his nervous ways and his quick brown eyes, was full of fear: fear of the unseen, fear of the unknown malevolencies, above all, fear of death. So they would talk of death, and the powers of death. And the farmer, in a non-mental way, understood, understood even more than Somers.
And then in the first dark they went down the hill with the wain, to part at the cottage door. And to Harriet, with her pure Teutonic consciousness, John Thomas’ greeting would sound like a jeer, as he called to her. And Somers seemed to come home like an enemy, like an enemy, with that look on his face, and that pregnant malevolency of Cornwall investing him. It was a bitter time, to Harriet. Yet glamorous too.
Autumn drew on, corn-harvest was over, it was October. John Thomas drove every Thursday over the moors to market—a two hours’ drive. Today Somers would go with him—and Ann the sister also, to do some shopping. It was a lovely October morning. They passed the stony little huddle of the church-town, and on up the hill, where the great granite boulders shoved out the land, and the barrenness was ancient and inviolable. They could see the gulls under the big cliffs beyond—and there was a buzzard circling over the marshy place below church-town. A Cornish, magic morning. John Thomas and Somers were walking up the hill, leaving the reins to Ann, seated high in the trap.
‘One day, when the war ends, before long,’ said Somers as they climbed behind the trap in the sun, past the still-flickering gorse bushes, ‘we will go far across the sea—to Mexico, to Australia—and try living there. You must come too, and we will have a farm.’
‘Me!’ said John Thomas. ‘Why however should I come?’
‘Why not?’
But the Cornishman smiled with that peculiar sceptical smile.
They reached town at length, over the moors and down the long hill. John Thomas was always late. Somers went about doing his shopping—and then met Ann at an eating house. John Thomas was to have been there too. But he failed them. Somers walked about the Cornish seaport—he knew it now—and by sight he too was known, and execrated. Yet the tradespeople were always so pleasant and courteous to him. And it was such a sunny day.
The town was buzzing with a story. Two German submarine officers had come into the town, dressed in clothes they had taken from an English ship they had sunk. They had stayed a night at the Mounts Bay Hotel. And two days later they had told the story to some fisherman whose fishing boat they stopped. They had shown the incredulous fisherman the hotel bill. Then they had sunk the fishing boat, sending the three fishermen ashore in the rowboat.
John Thomas, the chatterbox, should have been at the stables at five. He was an endless gossip, never by any chance punctual. Somers and Ann waited till six—all the farmers drove home, theirs was the last trap.
‘Buryan’s trap—always the last,’ said the ostler.
It became dark—the shops were all closing—it was night. And now the town, so busy at noon and all the afternoon, seemed cold, stony, deserted, with the wind blowing down its steep street. Nearly seven, and still no John Thomas. Ann was furious, but she knew him. Somers was more quiet: but he knew that this was a sort of deliberate insult on John Thomas’ part, and that he must never trust him again.
It was well after seven when the fellow came—smiling with subtle malevolence and excusing himself so easily.
‘I shall never come with you again,’ said Somers, quietly.
‘I should think not, Mr Somers,’ cried Ann.
It was a two hours’ drive home—a long climb to the dark stretch of the moors—then across the moors in the cold of the night, to the steep, cliff-like descent on the north, where church-town lay, and the sea beyond. As they drew near to the north descent, the home face, and the darkness was below them, Somers suddenly said:
‘I don’t think I shall ever drive this way again.’
‘Don’t you? Why, what makes you say that?’ cried the facile John Thomas.
Past nine o’clock as they came down the rocky road and saw the yellow curtain of the cottage glowing. Poor Harriet. Somers was stiff with cold as he rose to jump down.
‘I’ll come down for my parcels later,’ he said. Easier to take them out at the farm, and he must fetch the milk.
Harriet opened the door.
‘At last you’ve come,’ she said. ‘Something has happened, Lovat!’ One of John Thomas’ sisters came out too—she had come up with Mrs Somers out of sympathy.
‘What?’ he said. And up came all the fear.
It was evident Harriet had had a bad shock. She had walked in the afternoon across to Sharpe’s place, three miles away: and had got back just at nightfall, expecting Somers home by seven. She had left the doors unlocked, as they usually did. The moment she came in, in the dusk, she knew something had happened. She made a light, and looked round. Things were disturbed. She looked in her little treasure boxes—everything there, but moved. She looked in the drawers—everything turned upside down. The whole house ransacked, searched.
A terrible fear came over her. She knew she was antagonistic to the government people: in her soul she hated the fixed society with its barrenness and its barren laws. She had always been afraid—always shrunk from the sight of a policeman, as if she were guilty of heaven knows what. And now the horror had happened: a
ll the black animosity of authority was encompassing her. The unknown of it: and the horror.
She fled down to the farm. Yes, three men had come, asking for Mr and Mrs Somers. They had told the one who came to the farm that Mr Somers had driven to town, and Mrs Somers they had seen going across the fields to church-town. Then the men had gone up to the cottage again, and gone inside.
‘And they’ve searched everything—everything,’ said Harriet, shocked right through with awful fear.
‘Well, there was nothing to find. They must have been disappointed,’ said Richard.
But it was a shock to him also: great consternation at the farm.
‘It must have been something connected with Sharpe—it must have been that,’ said Somers, trying to reassure himself.
‘Thank goodness the house was so clean and tidy,’ said Harriet. But it was a last blow to her.
What had they taken? They had not touched Somers’ papers. But they had been through his pockets—they had taken the few loose letters from the pocket of his day-jacket—they had taken a book—and a sort of notebook with scraps of notes for essays in it—and his address book—yes, a few things like that.
‘But it’ll be nothing. It’ll be something to do with Sharpe’s bother.’
But he felt sick and sullen, and wouldn’t get up early in the morning. Harriet was more prepared. She was down, dressed and tidy, making the breakfast. It was eight o’clock in the morning. Suddenly Somers heard her call:
‘Lovat, they’re here. Get up.’
He heard the dread in her voice, and sprang into his clothes and came downstairs: a young officer, the burly police sergeant, and two other loutish looking men. Somers came down without a collar.
‘I have here a warrant to search your house,’ said the young officer.
‘But you searched it yesterday, didn’t you,’ cried Harriet.
The young officer looked at her coldly, without replying. He read the search warrant, and the two lout-detectives, in civilian clothes, began to nose round.
Kangaroo Page 31
