The Power of the Dead

by Henry Williamson

  “Oh, I don’t suppose they took much notice of her, Phillip,” said Uncle John, adding, “After all, they know you—and they don’t know her. You could of course take some action, but perhaps it would be best to ignore it, if only for Mrs. Chychester’s sake.”

  “Yes, I’d thought so myself.”

  While he was seeing Uncle John, Miss Priddle was packing her bag.

  “I feel I behaved badly,” he said to Lucy, after she had gone. “You are right, I put her back up by putting that rubbish in the dust-bin. And I should have explained, at the start, about the way the Valor vaporisers hot up. But I wonder where the money went to? It couldn’t have been ‘Riggy’, because she wasn’t here.”

  “Oh, Miss Priddle will probably find that she left her money at home in its usual hiding place, a spare tea-pot or something like that. Anyway, Grannie likes you very much, and so does Uncle John. So don’t worry any more.”

  *

  When he had gone Lucy lay still, worrying about what would happen to him and the two little ones if she, like her mother, had tuberculosis. It all came back with startling clearness: Mother had died just before she arrived back from school for the summer holidays. The telegram had come on the last day of term, she had been called to Sister Agnes’ room and told the news, with Sister Agnes’ hand on her shoulder. There was no train home that night, it was war-time economy. She saw again the figures of Pa and Tim, then fifteen, looking lost as they stood together by the chalet on the lawn, where Mother lay dead. She saw their eyes, Pa’s looking faraway in his gaunt face, Tim’s swelled with weeping. Miss Priddle was crying, too. Tim had a Bible in his hand. Poor Tim, his hand was rather grubby. Later Pa told her that Mother had, just before she died, said to Miss Priddle, ‘Will you bring the lamp, please, it is getting so dark.’ Miss Priddle had at once fetched Pa from his rockery, where he was working in bright sunshine. Five minutes after asking for the lamp Mother had sighed as she held Pa’s hand, and was gone.

  She remembered the funeral, it was a rainy day, the last day of July, she had not been able to sleep the night before, and in the first grey light she had heard the dull booming of the guns in Flanders. It was said that the sound came through the chalk of the downs. She remembered that there was little in the house to eat, but that did not matter. It was the helpless look on Pa’s and Tim’s faces which had made her cry for the first time in her life. She could see Pa and Tim now, standing together, waiting for her to come home.

  Earlier scenes of childhood arose, with never a cross word in her home, except from her governess, but that had not affected her, for she had Tim to think about. He and she had been inseparable during the holidays; while Ernest and Fiennes had always gone about together.

  *

  Lucy had cried only twice in her life. The second time was when she had gone to have lunch with Phillip in the postman’s cottage, where he had his meals. They had just become engaged. She had gone into the cottage, and passed Mrs. Mules and Zillah the daughter without saying good-morning: she thought that one did not say good-morning to servants in a strange house. Afterwards Phillip had explained that the Mules were put out by it; Lucy thought she had let him down, she had turned away her head and wept.

  They were married the following year, and very soon she realised that her former dream of Phillip and herself being like Mother and Pa was not to be. It was her fault, because she was not clever and quick like Barley, his first wife who had died when Billy was born.

  *

  Her baby cried, it was in torment. Early in the morning she had an idea, but she kept it to herself until Phillip came up with her morning cup of tea.

  “Do you think you could spare the time to go to see Mrs. Smith? She’s good with babies. She may know of something.”

  Within a quarter of an hour he was knocking at the door of Ruddle Stones.

  “Babies vary, you know. What one thrives on, another can’t take. Has Lucy tried Flowerdew and Heath’s? It might suit Peter. Now you must have some breakfast.”

  “Well, thank you very much, but I think I ought to get the baby’s food.”

  He went into Colham, and returned with a tin to Lucy. That afternoon the baby slept after its bottle, and again at night.

  “I’ll never criticise Mrs. Smith or ‘Mister’ again. Everything fits into the human scene, if only one has the wit, and the patience, to discover it. I’ll write her a letter of thanks immediately.”

  Mrs. Rigg came back again, the kitchen was a happy place once more. Lucy’s fever abated. Primroses were fading, bluebells rising in the hanger. Phillip continued to sit at his desk during most of the day, and sometimes at night. He was near the climax: Lutra was killed by hounds; it was free. Now Barley could arise from the grave.

  He wept, thinking, I am an icicle, whose thawing is its dying.

  *

  The air was filled with birdsong, cloud-shadows moved over the downs. Lucy’s first visit, after she was out and about, was to Uncle John. As she walked to the house she thought, What a friendly place it is. It stood in two acres of ground on the lower slope of Fawley down, just the right size, she thought, for the family of seven children who had lived there when Uncle John was a boy. She would like to have seven children, too.

  The foundations of Fawley House were laid in the 14th century, when it was known as ‘the barton’. The coigns of the original fortified square building were of limestone, the walls of dressed flint; the original barton was now all but invisible, the walls having been cut into to provide windows, passages for additional rooms and courtyard buildings—larger stables, laundry, brew-house, and various storehouses. What remained of the flint walls had been plastered over in the 18th century, patched and repatched during the 19th century, until in the 1870s the outside walls had been uncovered and re-stucco’d with a mixture of cement, sand, and blue lias lime. Phillip’s grandfather had terraced the front and planted two cedar trees, one on each lawn, and wistaria in the wall-beds; now, half a century later, the dozen windows in the paint-flaked south front were overhung by the shrub, the roots of which twisted out of the foundations of the walls. The box hedges bordering the flower-beds were overgrown, with brambles winding among them. Lucy loved the garden’s half-wild appearance, the very place for whitethroats, finches, and nightingales among the nettle-beds. It was a lovely house, not too large, and it had a colony of martins under the wide eaves. Jackdaws, too, built in many of the chimneys of the shut-up rooms. Uncle John had told her that there were ten bedrooms, not including the servants’ rooms in the attic, and four rooms downstairs, two of them shut up; the billiard room, and Uncle John’s smoking-room or study, where his meals were brought to him on a trolley by his house-keeper, who lived in two dark little rooms beside the servants’ hall.

  The affection which Lucy had for Uncle John was reciprocated. He thought her to be a beautiful young woman, in nature like his dead wife Jenny. How fortunate was Phillip to have found her, so soon after the death of Barley. How strangely family history was repeated; for Phillip, like himself, had lost his first wife when his son was born. In Time existed the great irony; if only one could recover Time, how differently one would behave. If only he had been more understanding of Willie’s nature and ideas. Now his hopes were for Phillip and Lucy, and their growing little family.

  While awaiting tea she spoke about the christening of the baby.

  “Billy hasn’t been christened yet, so Phillip and I thought of having a joint baptism with Peter when Uncle Hilary comes down for the mayfly fishing.”

  “A most sensible arrangement, my dear. Have you chosen the godparents?”

  “Phillip wants to ask your advice, Uncle John. He wondered if you would be Billy’s godfather, and do you think we might ask Uncle Hilary for Peter?”

  “I’m greatly honoured to be asked. And Hilary will be, too. A little note to him from Phillip would be much appreciated, I’m sure.”

  He went on another line of thought. “Phillip with his beard has a look of my brother Dick, bu
t his beard is a shade darker than Dick’s at his age, I fancy. How does Phillip get on with his father nowadays?”

  “Oh, very well, Uncle John.”

  “I’m so pleased to hear it. Dick hasn’t been down this way for years, and I’ve been wondering if Phillip would care for me to invite his parents down for the christening?”

  “I think it’s a splendid idea.”

  “Perhaps, in a week or two’s time, when you are feeling stronger, you would advise me about redecorating a couple of bedrooms? I’m proposing to have the eastern roof repaired shortly, the rain has made quite a patch down one wall. Now tell me, how does Phillip like the idea of farming?”

  “Oh, he’s looking forward to sowing the arable, Uncle John. I think the idea is to get some fields ready for grassing down, for an eventual milking herd.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t heard about that. Has Hilary written to him?”

  “Well, not exactly, Uncle John——” Bother, her face was getting hot. “I don’t really know much about the plans——” She must say something. “I think he’s hoping that, if his book succeeds, he’ll be able to pay for things himself. Mr. Norse, his literary agent, did say that one day they would bring in—I think it was ten thousand a year.” She blushed again, and half-laughed as she burst out. “He’s just finished a perfectly lovely book about his otter.”

  The tea tray rattled in, a mahogany stand on cast-iron wheels upon the treads of which the rubber was cracked and hard.

  “Well, Lucy,” he said, when they were alone again, “to return for a moment to the farm projects. Hilary, Phillip, and the agent will be having a conference before very long, no doubt, to get something settled so that Phillip will not need to act on his own. Now, before I forget, has Phillip thought of adding the family name of ‘Beare’ when Billy is christened? Or was he registered as ‘William Beare’ at Queensbridge, when he was born, d’you know?”

  “I think he was just called William, Uncle John.”

  “Well, it will be too late to add another name now to the Register of Births, but it can still be done by deed poll; and of course there will be the parish record at the christening. Put the suggestion to him, will you? ‘Beare’, as you probably know, means ‘wood’. The four hundred acres of the Forest”—he pointed to the 25-inch Ordnance map framed on the wall—“were thrown during the war, to help provide the baulks for the timber tracks across the swamps below Passchendaele.”

  “Yes, Phillip did tell me.”

  “Hilary intends to replant a hundred acres, as a beginning. The idea, I understand, is to grow alternate belts of conifer and hardwood.”

  “How lovely to see the trees back again.”

  “Yes, it will be like old times,” he replied with equal happiness.

  Lucy was optimistic about most things. As she poured tea she felt happy that at last she was able to help, after the long enforced idleness in bed with a temperature that had moved up and down for no reason, irrespective of the daily douches given by the parish nurse. Now, for three whole days, ever since getting up, her temperature had been below normal; her precious, her darling Peter was doing splendidly, thanks to Mrs. Smith and ‘Mister’ at home.

  Lucy still thought of her old associations as home; while Phillip, when he did dare to think, felt himself to be homeless.

  *

  One Saturday morning Lucy said to him, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have our very own Jersey cow for Billy and Peter?”

  Phillip had returned from his usual 7 a.m. visit to the premises. “Why not? Ned has asked me to buy two bull calves for one of the old screws used for rearing.”

  It was a sunny day. The men were making seed-beds on some of the arable deep-ploughed by the Iron Horses; then ‘artifissals’ were to be broadcast on the rolled work before drilling a mixture of tares, rape, cow grass, lucerne, and wild white clover. If a milking herd wasn’t decided on by the time the ‘seeds’ came to flower, ewes could be folded there in the late summer, and on the lucerne and alsike in the following winter, and so restore the fertility by means of these walking dung-carts.

  The nitrogen left by the snow, Mr. Hibbs had said, might help the take of the seeds to be broadcast by the fiddle. Phillip felt optimistic about the milk to flow from his new ‘seeds’, and wondered what a Jersey cow would cost, as a present for Lucy after producing Peter. Nuncle could hardly object to Lucy having her own private cow, paid for by himself.

  “And I’m going to treat myself to a rick-cloth, for when my new fodder crops are ready to cut. I’ll pay rent for the land—it’s worth only half-a-crown an acre—if Nuncle objects. Then I’ll be buying my own experience, and not living out of his pocket.”

  Having gulped a cup of tea, he set off on the Norton, keen to buy a Jersey cow as a present for Lucy. He drove fast, often lifting the empty sidecar 45° round right-hand bends for the thrill of it, and reached Colham in six minutes. In the Corn Hall he ordered a rick-cloth of a grade under the finest quality from a man with a smiling red face who greeted him like an old friend. He had never seen the fellow before, but was grateful for the greeting. It was a heavy-weight jute cloth impregnated with wax waterproofing. It was to be made in two sections, the sections to be laced together on top of the stack. A single cloth fourteen yards long and ten wide would be, he thought, too heavy for one man to carry on his back up the ladder, especially as the ricks of new fodder would probably be fairly tall.

  A fanciful scene arose in mind as he left the Corn Hall.

  Nuncle (wonderingly): ‘By Jove, Phillip, you’ve got a wonderful shear off Lobbett’s. How ever did you manage it. Hibbs tells me he’s seen nothing like it in all his experience!’

  Self (modestly): ‘Oh, I think the snow helped. It was Hibbs’ idea, really.’

  Nuncle: ‘But it was your idea to hire Johnson’s Iron Horses, don’t forget! Aunt Viccy will be surprised when I tell her.’

  Self (imitating Ernest): ‘Ah.’

  With determination he went on to the Cattle Market, a place which he disliked, even dreaded. It was on the side of a hill, a congestion of iron railings set in concrete, a chaos of parked cattle-floats, driven sheep and bullocks, shouting shag-haired drovers with sticks thwacking red, white, and black four-legged bodies with dirty, slopping hindquarters and heads set with horns at various angles above distraught eyes. The day was hot. Men with hard faces were pushing and gathering everywhere about the various auction rings. Walking with resolution, he went to one of the sheds—a circular building with corrugated iron roof painted green, with seats around the ring, heavy iron tubular gates for entry and exit of the cattle, and the auctioneer’s raised platform above. A sale of cows was in progress.

  Most of the cows sent to market had been sent because of some defect, he knew. Caveat emptor—let the buyer beware. He moved into the acre of massed animal fears, human staring eyes and ruddy faces, past rows of cows standing mournfully tethered, sometimes belving for lost calves. Their bags were swelled; some were spirting with milk that the unhappy animals had let down in anguish for calves tied by their sides, cord binding the small muzzles lest they suck, and so diminish the bag. Many of the calves’ backs were curved with exhaustion, their bellies hollow. Milkmen in search of a bargain wanted a big bag, to give the largest yield of milk. We’re not in business for our health … but to make money—that was real farming. So the vendors usually left their cows, recently calved, unmilked and unsucked since the previous night, to get a swelling bag; and in the market place, awaiting sale—calves bought for a few shillings, perhaps for the glue factory—they shivered by the flanks of their dams, jaws tied, bellies pinched, backbones curved with cold and hunger, tails between infirm hindlegs. Some had ceased to cry for milk; they lay collapsed upon the concreted ground dirty with urine, loose straws, and squittered dung. On the rostrums above the cattle rings auctioneers stood beside their clerks, taking bids rapidly, their eyes roving imperceptibly, raising the bids at nods from secretive emptors—secretive lest the owner of the animal run the
buyer, by adding bids, also covertly. ‘You never know who’s out to do you, do you?’ more than one fellow at market had said to Phillip. Caveat emptor—don’t go beyond your price—have a good breakfast before going to market—or you may find you’ve bought the worst screw in the place, probably with ‘hurden hill’—udder ill—a sort of coccus disease, he supposed.

  Hopeless idea, to buy a cow there. Anyway, only dud milkers from good herds, at the best, were sent to market. There were no Jerseys. The proper thing to do was to buy a good Jersey calf, and let Lucy rear it, if she fancied yellow cream and rich milk for the children.

  He went up the hill to the calf house. Here reigned comparative gentleness. The calves were not so bedraggled, their coats less staring than those of the wretched infants destined for the glue factory, beside their hopeless dams lower down. Here the calves stood, with full bellies, in line together, standing on clean straw, their hind-quarters near the railing, so that buyers could see whether or not they suffered from squitters. They were of all ages, from new-born to veal-size. He saw two Ayrshire-cross heifer calves, standing side by side. Good, clean little creatures, bloom on their coats, they would just fit into the sidecar, if both were put in sacks, as was usual, to prevent kicking and escape. They could live in a box adjoining the yards from October to April, while the water-meadows were being ‘drowned’.

  Ned had asked for bull-calves. Why? Beef did not pay. ‘Meat for manners’—the butcher got the meat and the farmer got the manners—the dung. The dung grew the barley, which didn’t pay; the barley nursed the ‘seeds’ of clover and ryegrass, to grow the hay to feed the bullocks to get the dung to grow the roots to feed the sheep which didn’t pay. Labour in vain!

  Bullocks in yards fed on mangolds and sugar-beet pulp, barley-and-oat straw and hay, with a little linseed or ground-nut cake daily, while treading litter into good dark muck, and growing into money for the butchers’ bank balances. Carting hay and straw to the yards—a ton of straw an acre, a ton of hay an acre—all for manners.