The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  We sat on some faggots: chestnut, hazel, silver birch. A small green insect with horns came on her finger. She showed it to me—a bright atom of life that felt the sun as we did. Then it opened translucent wings and flew away, and a moment later came another creature, this one coloured like a peacock, with two long curving antennae waving in the wind. It was a joy to watch these insects, part of the earth-passion with the infinite armies of green leaves and succession of flower-life.

  A whitethroat gurgled huskily to his mate as he followed her through the hedge at the boundary of the covert. The old keeper came up to us, and said the ‘little grass-bird’ was building again. I felt the sun sending love in a great flowing flood to the earth—the earth that will always keep the heart young.

  The keeper said that the nightingales did not seem to be singing so well this year. “Most of them seem to be young birds,” he said.

  I made a fire, and we had some tea in a small tin kettle I had hidden there. We lay one on either side of the hazel embers and were silent under the elms while the night grew darker and the stars came nearer, it seemed. The tawny owls are still nesting there. One owl flew to the tree and watched us—swaying head first left then right with a queer pendulum movement, which I thought was to discern branches and twigs in the imagined path of flight—— I do this myself when walking through a wood at twilight. Also it helps one to focus.

  The moon rose up through the corn field, deep and yellow, partly hidden in mist. As it swam higher, atoms of light mingling with clouds formed a golden haze. Then, free of cloud and mist, she climbed up, and became smaller and silver, with a sheen of lavender light about her. Passing by the large pond, we heard the wind sighing in the dead rushes of last year, and saw the stars shaking on the water with the broken image of the moon through dark and grotesque trees. We disturbed a wren, which began to sing brilliantly, but soon stopped.

  Then low on the horizon I saw the planet Mars, with its tinge of red, below the constellation of Spica Virginis, and thought, not seriously, that it was an omen.

  The following Thursday, to his relief, Tabitha was again at the Club meeting at Caxton Hall—the old premises in Long Acre had become too small to hold an increasing membership on that rickety floor. Caxton Hall was near a pub for which a little group of the men members made in the interval between the lecture and subsequent questions. Tonight he did not dash out with them, but sat beside Spica, as he called her to himself, and discussed the address by a Press magnate, Lord Riddell.

  “What did you think of it?”

  “I thought what he said was typical of the very low level of journalism. I’ve read his beastly weekly record of adultery, crime, and murder for Sunday reading. One of Lloyd-George’s two hundred mushroom peers, isn’t he?”

  “I suppose so. He looks like an undertaker to me, in that seedy frock-coat! ‘We give the public what it wants’, pouff! I wonder why Mrs. Portal-Welch invited him to come. Sorry it’s such a boring evening, when we might have gone to the opera. Have you ever been to Covent Garden?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I’ve always wanted to go.”

  “I go nearly every night. How about tomorrow night? It’s Tosca.”

  “I’d love to, but I am going down to stay with my parents in Folkestone tomorrow.”

  “Folkestone!”

  “Yes, d’you know it?” She thought he looked surprised—and guilty.

  “In a way—yes. I was stationed there after the war.” Pause. “At one of the Rest Camps.”

  “Oh, really? Which one?”

  “On the Leas. Number Six.”

  She said eagerly, “My parents live near there! I remember watching the rooks nesting in the chimney pots of some of the hotels. It seemed so odd somehow, and in a way comforting. Soldiers marching away down that steep hill to the docks, singing —at least they did until the end of 1917—while the rooks were contentedly cawing on the roofs! It seemed somehow to restore the balance. No, not the balance—that’s absurd—but to a small girl it gave some sort of comfort.”

  He met the look of her brown eyes seeming to glow with inner light. She had a strong chin, the lips were parted in an eager smile, a wisp of mousey-coloured hair fell over the level brow which held such eager and penetrating thoughts. At his glance the eyes lost a little of their light, the smile hesitated, as though responsive to his own thoughts of remote dereliction. She was all concern for him, tremulous to his spirit, wondering what it was that, in a moment, could quell his eagerness and enthusiasm. She suffered; she could not get near him. It had been the same in the woods; he was frank and open, she had seemed always on the point of knowing him fully—and then he was withdrawn, as though by some fear which both puzzled and hurt her.

  She noticed that he was clenching his hands, as though tightening himself against memory, and had to resist a desire to put her hand in reassurance upon his.

  “I wish I didn’t have to go home tomorrow, Phillip.”

  It was the first time she had called him by any name; and the address emboldened him to say, “May I call you Spica, after that star? Oh, let’s cut the rest of the evening here, and hare off to the opera! There’s still time. It won’t start for ten minutes. Are you game?”

  “Rather!”

  As the taxi took them down the Strand he said, “I was going to ask a question: ‘How does the golden dustman riddle his garbage and why does he call it world news?”’

  “Good for you!”

  “By the way, Spica, are you hungry?”

  “I am, rather.”

  “There’s a sandwich shop near here. Do you mind sandwiches?”

  “Of course not!”

  “An old soldier, a deserter who attached himself to me at Loos, used to work there. He had the odd name of ‘Twinkle’. It’s a place where market men go for ‘thicks’. Ham, beef, cheese—I’ll stop and get some. What would you like?”

  “Cheese, please. Any onions? They help to digest the fats.”

  “How do you know so much?”

  “I work in a laboratory at Cambridge, and hear the others talk. I look after mice, among other things. Tragic creatures. But it serves mankind, I suppose.”

  “Here we are. I won’t be a moment.”

  “May I come with you? I’d love to see ‘Twinkle’.”

  “He was shot as a deserter, I’m afraid.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I am sorry,” she whispered.

  “I’ll soon be back.”

  The queue under the glass roof over the north side of the Opera House in Floral Street had already gone in. So far Phillip had come here alone, and while waiting up to a couple of hours had made acquaintance with a number of regular galleryites, most of them young people of the poorer classes. Now he put down two florins at the box and leapt up the stone steps two at a time, easily leaving her behind, and meaning to surprise her by hiding round one of the corners; but she came up unexpectedly fast, and seeing him pressed against the wall held out a hand and took his, rewarding him with a little smile as though to say, I knew you would wait for me.

  Far down below, the orchestra was tuning up, beyond the wide arc of grand circle and unseen dress circle. They saw one aspect of the boxes, and part of the stalls, all upholstered in red. They were in the gods, a place of iron railings and wooden seats—in one of the side-galleries, with the pink-painted Doves’ Nest. It was unoccupied. He whispered that, as soon as the fireman had gone his rounds, and the lights went out, they would get up into the Nest.

  “What is it tonight?” he asked a crippled girl, one of the regular galleryites, with whom he had struck up a sort of friendship.

  “Stravinsky’s Nightingale. First performance in England.”

  “Oh—isn’t he rather cacophonous? I mean, all discords?”

  “Stravinsky all discords?” exclaimed Spica. “If this new opera is anything like Fire Bird, it will be marvellous!” She added with some of her eagerness gone, “My respected Papa says Fire Bird is a frightful row, and forbids me to play the
records on my gramophone!”

  “My father loves music. He used to play the ’cello.”

  “You’re fortunate!” she said, decisively. “I come from a Cornish family, cathedral close and all that sort of thing, but the Celtic sensitivity seems to have given my Papa a wide berth. He’s a doctor, by the way, a G.P., just demobbed from the R.A.M.C.”

  The fireman in dark tunic, round pork-pie hat, leather knee-boots and belt came in, looked round to see if anyone was smoking, and left the side gallery just as the lights in the chandeliers hanging from the dome of the roof went out.

  Sir Thomas Beecham appeared from under the stage, while clapping rippled against the tiny figure far down below. “Now! Get up on my back,” whispered Phillip, as he bent down beside the plastered pillar. “Hold on to the rim. I’ll bunk you up.” Having done this, with a jump he levered himself up and lay beside her, looking down upon the illumined figure with upraised baton.

  May 6. This is one of the most wonderful nights of my life. Within half a dozen bars of the opening I was face down on the Doves’ Nest, head on arm and eyes closed, living in the darkness of the woods; and the longing of the fisherman, dim-seen in the shadows of the stage, waiting for the bird to sing to him, and the sad doubt, “She will not sing tonight”, was my own longing and doubt; then I was uplifted into the realm of the pure beauty which only genius knows. How could Stravinsky, a Russian, know exactly the feelings of the English woods at night, and the longing of the poet? And then the miracle—from the orchestra the voice of the nightingale suddenly broke out, in wild but dispassionate purity, a voice above all earthly passion, and the tears ran from my eyes and I knew, with wild but remote emotion, that I had the same power in me to translate the voice of the spirit of life, which was beauty come upon the planet as love, and that I was destined to walk the same lonely path, perhaps all my life.

  Phillip introduced one of his gallery acquaintances, Jack O’Donovan, a part-time journalist who worked on a theatrical paper, The Age. He knew a lot about music, he told Spica; whereupon Jack O’Donovan began to tell them what the opera was about—based on a story by Hans Andersen, The Emperor and the Nightingale. Phillip only half-listened, preferring his own ideas aroused by the music: for him the longing and faith of the fisherman had turned the bird into a woman—the soprano in white, sitting in the orchestra pit, just visible in the dark blue-green dusk from the stage—and so into the miracle of love. The inspiration of love had created the miracle, through Stravinsky, of art in its purest, highest form: while the story Jack told was one of material gain by the rich Emperor, by which the pure flow of beauty in the nightingale’s song was muted, withered away as bricks-and-mortar had suppressed the country he had known as a boy, killing the life which was its spirit.

  “You look pale,” whispered Spica, returning to his side. “Do you feel all right? It’s rather hot up here, isn’t it. Would you like to leave?”

  “Oh, no! Don’t you love it?”

  “Of course I do! But I am thinking of you.”

  Even the happiest friends have within themselves a loneliness of the soul, because the soul must always sing alone. The artist is not conceited, as some people think of me: the artist is a trustee of the spirit which dwells in the temporary abode of his body.

  The next day he went to see her off at Victoria station. She was to leave by the 11 o’clock boat train; but at the last moment she jumped off, saying she would catch the next train. They walked on the Embankment, and soon the time came for her to return to Victoria; then it was too late, and they went into the Tate Gallery, and sat looking at the pictures, but seeing only the image of one another under the opaque glass roof. Luncheon at a chop house in a side street was followed by an idea of going down the Thames from Westminster pier to Greenwich, for it was such a lovely day. So another telegram was sent off, saying Arriving tonight. They walked through the Naval Museum, seeing the pale blue uniform of Nelson, and her eyes were large and sad when Phillip said, with the recklessness of knowledge that he now had a hole in his ribs again, “Lucky man. Nelson went at the right moment.”

  “But think of Emma Hamilton, who loved him!”

  “Love is an illusion.”

  “It makes the world go round, anyway,” she said, her face showing a delicate pink.

  “And what a world!”

  “A beautiful world, when there are people in it like Nelson—and Stravinsky! Why are you so bitter, Phillip?”

  “My life is half truth, half lie.”

  “So is everybody’s, only few know it!” She touched his hand. “Don’t be bitter, I can’t bear it.”

  “Now I’ve mucked up your day—as well as keeping you from your parents!”

  “Not at all. I decided to stay, because I wanted to. After all, I am nineteen years old!”

  “A child. I’m twenty-five! And I’m not at all bitter, really.”

  “I’ve never known anyone so young—if he will only give himself a chance!”

  They walked in Greenwich Park, and his depression gave place to a kind of exultation that he had triumphed over her, and yet with his uprising spirits was a sense of fear; which became longing entwined with pain when, standing by the 8 o’clock train, she told him that after the week-end she would be returning to the laboratory at Cambridge, and was looking forward to the May Week college balls.

  “You know a lot of undergraduates, I suppose?”

  “Not a lot, but I have one or two friends up at the university.”

  “What sort of work do you do in the lab.?”

  “I look after mice infected with syphilis, among other duties. I’ve got a tame mouse with me, would you like to see him? I call him Nig. Don’t worry!” she said, seeing Phillip’s face. “Nig’s not contaminated!”

  She opened a bag, which was loosely strapped to allow entry of air, and took from a perforated box a silky grey mouse and put it on her shoulder. It sat up and washed its face.

  “Sign of release of anxiety through action,” he said.

  Doors were being shut, the guard was unfurling his green flag. An elderly man in a bowler hat was hurrying to find a seat, and passing them, stared at the mouse, then lifted his umbrella as though to strike it.

  “Don’t worry,” said Phillip, with mock affability, “this is Nig, a Burns scholar at Cambridge. Nig’s great ancestor helped Burns to write that poem. His great ambition is to make this a Land Fit for Wee, Tim’rous beasties.”

  The man walked away, with bulging eyes. “Well, have a good time in May Week, Spica. I shall be having my annual holiday then, and hope to explore the West Country.”

  “I hope we meet again,” she said. “Please tell me before I go. Did you have ‘Twinkle’ shot for desertion?”

  “No. I was nearly shot for desertion myself, or might have been, except for a fluke.”

  They were standing at the front of the long train, the moon was rising over the buildings, and as he lifted his hat and said goodbye he saw a tear upon her lashes like an opal.

  Chapter 2

  FLOWERS IN THE SUN

  May 20. Major Pemberthy (son of Max Pemberthy) said to me in the office today (when I said I hoped to be like Galsworthy in 15 years’ time), “Why shouldn’t Galsworthy wish to be like Maddison in fifteen years’ time?” Then he added, seeing I was carrying a volume of Songs of Innocence, “William Blake is probably watching your progress, remember that!” Wherein is much food for thought. I thought it awfully kind of him. An ordinary man would not have said that.

  I went into the Squire’s woods in the evening. Nothing remains of the little fire Spica and I kindled, near the nettle-creeper’s (or grass-bird’s) nest, but charred stick-ends and rain-flattened ash.

  I am afraid I nearly trod on a little, frightened frog. My foot nearly crushed him. Who guards him? Who put him on the earth, and cannot help him if he is crushed or not? 500,000 years ago, man was like an ape. Who cared if a great forest-monster killed him? Who cares if a man is crushed by a ’bus now, except man himsel
f? Where does the frog-spirit go, after the crushing-out? Where man goes, so the frog goes—of that I am CONVINCED. I want to read no philosophy, or system made up by any particular man’s experience. I will make my own, or rather, it will drift up without thought in my soul. I am convinced that some power is trying to speak through me. I am two different men, or two kinds of men in one body.

  The Floral Street Galleryites are now five—myself, Jack O’Donovan (who gets a free pass being, on the staff of The Age), cousin Willie (during his week’s leave from France), Bob Willoughby, and my sister Doris. La Bôheme, Tosca, Village Romeo and Juliet, Butterfly, Tristan (Frank Mullings as Tristan, weak voice). Jack O’Donovan says this opera is the most sensual music ever written. Rot! Tristan to me is an honourable man, broken between love and duty. He is all psychic love, beyond healing by earth-love. The opera is spiritual: it is lyrical, like Stravinsky’s Nightingale, the finest work this season at Convent Garden, as the porters in the local pubs call it.

  Village Romeo is silver to Tristan’s gold.

  Can’t write any more—going for my nightly walk round the Hill—hope it’s deserted—I cannot commune with the spirits of stars and silence if even lovers are on the seats.

  Later.

  Didn’t go for walk—even writing the above incoherency—mere effusion—has made me limp. Have just read some of my story—it is wishy-washy, badly written.

  Notes. The broad oak thinks of eternity.

  A hazel twig, broken long since, dependent and twisted, still holds to its leaves. All things cling to life.

  June 3. In evening walked to my oak in Foxgrove. Its trunk is straight and round for twenty feet; then its branches stretch into the air like arms each with hands of fingers held to the vertical. They are sturdy fingers which would grasp the sky.

  Again I experienced that curious sensation under it. I felt as though my whole vitality, or spiritual energy, were suddenly gone from my body, rushed in a moment up the great moist bole of the oak, through its arms and crackling across the tips of the fingers like a wireless installation sending out waves. My backbone felt creepy, and so strong was the feeling that I almost saw, or rather sensed—as though I were being translated—the invisible snaps of electricity across the fingers. Only this tree gives me this sensation—none other, and I always experience it when I approach it. Am I deranged, I wonder? I felt momentarily exhausted afterwards—the emotion takes place in a particle of a second.