The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  While he had been waiting for the London train, a wooden-frame bed, costing £4—12/6 before the war—had arrived by carrier. It had rusty springs and was accompanied by a dumpy mattress and a camp-bed, some war-surplus Australian sheepskins, two feather pillows, and a length of old brocaded curtain which, ripped in two pieces, would do for coverlets, he told Jack.

  That morning he had collected a sackful of driftwood from the beach, and bought from the post-mistress an old Beatrice oil stove, a tin kettle, and a china tea-pot. With a couple of cracked cups lent by his neighbour, Mrs. Crang, and a couple of soap-boxes for table, he set about preparing tea.

  “I say, old lad, ought you to boil the eggs in the kettle? Won’t it give us warts?” asked O’Donovan. “There are limestone beds somewhere here. I’m a civil servant with the Metropolitan Water Board, and looked up the charts before I left. It’s red sandstone around Exeter, by the look of the fields, and Dartmoor water is acid, from the peat layers.” He looked in the kettle. “I thought so, look at that lime deposit.”

  “It’s a kind of shale round here, Jack, I think. The guide book says the cliffs are gneiss and schist.”

  O’Donovan made a joke about this, at which Phillip tried to look amused as he said, “Right, I’ll light a fire, and put on a saucepan for the eggs.”

  The drift-wood fire soon had the little pan bubbling; milk from the dairy lower down in the village, butter pats on home-made bread with eggs, then honey—this was the life! Afterwards, while washing up, Jack began to hum an aria from Bôheme through his nose, interposing with lips and throat a queer imitation of an orchestral accompaniment, while beating time with a tea-cup. He was conductor, orchestra, and singers in one, while his eyes beamed with happinesss. Then looking round the cottage, “This is grand, old lad, much better than I hoped for! All it wants is a couple of Musettas to join us. We ought to hire a car in the town, and go after them.”

  “Well, I’m not awfully keen on getting-off, Jack. My idea is to walk, and explore the country.”

  “But if we can get a couple of birds as well, the more the merrier! Oh, I forgot, you’re in love with your Mimi, aren’t you? Nice girl, just a little too spirituelle for me. I’m sex-mad, of course. Almost anything in skirts. Time I had a nice wife to keep me from roaming.”

  They went for a walk, Phillip hatless, Jack sauntering along, wearing at an angle his pre-war Homburg grey hat, with its white-braided brim upcurled, a little frayed from much fingering. He was a short, sturdy man, his amiable red face showing the blue of shaven beard. He picked a campion flower for his button-hole, and walked along, swinging his stick; an obvious townee, thought Phillip, with his manner between the bland and the cocky, and—he winced from thinking it—a little bit of a bounder. He hoped he would not get off with any village girls if they met any. But there were none on the cliff path, to Phillip’s relief.

  They returned for tea, by which time Phillip was glad that he had Jack with him, he gave out humour and a sort of innocent kindness. He was also considerate; he got up in the morning and prepared the breakfast; before this he had brought up two cups of tea, drinking his while sitting on the end of Phillip’s bed. “I’ve always wanted a real pal, you know, Phil. Someone I could help, in my crude way. I’ve even dreamed of writing an opera libretto with some unknown musical genius, and finding fame with him. But I’ve got no real power of expression. You have, Phil. What you read me last night was the real thing.”

  “Do you really think so, Jack?”

  “Sure of it, old man. I’m only an old penny-a-liner in my spare time, but I know quality when I find it. Your story reminds me of Village Romeo and Juliet—remember Delius’s opera we saw together? And your description of the nightingale singing, and that lonely chap listening to it has something in common with Stravinsky.”

  “That’s what I felt, when I first heard his opera!”

  “Every great artist recognises his own sort. What they have in common is extreme simplicity. That’s what beauty is—simple. At base, I mean. Decoration can be complicated, but still be simple, if you know what I mean, like a fugue of Bach.”

  “You mean the whole work is made up of genuine parts, like varied flowers and birds in a jungle?”

  “That’s a good description of Stravinsky’s Sacre de Printemps.”

  “I wish I could hear it. I suppose a jungle is really very sinister, all the bright birds and flowers high up on top, striving to live above the lower darkness.”

  “You’ve got it, old lad. One day you’ll get up among the flowers in the sun.”

  That was the Jack he warmed to, who, as they prepared supper that evening, waved his arms as though he were conducting an orchestra, humming Parsifal through his nose—then breaking off, as his primary nature asserted itself through the stimulation of imagined music, to examine his face carefully in the one small-looking glass in the cottage and pluck hairs from his nostrils; then with a sigh, to return to his humming, imagined baton in hand, a look of innocent happiness on his face.

  Phillip felt shame that he had thought of dear old Jack as a bit of a bounder. The following afternoon, a Sunday, they went down the lane to the sea, making for Malandine sands. There to his apprehension he saw in front two girls walking slowly, side by side. They overtook them; the elder girl was not pretty, but the younger one had a small sweet face, and a pigtail tied with green riband. Jack stopped, and raised his awful old Homburg with its band stained by hair grease. Phillip made the best of it as they sauntered beside a reedy lake dammed by sand-hills, and sat down. Jack and the elder girl were soon laughing and kissing; it was embarrassing, so Phillip got up and said to the girl beside him that he wanted to see the burnet roses, mulleins, and plants of viper’s bugloss which grew on level sandy ground behind the outfall of the lake, where it cut its way through the sands to the sea. She walked beside him, telling him that teacher used to learn them about wildflowers at school, but she did not remember any names.

  They waited for the others beside the canyons of sand above the watercourse, while he thought that it was a pity Jack could not enjoy the wild scene, the exhilaration of walking and exploring. If he went on like this it would spoil the holiday. Where were the poetical thoughts and understanding of writers and composers which had drawn them together in the gods—for Jack knew the works of Hardy, Jefferies, Hudson, Galsworthy—particularly the plays, giving high praise to The Silver Box? In London, Jack had longed for the country; in the country, he clung to the rootless pattern of town life.

  “Nothing doing,” Jack said, when they met again, and Phillip had said goodbye to the quiet girl. “She was only a teaser.” Then seeing Phillip’s face he said, “Don’t take any notice of me, I’m only an old has-been, or rather, never-was. I’ve spoiled your afternoon, haven’t I?”

  “Oh, not at all. I’m rather a dull dog, Jack.”

  “Don’t you believe it! You could have all the girls you want, if you tried. You seduce them spiritually.” Then seeing Phillip’s face he said, “Don’t listen to me! I’m blasé, that’s my trouble. Let’s go for a real walk, old lad! You don’t want to find a girl, do you? You’re a poet, all sublimation. I used to be like that once,” he said, with a short laugh. “It was very sporting of you to ask an unknown quantity, or rather quality, down here. Where shall it be? I’m with you, old lad!”

  June 7. I am in the West Country, light of foot and purse. Jack and I have walked many miles. So much have I seen; so much thought. How can one write while the sun glints in the dusty lanes, soaks into the sea, directs the winds and the clouds?

  June 11. Jack O’Donovan has gone home, and I am remorseful that I was a poor companion, striding on in front, while he sauntered along behind, I constantly going back to him, like Don Quixote to Panza, he said.

  I cannot write. It is useless, nothing will come. My mind seems to be a blank, a fire that has gone out. Spica is in Cambridge—she has written me a brief pencilled note, headed 6.30 a.m. after the ball.

  She says she is havin
g ‘a ripping time.’ I suppose it is so ripping that she has neither time nor wish to write a real letter to me. That, of course, is how it should be. Eventually I shall no doubt learn that the number of true poets in the world is so small that the chance of meeting one of them is nil … I know I am, as her mother said, unbalanced, but sometimes I think it is because this foolish heart is so heavy. Poor little Spica, I am not good for you. It is not fair to distress your heart. I must learn to stand by myself, and not rely on others, for happiness. Also, I begin to suspect that she is rather like Sue Bridehead in Jude the Obscure. Afar the summer wavelets murmur against three or four miles of broken gneiss and schist masses which stand between the 400-foot Valhalla to the east, and the Valkyries Rock to the west. Around me lie open the silver-grey leaves of the sand-rose, the yellow flowers spread to the vitalising rays of the sun. Plant life in this light soil is small; buttercups of stunted growth cover bleached bones of rabbits and minute snail-shells; here is the lowly pimpernel, the little towers of the centaury with its pink bells, heart’s-ease with diminutive faces of pansies, their tame rich cousins of civilised gardens. Here all plant life exists in a tangle of uttermost poverty, finding the barest of livelihood in the loose sandy soil with its food formed of dead plants and insects and shell-life.

  The pride and beauty of this incult sward is the burnet rose, petals of curled ivory among the low briars, their servants. A blue butterfly goes by, pausing to sip honey from one; then comes a small heath, aimless in flight with the breeze but with one purpose: to be achieved before those brown sails are enfeebled by age, counting its days as man reckons decades. So common, the small heath butterfly, and yet so wonderful as it flickers and dabbles over the rock-roses and the empty skulls of rabbits, finding joy in the sun, and hope in the sudden tremendous sight of another like itself, but more than itself, for joining with this other self it will enter into immortality, in the pearls that are its eggs; and duty done, find rest in that which bore it.

  A cloud covers the sun. Others follow, beyond the point of the headland. These are not cumulus, but nimbus. They have ragged edges, truant vapour from the mass. A wind frets the sea, there are still sparkles, but no longer calm. The dance of small winged life is coming to its end, and the ivory shells of the burnet roses already shrinking smaller, closing their petals.

  Rain was falling in the afternoon, colour was gone with the sun. It was unbearably lonely in the cottage; the postman brought no further letter; and after two days of almost solitary confinement to the wet lanes and the dark cottage Phillip counted his money, five shillings and fourpence; and having asked the village carpenter to make him a simple dresser for the cups, plates, and saucers, a kitchen table for downstairs and two smaller tables, one for each bedroom, to bear basin and ewer, he locked the door and set out across Dartmoor to the north coast of Devon, meaning to call on his Aunt Theodora on his way to Cambridge. Hatless, wearing his old trench-coat over tweed jacket, grey flannel trousers with socks and brogue shoes, he thought to reach Cambridge by early evening.

  The journey across Dartmoor took longer than he had worked out, owing to continuously twisting narrow roads. It had stopped raining, but the sky was still overcast. It was beginning to rain again as he reached Lynmouth, after averaging 28 m.p.h. for the eighty odd miles. He skidded and slid with his feet as balancers down the steep hill above the forest glooms of the river roaring in its chasm far below. His aunt had two old ladies in her cottage. One was peering round the kitchen door when she let him in. Both were dresssed in black, mid-Victorian clothes, with jet-beaded bodices like armour up to their chins. And so tiny! Seeming to be twins, each was no more than five feet high, with identically coiled white hair and cameo brooches pinned at the throat. One curtsied to him, the other followed her sister. He heard a strange story about them, while Aunt Dora cooked breakfast for him.

  “Let me see, you were here last in, I think, the autumn of 1916, Boy? How the time flies! It seems like last year, only! Yes, of course, you were fighting at Passchendaele in 1917, were you not? It was then that someone came from London, and rented a furnished cottage next to mine, with two old ladies in her care. We became acquainted, as neighbours do, without becoming intimate friends, for we had no tastes in common; and a fortnight before Christmas she said she wanted to go away on business to London, to see about the money affairs of her two charges, and would I look after them for her until she returned from her week-end. Well, Boy, that was the last I saw of my neighbour.”

  “Two and a half years is a long week-end, Aunt Dora.”

  “Now they are my Babies, and so helpless! One is nearly blind, the other a little weak in the head.”

  He was relieved that his aunt made no mention of his having spent a month in prison after leaving the army. But obviously she was anxious about his future; she asked many questions about his work, and listened sympathetically to the somewhat jerky confession of his hopes as a writer.

  “But you must not forget the old saying, Boy—‘Literature is a good stick, but a bad crutch’.”

  “I have both crutch, stick, and Brooklands Road Special Norton, Aunt Dora!”

  “Good for you, Boy! But carry on with your present job, and write in your spare time.”

  “That’s what I’m doing!”

  “And don’t fret too much, Boy. Both you and your father are worrying sorts, you know. Oh, I am not criticising you, far from it, but you were the most unhappy small boy I ever saw, and that condition in later life tends to make one subjective, you know, and subjective writing is not the best kind of writing. It can produce beautiful poetry, but seldom poetry that is universal. I am deeply devoted to Francis Thompson, as a man—I used to see him sometimes at the Meynells’ home—but his poetry is association poetry, if you know what I mean. We think of him and his tragic life when we read it; whereas classic poetry is impersonal, in the sense that it illuminates the universal. I hope you are not the subjective kind, Boy, for unhappiness lies that way. But there, you are tired, I must not lecture you! Are you going far today?”

  He told her about Spica.

  “She sounds to be a sweet girl, Boy, but she is young; and while she may know her own feelings, that is not the same thing as knowing her own mind. Give her time. Now you must be on your journey.”

  Kentisbury Hill led to Exmoor up a long narrow rough track, hardly road, of red ironstone to over a thousand feet. He was just past the county gate when rain began to fall. Soon his trench-coat was soaked and water running down his neck, his legs cold from thighs to rain-filled shoes. The worst part was the slipping of the rubber belt within the pulley flanges; the engine raced while the machine slowed up. But when the pot-holes of the red road across the moor and below Porlock hill were passed, and he came to Bridgwater, the rain held off. He rested in a tea-shop and ceased to shiver; optimism returned. But the rain returned also, and by the time he got to Devizes the engine had revved so much that all the petrol in the tank was gone, and having spent the last of his money at a garage, he had none for food or lodging.

  He spent the night beside a haystack in the rain, having tried without success to light a fire of wet sticks; and went on at first light, the belt slipping most of the way across the downs to Swindon, the canvas core showing on both sides of the rubber belt and the holes of the fastener beginning to widen. But after Oxford the weather cleared and he was nearly dry when he reached Cambridge at four o’clock in the afternoon, to enquire the way to Spica’s address and, leaving the Norton on its stand, to go up the steps of the house where she was staying for her first visit with the parents of the undergraduate acquaintance.

  A tea party was about to begin. About a dozen young men and women were gathered in the drawing-room, he saw through the bow window. The maid said she would speak to her mistress. This lady came, and invited him into the hall. Then Spica came out of the room. He saw her cheeks go pale. She looked steadily at him, drew a quiveringly deep breath, and said almost inaudibly, “What a ruffian you look!”

&nb
sp; “I’m growing a beard,” he said with a forced smile.

  “I can see that.” Then recovering from shock with her mind, and making as though to take his hand, she said, “Do come in, we are just going to have tea.”

  A looking-glass in a gilt frame over the fireplace showed him what he really looked like—a tramp—untidy long hair, thin brown face smirched by spots of mud, and ten days’ growth of black beard. He felt no social inferiority to the young men in tweed coats, grey flannel trousers and college ties, as he talked to his hostess about the journey, explaining that his hand was shaking the cup upon its saucer, “not from drink, but from gripping the wide forward handlebars of the Norton.”

  “I must apologise for what is almost a hold-up, but owing to belt slip I have used up all my petrol, and so came here to borrow enough from Miss Trevelian to get home.” This would, he hoped, camouflage his real motive, and so save Spica from further embarrassment.

  June 21. S’s mother writes from Ireland, in reply to a letter in which I said that I thought of S. as one of the ‘larger and more beautiful flowers of God’ …

  ‘… nearly all your letter was full of Tabitha’s charms; you could not have written more effusively had you been in love with her—I am glad to think there is no nonsense of that sort—I was therefore very sorry to hear from her that you had been down to Cambridge to see her….’

  Mrs. Trevelian mentions among other things that she ‘is staying in the district which has the very doubtful honour of being represented in Parliament by de Valera….’

  Later.

  I replied to this letter tonight, but did not say, as I should have done if asked directly, that I loved Tabitha. I said I had been most reluctant to borrow money for petrol, but having come from Devon via Minehead and Bridgwater, in the rain, I had calculated that I could just reach Cambridge, where I knew she was staying.