The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  *

  “What did you get from Father Vaughan, Willie?”

  “A cup of tea, a bun, and some good talk about Belloc, Chesterton, and Francis Thompson. I wrote it, and Bloom said I’d fallen down. What did George Moore say?”

  Phillip told him.

  Aug. 11. Evening. Mentally and physically exhausted, having had no sleep on Saturday night before blinding to Folkestone at 4 a.m. from Monks House where I left Willie asleep on the carpet of the Trident editor’s room. I did the 73 miles in 1 hr. 35 min.

  I did not like to go near the T’s house, it being Sunday, so having got myself a room near the harbour, I walked about, and later, meeting Lionel and Eveline Fairfax on the Leas, had supper with them.

  The next morning, very early, I threw earth, standing in the garden below, at Spica’s bedroom window; and she asked me to come back later, at 10 a.m. So I did, and Mrs. T. allowed us to go down to Romney Marsh, to study the wild life there.

  Most of the flowers were dead; summer was nearly over; the wind lisped in the reeds by the river. A heron rose and flapped away as we followed the curving banks, calling harshly as it passed over some lapwings wailing as always above their speckled young crouching in the rushes. For a long time we walked over the springy fields, holding hands, seldom speaking, borne along through the sunshine by our happy thoughts. We sat down, and discussed my new novel—I have put aside my idyllic short book—and the end of Donkin found drowned in Greenwich Reach which moved me almost to tears, and then I found myself whispering that I loved her, so why should he die? We wandered on, no longer in happy unison, and stood by a stile, then I lifted her over, my arms round her soft body, and held on to her and kissed her gently on the cheek, but she turned away, shaking her head.

  “The lame dog has lifted you over a stile,” I said, loosing her, but she held my hand tightly. “Give lame dog a pat, please!” and my arms went round her and again I kissed her cheek.

  “Where will you find someone else like me to guard you, Spica Virginis?”

  She hung her head, she looked at me. Those eyes were bright and beautiful, the apple-blossom was in her cheeks. Then she began to cry quietly: said she was making me unhappy: she gave me all she could, but did not love anyone. “I am still not awake,” she said.

  “No one else shall hold your hand. These thin little fingers are mine to clasp, mine only to hold at the finger-tips, like this, and entwine with my own. If anyone else wishes to do it, I will kill him!” I was not serious, of course.

  “No one else, my dear, no one else,” she sighed, and once more my heart felt squeezed, for her eyes were limpid, her mouth young and tender, her cheeks now a little pale, like a late June rose in the hedge.

  I had brought with me the little silver and ebony crucifix that my mother had given me in 1914, and which I wore with my identity disc round my neck during all but the last time I went out to France. I showed it to Spica, and asked her if she would keep it for me. She nodded, her eyes still fixed on mine, sad, wan, her lips but faintly smiling.

  He paced the bare boards of the room, feeling himself to be insubstantial, dissolving beyond the flesh in an ecstasy of grief which was poetry, the spirit of life beyond the body’s death, his lips babbling lines of those poets he thought of as being always with him. Then sitting down again he wrote in a rapid, sprawling hand.

  We sat by the sea-wall of Dymchurch, the drear tide moving west down Channel before us. A porpoise rolled and slid below immediately, it was hunting. A lone gull flew to the west, over black sticks jutting from the water marking an oyster bed. A lonely place for both of us. I hardly knew what I was saying.

  “Spica, have you ever thought how joyful it must be to nurse a baby? Like this——” and I laid my forearm across her breast, and she pretended it was a baby, pressing it to her bosom. Then her warm hand sought mine and those small fingers held firmly. But it was as though a thorn had gone deep into my heart, or perhaps the old one had turned. I was apprehensive, not of Spica, but of forces which still controlled her.

  We returned after tea, which the family had in the garden. The old parson was in his room; he had had a fit, and was now in a deep sleep. What terrors of the mind had broken like fire-damp into explosion, from the dark shafts of the child’s mind of long ago, some brutal frustration by a nurse, or helpless longing for a mother that never came to kiss the child good-night, so that he wept away his very soul into the darkness, where it had remained ever since, awaiting the coming of Christ, who suffered when He returned to the suburb of Nazareth, and had nothing to say except the bitter remark that elsewhere he had not been regarded as merely the boy next door?

  But to facts. After tea, when the older people had gone in, something I did or said annoyed S’s elder sister Kay, who went off, morose and offended, to her room above the rose-bed. Then, while we were playing croquet, her voice exclaimed at the open window, “Get out, you beast,” and a half-grown kitten sailed spread-clawed to the garden bed below.

  A few moments later Mrs. T. came to where we were half-heartedly playing Happy Families.

  “What did you say to Kay to upset her, Phillip? You must have said something rude! You are too outspoken by far!”

  “But I haven’t spoken to her, Aunt Lydia!”

  “That in itself is a confession of rudeness. You simply do not understand how others feel! Kay is very lonely, and jealous, I suppose. Why can’t you be sociable, at least occasionally!” Then turning to Spica, sitting palely on a seat, “You are not fair to Kay, you know. She says you have everything—looks, intellect, and other things. It’s your duty to try and cheer her up, not to avoid her if she is unhappy!”

  Kay is plump and fair, with blue eyes that are short-sighted, so she has to wear convex glasses.

  “But Mother,” said Spica, “Kay never listens to me, and never did. Phillip said nothing rude, really he did not.” Her voice was now pleading. “She simply went off in a huff. Then she found the kitten had misbehaved in her bedroom.”

  “Well, try and be nice to her,” said Mrs. T., leaving the garden. The air was a bit sultry, the sky heavy with cloud, as though the elements were adding a Hardy-like background.

  Kay came down to supper. She did not want any food; nor lemonade; nor any cake. Afterwards I offered her a cigarette. She turned her back and said, “Not from you.”

  Spica tried to interest Kay in a forthcoming dance at Carapel House, where Kay lived in London. No response. I wondered if I should offer to partner her, but it would have been rather too obvious. Eventually, tired of pandering to one from whom she is fundamentally different, Spica said, after Kay had again refused to answer something she said, “Well then, if you behave like this, you make yourself not wanted!”

  Kay got up, saying, “Oh, go to hell! I’m bloody well fed-up with the lot of you!”

  Whereat Mrs. T., returning, began anew. I was rude; opinionated; a youth who knew not his place, and had the impertinence to treat them with the easy familiarity of an old friend, when I was still virtually a stranger in the house. “And please do not call me ‘Aunt Lydia’. I am not your aunt!”

  “But Mother, you asked Phillip to call you that,” said Spica.

  “That may be so, my girl, but one does not necessarily take advantage of everything that another happens to say.”

  I was left in the garden, with the dark clouds above the dim blur of trees. Then from indoors came the sounds of piteous weeping, and a voice crying in a strained, broken way: Spica was saying something to the other two. What she said I don’t know, for I went to the far end of the garden, while the sound of that piteous distress drove the blood to my head, and silently I cursed. Then the weeping stopped, and I heard her mother speaking.

  “It’s all very well for you to talk of platonic friendship, my girl … it does not exist….” She was speaking quickly, sharply, and I heard no more. I walked up and down the top of the garden. Deep in her heart I think Mrs. T. feared me, an unknown quantity, feared for her daughter’s safety, for
obviously she must have known about me and Eveline F., and possibly that police-court matter at Greenwich. I was not a desirable son-in-law. Until now she had been mainly kind seeming to like me—now she was the mother, defending her ideas of what was suitable for her young daughter.

  Alas, I went into the house, and foolishly tried to make things clear. She made an attack from the other flank, turning not her cheek, but her tongue.

  “You may not have said anything rude on this particular occasion; but surely, since it is so obvious that you don’t like the manners or behaviour of my daughter Kay, you have your remedy?”

  After the others had gone in, Phillip stayed in the garden, telling himself to remain quiet, and in control of his feelings now that he had received his congé.

  After awhile the idea came that perhaps Mrs. Trevelian was upset because he had not asked Spica’s father’s permission to pay addresses to his daughter.

  He tapped on the door. “May I see Tabitha for one moment, please?”

  She came out, and they walked to the garden table, on the edge of which she sat, while he stood before her.

  “Yes, Phillip?”

  “I love you, Spica. Do you love me?”

  “You know I do,” she answered softly. “But in my own way.”

  Making his voice steady he said, “What does that mean?”

  “I love you, but not in the way you love me, Phillip.”

  “Oh, Spica,” he said, “I love you so much. Why don’t you love me? We think the same thoughts. I know your mother dislikes me, but I don’t mind—not much, anyway. Will you marry me? Why, what’s the matter?”

  She was staring at the garden wall. “I thought I saw a face looking over. But people often walk down the passage at this time of night.”

  “Spica, please answer my question!”

  Her eyes, seeming to be larger with pain, were fixed upon his face. “My poor boy,” she said, as he came near to her sitting on the edge of the table, “What would you do with a wife?”

  “What would I do with a wife?”

  “Yes. You would want her to lean on. I must have someone on whom to lean.”

  “Then we can lean on each other! The problem’s solved!” as he leaned against her.

  “Be serious, my dear.”

  “I am serious!”

  “And I am practical. One of us must needs be.”

  “Then we are a good partnership!”

  Mrs. Trevelian called out, “Tibby, you must not catch cold out there!”

  “Spica,” he said desperately, “do you love me enough to marry me—some time in the future, when I have made my name?”

  She would not answer. Her eyes looked at him steadily, but there was misery in them. When she did not speak, he said, “Well then, if you do not love me, there is an end. I shall not worry you again.”

  “You don’t worry me——” very softly, taking his hand.

  “Answer me, Spica. Be fair!”

  Her glance dropped, her eyes filled with tears. She pressed his hand. He wanted to clasp her, to press her breast to his, to lay his cheek against hers.

  “Very well. I’ll tell you again. No, I don’t love you—except in my own way. You see, you might not love me in a year’s time. And, for myself, I don’t think I shall ever love anyone. I’m warped. I cannot love.”

  “Thank you for being straight with me,” he said. “I must not keep you out in the cold any longer,” as he led her by the hand to the door. It was opened by Kay. Phillip thought she must have been waiting there. “I’d like a word with you,” Kay said, as her younger sister went into the house.

  Phillip and Kay walked back to the table. There Kay began to cry, saying, “I’m awfully sorry, old thing, that I’ve caused such a tornado.”

  “It was nothing to do with you, Kay. I know I’m anti-social.”

  She put her arms round him, while her mouth sought his, fumbled there awhile, but finding no response, she recovered and said, “Mother is old, she does not understand youth. Also, she’s terribly worried about money. Good night, old thing, don’t take it too much to heart.”

  Before he left the garden he saw Spica once more. She stood at the window in her nightdress, her hair loose and falling over her shoulders as she brushed it. Then her mother entered the room, and down rattled the Venetian blind.

  He walked about until dawn. The dark clouds passed, but no rain or thunder; he saw meteors streaking down the sky, for it was the beginning of the season of shooting stars, from the galaxy of Berenice’s Hair. He sat on the Leas, the night was silent except for the wash of waves on the shingle below, and from France came the flash of lighthouses.

  Footfalls came towards him.

  “Hullo, Phil!”

  “Willie! My God, I’m glad to see you! Where did you spring from?”

  “I thought you might be in trouble, so I came to find you.”

  Phillip clasped his cousin. “I think we must be telepathic!”

  “I think we are, Phil.”

  “Was it you who looked over the wall of the Trevelian’s garden tonight?”

  “Yes, but I wasn’t eavesdropping.”

  “I know you weren’t. My Lord, I’m so glad you’re here!”

  They went back to Fleet Street at great speed on the Norton.

  *

  One Saturday afternoon Harry Ownsworth—a friendly, simple, happy man the more pleasant because, it seemed, he hadn’t one thought of his own behind that sloping brow—said to Willie, “The Doncaster police have just rung up to say that a man living at this address in Hoxton tried to cut his throat when caught opening a mailbag on the London platform after the races. He was a bookie, and had apparently lost all his money. Go and find out what his wife has to say, and get the story.”

  He went. The people were obviously very poor in that neighbourhood of rotten little houses. After enquiring at three places he found the tenement. While neighbours gathered outside, peering and wiping hands on sack-aprons, he asked to be allowed to have a private talk with the very apprehensive wife, or widow. Her face was white, her eyes frightened. Her children looked solemnly at the stranger from behind her skirts. He faltered in his questions; he dared not tell her what had happened.

  “What d’yer want to know about my ’usband for?” she repeated, again and again. “’as anyfink ’appened to ’im?”

  “Only a slight accident. Is he an old soldier?”

  “Yus he was! On a pension of six bob a week!”

  “He went to the races at Doncaster, I understand. I expect you know that?”

  “Why’r yer arskin’ me, mister? Is e dead?”

  “Oh, no, no,” he replied. “I don’t really know. I’m on a newspaper, and the police telephoned us——”

  “The p’lice? Oh my Gawd! What’ll ’appen to me kids?” She started to cry, the children wailed as well.

  “I expect he’ll only be a few days in hospital, injured himself on some glass, I think. Fell, or something.”

  By this time a dozen women, with some old men, were outside the door. Willie gave her a ten-shilling note, and said goodbye, telling her not to worry.

  The story he wanted to write was this: An ex-soldier trying to hold a little family together by keeping a book: obviously an amateur, to cut open a mailbag lying under all eyes on a station platform!

  If only Bloom would see in it a desperate and innocent act, if only people knew what difficulties old soldiers had, in a new world where each man was for himself, a world of slow economic death because there was small understanding, little genuine cooperation, a land unfit for heroes—sob stoof—to an editor condemned himself to maintain circulation by appealing to the baser instincts! But he must get back, he had not earned £3 so far that week. He was comforted by the volume of Keats’ poems in his pocket; and reading the sonnet Bright Star! in the lift while going up to the third floor, he was spoken to by Sir Andrew Braird, a director of the Conglomerated Press and one of the several Scottish businessmen Castleton got to look af
ter his money. Sir Robert Black, a lean, grey-haired man, growled at him, “What’s that stuff? Keats’ Poems? That sort of stuff won’t get you far here, my lad!”

  “It didn’t get Keats very far either, did it?” replied Willie. “The wrong things are ‘writ in water’, if I may give confidence for confidence, sir!”, as he left for the news-room.

  “What’ve yer got?”

  “Story of home unfit for hero, amateur bookie. What I could write, the truth, would move people’s hearts, if only you would print it.”

  Bloom looked at him curiously. Then he smiled, and jingled coins in his pocket. “Now, now, don’t let it get yer down. D’yer know anything about side-whiskers? D’yer know Lord Lonsdale?”

  “Only by repute.”

  “Go down and ask him if he thinks it’s time side-whiskers returned to fashion, that a great sportin’ personality like himself was imitated. He’s in his town house. Ask Ownsworth for the address.”

  “I suppose you know that the Chief is a great friend of Lonsdale? If I meet him there, may I tell him that you sent me?”

  Bloom laughed. “I like yer, Maddison! You’ve got a sense of humour. But get something from Lord Lonsdale.”

  Willie’s approach to his Lordship’s town house was similar to dozens of other calls; he moved away from the cold eye of the butler. He returned to Fleet Street, and rang up several ‘well-known men about town’, in vain. Then he went down to Whitehall and called on the Minister of Labour in the Coalition Government. He had met Dr. Macnamara before, and remembered him as a kind and sympathetic man. He was led to a wide room where the Minister was writing in shirt-sleeves at a desk by the far wall. Around the walls were ranged charts with graphic curves—the unemployment figures. It was a bad time; hundreds of thousands of ex-soldiers had come home to find a changed world in which they were unwanted.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you, sir. Please will you give me an interview?”