The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  “You’re becoming more tedious than usual, Father,” replied Julian, evenly. “Now why not go to bed? Your guest will not feel you are neglecting him.”

  The old man was staring at Julian fixedly.

  “Honestly, Father, why don’t you go to bed? You’re becoming intolerably tedious. Your muttering and mumbling in the corner is not amusing.” He turned to Phillip. “I apologise for Father’s ill-humour.”

  “What in the name of the devil——” began the old man, for there had come a thunderous knocking on the front door, accompanied by high-pitched almost hysterical laughter behind it.

  “It sounds like old Basil,” remarked Julian equably.

  “Well, I don’t consider myself an intolerant individual,” replied the old man, “but I utterly refuse to have that four-flushing blackguard Basil back inside my house!”

  Again the door was violently hammered by the heavy metal knocker. “I suppose you’ve been with him again tonight? Look here—I—I—I’m damned if I put up with his insolence further!” And seizing his stick, the old man walked out of the room. Julian emptied his glass and unscrewed another bottle. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “I wrote several sonnets tonight,” he said quietly. “Basil was expecting me in the Roebuck. But Basil bores me. I am going to write seriously, my friend. Before, I felt I was immature: I did not wish to add to the juvenilia of a weary world. Well, life’s full of fun, old Omar was right, Maître!” He rubbed his hands together. “I will live only for poetry, by God!” He swallowed a glass of beer. “How about you, Phillip?”

  “No thank you, Julian.”

  Mr. Warbeck and the midnight visitor appeared to be having an argument on the doorstep. Apparently he and Julian had been playing billiards. He claimed that Julian owed him some money, and had failed to turn up at the Roebuck to pay it.

  Basil Lack, an infantry officer invalided from Gallipoli with dysentery, was tall and good-looking, with a charming manner. He had a reputation for being a billiard-sharper; Phillip had always avoided him, being a little wary of his friendly manner. Julian had told him that old Basil was married, that he had got rid of a fortune after which his wife had got rid of Basil, taking the children away and refusing to see him. Old Basil, said Julian, had scores of girls; he had a different one every evening; they fell for old Basil, declared Julian, because he appealed to their protective instincts. He was living with his grandmother, the widow of a brewer, who believed that he was much misjudged—he gets away with it every time, said Julian.

  The hall door shut, and Julian’s parent re-entered the room. “That’s settled that gentleman’s hash,” he remarked grimly. “Never have I seen a man take to his heels so swiftly upon the approach of a bobby. The unutterable scoundrel, demanding money for what he called your debt of honour!”

  “Old Basil is an intolerable bore,” remarked Julian, casually. “Have some beer, Father.”

  “I am quite capable of getting my own beer for myself if I require it, thank you.”

  Phillip felt suddenly exhausted. The world was growing grey again. He did not want to remain in that house. He had stayed there once before, when the noises of snoring, heard through the wall in one direction from Mr. Warbeck and from another direction from Julian’s room had driven him to get up and dress, with visions of a haystack where he had dozed before. Julian had got up as well and gone with him three miles into Kent. Trees, hedges, and lanes glittered with frost that night; boots were bone-hard when they got up with the morning star to tramp across golf links to a coffee-house in a side-street where carters and others were having eggs and bacon.

  Phillip decided to go down to his cottage. He had an electric torch he could tie to the handlebars. The battery would last, on the fast empty roads, to beyond Staines, where he would find a haystack.

  “I do hope my going, now, won’t put anyone out.”

  There were protests. They went to bed soon afterwards, Phillip to fall asleep at once, and to awaken optimistically at 7 a.m.

  After a good breakfast it was decided that Julian should join him in his cottage. Mr. Warbeck proposed that he send two guineas a week for his son’s keep. They would share expenses, including rates, and the rent of one shilling and sixpence a week. Julian would have the balance of the two guineas for pocket money.

  “We shall work hard, and walk a lot, and seek fame together, sir,” said Phillip to Mr. Warbeck.

  “Humph,” said the old man.

  *

  Sunrise was behind him; the wet grey road ahead. He wore his old flying helmet, new ill-fitting goggles which let the wind into his left eye, trench-coat and field boots and breeches. The speedometer needle wavered between forty-five and fifty. His feet and hands were cold. He was chill for lack of food, but not hungry. The note of the open exhaust drummed pleasantly in his ears. He gave another pumpful of oil to the engine, and holding lightly to the left grip of the handlebar glanced over his right shoulder and down at the faint blue cloud diffusing away behind. This was the Great West Road, he was on the way to Devon! His right fore-finger slid open the throttle, and whacked the engine up to sixty. It was pleasurable to confirm once more the absence of vibration.

  Basingstoke was behind, before him lay Andover. His leather gloves were sodden. Banging of fingers on thighs did not remove the feeling as of thorns driven under the nails. He stuck it until Andover, where, finding a coffee shop on the right of the square, he sat down and ordered eggs and bacon and four cups of coffee in a row. This would save time. He must be at the cottage when Julian arrived. The Paddington train was due in at Queensbridge about 4.15 p.m. A cab would take Julian another twenty minutes to reach Malandine. He must get there by 4 p.m. to have a good fire going when Julian arrived.

  Warm again, he went on, passing and overtaking occasional cars going westward, shoving open the throttle lever as he rocketed by to show them what was leaving them behind. Coming to the long straight undulating road leading up to Salisbury Plain he braced his arms, gripped with knees the rubber pads laced across the tank, lay low along the frame, and opened the throttle wide. The thorn trees went by in diverging blurs. Wind scooped tears from his eyes behind the goggles. The speedometer needle wavered at seventy-three. The engine’s power flowed smoothly along the grey rubber belt; he could hear the watch-like clicking of the fastener as it was flung around the shining inner flanges of the pulley. He closed the throttle slightly, and at a steady sixty, the sweetest period of the engine, he and ‘Falcon’ flew westward.

  Julian was bringing with him his leather gun-case and gun; air-rifle; hold-all containing saddle, boot-trees, and bridle; two boxes of books; japanned uniform case containing his dinner jacket in addition to two civilian suits—one of blue serge made out of hard-wearing cross-woven barathea khaki cloth dyed blue, the other of tweed made by a tailor at Folkestone. The two suits had cost nine guineas each; he had not yet paid for them. He had an idea, from occasional jokes in Punch, that the correct thing was never to pay one’s tailor, for a few years anyway.

  Now the road lay along the crest of the high ground, and a far view over the Plain fell away before him. To the right were painted iron buildings of a military camp spreading below and across grey-green country. He passed three dispatch riders of the Royal Engineers standing by the side of the road with their slower Triumph machines, and opened the throttle and fled down the hill, round a bend, and up another hill, to see Stonehenge rising out of the yellow grass about three hundred yards back from the road. He had come too far north.

  He returned to Salisbury, where for the first time he went into the Cathedral, on tip-toe, leather helmet and goggles in hand, down the middle aisle. Memory dimly told him that it had been built in the twelfth century, but it was an amazing piece of work, so vast, concise, and new-looking; people in those days, and for centuries before them, he thought, must have known all the truths of the spirit made visible by art.

  When he went outside the rain was falling steadily—and that meant belt slipping in pulley while the eng
ine raced; it meant water short-circuiting between sparking plug and cylinder-fins; and, at best, many hours of self-bracing rigidity against cold.

  Meanwhile, a pint of beer was indicated! After that, a hot meal. He went into a pastry cook’s which had a restaurant over the shop, a room with old oak panelling and a big fire. There was a copy of The Daily Trident left behind on one of the tables, and taking it up he saw that the Chief’s declaration had been altered to exclude anyone having any connexion with The Daily News in regard to the offer to give six free pages of advertising to anyone who could persuade that paper to declare its circulation. Dear old B. B. Bloom; but he might at least have said thank you!

  He looked through old tattered copies of illustrated weekly papers, searching for faces of beautiful girls while awaiting roast beef, baked potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, and brussels sprouts. Outside it rained steadily.

  At half-past two he left the warm room and went out to the dripping motor-cycle. His trench-coat was buttoned tightly over several newspapers tied by string around his jacket. The sodden flying helmet was replaced by a cap whose peak would keep the rain from his eyes. If only he had brought some anti-belt-slip solution! The local garages had none. Well, it was no use watching the water in the gutter eddying around the tyres. Petrol turned on, plug-porcelain wiped dry, pack-webbing straps adjusted around shoulders, throttle lever left open half an-inch: push off. The engine fired at once. Tuck ends of coat round knees. Turn left to the bridge over the Avon, up the street and under the railway bridge, the road bending to the left sign-posted MERE. Mindful of skids, he went along at thirty miles an hour, to Wilton with the main road twisting through its cottages, the rain now lashing aslant his face. Soon the engine was racing while forward movement slowed. Friction heated the pulley flanges, dried the belt, and the machine shot forward suddenly. But rain made the engine race once more. To continue would mean the belt quickly wearing out; besides, he could average only about ten miles an hour under such conditions. So shelter was sought in a barn by the roadside, and sitting on a chopping block he read Blake’s Songs of Innocence.

  Later in the afternoon the grey skies became lighter, the rain ceased. On again. After half a dozen miles the rain returned so violently that spray was beaten upon the tarred road almost as high as his knees. This time there would be no stopping; let the belt wear out. The tarred road ended, and the belt gripped again when no spray arose as he serpentined round chalky puddles. He passed through a village of mellowed stone cottages built beyond a small brook running clear and rippling-swift with emerald green weed down one side of the road. The road led up a hill to the left beyond the last house, between hedges. Slowly to another village, the afternoon growing dark. It was hard to imagine that it had not always been raining. Water was inside his riding boots, which became soft and shapeless—his lovely boots which so often had been boned and polished until they were more shiny than an old walnut table-top.

  Now the dark grey road was stretching away into a light grey landscape. A straggle of rooks flew slowly overhead. With engine alternately racing and gripping the belt he moved westwards up a long and gradual incline. Towards the top of the slope, where fir-trees were planted in lines beside the road, the belt broke. As he walked back to pick it up rain fell so heavily and coldly that he had to shield his face with his sopping gloves. How lucky that Julian hadn’t come on the carrier, as he had at first suggested! Only the need for luggage to go by train had decided otherwise.

  The business of unpacking tool-roll, then cutting the ragged belt end, making a new hole with the belt punch, before searching through pockets for the fibre spare-link, was done with hands of cold wood. Afterwards so numb was his body that the machine seemed too heavy to push, but he continued, slower and slower, the engine not firing, until he fell over and across the machine, to lie there while the rain came down ‘like aught out of a sieve,’ as the baker had said in Salisbury. The water was now coursing down the side of the road in a muddy stream a yard wide.

  He tried again, pushing desperately while the valve-lifter was dropped and raised again a dozen times in fifty yards. Still the engine would not fire. He pushed until his heart seemed to rise and fill his throat, and his sight darkened. Then, screaming a curse at the engine, he fell over and lay uncaring in water rushing over his right arm and shoulder.

  After awhile he got up, telling himself that it was nothing; he was a free man, he could sleep in a dry bed that night whatever happened: for the War was over. He was his own master; his book was accepted; he was going to his own home; henceforward he would live according to nature, in the elements! What was one rainy day, now that Third Ypres was a thing of the past?

  With the unwet portion of his handkerchief taken from dry breast pocket he wiped the porcelain insulator of the plug, and pushed again with determination. The engine fired at once, he vaulted into the saddle to crouch, shivering but happy to be on his way once more.

  The long narrow road over the Great Plain joined the upper road lying east and west across the downs, and there the sky was darker, as though the wind were curiously dirty. Soon sleet was falling, and only by nearly closing his eyes was a forward sight possible. The wind was as a fleshing knife. Part of him cried out to stop, to abandon the machine, anything to escape the pain of ice now within skull and arm-bones; another part of him determined to continue; a third self strove to obliterate the mental picture of a room with a fire.

  Now he was going downhill—too fast. He must force his right leg out of its rigidity to press on the brake pedal, to go slowly lest his wooden body steer helplessly into the grassy bank. He went on like this for some miles, until, the pulley racing with no forward movement, he dismounted by a limekiln, to swing his arms and try to blow breath through senseless fingers. There was no warmth from the kiln, it had not been kindled long, judging by the least vapour blown over the rim above; but it was at least a shelter from the north-east. While he stood there, a little owl, athene noctua, lit on the stonework above, stared at him with yellow-ringed eyes, howled like a peacock, and flew away.

  At twilight he sought a bed for the night in the Ship Inn at Mere, sitting dulled before the fire in the bar until supper time, after which he returned to the bar, drinking beer he didn’t want while trying to keep warm.

  *

  The next morning he went on under a bright cold sky, thinking that his telegram to Julian, sent at six o’clock the previous night and telling of the delay, would have been delivered with the morning’s post. Filled with porridge, kippers, eggs, bacon, toast, marmalade, and four cups of coffee, he wasn’t going to hurry.

  Wincanton was passed; he came to Sparkford with its steaming milk factory at the bend of a road deeply rutted by the solid tyres of lorries. The road was impassable; he wobbled to a standstill and had to push the machine through the grey slough dragging at the engine sump.

  Thenceforward the road surface was poor, having been cut up by traffic in the War. His boots were clotted with mud; the papier mâché suitcase on the carrier was now flapping; his arms ached with holding the handlebars steady against a continuous series of shocks. By the right-hand curve of the churchyard wall before Langport he nearly came off, taking the bend too fast; then through the narrow archway, and down the steep short hill into the town. Bread and cheese and beer at The Black Swan, while feet and hands were warmed before a fire before going on through a flat land of rhines, or dykes, beside which withies grew for basket-making. This must be Sedgemoor, he thought, recalling the name as an unrealisable battle of Monmouth’s peasants’ scythes against the King’s muskets. And then, at Taunton—a shock. He had come too far north. He must turn south for Exeter; Queensbridge was a matter, on the map, of only seventy miles.

  The chalky grey mud of the Great Plain rough-cast on boots and motor-cycle was covered by the red mud of South Devon when at last he saw the church and stump steeple on the Passchendaele ridge, as he thought of it, and with a smell of the sea wearily descended to Malandine.

  The singl
e window of the kitchen was closed, so were the two bedroom windows above. He tried the door, it was locked. Then the head of Mrs. Crang appeared around her doorway, simultaneously with other heads from the stone cottages up the lane. All peered cautiously.

  “How are you, Mrs. Crang? How’s Walter? And who’s this?” Yet another face was staring up at him: a small, white, jam-smeared face looking out of a bundle of black rags on the floor. “Nice baby. Hullo, cat. Have you seen a gentleman in my cottage, Mrs. Crang?”

  “No, zur. But a telegram corned for ’ee last evening. ’Tes with the postmistress, Miss Potts. ’Er’ll let ’ee ’ave’n.”

  Bodies now appeared. After shaking all available hands he unlocked his door, took a quick look around upstairs, and opened the casement windows.

  The post office was shut. An elderly man in the street said that a telegram had been brought up and taken back to Clayborough. It was post-office rules, he explained. Having cursed post-office rules Phillip went to Clayborough, with its church and spire looking to be a petrified warning against the salt gales of the coast.

  SWINBURNE’S SUCCESSOR COMPLETELY OVERCOME BY THOUGHT OF PARTING POSTPONEMENT OF ARRIVAL UNTIL TOMORROW UNAVOIDABLE WARBECK

  So that was that: not a very good start of a new life, he thought as he returned to the cottage, to look over it thoroughly. His mother had advertised it as Furnished in the Evening News during the previous July, asking £1 a week. Two lots of tenants had occupied it during the past summer. The first was a woman with several small children. She had stayed during the month of August, and left the place dirty with some crockery smashed. Her husband had afterwards sent Phillip a letter in an unstamped envelope abusing him as a swindler for misrepresenting a soldiers’ billet as a furnished cottage. As he had paid nothing at all Phillip thought this use of the word swindle an original one. The second tenant, a woman with a small baby, had taken it for six months at a rent of five shillings a week, staying only two months during the winter and writing for a rebate of rent, which was given.