The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  Phillip wondered; his previous hail-fellow-well-met attitude, projected impersonally, became quietness. Had they expected something from his visits? He had always been polite; nothing more. Did Dora imagine that he had come to court her?

  A cat was asleep on the sofa, a shaggy bullock dog on the hearth. Three chickens chased a spider in one corner. He sat still beside the fire, in the plush chair fetched from the parlour. A lamb trotted about the room following Dora, who usually fed it with a bottle. The ewe had turned against it, said Dora. That morning they had cut off its tail, and its quarters were bloody. He was invited to stay to tea. Dora disappeared. Thumping feet overhead told him she was changing her clothes. Soon she came downstairs, smiling, faintly flushed, and told him that tea wouldn’t be long. She was dressed in a green jersey, and wore underneath a pair of stays in which her slimness was lost. The very obtrusive stays might have been a gift from her elder married sister, whose husband had been killed in the War.

  “Nice li’l maid,” Phillip’s neighbour, Walter Crang, had said to him. “Proper little maid her be, a heart of gold, and a good worker.”

  Now the friendliness between them was constrained. He saw her face redden. She seemed unhappy; and following her glance, he saw she was looking, anxious and ashamed, at the lamb with the bloody tail stump. “Dearie me, oh, look at thaccy now. Get on out, you dirty little bitch!”

  Should he suggest that he have tea with them in the kitchen? Would this give the idea that he wanted a more intimate relation with the family—one step nearer Dora? He resisted a feeling to be breezy. Did they consider that he was excessively genteel? To have winced at the word bitch?

  He was given tea in the parlour by himself, while the others sat at the long table in the kitchen and were unnaturally quiet. Had the sensitive mother observed his face when Dora had come downstairs, and again when she had rated the lamb? But it was not so much the word, as the sudden hardness in the voice that had checked his feelings, he decided as he left the farmhouse. And yet—the sixteen-year-old maid had used the word to the wounded lamb naturally, unthinkingly—even so, he could not help a feeling of mortification because she had spoken like that; and so, because he had felt like that, he was checked; Dora had caught his feeling; and now the gossamers were snapped between them.

  *

  ‘Brex’ of The Daily Crusader was still taking his weekly guinea-and-a-half brief articles. He walked upon the cliffs, everything he saw was fresh and vital—enough for a dozen 100-word Vignettes of Spring.

  *

  The blackthorn was out, dog violets blooming, celandines fading, magpie nests nearly topped with thorns, ravens were sitting. He lay happily in the sunshine above the grey-green seas rolling up the Channel, noting that the spotted wing-covers of the vermilion ladybird shone upon a leaf of green nettle under the dry-ditched wall of the last field before the cliffs; while in a wind-stunted brake of blackthorn the pleading note of the greenfinch was sad as though with long-drawn doubt and hopeless love. Was this what Julian had called Wordsworthian anthropomorphism—human feelings transformed to a bird? But the bird did seem unhappy: and very shortly Phillip was to witness the cause.

  Over the great craggy precipice Phillip called Valhalla the gulls soared, glided, threw-up and fell crook-winged, blaking, crying, gabbling, hanging in the upblast of wind a few yards from his face, yellow-eyed and wind-ruffled. Daws winged their speedy blackness down the wind, shooting down and checking uneasily; buzzards sailed high, with sweeping leisure and then—crossing the sky at tremendous speed, swinging round into the wind to hang aloft—two peregrine falcons. Two shaftless arrowheads of iron, he thought, two black stars of the day, cutting into the blast. The wings were bent back, the heads blunt, tails short, thick, and stocky—they remained motionless, as though held there, at a thousand feet.

  As he watched, greatly excited, a finch came from over the streaky, smashing sea, a frail dark mite flittering to reach the shore and sanctuary. The smaller peregrine, the tiercel or male, saw it, tipped up, shot down … and missed! He felt terror, as though the finch were himself, The larger falcon then stooped; she, too, missed. Their speeds carried them far below the finch, but within the time of one breaker following another to dash against the rock below the pair had shot up without wingbeat to their pitches a thousand feet above the sea. They zoomed up as though shot from an invisible gun: the gun of the booming wind, which buffeted his ears, sought to lift his eyelashes, and sprayed salt on his lips.

  The small bird struggled to the lower end of the headland, and crouched like a stone among the ragged clumps of sea-thrift. Then, after the peregrines had glided away, it flew up the slope of the land beside the precipice and joined the greenfinch in the blackthorn brake where dead branches were shaking and squeaking in the gusts.

  It was the mate of the greenfinch, who mourned no more, but sat beside it, eyes closed in exhaustion after such terror.

  April 20. The inspiration of true poetry comes like a flower opening, a bird singing, a falcon stooping—an elemental co-ordination creating beauty. One dare not premeditate the elemental thought of the Imagination, which gives sudden form to words. They write themselves. Revision, by the mind’s skill or experience, can define or simplify them; but the original impulse is a matter of trust, of humility, of primal simplicity.

  Of course it is arranged in words by nerve-cells impressed by the poet’s experience, as the true painter owns a knowledge of paint and drawing, and the composer knows his instruments and how to ‘build’.

  When such a feeling comes upon me the nape of my neck shivers, the skin becomes hard, as though cold. This feeling is not to be explained, or analysed. Years ago I divined the same Imagination (surely all men think in images?) in the works of poets like Blake, Shelley, Thompson, Heine, Delius, Wagner, and Jefferies—poets which Julian does not really care for.

  Once a man has uncovered the Imagination, will he thereafter always be lonely? So many of the inspired poets of olden time were lonely, singing not from their pain, but from the inner flash that struck deeper than pain: but when Inspiration was gone, it left an emptiness in which doubt lay heavy; it was then that the poet longed intensely, not for a woman, but for Love.

  Ever hopeful, Phillip showed this journal entry to Julian that night.

  “What you describe,’’ said Julian, “is merely a variation, personal only to yourself, of a well-known symptom of mental disease, described by many writers, including Dostoieffski. Your sister, I am told, is subject to fits. Does it run in the family?”

  “How sympathetic you are,” said Phillip, almost bitterly. “Your words are salt, sown upon the earth.”

  “Salt to heal wounds, and maybe suppress weeds, Maître! Come, be a man, and admit that you are deluding yourself! Take more beer with your water, my dear chap!”

  Poor Julian: he is a product of his father’s incapacity to love.

  It seemed to me on this afternoon, as I walked along the tideline, that the problem of peace and happiness was simple, as Willie is always declaring. A child should be allowed to grow itself naturally. The parent’s influence should be indirect; the child should learn by the divine instinct of imitation, not by the human vice of compulsion. Everywhere in the world is compulsion, instead of inspired discipline; so everywhere in the world is lack of harmony. There can be no harmony, or attempt to create it widely, until the internecine financial system is made the servant, and not allowed to remain the master, of human destiny. Julian, and Porky—and yes, myself—are in various ways trying to writhe out of the coils of childhood’s upbringing. If I can reveal the past of one human being—Donkin—truly, clearly, objectively, then the cause of personal unrest, which are the causes of strife in the world between individuals, masses, nations, will be made plain for the first time in human history. Only a novel of character, of many characters each of whose thoughts and actions is based on pure cause and effect, will be of any use to the world in future.

  Stroking his soft beard, the black hairs of
which were turning brown with the sun’s bleaching, Phillip sat at the table, pen in hand, staring before him. He saw nothing: he was listening to the intermittent beating of his heart. Was it valvular disease, or indigestion? He felt weak when he got up suddenly to test his heart, a fog came over his eyes. The hands of the clock pointed to ten. The world was dark, most of the village to bed. Julian would soon be down from the pub. He dreaded his return. Then sitting down again, he listened anew to the intermittent thudding of his heart. Putting aside fear he read aloud the latest entry in his journal.

  He had just finished when the door was shoved violently open. Julian in his coat made from the skins of bears glowered in the doorway. Phillip, pretending to be studying, breathed slowly and deeply to ease the feeling in his heart.

  “When a man talks to himself they say he is talking to the devil!”

  “The alternative is talking with you.”

  “Huh!”

  Phillip sat still.

  “Why you sit there night after night writing and reading to yourself that balderdash about Donkin completely beats me,” said Julian, advancing a pace and thrusting his hands deeper into his pockets. He stared sulkily at Phillip, then with pretended concern said, “You look pale, Maître. Very pale. You’re not going to have another haemorrhage, I hope? If so, I won’t be your wet nurse, old boy. I’ll send for the ambulance, and they’ll take you away and you’ll never come back again!”

  Phillip sprang up screaming, “Your nurse may have spoken to you like that, but all the same you’re a bloody swine!”

  “Well, perhaps I am, old boy, but at least I enjoy myself!”

  “At other people’s expense!” Phillip clenched his hands.

  “Certainly not at yours, old boy. Forgive my mentioning it, but don’t you owe me, or Father, quite a lot of money? Or are you content that he should support both of us. I refer, of course, to the balance of past remittances.”

  “You’ve had every penny!”

  “I’ll take your word for it. Forgive my base suspicions, Maître: I intended only to try and arouse you from your nocturnal and sepulchral self-immolation. Come, Maître, be a man! Admit that you’re writing bosh! It is bosh! Who wants to read all that Donkin nonsense? Oh yes, I know I laughed, but my God, one laughs at what a fellow says in the pub. That doesn’t mean it’s literature.”

  “Come on, let’s hear some Swinburne, now we’ve decided to stay outside literature.”

  “What!” He glared at Phillip. “Your impudence is intolerable, by God it is—it is, by God, it is——”

  “Try ‘unbearable’ and give the top of your tongue a rest!”

  “Oh well, you’ll be dead before long, old boy, so why should I bother to listen to your drivelling absurdities. Be careful, old boy. You’re not well, you know. Aren’t you afraid your lung will suddenly——”

  “You’ll be dead first!” shouted Phillip, springing up and rushing at his tormentor. He had no feeling to hurt Julian: the attack was more an explosion of his own fears and doubts. He was surprised when the table canted up and fell over. Whirling his arms he struck the air, while Julian likewise struck out with his fists ineffectively, so that Phillip knew that Julian did not mean really to hurt him. His rage already gone, Phillip gripped Julian round the waist and swung him over his left thigh and across the table. The candle fell, and went out. Phillip stood still. Urgently the labourer Crang next door was calling his wife into the coal cellar. Phillip laughed hysterically.

  “By God!” said Julian, a bear on four legs. “Your insolence is intolerable, you long, lean, lounging fool!”

  Striking a match, Phillip sought and relit the candle. Without further words Julian went upstairs, presumably to pack. There was much noise overhead; then came a big bump on the floor, followed by comparative quiet. Going upstairs, Phillip saw that Julian had pinched the bedding from the camp bed, thrown it on his own bed and fallen on top of the mass. There he was, already snoring.

  Phillip seized the iron tubing of Julian’s bed and jerked it up and down violently. The ruddy, furry carcase bounced up and lolled with its head between wall and tip-tilted mattress. Phillip shook the bed more violently, then with a jerking twist tossed the body with a crash on the floor.

  “You again!” cried Julian.

  Phillip’s answer was to seize the ewer and pour cold water over Julian’s head.

  Julian sprang up with such rage on his face that Phillip, laughing, turned and ran away, to bang the flimsy door in Julian’s face. The next moment the door burst and splintered, and the camouflaged bear fell through. While it sprawled there Phillip seized the other ewer from his washstand, sluiced more water over Julian and ran downstairs, reaching the kitchen as the ewer crashed into pieces at the foot of the stairs behind him.

  “All right, you want a real fight, do you?”

  As Julian came off the lowest stair he rushed at him, while the rage on Julian’s face changed to alarm. He turned to run up the stairs. Phillip seized the tail of the fur-coat and pulled so hard that they fell together on the floor. He struggled up, and as Julian clambered to his feet he pushed him over again. Julian hacked him on the shin.

  “You kicked me, did you, you bloody swine?” Seizing the five-gallon cloam pitcher standing by the door, empty, Phillip whirled it round, to aim at the lime-ash floor beside Julian, where it shattered with a splaying crash. Then he leaped upon the hairy mass, seized Julian by the throat and bumped his head on the floor. Julian lay unresisting, Phillip stopped after two bumps, but continued to pretend to a roaring anger while thinking what a comic film it would make. Getting up, he took his 12-bore gun from one of the dresser shelves and slipping two cartridges into the breech shouted with mock fury, “By God, Julian, your insolence is intolerable, you’re going on a long journey now, old boy, all the way to Algernon Charles Swinburne!” and shutting the breech, pushed forward the safety-catch, aimed the gun at the door of the coal-house and pulled both triggers at once. The candle-flame clapped out, his ears rang with the detonation. Whispered voices came through the opposite lath-and-plaster wall, where in their coal-house the Crangs were crouching, as in a box at the play.

  “By God, you are against me, too!” muttered Julian, between sobs. “The world is against me—I can fight the world—but now you’re against me—the only man I ever——”

  Phillip relit the candle. Two holes like big ink blots were in the putty-coloured door of his own coal-house. Julian went upstairs, packed his bag, came down, and held out his hand.

  “I’m going, Phil. I’m no good for you. Honestly, I meant to help you. Something in you seems dead, and in my rough way I wanted to resurrect it. Seriously, your apartness disturbs and even challenges all I believe to be vital and true in life. Am I boring you?”

  This was a new Julian.

  “No,” said Phillip quietly. “You are speaking the truth.”

  At this a change came over Julian. He might become a dramatic actor, thought Phillip, if only he could learn to discipline himself. He had a presence. His head was held back, proudly. “What is Truth, indeed, Maître? As I see it, I have only hindered you. So I am going away. By God, I’ve only hindered you.” He bit his lower lip, blinked tears from his eyes, gave Phillip a straight look, thrust out hand and chin simultaneously and said, “Good-bye! Keep my books in memory of me—if you care to remember me. I’m going.”

  “Where to?”

  “Back to Father.”

  “Father will be pleased!”

  With no further word Julian went to the door and walked away in the darkness. Phillip could not believe that he had really gone. He began to feel sorry for Julian. What sort of companion had he been for him? Always self-absorbed, shutting himself away from him, completely selfish and egocentric. He recalled how many times Julian had, after the inevitable verbally truculent return at night, got up on the following morning to light the fire and swab out the kitchen; how he had been considerate and quiet-spoken at breakfast, afterwards tip-toeing around when he saw h
e was preparing to re-enter the world of Donkin. Poor old Julian, now he was gone, how empty life in the cottage would be without him. He hastened down to the village street. Julian was sitting on the stone step of the shut pub, but hearing him approach, he got up and walked towards Phillip.

  “I’m a damned fool, Maître,” he laughed. “Of course I’m not going to London. I’m sorry for being such a bore. Do you, er—would you object if I, er—slept in the cottage for one more night?”

  “Certainly not. I ’m sorry if I hurt your head.’’

  “My dear fellow, it has survived many a worse crash than that on your comparatively soft floor, I do assure you.”

  They sorted out their bedding, and finally Phillip fell asleep. In the morning Julian was tip-toeing around again. He could not stand this, so he told him he would do the work. That night Julian returned glaring and contemptuous as before; and again on the following night. Phillip went to see the landlord of the Ring of Bells, a decent fellow, who said, “I don’t very well like to refuse a gentleman, you see, zur. Yes, there is a bit owing, nearly nine pounds. Mr. Warbeck told me he received his allowance quarterly, zur. He’s a wunnerfully interesting talker, if I may say so, zur. Us have never heard anything like it.”

  “How much does he drink in a day?”

  “I don’t take particular notice, zur, but just chalk it up as he calls for his pints. But three days ago, I counted, out of interest. By eight o’clock he had thirty-two pints, that’s including the midday, of course. I didn’t count particularly after eight o’clock; and he was the same when he went out as he was at the beginning. I’ve known a lot of beer hanged up during a swampy harvest in the old days, but I never knew anything like this. And as I said, he be always the same—very polite Mr. Warbeck be to all he speaks to. A most interesting gennulman, zur, most wonderfully educated man, very interesting to listen to, and although I’ve heard tales about’n, I must say, speaking as I find a man, that he has always behaved like a gennulman while in my house.”