The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  Phillip said to Julian, “I can’t go on like this. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go.”

  “That’s all right, Phil, I’ll go. Don’t let it eat you, old boy. I’ve found a place, as a fact, with a chap I met in the pub.”

  The next day he took his belongings down to a dilapidated cottage, with half the roof fallen in, at the end of the village. There was only one bedroom, so Julian had to share ‘Sailor’s’ bed. ‘Sailor’ received his pension at the beginning of every month; and during the first four days of every month he abandoned his work of quarrying stone, and was to be seen during opening time in one or another of the inns, a pint before him, his eyes with an ox-like stare, and his head nodding its ruffled mousey-coloured hair towards closing time at night. His ship had gone down in the battle of Jutland, and somehow he had been rescued, after a day and night in the sea, covered with oil-fuel.

  But the basic cause of his trouble was that he had an older brother living in the village with a wife, and ‘Sailor’, Walter Crang told Phillip, had doted on his older brother, who had brought him up when their parents had died, the father at sea and the mother in the Infirmary of yellow fever. When ‘Sailor’ went to sea with the Navy, his brother married ‘Sailor’s’ girl and refused to let him into his cottage.

  “Tidden right, you knaw, zur, for to trate a young brother like that, when ’a was away fighting the King’s enemies, then to disown him when ’a cometh home.”

  “Ah, Walter Crang, as John Galsworthy said in one of his books, ‘There is no justice for men’.”

  “You’m right, zur, I reckon!”

  Chapter 10

  THE SINGING SANDS

  Every afternoon Phillip walked to the sea-shore down the sunken lane, his body brushed by umbelliferous plants and wild flowers and ferns leaning from the banks and almost meeting in their profusion. On the sands it was rare to see a footprint other than his own wandering from pool to rock, and along the edge of the glittering sea. His clothing was light: tunic, flannel shirt, and grey trousers tied by string, shoes without socks.

  It was a simple thing to cast these garments, and to walk about in the sun. Sometimes while swimming he saw salmon and sea-trout leaping just beyond the foam-drag of toppling green waves, as they followed the line of the shore, seeking the fresh-water smells of their native rivers. He floated in the glassy water, while the swell lifted him, murmuring in his ears; he lay upon ribbed sand at the wavelets’ break, allowing himself to be washed over, rolled with each flow, and returned with wavelet lapse. Rising, he ran along the tide-ribbon, leaping over sticks and dead gulls and other jetsam. Sometimes a premonition came that he must not stop before coming to a certain mark, lest he die before his work was done.

  He learned the way of the tides: the springs that withdrew far out and returned high up the beach at new, and again at full, moon: the neaps of the growing half-moon and the wasting old moon which went out but a little way and returned less and less up the shore so that an area of dry sand was left for days at the top of the beach where seaweed lay scorched black and brittle among corks, empty crab-shells, and his own sand-blurred footmarks.

  The loose hot sands purred musically under his dry naked heels, and at times he seemed to hear singing voices above the shimmer of the noon sun, causing him to pause and listen, in doubt whether the singing came from his own ears after underwater swimming. He walked on: the singing voices rose and fell, seeming of some crystal invisibility between earth and sky. Always they rose and fell, and were of that remote skyey feeling he had experienced when a small child, a feeling of clearness beyond his body.

  He walked in a world that was almost all sea and sky, his feet marring the crystalline foam-nets of wavelets curling against his insteps, while he imagined a sun-spirit walking beside him and completing his life with a sigh. This rare and tender being, Anadyomene herself, would clasp him and cherish him, he would be as the air evermore, free of all the past with its fears and failures and mortifying experiences. Until then the beginning of each day, before raising himself for work and action, would be vacant, because the past was still lying upon his mind, its spirit crying to be re-created in poetry. Until he could resolve all, the past must return vainly, sadly, its clouds dulling the sun of life. But on the sands he had for a while the freedom of the blue-stained air, he was alone, but not lonely, for in the glitter of water was the spirit that nourished hope.

  He must let the sun absorb him; otherwise the spirit of the sun, served by the senses of sight, hearing, smell, and taste—but chiefly of sight—from which all writing was unconsciously distilled, would not flow into and renew the nerve-cells of the body, and thereby the mind.

  Hundreds of gulls standing on a wet area of sand, through which the stream from the mere cut, watched his approach, waiting to run into the breeze from the sea, lift their wings, and launch themselves into flight. He tried to compel them to lose fear of himself by projecting into the multiple images of the flock the thought that they would receive no hurt from him; shutting his eyes and willing the force of his being into the birds. When he opened his eyes again the last of the gulls were drawing up their webbed feet in flight. That was false prayer; the Spirit must be allowed to come into one from the sky. Demands, willings, supplications, tip-toe conciliations, cadgings, humble beggary on knees, were manifestations and proof only of mental fear. Arnold Bennett knew this: he had written that the most beautiful (or true) line in all literature came from the Bible—Be still, and know that I am God.

  He lay hot among pebbles under the wind-blown barrier of sand which, piled up by the gales, kept back the water in the mere above the shore. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply to release himself into the sunshine. Soon he was away from himself, poised selflessly in the murmur of waves, in the viewless whirl of blue-white atoms which was summer daylight, the maker of all life in the world.

  He was restless, and going down to the tide-line, saw before him the marks of feet with scarcely a touch upon the sand between wide-spread toes and heel. They led out of the water and aslant the sands. He knelt down to study them. The big toes showed a space between the next toe, which was slightly longer, giving the impression of a spread shell. He rose and followed the track, keeping his eyes down and telling himself he would track them to their source, without raising his eyes, while his imagination made to rise from the sand the rare and tender being of his hopes.

  Now the toes were digging into the sand, the steps were farther apart, she had run forward, a creature from Water inspired and elevated by Air. He followed more quickly, eyes on the sand, with its embedded shells and concurring marks of gulls’ feet, and the tinier tracks of dotterel and sandpiper. Now she had walked again, to wander off to pick up a larger shell, judging by the impression, and the slight dig of fingers beside it. After that they led straight to the top of the sands, and still with downheld sight he followed until he knew that he was approaching the barrier of wind-piled sand through which the stream from Malandine cut a way to the shore.

  There the footsteps were blurred by the loose sand above the mark of high tide, where the desiccated jetsam of the sea awaited the coming of the spring tides to wash it away. He moved up more slowly upon this area, until he saw the feet just in front of him.

  There upon a rug sat a woman, and beside the rug a tea-basket holding a Thermos flask. He was disappointed. With so much driftwood lying there, why not make a fire and boil a kettle?

  Without raising his eyes he climbed the barrier, and sat on the top, ten feet above the shore, and looking down, saw a girl with a mass of fair hair sitting beside the woman.

  After a while he wondered how he could get away. An entanglement of brambles grew at the top of the barrier farther on, where it joined the land proper. The only way down was either into the stream, by a ten-foot cliff of sand, or by the way he had climbed up.

  As though unaware of their presence he slid down the face of the barrier, and walking fast to the tide-line went into the water, making for the two pillars of
igneous dark rock which, surviving the bombardments of the sea while the softer shales and schists had been washed away, stood above the low serrations of igneous rocks worn away during the years. From one angle the upstanding pillars formed, in outline, a profile of Britannia aslant the sky, wearing her helmet. Upon the figure he climbed, and sat facing seawards with the hot reflections of the westering sun giving a double-heat glitter on his face. He made a cushion of shirt and tunic, for Britannia’s nose was hard.

  It was a queer and not unpleasant feeling to be on an island that would be submerged by the high spring tide. However, he felt safe, for the tide was coming in, and he was fit. Julian and he had bathed only once together, soon after their arrival in March, when they had run into the sea naked, plunging in to run out again immediately, laughing and waving arms in the scythe-like sweep of a north-east wind. But Phillip had bathed daily, his body was hardened, his skin pickled by salt.

  He sat there for an hour and more, until the waves were washing his toes.

  “Hi!” cried a voice. He turned and saw the woman with the girl standing at the edge of the sea, staring at him. “Hi!”

  He rolled sideways off the rock and swam underwater while breath lasted, and then, swimming in, walked out of the sea and past the two onlookers as though they were not there, yet through salted eyelashes he observed that the woman was pretty, with blue eyes and fair hair cut short, the ends upcurling slightly like feathers about her neck. Knowing they were watching him, he mimed slowly an act of taking off wet khaki tunic, wringing it out, kneeling down to thump out the creases with a stone, afterwards standing up to fold it precisely and hang it, with an exaggerated gesture as of a tailor’s cutter after a fitting, upon his left arm. He had left the undersized shirt on the rock; it was by now washed away. To complete the exhibition he walked towards them, pausing to say seriously, “Madam! You have saved my life! Henceforward it is yours,” and with a low bow, turned and set off eastwards along the shore, never once looking back.

  Two afternoons later he returned, this time to the next bay below the golf-course, and to see people scattered beside the rocks.

  Damn! The place was being discovered. Two char-à-bancs were drawn up on the track above the sands. By the dark clothes and quiet, happy faces of the people standing with vacant contented aimlessness near the rocks, he guessed it was a Chapel outing from Queensbridge.

  Then he saw the fair-haired woman sitting on a rug by a rock with the girl, a basket of cakes with cups and Thermos flask beside them. He found he was smiling at them at the same moment as they smiled at him.

  “Hullo,” said the woman. “I’ve been quite worried about you. Do you know you have created quite a mystery in Turnstone? Come and have some tea.”

  While they sat on the sands she explained that she had thought him to be an escaped patient from some military hospital suffering from shell-shock. The girl beside her seemed to think it was all a joke; then she was serious, looking at him with a straight glance. She was quick and slender, with eyes of indigo blue. She talked like a grown person, yet simply and naturally. He found she was interested in the flight of birds, and told her about the falcons at Valhalla, while describing the tremendous precipice five miles to the east.

  “Oh, Mummy, can’t we go and see Valhalla?”

  “It’s rather dangerous,” he said.

  “I will be most careful, I promise. Besides, I am used to mountains.”

  “My mother has a villa in the Basses Pyrénées, and Barley has more or less grown up there,” said the woman.

  “It puts the wind up me,” he said. “But then I can’t stand heights.”

  Idly he scratched his initials on the grey rock, beyond which another stream gushed from an iron pipe put through the soft shale rock. When he went over the next afternoon he scratched the letters deeper.

  “Is that a talismanic sign?” asked the woman.

  “Only my initials,” he replied. “Phillip Maddison.”

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have told us!” she said. “Barley and I always refer to you as ‘P.M.’, it’s much more mysterious that way!”

  “What an apposite name your daughter has. She looks like barley, ripe barley in August, somehow. But by that time, where are her eyes? Cornflowers are over by then, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, Barley’s eyes are the colour of gentians, surely? They’re even a darker blue than yours, P.M.! You’re Irish, surely, with the black hair and long upper lip of an actor. Certainly you took us both in the day before yesterday!”

  He learned that her name was Irene Lushington, and that she had come from abroad only two days before “saving his life”, having selected the name Queensbridge at random from the A.B.C. railway guide on arrival at Harwich. She was charming and gracious; but once, when he stole a glance at her, he saw that her face was abstract and sad.

  He carried the tea-basket back to their hotel, and said good-bye at the gate. “Won’t you come up for a cigarette?” He went up to their drawing-room. A telegram lay on the table. She did not open it. It lay there while he smoked a gold-tipped State Express; another telegram arrived as he was about to say goodbye. She invited him to dinner, but although he was hungry and would have liked some decent food—bully beef, sardines, eggs, cheese, raw onions, with bread, butter, and marmalade was all he bothered to eat nowadays—he pleaded work, and went back to the cottage.

  It was impossible to write the next morning with the sun outside, and new impressions upon his mind. In the afternoon he went over to Turnstone sands again, shared their tea and stayed to dinner with Irene, as she asked him to call her. Several telegrams were lying open about the room; another arrived after dinner.

  “I must apologise for the room looking like a post office, P.M.!”

  “My cottage will soon look like a printer’s shop, for I am expecting the proofs of my new book any day now. Would you like to see them?”

  “Very much, P.M.! Do bring them over when they come.”

  The girl was listening to every word, with complete understanding, he thought. At 10 p.m. her mother said, “Goodness, you should be in bed, my baby!” so he thanked his hostess and said goodnight.

  There was a full moon in the sky, substitute for the carbide lamp he had yet to buy. The local bobby watched the bluish flame of the exhaust as the Norton roared away up the hill, but made no attempt to stop the driver. It was the only motor-bicycle in the district.

  In the morning Julian appeared at Valerian Cottage. He asked Phillip what he had been doing. Apparently a mason working at Turnstone who went to the Ring of Bells every evening had told Julian about seeing him there.

  While they were talking a telegram was brought to the door by an old fisherman from Esperance Cove who sold crabs and watercress, collected rabbit skins, and did other small jobs to add to his Old Age Pension of 5/– a week.

  “There you are, Julian old boy! It’s a poor heart that never rejoices, I think you’ll agree. Look!” He showed him the telegram: the invitation to tea and dinner ended with the words, do come if you can manage it please, Irene.

  “Oh well, good luck to you, Maître! I’m going to get some beer.”

  Phillip went over on the Norton. When he arrived Irene was reading yet another cablegram. Her face was pale.

  “P.M., I hate to bother you, but could you tell me if in your village I might find a furnished cottage immediately? Please be discreet, I’m so worried, and so sorry to trouble you. He—” indicating the cablegrams, “may appear at any moment.”

  *

  Sitting on the sofa beside her, he listened to her story. She was Anglo-Indian and married to a Judge older than herself. Phillip must understand that she could never love anyone but him; but she had gone away because they could not live together. Like his daughter Barley he was very quick mentally; but unlike Barley, he found fault with the slowness of others. After much unhappiness she had decided to return to England with her daughter who must finish her education at home. Feeling unwanted, in a mood of despair, she
had allowed herself to be sorry for a pathetic, childlike Swede in London who had fallen violently in love with her. She had gone off with him to Sweden, regretting it as soon as she started, but had gone through with it. Ivan was difficult, very temperamental, a weak man. He drank dreadfully. He had no money, his father had kicked him out of home after he had consistently neglected his job in the family match factory. Ivan had borrowed all her money. She had cabled her trustees for more, and Ivan took that. When there was no money to pay the hotel bills she decided that to remain with him would only mean deeper misery. She could not help him, an artist of sorts, because he wouldn’t help himself. When she told Ivan this he ran into the bedroom from the sitting-room and banged his face against the wall, in order to hurt himself and so excite further her feelings of pity which were already exhausted. With bleeding nose and weeping eyes he implored her not to leave him. He was so weak, in contrast to her husband, who was stable as felspar, that she felt almost contempt for Ivan. He took her ermine coat and pawned it without telling her. He took her jewellery and pawned that also. At last she left without her luggage, which was held by the Stockholm hotel until the bill was paid. She had just enough money to reach Harwich.

  “And here I am., P.M., with Barley, until I can find a school for her.”

  By this time Phillip was beginning to wonder if her story was a prelude to borrowing money from him; but as he had not yet been repaid by Porky, his reply would be truthful, if unbelievable: he had no money. However, the confession was not intended as a prelude to borrowing, and he felt himself to be mean, especially as she had been so trusting. And yet—how had Ivan the Swede found out her address, if really she had come so far to hide herself; but he asked no questions. He was shown several of the cablegrams. It was reassuring to realise that although he had in the past felt like Ivan, he had never written letters quite so wildly as these long cablegrams: at least he had written them, but never posted them, either to Eveline or Spica.