The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  When I am silent and unimaginative, Annabelle is attracted to me. How can I become normal? Feel like ordinary people? Forget the war, and live in the present—before it is too late?

  Poetry is cold, like the high snow-peaks; human love is warm, and of the lower places, literally so.

  The rain falls steadily outside, little cascades from the thatch glitter with lightning.

  At the tennis tournament he had made the acquaintance of two sisters whose mother lived in a villa at Turnstone. When walking above the cliffs between Valhalla and Valkyrie he had sometimes seen them on the rocks below, with long bamboo rods in hand and prawning nets. On other occasions as he had passed the elder girl in the lanes, riding astride a spirited hunter. It so happened that at the tennis tournament he and Annabelle had played against this girl, Jacqueline Carder, and her partner, a young man of moods who, half-way through the set, had begun to hit the balls wildly, the more so when the girl partnering him told him not to behave like an ass, finally declaring, as the set ended with him hitting the ball over the pavilion, that he was a bloody fool. Phillip imagined that the young man was in love with her, that the girl was the dominant personality, and fancy-free; hence the young man’s eccentric behaviour followed by pessimism and final self-destruction in her eyes.

  He wondered if he himself appeared to the Selby-Lloyds to be more or less like that young man; and for two days following the tournament he kept away from them, giving himself the excuse that it would make Annabelle miss him. He rehearsed in his head imaginary dialogues, always ending with her sudden surrender, such as: “My mother wasn’t very well, also I felt I might be in the way if I came over.” “Then you were not purposely avoiding me?” “Also: it seemed only polite that I should stay with my sister and brother-in-law, who are my guests.” “How considerate of you, Phillip,” as she took his hand. “You are so kind, and oh, I have missed you so!” But Annabelle hadn’t appeared; and alarm succeeded his imagined triumph.

  On the third afternoon of his self-immolation he saw Jacqueline Carder cantering across the sands, to walk her hunter into the sea. He strolled over to her. “Hullo!” she called out gaily, and invited him to ride the gelding. He pulled up the irons; and jumping into the saddle, trotted off and then kicked it into a canter. After turning it in a figure of eight he went back to the girl and complimented her on her mount.

  “Dear old Dum Dum,” she said, patting its neck. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, darling,” as she kissed its nose. “I say, Drummer—that’s what we all call you, from the noise of your old bike—I hope you don’t mind—come and have tea with us tomorrow afternoon. You know where we live? That house on the slope over there. Right, I’ll expect you.”

  Thither he went the next afternoon, finding Jacqueline and her sister alone in the house except for the cook and a maid-servant. He stayed to supper of rabbit pie, followed by raspberry tart. Too late now to visit the Selby-Lloyds! He went back to his cottage feeling that he was creating his own doom: a fate that he could only escape by developing firmness of mind.

  The next morning, while he was writing an article for Brex of The Daily Crusader, the others having gone for a walk “to leave him in peace”, as Hetty said, Jacqueline arrived on her horse at his open door.

  “Come in, both of you, plenty of room,” he said, patting the neck of Dum Dum. She sat on the edge of the table while he played a record on the gramophone and offered her a glass of whit ale.

  “It will amuse you, Drummer, to hear that mother had a letter when she returned this morning, warning her of the danger we ran when we invited you into our house! What have you been up to?”

  He showed her a pile of manuscript, scored over, passages obliterated, minutely corrected in three different coloured inks. “This is what I’ve been up to.”

  Seeing his face she said, “I say, I thought you’d think it damned funny. Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings!”

  “Oh, not at all! But perhaps I ought to see your mother?”

  “Do come and see us, whenever you want to.” She took the reins of her horse, which had been standing patiently looking at them through the window.

  “My God, what cats some of the old girls round here are! Don’t take any notice of what they say. If I’d have thought it would upset you, honestly I wouldn’t have mentioned it!”

  That afternoon he went to call on Mrs. Carder. She told him that she was getting up a Fancy Dress Dance in aid of the Girls’ Friendly Society, and one of her problems was how to fix up a ladies’ cloak-room in the village hall—this being the room where Phillip had first met an incarnation of J. D. Woodford in the guise of Porky.

  “I wonder if blankets hung from the ceiling beams would serve as partitions? I have a number of lengths of tweed, which I’d willingly lend you, or help to fix them up, if you think——”

  The next morning he worked with them, and was about to leave when Mrs. Carder said, “Now that you have been so kind as to do so much work for us, I think you ought to come to the dance, Mr. Maddison.”

  “I’m not very good at dancing, also I haven’t danced for some years, Mrs. Carder.”

  “Well, if you decide to come you will be very welcome. And do bring any friends—it’s all in a good cause.”

  This gave him an excuse to go over to the Selby-Lloyds. Queenie had just arrived back from Pompey, with tales of the dances, the lights on the ships, the Admiral’s barge, the cattiness of some of the young wives. (How odd, he thought: Queenie was at times cattiness itself—another robin fighting itself in a looking glass.)

  Queenie had had a ripping time, she said, and had a man in tow, ‘Brolly’ Weld, who was to arrive that evening in his Bentley. “You’ll like ‘Brolly’, Annabelle,” said Queenie, with a sly glance of pretended innocence at Phillip. “He’s called ‘Brolly’ because he doesn’t go down the gangway when going ashore, but goes over the side of the ship holding an umbrella, and swims to the Admiralty slip, where his servant meets him with his dressing-gown and suit-case in the Yacht Club.”

  “Sounds the very kind of chap for a fancy dress dance,” said Phillip, and told them about the hop got up for funds for the Girls’ Friendly Society.

  “Who is giving it, Phillip?” asked Sophy.

  “Mrs. Carder. She’s the mother of the girl Annabelle and I played against in the mixed doubles, when her partner fooled about.”

  “Oh, that’s the girl who rides a hunter on the sands?”

  “Yes—Jacqueline.”

  “She’s a show-off,” said Annabelle.

  “Jacky’s a jolly nice girl!” retorted Phillip.

  “Oh, you know them, do you?” asked Sophy.

  “I bet he got off with her,” said Queenie. “What an odd name—Jacqueline. Is she French?”

  “Spanish—her ancestor was a wrecked grandee, after the Spanish Armada.”

  “Liar!” said Annabelle.

  “That’s what the parson says, anyway.”

  “What does he know about it—he comes from the suburbs of London!” said Sophy.

  “Anyway, I helped Mrs. Carder to fix up the ladies’ cloak-room in the village hall, and she invited me to bring my friends to the dance. So I thought I would ask you all to come as my guests. Fancy dress is optional. It’s also a flannel dance, and probably some of the holiday makers will go.”

  “Oh lor’, trippers!” cried Queenie, “and friendly girls! How awful!”

  “Well, thank you for inviting us, Phillip, but Queenie’s young man may arrive late, so she and I must remain here in any case. I don’t know about Annabelle, but she will require a chaperon, of course. Will your sister be going?”

  He seized the chance, and replied, “Oh, yes!”

  “Are you going in fancy dress?” asked Queenie.

  “I did think of going as a Long-eared Owl, that is, if I can rig up something.”

  Hoots of laughter from Annabelle greeted this reply, with counter-cheers from Marcus.

  “You are a ninny!” said
Queenie, with her soft, uplong look.

  After tea Sophy said, “Now we ought to wash up, then I must dress the lobster for supper.”

  Phillip volunteered to wash up, but they all helped. While at the sink he heard Sophy’s interior making slight rumbles once or twice, an effect he had often experienced from bully beef in the old days of solitary munching at table. Queenie as she dried up beside her said, “You’re getting old, Mother,” with a titter.

  “Oh, no,” said Phillip, “it’s a sign of extreme youth. Why, when you were a teeny queenie in swaddling clothes your interior economy was like a little cave when the tide fills it, all pobbly and gurgling. Anyway, it was I who was rumbling. I have a dog inside me, who warns me when a witch is about.”

  Afterwards Queenie sat down to knit a yellow pullover for—but she would not say.

  “‘Brolly’, I bet!” cried Annabelle.

  Queenie had, in the past, worked on a yellow pullover for “dear old Bay”; but Sophy had finished it, Phillip remembered.

  A combination of circumstances—Queenie’s seasonal excitement over ‘Brolly’, Sophy’s apparent relief at my championing her against Queenie, Annabelle’s state of dual feeling corresponding with mine produced a state of excitation when the conversation became almost exclusively feminine, with usage of sporting terms to describe an aspect of the art of love. I remember how Queenie had, on the first occasion of wearing the diamond ring of engagement to ‘Woppy’, now at the China station, spoken demurely of having used the gaff. The gaff is a sharp steel hook by which a salmon, after being played to exhaustion, is lifted out of the river or loch. The metaphor varied. “‘Brolly’s’ tongue was hanging out.” Before this, Brolly had “risen to the lure”. All this in amiable banter, and all coming, like my own emotions, from the head. Even so, it is the deliberateness of love being regarded as a chase, as a sport, that stills me—while at the same time I feel that my critical attitude is due to a Puritan upbringing, under the shadow of Uncle Hugh dying of syphilis. Or is the difference between us that the Selby-Lloyds are a happy family and therefore the more natural, while I am from an unhappy family, and therefore unnatural? Is it the mortified part of me that is the artist, striving to excel in a personal medium? Even as all new life arises out of death?

  While Phillip was at the Selby-Lloyds’, Doris and Bob had been wandering along the tide-line collecting the feathers of gulls, curlews, and other birds. The idea was to stick these with glue—there was no time to sew them—on a hessian jerkin which was to be the body of the owl. Doris had also got, from the shop, some cardboard sides of a box from which to make a pair of wings.

  “I must dye my face brown with iodine, and stick small feathers round my eyes, Doris. I’ll need a beak, too, can you make one of cardboard? We’ll want some dark elastic to hold it in place. How can I get feathers to stick to my pyjama trousers?”

  “You might tar an old pair,” suggested Bob. “Then roll in some feathers out of a pillow.”

  Hetty began to laugh.

  “It’s no laughing matter, Mother! Time’s getting on, you know!”

  “Well, dear,” said Hetty, trying to keep a straight face. “If you tar some feathers to your legs, and the room is hot, won’t they come off on your partners’ dresses?”

  “What, my legs? How awful! Anyhow, I haven’t got a partner!”

  “Yes, but you’ll dance, won’t you? At least with Jackie? She is such a nice girl,” she added, inconsequently.

  “How about glue?” said Bob.

  Phillip began to laugh. “Supposing we get stuck together, and can’t be separated? What a story for Bloom! AUTHOR GLUED TO PARTNER, SEASIDE SOCIETY SCANDAL, ORNITHOLOGICAL RARITY PRODUCED. HAS EVOLUTION TAKEN A STEP FORWARD? I’ll see if the carpenter has got some glue. It won’t stink when it gets hard. Coming, Bob?”

  The carpenter’s shop was shut and padlocked. After a visit to the Ring of Bells they went down to the Anchor Inn at Esperence Cove for some old rope-ends from the fishermen. A Long-eared Owl would not be complete without a mouse, as befitted a bird of prey. Then back up the valley road to the cottage.

  The creation took more time than had been anticipated, and when Phillip set out for Turnstone the sun had gone down below the hills of Cornwall. Scorching down the winding sunken lane he met with some surprised and even startled faces as he fled past figures taking an evening stroll in the twilight. The lower half of his fancy dress consisted of pyjama trousers tucked into brown riding boots, the base of the upper half being a torn war-time sheepskin jerkin, to which masses of mixed feathers were stuck by seccotine. At the last moment he had decided on a white-washed face with burnt-cork circles round eyes surrounded by gummed-on bantams’ feathers.

  Upon his head he wore a baby’s woollen cap pierced by two upstanding turkey feathers; while the unconventional effect was enhanced by a moth-eaten lambskin enwound with old rope to make the shape of a rat, with tail of tow and black beer-bottle screw-stoppers for eyes, carried in his mouth.

  His arrival outside the village hall was greeted by genuine cheers from boys waiting below. From within the hall came imitation Highland cries. A reel, to the music of a gramophone, was in progress.

  By this time he had the gravest doubts of his appearance; but he couldn’t very well turn round and go back. He paused, irresolute. Would his pyjamas arouse consternation, and confirm what that old woman had written to Mrs. Carder? Telling himself to keep calm he walked up the stairs, and near the top waited for the dance to end, the while harvest beer-drinkers in the pub opposite came out to encourage him.

  “Well done, Mis’r Masson, you look praper, midear! What be ’ee, a bliddy g’rt parrot?”

  “What, be ’ee just out o’ bade (bed)? You’m equipped for the young leddies, I reckon!” Roars of laughter drowned other remarks. Now for it! He went into the dance-room, and uttered the melancholy call of the Long-eared Owl before presenting himself to his astonished hostess.

  There was silence, broken by a ringing Yoi-yoicks! from Jacky. Grateful for this, he crossed the empty floor amid silence, and, bowing to her, sat himself down on a wooden form below the dart-board enclosed in an old motor-tyre. Jacky said, “’Ullo, Drummer, you’m a proper sight, you be!” and in the silence following this remark he heard an old woman with an enamelled face and fluffy white hair holding in her hand a lorgnette say loudly, “Why was that young man invited, I wonder?” as through her lorgnette she stared, somewhat owl-like herself, in his direction.

  Assuming an air of complacent detachment, he sat there until the next dance began. “I’m afraid I’ve promised this one,” said Jacky, whereupon he stood in mock ease against the dart-board, overhearing the reply of Mrs. Carder into an ear-trumpet exchanged for the lorgnette, “My dear, he’s quite harmless. An original costume, don’t you think?”

  “Pyjamas at a dance are not my idea of originality, Phoebe!”

  There were Indian Rajahs, several Clowns, Milkmaids, one Lord Nelson, Swiss girls, Cowboys, two Charlie Chaplins, Jack Tars, a Harlequin, Redskins, etc. Mrs. Carder moved through them to Phillip.

  “So you are an owl, are you, Mr. Maddison! Well, you are certainly original!” Later he heard her say to his critic with the ear-trumpet, “My dear, it’s a success, don’t you think? I managed to get three peeresses as patrons, and they’ve all come!”

  He danced once with Jacky. She was eighteen years old, light of feet and lissom of figure. “You know, I felt a little doubtful about wearing my pyjamas!”

  “You should have taken them off, then what a howl would have gone up! My dear, I’m damned glad you’ve shocked all these old jigs!” She glanced down at his boots. “Do you hunt?”

  “You mean, in pyjamas?”

  She laughed without restraint.

  “I once fought a battle in pyjamas, but without boots!”

  “Get out! You’m a bliddy liar, my dear!”

  “It’s a fact!” He told her about the surprise German counter-attack at Cambrai in 1917.

  “W
hy not come out next season with the Queensbridge? I’ll send you a card of the meets. You can hire a good hunter for thirty bob a day down here. There’s not much flying of hedges, it’s nearly all catting the banks.”

  “I’ll certainly come out!” It would be the very thing to keep him fit in the winter.

  They were dancing to a record of Ours is a Nice ’ouse, ours is, played by the American Savoy Havana Band. This was to be followed by Ain’t We Got Fun on the other side of the record; but in the interval he slipped away, and discarding his horrible headgear went back to the cottage to throw off the idiotic ‘disguise’ for normal clothes and then to call on Porky, to whom he gave an account of what had happened.

  “You know who the old gel is, don’t you?” said Porky. “She’s the heiress of Nunn’s Nabob Shag!”

  He went on to say that she was the more keen on morality at the moment because her husband had recently been gettin’ on with the good work. “Yes, Phillip, he put a young parlour-maid in the family way, a little matter which cost the old gel a hundred quid!”

  “Who are the other people?”

  “Oh, local bigwigs, y’know—wives of lawyers, doctors, a builders’ merchant or two—I shouldn’t let them worry you. Now, Jacky, she’s a real sport, goo’ lor’ yes—a jolly fine girl is Jacky.”

  “Who are the peeresses?”

  “One’s the widow of a Field-Marshal, the others are staying here for the holidays. Nothing to do with the locals, really. Yes, Phillip, as I was saying, young Jacqueline Carder’s a sport! Best of the bunch! She had a rip for a father, y’ know. He’s dead now—he owned the town mills in Queensbridge, they tell me.”

  Mrs. Tanberry asked Phillip if he had had any supper. “No? Then let me boil you an egg. You must keep up your strength, you know.”

  “Yes, how’s the old bellows?” asked Porky. “That Warbeck fellow told us you had had a haemorrhage before you came down to live here. You see Dr. MacNab, of course? How’s your lung gettin’ on?”