A Solitary War

by Henry Williamson

  Why am I thinking like this? Why am I afraid of Melissa?

  Princess of Smiles,

  Sorceress of most unlawful-lawful wiles,

  Cunning pit for gazers’ senses,

  Overstrewn with innocences!

  Purities gleam white like statues

  In the fair lakes of thine eyes,

  And I watch the sparkles that use

  There to rise,

  Knowing these

  Are bubbles from the calyces

  Of the lovely thoughts that breathe

  Paving, like water-flowers, thy spirit’s floor beneath.

  Poor Thames, what have men done to you and your water-flowers. My sister Elizabeth. Shall I go and see Elizabeth, of whom always I think with dread, and sadness. Lucy once said, ‘You and Elizabeth are worlds apart, so you should keep apart.’ Poor sister, mewed in stone and electric light of a narrow street of the City, her spirit a water-flower fretted by London. She must be very lonely. We are much alike, sharing the same nervous fears, seeing and dreading the effects of life polluted in one another. Worlds apart? No: we live in the same world lurking at the back of the mind, linking past with present, so that to escape one has to live in the future—the glassy unreal world of the aspiring heart, the street-reflecting countenance.

  A string of barges behind a tug was going down on the brown and oily ebb towards Blackfriars Bridget

  Oh! may this treasure-galleon of my verse,

  Fraught with its golden passion, oared with cadent rhyme,

  Set with a towering press of fantasies,

  Drop safely down the time.

  Leaving mine islèd self behind it far

  Soon to be sunken in the abysm of seas

  (As down the years the splendour voyages

  From some long-ruined and night-submergèd star),

  And in thy subject sovereign’s havening heart

  Anchor the freightage of its virgin ore;

  Adding its wasteful more

  To his own overflowing treasury.

  So through his river mine shall reach thy sea,

  Bearing its confluent part;

  In his pulse mine shall thrill;

  And the quick heart shall quicken from the heart that’s still.

  “Good morning. Might I speak to Miss Maddison, please?”

  “What name shall I say?”

  “Maddison.”

  The porter hesitated before going away.

  “Mr. Maddison, did you say, sir?” He seemed shaken. He was remembering Phillip’s father. He was seventy-six, he lived sixty years back.

  “I am his son.”

  He stood in the waiting room, glancing at the framed oleographs on the walls of City buildings: all flat surfaces of Victorian and Edwardian impersonal business art. Mahogany furniture, ground-glass windows, no sunlight or view of sky. City chasms, the enslavement of men by figures.

  “Is anything the matter? Then why did you come?”

  Anxiety. Pale face. Hairs on chin. “Well, why don’t you answer?”

  “To see you, Elizabeth. How are you?”

  Grey hair, cheeks fatter. The brown eyes, once so limpid, shrunken. Nose longer, mouth without lipstick. Poor faded sister, quick jerky manner, the queried surprise holding a suggestion of his being if not unwelcome at least not welcome—

  “Oh, I thought I’d drop in to see how you are getting on. Perhaps you will come out to lunch with me?”

  “What, now? Out of the question! I don’t go until twelve-thirty.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve t-taken you rather by surprise. May I call back at half-past twelve then? Or meet you outside?”

  “Just as you like. But I warn you, there’s only one place to go to round here, and it’s an awful rush! Awful!”

  “Then we’ll get a taxi and go elsewhere, shall we?”

  She shook her head decisively. “No good. No, I have only half an hour. We’re understaffed you see. Yes. Men away in the services. We have to do their work for them. Longer hours, often long past the black-out. Then the rush home. No, I can’t be late.”

  “I know a place near Liverpool Street Station where one can get a plate of crab, or lobster, or oysters, quickly.”

  “Shell fish? No fear! What about ptomaine poisoning? I can’t afford to get ill.”

  “Well, shall we go to your place then? I’ll be outside at half-past twelve. That’s fine.”

  Just like Poluski. That’s fine.

  He left the building to curious upglancings of faces at mahogany desks. He smiled at the porter, and got a smile in return. T. S. Eliot in a bank: no wonder The Waste Land was the poem of the second quarter of the century. Grim with iron and coal, bitumen and carbon monoxide, narrow street of business and banking. I sentence you to death by accountancy. He walked aimlessly down the sparrowless street, seldom a sun shaft penetrating glassed cliffs of stone.

  An hour to waste. He cut across Gracechurch Street to Leadenhall Market; not visited since beardless 1914. Gone the white-coated poulterers in straw boaters and waxed moustaches, gone the shop where he used to buy a penny roll of cheese or salmon, then a penny cheesecake. Gone the pet shop, where Father had bought Timmy Rat. So thin and wan the feeling, I dare not go to Fenchurch Street, to Wine Vaults Lane. I am not yet man enough, I am only a jerky superstructure with no real existence.

  I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

  A cellar, a dive below a street near her office, queue on the steps of unspeaking men and women. He and she two of them, moving down several steps at a time. Waiting. Unspeaking men and girls squeezed upon narrow stairs with shiny iron treads. Little tables in the cellar, smell of steam, tobacco smoke. Rolls of reinforced white flour scarcely more nourishing than cotton wool. Insipid food, slight portions, clatter of piled plates, small glasses of undrunk water, thin half-cooked pastry and a tiny spoonful of hot jam.

  “Coffee, old girl?”

  “I daren’t! It gives me indigestion!” Her life a series of ejaculators, her face a dark stare beyond anguish; existence a slow petrofaction.

  “Why don’t you keep house for Father? He can afford it. He lives alone.”

  “Oh, no, no! Never think of it, Phillip! The doctor told me I must never live anywhere near Father! Or my attacks might return.”

  A euphemism, as the Magister at school would say, for epileptic fits.

  “Where do you live?”

  “With two old people in Sydenham. An awful life! They won’t let me hear Beethoven or even Tschaikovsky on my wireless set. They hate music. I can’t afford a fire in my bedroom, anyway, they’re frightened of fire. It’s awful!”

  “Forgive my asking, but what do you get, what salary, I mean?”

  “Three pounds ten a week.”

  “Is that all? After—how many years is it?—eighteen years? You left home a year after I did, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, when Father turned me out. He turned you out, too, didn’t he?”

  “I deserved it, what’s more, it was the finest thing he ever did.”

  “You’re different. You’re a man. He killed mother, you know.”

  “Well—maybe cancer is psychological.”

  “Of course it is! It’s increasing in leaps and bounds. Look at the lives we have to lead! Nobody I know is really happy. Are you? Of course you’re not. How can you be? How can anyone be, in this sort of world? And now it’s all come down to that man Hitler.”

  “Yes, it’s come to that, as you say. He’s trying to raise from the dead a world too far gone for saints. At least, that’s only my opinion.”

  “You’re very polite nowadays, aren’t you? I can see through you, you know. You always did pretend. Anyway, don’t blame me this time. I told you it would be awful down here. Now you know!” She gave a brittle laugh.

  The hustled waitress, collecting coppers for herself at small table after table, stood by them and flicked out a bill. The front of one thigh was pressed against his shoulder. She gave him an aching look, drawn by the deep
blue of eyes in a brown face, as he turned to go up the stairs.

  “Well, au revoir, Elizabeth.” He gave her a light kiss on the cheek, against his will.

  “Aren’t you sentimental. Well, good-bye.”

  Stone and mahogany and glass received her wraith again. He walked up the street to find a chemist’s to buy soda-mints.

  *

  Liverpool Street Station, 2 p.m. Dirty sooted glass roof of peace-time now painted black. He stood by the Arrivals board. She had changed her mind, after discussing it with Penelope. She would not be coming. The train rolled hissing into the cavern. She would not be coming. He watched. She was not there. He was moving away from the Arrivals board when Melissa’s voice said, “I had a feeling you would be here.”

  “Francis Thompson led me along the Embankment to you.”

  “I was thinking of his ‘Sister Songs’ in the train.”

  “I knew we were telepathic!”

  “I tried to telephone your club this morning, but the line was always engaged. Priorities, I suppose, after Churchill’s speech last night, urging the neutrals to join in the war against Hitler.”

  “Yes, he wants to get the war started.”

  The tea room was crowded with service men. No coffee. She kept two chairs while he joined the queue. When he returned he saw she had made-up her face. The tea was rank and sweet, but hot.

  “Did you enjoy your stay with Penelope?”

  “Very much. Are you going to be in London for long?”

  “Only a day, then I must go to the Gartenfeste to write my film synopsis. I’ll be there for about ten days.”

  “Won’t it be awfully damp?”

  “One inside wall below is entirely stacked with split beech-logs.”

  “I hope you’ll feed yourself properly.”

  “There’s a store of tins in the field. Also I’ve got a basket at the club, with some of the farm bacon I hid, and some eggs.”

  “That sounds better. I hope you won’t find the Gartenfeste broken into by troops. Aunt Flo says they scrounge anything and everything they can find. When are you leaving?”

  “I did think the day after tomorrow. I’ve got the car. Keep it to yourself, but I’m not supposed to use my petrol coupons for other than agricultural purposes.”

  “Your film is about agriculture, so you won’t be wasting petrol. I’m awfully sorry, but I mustn’t stay any longer. I’m meeting mummy at her club, we’re going to a matinée. Well, if I don’t see you before you leave, good luck to the film story.”

  He saw her to the taxi queue, hating himself for his diffidence, and when he had shut her cab door he gave her a wave of the hand and walked out into a khaki world of sulphurous smoke and engine screech.

  *

  The next morning Phillip, having made up his mind to telephone, went down the broad stairs, past the bronze heads of dead members on pedestals—one still smoking, apparently, since a joker had stuck a cigarette stub in its mouth—to the hall porter’s box.

  “Will you get me the Ladies Marlborough Club, please.”

  The porter was saying, “Will you take it in Box Four, sir,” when the buzzer inside his box made him lift the receiver. “Hold on, miss. Mr. Maddison is just here. Box Four, sir!”

  He felt no emotion as he heard himself saying, “I had just asked the hall porter to telephone your number, when you rang me!”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “I thought you’d be at your mother’s club.”

  “I’m in Dolly’s flat, off the Fulham Road. You may remember, you met her when we dined with John Chettwood at the Café Royal. Am I forgiven for my self-destructive mood this morning? I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  “Oh darling, I didn’t mean to be unkind to you. I’ve got a sado-masochistic streak, I’m afraid. But I had an idea you might be going with Felicity to Malandine.”

  “I haven’t seen her for ages. She’s looking after her mother, who’s had a major operation. The thing my mother died of.”

  “Poor Felicity. Still, she’s got Edward. Where’s her father?”

  “Brother Laurence is with a Field Ambulance Unit in France. How is Dolly? Is she still going to marry John?”

  “They’re quite happy as they are, I think.”

  “I suppose I can’t see you?”

  “Do you still want to?”

  “Of course I do!”

  “I’d better warn you what I said in a letter I’ve just posted to you. I invited myself to the Gartenfeste for a week, to cook for you while you’re writing your synopsis. I can’t stay longer, as my leave will be up then. It’s embarkation leave, I’m being posted—well—it’s hush-hush, so I can’t say over the telephone. If you can stand me, that is, for a few days.”

  “I did think of you. Only I felt I was a sort of Flying Dutchman in your life.”

  “Darling Phillip, I shall always be your bemused and dreaming girl. And I’m here if you want to warp your ship on my water-front. Well, that sounds a bit off, doesn’t it? It’s the gin I’ve been drinking, all by myself, see what you’ve reduced me to. I needed Dutch courage before I dared to telephone. The address is Number Four, Mopus Mews, Kensington. South, not West. Repeat, South Kensington.”

  “I’ll be down right away.”

  *

  A half-bottle of gin stood among brushes and tubes of paint on the table with two glasses and bottles of tonic water.

  “Oh Phillip,” she said, and hid her face on his jacket, while he held her. Tenderness gave him mastery, with this sense of mastery he was no longer afraid.

  They sat on the sofa. He was holding her, while gently stroking her hair, when she drew away and getting up, went to the gramophone.

  “I thought you would like my new record,” she said, when she had put it on the turn-table.

  “Nights from the Gardens of Spain.” Then turning a white face to him she said, “I’m awfully sorry, but I think I’m going to be sick.”

  He got up, and after softening the music, led her to the kitchen sink.

  “I’m so ashamed.”

  “I’ve been like it hundreds of times. Don’t worry, my sweet.”

  He supported the vulnerable little skull under the fair hair. She was a child. “There now, that’s better. Don’t worry.”

  When she was purged he carried her to bed, having taken off her shoes and jacket, bathed her forehead and covered her with a rug. She fell asleep. Removing shoes and jacket, he got under the blanket and lay beside her.

  “I’m sorry, I think I’m going to be sick again.”

  He was ready with the basin.

  “You are so kind to me,” she said floating through mists of nausea.

  “Don’t worry, Melissa.”

  His hands so gentle on her forehead.

  “Oh, Phillip, I do love you so.”

  When she was asleep, he sat in a chair, and was writing in his journal when Dolly, Chettwood’s girl, came up the stairs. She was tired, he could see, and psepared to leave. She insisted on making some coffee, after which he said good-night and returned to his club.

  Chapter 20

  HOPE

  Gear-box making its euphonious hum, oil-pressure constant, dynamo charging at 10 amps, rev. counter 3,000. Upright in cockpit, elbows tucked into sides, holding wheel at twenty to four, the driver sang as the hedges streamed away behind. Melissa was coming down after three days. By then the story would be in shape. Before then, she said, she would be in the way of the story, also she must be with her mother.

  Wearing heavy leather flying coat, helmet, fur-lined gloves, he was now approaching the downland country of his first farming venture. He began to feel he was entering another world: for the landscape as he had known it was entirely altered, as though to a vast film-set for a scene of ultimate chaos. The queerest things seemed to have happened, an entire countryside was estranged. All standing natural objects appeared to have crashed upon the earth.

  As far as the eye could see tele
graph poles along the road were lying snapped and splintered. Loops of wire were like monstrous glassy gossamers upon the hedges. Great oaks in the fields stood gaunt bereft of all limbs. Torn off boughs lay around their bases. Other trees had collapsed upon their own branches. Cattle byres were flattened. Mile upon mile revealed the effects of some mysterious pressure upon all things that once were standing upon the earth.

  All weather news being censored, neither newspaper nor B.B.C. broadcast had forecast the phenomenon. It must have had to do with the prolonged freeze-up: but what had caused upright telegraph poles to crash so completely? And not a tree standing in miles? A tornado? But no branch of oak or beech had been carried away so much as a yard. All lay directly below the parent trunks. He left the car to walk around an area of collapse, puzzled, amazed—and alarmed. A German ray—soon to be used upon towns?

  Upon the West Country had come, during the darkness of one winter night, a strange precipitation of the elements, revealing by the light of day a startling transformation in the landscape. This was the effect of a fine rain or mist drifting on leaf and twig and branch, on sleeping bird and thistle stalk, oak-apple and ash-bud, wire of fence and telephone: a fine rain freezing as it came to rest on all objects until they were encased in ice; and as the drift of moisture continued, so the ice was enlayered the more until copper telegraph wires became thick as ropes, thicker like a ship’s cables, becoming heavier and heavier until finally they dragged down their posts already encased ovally to many times their wooden diameter. Oak trees, massively crystallised, groaned and then shrieked as branch after branch went down. Some had fallen with reports almost of 18-pounder field-guns. Sheep on the downs became tinkling cymbals, then armadilloes of glass recumbent with lambent eyes, crystallised amidst the snow.

  The unthawed grasses of the northern fringe of a stack of meadow hay, where he stopped to eat bread, cheese, and pickled shallots, made in the wind a faint crying, so that for a thudding moment he wondered if, at last, sirens in distant towns were wailing at the coming of the German bombers. So far no bombs had fallen upon England.