The Phoenix Generation

by Henry Williamson

  “He took the Castle on lease after the war. I’ve no idea where he comes from. I don’t think anyone knows, except that he had an American mother who left him a fortune. He told me once that he was with the sixteenth cavalry at Mons, and then went on the staff. What else he did in the war, if anything, I don’t know.”

  “I tried to talk to him about it at the club, Piers, but all he said was, ‘Who wants to talk about that goddam war?’”

  It was midnight. Champagne suspended time. They sat with backs against the wall, glasses in hand. When Runnymeade reappeared he was wearing a claret-coloured smoking jacket. “Let us await our guests in the hall,” he said.

  A light flashed at the top of the flagpost on the lawn beyond the entrance drive, announcing the convoy passing under the arch of the eastern lodge. At once lights went on in all the rooms and the great oak door, iron-bound and studded, was opened. Two footmen stood by this door, while a red light glowed below the light on the pole. The chamberlain, wearing some sort of brocaded eighteenth-century coat with black silk knee-breeches and silver-buckled shoes, went forward as the tyres of the first motor stopped on the gravel. It was like a film set, Philip thought: the chamberlain bowed, in came the guests, led by Stefania Rozwitz dressed in a pale fur toque and coat, gliding towards Runnymeade with arms held out, a dozen young women behind her moving with level movements as though the bodies floated on air. Curtsies were dropped while the ballerina received clasps from a beaming host. The men stood behind them with less assurance, automatically feeling themselves to be in a supporting role.

  Last of all, velour hat in hand, came a figure with a moon-face and the eyes of a children’s-book owl in spectacles.

  “I say, Piers, do introduce me to our host, won’t you? I heard you were going to be here. Hullo, Phil. What a pleasure to see you again. And Gillian, my dear, I am delighted.”

  “And what might be your connexion with the ballet, Mr. Plugge?” asked Runnymeade, when Piers had introduced him.

  “Oh, I hire out the chairs to the gallery boys and gels, sir.”

  Archie Plugge was soon at home. He praised the ‘simply marvellous’ dancing of the ballet as he held a large whisky and soda beside Runnymeade.

  They moved into the banqueting hall. There were two enormous flaming hearths at each end. The loftiness below the roof was interrupted by a gallery running around three sides of the hall, up among dark beams and kingposts. On the floor of heavy oak planking stood a refectory table long enough to seat a hundred guests but now looking bare with a mere score or so of places laid amidst a profusion of flowers, candelabra, crystal glass, and gold plate.

  “Seat yourselves anywhere,” cried Runnymeade. “We don’t stand on ceremony here.”

  Even so, the footmen served, the under-butler carved and sliced, the wine went round with dignity. At last the servants left, with the exception of Jerry the valet, who had looked after his master at the Club-house.

  “This is a party,” cried Runnymeade, his eyes between glaze and glitter. He had eaten only oysters with whisky and soda. Along the table corks popped. Laughter was continuous.

  Phillip sat with Archie Plugge, who explained that he was in partnership with a chap who hired out the collapsible chairs at sixpence a time to people in the queues for the ballet and opera.

  “I’m still on The Wireless Times, old boy, the chairs are a sideline—literally so, ha-ha. It’s a gold mine—fifty per cent pure profit on our outlay.” He went on to say that he had telephoned Piers’ home to propose himself for the week-end, but when he found he was not there he rang up Lucy, and since some of the ballet company were going to a party not far from Piers’ place, made enquiries and found they were on his doorstep, so to speak.

  “Have you seen ‘Le Spectre de la Rose,’ Phil? I saw it for the first time tonight. It somehow reminded me of you. Rozwitz was marvellous.”

  “Tell me about it, Archie.”

  “It’s rather the same theme as ‘The Flying Dutchman’. A girl dreams of a lover in the rose she has been given, and her feeling calls up the vision in a material form.”

  “Poor girl,” said Phillip, thinking of Felicity.

  “I say,” whispered Plugge, confidentially, “What is our host, d’you know?”

  “Retired cavalry. Rich American mother.”

  Plugge raised his glass towards the head of the table, and then went for the lobster, with a side-glance at the chicken on his neighbour’s plate, mentally approving it for the second course.

  Felicity sat on one side of Runnymeade, Stefania on the other. ‘Boy’ appeared to live in a private world, served by Jerry and an almost colourless Scotch whisky. It was not so much a party, as an assembly of parties. Phillip tossed a roll which fell at the other end of the table, where sat the male dancers in a separate gathering, some talking with feminine voices and gestures. The roll was gracefully tossed back. The host then picked up another roll and hurled it at Phillip.

  “Now then, ‘Farm Boy’,” he called out. “Come on, pay a dividend! You’re a writer. Amuse us. Remember what O. Henry said, ‘Once a farmer, always a sucker.’ You haven’t said a goddam word all the evening, Maddison. Tell us somethin’ amusin’.”

  “What sort of thing amuses you, Captain Runnymeade?”

  “What does that mean exactly?”

  “I haven’t quite got your wave-length, but I gather that you’re not a sucker.”

  “What d’you mean by that?” asked Runnymeade, in a voice suddenly quiet.

  “Hush, ‘Boy,’ hush,” said Stefania putting a hand on the sleeve of his jacket.

  “I meant merely that you’re apparently not a farmer yourself. Nor am I—it gave me up.”

  Runnymeade sat back, nodding his head to himself. “At any rate, my other friends don’t call me a sucker to my face, although they probably think it.”

  “Oh no, ‘Boy’,” said Stefania. “Don’t pretend that you’re hurt. You were playing with Farm Boy, now Farm Boy is playing with you.”

  “Very well. I can see I am in the way, so I’ll say goodnight all, and leave you to enjoy yourselves.” He pushed back his chair and toppled over.

  “I can tell you one thing,” said Piers, when ‘Boy’ was back in his chair. “I saw this farm boy once doing a very fine stroke of business in the market. Made a good profit, too, over Rosebud. She was beautiful. What did she cost you, Phil? A tenner, wasn’t it? Quick work, I must say, and worth every penny of it. Don’t you agree, Gillian?”

  “She was a pet. A love. She was simply too, too sweet,” sang Gillian, and, draining her glass, she gave a loving glance at Runnymeade across the table.

  “You’re a dark horse, Maddison,” said Runnymeade, smiling to himself. “Why didn’t you bring Rosebud?”

  “She was looking after two other suckers at the time.”

  “I don’t get you. Who or what is this Rosebud?”

  “An Ayrshire heifer I bought at market.”

  When the laughter had ended, Runnymeade said, “Pay a dividend, and tell us more about this Rosebud.”

  “I bought two calves at market. They were starving. For all animals to be sent to market is tragedy. Market Hill at Colham is a place haunted by lost love, anguish, and fear. So I bought a cow from a milkman, so bagged up, as they say, that——”

  “A milkman bagged up, did you say? Or was he baggered up, possibly a euphemism for the familiar state of all farmers today?”

  “In a way, yes. But it was the cow who was in pain. She hadn’t been milked that morning, in order to show off the size of her bag.”

  He told them about the honest milkman, how Piers and Gillian waiting apart gave him a calmness to know that the cow was good, as was the milkman’s word. It was all a true play of social instinct, he said, feeling foolish.

  “God bless my soul,” said Runnymeade. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I suppose a ballet could be written around the incident—‘The Honest Milkman’?” said Piers.

 
; “Good God,” said Runnymeade, “And that’s how you spend your time. You’re a do-gooder, Maddison.”

  “You’re a do-gooder, too. Look at your wonderful party.”

  Cheers and handclapping seemed to depress the host. Phillip knew what he was feeling: the loneliness of the would-be artist, the dream of happiness that was built on the broken inner self. The mockery, the touchiness, the semi-scoffing attitude toward others were but signs of inner despair. He felt affection for Runnymeade.

  “Are there any more animals on your goddam farm, Maddison?’’

  “I’m afraid not. I lost my land through my own stupidity. Ideas pass, the land remains.”

  This simple statement caused silence. He was conscious of sympathy from the feminine young men at the end of the table. They had been listening to the talk with absorbed interest. Then one of their number took a mouth-organ out of his pocket and began to play a melancholy tune, improvising as he went on, bringing in bass notes to represent the noises of market. Suddenly the tune lifted into life, and another of the feminine young men got up and began to dance with hardly a sound of feet on the oak floor. Another joined him, throwing off his jacket, and another, until they were passing to and fro in the candlelit hall with a suggestion of the grace of swallows meeting and turning and circling over a lawn when the glass is falling and the gnats are flying low because of damp membraneous wings. Phillip felt tears coming to his eyes as he sat, hands folded as though meekly on his diaphragm, with a feeling of being borne above life, aware of Stefania moving her feet out of her low-heeled shoes and floating down the other side of the table, giving him the passing glance of a dove among swallows. The other girls joined in. He felt the part-communicable truth of the moment: of Rosebud and her gentleness, her grief for her own lost calf, her love given to the two calves he had bought: of Runnymeade, also aching under his bravura for lost love.

  They were miming the story: Rosebud was being danced by Stefania, the Honest Milkman by a male dancer, the calves by two girls. The others made the market-day crowd, all in silence, through motion: the flow of feeling transformed to movement.

  Then everybody was clapping and laughing—except Runnymeade, who sat at the head of the table, leaning back a little in his chair, his manner of faint mockery that of a man wilfully apart, watching in a surrealistic world of cubes and angles, Phillip dancing with Stefania.

  As for Phillip, he felt himself to be moving on air while holding and being upheld by air.

  *

  The morning star had risen in the east when, feeling his way down a dark passage with feet and hands, a swirling vehicle of acidity remaining after two bottles of champagne, he was aware of Runnymeade’s voice, now petulant, now pleading, now angry, repeating the same words again and again—behind the closed door—Beat me—beat me—Goddamit, why don’t you beat me!—ending the pleas with a crash. What was Runnymeade doing?—his conscience demanding punishment?—and for what? God, how easy it was to lose one’s true self … and with a pulling movement of hands along the wall he counted to twenty-three before stopping, to proceed again with caution, until he found and overcame the obstacle, sought and found the glass handle of the ‘throne’—a large glass knob cut with a score of facets. He had observed this potential bolt-hole, making a mental map-reference to it as it were, on the way down to dinner.

  He turned the cut-glass knob; and after a timeless period of surgent repentance on his knees lifted the plug and left the hide, his bearings beyond tight-closed eyes fixed upon the length of the passage, particularly the step—up this time—now twenty paces on—slowly——

  He tripped and fell over. The jolt upset everything—he must go back to the cut-glass handle—he was conscious of someone helping him up, leading him into candle-light. A voice was saying Drink this. Fizzy stuff. His legs were lifted and he was floating on a bed; but not, thank God, with saliva coming into his mouth for the dreaded return.

  Later, he knew that his forehead was being sponged with cold water. The candlelight revealed an oval face enclosed in a white bathing turban. He felt better.

  “Stefania, how very kind of you.”

  “How do you feel, ‘Farm Boy?’”

  “Better, thank you.”

  She sat on the side of the bed and looked at him.

  “Why do you men drink? I know what ‘Boy’ is looking for—his mother. But what are you looking for?”

  “I don’t drink much, as a rule.”

  “But you are looking for something. Isn’t Felicity enough, and your writing? You are sad about your farm. Why? Tell me. Do you know what it is? If so, tell me. Don’t be afraid of me. I have known many men—I have known Nijinsky, yes, I still know Nijinsky. There was a contradiction in his life that overwhelmed him, just as there is in ‘Boy’, only a different contradiction. I try to help him. I try to help you. Tell me, ‘Farm Boy’.”

  “All life is a search for ‘le spectre de la rose’.”

  She looked at him again and said, “You are a poet, as well as a Farm Boy.”

  “‘As a necromancer raises from the rose-ash, the ghost of the rose’—I must raise my ‘spectre de la rose’—or die.”

  “You will die in any case, ‘Farm Boy’. Who was she?”

  “My first wife, who died at nineteen, having a child. The wrong way round. Feet first.”

  “Did the child live?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is the child now?”

  “Lucy—my second wife—looks after him. She loves him more than I do. With a true, human love, which I lack.”

  “Go back to Lucy, and love your son, ‘Farm Boy’.”

  She kissed him on the forehead, and he returned to Felicity’s room, got in beside her, and fell asleep.

  Felicity lay in her bed, unmoving. She was thinking, or rather feeling, that she had lost Phillip. She had seen him returning along the passage, and entering the bedroom of the beautiful, the graceful Stefania Rozwitz, whom she adored. If only her mother had allowed her to train as a dancer, as she had wanted to when a child.

  Chapter 2

  FLUMEN MONACHORUM

  Phillip went to London to make a complaint about the engine of his car. The Portland Street salesman was suavely repetitive.

  “The Motor Association engineer’s report made it clear, surely, sir, that the oil-flow needed only a little adjustment. The regulating screw on the oil-pipe to the overhead valve tappets needed a turn or two, I thought I heard him say.”

  “I fancy that is what you suggested.”

  “Really, sir? But I’d not seen the car before, it only came in that morning. Have you tried adjusting the oil screw, sir?”

  “Oh yes. There’s no compression in one of the cylinders. You can hear the air hissing past the piston when you turn the handle.”

  “A broken ring, perhaps, sir. If you’d like us to take off the cylinder head for you, and can spare a couple of hours, I’ll get a mechanic to draw the piston.”

  Phillip went back that afternoon. The front cylinder was badly scored. “The gudgeon pin apparently came adrift, sir. It looks like a rebore.”

  “How much will a rebore cost?”

  “We might do it for ten pounds. She’ll require new pistons, of course. Shall we say fifteen pounds for the job?”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t be fair to ask you to pay for the entire job, since I bought the ’bus as it was. Caveat emptor, you know.”

  “That’s very sporting of you, sir. I’ll tell you what, we’ll throw in the pistons. How about a tenner for the job, sir? By the look of the toe-mark on the floorboard by the accelerator pedal, the last owner caned your engine somewhat.”

  When the work was done he drove home at thirty miles an hour. The dipstick showed clean oil, and none used. He must take Lucy for a drive, at once.

  “You look after the house while we’re gone, Felicity. I’m going to take Lucy to look over that house at Flumen Monachorum we saw on the way to the Yacht Club last Saturday.”

  Felicity felt u
nhappy because Phillip did not invite her to come, too. Had he forgotten what he had said to her? ‘We’ll go over together, and if the place is all right, I’ll take it, then well bring Lucy and let it be a surprise for her.’

  Now she watched them driving away, and felt forlorn. He did not really love her. Was he in love with Stefania Rozwitz? Had he slept with her that night of the party?

  *

  “Lucy, d’ you think Mother will mind if we move some miles south of Fawley, now that they’re going to live there when Father retires?”

  “Well, all Mother’s letters have been about how wonderful it will be for her to be so near the children.”

  “But Skirr farmhouse is sold, as you know, with the rest of the estate, and we’ve got to give vacant possession by Michaelmas. And frankly, I don’t fancy living in one of the flats at Fawley, right on top of my parents.”

  Lucy thought that this was perhaps not the time to tell Phillip that Mother had written to her, asking her if it were possible that she, Lucy, might take Doris’ two little boys, so that Doris could go back to her old job of teaching in London, and spend her holidays in the country with them. Mother had said in her letter that, when she and Father came to live there, it might result in a reconciliation between Father and Doris, now that the marriage between Doris and Bob Willoughby had failed.

  Lucy would love to have Doris’ two little boys, it would be so good for Billy and Peter to have some cousins to play with. After all, Fawley was big enough, and there was plenty of garden, and the downs behind. But Phillip did not get on with either of his sisters, Elizabeth or Doris. So Lucy said nothing about the letter from his mother.

  “I don’t want to live at Fawley. The downs will be out of bounds, tanks churning up the turf. Instead of rooks cawing there’ll be the crack of tank cannon, and splintered trees.” He thought of Bourlon Wood in the battle for Cambrai in November 1917, and drove on slower than before.