The Phoenix Generation

by Henry Williamson

  “Yes, thank you.”

  After more small talk, Mr. Fitzwarren said to Mrs. Ancroft that he must be going, but would telephone later. Mrs. Ancroft saw him to the door.

  As soon as her mother was out of the room Felicity sprang up and said, “Oh, darling, I can hardly realise that you are here!”

  He said quietly, “Lucy says you must have your baby. I think so too. By the way, am I still an American?”

  “I haven’t said anything more about it. Only Mother is shocked because she says I seem to be so casual about it.” Her face glowed with happiness.

  Mrs. Ancroft returned.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Maddison. You must be tired after your journey. Would you like some coffee?”

  “May I?”

  “Certainly. Felicity, will you attend to it?”

  “Yes, Mother,” replied the girl, going out with an adoring glance at Phillip. There was a pause; then Mrs. Ancroft said, raising her eyes, “I wonder if you have anything to tell me about my daughter, Mr. Maddison?”

  “Felicity tells me that you think it best that she does not have her child. In which case,” he said, with a stammer of awkwardness, “I hope that you will regard me as your banker.”

  “Does that mean that you assume responsibility for my daughter’s condition?”

  “Oh yes, Mrs. Ancroft.”

  Part of Mrs. Ancroft’s face seemed to glitter, as though with petrifaction: it was the eyes that gave this effect, in a red, rock-like face. She suffered from heart-trouble.

  “How could you, a married man, behave in that way towards one so young, and so inexperienced?” she said. “It is a terrible thing to have happened to one so gently brought up. Mr. Fitzwarren, my daughter’s guardian, is greatly shocked. I will say quite frankly that he was against her going so far away from her home to work, from the very first. I foolishly considered that country air would be good for her, since she was often pale and inclined to be depressed. But had I known then what the situation between you and Felicity already was, I should certainly never have given my approval, but on the contrary, taken her guardian’s advice.”

  To this he was silent. The coffee arrived. “Girlie, will you bring some more hot milk? Thank you, darling.”

  When Felicity was out of the room, Mrs. Ancroft continued, “What will your wife say when she knows, Mr. Maddison?”

  “She said she thought it would be the very thing to give Felicity some sort of balance, Mrs. Ancroft.”

  She looked at him curiously, as though unable to resolve the puzzle of this man who had written The Water Wanderer, such a delightful, revealing book; only to follow it with The Phoenix, a mixture of saintliness and blasphemy, of wonderful descriptions of natural beauty hand in glove with such appalling sentiments.

  “I cannot understand why the hero of your novel, The Phoenix, who is presumably based on yourself, should hold such dreadful ideas about his own country! Oh yes, well do I know that war is a tragedy. But surely, Mr. Maddison, love of one’s country counts for something? Three of Felicity’s uncles, my brothers, died in that war. You survived. Is that all the war meant to you, what you put into the mouth of your hero, Donkin?”

  “Mrs. Ancroft, my novel is not autobiographical. But I may tell you that Donkin was a real person. I hoped that it would be clear that he was his own tragedy, but I expressed it poorly, I’m afraid.”

  “At least I am glad to learn that from your own mouth.” She looked at the ormolu clock. “Now I must leave for my appointment with an eminent surgeon, if you will excuse me. I expect you to be here when I return.”

  When her mother had left, Felicity took Phillip for a walk on the common.

  “I’m sorry I was angry with you, Felicity.”

  “Ah, but it was my foolishness over the sandshoes that made you so upset. But you are here now, that is all that matters.” She took his hand. “O, I am so glad to see you! I thought I would never see you again. I ran last night on the common, in my nightdress. I thought of my baby being taken away from me. I could see it with its unsunned eyes lying in a hospital bin, wrapped up in a parcel. I had wanted to drown myself, to save everyone trouble, but I knew this might cause more trouble to you, so I went home.”

  “You poor darling. Hold on, never give way. And when your baby comes, about the same time as Lucy’s, I’ll get both registered as twins. Then there will be no stigma. If I’m copped I’ll probably do porridge, but people will be on the side of a man who thinks of the baby before himself. It might even sell my books!” he laughed.

  When Mrs. Ancroft returned she said, “Oh, that specialist is such a fool. He had already agreed to do the operation for a hundred guineas, after merely glancing at the doctor’s certificates, but when I said, ‘Isn’t it a pity that we are the only country which is so hypocritical about abortion?’ he looked at me and said, ‘Madam, if, as your words appear to infer, these certificates are not authentic, then I refuse to consider the matter further’ and with that he pressed the bell for me to be shown out. Such a stupid man.”

  Phillip avoided the ravaged eyes in the haughty suffering face which looked for a moment almost forlorn; then the mouth recovered its former determination.

  “Felicity shall come down in a few days’ time to pack her things. I have told her that she must return the same day and you must not dissuade her. I need hardly remind you that she is a minor, Mr. Maddison.”

  “Very well, I’ll go back now. Perhaps you’ll let me know when you are coming down, Felicity?”

  Mrs. Ancroft called out to Mr. Fitzwarren waiting in the next room, “Come in, Fitz, and be a witness to what Mr. Maddison has just said. He has promised never to see Felicity again.”

  Phillip said firmly, “That is not true, Mrs. Ancroft,” at which the lady, hitherto masterful, murmured, “Oh, my heart, my heart,” and supported by Mr. Fitzwarren on one arm and her daughter on the other, she sank back on the sofa.

  Phillip left the room, lest his presence cause further upset. He was near the front door when he heard slipper’d footfalls behind him.

  “Don’t worry, darling, don’t worry. I’ll never leave you so long as you want me.”

  “And I’ll stand by you always.” They kissed hurriedly. “Make my apologies for leaving so abruptly. I’m with you, remember, and so is Lucy.” And kissing the back of her neck, so slender under the fair soft hairs, he was about to go down the steps when she said, “I’ll come with you to the car. Oh, I love the Silver Eagle.”

  *

  Mr. Fitzwarren was saying, “Now don’t forget what I said, Nora. I know of a cottage in the woods in Oxfordshire, which I’m prepared to buy now against my retirement in a couple of years’ time. It will be the very place for you to take Felice until it is all over. Meanwhile I’ll find out about the adoption and let you know.” And putting on his black Homburg hat he went down the steps, thinking, as he saw Felice returning, that he would marry her.

  Mrs. Ancroft had her own ideas for her daughter’s future. “You and I will go away together, Girlie darling, just as we did when you were little, and be all in all to one another. We’ll find our own little cottage in the country, far from anywhere, perhaps in the Lake District, and you shall have your baby there. And we three shall be all in all to one another, won’t we?”

  Felicity pretended to herself that the three were Philip, her baby, and herself, living somewhere in Scotland. He would study trout by some loch or burn, and catch their breakfast at the same time. Tears filled her eyes as she thought of this hopeless fantasy; yet it persisted; and she wondered if Phillip was thinking the same thing—perhaps all of them together—Lucy, Billy, Peter, and Roz—herself and her child. Then no one would be unhappy. Had he not offered to take the baby and have it registered as Lucy’s, which would mean all of them together again? It was with a shock she heard her mother saying, “And Girlie darling, I shall adopt our baby when it is born, and then we shall always be together, shall we not?”

  Two days later Fitz made his proposal to
Mrs. Ancroft. “I’ll marry Felice myself, old girl, to keep the good name of Ancroft.”

  “A noble gesture, Fitz,” she replied, equably, “but I could not think of allowing you to make such a sacrifice,” while she thought that she would adopt the baby when it came; then in due course, when Girlie met some nice young man, no one need be any the wiser.

  *

  When Phillip returned to Monachorum he read the letter from his New York publishers, MacCourage & Co., Inc. John MacCourage asked how the book on the trout was coming along, and when could he see a copy of the typescript. Phillip replied that he could not see the form the book should take: there was so much to be seen by the river; and to be frank, it was not easy to concentrate at the present time, with so much domestic detail filling the Imagination, as Keats wrote of his muse, with a capital ‘I’.

  When this letter reached New York his publisher replied at once with a long night cablegram asking Phillip to come over at his expense, tourist class, and stay with him at his apartment in Manhattan where he might be able to help him co-ordinate some of his ideas, since he himself was a keen fisherman. If Phillip brought his rods he would take him north to spend two weeks at his Fish and Game Club in Canada.

  Phillip thought at once that he couldn’t possibly go. How would the family get on without him? He went to see his father.

  “Ah, old chap, now you are beginning to feel what it is to be a family man, I can see.”

  Richard laughed as he struck his spade, with its work-bright blade, into the plot of alsike, with its pink clover flowers, he was about to dig-in. “I thought of dibbing-in my first early potatoes under this wall next March. It will give shelter from the frost wind from the east. How’s the trout book coming along? Have you started your garden yet?”

  “More or less.”

  “Shall you go to America?”

  “Well, Father, I dare not allow anything to come before my eyes until I can see how to do the trout book. I’ve got somehow to link the theme with the Zeitgeist—the spirit of the times. It isn’t only knowledge of fish that I’m groping for. I’ve been reading back numbers of the Salmon and Trout Magazine, as well as the Flyfisher’s Journal. Also many books. What I want to cohere—to bring to life—is something beyond local things. I mean—well—civilisation is threatening all wild life—rivers being polluted——”

  Hetty came into the walled garden.

  “I know you are so very busy, Phillip, but do tell me, how are Lucy, and the little ones? I am simply longing to see them.”

  “Lucy sends her love, and says she will come over shortly to see you both.”

  “Ah, then she can ask her father about the artichoke tubers. When the other day I saw Lucy she said she would get some from her old home. I thought of putting them in the corner over there.”

  “I’ll tell Lucy to remind Ernest to bring them, Father.”

  “How do they manage, those two alone?” asked Hetty.

  “Oh, Ernest and Pa muddle through somehow. I’ve tried again and again to persuade Ernest to sell the machinery, which was hardly used when his brothers Fiennes and Tim went to Australia years ago, but Ernest does nothing. He says, ‘Oh, I shan’t bother,’ while nearly a thousand pounds worth of lathes and milling machines depreciate. Ernest is living on his capital, which isn’t much. He potters about the semi-derelict Works and feeds spiders in their webs, trying to see which will grow the biggest. Still, I used to do that, as an impotent young boy, so who am I to criticise Ernest?”

  “Who looks after Ernest and his father, Phillip?”

  “No one except themselves. I suppose there isn’t enough money left over to pay the so-called cook’s wages. I don’t know, I never go there,” he said with a trace of irritability. “I can’t bear to go over to Down Close. But who am I to talk. Look at the mess I’ve made of my life so far.”

  “But you’ve done ever so well, really, Phillip. It seems a shame to waste all these beautiful rooms. I suppose you aren’t thinking of letting Lucy and the children come over here to stay, now and again.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be much happier away from me, so it’s not a bad idea, Mother. I’ll suggest it to her.”

  “I thought that perhaps she should not be left alone in the house when you go to London.”

  “Yes‚ Mother,” he replied, quietly. “Yes.”

  “I wish I could do something about your sisters, Phillip. There they are, both in London, Elizabeth all day in her office, and living in a rented room in North London, and Doris as a schoolteacher. It seems such a pity that Father won’t allow either of them to live in the house in Hillside Road. I don’t suppose you are going to London soon, are you?”

  “I wasn’t, mother.”

  “I’m sure it’s not good for either of the girls to live so far apart. Now do come in and let me give you some tea, you look rather tired. I’ve had a fire lit in the drawing room, it gets so damp, I find.”

  They sat in the drawing room, close to the fire around which two screens were drawn in a vain attempt to exclude the east wind.

  “How do you like living here, Mother?”

  “Well, as I was saying, Phillip, without Elizabeth and Doris it will be lonely, at times, for me, after all those years in Wakenham. Still, your father seems to like his garden—he spends all his time on it. But the house is so big, after what we’ve been used to. What a pity you decided to give up the land——”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Mother! I did not give up the land! Uncle Hilary sold it—or made up his mind to sell it—before we had the promised conference—in order to marry Irene. I was quite prepared to set aside all my plans for writing, to which he’d never shown any sympathy—on the contrary, he was dead against it.”

  “Ah well, no one can put back the clock, my son. And as Father says, land has never been so cheap for more than a century, so perhaps it is all for the best that it was given up. Still, I can’t help thinking it is a pity. I’ve been looking at some of the records Father found in one of the oak chests—I wondered if they would interest you, as a writer, I mean. But perhaps you’ve already seen them? Father brought these in from the library.”

  She pointed to a heap of parchment deeds on the table.

  “Your father says he remembers your grandfather telling him that there were boxes and boxes of them in the attics. Have you time to glance at them?”

  “Well, at the moment my mind is rather pre-occupied, mother.” To avoid letting her feel disappointed he added, “Yes, of course I’d like to look at them.”

  She got up, and taking one from the table said that she found the details very interesting.

  “I made a summary of the will of William Beare Maddison in fifteen hundred and seven, just think of it, before Shakespeare was born. Here it is, so very interesting.”

  In the will (circa 1507) £4 was left to the poor of Colham, and to his most beloved wife W. B. Maddison left part of the barton, namely the ‘smalle parlour on the north side of the hall’, the buttery and the cellars under it, the ‘kitchin’ and the ‘bowlting house’ (bakehouse), with wainscot chamber, the chamber of the ‘kitchin,’ the ‘dornix chamber’ with the hangings of coarse damask, and the two chambers and the garret on the south side of the house.

  His wife was ‘not to meddle at all with the building or garret or cellar on the north side of the barton, but to suffer my son William Beare to have the same’. She was to have the ‘smalle room at the stairfoot, and the lodging over it, the newe house for the capons, and one of the two hogstyes, and ‘the newe stable and loft over all, with free ingress, egress, and regress to herself, her children, her servants, so long as she continued sole and unmarried.’

  This widow left to her daughter Elizabeth ‘parcells of her apparel’. One gown of ‘wrought velvet, one kirtle of the same, a gown of damask, two kirtles of velvet, a kirtle of wrought velvet and one of trifet taffeta, a petticoat of crimson Callymancho, and all linen appertaining to her proper wearing, a turkey grograyne gown with two yards of velvet,
a mourning gown of cloth, a petticoat of cloth with fur of lysle grograne, another of silk grogane with six welts of velvet.’

  “Well, Mother, it’s not exactly in my line. You see, I have to shut my mind to some things, in order to think about the trout book.”

  “Yes, of course, naturally. But I thought this might interest you particularly, after our walk to the Coppice, all of us together, when we were here for the christening of Billy and Peter. Do you remember? Hilary, Irene, Dora, Uncle John, your friend Piers—Oh, I did so enjoy that visit. You told us about the prices of coppice wood—well, this is about another coppice, Father said, because the Hanger Copse was chestnut and hazel, this was for oak, grown for tanning leather as well as for firing. It was written in seventeen eighty-five, in the Steward’s book.”

  Dead—dead—dead stuff—the blind trout slowly dying of—inanition——

  Upon a Statute Acre of Coppice Oak Wood of seventeen years Growth there should grow two tons of Bark and twenty two cords of Wood.

  Three Wood Acres make very near Five Statute acres.

  One Good Load of Wood in a kiln will burn Fifteen Yard of Lime.

  16½ ft. to a Perch to a Statute Acre.

  21 ft. to a Wood Acre.

  A Cord of Wood is 8 ft. 4 inches long, 4 ft. 6 inches high, 2 ft. 6 inches in length of Billet.

  Half a year’s land tax and window money at 4/- comes to £8:04:11½ Tax in All thus—

  “I make the total ten pounds and sevenpence.”

  “Here’s a list of the names of the men employed, Phillip. There were forty in those days. Just think of it.”

  “I don’t want to think about it, Mother. I want to think of the blind trout. Why don’t you write a book about all this?”

  “I would if I had your gift, my son.”

  “As I told you when you first came down here, Mother, my talent is buried, with most of my generation. No, that’s sentimental. But as a fact it is not possible to give all my imagination to what I want to write just now. Perhaps I’ll be able to write it in my field at Malandine.”