The Phoenix Generation

by Henry Williamson

  He went home to Monachorum, and was happy with Lucy and the children.

  *

  It was August, and the Royal Wessex Yacht Club, at the end of the crescent of Georgian houses along the western curve of the bay, was in full burgee. There were dances (to the gramophone or the wireless) in one or another of the seaside summer houses every night. The Navy was in harbour (a small cruiser). The pennant of the South Wessex cricket ground fluttered in the breeze. The club was swelled by temporary members—friends, relations and members of the three services and the only three possible professions. Gone were the days when there were only three possible schools. The war had brought its social compromises within the Royal Wessex Yacht Club.

  Phillip was rowing Melissa from the shore in his dinghy. The lug sail was not yet up: a race was imminent: yachts with unreefed canvas were skimming up and down the fairway. He felt himself to be in a state of grace, with Melissa sitting at ease on the thwart before him. She wore serge trousers loosely almost baggily cut, with rope-soled shoes and a blue jersey. Her curly hair fell to just below her shoulders.

  Phillip was now on intimate terms with the family. He wondered if George and Julia Abeline had parted company, for George never appeared at the family seaside house where Julia lived with her children—Melissa, and her brothers Giles and Nigel, when home for the holidays. Phillip privately thought this was a good thing, for once after the Abelines had come to dinner at Monachorum, George had taken him aside and whispered, apropos of something Julia had said, “She must have left her brains in her mother’s womb.”

  At least Julia had poise and charming manners, he thought, which was more than George had. Julia more than once had offered to put him up, after a late evening at the club, but Phillip had always refused, since he did not feel altogether at home with her; but after he and Lucy had spent a couple of days there with the children, he lost the feeling of slight constriction, which, Julia had remarked once to him, in a frank talk after several drinks, was due to pretentiousness on his part.

  Like Dikran Michaelis, he thought, of whom it was said, ‘Not so much brilliant, as brilliantine’. Or, ‘Every other inch a gentleman’.

  “Yes, I suppose I do seem pretentious, Julia, but the fact is I’ve never lost the feeling of nervousness with you, after our talk in May, nineteen eighteen, about that rare cuckoo. I felt I was a bore.”

  “Not at all, Phillip, not in the very least. They still talk at Husborne about your marvellous sound-ranging by echo on the front of the house, before your bandages came off. It was simply marvellous. I was amazed I can tell you. Oh yes,” she said, lighting another cigarette, “you were simply marvellous. Oh yes. Uncle Bohun still talks about it whenever I go there.”

  After that Phillip often stayed a night, sometimes two. One morning he saw through the open breakfast room door two strange men at the table. Julia took him aside before he entered the room and said in a whisper, “Don’t let on this isn’t the Ocean Hotel, you know, the house next door. They arrived here this morning just as I was taking in the milk at the top of the steps. They said they’d driven through the night from London.”

  “It must have been one of them that tried to turn the door handle while I was having my cold tub.”

  “I’m simply longing to see their faces when they find out this isn’t their hotel.”

  Julia led the way in. The two strangers continued to eat eggs and bacon, until Julia said, “May I introduce Colonel Maddison?” One nodded, then went on cutting up a rasher, the other half got to his feet. Both looked slightly embarrassed.

  “Phillip, may I cook you some porridge, or would you prefer cornflakes?”

  “I’m afraid we arrived rather early,” said the one who had half got to his feet. “When will our rooms be ready?”

  “Oh—well—you see——” Julia’s smile lit up her face. “May we talk about it after breakfast? I have two small rooms at the back, if you won’t mind having them for a few days.”

  “But in your letter you said we could have the two rooms facing the harbour, surely?”

  “My letter?”

  “Isn’t this the Ocean Hotel?”

  “Oh, no,” said Julia vaguely. She added briskly “The Ocean Hotel’s next door. That way, Number Three. Oh yes, the Ocean Hotel’s next door.”

  “I say, I’m most fearfully sorry. We’ll go at once.” Both men were on their feet now, alert and deferential as became sahibs.

  “Ah ha, you came to the wrong door!” laughed Julia. “What fun! Anyway, stay and finish breakfast, won’t you? I’m awf’ly sorry the bathroom was occupied when you came. Yes, the Ocean’s next door,” said Julia, with a laugh, and with her style of repetition that had maddened the neither-one-thing-nor-the-other George Abeline.

  “It’s most awf’ly good of you. May I be so bold as to ask the name of our charming hostess?”

  “I’m Lady Abeline,” said Julia promptly, like a busy person at the telephone saying “Wrong number”. “Have you come to do some sailing? You have? Oh well, Colonel Maddison and I will take you round to the Club this morning, if you’ve no other arrangements, and you can meet the secretary, and arrange about temporary membership.”

  “That is most kind of you, Lady Abeline.”

  “And how is Kenya?”

  “Sisal and coffee not so good, I’m afraid.”

  “You’ll meet a number of fellows also back on leave, I expect.”

  When the two men had gone next door Phillip said, “Oh, by the way, Julia, when I was at Husborne in nineteen eighteen I was only an acting lieutenant-colonel——”

  Julia appeared not to have heard this remark. She and Melissa were laughing at what they appeared to think of as a tremendous joke. “Oh Lor’, you should have seen their faces when they found out this wasn’t the Ocean! My dear, it was killing,” to Phillip.

  He felt happy, life was light, easy: Ariel had come again—the summer sun of boyhood, of the first visit to the West Country in May, 1914. “Well, I’ll leave you two together,” said Julia, taking her coffee and dry toast (rye bread) and honey upstairs. So Phillip hovered around the kitchen while Melissa cooked his breakfast. They sat at a bare wooden table, scrubbed until the grain in the wood stood out. Giles and Nigel, Melissa’s brothers, who had returned from the Abbey very late the night before in an old Scripps-Booth runabout, were sleeping on.

  “I suppose I should ask you if you slept well?” said Melissa.

  “Very well, thanks.” He added, “I suppose I ought to go back home this morning.”

  “There’s no need to go unless you have to.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She looked at him steadily. “Unless you want to go.”

  “I want to stay.”

  She sparkled, her tongue darted out and in again like a bumblebee’s first sip at honey. He heard himself saying, “Would you like to come sailing in Scylla? I expect you’re much in demand to crew.”

  “I’d love to come. There’s a race on, it’ll be fun to watch from the water.”

  He got up and standing before her said, “You wrote me a beautiful letter after the dance at Runnymeade’s. I’ve read it many times.”

  She was pale. He sat beside her, putting his arms around her, feeling her curls on his cheek with his nose, and as gently kissed first one cheek bone then the other.

  “Your feelings are important to me,” he said as he stood back, smoothing her hair from crown to ears. “You are beautiful in your own right.”

  “I must turn off the gas under the coffee.” She returned to put her arms round his neck and hug him. “And your feelings are important to me, Phillip.” She added, “They always were.”

  “Since you were five, at Husborne, in nineteen eighteen?”

  “Yes, ever since then.”

  “I often wonder if, when I am thinking about you, the waves are coming from you to me.”

  “I think about you now and again.”

  “Only now and again?”

  “Well, quit
e a lot.” She was now self-possessed. “Sit down and get on with your breakfast. Quince jam or marmalade?”

  “Whichever you like.”

  “It’s what you like.”

  “Sorry. Quince, please.”

  “‘Sorry’—‘sorry’—don’t say that word to me again. You are so much stronger than your Donkin.”

  “Donkin was my cousin Willie.”

  She put toast before him. “Yes, Lucy told me. How’s the trout book getting on? I’ll type it for you if you like.”

  *

  The 6-metre class race began in a stiff breeze from the south-west. The first leg of the course was due south to the chequered channel buoy, Fisher’s; west of Gull Island to round the Campion buoy for the long haul east to the first harbour buoy and home to cross the starting line.

  After the first hour the sun was obscured by low overcast cloud, while the wind freshened. Cat’s-paws on marbled waters became lion-rushes to the growl of gusts while reefs were rolled around booms and the recall signal was run up the Club mast. A 7-force wind was blowing.

  He felt not the slightest anxiety. Melissa sat calmly amidships, adjusting her weight to the drive of the dinghy. They were a mile west of the starting line when the last 6-metre reached its mooring. Tide was lapsing, wind against water. Scylla on the homeward run banged and bumped into waves and shook off all sheared water.

  Gale cones were hoisted. The wind was violent. They were watched from the upper windows of the Club house through binoculars. The motor-boat came to meet them, and returned alongside to starboard. All was well. Scylla had proved herself. So had Phillip. And Melissa. Cheeks glowed. When they landed on the slip the motorboat man said, “Well done, sir,” as he helped off the lady’s oilskin.

  *

  “May I have a cold tub?”

  “Isn’t that what otters require?”

  He was making whistling and yipping noises when Melissa came through the unlocked door and walked to a cupboard to get him a hot towel.

  “Do you always utter odd cries when you are in your bath?”

  “Always at the full of the moon.”

  “But it’s the new moon.”

  “I’m practising.”

  She hung the towel on a chair-back and with a satisfied glance over her shoulder walked out.

  Julia said, when they were drinking pink gins before supper, “Thanks for bringing back Mel so promptly, Phillip. No, I wasn’t alarmed in the very least, but Mel’s not been well, and you know the danger of getting cold at her age. Do stay the night if you want to.”

  Melissa was drinking milk with glucose. After supper, with two hot-water bottles, she went to bed. And sat up while trying to put her feelings into verse.

  How could you have known that I loved you so,

  When, with a child’s heart and eyes

  I followed your moods and ways,

  Your look, and the homeward road whence

  A receding you journeyed to that troubled place

  In Flanders?

  Do I, in tidal flooding twilights, link

  The shore-birds wet-sand prints

  And starry pipings,

  To you, remote across the hills, yet infinitely mine

  As with a child’s simplicity, I feel in me,

  In man and nature, the divine

  Love stirring?

  After breakfast Phillip said, “I have so enjoyed myself, Julia.”

  “Do stay on if you want to.”

  “Thank you, but I’m afraid I’ve got to be in London to meet Piers. We’re going to Birkin’s party at Olympia.”

  “Oh lor’, that fellow.”

  “I’ve never heard Birkin speak,” said Melissa.

  “Would you like to come?” he dared to say when alone with her.

  It was arranged that she should stay with an aunt in London where Phillip and Piers would call for her.

  *

  For nearly two weeks the morning newspaper owned by the Trades Union Council and the Labour Party, together with the two Liberal papers and the Communist news-sheet, had been urging all men who believed in the principles of equality, democracy, and free speech to protest against the advertised massed rally of Birkin’s Imperial Socialist Party. Birkin’s face displayed on thousands of posters stuck to suburban walls and boards had been torn down and defaced; to be replaced at night by volunteer members of the I.S.P. The route was marked by arrows at key points. As the Silver Eagle passed one arrow, some men were in the act of reversing it.

  “What a pity all political parties can’t combine,” said Melissa.

  “Only necessity unites dissident parties, in a war.”

  “But the other species don’t fight amongst themselves,” said Phillip.

  “‘Homo rapiens’, as my father’s old friend Henry Salt called us.”

  “He wrote a fine pamphlet about Richard Jefferies.”

  Kensington High Street was dark with figures. Phillip noticed a group of men in horn-rimmed spectacles leaning forward to peer at each car as it moved slowly past. Across the road another group was watching the first group.

  “Birkin’s boys,” said Piers. He was wearing the party badge, a warrior with a sword confronting the minotaur. “We must find a garage. I don’t want your Eagle overturned.”

  This was done, and they walked back along Exhibition Road. Two hundred yards short of the main entrance the crowd was solid. While they waited, a clip-clop of mounted police edged a way through the crowd, followed by others on foot. With linked arms these tried to maintain a passage for ticket holders. Cries of ‘Fascists’, ‘Enemies of the Workers’, ‘Scabs’, etc., were drowned when another group started to sing the Internationale to the waving of small red flags. Farther on towards the narrow street beside a railway line which led to the main entrance counter cries broke out, sharp and staccato, “Two-four-six-eight-who do-we-appreciate-B-I-R-K-I-N—BIRKIN!” At this, booing spread across the crowd which, to Phillip’s eye, seemed about the size of a division of infantry—ten thousand men.

  “Juden,” said Piers. “At least they haven’t got machine guns, as in Red Charlottenburg.”

  Piers had recently returned from Germany. He had been writing scripts for a film company which had studios in the woods north of Berlin appropriately called Neubabelsberg, since films were made simultaneously in German, French, and English. The same star was used in all three versions since she was tri-lingual, but the dialogue was rewritten and the minor parts acted by nationals of each of the three countries. Piers had been writing the English dialogue, together with the English director. He had watched some of the nightly fights in Berlin between the Communists and the Brown-shirts of the N.S.D.A.P., or National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei led by Hitler, of whom he partly approved, because the Brown-shirts were cleaning up the worst of the vice shops in the city; nearly all of them, he said, run by Polish profiteering Jews who had become rich during the inflation, when millions of marks could be bought for a few roubles.

  “It was commonplace,” Piers told Phillip, “that any film-struck young girl coming from the country and prepared for a camera test, found herself told to strip off her garments, thinking she was to act in a ‘realistic’ play until she was finally raped before the camera. I must admit that as far as I could see, most of the audience in a private house watching one such film were nearly all Germans, bald and middle-aged and biting their cigars as though they were nipples.”

  Phillip glanced at Melissa. “My cousin Willie told me about the destitution in Berlin after the war. I wish I’d been there to see it.”

  “You must come over and be my guest,” said Piers.

  “Thanks. My cousin told me that he saw in Hamburg small girls of six or seven offering themselves to sailors for a piece of soap. They must be clean, the Germans.”

  “Sign of a guilt complex,” said Piers. “My father, a typical Etonian of this period, is always concerned to have clean hands. Believed in the birch as a good healthy corrective to lust between member
s of Pop and fresh-faced fags. Canes tied with pale blue riband hanging on the study walls of members of Pop. This mob here is out to kill.”

  “I should say that, individually, each man here is struggling for a better life for his children.”

  “Yes, with cosh, razor, and broken bottle. I’m afraid that most of your swans are geese.”

  The two men and Melissa went down the gangway kept by the police and, to the jeers of the crowd, got inside the building. There they were scrutinised, but on Piers being recognised, were smilingly led the way to their seats.

  *

  Birkin was late. The van bringing him had been held up by the angry mob. Individual faces had threatened the uniformed figure sitting inside, ignoring them as police pushed their way around the van, amidst cries of Scabs, Blacklegs, Bogies, Bleeders.

  An hour after the advertised time the lights were diminished, and a procession of stewards holding banners of the many branches of the I.S.P. moved up the central gangway, followed by Birkin. As he thrust himself forward trying to minimise a Byronic limp, all within rose to their feet the better to see the pale but smiling figure, now being greeted by cheers from those with raised arms and open hands, and boos from sections of faces below clenched fists. Phillip thought how eager he looked, rather as Willie had looked, but Birkin seemed more compact, more head than spirit. He might have been limping out of the first battle of Ypres in 1914 with a spiritual translation of all that horror and chaos into clarity and order, he thought, as the tall spare figure reached the platform erected in the middle of the vast floor and climbed up.