The Phoenix Generation

by Henry Williamson

  He held her and stroked her brow. So tender, so clear-feeling. He kissed the dear head, so vulnerable now that he held it. Generous Melissa, O, he must protect this frank and impulsive child. “Poor you, all alone on your birthday.”

  She diverted, playing with his mood. “Will you bring Lucy and the children to my tea party on Saturday? Daddy will be back then, probably bringing his new wife-to-be. Or do you object to pre-marital relationships?”

  “Only my own, I suppose.”

  “How is Felicity?”

  “She’s very happy now.”

  “I heard about the monk by the river. Someone said it was her father. What’s he like?”

  “They get on very well together. All three of us do, in fact.”

  “Why not join them, if that’s the case.”

  “The affaire is over. We are now friends.”

  “I thought she was a nice girl, but not right for you, if you won’t object to my saying so. Why do you move away from me? Do I stink?”

  “You smell only very slightly musky.”

  “Really!”

  “A very rare scent. Do you know that the musk flower lost its scent everywhere in the world in nineteen fourteen?”

  “I was about to bathe when you telephoned. D’you mind if I do now? You can come and scrub my back for me if you like.”

  “Do your guests usually do that for you?”

  “Depends on who they are. You might like to amuse yourself with this book.” She gave him The Kreutzer Sonata and went into her bedroom, taking the letter. Then to the bathroom. He heard running water, and sat still. Double noise of water, cold running in. Fear troubled him. If only I could feel ordinary. Is part of me, like Hitler, ‘dead beyond resurrection’, as someone in Berlin said at the Taverne? The bath water was still. Was she reading the letter? Time seemed to hiss silently in a vacuum. At last, noises of sluicing. More stillness. He started at the words,

  “Are you reading Tolstoi?”

  “No.”

  “Come and scrub my back if you’ve nothing better to do.”

  He went into the bathroom. She was lying on her back and smiling like a small girl a little unsure of herself. She sat up, leaning forward to conceal her stomach, breasts hanging a little, ready for her back to be soaped. He rolled up his sleeves and, kneeling by the bath, worked the ball of ivory soap round her shoulder blades then up and down the nobbles of her spine. This was pleasurable, a service of devotion. Her hair roughly twisted at the back of her head, showing the long neck, and pink ear-lobes. He knelt to press his cheek against the back of the neck, loving her, but not with passion. You are my child, he thought, feeling the tenderness of Barley upon him.

  “I’ve read your letter. Most interesting!”

  When she stood up he saw she was in proportion, a Rodin girl in flesh. He held a towel around her as she got out of the bath. Folded it around her, pressing and patting. When she was dry she stepped out of the towel and put on a peignoir, pushing her toes into swan’s-down slippers. She seemed to have forgotten him as she went to her bedroom. A minute’s silence, then she called his name. She was standing by her dressing table, the gown hanging slightly open in front. He saw her belly, with the little bush before she put her arms round his neck and with half-open mouth kissed him, so that he felt the tip of her tongue. He felt shame that he could not respond, and went slowly out of the room.

  She followed him, her face pale. “You are a sadist, aren’t you?” He did not know what to say to her.

  During tea she showed him some photographs taken by her father. “George likes to take young girls in what he calls the buff. Here are school friends of mine, taken some time ago.”

  She put several sepia studies on his lap. “I’ve read the letter you wrote to me in Germany,” she went on, while he looked at the photographs. “I wonder if The Times man is right in what he said in the Taverne about Hitler being neither homosexual nor heterosexual?”

  “Until he finds the right woman I suppose he’ll remain what Churchill said of T. E. Lawrence. ‘A rare beast: does not breed in captivity’.”

  “Was Lawrence of Arabia a pederast?”

  “When I met him I felt he was a disembodied spirit.”

  “Not even a repressed pederast?”

  “What is a repressed pederast? A spinster? A man so natural that he isn’t a fornicating womaniser? One who waits for love with his or her own sort—the supreme attraction of that rare thing, ‘likeness of thought’? When that happens, the scent returns to the musk blossom.”

  “Oh darling, forgive me for calling you a sadist.”

  “Melissa, my flower, everyone has an atavistic streak. I was a proper little sadist when I was a boy. I had a stronger boy with me, whom I got to do my fighting. I used to urge him on to fight. It gave me a limpet-clinging feeling between my legs. But the often bloody results filled me with alarm—and the anguish of pity.”

  She sat beside him, and leaned her head on his breast, to be gentled.

  “You were releasing tensions that your father put upon you.”

  “I suppose a girl can feel the same?”

  “Possibly.” She was giving no more of herself away.

  “Also, Melissa, when one uses the imagination, and drives oneself with it, ‘much power has gone from me’, as Jesus said of himself.”

  The telephone bell rang. Lucy asked Phillip if he would like to bring Melissa back to supper, since she was alone. He gave her the receiver. She said, “I’d love to come, dearest Lucy.” She put down the receiver and going over to Phillip put her arms round his waist, pressed her cheek on his chest, closed her eyes and said, “You are a sweet man.”

  *

  At supper, among the children at the long candle-lit table, she told them that her father had bought two thousand acres of light land in East Anglia, at three pounds the acre including all buildings—four farmhouses, with all service cottages and premises.

  “I’d like to farm again” said Phillip. “Perhaps, if my trout book sells, I can manage it.”

  “Will you farm down here, d’you think?”

  “I did think of somewhere in East Anglia—land seems cheap there.”

  “What fun, we’ll all be together.”

  She helped Lucy bathe the children. She carried David to bed, thinking that the little boy was of Phillip’s flesh and warmth, and told him a story. She looked at the baby in its cot, and began to ache with longing. So much so that when she was leaving, and he said he’d run her back, she said she would walk across the park.

  “I love walking at night, and it will be my last chance to see the river in starlight.”

  “I’ll come with you, in case you fall in and frighten the spawning fish.”

  On the way into the park, hand in hand, she said, “You won’t think the worse of me, will you, for this afternoon?”

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t think that of me.” When it was time to part she said, “You will write, won’t you?”

  Dearest Melissa,

  Orion bestrides the southern sky, and signals that it is night. Lucifer arises in the cold mirk of dawn, and a far voice says it is day. Is that frost in the grasses around the Gartenfeste, or heavy dew? My partridges are calling. I am a spectre moving with the last of the night. Waves beat on the sands of Malandine. The sun is fuming below the line of the moor, Lucifer a bead of red gold beyond the Abbey.

  At every step the long grasses in the field, uncut for two years, scythe my ankles. I am a spectre, confronted by an apparition with two feathery horns above a mad staring face floating over, the spirit of silence. It shows no fear of me, this lone owl which lives in the dark pinewoods of the valley and sometimes calls a melancholy and vain Who? from my roof ridge at night.

  I wander over the next grazing field, as light flows full and wide. Ruddy vapours over the Chase have quenched the morning star. The sun’s rim gilds the tracks of sheep distinct among grasses, and the narrower trails of rabbits. I look back at my own braided steps, and imagine Me
lissian tracks beside them. And through the air I come to you.

  The sun was declining from Libra to the star-group of Scorpio, and the book on the blind trout was published. To the author’s surprise the critics greeted it on the day of publication as a small masterpiece. Just before Christmas the publisher wrote to say it had beaten all records for his firm by selling 3,000 copies in one day, in addition to the subscription of 7,000. Two reprints were on order.

  In the New Year the vicar of Flumen Monachorum said to Phillip at the Badminton Club in the old stables, “When are you going to give us another book like The Blind Trout? You should always write that kind of book, you know, and not attempt any more novels.”

  *

  Die Schwarze Forelle, as it was called in translation, was published in Berlin in due course. Phillip was able to return the 150 RM (he hoped without offence) to the N.S.D.A.P. official who had given him money in the Adlon Hotel.

  The repayment, made as an act of chivalry to a poor nation desperate for currency, altered the course of Phillip’s life during the years that were to follow.

  Nearly two thousand pounds in royalties is due for The Blind Trout, not including America and translations. If Birkin comes to power, farming will take its rightful place in the life of the nation. If Birkin fails to come to power, then farming will be a priority in defence of the nation.

  Towards one dark winter night of the New Year at 6 p.m., while listening beside his wireless set, Phillip heard the words,

  “The condition of His Majesty shows diminishing strength”

  and at once ran down to tell Lucy and Ernest. Then he called in Rippingall to listen.

  “May I bring my cocoa, sir?”

  Rippingall had come back with the frosts, penitent as usual.

  “The following bulletin has just been issued. The King’s life is moving peacefully towards its close.”

  *

  The voice from the aether ceased. There followed the dull tick-tock of a metronome. It went on and on. Lucy and Ernest went quietly to bed. Phillip remained with Rippingall. They lay on the rush mat, playing draughts, as in a billet—a good dry billet, thank God. At 10.45 p.m. the same words as before. They prepared for an all-night watch. Phillip fetched a bottle of whisky. They stood up. Phillip drank silently. Rippingall said, “In duty, sir, I drink my Sovereign’s health,” and threw the whisky between his teeth.

  “Draw up that armchair, old soldier, and make yourself at home. After all, this is your billet as much as mine.”

  Each man lay back in a padded leather armchair.

  “We must keep vigil, Lance-corporal Rippingall.”

  “Very good, mon capitain.”

  At eleven p.m. the same voice, the same words.

  “Have another drink, Corporal Rippingall. Help yourself.”

  Rippingall stood up. A tear dripped off his chin. “We’ve all got to come to it, sir. Maybe in the next war.” He was thinking, If it comes to that I’ll dye my hair black and ’list in the footsloggers. He raised his glass. “Cheerio, Major.” Having jerked back the liquid he remarked. “Chesterton once said, ‘Cocoa’s a cad.’ I fancy that was at the time of the Belgian Congo scandal.”

  Phillip thought to telephone the features editor of the Crusader and ask to be allowed to cover the funeral procession through London. No: it would be bad form to ask this before the King died.

  A single candle burned on the shelf below the chimney piece.

  The hands of the grandfather clock tick-tocked towards the roman figures XII.

  “Why don’t they have great music at a time like this? Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. They could fade it out as the voice repeats the news more humanly, more intimately, while omitting the preliminary ‘The following bulletin was issued’, and simply repeating the phrase, which is beautiful, ‘the King’s life is moving peacefully towards its close’. I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed. No more whisky, Sergeant Rippingall.”

  “No, Colonel.”

  Rippingall stood to attention. His moustachio ends were waxed and spiky and each spike was nearly three inches long. It looked bloody silly. He must have seen that photograph in the Crusader of some bogus old sweat with six-inch spikes.

  “Sir, with permission, I’ll remain on guard. For soon Death the Antic with his little pin, bores through the castle wall and—farewell King.”

  Phillip was hardly in bed when a discreet tap came on his door. He crossed over the polished oak slabs lying unevenly on their joists. Rippingall, making his voice steady, whispered, “Sir, the King died just before midnight, I ’eard it just now. And I could hear the guns at E-priss.” Tears ran down his cheeks.

  “You are right, Sergeant-major Rippingall. War is coming, I’m very much afraid. Goodnight, old friend.”

  “God bless you, sir,” sobbed Rippingall, going to bed with the bottle.

  The features editor of the Crusader replied that staff reporters would cover the funeral from various angles, but would Phillip write a personal-impressions article? They would pay fifty guineas for a thousand words.

  Phillip took Rippingall with him to London. He wanted a full-dress scene for his novel series to be started one day. The time was not ripe for it; the spirit of the people, which Wagner had written unconsciously gave strength to artists of their time, was against withdrawal. One must remain part of turmoil.

  At 4.30 a.m., of a morning threatening rain, the two men left an all-night café near Leicester Square and walked down Panton Street, making for the Circus where Eros, the winged archer, delicately paused after drawing his bow. Recalling Thomas Morland’s mere reference to Queen Victoria’s funeral procession in one of the novels comprising The Crouchend Saga, he was determined to make notes of all he saw. He told Rippingall to make a night of it. Walking up Piccadilly, they passed silent rows of people squatting on the pavement edges, feet in the gutter. Some had rugs over heads and shoulders; newspapers were wrapped round some legs, children among the adults. All were trying to doze.

  He decided to stand at the corner of St. James’ Street. Rain fell steadily and towards dawn he began to feel peevish. Hadn’t he had enough wet and sleepless nights in the war? He led the way onwards, to find a less unsheltered place.

  “There’s a hotel with a portico and pillars giving shelter farther on, Rippingall.”

  “The Ritz, sir.”

  “Oh, is that where it is?”

  “Captain Runnymeade and I, Sir, in the old days——”

  Phillip hastened on, looking for a stance. Every square foot was taken. They stopped beside a man wearing a bowler under an umbrella. Water dripped from several spoke-ends upon them.

  “With permission, sir,” said Rippingall, to the owner of the gamp, “I would suggest that an umbrella is an unsocial instrument in a crowd when it is raining.”

  The stocky man under a bowler ignored Rippingall. Phillip wondered if he were a detective mingling with the crowd. For it had been announced that the heads of many foreign countries would be in the procession, including a German general in uniform and coalscuttle helmet. Strings of a steady downpour continued to plop on Phillip’s hair, coat shoulders, and sleeves. Rippingall addressed the stocky man again.

  “My gentleman is getting extremely wet from your umbrella, sir.”

  The stocky man remained still. Sideway pressure and sway increased with the rain. A newspaper seller walked among the moving people in the street crying, “Morning Post. A newspaper, a tent, an umberella—all for one penny.”

  Rippingall bought two, and put one over Phillip’s cap and another over his own. They moved towards the Green Park. Kerb-huddled children were beginning to look like dirty bundles in the indifferent light of dawn. The crowds were thickening fast. Phillip said to Rippingall that the place to be was inside the railings of the Park, with freedom to move about. They went through a gateway and walked under plane trees dripping mournfully upon those leaves which had detached themselves with the extra weight of rain. Strolling about, Phillip decided the thing to
do was to transport a seat to the railings and stand on it to see over the heads of those packed on the pavement.

  “Come on, Rippingall, lend a hand.”

  The seat, of wood and cast iron, was heavy. Rippingall accosted a man and two girls hurrying out of the murk, and offered them a part-share in return for part-haulage. They had dragged the seat about a hundred yards when a fat walrus-moustached keeper trotted up.

  “You can’t do that here. You put it back at once.”

  “We’ll take care of it, officer.”

  “I can’t help that, it’s against regulations.”

  “Come on,” Phillip said to Rippingall. “We’ll put it back.”

  Then the keeper spied someone getting up a tree.

  “Hi!” he cried. “You can’t do that here,” and went towards a white-faced and swift swarmer, who reaching the first fork appeared entirely deaf to all threats from below.

  When the keeper disappeared the team returned to the seat and having secured new partners, they dragged it to within fifty yards of the railings, then the keeper reappeared.

  “Didn’t I tell you …”

  Phillip admitted the crime. But now, three other gangs were hauling seats. The keeper hurried after them.

  “I don’t think we need take it any further.”

  So they left it and went to stand on a slight mound about twelve yards back from the railings. It was now light. The rain was lessening.

  Soon many people were up trees. Others were dragging seats. The crowd on the pavement was now immovable.

  Phillip and Rippingall found that the mound was not high enough. Then a voice behind them said authoritatively, “Now then girls, all together. I shall say One, Two, Three, Heave. And again, One, Two, Three, Heave—Monica, pay attention—and again, as before. Now then, all together. On your marks! One, Two, Three, Heave”—and the seat moved towards the railings not as ordered, but heaved easily over the grass by many long black-stocking’d legs, under blue mackintoshes topped by red-banded hats.