“Ask him to come in.”
The friar came in and apologised for Felicity’s absence. “Her child has a temperature, Captain Runnymeade.”
“Have a drink, Brother Laurence. Help yourself. We’re having a discussion about certain matters. Now, ‘Farm Boy’, give us your views of the European crisis. Do I understand you to claim that Usury is the cause of the deteriorating international situation?”
Phillip said to himself that he was not going to be drawn.
“Come on, Phillip, speak up, man!” cried Riversmill.
“Come on, ‘Farm Boy’, give us a run for our money.”
Phillip was sitting beside Stefania Rozwitz. She put her hand protectively over his. “The fox is a gentleman,” she said. “The fox doesn’t want to hurt the feelings of those who would hunt him.”
Phillip said, “Winston Churchill wrote in his autobiography some years ago that the English power, based on world trade in English bottoms, or ships, for four hundred years has maintained that power by a policy of Divide and Rule in Europe.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?’’ said Runnymeade. “Anyway, who is Churchill? Nobody thinks anything of him today. He finished himself over the Dardanelles in nineteen fifteen. Come on ‘Farm Boy’, tell us what Birkin says!”
“There’s a man for you!” cried Riversmill.
“Birkin says, ‘If there is another war between England and Germany, it will be money’s war, and nothing to do with the English people’.”
“Money’s war?” growled Stefania. “What about my countrymen? I am a Pole, do you not know that?”
“My remark was not intended personally.”
“Why not?” said Runnymeade. “Let’s have the gloves off. No holds barred.”
Stefania gave ‘Boy’ a contemptuous look before saying to Phillip, “Why Money’s war, ‘Farm Boy?’ Money is only a unit of energy, like a volt of electricity, or horse-power for an engine. You may as well say, ‘It will be a volt’s war’, because electricity comes into it, to help drive one of your friend Hitler’s tanks, or, ‘It is horse-power’s war’, because somebody gets his rations in a lorry. Think straight, ‘Farm Boy’.”
“Well, you must agree that wars arise from a need for food, work, raw materials.”
“And from damned gangsters who want what others have got,” said Runnymeade.
“Europe has been divided too long. International money would lose its power to keep Britain on the dole if markets were stabilised by an Empire customs union. One more European war will wreck, as Riversmill has said, Western culture based on the Greek ideal. Greece was wrecked by rivalries between the city states, and the barbarians poured in.”
“The modern barbarians are Hitler and his bandits,” said Stefania.
“The modern barbarians are the dupes of Karl Marx,” retorted Riversmill.
“Shut up,” said Mrs. Riversmill.
“You shut up yourself.”
Phillip turned to Stefania and said, “I respect you, not only as an artist; but surely, you, as a Polish patriot, do not want ‘Only Russian spoken here’ in your country.”
“You would prefer ‘Only German spoken here’ in your country, ‘Farm Boy’?”
“Of course not. English spoken here. I do not want to see another generation of British youths in their graves, head to head, boots to boots. I do not want to see German or Polish dead or French dead, while Oriental Commissars wait, like jackals, to grow fat on the killings.”
“The hyaena comes before the jackal, ‘Farm Boy’. For hyaena, read Hitler.”
Runnymeade, half-gloating as he looked with semi-distaste at his voided mistress, said, “Tell us what Birkin says, Maddison.”
“He says that Money is mainly in the control of those who have no national territory, whose virile qualities will always, until they do have their own territory, be subverted. I do not know about this myself, except to say that all money should be controlled by the Government. You will forgive me if this offends, but I am trying to answer ‘Horse Boy’s’ question.”
“What you lack is a sense of humour,” said Runnymeade.
“I have no sense of humour about war. I lost some of mine in the first battle of Ypres, and again at Loos, and another little chunk of it on the Somme, and more at Passchendaele, and finally, in April nineteen-eighteen I found myself with no more humour whatsoever. At least, no Punch, or British upper-middle class humour. I except George Burper’s drawings, of course. They are not patronising, but human.”
“Go on lad, go on,” said Riversmill, while Runnymeade filled his glass.
“If I speak of myself, it is because I can know only myself, who found the love of his life among the soldiers of a regiment. I was fortunate to be in a good crowd, where I was shown great friendship, or, as I know now, love.”
“Now you are your true self, ‘Farm Boy’,” said Stefania Rozwitz. “I know what truth is, let me remind you. I—Rozwitz—who danced with Vaslov Nijinsky in ‘Le Spectre de la Rose’.” She put her hand on his. Phillip shook it before kissing it and returning it to her lap.
“One moment,” said Runnymeade. “Do you mean to tell us that you found this feeling of brotherly love for the Germans?”
“I found it first in the Christmas truce of nineteen-fourteen, then in my regiment, where the camaraderie helped us all to carry on.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Of course. But I was not alone any more.”
“Then why don’t you look forward to another war, to find more brotherly love for the Nazis?”
“I’d like to say one thing more, before the silence of personal opinion which may descend at the beginning of September.”
“Why September?”
“The corn harvest will be in. And how wise and foreseeing is Birkin, whom I have the honour to know—a soldier of nineteen-fourteen like myself—how wise is he about the Jews. For years he has declared that they must be given territory within the British Empire, where they can settle and find their soul again as a nation rooted in its own soil. This soil must not be Palestine, because that would upset the Arabs, whose territory lies south of Russia, with outlets to the Mediterranean. Who holds the Mediterranean holds the world, says Birkin. No! The Jews can be settled in the British Empire somewhere, and so fulfil the age-long vision of their prophets.”
“Birkin’s a great man,” cried Riversmill. “I heard him speak in the Corn Hall at Fenton. He’s a man alone, he won’t work with other people, that’s his trouble.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Runnymeade. “I heard him, too, and thought it a lot of hot air. I knew his father, and he was a waster. And I say, A plague on all your politics. Drink up.”
“Birkin told me recently that every thug and crook in England had been through his party. Of course it’s easy to see now where he went wrong, and others with him left over from the battlefields. If he had remained in Parliament, he would have had a platform where his speeches would at least be reported. Now, as you know, practically no paper prints them.”
“It’s the advertisers who control newspapers,” said Riversmill.
“It’s because Birkin strutted about in lion-tamer’s boots and copied Mussolini, who is a clown,” said Stefania. “But the Hyaena isn’t—he’s Anti-Christ, he’s the devil, he’s the modern Lucifer.”
“Lucifer is the light-bringer,” said Phillip.
“May I speak?” said Brother Laurence, quietly. “God had two sons. The elder, Lucifer, was arrogant, and wanted to usurp his Father’s place. The other son was compassionate, all-embracing. Lucifer wanted a better world immediately. God said, ‘You do not know my difficulties, the forces against me, my son. Your brother Kristos, has compassion for all life. He is love. And love will prevail when deep, dreadful night has absorbed all your light, my son.’”
“Did you hear that?” said Stefania. “After hearing that, never again talk to me of Hitler as a light-bringer, ‘Farm Boy’! A false light, a false dawn, ‘Farm Boy’—like th
ose Northern Lights you told me about last winter, all electric storms. Very attractive, but no good as a steady constructive power. Your derided Money at least builds dynamos and power stations where electricity is harnessed, and not allowed to flash and terrorise and burn.”
“Very interesting,” said George Burper. “Very interesting indeed. I’ve never heard more interesting talk anywhere.”
“We must agree to differ, ‘Farm Boy’,” said Stefania; and before she could cover his hand with her own, Phillip took hers and shook it in a friendly fashion. The defensive feelings due to her proximity went from him, and he felt compact once more.
“Well,” said Runnymeade, “let’s all drink to the damnation of Schicklgruber and his gang.”
“To a Greater Britain!” cried Phillip.
As they left the table Melissa said, “Who’s for a swim, ‘on such a night as this’.”
“I am,” said Phillip.
*
In the dark days that lay ahead he was to remember that last peace-time party at Captain Runnymeade’s—George Burper and his wife so quiet and happy, truly joined together by God, and Riversmill and his wife, and Brother Laurence saying, “Do not turn your talent into salt, Phillip. Your inborn love of the Kristos is your greatest protection—as it is mine—and you cannot rid yourself of it if you would.”
*
There was the warm, moonless night outside, so still that it seemed natural to be walking in silence on the causeway across the marsh to the sandhills and the sloping shore beyond. At first he had been a little uneasy, for he had no bathing suit, and Melissa carried hers, with a towel; but the night was dark, the stars dim and small, and she seemed no more than a wraith as she moved unspeaking over the short turf of the golf-course beside him, and through a valley of loose sand to the shore, where the darkness seemed to be thick. Whither had the wraith disappeared? He did not know, he had lost her until her voice spoke quietly beside him and even the wet sands beneath the feet were unseen as they went towards the soft crashing waves; and entering, he saw that his feet were silvery, and wading farther in, that he had silver-green streaks for legs; and lying in warm water, in criss-cross movement with the short breaking waves of the North Sea, his hands were fins glimmering with silver.
He had no body, no feelings, he was a shadow, a water-sprite, the spirit had found its true home.
The tide was scouring along the shore to the east, and lying in two to three feet of water he was carried eastwards in the current, his face sometimes awash in a short cross-rush of breakers. The waves when rising were streaked electrically, they crashed in silver stabs and slashes on his body. Was that a seal with gleaming head rising near, was that a fish in the turmoil of waves? The silver streaks were Melissa. She was beside him in the wavelet rush, they were two glimmering water-things, drifting, drifting in the marvellous phosphoric sea of summer’s midnight.
Never had he seen such a liquescence of light. The naked body of the nymph beside him was of a rare greenish pallidity, a thing entirely apart from ordinary life as the wash of waves bore them along, caressingly in greenish-silver water which had no undertow, no power to hold or to misdirect those pale watery forms which moved with the tumbling tide aslant the shoaling shore. Sometimes she glimmered among leaping sea-trout, a dim seal-like shape blurring into invisibility and revealed by a hand, a lock of hair, a shoulder laved in silver.
And the marvel was that this beauty of light was only of the warm sweep of water; it belonged only to the sea; this was baptismal beauty of the waters of night; for when he rose to his feet, all was dark. And once again the water sprite was an invisible presence beside him.
But night, yielding to all motion and bearing effortlessly the spirit over the shore to the sandhills a mile and more from where they had left the sea, had its wonders, too. There was no self, no thought, no problem, no feeling: only a calm everlastingness of the elements which, of their immense generosity, had created life. Desire, hope, striving, all were solved: the spirit was paramount, beyond even the beauty of words. For no word had been spoken between the time of coming on the shore, and leaving it an hour, or was it two hours, later. So it was, he thought, before he was born; so it would be, after he was dead.
He took her hand outside the garden gate of Marsh Cottage, whispering, “I won’t come in. I expect they have gone to bed,” for the upper windows were lit up. “Good night, Melissa.”
“Good night, Phillip.”
Covering the hand that he still held with his other hand he drew her nearer, kissed her cold cheek before touching her lips with his, then he was walking away in the soft dust of the lane, drawn by the thin wire of pain.
He could not face another heart-ache, which was all that falling in love had ever meant to him. Except with Lucy, whom he had never truly loved, or so it now seemed.
He wondered if Runnymeade, in alcoholic impotence, was in love with Melissa, a mental mistress of the hopeless spirit.
O Melissa, Melissa! Perfect sensibility; wordless understanding. Dare he still hope that his loneliness, his melancholy, his lost-ribache, would be salved by union with one of the generation following his own, a generation of sun, not like his own, of half-sun? Had he found his Isolde, Lily incarnate, Barley come again?
Looking back from rising ground, he saw that the sitting-room window was now alight. After hesitation he returned down the lane, giving himself the excuse that he must thank his host.
Re-entering the garden he had to pass the window. There was a gap between the curtains. He looked in, to see who was still up. He saw Melissa sitting in a chair. Runnymeade was kneeling before her. He was holding her two feet in his hands to kiss them. All this he saw in a brief glance before he turned away and walked over the lawn, keeping his back to the lighted window.
*
He drove along the serpentining coast road through the warm air of the summer night, jacket flung in tonneau, tyres whimpering on corners, headlights revealing the flint wall of the great park and then the cottages of the back road of the town, and home past fields of barley and sugar beet.
*
Watchers of the Observer Corps, Air Raid Precaution volunteers, regular members of the Police Force, Special Constables, and others reported by telephone that an open car, approximately one hour after midnight, was being driven at speed, with headlights full on, between two points on the coast—references and other particulars being given. An abbreviated report in due course reached M.I.5 in London.
Chapter 18
ROSEATE TERN
The barley was not yet rotten-ripe. Thistle-seeds were floating, set free by King Harrys, the twittering gold-finches of the East Anglian legend of the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
To Phillip delay was relief. Harvest time was crisis time: war when the harvest was in? He was troubled by doubts about the man whom for years he had thought to be the only true pacifist in Europe.
He carried in his pocket a copy of a speech made by Hitler to the Reichstag on May 21st, 1935. Reaching the creek where his dinghy was moored, he sat down and re-read the peroration.
We believe that if the peoples of the world can agree to destroy all their gas, inflammatory, and explosive bombs this would be a more useful undertaking than using them to destroy one another.
In saying this I am not speaking any more as the representative of a defenceless state which would have no responsibilities but only advantages as a result of such a procedure. I do not intend to take part here in discussions such as have recently been started in various places as to the value of other armies or one’s own army and the cowardice of foreign soldiers and the supreme bravery of one’s own.
We all know how many millions of fearless opponents, contemptuous of death, faced us, alas, in the Great War. But history has certainly often shown us Germans that we understand less the art of living reasonably than that of dying nobly. I know that if ever this nation should be attacked the German soldier will do more than his duty, remembering from the experiences of one and
a half decades what is the fate of a conquered people. This conviction is for all of us a serious responsibility, and at the same time a noble duty. I cannot better conclude my speech of today to you, my fellow fighters and trustees of the nation, than by repeating our confession of faith in peace. The nature of our new constitution makes it possible for us in Germany to put a stop to the machinations of the war agitators. May the other nations too be able to give bold expression to their real inner longing for peace.
Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos. We, however, live in the firm conviction that in our time will be fulfilled, not the decline but the renaissance of the West. That Germany may make an imperishable contribution to this great work is our proud hope and our unshakeable belief.
To escape—to be free—to be young again—to live, to love for ever. Sea-lavender, the misty blue of Melissa’s eyes. The sea drew him, with memory of the phosphoric night. Why had he not come more often to this water which gleamed with sky as it moved up the channels of the marsh?
He set mast and rudder, put the anchor in the bows atop the coiled rope, and with leg-o’-mutton sail gently shaking glided down the creek, centre-board drawn up because the lapsing water was barely a foot deep. Lying back with tiller under arm, clad only in khaki shorts, dreaming of hair pale like the fine-ground sands of his destination. The bow touched, and leaping out he pulled the boat beyond the wavelets curling silently upon that windless shore. A whiteness of terns with scarlet mouths screamed and flapped a few inches away from his face as he walked among their young almost ready to fly.
There were Arctic terns, the colour of chalk and soot; and one roseate tern, a lone hen which had mated with an Arctic bird. From the watcher of the Yarwich Naturalists Society he had learned that the President, an aged man of eighty-two years living in the town, had ordered that the chick be killed when half-grown. It must not be killed when small, the parents might lay again, and so manage to bring off another hybrid, unwanted by the Society.
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