The Gale of the World

by Henry Williamson

  “Will you dine with me at the Medicean tonight? I’m going back tomorrow.”

  “I’m already dining there with someone else,” a very quiet voice replied.

  “I see. Well, goodbye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  *

  Hitherto Phillip’s letters to Laura had sustained the wilting bloom of imagined, or romantic, love in the little attic room in Old Compton Street. Not the flower of her life—that was her art, her dream, for, like Phillip, she had her being almost entirely in the imagination. Phillip was the sap rising to the flower of her spirit, the bloom by which she felt a glowing happiness, as she created an imaginary world by the art of words. But all blooming expends the resources of the plant. When sap ceases, blossom wilts. Then thoughts of death blight the being.

  With each letter Laura was renewed—the force of sap was the force of love. Darling, darling Phillip! When her book was completed she would go to him in his cot. The morning might be dull and dead outside; Phillip was the sun, shining in her mind. Unlike ‘Buster’ he was not ruined to love, only alienated. His love would heal her, give the fulfilment she had always longed for. Those two had both had terrible experiences in their different wars. Neither seemed able to forget. Would Phillip be free, even when he had written his war novels? O God, whenever he spoke of his war she felt a chill, as of fog over the face of the sun. Gould she be good for him, if she resented even the look on his face whenever he thought about his friends of that faraway time?

  Sometimes Laura saw herself as wholly selfish. I want his sperm and his essence for myself. I need him to companion my genius. I know I am a genius. Or is it self delusion? An evil genius, a Medusa, as some man I took to bed once told me? Medusa, with hissing snakes in her hair? No, no. I am Kundry, awaiting redemption from Parsifal. My writing is a search for the Holy Grail. If I did not believe that, I should want to drown myself, like Shelley’s first wife, Harriet Westbrook. O, Phillip, darling sensitive Prospero, your Ariel is coming to you!

  Many times she had imagined the two little rooms, in Phillip’s words ‘up over Timber Hill into Blanket Field’, over the kitchen in Shep Got; one room for her and her work—entirely private. Phillip in the other room.

  Where would they sleep? Upon a heap of bracken on the kitchen floor—under blankets woven of local sheep’s wool—before a log fire in the great open hearth. Like Sigmund and Sieglinde in Hunding’s cottage! And the morning sun would blaze upon them lying together, utterly relaxed. And they would run out naked and lie in the stream below the coombe and let it take them down, down in its clear bubbled run. And through the eastern window at night the moon would slant on his face beside her while he stroked her hair, and she, with a finger, traced the outline of brow, cheek, chin before winding her arms snake-like around him while he held her in the safety of night glowing with darkness under the stars.

  Chapter 12

  FLOWERLESS LOVE

  One thing had come of ‘Buster’ dining as Phillip’s guest at the Barbarian Club during the London visit to publishers’ offices: a house-parlourman for The Eyrie. The new man was, in ‘Buster’s’ words, “an addition to the gaiety of nations.” Mornington had been engaged on Phillip’s recommendation, and he had turned out to be, ‘Buster’ told Molly on his return to Exmoor, a jewel: willing to turn his hand to anything—sawing logs, cooking, repairing roofs, gardening, an expert mechanic. He had been almost everything, according to himself—cowboy, gold miner, actor, opera singer, secret service agent, pearl-diver, barman, racing motor-driver, and night-porter at the Barbarian Club.

  “And it appears to be true, that’s the excellent part of Mornington! Phillip? I have an idea he didn’t manage to persuade any publishers to take space, as they say, in his little magazine.”

  *

  Later in the month, there was an outbreak of measles at Miranda’s school, and those girls unaffected were sent home for a week. Miranda arrived much excited by a book someone had given her at school. Molly took the excitement to be a sign of possible infection, and put her daughter to bed and the book into a hot oven, just in case. It was called A Cosmic Concept of a Fifth Gospel, received from the Unknown Soldier of the Great War, and came out of the oven with brown edgings upon the leaves.

  “It says that a revelation will come on Oldstone Down this summer by a message from the Seventh Plane. The book is by Major Piston, whose mother runs a boarding house in Lynmouth called Shelley’s Cottage.”

  This was reassuring for Molly. The craze for poetry, etc., would soon pass.

  “I must read it, Anda darling. But don’t you think Major Piston is just a little teeny-weeny bit bogus? Like that Caspar Something at Oldstone Castle?”

  “Oh, Mummy! I know Major Piston’s sincere! He was blown up on the Somme, and in hospital at Lynton the same time as Cousin Phillip! His old mother is a very sweet person, and also a medium. They are both spiritually based, and don’t eat meat or even fish, nor does anyone who stays at Shelley’s Cottage.”

  “That doesn’t mean that Major Piston isn’t deceiving himself, darling.”

  “William Blake wrote, ‘What is now achieved was once only imagined’. Major Piston says that the universe is based on an expanding Idea. Why shouldn’t the expanding Idea include communication with other planets, or worlds? All things are related.”

  “But he says his mother has ridden about in flying saucers—as though they were taxis, darling.”

  “How do we know there aren’t any? Mrs. Piston received a message to await the coming of someone from the Seventh Plane an hour before dawn on Oldstone Down last year. She was taken up in a flying saucer and told that the coming of a stranger, who will be an old soldier of the Great War, will reveal a way to heal the world. I think I know already who it is.”

  “She was obviously meaning her son, darling.”

  Molly of course knew that her daughter had Phillip in mind. She was greatly relieved that Anda’s feelings for Phillip, like those for that Piston creature, were no more than a green girl’s imaginings.

  “Darling, I’m not doubting the sincerity of you or anyone else. But most people do deceive themselves, you know. Perhaps not philosophers, but then how many understand what they’ve written. How hot your head is. Just a moment, my pet. I’ll get a thermometer.”

  She took her daughter’s temperature. “It’s normal, thank goodness.”

  “Then may I ride over to Shep Cot and see Cousin Phillip tomorrow?”

  “If you want to, darling. Ask him to come over and see us. I’ve asked him several times, but he’s only called in once, and then he couldn’t stop. You may be more successful. Tell him we can always give him a bed. He’ll have to take us, goats and all, as he finds us. What will happen to the goats if your father doesn’t come in August hardly bears thinking. They eat everything, including a cricket ball I gave them to play with. I simply daren’t have any laundry drying outside.”

  The next day Miranda set off on her cob for The Chains, accompanied by Capella. She loved that sky-wide tract of land on the top of the moor. On fine days you could see the dull blue tors of Dartmoor humped along the southern horizon. There the air was seldom still, shaking white blossoms of cotton grass like wisps of wool straggled by the rains. And the Atlantic ocean lying distantly away to the west—a scatter of pale gleams below cumulus clouds billowing whitely in line above the unseen estuary of the Two Rivers.

  She halted her cob beside a tumulus on the highest point of The Chains, and when she saw the sun-shafts pointing to the sea, she thought of Donkin drowned. Phillip had written that book, about his cousin Willie. Would he be writing if she called again? What had Mummy said to him—‘not to let her be a nuisance?” She felt suddenly inadequate. Phillip was so clever, he knew everything; she knew only what she had learned at school, and read in books. It was terrible!

  What could she do? She turned away from the west, and looked across the pale almost milky blue of the Severn Sea, calm with St. Luke’s Little Summer. It was what ‘Buste
r’ called soaring weather: there was another squadron of clouds becalmed above the mountains of Wales. Then, looking east, she saw a glider rising in circles beyond Dunkery beacon. ‘Buster’! She felt excitement, then optimism; and touching the cob with her heels, went in the direction of the unseen cot lying below the northern slopes of The Chains.

  *

  ‘Buster’ Cloudesley had seen bubbles of warm air arising to colder levels above the Black Mountains, where they hung condensed as vapour. It was a rare, clear day: thermals would be ascending from the warmed vegetation covering the great sponge of the moor, to become clouds floating as on summer days, galleons in line astern, come to anchor.

  With his new man beside him, he drove the Bentley down to the Porlock marshes, where a runway had been made behind the ridge of grey boulders above the line of high tide. There was not really sufficient length for a fool-proof take-off. Safety depended on the speed of towing over a limited runway: the acceleration of the 4½-litre supercharged engine.

  The wind was from the west: ideal. Mornington, on a trial run, was splendidly efficient. The glider rose to six-hundred feet well before danger of the motorcar shunting: ‘Buster’ released the nylon tow-rope and was on his own. For some minutes he circled in wafts of westerly sea-airs, neither gaining nor losing height; then, chancing his arm, he went inland towards the wooded slopes covering rising ground, and rose on the uptrend. Over the trees he found warm air streaming up from the topmost leaves, and soon was circling well above those northern slopes of the moor covered by acres of warm heather. Up—up—four thousand feet on the altimeter, and still climbing. He thought of the Azores, of the far Falklands, of the deep, the green, the tiger-haunted mountain forests of Brazil. O, life was always wonderful, away from the inhibiting life of houses, the map-like earth so clean and orderly! He felt to be one with Laura, in the altitudes of mind. Theirs was indeed Shakespeare’s ‘marriage of true minds’, without impediment.

  No overcast to act as a wet blanket to Falcon One. Looking round and above him, he counted seven ravens crossing the sky; and heard, above the sibilance of air past sails and cockpit, the throaty croaks of joy of five young with their parents. The cock-bird did a half-roll on black wings, recovering immediately. The flight-leader waggling his wings, signal to dive! He heard the throaty chuckles of joy, from cock to hen, when the young birds, as one flight, dived and rolled. By God, it was like his father’s war! Now that Laura was coming, they really must get on with Manfred’s biography. Thirty seven Hun aircraft shot down; eleven wounds; two books of verse published, and four gongs before he was twenty one … and while trying to fly home to his wife in Cornwall, from New York, falling into the drink. And two years later, 1932, his last message, in a bottle, rolled upon the shore near Lyonesse …

  The ravens were playing in the blue halls of the wind. It was one of those days when Nature let down her hair. And now, by heck, the ravens were making for a flight of buzzards soaring in tiers on outheld wings, one hawk above the other, simply for the hell of it! If he could find a convolution of thermals he might—with luck (for it was always luck with gliding) reach 10,000 or even 15,000 feet! The real big stuff was done in thunderheads, with a possible 60–100 m.p.h. lift—and the risk of getting caught in an associated down draught, and hurtling down with a cracked frame, wings torn off as neatly as lesser kestrels, in thermals over the Bitter Lake, nipped off the wings of advance parties of locusts migrating in their swarms. Paired-wings of locusts twirling down like silver sycamore seeds.

  The ravens were now in line astern, ignoring the buzzards; probably making for a dead sheep somewhere on the moor, thought ‘Buster’, climbing steadily in wide spirals. Now the buzzards were diving into the oak-woods they shared in mew-and-snarl with carrion crows. He watched the crows flying up to harry the hawks, for there was perpetual war between the two species of predators. Harrying black anger pursued mewling mottled flap-wings until, evasive action was taken among the trees.

  My Prospero!

  I love you, I love you; I will die with you in the sea like Shelley; but I cannot live with you. Set your Ariel free, O my master! I am in thrall to you all the time; I shall always love you; but I must be free of your image.

  Laura.

  Two days later, when Laura read Phillip’s reply, together with a poem on the drowning of Shelley which he had enclosed, she fell into despair, from which she found relief only in the thought that she must go to Exmoor before it was too late. The poem could only mean that he, too, wanted to die. To drown himself! Oh no, let it not be too late! She ran down the stairs and out of the house to the post-office, and sent a telegram telling him the time of her train’s arrival at the junction; unaware of the fact that Phillip had told them at the post-office to keep all letters and telegrams until he called for them.

  In the train she read an article in The Saturday Evening Post by a sergeant of the U.S.A. Army, one of the hangmen at Nuremberg, who declared that he had been waiting months to get his hands on Herman Göring, for the pleasure of watching his slow death by strangulation. The print was so vivid that she felt she could not breathe, and left the carriage to stand by an open corridor window. In her mind was printed the photograph of the hangman: fat and revengeful as Göring had been in similar revengeful, self-righteous moments. An eye for an eye—O God, when would it stop, blood calling to blood in revenge down the ages—

  She sought refuge in Phillip’s letter, feeling strange beauty in the poem he had enclosed. Darling Phillip, he was a medium, truly in rapport with the dead. Was a wiser, older Shelley speaking through him? She re-read the poem slowly; and then the letter—

  Shep Cot

  Dear Laura,

  I am no Prospero. My staff, or pen, has been lost long since. Perhaps it was broken for ever, thirty two years ago tomorrow, under the moon of Hallowe’en, 1914, on Messines ridge in Flanders, ‘which still doth haunt my dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant’.

  Do you remember telling me of Jane Williams, the girl Shelley called Miranda, to whom he lost his heart when he was living at Lerici? Well, it seems that in 1812 he spent part of a summer at Lynmouth. I think he found little there, for he refers only once to the scenery. (Even today, Devon is known as the graveyard in the book trade). Fanny Burney didn’t care for Devon, nor did it make much impression on Keats, or Hardy. But to me, it is home, where some of my maternal forebears lived for centuries. Such things, I am sure, pass on in the blood, which determines the personality—and its immortality.

  I almost believe in spiritualism, too—communication with stray shades of the dead—the homeless ghosts of the Chinese. I believe, too, in the continuing life of the spirit after the body’s death.

  In her last letter to Shelley, Jane Williams wrote: ‘Why do you talk of never enjoying moments like the past? Are you going to join your friend Plato, or do you expect I shall soon? Buona Notte.’

  The letter was dated July 6th; Shelley was drowned on the 8th; and the poem is his imagined reply from another world.

  The poem was psychic! Phillip was seeing his own death in Shelley’s! She stood by an open window in the corridor, imagining her hand opening the door—her body throwing itself out—

  At last, at last, with a sick feeling, she arrived at the Junction, to leave her hold-all outside the telephone box and telephone The Eyrie. Supposing there was no answer? Everyone away, round the coast, searching for Phillip’s dead body? With a shock she heard the voice of the late night-porter of the Barbarian Club, while her heart boomed in her ears.

  “I expect your hearing my voice down here is a bit of a surprise, Miss. I left the Brotherly Barbarians a matter of a week ago, to take up my new post with his Lordship.”

  “I’m so glad to hear your voice, Mr. Globe-Mornington!”

  “Equally glad to hear your voice, miss.”

  “Is everyone all right?”

  “Right as the weather, miss. His Lordship is out gliding, or should I say up gliding, though that sounds a bit silly doesn’t it. You’r
e coming here, I hope? Splendid news, miss!”

  “Have you seen Mr. Maddison today?”

  “No miss. He appears to have taken to the simple life like Leo Tolstoi.”

  “Has anything happened to him?”

  “Tolstoi? Oh yes. World fame, miss. And to think he never even bought a railway ticket for his last journey on earth!”

  “I mean Phillip Maddison! Is he dead?”

  “Dead? Not him, or should I say he? No miss, I was referring to the late Count Leo Tolstoi. He seems not to have possessed the wherewithal for his fare, and didn’t like to risk a platform ticket unlike that chap—”

  “Cut!” cried Laura. “I must find out about buses!”

  “You’ve got twenty minutes to get to the bus station at the Strand over the bridge before the next bus leaves, miss. Mr. Maddison’s right as rain miss, so not to worry. Will you be staying here? We need someone to cheer us up. Anyway, I’ll tell the temporary housekeeper, that’s me, to have your room got ready. And would you like the groom, that’s me too, to saddle-up the pony for you? I’m sorry I can’t bring the Bentley to meet you, I’m standing by to collect his Lordship on his return to terra firma—”

  “Is the turning off for Shep Cot at Barbrook?”

  “That’s right, miss. You go over the bridge there and follow your nose up the lane. I understand it climbs steeply and twists about but when you go through the last gate to the common you’ll see Mr. Maddison’s hide out. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You can’t miss it.”

  “Only half-wits unable to communicate say ‘you can’t miss it’. I can miss it! I’m always missing it!”

  “You’ve got bags of time, miss. Now you get the bus from the Strand and I’ll bring the pony to Barbrook and meet you there. I need a walk to stir up the old phagocytes. As I said, I’ll meet your bus at Barbrook, it leaves in fifteen minutes, and it’s a quarter of a mile walk over the bridge to the Strand. At Barbrook you get off, see me, and I’ll put you on the way to Captain Maddison’s hermitage. Another poor fly in the spider’s web. No offence, miss, I didn’t make the world. Talking about flies, there’s a friend of Mr. Maddison’s down here called Major Piston whose mother saw one of those mysterious Unidentified Flying Objects above Oldstone Down the other day. It come down with a message from the spheres or stars, I forget which, anyway it took the old lady up to the Seventh plane, about a book her son had written to save the world from the atom bomb—”