“I may go blind, doctor?”
“Have you anyone with you?”
“I live alone on Exmoor.”
“You are not staying with Mrs. Lemon?”
“I am on my way home. Shall I be able to drive?”
“If you proceed carefully. Now put your hand over your lazy eye and read the letters on that card on the wall. What do you see?”
“All the letters seem to be bent, and there is a darkish blur about each one as I try to focus on it.”
“I would welcome another opinion; and will give you a letter to a retired colleague of mine who lives at Minehead. He’s also something of a naturalist like yourself, and a particular authority of wild life on the moor. Yes, I shall welcome another opinion.”
North for Cranborne Chase; over the high downs and onto Colham. Would Piers be at home? Passing the lodge, he saw neat cords of sawn wood in the park. And driving on, was startled to see a small dark-red house where Field Place had stood. Orderly piles of stone came into focus. Of course! Piers had said the shell was being sold to a building firm, together with doors, window frames, lintols, oak flooring—everything had a value in a time of acute shortages. ‘Money for old rope’, they said.
Evidently the Palladian structure had been built around the original house, a small Jacobean affair of brick and tile baked from local clay. He went through the postern gate to the courtyard, which remained. It was swept and tidy. He knocked at the kitchen door. A young girl, looking to be about seventeen, opened it wide.
“I’m Phillip Maddison, a friend of Sir Piers,” he said, taking her for a kitchen maid.
“Do come in,” she replied, in a calm voice. “Piers is working in the walled garden, he spends all his time there. He’s often spoken of you.” She took off an apron, revealing a slightly bulbous front. “I’m Beth. You know Laura Wissilcraft, don’t you? I heard from her only this morning, she’s back from Greece. Let’s go and find Piers, shall we?”
Beth? Beth? Ah yes, the girl with the sadistic husband, aborting her every time she was pregnant; murderer of a prostitute, hanged about the same time as the Nuremberg ‘war criminals’ Laura saying, She looks like sixteen but is twenty-eight. Must be a strong character.
“Piers, you’ve done wonders! Look at everything! Marvellous vegetables—fruit trees pruned—”
“I’ve got a good man, I take orders from him. Well how are you, Phil? Tell me about Lucy and the children—”
“They’re very happy. Boys at school, also Roz. Baby Sarah has a great sense of fun.”
“Well done. You must bring her down sometimes to play with ours when it appears. You’re writing hard, I hope.”
“I’ve done nearly a hundred thousand words—all synopses of scenes for my novel series, since I went to Shep Cot.”
“Good for you.”
“I also walk a lot on the high ground of the moor.”
“Nothing like it. You look lithe and fit. How’s ‘Buster’?”
“I see him now and again.”
“Archie Plugge called here the other day. He’s public relations to a sort of Ouspensky revival down your way, at Oldstone.” He laid a heavy split section of beech-trunk on the hearth.
“I’m glad you’ve kept the kitchen, Piers. And opened up that hearth.”
“Nothing like a wood fire. We cook on it—the old lapping crook, crock, cast-iron frying pan. Suits me.”
“Just like my hearth in Shep Cot.”
The young woman put a small table beside Phillip’s chair, and covered it with a table-napkin. Soon a plate with omelette, deliciously cooked. Mug of tea.
“I’ve got an old friend down your way, Phillip, go and see her and give her my love—Molly Gildart that was, she married someone called Peregrine Bucentaur, who writes articles on big game hunting in Kenya for Country Life.”
“I have met her—not him. Molly is a splendid friend.”
“She always was. You’ll stay, won’t you,” Piers went on. “Plenty of room. Thank God those bloody hens are gone. What sadists they were, pecking and treading one another.”
“May I stay the night, and go on tomorrow?”
“Stay as long as you like.”
“Will you mind if I leave you,” said Beth. “I’m painting one of the bedrooms at the back.”
“May I help you? I’ve done painting before.”
“All aid welcome” said Piers.
The surfaces had been prepared—cleaned, pumice-stone’d, dried. She gave Phillip a door to paint.
“Laura had a bad time as a child, Phillip.”
“She told me.”
“Nursing was very good for her. ‘My therapy’, she called it.”
“I suppose I’m a border-line case in a way. No-man’s-land, where miracles can happen—”
“But a place to be wary of, generally speaking, didn’t you find?”
The dialogue continued while both went on painting.
“I had a brilliant husband. Half-angel, half-devil.”
“Usual mixture when among women,” said Piers, coming in to borrow the wall-scraper.
“I suppose all men are potentially that?”
“Women too,” said Piers, going out.
“We’re all mixtures of fear, and the loyalty called love, Beth.”
Work continued, while she asked him if he had anyone to help him in his cottage. “So you ‘do’ for yourself altogether. Piers did, for a period. Did he tell you how I came here? Well, it was rather funny, I suppose. He was taking me home in a taxi, after we’d been to the Medicean Club. He wanted to have me in the taxi but I wouldn’t. I liked him, you see, and wasn’t going to be regarded merely as a fourpenny touch. When he cried, I suggested he take me home with him, meaning the next day. ‘Right’, he said. We went back to the Medicean and he got some beer bottles, whisky, glasses, and a lot of sandwiches. Then to my room, where I packed some clothes. That’s how we came here, by taxi.”
“All through the night?”
“We stopped now and again for a drink and a sandwich. The taxi driver was a sport. Piers gave him double fare, including the return. So here I am, pregnant to my satisfaction.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
She went on painting.
“How long have you known Laura?”
“Ever since we began nursing during the war. There were three of us, the other being Melissa Wilby. You know her, don’t you?”
“I did once, long ago. She and Lucy are coming down to Exmoor in the summer, by car.”
“Do tell them to call here. We can put them up for the night, and I know Piers would love to see them again.”
*
Phillip telephoned the retired eye-specialist at Minehead before going to see him.
“Ah, at last I have met ‘the water wanderer’!” he said, with gentle satisfaction. “You’ll be pleased to hear that we have under observation a blackcock’s nest on Winslow Hill,” as he brought forward the opthalmoscope. “You’ve been burning the midnight oil to excess, I expect.” He peered. “Ah, there is a blood vessel on the retina of this eye, which appears to have broken. Yes, the grey hen brought off her brood, despite the attacks of crows. The bleeding may stop, and heal. You’ll also be glad to know that two corncrakes have hatched off a clutch of seven eggs. They’re getting rather rare. Some of the trout-fly-tying johnnies will pay two pounds for a skin. You must rest from your labours. Another book on the stocks? What is to be this time? Well, have a rest; ideas will come the easier, then. Come and see me again. Don’t read too much. Get in the open air. It is possible that blood vessels may leave scar tissue, which will be in the direct line of vision, and prevent both reading and writing with direct focus. No fee, my dear boy. But if you care to send me a copy of your next book—”
James Joyce went blind. How did he manage to finish Ulysses? Large BBB pencil? Helped by Samuel Beckett? His style all private notes, conglomerated. Delius wrote music when he had gone blind, squired by Eric Fen
by. Perhaps Miranda—
He would never ask her.
*
From first light to the sun rolling away half his gift of day, curlews were crying their linked bell-notes in the upper airs of the moor. No longer were they afraid of the man and dog walking among the tussocks, often two-feet and more across, beside which their young were crouching, obedient to warnings from above. For the carrion crows quartered The Chains, an inherited right, seeking nests of large blotched eggs, and later the speckled young below. The crows hunted from a height of from six to seven hundred feet; they knew the habits of curlew, knew that a standing hen nervously regarding them was near her nest. And the cock-bird circling above them, with urgent thrusts of wings, calling with sharp and ringing alarm when directly over the young birds, pointed the objective to be assaulted. So one crow would flap down, as though lazily, a decoy to draw the cock curlew in tumbling flight after him. Car-car-car! Signal for crow’s mate to flop rather than fly down and make open-mouthed cursing dash at hen curlew.
Phillip could tell what was happening by the cries of the birds. He could discern aerial movement, but no definition. Bodger waited with quivering stump.
“Goo’ boy, Bodger!”
And off the mongrel would go upwind, leaping over long wind-stroked grasses arisen from the tussocks: to stand where the female curlew had arisen, with ringing scrape of melody, to fly wildly about the sky. Bodger on guard, looking up at crows sloping away with muttered curses.
Phillip walking over to Bodger. “Good old boy, Bodger!”
Sometimes in those sunny days of early June he would play a game with the little dog, while, unseen by him, two gliders soared overhead. ‘Buster’ now had his war-time comrade with him, Brigadier Tarr, to train new pilots. Laura was his first pupil. She was all air-minded, finding fulfilment by identifying herself as an Icarian spirit, seeing the earth below as the pantheon of the gods of Hellas. For Greece, and particularly an experience in Corfu, leading to a temporary liaison with another visitor there, was now shaping in her mind for a novel.
Phillip would be a Prospero-figure, she thought, as she saw him and the little dog below, and wondered what he was thinking. Sometimes he lay down upon the long green grasses, resilient and soft upon the clumps, and stared into the sky; she waved, but he took no notice.
For Phillip had not seen the gliders overhead. His idea was to lose Bodger, away hunting on some scent, mouse or straying rabbit, so that the dog would be able to find him should he ever lose himself. So Phillip was lying hidden, waiting for the dog, upwind, to find him. Would the genes of a foxhound mother—emblazoned on Bodger’s coat in patches of lemon, tan and black—come to his aid? Raising his head a little, he could just discern Bodger standing still, facing east, staring for any movement. Seeing no movement, Bodger changed position to stare south. No scent; for Phillip was downwind from the dog’s nostrils.
Dog faced north; stared awhile; then west. No sight, no scent, of master.
So Bodger set off to find Phillip. He ran down wind for half a mile, to stop on the crest of The Chains, casting. He crossed the wind, until he got his master’s scent. Then upwind, tossing scent on black nose, until he came straight to warmer scent of master lying face-up in a green bed of softness.
And looking up to spy around, Phillip discovered Bodger sitting, composed and now looking elsewhere, less than a yard away from him, downwind.
*
One morning Laura walked to Shep Cot. She was seen by Aaron Kedd, the smallholder whose eyes watched with covetous disapproval the length of her naked legs: for she wore a bathing dress with short linen jacket belonging to ‘Buster’. She found Phillip lying in the heather outside his open door, and came to the point at once.
“Why are you avoiding me? I waved to you as I passed over this morning, but you took no notice!”
“I’m afraid I must have been in what used to be called a brown study. How high were you?”
“A thousand feet only. And don’t try to avoid what I’m saying! You did see me! You looked at me and when I waved you deliberately looked away. I suppose it’s all Miranda now?”
“I seldom see her.”
“That’s her handwriting!” She pointed to a letter beside him. “Postmark Cheltenham!”
“I’ve only just got it from the post office, and haven’t opened it yet.”
Laura walked away. She returned. “Phillip I’m sorry. Please be kind to me. Why are you keeping yourself away? Even ‘Buster’ feels you’ve dropped him. Are you writing?”
“I’m making notes. How goes your stuff?”
“My stuff, as you call it, is being composed all the time—in my head.”
“So is mine. How’s the gliding?”
“You are keeping something from me! I was quite frank with you about the composer in Corfu. He said he wouldn’t ask for children, and would let me go on with my writing while he wrote his music. But I kept thinking of you, and how you were getting on, with no one to look after you.”
“I’m no good for you. You know that. Oh, listen to the curlews. There’s pure prose for you.”
She sat beside him, and stroked his chest and neck with a crow’s feather.
“Darling, you are a curlew, you are Prospero, who understands his Ariel. If I come and live with you, you won’t mind me having other men sometimes, will you? I can’t help it, Phillip, it’s my nature. I’m very passionate, but I can’t bear the idea of having children. My life is my writing.” Then she said, “O, it’s so lovely by the harbour now! Do let’s go down and swim!”
Aaron Kedd watched them crossing the common to the lane. Thaccy scarlet woman had bestways no right to paint her lips, and go whoring after men! He grunted when Phillip called out, “How’s the root crop? Any fly on the turnips?”, considering this idle remark to be a jeer, because he hadn’t yet drilled the seed.
Reaching the village, Phillip and Laura went into a shop for coffee. Visitors were now numerous in Lynmouth. An occasional young American voice was heard, in connexion with words like doctorate, skedule, comparative literature. Shelley’s cottage had a board beside Bed and Breakfast, saying Full Up.
“Phillip, I am fascinated by gliding. It’s as near to heaven as one can get. And to fall, fall, fall as Icarus!”
“Do you know Francis Thompson’s lines from The Mistress of Vision?
“‘O dismay!
I, a wingless mortal, sporting
With the tresses of the sun?
I, that dare my hand to lay
On the thunder in its snorting?
Ere begun,
Falls my singed song down the sky, even
the old Icarian way.’”
“Thank you! That’s most reassuring!”
“Apologies for taking your fancy literally. How’s the biography of Manfred Cloudesley going?”
“It’s been stopped for the time being, by a local irritation, calling itself Osgood Nilsson. He keeps asking ‘Buster’ for details, including ‘any of his father’s letters he happens to have by him’. The man has the hide of a rhinoceros! By the way, ‘Buster’ doesn’t want him to know that we’re writing his father’s biography. He doesn’t want any publicity, in case someone like Nilsson rushes something out first. ‘Buster’ worries about it, you see, and so can’t concentrate on the book.” She added, “He has to take sedative drugs, his spine never ceases to ache.”
“He’s a very brave man. Also, a grand man. He never ‘blows black smoke in other people’s faces’.”
“He’s wizard when in the air. So am I! We’re both Icarians in this wonderful weather of thermals!”
“Including your instructor, the full-rigged and tarred Brig?”
“Phillip, he’s quite different in the air! He’s like a boy again, before his father was killed in nineteen seventeen, after his mother had bolted with someone else.”
She appealed to him with limpid eyes. “Phillip, I know you will understand. He had a bad time in his war, you know. He was blown up on a land-mine
, and it affected his brain. You won’t tell anyone, will you? I know you won’t, but he’s been in the loony-bin, his brain is still hurt—” Her voice was almost inadudible, she was nearly crying.
She recovered; and asked him if he would be going to Oldstone Down for the Midsummer Eve Festival of the Eirēnēan Society.
“You know Piston, don’t you, Phillip? Some people laugh at him, but I don’t. Oldstone Down is one of those charged mountains, like the Hartz mountains in the Black Forest, where people see the Brocken. You do believe in the unseen world, don’t you?”
“I believe in Blake, who said, Everything that lives is holy’. He didn’t mean that all living acts are holy—but the potential for holiness is there. Bodger lying there is holy. Aren’t you, Bodger? His tail says ‘Yes’. Laura—did you ever read W. H. Hudson’s story of two dogs on the pampas of Argentina remaining with the master who had fallen off a horse and broken a leg? When the vultures came and sat near him, the dogs remained on guard until their tongues were dry with heat, and thirst. Water was near, but whenever they began to slink away to it, the movement of the birds towards the man brought them back to defend him. Hudson says he does not like dogs, they are stupid he says: and goes on to say that, otherwise, one would have gone to drink while the other remained on guard. So dogs are not really to be admired. It is so strange that Hudson seemed blind to their selfless courage, and saw in it only stupidity. I’ve heard young men, not born when my war was being fought on the Western Front, declaring that all who remained there to die were a lot of bloody fools. Do you mind if I read you something I’ve just written?” He took out his note-book and had got so far as saying, “This is about an incident at Passchendaele—”, when Laura got up and left the café.
Returning up the street, Phillip saw smoke coming out of a chimney on Ionian cottage. Osgood Nilsson’s old jalopy was parked by the gate. Standing behind it, he heard voices. Mrs. Nilsson was talking at the open door, beside his sister Elizabeth. Had she come to live in Lynmouth? He felt thin and anxious; and turning back, returned home by way of Mars Hill, desperately forcing himself up the narrow, twisting lane.
The Gale of the World Page 23
