Money was low. David had lost his £3, and Peter had spent thirty shillings on a new chain and sprocket. Peter hadn’t liked to ask his mother for more, and his father had little money, too, he thought.
The rain fell through the oak-tree, so they pedal’d on. There was no fish-and-chip shop in the next village, so they bought three kippers. Coming to a wood beside the road, they made a fire and each boy grilled a flattened corpse impaled on the sharpened end of a green stick. The kippers tasted of tar. They ate them in their fingers, glad that the rain had stopped, but not the wind, and went slowly on their cape-flapping journey.
“Cor, I hope we won’t be late for what-you-call seeing the Brockholes goats scrapping out of the horse van, chookies!”
“Ah, ’bor. Don’t forget the cricket, too. I hope it won’t rain all the whole time.”
“Wet weather in Devon clears up suddenly,” said Peter, as rain fell again.
*
The caravan was damp, so was the cot, what with all the rain, so Phillip had arranged for the boys to spend the night of arrival at Shelley’s Cottage where, he had written to Lucy, Mrs. Piston would welcome them.
“No charge, Masson, for troops coming out of the line into billets,” said Piston. “After all this rain, your young soldiers will be pretty well out, old lad.”
Phillip was anxious. The boys were overdue. He was worrying, too, because of the presence of his sister Elizabeth at Ionian cottage. Aunt Dora’s will had been proved: Elizabeth, after death duties, had inherited £11,000. He bore no resentment that he had been left nothing; he was nervous at the thought of her in what he regarded as his territory. Her presence always had diminished him.
So he avoided walking down the main street above the river by climbing up the lane which, descending along a path through the slopes of the woods to the quay, brought him to the harbour mouth. There he hung about, hoping to find the boys, for surely the first thing they would make for was the sea.
Osgood Nilsson was fishing. He called to Phillip, “Hullo, there! The school peal are running!”, and fumbling in his inner pocket, he held up two small sea-trout seemingly linked together. “I’ve just taken this one, pound and a half, I guess.”
Puzzling: alarming: for now beside Osgood was another figure like him—Siamese twins standing in a twin-waved sea below the duplicated pebble ridge on the east side of the channel marked by tall poles, each one topped by a herring gull. While he stared, a gull flew to a pole and alighted on the back of a gull already perching there. He felt faint, his heart thudded in his ears. Am I losing reason as well as sight?
“Hullo, Dad,” said the voice of Peter beside him. “We thought we’d find you here, somehow,” and coming towards him were two blurred figures with elongated heads, which settled into the recognisable outlines of David and Jonathan.
“Cor, look at that gull up there, sitting on another one’s back!” cried Jonnie.
“There are two gulls, then?”
“Why yes, Dad!”
Peter was looking at him anxiously. Phillip could see his son’s face clearly now. He felt suddenly happy. He could see Nilsson clear and undivided. He felt a rush of affection for Peter. “How long have you been here?”
“About half an hour, Dad. Mr. Osgood saw us and asked if we belonged to you, and when we said yes he took us into a cafe and gave us coffee and doughnuts!”
“Cor, we were what you call hungry,” said David.
“We hitched the last fifty miles by coach,” went on Peter.
“The driver gave us a lift, and put our bikes in the back with the luggage,” added David.
“We didn’t have any lamps, you see,” explained Jonathan. “It was ever so dark until the moon rose up behind us.”
“You travelled at night without lights?”
“We thought we’d be late for the ceremony of the white goats,” said David. “Peter said we shouldn’t bike in the darkness, but we felt so cold trying to sleep beside a haystack we decided to get warm pedalling.”
Peter explained that they had seen the headlights of the coach a long way behind. “We got beside the hedge to let it pass, but it stopped. The driver said he recognised us two days back, in the rain, this side of Salisbury.”
“We went to look at the Cathedral, and stopped there to get warm, Father,” said Peter, a little afraid.
The emotion passed, yielding to affection when Phillip said, “My poor children, why didn’t you go to a Cyclists Touring Club lodging, as I suggested?”
“We didn’t have enough money for lodgings as well as food, Dad.”
Peter explained that a pound had to last either for four nights with no food except breakfast, or if with supper they must sleep out.
“Oh God, what an awful father I am!”
“You’re not!” cried David. “Any way, we loved coming, didn’t we, chookies?”
He yawned, he was pale and drawn.
“Well, you three tough guys are to sleep at Major Piston’s cottage tonight. He’s an old friend of mine from the first war. Go to bed early, you’ll sleep the clock round. By the way, don’t forget to thank Mrs. Piston when you leave tomorrow, and also write her a letter, Peter.”
“Very good, Dad. Is this your little dog?”
“Yes, that’s Bodger.”
He left them with the dog, saying he’d have a word with Osgood Nilsson, and then they’d all go up to see ‘Buster’.
“Have you got a chain and padlock for your bikes? Good. By the way, you should address our host as ‘Lord Cloudesley’ and not ‘Buster’.”
“Of course, Dad,” said Peter. “Mr. Osgood gave us a canoe, he said he was too big for it now.”
“Well, you must never go out to sea in it, any of you.”
“We thought we’d only go in it in the harbour, when the tide is coming in,” said Peter.
“You can all swim?”
“Yes, Dad!”
After Phillip had thanked Osgood for his kindness, they all went up the lift to Lynton, and down a path to The Eyrie. There they had poached eggs on toast with baked beans, their favourite food.
“Sir—I mean Lord—is that right, Father?—”
“My name is ‘Buster’, Peter. It helps me to feel not so old. What were you saying, David?”
“Do you believe in flying saucers, sir? I mean Cousin ‘Buster’.”
“Unidentified flying objects have certainly been seen by accredited witnesses, pilots flying over the Atlantic, for example, David. But some may well be due to ice-dust layers, which can diminish and so give an illusion of moving away from orthodox aircraft at a considerable rate of knots. They are similar, in my view, to what my father, in one of his letters here,”—he held up a bundle tied by faded ribbon—“speaks of as ‘the queer circular rainbow’ in front of his scout ’plane—or fighter aircraft as you would have called them in the recent war. The rainbow, or rain-circle, is visible in certain lights and atmospheric conditions, due to the refraction of light into the colours of the spectrum. What do you think, Brig?”
“Possibly, ‘Buster’, possibly.”
Brigadier Tarr turned to Peter. “I want to apologise to your father’s eldest surviving son for my bloody-mindedness towards him during the war. I was arrogant, and somewhat shaken after I came back from Narvik. It was I who told the troops on your farm in Norfolk to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. I thought all German sympathisers were—well—not my cup of tea. I learned differently in Holland, after the drop at Arnhem—” He raised a shaking glass and shouted into the air, “Where Eisenhower left us alone to be cut to bloody ribands!” He drank, then said quietly. ‘Yes, I was bloody-minded then. I’m fairly humble now. Lost me arrogance, thanks be to God.” He emptied the glass. He stared into space.
“All my men went west at Arnhem, while we”—banging his fist three times on the table—“waited—waited—waited for American help!” He glared at nothing and yelled, “In my opinion Eisenhower ought to be shot!” A glisten of sweat broke on his bald p
ink pate. Bodger crept under Phillip’s chair.
“I understand, sir” replied Peter. “My father was very upset at the time.” In fact, sir, he shouted, too!”
The Brig, went to Phillip, patted his shoulder, and left the room.
“Well,” said ‘Buster’, “it’s a rising glass, I think I’ll go gliding Do bring your boys to see me again before cricket week, won’t you,” to Phillip.
At Shelley Cottage, when their father had gone, Jonathan said, “Cor, I what-you-call like this place, Chooky.”
“Yar right, ’bor.”
“It’s the best holiday I ever had,” said Peter.
*
The rising glass hovered, then fell. Rain beat upon the common. The boys passed the time in the caravan, leaving Dad to his writing. Soon Peter had taken over the house-keeping—such as it was. Daily on their bikes the brothers went down to Lynton, returning with what they could get off the ration—usually kippers, as sold at that time throughout Britain—black oily split fish which had been dipped in creosote to give the appearance of having been smoked above a dull smouldering of oak saw-dust.
Chalk was still an ‘additive’—scientific jargon word—in bread.
“Blast, I wish we had some of our own wheaten scones” said Peter, who looked thin and pale.
“And Mum’s honey” said Jonathan.
“Don’t forget our own butter,” added David.
“What about some rabbits? Let’s take sticks, and Bodger to hunt them!”
“He’s too old to run fast” said Peter.
“I know! Let’s watch the buzzards, and when one drops, send Bodger arter’m!” suggested Jonathan.
So the boys went down Horrock water, where rabbits lived. They were not so common as before the war, and the great dusky-winged hawks were fewer, in that country of the sea-winds. Before the war as many as a dozen were to be seen at once, sailing in tiers above the hills; somtimes plunging down the invisible precipices of the wind, crying their plaintive cries, and on up-tilted wings sweeping up again; or, falling away in the east, to the oakwoods where they nested, each bird growing smaller and smaller until but a tawny speck showed at the turn, from dun undersides of out-stretched wings.
The boys surprised one of the great hawks on the ground holding a rabbit in its claws, and flapping. They killed the rabbit and in triumph bore it back to the cot.
*
Now the cot was ‘home’, Phillip began to view the past happily. He told them how, on opening the door during the past winter, he had seen the constellation of the Plough lying above the eastern end of a beech clump, near the end of the lane across the common, and pointing to Polaris, the constant star of the North. In frosty weather, after the blizzard, and at the turn of the year, he had heard owls on his roof-ridge calling with a throbbing softness. They seemed to be following one another from hunting-perch to perch, to be playing in the quiet of the night, their cries gentle with pleasure. And now, when the rain had stopped, and the nights were quiet under the stars, the owls seemed to be playing again.
“Perhaps they are the young owls of this year” said Jonathan.
It was a warm and gentle night. Four of the Maddison family dining in the caravan by candle-light on rabbit which for three hours had simmered in the crock hanging from the chimney bar. With the rabbit were potatoes, carrots, onions, and half a bottle of O.K. sauce.
“Very tasty” said David. “Good old Peter!”
Phillip felt a little guilty that he had left all the cooking to Peter, that loyal and uncomplaining aristocrat among the children. Soon they would be leaving; their mother was coming down with the baby, to camp in tents and caravan beside the West Lyn below Barbrook, going to sleep to the gentle music of water playing on stone beside them.
Phillip felt already an underlying poignancy that the boys would soon be leaving him. Still, they would be happier in the caravan beside the Lyn, on the Green Meadow camping site, with their mother. Also, he must carry on with his notes for the novels.
Yes, the family would be happier in the caravan on Green Meadow. They had got so wet walking through the heather, day after day of rain, that he had told them to give up wearing shoes and stockings, and walk bare-footed. And those poisonous kippers! White bread and margarine, and a tiny ration of cheese—poor diet, with an occasional orange and apple. The main diet was soup of potatoes and cabbages boiled in the cast-iron crock.
They felt contentment after the rabbit stew. The three boys and their father were sitting in the yellow haze of candlelight when a wood owl hooted almost with flute-like quality on the roof of the cot, forty yards away. It was the bubbling, quavering call, a little uncertain, of a young bird which had lost its parents and was seeking hopefully for an answer to its feelings. Phillip replied with a short, clear note, the call of a male bird. After awhile the quaver came again; and upon being called once more, the bird flew nearer. The conditions for mimicry, or art, were perfect: the upright, solitary candle-flame: the immobility of the boys, their alert faces: the windless night wherein sounds travelled afar—they could hear an owl crying in the valley leading down beside the Lyn a mile away. No cloud over The Chains, only stars. There had been no rain for three days; gossamers strewed the heather, mushrooms were appearing in the enclosures behind stone-walls topped by furze and bramble. The voice of the young female owl seemed to become more tender as it cried again through the darkness.
“She has almost forgotten the owl far away in the valley. She is entranced. She has heard the perfect hoot. She dreams of wonderful eyes, of the tenderest beak preening her feathers.”
There was now complete silence within the caravan, the door open wide to the night. Then with a slight bump on the painted canvas roof they knew the owl had arrived. They dared hardly to breathe: the quavering came again, startlingly near: they could hear the sighing away of the frail and tremulous note.
A soft answer from the caravan. Far away across the common, the other owl was calling. They hardly dared to raise their eyes from the plates before them. Then the owl fluted again; hopefully, thrillingly, trustingly. Was she awaiting her bird of paradise to fly forth from the cavern below?
The candle flame began to quiver. Jonathan, who was dark and Celtic, was silently a-giggle. Whereupon David, thirteen, blue-eyed and Germanic, assumed a clown-face, and stared at his brother, his own face owl-like. Hush, their father whispered, don’t disillusion the bird. What could they do? How get out of it? Oo-oo-woo-loo-woo, came the soft throbbing above their heads, as the egg-shaped swelling in the bird’s throat subsided. The owl in the valley had ceased to call. They began to shake with silent laughter.
Then David gave an imitation of a cuckoo. After awhile there was a reply from the owl on the roof; but a note of doubt was in the fore-shortened reply. Cuck-oo cried David again.
They waited. A less hopeful, a half-sad, melancholy note in the bird’s voice now. David let out another mellow Cuck-oo. Their laughter broke. Then they were sorry for the owl, until later there came a bubbling and wauling and baying across the common, where beech trees stood.
“Cor, I’m what-you-call glad to hear that, ’bor!” said David to Jonathan. “I reckon they’ll pair for life after that hullaballoo!”
They decided to sleep in the Cot that night, to be together. When the boys were in bed, David’s voice said, “This place is haunted, d’you know why? Dad’s got our grandfather’s bones, or the bits that aren’t all burnt up—you know, they burn up some people who prefer to be buried that way, first I mean, because they don’t like the idea of worms eating them up underground, I suppose.”
Phillip heard this talk as he sat by the hearth, there was no door to the bedrooms. He went upstairs with a copy of a book, and said to Peter, who was sleeping on the floor, “Read this passage aloud, please. I’ll put the candle on the floor beside you.”
Peter read slowly,
“The supernatural miscalled, the natural in truth, is the real. To me everything is supernatural. How strange the condit
ion of mind which cannot accept anything but the earth, the sea, the tangible universe! Without the misnamed supernatural these to me seem incomplete, unfinished … As I move about in the sunshine I feel in the midst of the supernatural: in the midst of immortal things … as commonly understood, a ‘miracle’ is a mere nothing. I can conceive soul-works done by simple will or thought a thousand times greater. I marvel that they do not happen at this moment. The air, the sunlight, the night, all that surrounds me seems crowded with inexpressible powers, with the influence of Souls, or existences, so that I walk in the midst of immortal things. I am myself a living witness of it. Sometimes I have concentrated myself, and driven away by continued will all sense of outward appearances, looking straight with the full power of my mind inwards on myself. I find ‘I’ am there; an ‘I’ I do not wholly understand, or know—something there is distinct from earth and timber, from flesh and bones. Recognising it, I feel on the margin of a life unknown, very near, almost touching it: on the verge of powers which if I could grasp would give me an immense breadth of existence, an ability to execute what I now only conceive; most probably of far more than that. To see the ‘I’ is to know that I am surrounded by immortal things. If, when I die, that ‘I’ also dies, and becomes extinct, still even then I shall have had the exaltation of these ideas.
“How many words it has taken to describe so briefly the feelings and the thoughts that came to me by the tumulus; thoughts that swept past and were gone, and were succeeded by others while yet the shadow of the mound had not moved from one thyme-flower to another, not the breadth of a grass blade. Softly breathed the sweet south wind, gently the yellow corn waves beneath; the ancient, ancient sun shone on the fresh grass and the flower, my heart opened wide as the broad, broad earth. I spread my arms out, laying them on the sward, seizing the grass, to take the fulness of the days.
“Could I have my own way after death I would be burned on a pyre of pine-wood, open to the air, and placed on the summit of the hills. Then let my ashes be scattered abroad—not collected in an urn —freely sown wide and broadcast. That is the natural interment of man—of man whose Thought at least has been among the immortals; interment in the elements. Burial is not enough, it does not give sufficient solution into the elements speedily; a furnace is confined. The high open air of the topmost hill, there let the tawny flame lick up the fragment called the body; there cast the ashes into the space it longed for while living. Such a luxury of interment is only for the wealthy; I fear I shall not be able to afford it. Else the smoke of my resolution into the elements should certainly arise in time on the hill-top.”
The Gale of the World Page 30
