The Phoenix Generation (48 page)

“No, but I must see that the stove in the wash-house is lit. Mrs. Valiant is coming to wash today.”

“I must go to London first thing tomorrow morning. The barley won’t be rotten-ripe for a few days.”

It was a fast run over empty roads. He left the village at half past four, and had to go slowly at first, owing to the number of turtle doves picking up grit on the lesser road to Wordingham, but once through that town and on the better roads beyond it he kept his foot down and was passing up the broad and empty
White-chapel
road at half past six—an average speed of fifty-four miles an hour.

Hurst came round after breakfast to his club. They sat on the grass of St. James’s Park.

“London can be very pleasant,” said Phillip, turning over to lie on his back. “These elms are fine creatures, lifting their arms to the sky. Byron must have known them, and Keats, and Shelley. W. H. Hudson, too. I saw a green woodpecker here in
nineteen-twenty
, during my first year in Fleet Street.”

“How can you talk about that when the world is on the brink of a war that will end in the bolshevisation of Europe?”

“Did I ever tell you that my cousin Willie met Hitler at
Beyreuth
in nineteen-twenty-three, after the abortive
putsch
? My cousin said Hitler was the most sensitive and eager creature he had ever met, or was likely to meet. He was all idealism and hope and naked sensibility. And he had almost a mystic admiration for England. Willie, as an ex-service man, was invited by Frau Cosima Wagner to sit in her box during a performance of
Parsifal.
Hitler sat at the back, concealed from the audience. He was on the run. The music moved Hitler so much that the tears were running down his cheeks.”

“I’d have given ten years of my life to have seen Hitler. He is
everything.
Birkin is a clod compared to Hitler.”

“Now look here, Hurst! I’ll be glad if you’ll kindly keep such remarks to yourself, or to your pickpocket pals. Birkin is
my
generation, he is English of the English. I think it is a great pity that he resigned office from the Labour party. But then all
history is a great pity. He belonged to the war generation, and we survivors all resolved to
do
something,
to
be
something different when it was all over on the Western Front, that great livid wound that lay across Europe suppurating during more than fifteen hundred nights and days—torrents of steel and prairie fires of flame, the roar of creation if you like. Birkin should have remained in Parliament—that was his platform—but what’s the use of talking about should-haves, or might-haves? Birkin remains the
only
man of prominence in England with the new spirit. He limped away from the battlefield determined that never again would it happen. Perhaps such a spirit can only be acceptable to a new generation after another war. When he is dead. And I hope I’ll be dead, too.”

“I still say you are the better man.”

“I couldn’t lead a party. I can’t even lead my men on the farm. I used to think I could inspire a new way—through my books—but I’ve outgrown that conceit.”

“Talk like that tonight, Phil! Let yourself go.”

“I’ve got nothing to let go, Hurst—except my life. And who wants that?”

“England does.”

“I’m afraid I am now only Hardy’s ‘man harrowing clods’.”

*

Hurst briefed Phillip about the meeting as they finished their tea at a shop in the Strand.

“The meeting has been called by a man who was one of the ‘Iron Ring’ around Birkin. He says that Birkin is the weakest man in England.’’

“Every man is the weakest man in England at times. If you don’t mind, I’d rather not hear any more of your reflections on Birkin.”

“Very well. You’ll see all kinds of people. There’s Lord Eggesford, for a start. He’s an authority on soil conservancy, and wrote a very fine book, according to Major Bohun-Borsholder.”

“I’ve read it.”

“Then there’s the Admiral who commanded the Mediterranean Fleet in the last war. He’s Anglo-German Link. Then there’s the ex-M.P. who seized the mace in the House of Commons some years ago. I think you know the Duke of Gaultshire? He’s promised to come. There are also heads of all sorts of societies, and associations, including an M.P. who fought with the Coldstream during the first battle of Ypres in nineteen-fourteen and was badly
wounded. You’ll meet a lot of men who were once with Birkin, but left him. The idea is to try and form a Committee to include all who see the danger of war, and want to try and form some sort of front to stop it. If you feel at the meeting that you can say anything, I do promise that it will be listened to eagerly. We desperately need a rallying point.”

“I’m a smoking flax.”

“For God’s sake don’t run yourself down so!”

They walked through ambient sunshine to the meeting. It was to be held in an upper room in a building off the Strand.

There sat and stood about fifty people, both men and women. They looked to be a little odd, all different, all of differing minds and animations. The Chairman briefly stated why the meeting had been called.

“We hope to try and find a formula of united resistance against the threat of decadent democracy’s last resort to save itself by going to war. As Chairman I suggest that we listen to those who wish to speak. I must ask speakers to be as brief as possible, for time is short. Afterwards we hope to form a Committee, as a prelude to united action.”

He sat down.

Speaker after speaker followed. From them came suggestions; qualifications to suggestions; diversions of the qualifications of proposals; counter-proposals, counter-suggestions. Phillip thought that a surrealistic painter might have had an idea for a picture of circular stones grinding faces like axes, while each arm turned its own grindstone heedless of all other abrasive circular motions.

Nothing was agreed upon, nothing decided when the meeting broke up.

Hurst, who had somehow become acquainted with various famous people, introduced Phillip to some of them. He said, “I am a member of Birkin’s Party.”

No comment was made by the polite faces; but the Duke of Gaultshire, whom Phillip already knew, invited him down to Husborne to see his collection of rare and uncommon pheasants in his park, saying that he had read his books with interest and instruction, and they might talk things over quietly together.

“I was a patient at the hospital, Duke, in nineteen-eighteen.”

“So I am told,” said the Duke, with nervous courtesy. “I do hope you will be able to stay. But of course your corn harvest is imminent. Pray propose yourself at any time.”

What a gentle creature he was. A sad family, father against son, son in the wilderness. So it was throughout all classes of human society.

“His social credit programme isn’t any good,” said Hurst. “Come and see some of the fellows who believe in direct action.”

A discussion was taking place on the wooden steps leading down to the lavatory. Talk ended when he and Hurst arrived. Phillip had an idea that he was being assessed.

“Tell us what you think,” said Hurst.

“I believe in Birkin’s potential. He is a true leader, if given the chance.”

“He’s had the chance. He can’t work with anyone,” said Hurst. “Everyone here knows it. They have all tried to do so, and he’s failed us.”

The Chairman, who had white hair and a young and hopeful face, squeezed past the group. “Still talking about Birkin?” he said. “Well, he’s the weakest man in Britain.”

He passed on down, and Phillip was regarded by six or seven composed faces.

“For years that chap was one of the Iron Ring around the Bleeder,” said Hurst, “and he knows what he is talking about.”

“All men talk about themselves. And so, perhaps, you won’t mind not using that expression again,” said Phillip, looking Hurst in the eye. “Derision does not become you or me or anyone else. Our words are boomerangs. As we judge others, so we judge ourselves.”

“May I introduce you to William Frolich?”

Against the newel post at the bottom of the stairs stood a short man with a round face scarred by a razor slash down his right cheek, listening, half indifferent, to what was being said, but listening
without
discourtesy or egotism. Phillip recognised Birkin’s ex-director of propaganda. Was this the man who, having rejected Birkin as the greatest patriot in Britain, the destined Leader to bring to full glory of service the Empire, now spoke contemptuously of Birkin as ‘the bleeder’. What had happened? Phillip sensed in him a calm, easy force, a simplicity of nature, a singleness of mind. Hurst introduced him.

“Is Birkin the weakest man in Britain?” he asked, avoiding the razor scar.

“In no sense of the word is Birkin a weak man,” replied the other, in a quiet, slightly nasal voice. “But he is not Britain’s man of destiny, as the Führer is Europe’s man of destiny.”

“How can a man of destiny be known before he has ‘achieved what was once only imagined’?”

“First, he knows himself to be that man. After agonised
meditation
, his life becomes clear. When others encounter him, they find themselves becoming clear. Those who are truly clear become his disciples, and endure to the death.”

The scarred man hung by his elbow to the newel post at the bottom of the stairs and slowly swung round upon it as he smiled a little, as though to himself. A line of A. E. Housman came, without relevancy, into Phillip’s head—
He
wears
the
turning
globe.

The white-headed man who had been chairman at the meeting returned up the stairs. Seeing him close, Phillip saw that his umber eyes had a hurt look in them, as though he had passed through much mental confusion.

“He used to be a dipsomaniac,” said Hurst, half contemptuously. “Birkin sent him to Germany to be cured. So he never forgave Birkin.”

“He lost his fanaticism, perhaps? I suppose all eccentric ideas arise from a psychological basis, or condition.” And how often do we use scapegoats by which to escape from our own inner chaos. Hitler and the Jews; himself and Lucy.

Now he must return for the corn harvest, a half-and-half man: a failure, as once his father said of himself. Poor father. Not one of his children ever thought of him as Daddy.

Poor Daddy.

*

Billy came home for the holidays from his school under
Cran-borne
Chase, whither the sale of the Old Manor had helped to put him. He was eager to help with the harvest. On his first afternoon he went with Matt, who with a scythe cut round the field, ‘opening of it up for the binder’—and helped to gather up the stalks into sheaves. Next morning he helped to put on the steel wheels of the tractor, and to fit the extension to the towing plate. The binder was drawn out of the barn by hand, lest the iron spuds of the tractor dig into and scrape the asphalt floor. It was the same old binder that had been used by the previous farmer. Phillip had bought it for
£
8 at the auction. Now it had been reconditioned, and he hoped it would change some of its habits, which were, literally, eccentric.

The binder being fastened to the towing plate, the slow
procession
went up to the Steep wheat. The steward drove the tractor, while Phillip’s son sat on the high iron seat of the old horse-binder, stick in hand to bang the sheet-iron chain-cover
should the thing become temperamental. The last of the old discoloured 1914 paint on the sheet-iron cover had long ago been thwacked off; for that binder in previous harvests had been liable to do the oddest things. Having cut a certain amount of corn, it would suddenly refuse to bind the stalks into sheaves, but throw them out loose instead. After a rest, and apparent adjustment by pokes of Luke’s Shut-knife or Screw-hammer (the steward’s two infallible tools), the binder would, on restarting and as though in repentance, drop off a series of sheaves tied together like sausages. BANG! THUMP! WALLOP! on the sheet-iron cover of the main driving chain. Another stop for adjustment. Onwards once more, a hundred yards or so of perfect tying, then BANG! again. This time the string was in a tangle: the sheaves looked as though a metallic spider had been at work. At each stoppage the steward with patience spoke to the machine, uttering soft and patient words of encouragement—a sort of incantation—“Yar’ll see, we shan’t be in no muddle.” After this, for a period anyway, the reaper-and-binder behaved perfectly.

*

“I wonder what price we’ll get for our barley this year, Luke.”

“You won’t lose like last season,” replied Luke. “Not if the war come.”

“Last season the price fell a hundred per cent, Luke, because of that cheap foreign barley flooding the market, Luke.”

“You told me it was done to stop Hitler getting it.”

“It was bought in the City of London, and led to the virtual closing of the corn exchanges in Poland, Roumania,
Czechoslovakia
and Hungary. All this caused a crisis in Berlin, since it upset the barter plans of a nation possessing only two million pounds gold reserve. And as you know, Luke, many farmers in this
district
went bust, and the banks foreclosing on mortgages couldn’t get rid of the farms at any price.”

“Come a war, you’ll get a good price for your barley,” said Luke.

“So you see, it’s the same problem this year for Hitler, almost a problem of starvation, and then civil war. So he may have to go East.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Luke. “But if war come, you’ll be all right.”

“Luke, we must cultivate the stubbles as soon as possible before the rains come. Cultivation will cut the thistles
underground
.”

Luke looked unhappy. “No one else about here does that,” he demurred. “It’s a waste o’ money in my opinion. If ’twas mine, I’d keep the money in my pocket.”

“But stubble cultivation is a usual practice elsewhere. The cultivator tines penetrate into, and cut through, the top three inches of soil, and all the thistle roots. Then you cross the work again, leaving behind a loose tilth which dries out in the sun and kills the exposed thistle roots. You saw it on the Steep. When the rain falls, all the weed-seeds in the soil chit, the field becomes green with charlock, dock, fat-hen, and crab-grass. Then you plough. Thus you turn the growing weeds under and rot them. They help to put humus into the soil, they are destroyed.”