The Power of the Dead (44 page)

Georgian poetry died on the Somme. The young star-captains—Sorley, Butterfield, Thomas, Ledwidge, Brooke, Owen,
Rosenberg
, Grenfell—now glowed phosphorescent in the wood of wild
willows in the unclaimed areas of Flanders, Artois, and Picardy. Their poetic race was run. Modern verse now surveyed the waste land of Civvy Street; but no urban poet of alley-way and coffee spoon could speak with the authority of the phoenix—which had no real existence. The fleet of stars was burnt out and black.

*

A feeling of wildest desolation arose in him; he searched the immeasurable legions of the sand—rock, bone, tree reduced by air and water ever fighting for creation. He stared along leagues of empty wave, sky, and shore, longing to see one human figure. Had Wordsworth felt that—life a vacuum, once filled by what he had, in youth, been able to put into ‘nature’?

The far prospect of sand lay under its dilating shimmer of blue. When he stood up the mirage dissolved, releasing three small specks in line. Lowering his head to the level of the sea-shore, he saw the specks crumble and melt once more in quivering heat.

He ran up a sandhill, marram grasses pricking his bare legs, and surveyed from the crest. A man and two women were
walking
there. He awaited their coming, his mind buoyant once again as he watched them getting nearer. He decided to go towards them and see who they were; and running down the slope of sand came upon a number of blue butterflies among flowers of sea-rocket growing with yellow-horned poppies above the tide-line. He wondered if, there being no scent in the sea-rocket, the butterflies had been drawn by the colour of the flowers. His footfalls purred past them, and as the group came nearer and the man waved, his heart leapt: surely it was Martin Beausire? It was; and with him were Fiona and Felicity.

“We’ve been looking for you,” cried Martin, approaching with a hand held out. “We met Lucy in the village and she told us where to find you.”

“Where have you sprung from?”

“We’re staying with the Mules.”

He wondered about this, since Martin’s novel published two years before, with its caricatures of the Mules family, had been read in the village.

“Hullo, Felicity. This
is
a surprise.”

“But, Phil,” said Fiona, “surely you knew Felicity was coming?”

Seeing the girl’s downheld eyes he replied quickly, “Of course I heard from Cabton that she was coming. Only I’d forgotten the exact day.”

Martin wanted to bathe.

“It’s dangerous at the ebb, particularly at Aery Point. When the tide has run out we’ll be able to cross over the Hurleyburlies to the Shrarshook, and swim in the old gravel pits there.”

“It’s your line of country.”

They put on bathing dresses and sat in the sun before wandering down to Aery Point to look at a salmon boat which had just put in to shoot a draught. The ebb was still running fairly fast; but the main volume had lapsed. The fairway was two hundred yards distant. Salmon, cruising along the coastal shallows, just clear of breaking waves to find the river, were now moving into the estuary, he told them.

In the fairway two other boats, each with its crew of four men and piled net, were making for the sandbanks of the South and North Tails, now marked by white confused waves. Each of the fishing places, or pitches, he explained, were visited in rotation by the licensed boats, on the basis of equal chances for all.

Phillip and Felicity walked down wet shingle towards a
whale-back
of gravel where a shallow stream was rushing fast and noisy.

“Here the ebb is checked by the sea-mass, Felicity, and so the shingle piles up.”

They crossed the stream, the whale-back was loose with draining water. Each step up caused a slide of pebbles, so he gave her a hand. They descended the seaward slope, to walk upon the
sandbank
which lay beside the deep and narrow channel of the fairway. Marking buoys were lying nearly flat on their sides as though exhausted by resistance to the weight of the ebb.

“Cabton is in the camp. We’ll go there after the bathe. I expect you’ll be glad to see him.”

He left her, to follow or go back to Beausire, as she wished. No, he thought: I must stand alone. I belong to the dead. This is the North Tail, and across the narrow channel is the South Tail. There, on that late September morning the body of Willie’s spaniel was found. Did Billjohn follow his master to the
Shrarshook
in the darkness of that awful night? Did they meet? Did the spaniel find Willie and were both swept away together on the rising tide?

He heard the crunching of gravel behind him.

“Phillip, do you really think I came down to see Cabton?”

He looked down at her, as she stood before him in her black bathing suit. He saw the swelling breasts, the slope of her legs, the
soft curve of the thighs foreshortened in his downward glance to the feet standing as though obediently before his own. Only with Barley had he felt the lure of a girl’s feet, seen past brow, nose, breast, and soft diminishing curve of thigh.

“How is the free-lancing going?”

“I can’t work in London any longer.” Pale blue eyes appealed to him.

Lucy, so kind, so sympathetic, so trustful; Lucy so often set aside in his mind because she could not share his world—his memories. No: he must not allow his feelings for this young girl—— No: Lucy had come to rescue him, after Barley had died.

“Why shouldn’t you come to see Cabton?”

He felt his lust rising; and plunged down the loose shingle. Each step broke away a hundredweight and more of white, brown and blue pebbles; he arrived in time to help haul on the heel rope. Seven fish were in the seine. She turned away as one after another was clouted on the back of the neck with a wooden club.

“Phillip, didn’t he give you my message?”

“I heard indirectly through Edward Cornelian.”

“I wanted to write but I felt I might not be wanted——”

In his happiness he said, “Come and look at these salmon. Can you see the dreamy hues of ocean on them? The colours of the sea, silver of the scales: a suggestion of pale green of shallow water on ribbed sand: the faintest coralline of the paired fins. I suppose it dreams of homecoming to the river of its birth, after the long sea wilderness.”

Martin asked one of the crew how old were the fish.

“Maidens,” said one.

“Four-year hen-fish,” said another.

“They ban’t true spawning fish, they come later,” said a third.

“That’s right,” said the skipper. “They be maiden summer fish.”

“If they don’t come to lay their eggs, why do they come into the river?” asked Fiona.

“They’m rinnin’.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They’m playin’.”

“When is the spawning season in the rivers?” asked Martin.

“They fish spawn on the Shrarshook.”

“Why don’t they stay in the sea, where it’s safer,” persisted
Fiona, “until it’s time to lay their eggs. What makes them come into the river?”

“Dream,” said Phillip.

Felicity proved so companionable to Lucy that she was invited to return to Rookhurst with them. One morning the three went to look over Fawley House, to decide what furniture should be sold at the forthcoming auction. Felicity carried pencil and note-book.

While the two women were examining furniture, Phillip wandered away. What a place of dark tunnel-like passages the ‘big house’ was, beyond the living quarters of the family which once existed with its many children. Surely one half of the occupants, in the south-facing, tall rooms, had not known how the other half in the coving attics had lived. As for the kitchen, it was like the engine-room of a small tramp-steamer, without the engines and without the electric bulbs.

Feeling that the desolation of the house was too much for him, he climbed the stairs to the attics in order to see the view from the upper windows. The servants’ quarters, approached by steep and narrow steps, were crossed by papered beams. The wide but shallow eave-windows barely permitted the entry of direct light. During the years of silence up here only wandering butterflies and queen-wasps had found their way in, to add to the wreckage of wings and masks in ancient spider webs. He sat down in an attic bedroom to lose himself in a dream of past life. Sometimes from below came remote voices and footfalls as from another world. After some minutes Lucy’s clear voice floated up. “Are you still there? Can you come down and look at what we think might be sold?”

He went down the stairs and along a narrow passage to a baize door opening into the main gallery, and so to the tall bedroom where they were.

“What’s this, Pip?”

Lucy had seemed more affectionate since Felicity had come, he thought. Was it because some of the load was taken off her mind?

“I’ve seen something like that before, where was it, now?”

He could not remember. “My memory isn’t what it was. It may have been here. Yes, it was, Willie showed it to me. We bumped up and down on it. It’s a dandy horse, for shaking up the liver in the morning after two bottles of port and all that went with it into the belly of a glutton.”

It looked like a squat bellows, it was square and heavy with leather; toad-like; a row of five boards inside a square bellows, five rows of brass-headed nails, the brass held on by lead, along each board: coiled wire or springs between the boards to give the glutton a bounce and jerk each time he sat, stifling groans at aching eye-balls, fingers clutching scrolled wooden arms, sweaty feet on foot-board so that each pressure of his fat behind on
horse-hair
-stuffed top board, leather-covered, squeezed the fat of the belly-muscles.

“What a thing. Put it on the list to be sold, girls.”

He looked at other queried items: an oak sideboard, carved with scenes of the Crimea, a present to his grandfather; a wine-cooler by Sheraton (although he did not know this); several chests riddled by the beetle, and rotten underneath from long standing on the stone floor of what used to be the servant’s hall; large black
coach-trunks
in the loft, together with uniforms in japanned boxes. Other trunks of women’s clothes looking to be well over a hundred years old.

“Oh, they’re beautiful gowns!” said Felicity.

“Do you want them, Lucy?”

“Well no, I hardly think so.” She looked at some of the clothes with an eye to cutting them down for the children.

“They should go to a Repertory Company,” said Felicity, wondering who had worn the one she held up, with its tiny waist. She saw herself in it, beautiful for Phillip.

Seeing this with some satisfaction, he left to look elsewhere about the house. The dust-sheets had been removed from the drawing room, which was on the first floor. Now revealed was a conglomeration of Georgian and Victorian furniture—chairs, tables, lamp-stands on the marble shelf of the fire-place beside an ornate German over-mantel framing a tarnished mirror. Below was a brass fire-basket, green with verdigris and loaded with sticks and frayed feathers. The chimney seemed to be solid with
jackdaws’
nests. He thought of setting fire to them, but resisted the impulse and went downstairs to a tall room, dark with beams to the roof, which was the dining hall of the original barton
around which other rooms had been built in Stuart times,
according
to Aunt Dora. The uneven oak-slab floor carried a refectory table with carved bulbous legs, around which were placed oak chairs with tall straight backs hung with tapestry, and the seats covered by flat, patchwork cushions. He hit one seat with his stick; dust fell from the chair frame, with dead moths and
fragments
of woollen fabric from the chair-back.

At one end of the hall, under the minstrel gallery, was a great open fireplace, above which was to be seen a square of sky. Bits of burnt paper, discoloured by damp, lay on the hearth, with rusty bully beef tins and ends of charred furniture frames. Here in the war soldiers had evidently been billeted. Initials were scratched in pencil on the plaster walls, with dates, most of them in the summer of 1916. Seeing these relics, the dead life of the hall became momentarily alive with khaki phantoms—only to recede into the viewless past.

Some candle lanterns, on posts wrenched out of missing wooden pedestals, lay along one wall. Every pane of glass within the rusty frames was broken. He could imagine what had happened—the pedestals had gone into the soldiers’ fire. Had Uncle John claimed compensation? Probably not: too much had lain upon his spirit before, during, and after those days.

“Don’t worry,” said Lucy, seeing Phillip’s face. “Felicity and I will gradually get it all tidy.”

*

As he climbed to the downs above the borstal, he thought of the house soon to be altered to let in light and air; and striding along the ridge way to Colham, felt optimism returning. There he saw his solicitor, and told him his ideas for renovation. He was given the address of an architect. Having talked to that individual, he went round to the Rising Sun.

Outside in the yard stood Bill Kidd’s motor-car. And from within the bar-room came the familiar voice.

“Seriously, ‘Bosun’, my lad, and without the word of a lie, I took that fish, all of five pounds on the spring-balance, on a cast tapered to 4-X and ending with the single hair of a Percheron stallion’s tail knotted to my special fly, the Crystal Killer.”

The reply of the landlord was a belch, followed by a squirt into the brass spittoon on the floor near Bill Kidd’s feet. Then Bill Kidd’s voice called out, “Come on in, my Mad Son. I know you’re there. I’ll tell you for why,” he added when Phillip was in and
the door closed. “See that knot-hole down there? Now watch it when I’m outside.” He went out and closed the door. There on the floor was a dwarf image of Bill Kidd, surrounded by a faint halo of light.

“The old pin-hole camera, Phillip. It only happens when the sun’s east-south-east. Have a drink. Where’ve you been all this time?”

“In Devon.”

“Done any fishin’? Well, blow me down. And in the best season since nineteen fourteen! Did ‘Bosun’ tell you that I’ve moved into these parts, and got a cottage not far from your place? Near Uncle ‘Tinribs’ water, too, you must come with me and I’ll show you how to catch fish. See this little fellow?” He lifted the lapel of his coat and revealed a small crushed artificial fly. “The Crystal Killer, old boy. It will take any fish anywhere at any time.”

Phillip took the page-proof copy of
The
Phoenix
from his pocket. “Some bits here and there might interest you, Bill. Would you care to borrow it?”

“Thanks, I’ll let you have it back. Well, chin-chin, old boy. See you tomorrow.”

‘Bosun’ became ruminative when Kidd had departed.

“Blest if us knows what to make of ’n. Funny sort of feller; ’a saith so many things. One day ’tes this, t’ other day it be that. He be all fly this an’ fly that,” went on ‘Bosun’. “Now can you tell me where a blofly comes from? I knows, see, but ’a don’t. I seed one come out of a she-maskell, it flipped out in a flash, and not a feather on ’m. The maskell was up in thik corner.” He pointed to a chrysalis on the wall.

“If that’s a she-maskell, what does a he-maskell look like?” asked Phillip.

“Aw, like any other booger, I don’t trouble nought ’bout he, midear.”

“Yurr,” Mrs. Tinker whispered, beckoning Phillip. “Last night Farmer Mock and Butcher Dellbridge was in yurr,
discussing
yaws, and the Major must say something, so ’a zaid he once had a yaw-flock on his uncle’s estate. Was they two-toothed or four-toothed yaws Farmer Mock asks him, taking the major up, and the Major, I sees’m hesitating before he replies, ‘Three teeth’. Of course us all laughed, and the Major looked proper dark, sayin’ ’a had lost his memory after the wound ’a got, while rum-runnin’ off’a Long Island for the bootleggers in America.”

“Funny sort of rum-runnin’ it was too, I reckon,” said Mr. Tinker.

“When I asked ’im afterwards he told me it was Booth’s High and Dry Old Gin, and I told’n there wasn’t no such gin, noomye!” and this time ‘Bosun’ spat so violently that he straddled the target.

“But you know’d’n in the war, didden you, Mr. Phillip? ’A saith ’a knowed ’ee, di’n ’ee, ‘Bosun’?”

“Oh yes, he was a major all right, Mrs. Tinker.”

The next morning Lucy and Felicity were continuing the list of surplus furniture to be sold, so Phillip again walked to the Rising Sun.

Something had happened before he arrived; Mrs. Tinker drew him behind the curtain and said, “Yurr! Have ‘Bosun’ told ’ee? ’Bout the Major’s cheque what comed back? He asked us to change’n for’n, and it corned back this morning. What should us do? They do say that Malkin the butcher have got one corned back, too.”

“Shouldn’t be surprised if that be Malkin now, sounds like’s bike,” said ‘Bosun’, coming into the barrel-room. “’A comed yurr earlier on and zaid if he caught the Major ’a’d break his bliddy neck. There ’a be, comin’ in. Say nought about nothing, missus.”

The door opened and a man came in. He wore a jacket over blue-striped butcher’s apron, below the hem of which were revealed a pair of brown boots and natty leggings. He was a man of about thirty, and already his face and hands were assuming the meaty hue which butchers have from handling meat the juice of which, Phillip had heard, entered the body through the pores of the palms. He was partly bald, his forehead and dome of head gave the idea that the roots of his hair had refused to continue growing in the suet or fat which, like the juices of meat, were ever trying to press through an oft-wiped brow.

“That feller about?” he enquired, abruptly. “Haifa pint o’ fourpenny, ‘Bosun’.”

“You mean the Major?” asked Mrs. Tinker. “’A cometh yurr sometimes ’bout now. P’raps he’s working. I know ’a gets a cheque about this time of the month, for us changes it for’n, don’t us, ‘Bosun?”

“It goes through all right,” murmured the landlord. “Missus, draw me a pint.”

“I’ll give he ‘major’,” replied the butcher. “How does he make his money?”

“Yurr, I’ll show ’ee, Mr. Malkin.” Mrs. Tinker returned with a handful of crude pen-and-ink drawings. “The Major did all of these,” she said, a little proudly.

Phillip asked to be allowed to look at them. They were based on the simple kind of proposterous joke-cartoon repeated year after year in the comic weeklies of the Conglomerated Press.

“Yes, the Major did all they,” said Mrs. Tinker.

“I’ll give he ‘major’ when I zee’n,” repeated the butcher. “Twice I’ve had to leave my business to come yurr after my money. The bloody cheek of the feller!” He spat violently. “He comes to me, asks me to cash a cheque for five quid, and I obliged him. When it comes back from my bank I was after him, and he says he’s sorry, but his account was overdrawn and he’ll bring it down next day. Well, I was away to market when he calls at the shop to pay the money he owes me. He gives my boy a cheque to pay for the first cheque, then has the damned sauce to ask him to cash another for five pound, then makes the cheque out for ten pounds, and asks for t’other back. Then that one comes back also. I told’n if he didn’t pay me back by this mornin’ I’d put it in the hands of my solicitor and take him to court. And if he’s not here by one o’clock that’s what I’ll do. Wait till I gets my hands on him. The rotten booger!”

“I’m sure it be a mistake,” said Mrs. Tinker. “For ’a hath money be’ind’n, you know. The Army Paymaster gived he a pension—tes nearly thirty pound a month, too. I sees the envelopes to the Major, on His Majesty’s Service they be. Wait a minute, I’ve got one here.”

She went into her dark kitchen and returned with a
much-folded
envelope, on the back of which was a list of spirits—whisky, brandy, rum. “My eyes ban’t what they was. That’s what the Major ordered, perhaps you can read’n.”

“I don’t want to see no envelopes,” declared the butcher. “I wants my money, else I’ll take him, major or no major, to court.”

“Perhaps you can see it,” said Mrs. Tinker, passing the envelope to Phillip.

“It seems all right,” he said. “Addressed to Major William Kidd, M.G., and this envelope was forwarded from the United Services Club in London.”

“It will have to be all right,” said the butcher grimly. “What does he think I am? He’s one of the bloodsucking parasites, and I’ll make him sit up.”

“Such a shame the Major’s so careless,” remarked Mrs. Tinker. “And his wife, nice and quiet she is, going to have a baby.”

“Then why the heck does he go about doin’ things like this?” cried the butcher.

He had another beer, and when the grandfather clock struck one he got up, his face set, and said that they could tell the Major he’d be up for false pretences and swindling. Phillip heard the excessive noise of his engine—the valves obviously had too much gap—going away down the road.

“Major be a fool to ’isself,” said ‘Bosun’ reflectively.

“It’s his poor wife I’m thinking of,” said Mrs. Tinker. “You men!” she cried suddenly, with a feline look at her husband.

“What have I done, tho’?” shouted ‘Bosun’, his shoulders hunched under his blue jersey. “What you always tacklin’ of me for?”