The Power of the Dead (48 page)

He knew that feeling; it had in the past been his own. He held her in his arms, knowing that she was wounded to be needing love so desperately. He must be her friend and not abuse her.

“Don’t worry, pet. We’ll always be friends.”

“You’ll see me again, won’t you, before you go? And don’t forget your regimental dinner tonight.”

She was happy again, so was he. They walked down to the Cockchafer hand in hand.

*

The dinner was in the Connaught Rooms. After the meal and the toasts the Colonel of the Regiment moved around, talking to men who once had worn khaki, and had been such great friends, and now saw one another but once a year, for an evening.

It was a quiet occasion, for all remembered too much. Phillip, as a war-time acting lieutenant-colonel, sat at the high table, between two friends, one of whom had won the Victoria Cross in the penultimate month of the war, in the advance through the forest of Mormal. Ditchings had gone forward with a sergeant and a Lewis gun when the battalion was held up by a German
rear-guard
, consisting of a line of machine-gun posts. The two men had worked their way down a flank of the German line, knocking out one post after another—for the flanks had been left in the air, and so it had been almost a text-book exercise. Even so, it had opened the way for the Division to advance. Phillip asked Ditchings what he had felt afterwards, and Ditchings wrote on his menu card,
Sleep-
sleep
-sleep.
He had been sweated out, emptied away. No fear, no broken sleep—the German boys it was who died.

When Lord Satchville came round to speak to those who had once been his senior officers, he asked Phillip about his new book,
saying he must read it, and what was the title. Phillip felt
embarrassed
, and began to stutter, for he knew that it held to a point of view that the Colonel would consider alien to the spirit of the
Regiment
: so he said it was only a novel, and then thinking what he ought to say, felt that words had gone from him. Ditchings spoke up and said it was a very fine book: then he too became silent; for he knew the gulf of suffering between the spirit of the Regiment and what actually occurred before, during, and after a battle; and of the two diverse things, which was of the greater truth? Service to England and Empire, that was the spirit of the Colonel; service to mankind, which meant the poor man, that was the spirit of cousin Willie, the theme of
The
Phoenix
.

“I must get your book,” said the Colonel.

Hoping to ease the inarticulateness of himself, Phillip said the book was about an ex-soldier he had known, who had tried to bring a new vision to people—and he mentioned the name of a soldier-poet who had written some of the few truthful poems of the war.

“Oh,” said Lord Satchville, “I’m afraid I don’t much care for the fellow.”

“It’s rather a difficult thing, to be truthful about actual
warfare
, Colonel.”

“He isn’t English,” said the Colonel, musingly. “His father’s family are Parsees, from Bombay.”

“He was a very good regimental officer, Colonel, so I understand from those who knew him, and soldiered with him.”

Lord Satchville was stroking his Viking beard, now turning grey, and looking sideways with his fading blue eyes at Phillip, who could feel the Colonel’s disappointment in his own diminishing sensations. The Colonel knew, he thought, of how he had failed after the war: that black period in his life when he had spent some time in prison. The Colonel changed the subject and spoke to Ditchings, asking after his family; he was the benevolent patriarch once more. Phillip began to wish that he had not gone to the reunion dinner: for the truth was, he could not bear to disappoint anyone, and yet knew well how his weakness or incapacity too often led to another kind of disappointment. For this reason he had made an excuse not to accept the invitation to stay with Satchville, and to revisit Husborne Abbey, although Lucy’s grandmother, Mrs. Chychester, had advised him to accept, saying she was sure that Lucy and he would find the visit enjoyable. How would the great
man—great because of the strength of his simplicity—feel about a young man who “ceaselessly blasphemed against all the values a Christian holds dear,” according to
The
Ecclesiastical
Times
? He could think no further—the views of ‘Donkin’, the hero, were more in keeping with those of the outcast heir to the historic name and ducal estates of Husborne, the socialist Marquess who since youth had been alienated from his father, the Duke of Gaultshire, cousin to Satchville. A few pages of naturalistic prose and dialogue—how could they maintain themselves against the vision of the Abbey, with its immemorial traditions? How could his complicated consciousness fit in with the simplicity of such established assurance of life?

“Ah, I must read your book,” the Colonel murmured affably, as he left the top table. “I have your otter beside my bedhead, and read a few pages every night before turning out the light. For me, it is part of England.”

At these unexpected words, Phillip felt himself to be on the verge of tears.

Afterwards he walked with two friends of the Regiment, both holders of the Cross—Colonel Vallum, and Captain Ditchings—to the Barbarian Club. They sat together over a drink at the bar; they parted, saying they must meet again at the dinner next year. He felt sad seeing them go. He walked on the Embankment for awhile before returning to his garret bed with the near-cardboard walls through which travelled many sounds. Two of the dining-room maids slept up there; the floorboards creaked as footfalls went slowly past his door. He lay in bed, wondering how bad a man he was becoming, having failed Nuncle, and then Lucy, and now it looked as though he had spiritually seduced Felicity. Why hadn’t he gone before it was too late. Yet he wanted her, as she wanted him. No: he must never betray Lucy.

Midnight struck from Big Ben, down the river. One o’clock—two o’clock—

*

It was ten years since the Armistice: the war seemed deeper and darker in the imagination than during the actual days of that lost time: the faces of friends in uniform, against the smoke and intolerable crash of bombardment: faces around the piano in the ante-room: ever-gay, laughing faces round the table on
guest-nights
—these phantoms were more real to him than the living. One must never go back among the living: one must, for ever, say
goodbye to old comrades, so that one might always see them with young faces, gay and carefree, in those scenes of the vanished world of the Western Front which could only be entered in silence and alone.

Autumn moved serenely into St. Luke's Summer, as the early days of October were called—that period before the moon begins to wax, before its full shine brings the first woodcock over the North Sea to the downs and the beech hangers; before the
woodland
leaves begin to drift upon the winds and gather in the waving weeds of ranunculus swelling the trout-streams of the meadows.

The sheltering woods still showed the colours of autumn among their dark massed foliage.

All the village came to the auction at Fawley, and a surprising number of people from the towns, as well as from neighbouring houses, and of course the farmers drove up in their gigs and traps behind cobs. Phillip was surprised to see Piers and Virginia: his friend in a grey Tyrolean felt hat and red-chequered shirt and
Lederhosen
,
Virginia more conventionally dressed in tweed coat, skirt and blue beret. Piers had sold his Aston-Martin and bought an old
£
5 bull-nosed Morris two-seater, which looked as though it had been standing out in a field for a couple of years.

Phillip spoke to many of the farm-hands—Joby the shepherd, Ned the baliff, Mac the forester, Haylock the keeper. He saw also Captain Arkell, and Mr. Tinker of the Rising Sun. There must be nearly two hundred people present.

For the village people it was a holiday: at last they could see inside the ‘big house' they had known, distantly and with awe, all their lives. There they were, clumping up and down the pale wooden stairs of the servant's quarters, deal once scrubbed with sand, water, and perhaps home-made soap of fat and potash, until the grain stood out in lines. Now they were prying into empty rooms; moving in loose procession up the wide oaken stairway from the hall, to sit on Mr. John's bed and try the mattress. As for the village boys, they were having the time of their lives, playing hide and seek down the dark passages.

Sitting on one of the higher stairways he tried to assemble, in orderly procession, what tasks he had set himself for the immediate future. The accepted estimate was
£
1,450 to put the place in habitable condition. There were to be three divisions of the house, each self-contained. In addition, and before his parents came to live there, the gardens must be made ready for spring planting.

After that, all decaying boughs of oak and walnut in the little park must be cut, the stubs painted with Stockholm tar. All rotten wood, and shreddings from the uprooted fruit trees burnt for
potash
to be added to the compost heap, or heaps, ready for those cultivations.

The reconditioning of the game-house, on the north side under the big walnut tree, was not included in the architect's
specification
. Perhaps in his spare time—perhaps with Father's help, it might be converted for a study for himself—a place apart, where he could write? It was an octagonal building with a roof rising to a point. The walls were lined with lead and spiky with a thousand rusted nails set in rows, whereon game in the remote past had been hung. Ivy darkened the broken hand-made perforated zinc sheets covering the windows. The pitch-pine wood-work was sound.

He must work at his writing. The money made that way must flow back to the estate. That was just. The heart of the land must be restored. He had many detailed ideas for the future, including a map of the estate to be painted on plaster to be rendered on the breast of the chimney piece of the original barton hall; an electric light plant installed, with points (put in by Ernest?) for irons, small heaters, and of course a vacuum cleaner. A new septic tank was included in the estimate, also an artesian bore to be drilled. Captain Arkell had suggested a water-softening plant, and central heating by hot air. For the children, vita-glass in the nursery windows. Say
£
2,000 in all. Could he manage it?

The prospect made him a little tremulous. First, the trout book must be written. But before that, he must study the ways of fish. He knew nothing about them, really. He could read books, of course. Perhaps he could write a short novel, all action contained within a confined space, like James Joyce's
The
Dead
;
the story of one small maid at a New Year's party in the servants' hall—a girl based on Felicity. He began to imagine the young girl in
cottage-made
carpet slippers, dreaming of love; and being betrayed by a cold hearted fornicator. He must write it as soon as he could see a clear space before him. But the thought of all that must be faced
before he could attain such a space gave feelings near to
suffocation
: he clattered down the wooden steps in nailed shoes into the sunshine to avoid his thoughts; for he must think only of his duty to the land.

Already a start had been made. In the courtyard, flanked by stables, coach-house, brew-house, and adjoining laundry-house, were heaps of fine gravel and a stack of bricks. As soon as the sale was over and cleared away the builder was to start. In fact, he had already begun. Wandering into the house, Phillip saw that the tapestry panels of the drawing room, shut up for so long, had already been stripped, showing the wooden framework nailed against the wall of chalk-blocks. Through the open windows he watched the crowd moving about on the lawn outside, among the parallel heaps of worn bedding, puffed up by feathers, beside rows of
uncomfortable
-looking attic beds with rusty, chain-harrow-like mattresses. The prevailing hue of the bedding was suet-pudding grey, but
unlike
boiled puddings, the masses of ticking and feather-bedding were shapeless, giving the effect of having long been moribund. It seemed that innumerable repressions and sighful thoughts still hovered over them.

“Isn't it exciting?” said Lucy, moving to him. “And won't it be fun when it is all over, and the place done up? I'm so glad it isn't very big. I remember how relieved Pa's cousin Maude was, when she had the house left to her by her father pulled down, and she went to live in a small modern house by herself. ‘O, why didn't I have it done before?' she said to me. ‘I feel now that I'm an entirely different person.'”

Wandering around, Phillip saw Bill Kidd talking to the
landlord
of the Rising Sun. Kidd was there to buy furniture for the house he had rented.

“When you want a trout for your breakfast, send for me, my Mad Son.”

“Ah,” replied Phillip, in imitation of Ernest, who was
somewhere
about.

They talked together until Bill Kidd saw Piers approaching, and saying that he wanted a word with the auctioneer, made off into the crowd.

The auctioneer began at the collection of odds and ends, then passed to the bedding. This was quickly disposed of. By half-past twelve he was half-way; they broke off for lunch, the auctioneer saying that he would begin again at a quarter past one sharp, in
the raftered dining hall, where some of the more cumbrous
furniture
from outhouse and side rooms had been brought.

Phillip was dismayed by the price some of the pieces fetched. Most of them went quickly; there was a group of hard-eyed men in city suits and bowler hats who appeared to have arranged to bid in turn, he thought. Only afterwards did he realise that he had been too hasty in his desire to make a fresh start with the house.

The oak sideboard, carved with scenes of the Crimea, a wedding present to his grandfather from the Regiment, went for 17/6; the wine-cooler for 8/-; a pair of Jacobean cast-iron fire-dogs,
half-buried
under the ashes of the original hall, went to a scrap-dealer for eighteenpence, with the fireback.

“Now we come to a relic of the past, gentlemen. A genuine Georgian chamber-horse to reduce your weight. I don't suppose there's many left like this one throughout the entire British Isles. Anyone wanting to start a museum, now's his chance. Who'll open for me?” The auctioneer looked around. “Come on, where will someone start me? Shall we say a fiver?”

He looked down at the row of bowler hats.

“If this was in London, you'd get the Victoria and Albert bidding against some American gent,” he remarked
conversationally
. “Now who'll give me a start? All right then, make me a bid! A shilling? Be serious, please; we've got a lot to get through this afternoon. Who'll bid me a crown? You will, sir? Thank you. A crown I'm bid, a crown. Anyone want a valuable piece of furniture, the ‘Chamber Horse' as the first one was described nearly two hundred years ago by the inventor, a Londoner called Marsh. I shouldn't be surprised if this was made by Thomas Sheraton, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Now then, who'll say seven and six? You sir? Going at seven shillings and
sixpence
—for the last time—any advance on seven-and-six—going,
going
——” he struck the top of his rostrum, and nodded to Bill Kidd.

“That will sweat the whiskey out of him, Lucy.”

“Well, we didn't really want it, did we?” she whispered.

“I might need it one day.”

For a shilling or two went uniform trunks and japanned cases. Then heaps of dull pictures, most of them of horses with their riders or grooms; followed by the servant's wash-hand-stands and towel rails, which made a little more.

“Perhaps things will be better in the drawing room.”

Felicity spoke quietly, conscious of many eyes upon her; she
determined to remain aloof, lest people suspect her for an interloper. They followed the crowd through the tall white door.

The same gang ruled in the drawing room. Once the auctioneer stepped down and had a quiet word with Phillip: would he like him he said, to buy in some of the better lots? Phillip shook his head, unable to decide otherwise.

Again the name of Thomas Sheraton was mentioned from the rostrum.

“Some call it a supper canterbury, others a music canterbury, gentlemen, but Sheraton describes it in his
Cabinet
Dictionary
, published in eighteen hundred and three, as a supper tray. You might call it a dumb-waiter. Who'll say ten pounds to start me?” He sighed loudly. “Why, what's the matter with you? Here we are in one of the original West Country bartons, and … what's come over everybody? Are you all afraid of the slump? Then now's the time to buy! And hold for a rise when the Americans come over!”

It went to a bowler hat for five pounds. A Sheraton mahogany secretaire bookcase went similarly for ten pounds; a 1745
giltwood
carved upright mirror for two pounds. A parquetry dressing-table, style of Louis XV, and a mahogany pedestal writing desk of a decade later, made six pounds each. The bowler hats got all the lots—Dutch marquetry cabinet, 1760,
£
4: mahogany sofa table
£
3; eight Hepplewhite mahogany chairs
£
9; ironstone china flower-painted dinner service of 120 pieces
£
3.

*

Outside the room Phillip saw Pansy. She asked if he was busy. No. During the year and a half since Tim had left for Australia she had written regularly to him, but had had no answer.

“I haven't heard from Tim, either. Nor has my uncle, who arranged the passages for those two.”

“Do you think Tim is waiting until he gets a good position before sending for me, Phillip. May I call you Phillip?”

“Of course. Yes, that may be Tim's idea, Pansy.”

“Oh thank you, you have given me new hope!”

*

Another of the spectators at the sale was a lean and spare man who had a severe military appearance offset by a tweed hat in which several flies were stuck. Reading of the forthcoming auction, at
the home of a Phillip Maddison, Esquire, Colonel De'Ath had motored over to find out if this was the same fellow he had caught poaching on his beat. Having confirmed this, his next thought was for the Dynawurkur vacuum cleaner which the fellow's
brother-in-law
, Copleston, had tried to sell his wife a couple of years back. He recognised Ernest, and putting on an amiable one-sahib-
to-another
manner spoke to him about the possibility of getting a machine.

Ernest said that he had one at home, but it was second-hand. This was the same machine which had been the object of a
judgement
summons and several delaying fees to stay execution, and had finally cost about
£
40. It had never been unpacked, beyond examination by a pawnbroker when Tim had popped it for
£
4, since leaving the factory. Ernest let Colonel De'Ath have it for thirty shillings.

When Phillip heard of this from Lucy he said that he had behaved in the same dud manner over the furniture, as Ernest had over the Dynawurkur: how then could he, even in his mind, criticise his brother-in-law?

Lucy went on to say that the owner of the Tamplin had turned up, on leave from Africa. After staring at the wreckage in the bramble bush ‘Bongo' had gone away without a word, to return with a scrap-metal diddecai, who gave him
£
1
for the engine, leaving the skeleton behind.

The same diddecai was at the sale. He had looked over the Delauny-Belville in the workshop. Ernest had made a sound job of crown-wheel and differential, the motorcar was in running order. The late owner, disclaiming responsibility for unauthorised work, had already sold it to Ernest for
£
5.

“What'll you take for the old crock, guv'nor? Five pun'?”

“All right,” murmured Ernest, glad to get rid of the beastly thing.

Phillip thought, these Coplestons are England in decadence, yet, O God, I am part of this decadence. I do not really care for this land. I am a book-worm feebly channeling one of those leather-bound books of dead sermons I have tipped out as rubbish.

*

Other eyes had looked among the rubbish besides the diddccais. Billy was accompanied by his best friend, Artie Rigg, a boy with
yellow hair hanging over brow and neck, who owned a wooden box mounted on a pair of old perambulator wheels. Billy had been scrounging, a word he had learned from his father, from bits and pieces left behind by the diddecais. Thus Billy had salvaged half a dozen pink chinese lanterns, each made in the shape of a lotus flower and bearing a tiny candle. These paper lamps had once belonged to Hilary, who had brought them back from his first voyage in the China Seas.