A Solitary War (16 page)

“Do have this chair, ‘Yipps', won't you?”

He lifted the other leather chair nearer for her, and stood by the Morris-type armchair, the first furniture he had bought for himself twenty years before.

“No, you have the saddle-bag,” said Mrs. Carfax. “I like to see you in it. It's a man's chair. I don't think a woman should sit in a man's chair. Or perhaps you think she should?”

This opened up a new aspect of the hunting woman who wore breeches and according to Teddy had hunted her own pack of hounds.

“Do you believe in equality for the sexes?” she demanded, with a brilliant smile.

“Yes, but equality is earned, not given. Wild animals are equal in the sexes, only they have different jobs.”

“You're a queer man,” she said, with a change of voice. She became meditative. Sitting on the edge of the saddle-bag chair occupied by her bitch she took the two-pronged fire-pick and began to prod the burning sticks with false energy. “But I think I
understand
you.”

She turned and looked at him. Her face was sad. He could see that it was no longer a cheerful mask of her interior hopelessness. The reddish-brown eyes looking at him had dropped their guard, lost their remote blankness. He began to feel a slight flow between them, a stir of sympathy, but only superficially. Yet it was enough to evoke a sort of desperate desire to confide in her. But no: the petrification in her stopped the little hesitant flow.

He looked into the scattered fire which now had lost the eager play of flames and was but a dull smoulder. She was, like himself, always suffering. Her brittle pride concealed a desperate nihilism because she was unloved. Her true self was away most of her time: hovering tremulous and sighful, imprisoned within. Like himself she was accompanied in her living by a doppelganger, a wraith of lost love, which she felt was dragging her down to the shades. Like every living thing not too far sunk in the death-wish she was hoping to make herself whole again, to renew her
integrity
in love, and so come to grace.

“Penny for your thoughts, ‘Little Ray'.”

“I was thinking of Teddy's plan.”

Was she, like him, afraid of growing old, fixed by the
crystallisation
of life? All men and women, feeling themselves overworn, sought relief through another, for biologically man and woman were something that had become two parts, and each part, by the very nature of life, sought its complement. And when one gave up hope, as the little sun within the breast declined, so one felt to be in the cold shade of life, one's doppelganger to be enclosing one. Gradually the instinct of creation became weaker, and one wanted to be alone—and finally, to die. Poor ‘Yipps': poor Runnymeade—kneeling at the feet of young women, seeking Mother Eve—feeling himself to be lost to life … as boys in battle, mortally wounded, cried out for their mothers.

“I try hard to please you, ‘Little Ray',” she said, her eyes upon his own.

With what hopes had this girl—over-gay to conceal a shattered heart—this girl who through the imperceptible processes of time had become a woman approaching middle-age, feeling herself still to be a happy girl if only she had a chance—with what
hopeful
anticipation had she come with Teddy to start a new life, to become young once more, as an anemone in a drained rock-pool waved its fronds when the tide flowed in again?

To avert the danger of the pleading in her eyes he leaned his face on his hands, elbows on knees, and stared into the smouldering hearth. He must dissemble his thoughts, which were nearly always of Melissa.

With clasped hands Mrs. Carfax also stared into the fire, once again withdrawn into the merciless despairs of life.

“There is the iron god of truth, the only common denominator of the struggling human world,” he said. Then, because she would not understand this he hastened to add, “‘Yipps', I am sorry there is this constraint between us. I'll try to tell you how I feel about it. I've always felt it is unnecessary to be at odds with anyone, if only one can see clearly, and then speak clearly, without the confusing emotion of self. Beyond one's own prejudices one can see another point of view, even that opposed to oneself, and accept it as true. I learned that in No-man's-land at Christmas
nineteen-fourteen
. I believe scholars call it empathy.”

She had no idea of what he was saying. Giving him a glance both mournful and appealing she replied, “When I first saw you, I knew you were very unhappy.”

Pretending not to have perceived the implication, he said, “I can't bear to be at odds with anyone. But there must be common
ground. I'd feel happier if things could be settled here on a
business-like
basis. You see, I don't know where I am, or how long I can go on like this. My overdraft is increasing all the time, and nothing is coming in. I feel the Combined Household may be living beyond its income. And mine at present is about nil.”

“I thought you were in a bad spot and needed help. That is why I came. To help you,” she persisted.

“Yes, I realise how you and Teddy came out of a generous impulse. But I can't feel that generosity should be the basis of a proposed partnership. It should be based on strict attention to detail.”

“One must give and take in this life, ‘Little Ray'.”

“Yes. Now about Teddy——”

“Oh, I'm not concerned with Teddy, my dear man! I didn't come here because of him, but to help you and Billy. What a splendid boy he is! And he will be entirely spoiled if he is allowed to go on as he is now. Well, as I said, I came here to help you, and I'm made to feel entirely useless.”

“Well, you see, ‘Yipps', I thought that you and Teddy were very close friends, and wanted to start farming together. After all, Teddy wrote to me out of the blue asking if I would consider taking him as a partner. We agreed, as you know, before the Corn Barn that afternoon, that we all would have a month together, on certain terms to be observed, and then we would decide. Well, the month is more than up, and——”

“My dear man, you delude yourself! Teddy and I are good friends, but nothing more. We've known each other for years. All we ever had in common is that we played golf together. He used to live in a guest-house near my home, and was a good companion. I came here to run the house for you, because Lucy was going away. Someone had to do the work, you know!”

“Yes, I am most grateful for what you have done, ‘Yipps'. But the basic situation remains. Has Teddy any capital?”

“Well, it's a long story, but put briefly, if Teddy had been less unbusiness-like in certain things, he might still have had a
business
. He trusted his partner's word, and was let down. He founded the business, now the partner and the associates he brought in possess practically all of it.”

“Then he has no capital?”

“He has a share in the business still,
if
he can realise it. The other directors have voted themselves big salaries which makes Teddy's original shares of little value. His block was yielding a
good income before the war, when, with an offer of finance, Teddy agreed to accept new capital. He had an allocation of new shares, of course, but to-day they are worth only a shilling or so, where before, the original shares were worth a pound. Anyway, the factory may go over to war work, then the shares may harden. But surely he has told you, ‘Little Ray'?”

“I can't see, from what you say, how he was swindled. Many small firms have lost trade owing to the war.”

“Teddy may try to get a job in London,” she said quietly. “I hope he will, for his sake. He tried to join up as intelligence officer in the R.A.F. when the war began, but there was a long waiting list, many of them authors—like yourself. Most of you genii made a bee-line for that intelligence funk-hole in the R.A.F., I notice.”

“That means that the idea of partnership goes no further? For I don't think his scheme of taking pupils here is practicable. They're apparently to live, some of them anyway, in Penelope's house. Quite honestly I can't see any possibility of such a scheme. My name on the title-page of a book doesn't mean very much, and even if it did, as a farmer I've no standing at all, except perhaps as a local joke.”

“All you think about is yourself. Do you ever think of the future of that poor child Billy? Standing in the cowshed with a little whip, while that redpoll calf you bought for ten shillings, Nimrod, is being suckled? Spending his days in that dark little place with a dirty old cowman? It's dreadful to think of! You ought to send him back to school, you know. Lucy told me he got a scholarship, so it won't cost you anything.”

“But I don't think he will learn anything at school of the least use for the future.”

“Can you say the same of the farm, my dear man? All he learns here is to be like the men—the men, you say, who don't care about looking after things properly. Look how Matt bangs his pails about. I believe he drops them on the concrete road harder when he sees me. They're almost half the size they should be—like a hat in an illustration of a Surtees' novel, after its wearer has taken several tosses in the hunting field.”

“I've noticed his pig pail—crenellated is the word. It was a first-quality feeding-pail, too. I bought the very best I could for him, telling him it should last a lifetime. But Matt and Luke——”

“Matt! Luke! What names! ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John, went to bed with their breeches on'. Well, if you think labourers are a proper model for youth to form itself on, I don't!”

“Matt is sensitive, kind, faithful, and does his best, ‘Yipps'. I know he hasn't any mechanical sense. He simply drops that pig's feeding-pail on the concrete by the water-tap every time he returns them empty. As I said, that pail should, with care, last a lifetime. But he has dropped it there regularly twice a day for over three years. In that time it's had over a thousand blows equal to those with a three-pound hammer. Except that the hammer is made of concrete, and the weight of the blow is the weight of the pail dropped from about twelve or fifteen inches. And Matt declares that it has paid for itself many times over, simply because it's fed three or four lots of pigs. Why, in a German farm they prize such things, almost from generation to generation.
They
haven't had the pick of the world's richness, you see, to corrupt their social values——”

“Stop!” cried Mrs. Carfax. She put her fingers in her ears. “For heaven's sake, stop pimminin' about that pail! Anyway, what has a pail got to do with Billy. Can you answer that?”

“Well, ‘Yipps', you mentioned the pail, and it is, as it were, symbolic of the entire social structure, here and throughout England. So a pail carefully used has everything to do with the new generation.”

“I don't see any point in what you're saying. And anyway, is it good for Billy, at his impressionable age, to be in the midst of such things?”

“Certainly not. But I hope he will learn by contrast.”

“No child learns by contrast. If you weren't so selfish, you'd see that he needs a mother's care.”

“I see in that pail a symbol of decadent village standards, of town life, of national life, of the Empire itself. The standard of good craftsmanship is gone, everything must be cheap, nothing must be too well-made or it will last too long and there won't be enough work in the factories. Hence the consumption crisis that was one of the precipitating causes of the war.”

“Then why not buy cheap pails at Woolworth's? Isn't that the solution of your Great Pail Grouse, ‘Little Ray?”

“The principle of easy living and easy money is behind the war: the principle of usury. I see its effects in all those about me. I see the war in all those about me—the cause of the war. And I struggle, ineffectually I admit, against them.”

“My dear ‘Little Ray', you're talking absolute nonsense, and you know it! It's all this ‘Haw-Haw' stuff you and Teddy listen to, night after night. Absolute rubbish, in my opinion. Anyway, isn't your own country good enough for you?”

Phillip had heard that remark before,

“It will be when all farms are flourishing again, when the soil's fertility is being conserved instead of raped, when village life is a social unity, when pride of craftsmanship returns, when everyone works for the sake of adding to the beauty and importance of life, when every river is clean and bright, and the proud words ‘I serve' are in everyone's heart and purpose. Then my country will be good enough for me.” He felt suddenly exhausted.

She said after a silence, “I begin to understand you. You're a disgruntled patriot. Just you rest. Put up your feet, ‘Little Ray'.”

Now he was afraid of her in a different way. “Yipps, I'm not a true farmer. A real farmer breathes business like the air. He starts to be a farmer before he is born. Billy is starting to be one as a boy of fifteen. The towns may become deserts, under bombing, if the shooting war starts. Willows and elderberries will grow on the fallen walls and courtyards—I hoped that Billy and the other children would be what my grandfather called ‘rosy-faced
countrymen
', when the towns are deserts of rubble. That's the main reason why I undertook this job. To work.”

“
I
'
m
willing to work.”

“You
do
work, ‘Yipps'.”

“‘Little Ray', be serious for a moment. First, let me make you tea.”

“I'd love some, ‘Yipps'. I'm thirsty to-day, after all the wood Teddy and I sawed up. You'll have some, of course?”

“Yes, I'll put the kettle on. You like ‘Earl Grey' don't you? I managed to get a tin in Yarwich the other day.”

“The kettle may need more water, it's nearly boiled away.”

“Stop pimminin'. Put up your feet as I said, and lie back in your chair, and take your ease.”