Lucifer Before Sunrise (64 page)

Phillip went into the empty Corn Barn, to be alone. If only he had been less dictatorial, less tense, Billy would still be there. A colt was entered for the Grand National against all the rules of horsemastership, and after the worst of trainings. Since the age of fourteen, when the war began and he took him away from school,
this boy, whose form he was always seeing before him, this youth on a tractor with greenish-grey face looking as though paraffin were in his blood-stream—his movements languid in thick dark clothing covered by oil-stained overalls which he wore throughout the year, sleeves never rolled up even in the hottest harvest sun—the small boy who had missed all the joys of boyhood—whose life was all work and no play—jobs always behindhand—
implements
broken and no one to repair them—tail-boards of trailers being backed to splinter against hedge-banks and walls—tractor spud-wheels going over ladders left in grass—front wheels nearly falling off because roller bearings were worn and when they were replaced by another set the engine crankshaft broke. So it went on and on for you, Billy, it went slower and slower until you felt like a fly on flypaper, and all the dead flies on the flypaper were the hundreds of things that you never had leisure or strength to do properly, and worst of all, you knew you were not doing them properly, like a fly feels trying to walk on sticky flypaper. All Saturday and Sunday you had to sit on the Little Grey Donkey, and be laughed at for it, for the village lads down by the bridge had never heard of anyone else having a Ferguson tractor, and the village was the entire world to you. And Dad mobbed and mobbed until you hardly knew what you were doing, you were bound to be mobbed, anyway, so in the end it didn’t matter what you said or did.

Phillip was the owner of a second-hand Gascoigne six-unit milking-machine; and he did not want it. He paid one hundred
and ten pounds, the price asked, with the least inspection, and no enthusiasm. He didn’t want to see it in the first place, and
certainly
never wished to see it again. But he must advise the Railway Company where to send it, for it was in one of their trucks—three tons of pipes and tubes, canisters and angle-iron. Every day the truck waited in the Robertsbridge siding it would cost an extra ten shillings for demurrage. If it came to the farm it would cost an extra ten pounds, in order to lie and rust in the nettles outside the cow-house.

He mooned about the dim loft above the workshop, where the old sporting prints were still in their pre-war newspaper-wrappings in the tea-chests Ernest Copleston and he brought up from Dorset; and for a moment it seemed, as on one or two other occasions during the past eight years, that there was only one way to avoid ‘revelations’ in the divorce court that might wreck the career of a writer who was also the family provider—unless the charge be contested; which was unthinkable.

But
la
balance,
toujours
la
balance,
as Philippe Pétain was constantly saying to himself during the German occupation. He did not run away, and return to fight another day; he stood; and Mob had dishonoured him. Stripped of rank, honours, and decorations as a Marshal of France, the ‘saviour of Verdun’ in 1916, now lay in solitary confinement, awaiting trial as a traitor. Let him not defend himself; for he could not be tried by his peers; who were dead.

A queen wasp strayed in at the open window, flying still briskly in the early autumn sun. A tortoise-shell butterfly flapped at a second closed window.

Soon wasp and butterfly would be clinging torpid on the rafters of the building which, a year or two back, was made with
materials
left over from the rebuilding of the farm cottages, and hopefully called the Studio.

The last of the tomatoes ripened on the window sill. The
tomtits
had forsaken the empty down-hanging heads of the sunflowers which were grown again in the garden that year, to help provide money for the children’s education.

Phillip had sold, the season before, about two hundredweight of the grey seed, at ten shillings a pound. The price was far below that charged in the shops of London and other towns during the war. Sunflowers grown in small gardens were permitted in
war-time
, but it was against the law to grow bird-seed on farm lands. One farmer did try his hand at two acres of millet, for canaries and other caged birds. He was fined three thousand pounds, and the crop confiscated.

This year the sunflower harvest was not gathered, although the price had risen to twenty-four shillings per pound in the market. Birds had taken the black and grey seeds. But for the cries of greenfinches, sparrows, and tomtits, the garden had been silent since Lucy and the family had left.

“Someone to see you, sir,” said Mrs. Valiant.

The visitor said he was a farmer, who had just been talking to a friend of Captain Maddison’s, Mr. Horatio Bugg; and as he happened to be passing, he had called in to tell him how much he agreed with all that was written in Captain Maddison’s farming book,
Pen
and
Plow.

“That book ought to be read all over England,” he declared. “It would do a lot of good. It’s as true a book as ever there was one. But you left one thing out. In your description of the big protest meeting of farmers at Yarwich, in nineteen thirty-eight, against all the foreign barley coming in, after Munich, you didn’t write about the crazy man who advised us all to join up with Birkin and march to London to take over the Government. I found myself next to him as we went out of the hall and I told him we didn’t want people like Birkin or him in this country, and that they ought to be strung up!”

“You feel strongly about it, I see.”

“Well, wouldn’t you, if you’d been there.”

“Well, I was there.”

“Then why didn’t you put in about that crazy chap?”

“I did.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“He is everywhere in the book.”

“I must have missed it.”

“I’ve missed it, too.”

When the caller had gone, Mrs. Valiant came in with a telegram message sent over the telephone. It was from one of Lucy’s aunts, who asked him to telephone a given number in Yorkshire at seven o’clock that night.

At the given time he telephoned, to be told that Lucy and the children were well, and she was prepared to see him, provided no attempt was made to dissuade her from a course which she had decided upon.

“No, I won’t do that, Mrs. Adams.”

He left for the North the next morning, and was about a mile out of the village when he slowed up to ask a woman if she wanted a lift. She replied that she was going to Fenton, which was nearly thirty miles on the road.

Phillip was driving the Ford 8, and wore blue dungarees. He recognised the lady as a sister of Mrs. Frobisher, wife of the parson of a neighbouring village. Obviously she didn’t recognise him, for soon she was asking him if he had come far that morning.

“I live in the district. I am a farmer of sorts.”

After a while she asked where he farmed. When he told her she remained silent, as though with embarrassment. For Lucy and Phillip had dined at Mrs. Frobisher’s table just before the war, and the lady had been present. She had told her nieces, one of whom had recently married a young doctor who practised in partnership with an older practitioner, that they must remember all Phillip said declaring that he was a famous writer, and one day they would be able to tell their children and grandchildren what he had said.

Her nephew, the doctor, hearing that Rosamund was at a small local boarding school, at Staithe, told him that there was much tuberculosis in the district, from the many sanatoria which once had been filled with consumptives, gone there for the pure air of the coast. He wouldn’t like a daughter of his to be educated at Staithe, the young doctor declared.

This information alarmed Lucy, for her mother had died of what then was called consumption. The next day, without telling Phillip, she had telephoned the headmistress telling her that she had heard from the doctor, giving his name. She felt she must remove Rosamund. The headmistress replied that the school doctor was not only the senior partner of the young doctor, but Medical Officer for the district as well, and that, moreover, he had given the school a clean bill of health.

Phillip had paid a small sum in compensation, as well as a term’s fees; but what had worried him was that his host and hostess must have considered it an odd thing for a guest to use a private conversation to embarrass their son-in-law, who had only just started to make his way in a new district. And Lucy had not written to explain this to the Frobishers, although he had suggested she do it when she wrote ‘her bread-and-butter letter’ of thanks, as a guest at the dinner.

Evidently his passenger, like the caller of the day before, had not recognised him at first because Phillip’s hair before the war had not
been white. He drove on in silence until, at the beginning of the town, she said, “Oh, you can drop me here anywhere, thank you,” and when he stopped she got out without looking at his face, after the briefest thanks.

*

Along winding roads, past fields once full of the bulb flowers of ‘Little Holland’, level lands reclaimed from the sea; past airfield after airfield where long lines of silent bomber aircraft were ranged, rooks and crows sitting on gun turrets and tail fins; while the nearer he got to Yorkshire, after hours of monotonous
engine-noise
, the more disturbed he began to feel. The old acid, as Billy had called it, was not yet drained from a permanently tired body; sometimes he ranted at the image of Lucy, sometimes at himself for being an utter fool, allowing himself to be ‘ruled’ by anyone who was persistent. Had not Joe, the Dunkirk man who so wanted to be his bailiff now that the war was over, said, “You know, sir, everyone imposes on you. You’re too kind-hearted, if you will forgive me speaking my mind.” And Phillip had explained that he was really a writer, a novelist who must ‘shine on his characters as the sun sees them, without shadows’. And Joe had said no more, not wanting to impose his views on Phillip.

Lucy has never given me moral support, he said aloud; and at once the other side of his mind brought up his own defects. What ‘moral support’ have I ever given
her?
Left alone, she did her own work nobly. The conflict was exhausting; and when at last he approached a great barrack of a house surrounded on three sides by trees, he thought of turning round and going back to Peter.

He kept on, over a spring-juddering series of pot-holes which had once been a drive between two rows of walnut trees. By painted signs and acres of forsaken huts the army had taken it over during the war. And going slowly towards the house, he saw Lucy on a crumbling stone terrace, and was relieved to find her alone. She was pale, with dark places under her eyes.

He told her at once that he had sold the farm, and the money received would be made into a trust for her and the children.

“I won’t bother you any more, Lucy. I realise what a dreadful person I have been all these years. If you call off the cruelty case, which anyway I won’t contest, I’ll give you grounds for a divorce on conventional lines. The cruelty plea may ruin what is left of my reputation as a writer.”

Lucy replied, “I knew you would never give up the farm if the decision were left to you. So I had to force your hand. I was at
last really afraid of what you might do. I knew you would never surrender while you thought it was your duty to the family to remain. At the same time I realised how it was constantly
frustrating
your writing. But if you are not to lose the respect of the younger children, you must have your freedom, and I must have mine. I am forty-four years old, and there is the baby to be considered. But now the farm is sold,” she went on, colour returning to her cheeks, “if you like, I’ll come back to help see you out, but you must realise that I shall be in your hands.”

He thought that if she had been firm like that from the beginning the marriage might have been different.

“Thank you, Lucy. I won’t take advantage of your generosity.”

“There now, don’t you look so sad. Have you had any food? None? Really, my dear! Now let me give you some tea, and boil you a couple of eggs. We won’t be disturbed, Aunt Debby is out all day, looking after old people—cooking for them, and cleaning their cottages. Rosamund helps her, she is so good.”

During the laying of table, Jonathan came in. “Hullo, Chooky! Cor, it’s what you call nice up here! I’ve learned to ride a pony. Haven’t I, Mum? Can I have tea with Chooky?”

“Of course, darling.”

So all had not been in vain. Phillip’s good eye was aching with the strain, but voice and face kept composure. He knew what Lucy was thinking when she said, “Oh, by the way, I’ve heard from cousin Melissa. She’s coming home from India soon.”

“Oh, she’ll be glad, I expect.” He could not feel anything for Melissa. He thought of Billy, lying with other members of his crew in a grave in some Swiss village; and of Barley, alone in Malandine churchyard, among the corpses of unidentified sailors which had been washed on the rocks, or found on the sands; some of them German.
Hier
ruht
in
Gott
ein
unbekannt
—as in the 1914 Christmas truce in noman’s-land.

“You look tired, my dear,” said Lucy.

“I’ve got a good price for the farm. Treble what I paid for it.”

“Oh, I’m so glad. Now you’ll be able to write all you’ve wanted to, won’t you?”

“David can continue at boarding school, and Rosamund at your old school, if you like.”

When David, who had come from helping to thresh a stack, was told the news by Jonathan, he started to roll across the floor. “I’ll be able to play more football! Cor, I’m what you call happy, chookies!”

After tea, Phillip said he must go. “Oh really, should you? We can easily make up a bed for you. And Aunt Debby wants to meet you.”

“It’s so kind of you, but I think I must get back. Peter is all alone.”

“But it’s such a long way, and at night, too.”

“Only a hundred and forty miles. I’ll drive steadily.”

“I’ll make you some sandwiches. And some hot coffee. I’ll wrap a bottle in an old stocking, no one has seen a vacuum flask for years.”

Phillip decided to sleep until 4 a.m. and then go back over empty roads, with the dawn across the North Sea.

Problems during the drive. Where could he get enough men to bring in the hundred acres of corn? Would Italian Co-operators be available? They had been asked for weeks ago. Would they turn up? And if so, would they shirk as they had done on other jobs in the past? And who would bring them tea? If he had only four or five, and treated them as friends, they would respond and work nobly at the job. It was the mob that was bad, as opposed to the team.

Down by the bridge Phillip met Horatio Bugg. That village worthy, who in the days of tortoise-headed Fear had appointed
himself
to a mission of spy-hunting, now that the danger was
apparently
over, was affable, even friendly. He said to Phillip, “You’re not the only one who has done well out of the war, you know!” With satisfaction he wriggled a six-inch roll of pound notes from his breast pocket. “I’ve got it here, too, you know!” Stuffing the worn notes back into his pocket, “I collect gold sovereigns,” he explained, with quiet pride. “I find them, and the click I’m in with takes them by air to France. My cut is thirty bob for every sovereign I collect. None of my own capital is risked. The click gets eight pounds for each sovereign in Paris. Yes, they’re flown over from—” and he mentioned the name of the town. “But just now we’re keeping quiet—I expect you’ve read about it in the papers?”

“Yes, I’ve read about it in the papers,” said Phillip. “With other items.”

“What items?” asked Horatio Bugg.

“Oh, they’re of no general interest now. They will be in twenty years’ time.”

Phillip had clipped them from newspapers and pasted them in his journal. 

There was a letter in which a maxim of Marcus Aurelius was quoted as guidance for the Allies in the treatment of Germany in defeat. ‘The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.’ There followed an account of German boys, shot after the Armistice, by order of an American Military Court, for alleged spying three months before the war ended.

*

Another extract in Phillip’s book had been clipped from
The
Daily
Crusader,
wherein a former journalist, a sports-writer who had become a major of the Royal Tank Corps in the war, with a D.S.O. and an M.C., described how he had run over German boys who threw stones at his column of tanks moving beyond the Reichswald during the last days of the war … this, he wrote, to help obliterate the evil in a race which, he declared, should be exterminated.

*

Horatio Bugg repeated to Phillip, as they stood by his rusty old petrol pump, its head still covered by a rotten sack tied there since 1940, “So you’ve read about us in the papers, have you?”

“How d’you know I shan’t report you?”

“I know you’re not that sort of man,” he replied, which made Phillip smile for his innocence.

“How about your pal Birkin now, eh?”

“He’s been very ill.”

“He went too far. He was a good man before he left the Tories.”

“He was a better man when he was expelled from the Labour Party.”

“Why ever he joined up with the Socialists I can’t think. He was a rich man, why didn’t he keep where the money was, eh?”