The Phoenix Generation (27 page)

He addressed an envelope to Melissa, stuck and stamped it—and then threw it aside. It was awful, naked, weak stuff about the girls in the Eden bar. And
syphilis
—it would repel her. He picked it up from the floor and put it in the bottom of his suit-case.

*

That day he was taken by Martin to visit a labour camp. Young men working with the slow but steady rhythm of the body
unimpelled
to quickness by thinking too many thoughts. Draining marshes, reclaiming heathlands. Living in wooden huts. They looked to be limber and healthy.

“If only Birkin’s plan to make new motor-roads, Martin, some years ago, with our unemployed, could have been put into action, instead of the millions virtually rotting on the dole.”

“And England rich, rich, rich with gold, despite the great effluent across the Atlantic during the war!

“Yes, Phillip! During the ’twenties, our Rhine was an effluent, all sewage and pollution. Now we do not waste the fertility of our German soil! Our Führer has got back the Rheingold! Siegfried has slain the dragon and rescued Brunhilde! The fertility of our German soil is saved, and put back on our good German farms!”

Martin might have been addressing a public meeting. Once again he was a self-built image of Hitler. But how did the opera end? Valhalla of the Gods in flames, the world drowning as the Rhine overflowed to sweep all away. Was it the wave of death prophesied by D. H. Lawrence, the honorary soldier of the Western Front, phoenix in his own right——

*

When his Reisechecks were spent he was given 150 RM for the fare home. 4 hours and 35 minutes to reach Croydon, 990 kilometres from Berlin. Oh, the change from lyric-restored
Germany
. The away-feeling in the faces of Londoners. Shabby suburbs. Soot-darkened buildings of the City of London.

*

Sitting in the Barbarian Club was a West Countryman who had made a considerable success by writing his autobiography
Farmer’s
Boy.
He told Phillip that many banks, which after
foreclosing
on mortgages, and being forced to farm land themselves had lost money that year. Hundreds of farms in every county of Great Britain were being put up for auction at Michaelmas
without
reserve.

“Read my article in
Farmer’s
Life
this week. Land in England has never been so cheap since just before Napoleon tried to have a smack at what your pal Hitler may be bloody fool enough to try and do. Now’s the time to buy land. This world slump is bound to lead to war, and then your blind trout will be growing gold scales on both sides of his body.”

*

When Phillip got home Ernest was in the house alone. Lucy, he said, was at the nursing home.

“What, ill? Or the baby?”

“Oh, it was the baby.”

When Ernest said no more Phillip cried, “Is she all right?”

“Perfectly all right.”

“Ernest, please let me know. What happened?”

“I told you,” replied Ernest, distinctly. “Lucy went into the nursing home to have a baby.”

“But
when
?”

“Oh, soon after you left.”

“What is it—boy or girl?”

“A boy.” He added, “It weighed seven pounds exactly. I weighed it myself, on my father’s spring balance.”

“I left my address, you know. The Stefanie Hotel,
Kurfürstendamm
.”

“Ah.”

“Is Rippingall here?”

“He is not,” replied Ernest. “He absented himself the day after you left.”

“Lucy, although it’s lovely to have you back again, I don’t think I can stick another winter in this valley. Anyway I’ve missed the ’bus—the war-book boom is long over—Graves, Sassoon, Blunden, Manning, Barbusse, Jünger, Duhamel,
Aldington
, Edmonds, have all written their stuff. Remarque scooped the pool, writing with the tensions of imagined dread. They told me in Germany that he was too young to know battle, but I knew it after reading sixty pages.”

Lucy was looking through several years’ accumulation of Christmas cards, wondering which to keep and what to throw away, while half-listening.

“All I seem to do is newspaper articles. Chettwood of the
Crusader
wants some more about animals. I’ll have to imitate my younger self, I suppose. I’m getting on for forty-one, and nothing done of my
real
life’s work.”

His
real
life’s
work.
The words remained in her mind. What
was
his ‘real life’. His hopes, perhaps. Well, she was more fortunate, being a woman. She had her baby, darling little Jonny. If only Phillip could be happy. Then there were Billy, Peter, David, Rosamund, and—Jonny. He was such a darling, with dark eyes and sensitive face like the photograph of Phillip’s cousin Willie. If only Willie had lived——Perhaps Jonny would grow up to be the friend he needed. Piers was good for Phillip—up to a point. Thereafter they were different. Poor, lonely Phillip.

“I think I’ll go to the Gartenfeste, Lucy.”

“Yes, you go, my dear. You’re happier there really, in your Sanctum, aren’t you?”

*

In the pale blue October air a sparrowhawk was wheeling, cutting an arc through the lens of the Zeiss glass with wings which shone at the turn like the yellow grasses in the low sunlight. It was
so quiet on the hilltop that the cries of swallows dashing at the hawk seemed to come from just above the clump of beech trees behind the north boundary of the field. But even with the eight magnifications of the lens he could not distinguish the whitish patch on each swallow-breast. My eyes are not what they were. The delayed action of mustard gas, perhaps.

He focused on the hawk, deciding it was not the bird of prey that excited the swallows, after all. They were
playing
through the empty corridors of the sky—but not empty for them, for the birds were feeling the tribal message to migrate.

The sparrowhawk returned, and cut spirals against the candent blue of the sky. The swallows, fleeing back, rose up to another mock attack. They wheeled around it like a German fighter
geschwader
keeping the ring for their ace aircraft, circling in tight turns above, to dive out of the sun and pour tracer into a lone enemy. There was a continuous singing twitter while calmly the hawk soared, tracing a flat spiral (so it seemed, but of course it was losing height) upon the sky. Sometimes one of the winged specks seemed to hurl itself upon the hawk, but to flick up again hurriedly to join the agitated throng above. Phillip watched until the birds were out of sight behind the dingy-leaved beech trees.

He sat in the calm autumn sunshine, trying not to think how in a few days his poor trees, cut by Atlantic winds to the shape of a porcupine, would be black and bare as their topmost boughs already killed by incessant salt blasts. Soon the last brown leaves would be streaming away in the wind. And the swallows, which roosted in thousands among the reeds of the lakes behind Malandine sands, would be on their way to the African sun.

A hopeful grasshopper was risping in the grasses, fiddling away with his hind legs for a last chance of love. No blighting Puritan conscience about that soulless little harlequin. He, too, was born to die, as one of the inscriptions over a German youth camp declared—‘for Germany’. All things pass away. That marvellous psalm, ending in ‘dust to dust’ … The Abelines would soon be gone; masons, carpenters and plasterers take over for the new
coeducational
school to be run by a refugee from Germany. How had he got the capital to alter the place, since a refugee was supposed to have come out with no more than ten shillings, owing to currency regulations?

*

When he returned from the Gartenfeste, Lucy said, “Melissa was over yesterday, Pip. She didn’t know you’d been to Germany.”

“I did write to her, but didn’t post the letter.”

“Oh, why not. She would have appreciated it, I’m sure.”

Phillip had read it to Lucy in the nursing home. “It was clear, and very interesting, at least I thought so, but then I’m not really capable of judging. Did you see Piers while you were in the field? He rang up, and I told him you were there. Oh, before I forget, there’s an
Urgent
parcel of proofs for you, from Plymouth.”

“
The
Blind
Trout!
Now I’ll know if the prose is any good!”

He tore open the parcel, and read at random. The prose was hard, it was true. He felt a glow. “I’ll go through them later. How are the children?”

“Oh, just the same. Peter likes going to school with Billy. They walk across the deer park every morning, and back again in the afternoon. Melissa is staying for a few days, she said, to pack up her things.”

“Is George there?”

“I think she said he’d gone to Norfolk to shoot partridges. Why not give her a ring, I’m sure she’d like to see you.”

Melissa opened a side-door before the main entrance to the Abbey.

“I saw you from my room. Come on up, chuck your coat
anywhere
.”

She had a flat in the east wing, once the land steward’s quarters. A gramophone, a piano. Cut-out pictures on the walls. On the chimney shelf, part-covered by displayed telegrams, photographs. Her school; hounds, horses, yachts, friends and relations. Fourth of June occasions. Offered him her armchair, then sat at one end of the sofa.

“What was Germany like?”

“Quite different from the newspaper stories.”

“Did you see that photograph in the
Crusader
of five hundred Opel cars all lined up at Southampton docks?”

“No.”

“They were imported by a Piccadilly firm to be sold here at sixty pounds each. I saw it in
The
Daily
Crusader,
with the caption,
All
going
back
to
Germany.
The boycott, I suppose?”

“It looks like it.”

“Lucy showed me some postcards you sent to the children. I didn’t know you had gone there.”

“I did write a letter to you, but thought it was pretentious, so didn’t post it.”

“May I see it?”

He pulled the addressed envelope from an inside pocket. The stamps bore Hitler’s profile.

“He looks determined enough to get what he wants,” she said, then lifted her eyes to Phillip. “I like a man who knows what he wants.”

“Regardless of the consequences?”

“As long as they don’t hurt others.”

He began to feel insubstantial. She recognised this feeling, and said demurely, “May I keep the letter for my birthday present?”

“I wondered what all those telegrams were for.
Congratulations
, and many happy returns.”

“I’m twenty-one. My own mistress, I suppose.”

He thought of her father’s remark at the hunt dance. She sensed what he was thinking, and moved beside him. “Aren’t you going to kiss me on my birthday?”

He held her and stroked her brow. So tender, so clear-feeling. He kissed the dear head, so vulnerable now that he held it.
Generous
Melissa, O, he must protect this frank and impulsive child. “Poor you, all alone on your birthday.”

She diverted, playing with his mood. “Will you bring Lucy and the children to my tea party on Saturday? Daddy will be back then, probably bringing his new wife-to-be. Or do you
object
to pre-marital relationships?”

“Only my own, I suppose.”

“How is Felicity?”

“She’s very happy now.”

“I heard about the monk by the river. Someone said it was her father. What’s he like?”

“They get on very well together. All three of us do, in fact.”

“Why not join them, if that’s the case.”

“The
affaire
is over. We are now friends.”

“I thought she was a nice girl, but not right for you, if you won’t object to my saying so. Why do you move away from me? Do I stink?”

“You smell only very slightly musky.”

“Really!”

“A very rare scent. Do you know that the musk flower lost its scent everywhere in the world in nineteen fourteen?”

“I was about to bathe when you telephoned. D’you mind if I do now? You can come and scrub my back for me if you like.”

“Do your guests usually do that for you?”

“Depends on who they are. You might like to amuse yourself
with this book.” She gave him
The
Kreutzer
Sonata
and went into her bedroom, taking the letter. Then to the bathroom. He heard running water, and sat still. Double noise of water, cold running in. Fear troubled him. If only I could feel ordinary. Is part of me, like Hitler, ‘dead beyond resurrection’, as someone in Berlin said at the
Taverne
? The bath water was still. Was she reading the letter? Time seemed to hiss silently in a vacuum. At last, noises of sluicing. More stillness. He started at the words,

“Are you reading Tolstoi?”

“No.”

“Come and scrub my back if you’ve nothing better to do.”

He went into the bathroom. She was lying on her back and smiling like a small girl a little unsure of herself. She sat up, leaning forward to conceal her stomach, breasts hanging a little, ready for her back to be soaped. He rolled up his sleeves and, kneeling by the bath, worked the ball of ivory soap round her shoulder blades then up and down the nobbles of her spine. This was pleasurable, a service of devotion. Her hair roughly twisted at the back of her head, showing the long neck, and pink ear-lobes. He knelt to press his cheek against the back of the neck, loving her, but not with passion. You are my child, he thought, feeling the tenderness of Barley upon him.

“I’ve read your letter.
Most
interesting!”

When she stood up he saw she was in proportion, a Rodin girl in flesh. He held a towel around her as she got out of the bath. Folded it around her, pressing and patting. When she was dry she stepped out of the towel and put on a peignoir, pushing her toes into swan’s-down slippers. She seemed to have forgotten him as she went to her bedroom. A minute’s silence, then she called his name. She was standing by her dressing table, the gown
hanging
slightly open in front. He saw her belly, with the little bush before she put her arms round his neck and with half-open mouth kissed him, so that he felt the tip of her tongue. He felt shame that he could not respond, and went slowly out of the room.

She followed him, her face pale. “You are a sadist, aren’t you?” He did not know what to say to her.

During tea she showed him some photographs taken by her father. “George likes to take young girls in what he calls the buff. Here are school friends of mine, taken some time ago.”

She put several sepia studies on his lap. “I’ve read the letter you wrote to me in Germany,” she went on, while he looked at the photographs. “I wonder if
The
Times
man is right in what he
said in the
Taverne
about Hitler being neither homosexual nor heterosexual?”

“Until he finds the right woman I suppose he’ll remain what Churchill said of T. E. Lawrence. ‘A rare beast: does not breed in captivity’.”

“
Was
Lawrence of Arabia a pederast?”

“When I met him I felt he was a disembodied spirit.”

“Not even a repressed pederast?”

“What is a repressed pederast? A spinster? A man so natural that he isn’t a fornicating womaniser? One who waits for love with his or her own sort—the supreme attraction of that rare thing, ‘likeness of thought’? When that happens, the scent returns to the musk blossom.”

“Oh darling, forgive me for calling you a sadist.”

“Melissa, my flower, everyone has an atavistic streak. I was a proper little sadist when I was a boy. I had a stronger boy with me, whom I got to do my fighting. I used to urge him on to fight. It gave me a limpet-clinging feeling between my legs. But the often bloody results filled me with alarm—and the anguish of pity.”

She sat beside him, and leaned her head on his breast, to be gentled.

“You were releasing tensions that your father put upon you.”

“I suppose a girl can feel the same?”

“Possibly.” She was giving no more of herself away.

“Also, Melissa, when one uses the imagination, and drives
oneself
with it, ‘much power has gone from me’, as Jesus said of himself.”

The telephone bell rang. Lucy asked Phillip if he would like to bring Melissa back to supper, since she was alone. He gave her the receiver. She said, “I’d love to come, dearest Lucy.” She put down the receiver and going over to Phillip put her arms round his waist, pressed her cheek on his chest, closed her eyes and said, “You are a sweet man.”

*

At supper, among the children at the long candle-lit table, she told them that her father had bought two thousand acres of light land in East Anglia, at three pounds the acre including all
buildings
—four farmhouses, with all service cottages and premises.

“I’d like to farm again” said Phillip. “Perhaps, if my trout book sells, I can manage it.”

“Will you farm down here, d’you think?”

“I did think of somewhere in East Anglia—land seems cheap there.”

“What fun, we’ll all be together.”

She helped Lucy bathe the children. She carried David to bed, thinking that the little boy was of Phillip’s flesh and warmth, and told him a story. She looked at the baby in its cot, and began to ache with longing. So much so that when she was leaving, and he said he’d run her back, she said she would walk across the park.

“I love walking at night, and it will be my last chance to see the river in starlight.”