The Phoenix Generation (32 page)

Striding now with some purpose down the gulley, he went home and wheeled his bicycle from the lower lavatory room where it had always been kept. The tyres needed pumping up. The wick of the silver-plated King Dick colza-oil lamp burned steadily. He had recently overhauled his faithful steed, as he still thought of the Sunbeam.

Bicycling along Charlotte Road and then to the left up the Rise, he remembered the many times he had pedal’d up and down that way, Oh, forty and more years ago now. How had he come to be old? He was still the same man, except for a mental load of
experience
which had been in the nature of slavery for others, he reflected. The unaccustomed exercise soon tired his leg muscles, but he kept on, for endurance was now his main feeling, endurance and loneliness. Many motorcars passed him, he began to feel excitement in the air, as the red glow over the roofs before him increased in the north-west wind which had got up when the sun went down on the late November afternoon.

At last he was pushing the Sunbeam up the hill, one among hundreds, nay thousands of people awheel and on foot. He arrived within sight of the top of Sydenham ridge in time to see the great lunar chrysalis, as he had thought of it in his youth, glowing like a gigantic lobster being boiled to death. Then flames burst through the thin shell of the lobster, and became Valhalla on fire, as in
Götterdämmerung.

It was now impossible to get farther up the hill. Already, two hundred yards away from the building the heat of the flames could be felt on his face. Police were trying to clear a way through the packed masses of people for the fire engines to go on up. It was now eight o’clock: there must have been nearly a hundred
fire-engines
either at the fire or on their way there. Someone told him that the water pressure w r as poor, that the only thing to do was to concentrate on the south tower and the low-level railway station. The flames from the transept were at their peak. Glass was
everywhere
melting and forked flames waved high above the iron flame. At half-past eight the glass was all melted, the iron frame was twisting in the heat.

From the terrace of the House of Commons the rise and fall of the flames were reflected in the tidal river. Hundreds of thousands
were watching from high ground around London. Hampstead Heath was black with figures. People living in Brighton and Hove left their houses and tramped up the Devil’s Dyke on the downs to watch the fire fifty miles away. But from South London came the greatest numbers. Smoke and gases made eyes to smart, and caused coughing. Soon only the south tower, three hundred feet high, and the framework of the other tower, was left. The south tower held a thousand tons of water. What would happen if it fell? As in a dream Richard heard this being discussed. He stood there, knowing that wherever he went it would be the same
situation
, his life was now nothing but consuming memories. His life was already gone, like that of an old person who has died after prolonged pain and disease. The face of Hetty was fixed in his mind like a land that was eroded, the soil exhausted, desiccated and dead. The fertility, the life, was drawn out of everyone inevitably.

The crowd was thinning. People were returning home. He pushed the Sunbeam nearer the crest. There he saw a familiar figure standing bare-headed near a motorcar, where a chauffeur held a fur-coat. He recognised Winston Churchill. Going nearer he saw that tears were running down his face. Could this be the arrogant turn-coat after the Boer War, who had pleaded for the lives of the Boer generals to be spared? A hero to his sister Theodora, who had once said that a phrase in Churchill’s speech in the House of Commons was worthy of the ancient Greek poets. Richard remembered it well, for somehow it had not fitted the character he had formed from reading
The
Morning
Post
, and later
The
Daily
Trident.
What was the wording now—ah, he had it—
The
grass
grows
green
again
upon
the
battlefield;
but
upon
the
scaffold,
never.

Overcome by memories of himself riding to and from Hetty’s house in Cross Aulton, and of himself and his dark lantern
searching
for moths at night upon the Hill, Richard broke down. Tears ran down his cheeks. The discredited politician moved beside him and said in a growling voice, “An age is passing away. I see that your eyes, too, are dropping their tribute salt. And when we cease to weep, we cease to live.” He walked back to his motorcar.

Richard was being watched by a youth with a girl. The youth said, “Fancy crying because this old pile of junk is burning. It’s had its day, hasn’t it?”

The girl did not reply. She was moved to pity by the old man’s staring eyes

The quartet, now joined by Becket Scrimgeour, Lucy and Billy, was sitting on the floor and in chairs before the fire listening to the midnight news when from the hall came the shrill notes of the telephone bell. Billy went to see who was calling. He came back and whispered to Lucy. She got up murmuring, “Do forgive me, won’t you.” Then the door opened and she beckoned to Billy. Meanwhile Phillip was trying to look calm and easy. Billy came back and whispered in his ear. Phillip got up and went outside, closing the door behind him. Lucy stood there, he heard her saying in a low voice, “Here he is Gran’pa.” In the light of the oil lamp on the hall table her face was grave, her eyes downcast.

“Mother?”

She nodded. Father’s voice was higher than usual.

“Phillip, it’s been simply awful. It’s like Wagner’s
Götter
dämmerung
. Poor Mother, like Brunhilde, is at rest. The whole sky is still glowing.”

“Yes, we heard on the wireless that the Crystal Palace was on fire. I’ll come to you at once, Father.”

“No no, my boy, it’s far too late for that. I’ve been expecting poor Mother’s death during the past few days. I shall write and tell you of the funeral arrangements. Are you there, Phillip? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, Father. Mother is now free. I’ll come up tomorrow.”

“Wait until I can let you know the time of the funeral, my dear boy.”

Before he went back to the sitting-room Phillip said to Lucy, “Don’t let anyone know what’s happened.” He sat by the fire with his arms round Billy.

Becket Scrimgeour said, “What was it?
The
Crusader
wanting you to describe the ruins? They say in Fleet Street that you get a hundred pounds for an article.”

“You’re mixing me up with Arnold Bennett, aren’t you?”

“Anyway, you could do it better than Bennett. He said in the
Standard
when reviewing your
Blind
Trout,
that he was outclassed as a descriptive writer.”

“All great writers are over-generous to their juniors at times.”

Melissa kept her eyes away from Phillip. She felt, as often before, to be swelled with frustration that she could not comfort him. Later on, when he said he must take a sleepy Billy to bed, she went with him. At the door she said, “Felicity, do let me see Edward.”

The three went together up to the night nursery. There she
brooded over the sleeping young ones. “Oh, he’s the dearest little boy, Felicity!”

Lucy joined the two women, to arrange beds for the men. Billy, Peter and Rosamund were carried asleep to her bedroom, placed in a row at the foot of the bed, and tucked in. It was a fairly large bed, five feet across. Lucy occupied the other end. She asked her cousin Melissa if she would like to stay the night with her, the bed was big enough.

“I’d love to, Lucy, you’re sure I shan’t be putting you out—literally.’’

Melissa felt some satisfaction, but without a sense of guilt, that Phillip no longer shared the matrimonial bed; even as she was now unperturbed about Felicity, since he had told her that the affair was over. She believed everything he told her. Had he not opened her eyes to the beauty of the world? She owed everything to him, even her new attitude towards her father: an acceptance of what George was.

When she was in bed beside Lucy an awful thought struck her—how cynical her words must have seemed to Lucy about ‘putting her out—literally’.

*

At three o’clock in the morning, Rippingall brought in the last litre bottle of Algerian wine. Phillip was reading aloud from Shakespeare’s
The
Phoenix
and
the
Turtle.

At this point Becket Scrimgeour broke in with, “Of course Shakespeare was in love with Southampton.”

Phillip at once closed the book and left the room. There was a short silence, then the friar said, “How do you deduce that from this poem?”

“Southampton was a nancy boy. And Shakespeare was pure artist, all his sex went into his fantasies. You can see a self-portrait in Hamlet. He was obviously an invert, a masturbator, like Hitler.”

“Why do you think that, Becket—may I call you Becket?”

“I’m honoured, mon père. All Hitler’s rages are signs of chronic masturbation.”

“But don’t you think,” replied the friar, gently, “That the poem Phillip has just read is the spiritual essence of the poet?
Shakespeare
was surely apart from the world of so-called reality. As a youth and young man, possibly not altogether, but when his poetry welled up like spring water, he experienced a metamorphosis. The Old Adam in him died.”

“That’s evident in lesser forms of life,” said Phillip, returning. “The mayfly is pure poetry—pure love. Its mouth is sealed, it neither eats nor drinks after its wings are grown. It dies for love, literally.”

“You’ll be singing ‘All things bright and beautiful’ in a minute,” scoffed Becket. “Let’s have some of that Algerian wine. It sends the Foreign Legionaires
cafard.
I’ve never been
cafard.
Have you, mon père?”

“Oh yes. I was a scout pilot in the war, and towards the end some of us were blotto nearly every night.”

“Good for you, brother!” and Becket slapped him on the back.

“Shakespeare,” said the friar to Phillip, “may, as your analogy of the mayfly suggests, have been entirely sublimated, owing to the hard grind of work.”

“Don’t forget he had a mistress, the Dark Lady of the sonnets,” put in Becket.

“Yes indeed, Becket. But I doubt if she gave Shakespeare any feelings of self-esteem, or that confidence a man needs to keep even a liaison going, much less a marriage.”

“Don’t I know it,” snorted Becket, and sang a bawdy song about dilldolls and whips.

Phillip put on a record of the third act of
Tristan,
saying to Brother Laurence, “Here is the equivalent—before the deaths of Tristan and Isolde—of
Phoenix
and
Turtle.
The immovable essence of honour that was Tristan struck by the irresistible force of the love potion.”

“
Tristan
is all unfulfilled sexual desire and yearning for death,” said the friar. “All the
leitmotifs
illustrate psychic states of
unfulfilled
longing incapable of resolution.”

“Hear, hear,” said Becket. “Nietzsche saw through Wagner, and bloody well showed him up!” He filled his glass with the rough wine.

“I think Wagner’s music is heavenly,” said Phillip, sitting on the floor beside the gramophone. “I love his sense of the endless melody of life.”

“Heavenly my arse,” retorted Becket. “Wagner’s
unendliche
Melodie
is certainly endless but not all melody! There’s a bit of wit for you!”

“But Nietzsche was never disenchanted with
Tristan,
surely?” said the friar. “He rejected the
Ring,
certainly, but never Tristan, I think you will find. The trouble with Nietzsche was his puritan conscience, he felt that the music of Wagner was wrong,
aesthetically
and morally.”

“Nietzsche had syphilis, and was suffering from G.P.I. Anyway,
Tristan
is a carpet-bag of emotional tools,” retorted Becket.

“One can analyse music to destruction,” said the friar, “and in doing so, one is perhaps in danger of missing ‘the singing, the apple-blossom, and the gold’ of Euripides. One must surrender to music—
musique
bain
chaud
—and abdicate self-will. Have you come across Berg, Mr. Scrimgeour? I heard his Wozzeck about ten years ago. The effect of greatness still remains.”

“Did you, as a Catholic, surrender to that orgy of defeatism, lust, despair and murder?”

This remark did not surprise Phillip. With him, Becket
Scrimgeour
had been frank to the point of exhibitionism about his own private life. In London, among other activities, he taught the pianoforte to young women of seventeen and eighteen years. And when mistakes were made, Becket used to spank a pupil on the bare bottom, having put her across his knees. Ah ha, my boy, don’t I just enjoy it! No, I don’t have them, like you do. What, you don’t have lots of girls? Of course you do! Everyone knows you’ve had an affair with Lady Abeline, and now you’re having one with her daughter. I have a mistress, that’s the only woman I have. I’m faithful to her. The smacking of bottoms doesn’t count. But I must say it gives me a hell of a thrill.