The Phoenix Generation (35 page)

Phillip was being paid
£
25 by the
Crusader
for a weekly article of 850 words describing his adventures as an amateur farmer working towards the idea of community. These articles appealed to many young men and women who worked in offices all day and longed for a life of adventure, by which they hoped to become changed not only in their circumstances of living, but in their natures as well. A number of letters were forwarded by the Features Editor every week.

One letter was from a young man called Hurst. He stated that he had been educated at one of the ‘better known public schools' and that he had worked for three years in a private bank of the City of London. As a cypher clerk he read and coded all outgoing cables and decyphered those coming in from the foreign branches of Schwarzenkoph Brothers. ‘It is like being behind the beak of a great octopus, sucking power after squeezing whole areas of economic death by foreclosing on loans and mortgages.'

The letter went on to say that, having read
The
Phoenix,
he felt it to be his mission in life to write and say that he, Phillip Maddison, was the revolutionary prophet Britain was waiting for. Might he come down and visit him on the farm? Phillip replied by letter that there was a chasm between the inspiring word and the hard reality of a political party. The young man was persistent:
Deep-water
Farm, he declared, might be the centre of what he had long awaited: ‘the protoplasmic dot of an upsurge, a Renaissance'. It was his duty to say so. He was arriving the next day, and would make his own way to the farm. All he required was food and lodging and somewhere to lay his head.

Phillip and Ernest had been alone for the past month. Ernest did the cooking, which too often was fried slices of bully beef and hot pickles. Sometimes it tasted of paraffin; but there had been no dissension. Phillip had given up trying to alter Ernest, and thought of him as the tortoise. He himself was the hare. But when Brother Laurence and Felicity came, it would be different. They had been about to set off in the Toad from Reynard's Common when Felicity went down with scarlet fever. That meant six weeks before she was out of quarantine.

The hare was dejected. Overworked, underfed and thereby depressed, he became obsessed by the idea that the farm would never be ready for Lucy and the family. With this was another feeling: that the farm was the microcosm of the European
macrocosm
: it was a race between resurgence and death, otherwise another world war. He knew this was a fantasy, like passing a lamp-post before a car overtook you, otherwise you would have bad luck. Perhaps the young man from Schwarzenkoph's bank might not be so bad as his letter seemed? He must not be afraid of his coming. After all, he would be going back to his job at the bank.

The young man arrived. He wore in his button-hole a
founder-member
badge of the N.S.D.A.P. This was surprising, for how could he have been one of the original party-members of 1923, at the time of the Munich
putsch
by Hitler?

“I had it copied,” explained Hurst. He was dark-haired his pale face was too often clouded by perplexity. “I wish I could get you to see that Birkin is a fraud, Captain Maddison. I know many men who were in the Imperial Socialist party, and were expelled for no reason other than that they were advancing the cause too rapidly.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, Birkin's director of propaganda, Frolich, is a brilliant speaker, and drew the biggest crowds to his meetings. Then Birkin sacked him. And no reasons given. All Frolich had done was to advance the cause.”

“What cause?”

“The cause against the Jews, the cause Birkin is supposed to be standing for, but isn't.” Hurst went on,

“There is a tremendous dissatisfaction with Birkin as the Leader. Frolich, after five years with Birkin, was simply kicked out, but he wasn't the only one. Jock Kettle was another. Jock can prove that, whenever a branch looked like being a success, and grew in size, the ‘Iron Ring' around Birkin automatically closed down the branch.”

“Really.”

Hurst looked distressed. His white face took on a look that was almost ugly. “Please hear me, Captain Maddison. I know Jock Kettle very well. I also know Frolich. A Yid at one of the meetings tried to cut his throat with a razor, but only succeeded in slicing his right cheek. Frolich has a scar from his eye to his mouth, so he can hardly be accused of other than devotion to the
cause. But if you listen to Jock Kettle, who is coming to see me soon, he will tell you the same thing. Jock brought in over seven hundred members when he was in charge of the Houndsditch branch, and then he was given the push. The same thing has happened to all the other branches which were increasing membership.”

“But why should Birkin work against himself like this? It doesn't make sense,” said Phillip. “Now look, I must get to work. I've got to drive the lorry, we are short of a driver. A friar called Brother Laurence, who served in the war, was due to come up, but couldn't. Can you drive?”

“No, but I can learn. You will give me a job then? You see, I've already resigned from Schwarzenkoph's.”

Hurst was taken down to help dig chalk to spread on the
potholed
farm roads. Gravel was to be brought later to cover the chalk. Phillip was about to leave him working under Luke the steward, when the young man, dropping his pick, ran after him and said, ‘Just a moment, sir, I must tell you this. No doubt you've heard of Captain Bohun-Borsholder, one of the biggest landowners in Kent? Well, I know him. He too was a member of the I.S.P. and is now completing evidence that Birkin is
deliberately
sabotaging any attempt to form a real national socialist party in Great Britain, by discrediting his own party in the eyes of everyone in this country. Major Borsholder told me the reason. Birkin is in the pay of the Jews!”

On his return Phillip said to Ernest, “Hurst is a crank.”

“Ah,” said Ernest. He was designing an alternative to a
duck's-foot
cultivator. Phillip intended to plough all the arable of the Bad Lands; to let the fields lie fallow, and when weeds—chiefly thistle and charlock—sprang up, to cut them below the furrows by cultivation, and to follow this with finer cultivations by replacing the duck's-foot tines on the spring-loaded tine-holders with new tines shaped like spread wings of a bird. These would slice all roots and eventually the arable would be weedless. Nitrogen and sun would restore the fertility. The fields would then be rolled by a heavy Cambridge roll, and mud and rotting rushes, dug from the choked dykes on the meadows, spread with other compost from weed-heaps.

There were nearly two hundred acres of arable. A thousand tons of compost would, he hoped, be available in one year's time for this purpose.

It was a 30-cwt. lorry. With chalk to be spread as well, at the
rate often tons an acre (half the cost to be borne by a grant from the new Land Fertility Scheme) this job would take some time. Three thousand tons in all to be transported and spread by the steward, Brother Laurence, and Hurst.

The hare became a tortoise, and after the day's roadmending got on with the job of decorating one of the rooms in the Old Manor. He broke off to revert to a hare, his mind racing to write an article about the farm's progress. He was still the hare when towards midnight he finished a script for the B.B.C. in the weekly series,
English
Family
Maddison.
Then to blind the next afternoon, after digging all the morning, to London in the Silver Eagle, and return in the small hours. The work must be done, it must be done, it must be done, cried the hare with staring eyes.

*

Jock Kettle was taken on as a community member. For a few days he worked with pick and shovel, loading and driving the lorry. Then he drove only, refusing to help load. His driving every hour to and from where the chalk was being laid on the roads was less than half a mile.

One afternoon Hurst suggested that they should hold a meeting in Yarmouth.

“Jock will help to spread the idea of the regeneration of the soil of Britain, beginning with Labour Camps for the unemployed. We can establish the first one here.”

“Well, he might also shovel some chalk for us occasionally. What else will he say?”

“Oh, he will know when he gets the feel of his audience.”

They drove to the market place in Yarmouth. There Jock Kettle got hold of an empty herring barrel.

“You'll see how he uses it, Phil, to get a crowd.” Jock Kettle was a slim dark man with thin humorous lips. He spun the barrel in a tight circle, causing passers-by to watch. He changed to a figure-of-eight, skilfully flinging the barrel at the arcs of the figure. Then checking, he set up the barrel, climbed upon it, and opening a packet of chewing gum held it up to look at it, shook it by his ear, tossed it up and caught it in his mouth. After chewing with exaggerated face movements he pulled out a long string, and wound it back with his tongue.

“I see some young men before me, young men of the greatest fishing port on the East coast of Old England. I see trawlers tied up in the basin, rusting away. Gulls are the mourners at the funeral of Yarmouth fishing. I see older men in threadbare coats.
rotting on the dole. In my journeys about so-called Great Britain I see the same disease in all our once-great industries. We all know that East Anglian men have the hearts of lions and are the first to volunteer in a war. Are they to die upon the battlefields of Europe, to preserve the same rotten, worn-out system that enriches the few, the fat men that control this country with their millions, while we rot on their dole? And what is this dole but something to keep us quiet, and remain in virtual slavery, until war comes and you exchange your freedom to rot on the dole for another freedom to die under machine-gun fire and rot on the battlefield as your fathers did before you. While at home the old folk and the little ones burn up under bombing by aircraft at night?

“Ah, I see some comely lasses over there! Ladies of the herring industry—what is left of it—because it does not pay the moneybag men to keep it going—they bring in cheap tinned fish, caught and processed by sweated labour, paid one third of even the miserable pittance you lasses get here in Yarmouth. Yes, ladies, you should be the mothers of bonny bairns instead of the unmarried mothers of the dead! I tell you that unless we rise up in this country, war will come, and for what reason? They will tell you it will be to
preserve
your homes and parents and children. Who are
they
? The men who control this country, who have most of the money, the Jews! They will drive the goys to the slaughter, in order to tighten their hold on world finance! Down with the Jewish commissars! The Yids! Down with the moneylenders! All history reveals the Yid to be the yeast that ferments revolution, who turns one Christian nation against another Christian nation. The Yids are orientals whose god is the Golden Calf, the graven image of the moneylender with his sixty per cent interest! God help anyone who gets in a moneylender's clutches! Who financed the
revolution
against Charles the First—executed by Cromwell—where did Cromwell get the money from, to pay his soldiers? Shall I tell you? From two Yids in Holland. And what did they get for lending the money? A promise to let the Jews return to England, after being expelled by Edward the First three hundred years before. Nobody in Europe wanted the golden tapeworm of Judah in the body politic——”

“What are you, a Communist?” shouted someone. “We don't want your sort here!”

“Nor do we want any Facinists!” cried another voice.

“Well, well, well,” replied Jock Kettle. My friend over there thinks I am fascinating! Thank you, sir.”

“One of Birkin's lot I meant.”

“Birkin? The Bleeder? Nay, don't let's spoil an honest session with mentioning the unspeakable in pursuit of the ridiculous, as Shakespeare says. Any more questions?”

“Is that your lorry over there?” asked a policeman. “It's after lighting-up time. May I see your licence, please?”

“It's my lorry. I've got the licence,” said Phillip.

Particulars were taken. In due course he was fined ten shillings. By that time Kettle had returned to London. He left without notice. He wasn't in his room in the morning. Later in the day a police van stopped by Horatio Bugg's petrol pump. They went into his house. A desk had been forced open, a number of pound notes had been stolen. Dusting revealed no fingerprints. Bugg declared that over
£
79 was missing.

“The Old Manor is a thieves' kitchen in my way of thinking,” he remarked to all who stopped to speak to him.

As was to be expected, Hurst's attitude changed when he had to hand over his ill-kept account books. His manner became critical. He derided the community farm idea in the Hero—one of several pubs so-called in the district after Lord Nelson of
Trafalgar
. Horatio Bugg was only too eager to tell Phillip what ‘the Denchman' had been saying. Phillip ignored the gossip. Once Hurst pointed to the words painted by Ernest in small white letters on the left side of the lorry, and in sardonic tones read them aloud slowly, in Phillip's hearing, “P.S.T. Maddison
Esquire
—ha ha—Deepwater Farm, Crabbe. They say in the Hero that Phillip is bogus.”

“My brother-in-law,” Ernest replied in his slow distinct voice, “has held the King's commission, and since he is also Lord of the Manor, either condition qualifies for the style of
esquire.
”

“I was only joking,” said Hurst.

*

Soon after Brother Laurence and Felicity arrived, Ernest said he must return to Dorset, giving the excuse that he must go and pack up some things for Australia.

“Well, come back if you have to wait for your passage,” said Phillip. “Your help will make it all the sooner for Lucy and the family to join us here.” Ernest had done some good work in what was left of the kitchen. A new sink now replaced the heavy, chipped, and cracked earthenware horror. The bathroom would have to remain as it was, and be filled by water-carrying until the pipes were either cleared or replaced.