The Phoenix Generation (44 page)

*

When he had broken his arm the boy had been taken to the cottage hospital, accompanied by the entire family in the Silver Eagle. The children all sat in the tonneau nursing and reassuring the ‘baby’, while Lucy sat in front beside Phillip. The ‘baby’ had sworn at the surgeon who had set the bone, striking at him
with his free hand, his eyes flashing and his cheeks flushed. He had used such phrases of abuse that David, standing by with Billy, Rosamund and Peter, all four trying to soothe the ‘baby’,
exclaimed
in a mock-shocked voice, “Jonathan! Such words!”

“You shut up, you bloody fool,” cried Jonathan. “You bloody idiot! You half-wit! Don’t grin at me, you bastard!” And he had tried to strike his six-year-old brother with his broken arm. Billy enjoyed it all with an aloof and sardonic look on his face. Billy had felt for a number of years that his father did not like him. He felt, at times, apart from the others because his ‘real mother’ was dead.

“My youngest son sometimes gets upset,” Phillip had explained with assumed geniality to the white-coated surgeon. Thereupon Jonathan had given him a mournful, wounded look, uttered a stifled reproach of “You be quiet, you old man,” and broken with tears. His mother soothed him, sensibly; and on the way home, sitting in the back of the car with Rosamund, Billy, Peter, and David, all five eating an ice-cream (“Don’t throw the paper away,” said Peter, “keep it for Daddy’s compost heap, see, Jonny dear?”) the little boy had recovered his equanimity. And he had faithfully carried down the paper to the compost heap and buried it. A rat, unfortunately, had dug it out again and bitten it up, since it, too, liked ice-cream.

Jonathan slept in the big bed beside his mother in the largest of the three bedrooms of the two cottages made into the
farmhouse
. In the next room slept Rosamund and David, a table with their treasures between the bed-heads. In the third room Billy and Peter had their beds. The so-called Children’s Cottage adjoining had one large bedroom at present unoccupied, used as a spare room, and the playroom downstairs. Phillip slept in another cottage up the village street, where in the evenings after the day’s work he kept the farm books and accounts; and when they were done, sat in an armchair and wrote articles for the newspapers, his eyes usually smarting with weariness.

*

Jonathan, thinking himself to be alone with his mother, became imperious. Phillip, sitting quietly out of sight on the form running the length of the table, heard him say, “Mother, I want my other shoes on, my sand-shoes! Be quick! Where are they? I can’t find them!”

“Oh, I put them away in one of the baskets, now which one was it?”

“Not the proper one, of course. Be quick, I say! I want to plant this pea I found, in my garden.”

“Hullo,”said Phillip.

The startled child saw his father sitting beside the telephone. His imperious and anxious expression changed to that of a boy a little awed before the presence of his father. Phillip, who knew that his own interior balance was disturbed because of the
disharmony
of his own parents, was determined not to let Jonathan grow up as he himself had grown up. Jonathan loved his mother dearly; but he needed the animal warmth of a father.

“Come here, Jonny.”

He sat him on his knee, an action which the child resisted slightly; but before he could struggle Phillip spoke in a confidential whisper by his ear, while nuzzling the soft warmth of the dark hair against his own cheek.

“You didn’t come to our horkey in the Corn Barn last year, did you? We had twenty candles in empty bottles all down the table, and the flames bent one way when the sack dropped out of the broken window and the white owl looked in, screeching with dismay. We were all so happy that we went home long after
midnight
, forgetting all about the food left on the table—the ham and the mince pies and the Stilton cheese and the plum cake. And do you know, when we had all gone away, and it was quiet, first one cat, then another cat, and then a third and a fourth and fifth cat, all crept through the broken window, and had a party. And when the cats were gone the rats crept through their holes in the walls and had a party. And after the rats had gone away with full bellies the mice came and nibbled away all the rest of the night. And in the morning the table—this same table beside us, we took it down on two carts—was littered with bones and crumbs and little rolls of mice money, which they issue whenever they feel the need for deflation. O, ’twas a wunnerful horkey, Jonathan. And do ’ee know, midear, just now Captain Runnymeade telephoned, and invited you and all the other children to his children’s party this afternoon. Won’t it be fun?”

He stroked the dark, Celtic head, tenderly smoothing the imaginative bump at the back. Jonathan was amenable now, his affronted selfhood dissolved by imagination.

“Shall us wear our horkey hats, Dad?”

“Of course we shall.”

“I have the Dixie cotton-picker’s cap you gave me tidied away in the bottom drawer of the tallboy over there, Dad,” said Jonathan
eagerly. “Mum, Dad said we are going to a party tomorrow. And we’ll all wear horkey hats. And I shall wear my
cotton-dicker’s
hat Dad gave me.”

“What fun,” murmured Lucy. “Jonathan is so good,” she said to Phillip with a smile. She looked so young, he thought, remorseful for all his beastliness and sneers at her family. Except for a shared love of the children there was no flow between them. There never had been, really. Oh, he must try and be kinder to Lucy, who was kindness itself. He turned away his face, lest tears come, as he gentled the child on his lap.

“Yes, Jonathan is a boy after your own heart, Pip. You ought to see his garden. That will please Dad, won’t it, Jonny?”

“My bean is coming up, Dad! And now I have got another pea a boy gave me, to plant!”

“You’ll make a good farmer one day, Jonny.”

“And I shall always put old oil on my pigs, Dad, like Billy did this morning to the Large Whites. Coo, he made them scrap!”

“Oh, Billy did that, did he? Good boy, Billy.”

“He squirted with your squirter, Dad. Then he squirted Matt, and Matt chased us, Dad!”

Phillip felt the warmth of the child’s head through his cheek. The warmth spread through his body. He began to feel happy that he was a farmer, farming his own land. It would become the family land. Oh, things would one day be different.

“Now I must get on,” said Lucy, in happy voice. “I have rather a lot to do, but I’ll get through it. And we will try and make the place nicer for you,” touching Phillip’s head as she went past. “You and Jonny are so much alike, you know. He likes everything to be neat and tidy, just like you. Won’t you have your breakfast now? It.‘s nearly eleven o’clock.”

“I can’t spare the time!”

*

When he had done his business at market, hurrying from place to place as usual, he found that there was no time for a proper lunch. After a cup of coffee, beef sandwich, and cheesecake he felt easier; and when clear of the town, fastened the windscreen flat, pulled on flying helmet and goggles with curved Triplex glasses, buttoned coat to neck and put his foot down. The revolution counter was showing 4,600 r.p.m., the speedometer needle 77 m.p.h. along the straight nine miles out of town.

And quietly drove down his new road to the farm premises shortly before three o’clock. There he eased each calf out of its
sack—all but the little creatures’ heads had thus travelled warm—and put them in a cowshed box for Matt to find at 4 o’clock milking time. He tried to avoid the sight of tiles fallen off; of unswept concrete roads through the yards, cluttered with pats of dried dung; of dead rats lying about fly-blown; of patches of uncut nettles (he had imagined, a hundred times, wallflowers
replacing
them one day) growing out of the bases of the flint walls. But he did, against self-exhortation, look over the bridge into the stream for trout which he knew had already died of asphyxiation in the warm, sluggish waters bubbling with gases from the black silt of pollution covering the once-sandy bed. One day he would see to it that that chalk stream was de-polluted. The Effingham All Saints Rural District Council allowed—or permitted—or took no notice of the fact—that the drains of over two hundred cottages and new bungalows poured their sewage direct into the stream, thus ignoring two Acts of Parliament and their own by-laws. One small part of the decadence into which Great Britain had fallen. Poor Birkin, what a load he was bearing …

He returned down the new farm lane to the gate, and so to the main village road—the tarmac stained with and faintly odorous of dried sloppings from the weekly Night Cart—and drove to the cottages used by Lucy and the children.

“Hullo,” said Lucy, coming in with a smile. “I’ve got the children to tidy their room. They’ve gone down to the granary to fetch the horkey hats. They won’t be long.”

“I must give the car a rough wash, and polish the radiator. Is there any metal polish?”

“Yes, I’ll fetch it. Have you had lunch?”

“I had a snack, and some coffee.”

“We had a roast cockerel. It was such a nice luncheon, I did hope you would be back in time. Would you like some now? I put back a plate——”

“I don’t think there’s time, thanks all the same.”

“But you had no breakfast.”

For all his fancied knowledge, Phillip did not know that lack of food and sleep were the main causes of his depression. The delay that morning, and the consequent missed breakfast, had been due to his discovery that the grass-cutter was broken. The men were to snatch time before corn harvest to cut the thistles and rushes which almost covered the meadows. The cutter had lain broken, unknown to him, in the hovel since hay-cutting at midsummer. All breakages were supposed to be reported by the steward at once,
so that they might be remedied immediately, and the implement be ready for action at any time. That seemed common sense. Luke had objected. Why set about repairing anything until it was needed, he argued. That was what they did everywhere else.

“I see, it is to remain the old farm here, even as the old firm in Threadneedle Street.”

“I don’t know what that means, but we won’t get in no muddle,” said the steward. And the broken cutter had not gone to the
blacksmith
.

There were two fairly old horse-drawn cutters on the farm—one a Samuelson, the other a Bamford. Phillip’s plan for the morning’s work had been to draw one cutter by tractor, the other by horse. The spare cutter was found to be without a knife. During the June haysel its spare knife had lost several shark-teeth blades. Phillip had arranged for spare blades to be in their place in the workshop, upon the Spares Shelf. The whole set had been taken during haysel and left somewhere under a hedge. The rivetting-hammer also was missing. So was the box of rivets.

It was 11.30 a.m. before the cutters had left for the Saturday morning’s work of thistle-cutting on the meadows. One man had left his scythe half a mile away in a thorn-tree, three weeks before. By the time he had returned with his scythe it was time to go home.

“Do let me give you some chicken, Pip. Or will you get
something
at Captain Runnymeade’s?”

“Do roses like gin? Or is it hydrangeas that turn blue in the face? There won’t be a merciful fire in this weather.”

Soon with pails of water, brushes, wash-leather, polish and rags the Silver Eagle was being groomed, as befitted its visit to a retired dandy of Edwardian refulgence. The children waited silently—hushed by Billy—holding their hats while Father worked in grim haste, swabbing, drying, cleaning, polishing. It was half-past three when he went to wash and change his clothes. He had a cold tub, and immediately felt to be glowing with life. His legs were hard, so was his belly; he could still wear riding breeches made in Cundit Street in 1917: what fun, what foolishness it had been in those days, he thought as he rubbed himself down. An impulse came to him to wear the breeches in honour of those days, and of his host: but no, all eccentricity of dress must be confined to the children. And feeling much refreshed he went into the parlour wearing only a towel, and there on the table was a mug of milky tea and a plate of buttered brown bread spread with honey. He ate this, and the party seemed to be a thrilling possibility. Would Melissa be there?

“You’ll have missed some fun because I am late,” he told Billy, Peter, Rosamund, David, and Jonathan standing quietly in that order before him.

“It doesn’t matter at all, sir,” replied David, smiling, where before he had been serious of face. “Really it doesn’t. Your pigs look ever so nice now,” he added.

“They’re ever so streaky, sir,” said Rosamund.

“Good. I’d like to tether the sows on the meadow, and let them have sun and fresh air. They need to snout about for roots and things which their natures require. But Matt is afraid they will stray. Well, thank you, Lucy, for the honey. It’s power; the best kind of food. I wish we could all be vegetarian.”

Jonathan looked serious. “Dad, sir,” he said, thoughtfully. “Are pheasants vegetarian?”

“Ha, ha,” laughed David. He was the second youngest, and looked just as Phillip’s father had looked as a boy, according to an old photograph. At times David had a poignant appeal for Phillip because of that likeness.

Jonathan scowled. To avoid him feeling that he had asked something silly, Phillip said, “That is an interesting question. Pheasants eat almost anything, including corn, worms, beetles, apples, mice, small snakes, grasshoppers.”

“I know what they eat, Dad, I mean sir, but are they vegetarian food for us?”

David rolled laughing off the arm of the leather chair on which he had been sitting. He collapsed and hid his long thin face in a cushion. Stifled laughter came from the cushion. Billy remarked sardonically, “Are pheasants vegetables?”

Jonathan’s eyes showed mortification.

“I know, darling,” said Rosamund, going to the rescue. She was Celtic, dark like her small brother. She sat him on her lap. “You see, Johnny, pheasants eat clover and peas and corn, and when we eat them, we also eat what they have eaten, so in a way they are vegetarian. Vegetarian food means things like milk, butter, honey, and nuts. Figs, too, and dates, then there’s apples, potatoes, beans and peas, oh, lots of lovely vegetable food.”