The Phoenix Generation (7 page)

Cabton took out his pocket knife and began to clean his nails as Phillip said to Rippingall, “This is the peroration of Birkin’s speech. He was pleading in the Commons yesterday for a hundred million pounds to make new motor roads for the future, and also to give work——”

“—to three million unemployed,” said Cabton, inspecting the long nails with their raised half-moons.

“Per-or-ration,” said Rippingall, solemnly. “The climax, as the Greeks would say.”

“Do listen to this. Birkin has just said that this time we cannot muddle through, or there’ll be a smash.”

“All politicians are crooks,” remarked Cabton.

That comes well from you, thought Phillip. “Listen to this, Rippingall.

“‘I feel this, indeed, from the depths of my being: I believe with all the hopes of all the soldiers of our nation who lived for a better world and died on the battlefields of the Great War—on the rolling downlands of the Aisne and the Somme—upon the vast and
featureless
crater-zones of Flanders—in the March retreat across the waste lands of nineteen-sixteen—in the last summer-time advances to the Hindenburg Line, which they finally breached and led the way to victory, leaving nearly a million dead on these and other
battlefields
—dying in the hope, in the belief of a better life for their children—and the years drift by, and those children are on the dole, and who can rally their comrades who survived, who can mobilise and rally for a tremendous effort, and who can do that except the Government of the day?’”

At this point Rippingall said, “I’ve seen the ghost of the murdered priest.”

Ignoring this drunken fantasy, Phillip read on, “‘If that effort is not made, we may soon come to a crisis, to a real crisis. I do not fear that so much, for this reason: that in a crisis this nation is at its best. This people knows how to handle a crisis; it cools their heads and steels their nerves. What I fear much more than a sudden crisis is a long, slow crumbling through the years until we sink to the level of a Spain, a gradual paralysis beneath which all the vigour and energy of this country will succumb. That is a far more dangerous thing, and far more likely to happen unless some effort is made. If the effort is made, how relatively easily can disaster be averted. You have in this country resources, skilled craftsmen among the workers, design and technique among the technicians, unknown and unequalled in any other country in the world.

“‘What a fantastic assumption it is that a nation which within the lifetime of everyone has put forth the efforts of energy and vigour unequalled in the history of the world, should succumb before an economic situation such as the present. If this situation is to be overcome, if the great powers of this country are to be mobilised and rallied for a great national effort, then the
Government
and Parliament must give a lead. I beg the Government tonight to give the vital forces of this country the chance that they await. I beg Parliament to give that lead’.”

*

Rippingall stood to attention. As a serving soldier, he had been up for more ‘crimes’ than any other man in his regiment. As an old soldier, he made a parade of the military virtues, so-called. Rippingall now said, “Up the rebels!” and took uncertain steps into the summerhouse which he called his G.H.Q.

“Here’s what the first leader of
The
Crusader
says, Cabton. ‘Here was evidence of hard work, concrete thinking, and of a real political conscience, and the House, after the soft abstractions of Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, the Prime Minister, rejoiced to feel solid ground beneath its feet. After today’s speech no one can think of Sir Hereward Birkin as a rich dilettante in politics. This
industrious
and able young man, if he keeps his health and his industry, must be regarded as a candidate, some day, for the highest honours’.”

Cabton shut his knife and said, “Where can I find that pool, what d’you call it, ‘Fossetts’?”

“Rippingall will show you.”

Rippingall returned, and said to Phillip, “The monk asked me if I knew where Miss Felicity was living.”

Phillip was trying to write when an open car drew up in the lane with Hilary and Irene. He went to meet them.

Irene’s smile made him exclaim, “How good it is to see you,” as she held her face to be kissed on the cheek. “Hullo, Uncle Hilary, this is an unexpected pleasure. Lucy will be glad to see you. You both look awfully well. She and her helper, you know Felicity, don’t you, are in the midst of a spring-clean.” He added, “I hope it won’t disturb you.”

The two girls came out to meet the guests, who were on their way to the south coast of Devon, to stay at Turnstone and play golf, said Hilary.

Phillip noticed how much fitter his uncle looked, he had shed some of his fat. He heard him telling Lucy that he had been dieting
under the eyes of Irene, after a visit to Finland where both had regularly had sauna baths, in steam from water poured on hot stones, followed by beatings with birch twigs and a plunge into
ice-cold
water.

“There’s nothing like it, Phillip, for clearing away the cobwebs.”

“Talking of cobwebs, have you read Birkin’s speech following his resignation from the government, Uncle Hilary?”

“Yes, I have, and in my opinion it’s a lot of unrealistic idealism. Birkin was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and yet he
pretends
to be the friend of the working man.”

“He is the friend of the working man, Uncle Hilary, surely? His generation led them in battle, after all.”

“That’s not enough to run a country in these difficult times, with a world slump threatening to become worse. Noble sentiments I agree, but they come from a hot head. Birkin wants to ignore world conditions, which rule our overseas markets. He knows nothing about finance, which is ruled by the world situation, as I said,” replied the older man, his voice between the persuasive and
conciliatory
. “I hold no brief for Churchill, but he was right when he urged the raising of the Bank Rate, which stopped Labour’s
wildcat
schemes. Now Birkin, in resigning, has turned his coat again, as once before he turned it when he was a Conservative. The fellow lacks stability.”

“Birkin said that Churchill, who raised the Bank Rate, is like a man who sets fire to his house, then throws stones at the fire brigade.”

“If these wild-fire socialists came to power, the first thing they would do would be to block Sterling. Then where would our export markets be?”

“We could export to the Empire, surely, and invest all Sterling there, chiefly in raw materials.”

This did not please Hilary, who wanted to be free to invest his capital where he could get the biggest yield.

“Now look here, Phillip, we’ve had all this out before. Such ideas as yours will get you nowhere in your writing. Look at this——” He held out a copy of
The
Morning
Post.
“Read it out. That bit there.”

Phillip read, “‘The sounds of cheering in which the explanation of the resignation terminated were—ominous sign—common to all three parties’. I should say hopeful sign, instead of ominous sign, Uncle Hilary.”

“We’re a democracy, Phillip, and not a dictatorship. You should
have been with us in Finland, and heard what they said there about their neighbour, Russia. And Germany is on the verge of civil war. Although,” he added, “Hitler is at least anti-red.”

Seeing the bleak look coming on Phillip’s face, Irene said, “How is your trout book going?”

“I’m still trying to find a theme for it, Irene.”

“That’s your line, you know,” declared Hilary. “Now, my boy, show me where I can wash my hands. I had to change a sparking plug just outside Salisbury.”

When Phillip returned, Irene was waiting. “Come and show me the river, P.M.”

On the way through the garden she peered at Rosamund lying naked in her pram. “Isn’t she a darling? I can’t wait to see Billy when he comes home. It’s over a year since I saw my grandson. How are you, my dearest P.M.?”

“Oh, getting along, more or less.”

“Isn’t the scent of the meadow-sweet wonderful. And those ragged robins. Don’t you love it here?”

“I’m really offset from it, thinking how to do my book all the time.”

“I suppose you get more freedom now that you have help with your correspondence?”

“Oh, yes, but there’s not much to be done, really.”

“Felicity seems to be a nice girl.”

Phillip led the way upstream, away from the figure of Cabton, who, despite the request that fly only be used, was casting with a spinner. As the two walked on, a heron flew up before them. “That bird does a lot of damage. I thought of asking the keeper to shoot it.”

“Oh, it’s such an addition to the landscape.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

They stopped to watch the heron now at the top of a tree a hundred yards away.

“Phillip, you don’t sound very happy.”

When he did not reply, she said, “I’m probably leaving myself wide open to a snub, but what does Lucy think about that girl being here?”

“Oh, she doesn’t mind. We have only the children in common. Nothing else, really.”

“And what do you have in common with Felicity?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“That girl adores you.”

“I wish she didn’t.”

They walked on, watched by the nervous heron until the bird could bear its anxiety no more, and with a curse flew away.

“Irene,” he said, stopping to face her, “I can’t ever forget Barley.”

“Of course neither of us can ever forget that darling child. I am still her mother, and seldom is she out of my thoughts, Phillip. But we must let her spirit sweeten our lives, not embitter them.”

“I try not to let my thoughts sap me, Irene. My father kept his dream, or illusion, shut up inside him, and so became chronically irritable with my mother. He loved Jenny, Uncle John’s wife, you know, who died when Willie was born. Are
you
happy, Irene?”

“Oh yes, as much as one can expect to be happy, I suppose. Hilary is a pathetic little boy at heart—and it means something to a woman to be wanted, you know. But, P.M. darling—there’s always Billy, remember. Barley lives in him, you know.”

*

After a light luncheon of herb omelette with watercress, Hilary suggested that he and Irene take Lucy and the children, together with their little nurse-maid, to see her father and brother at Down Close. Felicity continued her re-arrangement of the writing-room—her surprise for Phillip, as she called it. Meanwhile Phillip had gone back to the river to look for Cabton. To his relief the fellow was gone. As he walked beside the familiar runs and weed-beds, he stopped and peered for signs of trout having been gripped by a heron’s beak—dark lines across their shoulders like a scissor-cut—in the shallows of the gravel beds. He had come to regard the heron as his particular enemy, thus venting his own frustrated feelings upon the thin, grey, cautious bird.

Alone in the house Felicity worked happily, and with animation at the thought of the writing-room being more orderly for Phillip by the time he returned. She was also quickened by an idea to go to London to have a sauna bath to get rid of what she thought she was now too old to regard as puppy fat. Her growing plumpness had continued despite exercises in her bedroom, and running with the boys on the lawn every morning before breakfast—a device to get them promptly out of bed. Felicity wanted to be slim and admirable in Phillip’s eyes always, as Barley, from her
photographs
, had been.

When Phillip came back from the park, where the heron had, as though lazily, oared itself by its wings from the gravelly shallows long before he could get anywhere near it, he was in a constricted
mood. He had waded in to get a fish lying on its back by a
weed-bed
, with a cut on its head from the bird’s beak. Going upstairs he smelled furniture polish, and saw to his surprise that the door of his wall-cupboard was open, with the key left in. Here, some time before, he had placed relics of his dead wife, including the pair of shoes she had been wearing at Malandine just before she had gone to the maternity home. The shoes were missing; also the lace which she had broken when she had been tying it.

At once feelings of anguish and resentment arose in him. He ran downstairs to where Felicity was sitting at the sewing machine in the day nursery, and said, “
Who
has opened my private
cupboard
?
Where
are the shoes that were in it?”

Rippingall heard the distraught voice as he was sitting in the summerhouse reading, with every approval, Birkin’s speech of resignation from the Labour Party. He listened for a few moments, then getting up, took the almost empty wine-bottle which that morning had been filled with methylated spirits, dyed blue, and drank the remainder. He was putting the bottle down when through the thin hedge he saw the priest, seen up the river, standing there.

“Christ Almighty,” said Rippingall, just as Phillip’s voice was heard shouting through his open upstairs window, “
Why don’t you answer me? Answer my question, damn you!
”

Rippingall crept under the eaves and stood still. He heard Felicity’s soft voice saying, “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I thought they had been left there by someone before we came.”

“They were left there by someone before
you
came! What did you do with them?”

“Oh, I think I put them in—in the summerhouse—for Rippingall to burn—with the other rubbish.”

“But
why
in the summerhouse?”

“I—I—don’t know. I get nervous sometimes and hardly know what I am saying.”

Rippingall floated to the kitchen door as the voice cried out, “If those shoes are burned I’ll never see or speak to you again!”

Phillip jumped downstairs, slid on the lime-ash floor, recovered, and ran into the garden. He saw Rippingall taking off the lid of the dust-bin outside the kitchen door. There the shoes were, placed side by side on top of a Quaker Oats carton. The lace that Barley had broken when trying to tie her shoes on the morning of her labour pains, before the night of her death, was inside one shoe.