The Gale of the World (24 page)

My sight must not blind me to what my fellow mortals see, or I shall find myself in Luthany, the region Elenore.

Here is Heathmarket, where I, a tall bony subaltern back from Flanders, found myself with the untried, the static
Edwardian
spirit of good form, within the presence of Rupert Brooke’s poetry, it was the summer of 1915. Bertram Baldersby, of Baldersby Towers, Berkshire, the senior subaltern who said I was an outsider, as I was, indeed.

Racehorses are still being exercised on grass, walking in file. They look to be thin, perhaps from rationing? Yet others are swelled, like those pictures of refugee children of Europe seen in newspapers, thin limbs and distended bellies. I am never really happy, something in me is pining, all the time. Poor Laura, too—she lives in the hell of childhood strangulation. We all put our hells on to others, she with a bewitching look. Cleopatra: I am dying, Egypt, dying. I have immortal longings for thee.
Shakespeare
was an angel of light, to divine the soul of woman.

Did poor, silly Bertram Baldersby suffer? He was killed later on the Western Front. He was rather like Brigadier Tarr—a lost child, seeking rest from torment, peace in the body of any young woman. Bald-headed, stumpy, pushing his middle parts of fortune against padded fork after fork: fashioned public school
drink-jag’d
lecher, feeling female breast with circular movement of hand and grinning, “Ring me up sometime, I’ll come hard on your call”. Wishful thinking, out of a torment of self-ruin? No
communication
with the feelings of others. He must suffer greatly—even a bird of prey tastes grief. Or are there some who enjoy killing for self-righteousness’ sake? Who say, The only good
German
is a dead German.

What say you, Wilfred Owen? Are you still haunting the Western Front, on guard, lest it happen again?

Oh hell, I can’t see through the orbs of my own eyes, I have gone too far south, stupidly, unthinkingly, I have taken the road across the Great Plain. No, not Rockhurst; never more those hills of the morning, and the beaten-gold shimmer of the Longpond. For there I was defeated; and my dead have not yet buried the dead. Uncle Hilary, where are you now?

Suddenly exhausted, he drove on to the turf, to misspend the night by the monoliths of Stonehenge, huddled in his war-time flea-bag: an enlarged chrysalis, torn by the furies of its own failures.

Vapours of the night-brain were scattered by a dawn of great stillness and beauty, despite the lack of larksong, for all the ploughed acres of the Plain, sown to corn, had recently been sprayed by yellow D.N.G. weed-killing compound, to which
sulphate
of ammonia had been added by the scientists to justify their customers’—the fertiliser merchants—claim that the yellow chemicals increased harvest yields of grain. It did—by the addition of sulphate of ammonia—which caused the death of several men driving tractors pulling spraying machines whence issued noxious gases.

Phillip, after breakfast cooked on the paraffin-oil stove,
wondered
whether to go south and call on Aunt Victoria; or to
continue
on to the West Country. Should he ask her if she had referred to him as ‘the black sheep of the family’ when Father died? She wasn’t at his funeral, although it was at Bournemouth where she lived. He decided to stand up for himself for once and ask her that straight question.

*

“Well Phillip, this is a surprise. What brings you here?”

“I am wondering, Aunt Victoria, if it was my presence that kept you, firstly, from my father’s funeral, and then again, from Aunt Dora’s.”

“Why should you think that, Phillip?” the old woman replied, as her face became more pale.

“I thought that perhaps you regarded me as a waster, for I heard from my sister Elizabeth that I was the black sheep of the family, in the eyes of one of my father’s sisters.”

“What gave you that impression? Surely nothing of that kind was said by me when you were here last?”

“It was said to me before I came here, Aunt Viccy.”

“By whom, may one enquire?”

“My sister Elizabeth.”

“I am not responsible for what your sister may, or may not say, Phillip.”

“I see. Perhaps I did not hear correctly.”

“I should
say
that you were once the odd one out of the family. But that was some time ago, surely? Since then you have worked hard on your own land in East Anglia, and increased your capital into the bargain.
You
are not one, I should say, who waits for dead men’s shoes. Or should I say
contrives
that the shoes come a
certain
way?” She looked at Phillip with pale eyes. “While doing nothing to help take off the shoes of the dying.”

“On two occasions, Aunt Viccy?”

“On two occasions, Phillip.”

The old girl seemed to be cheering up, for she said, “I’m going to make some coffee. Will you join me?”

“Thank you, a good idea!”

“Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes, thank you. I am making for Dorchester, to lunch with a friend there. Then I’m going down to Queensbridge to see a doctor, who is a good eye man.”

Here I am, back in my boyhood, telling lies. I’m going north to Colham, to see if Piers Tofield is at his home, Field Place.

“If you want a really good man, go to Endicott here in
Bournemouth
. He still charges two guineas, as before the war.”

Over coffee and wheaten biscuits she said, “Did you know—has your sister Elizabeth told you—that I offered to name her in my will as the sole beneficiary of my estate, after the tenancy for life of Adele, my daughter and your cousin? And do you know what your sister replied, Phillip? She said to me, ‘But I am older than cousin Adele, and she isn’t likely to die before me’. Those were her very words, Phillip. I should tell you that my offer to her included the use, rent free, of one half of this house, also I would pay all bills of housekeeping, including food, fuel, electric light, and rates. If Elizabeth became ill, I could look after her, and vice versa. But no! Elizabeth proposed that
she
be left a tenancy-
for-
life
, the capital in due course to go to
my
daughter! That
proposal
was not acceptable, I told her. From me she went directly to my sister Theodora, and tried it on her. With success, this time. I’m telling you all this in confidence, mind!”

“Of course, Aunt Viccy. Still, I suppose there are other kinds of black sheep who aren’t interested in other people’s money? I am not Pluto, caring only for money. I don’t know who the god of poetry is, Apollo I suppose. He’s my sort.”

“But isn’t Pluto the god of the nether-world, Phillip?”

“Also of money—the same thing, Aunt Victoria. Zeus made him a blind giver of wealth, thus men were destroyed. And women too, I suppose.”

When Phillip left, he gave his aunt a kiss, much to her surprise, and it seemed, approval. “Do come in whenever you are this way again, and do not fail to let me know what Endicott says.”

*

Dr. Endicott. Light beam of opthalmoscope into left eye, then right.

“This eye is a lazy eye. The muscles are partly atrophied. Now the left eye again. H’m. You seem tense. Tell me about yourself.”

Dr. Endicott listened.

“I see. Well, hypertension, due to chronic frustration, can be one of the causes of opacity in the crystalline humour, tension of the globe, and possible deterioration of vision, due to a fibrous tissue behind the lens of the eye. You were temporarily blind in both eyes from mustard gas in 1918, you say. That could well be a contributory, if not altogether an initial cause of renticular fibroplasis.”

“I may go blind, doctor?”

“Have you anyone with you?”

“I live alone on Exmoor.”

“You are not staying with Mrs. Lemon?”

“I am on my way home. Shall I be able to drive?”

“If you proceed carefully. Now put your hand over your lazy eye and read the letters on that card on the wall. What do you see?”

“All the letters seem to be bent, and there is a darkish blur about each one as I try to focus on it.”

“I would welcome another opinion; and will give you a letter to a retired colleague of mine who lives at Minehead. He’s also something of a naturalist like yourself, and a particular authority of wild life on the moor. Yes, I shall welcome another opinion.”

North for Cranborne Chase; over the high downs and onto Colham. Would Piers be at home? Passing the lodge, he saw neat cords of sawn wood in the park. And driving on, was startled to see a small dark-red house where Field Place had stood. Orderly piles of stone came into focus. Of course! Piers had said the shell was being sold to a building firm, together with doors, window frames, lintols, oak flooring—everything had a value in a time of acute shortages. ‘Money for old rope’, they said.

Evidently the Palladian structure had been built around the original house, a small Jacobean affair of brick and tile baked from local clay. He went through the postern gate to the
courtyard
, which remained. It was swept and tidy. He knocked at the kitchen door. A young girl, looking to be about seventeen, opened it wide.

“I’m Phillip Maddison, a friend of Sir Piers,” he said, taking her for a kitchen maid.

“Do come in,” she replied, in a calm voice. “Piers is working in the walled garden, he spends all his time there. He’s often spoken of you.” She took off an apron, revealing a slightly bulbous front. “I’m Beth. You know Laura Wissilcraft, don’t you? I heard from her only this morning, she’s back from Greece. Let’s go and find Piers, shall we?”

Beth? Beth? Ah yes, the girl with the sadistic husband, aborting her every time she was pregnant; murderer of a prostitute, hanged about the same time as the Nuremberg ‘war criminals’ Laura saying,
She
looks
like
sixteen
but
is
twenty-eight
. Must be a strong character.

“Piers, you’ve done wonders! Look at everything! Marvellous vegetables—fruit trees pruned—”

“I’ve got a good man, I take orders from him. Well how are you, Phil? Tell me about Lucy and the children—”

“They’re very happy. Boys at school, also Roz. Baby Sarah has a great sense of fun.”

“Well done. You must bring her down sometimes to play with ours when it appears. You’re writing hard, I hope.”

“I’ve done nearly a hundred thousand words—all synopses of scenes for my novel series, since I went to Shep Cot.”

“Good for you.”

“I also walk a lot on the high ground of the moor.”

“Nothing like it. You look lithe and fit. How’s ‘Buster’?”

“I see him now and again.”

“Archie Plugge called here the other day. He’s public relations
to a sort of Ouspensky revival down your way, at Oldstone.” He laid a heavy split section of beech-trunk on the hearth.

“I’m glad you’ve kept the kitchen, Piers. And opened up that hearth.”

“Nothing like a wood fire. We cook on it—the old lapping crook, crock, cast-iron frying pan. Suits me.”

“Just like my hearth in Shep Cot.”

The young woman put a small table beside Phillip’s chair, and covered it with a table-napkin. Soon a plate with omelette,
deliciously
cooked. Mug of tea.

“I’ve got an old friend down your way, Phillip, go and see her and give her my love—Molly Gildart that was, she married
someone
called Peregrine Bucentaur, who writes articles on big game hunting in Kenya for Country Life.”

“I have met her—not him. Molly is a splendid friend.”

“She always was. You’ll stay, won’t you,” Piers went on. “Plenty of room. Thank God those bloody hens are gone. What sadists they were, pecking and treading one another.”

“May I stay the night, and go on tomorrow?”

“Stay as long as you like.”

“Will you mind if I leave you,” said Beth. “I’m painting one of the bedrooms at the back.”

“May I help you? I’ve done painting before.”

“All aid welcome” said Piers.

The surfaces had been prepared—cleaned, pumice-stone’d, dried. She gave Phillip a door to paint.

“Laura had a bad time as a child, Phillip.”

“She told me.”

“Nursing was very good for her. ‘My therapy’, she called it.”

“I suppose I’m a border-line case in a way. No-man’s-land, where miracles can happen—”

“But a place to be wary of, generally speaking, didn’t you find?”

The dialogue continued while both went on painting.

“I had a brilliant husband. Half-angel, half-devil.”

“Usual mixture when among women,” said Piers, coming in to borrow the wall-scraper.

“I suppose all men are potentially that?”

“Women too,” said Piers, going out.

“We’re all mixtures of fear, and the loyalty called love, Beth.”

Work continued, while she asked him if he had anyone to help him in his cottage. “So you ‘do’ for yourself altogether. Piers did,
for a period. Did he tell you how I came here? Well, it was rather funny, I suppose. He was taking me home in a taxi, after we’d been to the Medicean Club. He wanted to have me in the taxi but I wouldn’t. I liked him, you see, and wasn’t going to be regarded merely as a fourpenny touch. When he cried, I suggested he take me home with him, meaning the next day. ‘Right’, he said. We went back to the Medicean and he got some beer bottles, whisky, glasses, and a lot of sandwiches. Then to my room, where I packed some clothes. That’s how we came here, by taxi.”

“All through the night?”

“We stopped now and again for a drink and a sandwich. The taxi driver was a sport. Piers gave him double fare, including the return. So here I am, pregnant to my satisfaction.”