The Gale of the World (25 page)

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

She went on painting.

“How long have you known Laura?”

“Ever since we began nursing during the war. There were three of us, the other being Melissa Wilby. You know her, don’t you?”

“I did once, long ago. She and Lucy are coming down to Exmoor in the summer, by car.”

“Do tell them to call here. We can put them up for the night, and I know Piers would love to see them again.”

*

Phillip telephoned the retired eye-specialist at Minehead before going to see him.

“Ah, at last I have met ‘the water wanderer’!” he said, with gentle satisfaction. “You’ll be pleased to hear that we have under observation a blackcock’s nest on Winslow Hill,” as he brought forward the opthalmoscope. “You’ve been burning the midnight oil to excess, I expect.” He peered. “Ah, there is a blood vessel on the retina of this eye, which appears to have broken. Yes, the grey hen brought off her brood, despite the attacks of crows. The bleeding may stop, and heal. You’ll also be glad to know that two corncrakes have hatched off a clutch of seven eggs. They’re getting rather rare. Some of the trout-fly-tying johnnies will pay two pounds for a skin. You must rest from your labours. Another book on the stocks? What is to be this time? Well, have a rest; ideas will come the easier, then. Come and see me again. Don’t read too much. Get in the open air. It is possible that blood vessels may leave scar tissue, which will be in the direct line of vision,
and prevent both reading and writing with direct focus. No fee, my dear boy. But if you care to send me a copy of your next book—”

James Joyce went blind. How did he manage to finish Ulysses? Large BBB pencil? Helped by Samuel Beckett? His style all private notes, conglomerated. Delius wrote music when he had gone blind, squired by Eric Fenby. Perhaps Miranda—

He would never ask her.

*

From first light to the sun rolling away half his gift of day, curlews were crying their linked bell-notes in the upper airs of the moor. No longer were they afraid of the man and dog
walking
among the tussocks, often two-feet and more across, beside which their young were crouching, obedient to warnings from above. For the carrion crows quartered The Chains, an inherited right, seeking nests of large blotched eggs, and later the speckled young below. The crows hunted from a height of from six to seven hundred feet; they knew the habits of curlew, knew that a
standing
hen nervously regarding them was near her nest. And the cock-bird circling above them, with urgent thrusts of wings, calling with sharp and ringing alarm when directly over the young birds, pointed the objective to be assaulted. So one crow would flap down, as though lazily, a decoy to draw the cock curlew in
tumbling
flight after him.
Car-car-car
!
Signal for crow’s mate to flop rather than fly down and make open-mouthed cursing dash at hen curlew.

Phillip could tell what was happening by the cries of the birds. He could discern aerial movement, but no definition. Bodger waited with quivering stump.

“Goo’ boy, Bodger!”

And off the mongrel would go upwind, leaping over long
wind-stroked
grasses arisen from the tussocks: to stand where the female curlew had arisen, with ringing scrape of melody, to fly wildly about the sky. Bodger on guard, looking up at crows sloping away with muttered curses.

Phillip walking over to Bodger. “Good old boy, Bodger!”

Sometimes in those sunny days of early June he would play a game with the little dog, while, unseen by him, two gliders soared overhead. ‘Buster’ now had his war-time comrade with him, Brigadier Tarr, to train new pilots. Laura was his first pupil. She was all air-minded, finding fulfilment by identifying herself as an Icarian spirit, seeing the earth below as the pantheon of the
gods of Hellas. For Greece, and particularly an experience in Corfu, leading to a temporary liaison with another visitor there, was now shaping in her mind for a novel.

Phillip would be a Prospero-figure, she thought, as she saw him and the little dog below, and wondered what he was thinking. Sometimes he lay down upon the long green grasses, resilient and soft upon the clumps, and stared into the sky; she waved, but he took no notice.

For Phillip had not seen the gliders overhead. His idea was to lose Bodger, away hunting on some scent, mouse or straying rabbit, so that the dog would be able to find him should he ever lose himself. So Phillip was lying hidden, waiting for the dog, upwind, to find him. Would the genes of a foxhound mother—emblazoned on Bodger’s coat in patches of lemon, tan and black—come to his aid? Raising his head a little, he could just discern Bodger standing still, facing east, staring for any movement. Seeing no movement, Bodger changed position to stare south. No scent; for Phillip was downwind from the dog’s nostrils.

Dog faced north; stared awhile; then west. No sight, no scent, of master.

So Bodger set off to find Phillip. He ran down wind for half a mile, to stop on the crest of The Chains, casting. He crossed the wind, until he got his master’s scent. Then upwind, tossing scent on black nose, until he came straight to warmer scent of master lying face-up in a green bed of softness.

And looking up to spy around, Phillip discovered Bodger
sitting
, composed and now looking elsewhere, less than a yard away from him, downwind.

*

One morning Laura walked to Shep Cot. She was seen by Aaron Kedd, the smallholder whose eyes watched with covetous disapproval the length of her naked legs: for she wore a bathing dress with short linen jacket belonging to ‘Buster’. She found Phillip lying in the heather outside his open door, and came to the point at once.

“Why are you avoiding me? I waved to you as I passed over this morning, but you took no notice!”

“I’m afraid I must have been in what used to be called a brown study. How high were you?”

“A thousand feet only. And don’t try to avoid what I’m saying! You
did
see me! You looked at me and when I waved you
deliberately
looked away. I suppose it’s all Miranda now?”

“I seldom see her.”

“That’s her handwriting!” She pointed to a letter beside him. “Postmark Cheltenham!”

“I’ve only just got it from the post office, and haven’t opened it yet.”

Laura walked away. She returned. “Phillip I’m sorry. Please be kind to me. Why are you keeping yourself away? Even ‘Buster’ feels you’ve dropped him. Are you writing?”

“I’m making notes. How goes your stuff?”

“My
stuff
, as you call it, is being composed all the time—in my head.”

“So is mine. How’s the gliding?”

“You
are
keeping something from me! I was quite frank with you about the composer in Corfu. He said he wouldn’t ask for children, and would let me go on with my writing while he wrote his music. But I kept thinking of you, and how you were getting on, with no one to look after you.”

“I’m no good for you. You know that. Oh, listen to the curlews. There’s pure prose for you.”

She sat beside him, and stroked his chest and neck with a crow’s feather.

“Darling, you are a curlew, you are Prospero, who understands his Ariel. If I come and live with you, you won’t mind me having other men sometimes, will you? I can’t help it, Phillip, it’s my nature. I’m very passionate, but I can’t bear the idea of having children. My life is my writing.” Then she said, “O, it’s so lovely by the harbour now! Do let’s go down and swim!”

Aaron Kedd watched them crossing the common to the lane. Thaccy scarlet woman had bestways no right to paint her lips, and go whoring after men! He grunted when Phillip called out, “How’s the root crop? Any fly on the turnips?”, considering this idle remark to be a jeer, because he hadn’t yet drilled the seed.

Reaching the village, Phillip and Laura went into a shop for coffee. Visitors were now numerous in Lynmouth. An occasional young American voice was heard, in connexion with words like
doctorate,
skedule,
comparative
literature.
Shelley’s cottage had a board beside
Bed
and
Breakfast
, saying
Full
Up
.

“Phillip, I am fascinated by gliding. It’s as near to heaven as one can get. And to fall, fall, fall as Icarus!”

“Do you know Francis Thompson’s lines from
The
Mistress
of
Vision?

“Thank you! That’s
most
reassuring!”

“Apologies for taking your fancy literally. How’s the biography of Manfred Cloudesley going?”

“It’s been stopped for the time being, by a local irritation, calling itself Osgood Nilsson. He keeps asking ‘Buster’ for details, including ‘any of his father’s letters he happens to have by him’. The man has the hide of a rhinoceros! By the way, ‘Buster’ doesn’t want him to know that we’re writing his father’s biography. He doesn’t want any publicity, in case someone like Nilsson rushes something out first. ‘Buster’ worries about it, you see, and so can’t concentrate on the book.” She added, “He has to take sedative drugs, his spine never ceases to ache.”

“He’s a very brave man. Also, a grand man. He never ‘blows black smoke in other people’s faces’.”

“He’s wizard when in the air. So am I! We’re both Icarians in this wonderful weather of thermals!”

“Including your instructor, the full-rigged and tarred Brig?”

“Phillip, he’s quite different in the air! He’s like a boy again, before his father was killed in nineteen seventeen, after his mother had bolted with someone else.”

She appealed to him with limpid eyes. “Phillip, I know you will understand. He had a bad time in his war, you know. He was blown up on a land-mine, and it affected his brain. You won’t tell anyone, will you? I know you won’t, but he’s been in the loony-bin, his brain is still hurt—” Her voice was almost
inadudible
, she was nearly crying.

She recovered; and asked him if he would be going to Oldstone Down for the Midsummer Eve Festival of the Eirēnēan Society.

“You know Piston, don’t you, Phillip? Some people laugh at him, but I don’t. Oldstone Down is one of those charged
mountains
, like the Hartz mountains in the Black Forest, where people see the Brocken. You do believe in the unseen world, don’t you?”

“I believe in Blake, who said, Everything that lives is holy’. He
didn’t mean that all living acts are holy—but the potential for holiness is there. Bodger lying there is holy. Aren’t you, Bodger? His tail says ‘Yes’. Laura—did you ever read W. H. Hudson’s story of two dogs on the pampas of Argentina remaining with the master who had fallen off a horse and broken a leg? When the vultures came and sat near him, the dogs remained on guard until their tongues were dry with heat, and thirst. Water was near, but whenever they began to slink away to it, the movement of the birds towards the man brought them back to defend him. Hudson says he does not like dogs, they are stupid he says: and goes on to say that, otherwise, one would have gone to drink while the other remained on guard. So dogs are not really to be admired. It is so strange that Hudson seemed blind to their selfless courage, and saw in it only stupidity. I’ve heard young men, not born when my war was being fought on the Western Front, declaring that all who remained there to die were a lot of bloody fools. Do you mind if I read you something I’ve just written?” He took out his note-book and had got so far as saying, “This is about an incident at Passchendaele—”, when Laura got up and left the café.

Returning up the street, Phillip saw smoke coming out of a chimney on Ionian cottage. Osgood Nilsson’s old jalopy was parked by the gate. Standing behind it, he heard voices. Mrs. Nilsson was talking at the open door, beside his sister Elizabeth. Had she come to live in Lynmouth? He felt thin and anxious; and turning back, returned home by way of Mars Hill, desperately forcing himself up the narrow, twisting lane.

Mrs. Osgood Nilsson, like her husband, was an odd mixture. Her mother was of Irish lineage, being a daughter of The O’Croglin of O’Croglin, head man of a hill tribe of Celts in County Galway. Her father had been a British actor who also wrote ghoulish
extravaganzas
under the
nom-de-plume
of D. Raquller.

Osgood Nilsson never mentioned this aspect of his father-
in-law
’s authorship, lest the fact somewhat tarnish the connection with The O’Croglin of O’Croglin, and also diminish his status with his own soldier grandfather.

But when Nilsson thought of his own father, he backed away from the image in his mind. All his need for assurance came from the disastrous memory when a small boy of finding his father shot, by his own hand, one morning.

The ghost walked from his mind when his blood-stream was polluted by excess of alcohol, and unknowingly he tried to transfer the ghost to others … Unknowingly, yes; for Nilsson at heart was a warm and generous man. Self-knowledge, in relation to the defects of others, was denied him; so he remained a second-rate, or superficial writer.

Otherwise, he was an amiable man. His wife was a generous woman, impelled by this trait to interest herself in the lives of others. Some people, who did not fully, that is intuitively, realise the chronic anxiety under which Rosalie Nilsson lived—never knowing when Osgood might fall under a stroke, or be killed while driving his motorcar—considered that she was merely a gossip, a retailer of the peccadilloes of others—in confidence, of course. Never tell Rosalie anything, these members of the
haute
bourge
oisie
told one another, unless you wish everyone to know it …

Mrs. Nilsson was by now much interested in how Phillip was getting on, and what he was doing. Elizabeth’s account of her brother’s faults, from his earliest years, had surprised her; the poor
woman obviously had a ‘thing’ about him; even so, there was much that intrigued her. The fact that he had been a ‘bad’ little boy meant nothing; and since his sister was obviously a neurotic character, much could be discounted. But other facts—if indeed they were facts—were surprising. Phillip had won the D.S.O., but relinquished it before going to prison in Wormwood scrubs, for arson! And he’d had an illegitimate son, and tried to get Lucy his wife, who’d had a child at the same time, to register both infants as her twins! And Elizabeth declared that he was always trying to get money from his relations, after
refusing
an
inheritance
of twelve hundred acres from his uncle, Hilary Maddison! There was something rather odd there—surely he could have sold the land after his uncle’s death, were he so keen on money?

These statements, taken into consideration with stories about him from other sources—mainly about his womanising in Shep Cot—Molly Bucentaur
and
her ’teen-age daughter Miranda—and other young women, including that girl with an odd name—one of the pseudo-literary world. The stories excited Rosalie Nilsson, so she decided to have a look at his ménage one afternoon. She could, sincerely, tell him how much she thought of his work; and invited him to have a meal with Osgood and herself.

She drove her car through the steep and narrow lane as far as the open moor, and walked across the heather, to find the door open, and no-one at home.

Then she saw him with his little dog, outlined against the steep heather slopes leading up to The Chains; but just in case someone was in the cot, she called out, “Hullo there! Anyone at home? Mr. Maddison, are you there?” A robin flew out of the doorway, and thus encouraged, Mrs. Nilsson walked over the threshold.

“Anybody at home?”

No answer. She entered and looked around before advancing to call up the stairs. “Are you all right?” She said, just in case
someone
was up there, “I’m Rosalie Nilsson, Osgood’s wife. This is a call, I suppose!”

Still no reply, so she returned outside. The common was empty for a quarter of a mile around. Thereupon she returned to the kitchen and quizzed first the bookshelves, then the papers on the table. There were two small piles of typed sheets: one on yellow paper, the other on white. After cautiously going up the stairs, to be sure no-one was there, she went down again and picking up the yellow sheets began to read.

This was exciting. Rosalie turned over to the next page—no signature. Who could it be?

The visitant examined the typing; it was done by a typewriter different from that on the table. Could the writer be Miranda, of whose infatuation for Phillip she had heard at a cocktail party in Lynton? “My dear, old enough to be her
grandfather!
” A ridiculous remark—for Phillip was, according to
Who’s
Who
,
fifty one. He would have to have been very precocious to be a father at seventeen, and his son also a father at the same age, to be Miranda’s grandfather! ‘Buster’s’ secretary, perhaps? That was nearer the mark: the girl, Laura someone—very odd name—had a withdrawn look about her, eyes anywhere but on the faces of people in the street when she had seen her in Lynmouth …

Yes, it must be that odd girl, Laura Wissilcraft. What a curious name! Transferring her own attitudes to Phillip, from what I have heard … very much so. That young woman had a flashing temper at times! It was said that ‘Buster’ had felt it on more than one occasion; but kept his feelings hidden, literally, under his mask. Osgood had a theory that he had something to hide about his own father, when the real reason of the poor man’s reticence was due to his incapacity—like the hero in Hemingway’s first novel,
The
Sun
Also
Rises
, in hopeless love with Brett, the girl ‘built like a yacht’—

So it
was
Laura, after all!

Poor Laura, what a mix-up. She is quite right, this situation isn’t any good for her. Obviously it has no true base. I’d like to talk to her, if I could do so without appearing to be interfering …

Mrs. Nilsson took up the differently typed sheets. These were obviously Phillip’s work.