The Gale of the World (26 page)

 What a good thing I came along, said Mrs. Nilsson to herself outside the cot. She hesitated. Could she manage to get so far as the crest of the moor? For while she had been an athletic type at school on the South Downs near Brighton, where she was captain of hockey, swimming, and cricket, sturdy athletism had taken or added its toll in later life, while in no wise diminishing her jollity. She was as innocent as a seal, itself a warm-blooded creature and covered by plenty of fat.

While she was trying to make up her mind, she was being watched by the smallholder, Aaron Kedd. Another woman come whorin’, all rinnin’ after he, and one a witch! And they high-goglee goin’s on at thaccy Lord’s house ’mongst the trees to Lynton!

Mrs. Nilsson decided to go on up. She was soon puffing, but she persevered, and at last, wondering if her heart might give
up at any beat, she came to the top of the hill, and walking south, came to a sea of deep, soft grasses growing from clumps more than knee-high; and there she saw a little dog looking at her, and Phillip lying beside Miranda, arms under heads and staring at the sky. Some distance away was Miranda’s pony, cropping the shorter grasses of a tumulus, beside a white goat.

Seeing her, the two got to their feet.

“I called at your cot, and screwed up my courage to enter, finding the door open, Phillip. May I call you Phillip? Osgood has long wanted to ask you to come and see us, but hearing you were immersed in a book, I forebore. How is it going? I saw some typed sheets on the table.”

“I’ve been preparing some scenes, Mrs. Nilsson, so far. Winter is the time for writing.”

“Osgood also finds it difficult to concentrate when the sun is shining. As it does sometimes even in Devon,” she went on cheerfully.

“What a wonderful view, Miranda! No wonder you two come here!”

Far in the sky a glider was making a slow turn.

“I expect that’s ‘Buster’ up there,’ she said. “He’s always at it. You know him, of course, Miranda?”

“Yes, Mrs. Nilsson.”

“Weren’t you both at the Hallowe’en party last autumn? I hear it was quite a party!”

Miranda smiled.

“I hear he’s writing a biography of his father, helped by a researcher from London, a Miss-, Miss-, some odd name, it just escapes me.”

“Wissilcraft,” said Phillip.

“Of course! Do come and see us, Phillip. Osgood gets so
depressed
at times, it’s his leg you know, he won’t have it off. It’s been like that ever since he crashed in Egypt while training with the R.F.C. in the first war. He’d have been much happier without it, but I suppose vanity makes him cling to it.”

“A wounded man feels inferior, I fancy.”

“Yes, of course. You’ve known that odd creature, Major Piston, for some time, I’m told. Weren’t you two together on the Somme?”

“Yes. He lost all his men, so did I, in the first few minutes.”

“How do you mean, lost? Through inexperience?”

“Scythed down by machine guns.”

“Oh yes, of course, it was terrible, wasn’t it? I had just left
school, and went to nurse in Mrs. Hall-Walker’s home in Regent’s Park. She was a great tennis hostess, that’s how we met before the war, although I was never in the top flight. Do you play tennis, Phillip?”

“I used to, Mrs. Nilsson.”

“
Do
call me Rosalie! And
do
bring Miranda with you to have a knock-up on our daisy and dandelion patch sometime. Osgood and I don’t like to think of you existing all alone in your cot. Any afternoon, take us as you find us.” She looked at a merlin circling above, watching for skylarks. “I must tell Osgood about that! He’s keen on wild birds. Our garden is a sanctuary.
Goldfinches
are already flocking to our dandelion heads, with their young. What a dear little terrier that is. What do you call him?”

“Bodger, named after a sack he sleeps on.”

“How interesting. That must be the sack I saw in your sitting room. Bodger of Great Snoring. A joke, I suppose?”

“There was a Bodger who farmed at Great Snoring in North Norfolk, Rosalie.”

“Sounds like something out of ‘Itma’, doesn’t it? Look at him, he’s seen something!” Bodger was growling; he had got the scent of his former master and tormentor.

“Maybe he’s got the scent of a fox, Rosalie. Foxes come here for frogs, so do otters.”

“How interesting! I must tell Osgood. Well, I must be going. I hope I haven’t unduly disturbed you, Phillip.”

They walked together to the common. The glider was now high in the sky, almost out of sight. “Ten thousand feet, would you say, Phillip?”

“Nearer fifteen, I should say. It has a good wing-span, more than most German aircraft in my war. They usually came over at about ten thousand, the observation planes I mean.”

“So you call it your war, do you.” She stopped. “Phillip, I’ve a confession to make. I took a casual peek at what was on your typewriter roller, and was fascinated by your description of Third Ypres. No mere mud and blood stuff, but all exact reporting, as Osgood would say. But do you think there is any interest left in the Great War? I seem to remember a spate of angry young men all writing books in the ’twenties. Oh, I don’t mean that your sketch is part of the spate! But, please don’t be angry, I read on for a bit, and saw how you link it all psychologically with the second war. I suppose its logical? I never thought of Hitler’s war as stemming from the first. But I suppose it did?”

“Directly, in my view.”

“Then you should write it, my dear. Your writing fascinates me! It is so understanding and compassionate! I nearly wept, really I did. I could see it was a sort of prècis sketch of a modern heroine, battles, et cetera, and as I said, I found it fascinating. How you imagine it
all
like that, completely baffles me!”

Phillip, not taken in by this pretence, replied, “Oh, a bit here, a bit there, out of life.”

“I shall be fascinated to read the whole book when it appears, Phillip. You’ll have rave notices, I’m certain of that. So you
do
use ‘real’ people?”

“Not as a transcript. All should be transmuted through the Imagination”

“For fear of libel, you mean?”

“Not altogether. Transcripts are never real to others.”

“Yes, that’s what Osgood says. His god is Turgenev. But then he was in Russia during the revolution. He thinks the Russians are streets ahead of all European novelists. Particularly Dostoieffsky.”

“Yes, Dostoieffsky sees through people, but always with
compassion
.”

Her motorcar stood by the gate leading to the common. “Now do come, my dear, any time, any day. Take us as you find us. Too much being alone leads to all sorts of mental fixations, I find. It does with Osgood. You’ve seen him when he’s not himself, poor man. His leg gives him hell; but he’s the sweetest old dear when he’s off the hard liquor, so don’t be put off, will you, Phillip? He has a lot to contend with, I do assure you. Yes, do come!” To Miranda she said, “I hear your father is coming for the cricket, and also to hand over the Boniface herd of goats to the town council. Well, if we don’t meet again, we’ll foregather in the Valley of Goats, you’ll be there, of course, won’t you? Do you write, too?”

“I help Cousin Phillip with the magazine, sorting out articles.”

“How’s the magazine going Phillip?”

“None too well, I’m afraid. Most of the subscribers won’t
renew
, and the railway newspaper stalls have sold practically none, all on sale or return of course.”

“I did hear you were just a little controversial in your Editorial, quoting passages from a book by Birkin. You must be careful, my dear, the war is still a very sore point with most people. Those concentration camps, surely you don’t justify them?”

“Did you see a copy of the magazine, Rosalie?”

“Unfortunately I didn’t, Phillip. I must send you a subscription. What is it?”

“Ten shillings a year, four issues post free.”

“Well, I think we can run to that. Make it a nature magazine, why not? I am sure it would then go like hot cakes. What a jolly old caravan you have got. I suppose you’re going to let it for the summer?”

“I thought Lucy and the children might prefer to camp out beside the Lyn, on Green Meadow, just below Barbrook, with the baby—”

“Oh, there’s a baby, is there? What a remarkable man you are, to be sure.”

“
She’s
remarkable for a child only a year old!”

“What fun for you to have your family with you again. I suppose you’ll keep your
pied-à-terre
to yourself, now you’re writing again, after the years of farming. Well, I have so enjoyed my visit, dear boy. Do bring your wife over, won’t you?
And
Miranda. Anytime—come for a meal—we keep open house. Osgood has food parcels sent over by his American publisher, so we always have plenty of Spam.”

*

Mrs Nilsson got into her car and drove away, eager to tell Osgood her latest news.

“My dear, that affair between Phillip Maddison and that strange girl with the odd name has evidently not gone well. Apparently he prefers other company to hers. One can quite see how
attractive
he would be to any romantic young girl. I wonder how Miranda will feel now that his wife is coming down?”

“Molly you mean, don’t you? She’s been using her daughter as a decoy.”

“How exciting! I do love a bit of gossip!”

Osgood Nilsson was, among other literary activities, a roving correspondent for a New York newspaper. He had proposed to his editor that he write a series of articles for the Magazine of the Sunday issue of the paper. The theme had suggested the overall title—
Living
under
the
Harrow
;
Churchill’s Island Fortress since termination of the war in Europe, particularly the growth of ‘the lunatic fringe of religions and breakaway groupings stemming from the rising generation’s rejections of pre-war sexual restraints, customs, mores, and accepted ideals which had produced the British Empire’.

Nilsson set about getting the low-down, for his first article, on the College of Diaphany established in a Victorian castle on the coast of Devon. It was run by an American calling himself Caspar Schwenkfelder, who had come to Britain with the U.S.A. Army Air Force, married an Englishwoman, and settled there.

Doctor Schwenkfelder claimed, in a brochure sent through the mails, the distinction of a Doctorate awarded to him by the Faculty of Therapeutic Medicine Hat Ethical and Philosophical Society.

Nilsson had gone to the Castle posing as a student requiring a course of instruction. Asked to wait in a room, the first thing he saw was an Abraham’s Box. Here was something! A fad of the ’thirties, which, by electrical currents, revealed what the patient should or should not eat and drink, and what hidden diseases you suffered from, such as cancer. A fortune had been made in Park Avenue and Harley Street by the Abraham’s Box racket!

Looking around the shelves of a bookcase in the waiting-room he came upon a volume entitled
Assorted
Articles
, by D. H. Lawrence, published in 1930. In one article, a reprint from a London Sunday newspaper of November 1928, called
Sex
versus
Loveliness
,
he found heavily marked passages.

Nilsson slipped the book into a large inner pocket, lined with water-proof material, made for holding trout while wading in water. He picked out another book.
The
Story
of
my
Heart
by Richard Jefferies. This also had heavily marked passages.

The
Story
of
my
Heart
joined
Assorted
Articles
in his
fish-pocket
. He was looking around when a fat man with a round face prominently set with dark horn-rimmed spectacles, came into the room and with confidential
bonhomie
(as Nilsson wrote later) told him that Doctor Caspar Schwenkfelder was in London for a conference. How could he help Mr. Nilsson, whose books he had read and enjoyed?

Nilsson was about to ask him which books he had read when the fat man said, “My name is Archibald Plugge, I’m public relations. I was a major with the Army of Occupation for my sins, and you, of course, served with distinction in the Royal Flying Corps, as it was then, in War One. Your
Sinner
’
s
Way
is terrific, if I may say so. How very glad I am, sir, to make your
acquaintance
at long last! You’ll have a drink, won’t you. I’ll lead the way. When will Doctor Schwenkfelder be back? I wish I knew, my dear sir! He is going on to Paris from London, to lecture on the philosophy and practice of Diaphany.”

Having said that, the speaker burst out laughing. “My Welsh upbringing still clings in tags and tatters, sir! Now what will you drink?”

When glasses were filled he said, “By the way, don’t we have a mutual friend, Phillip Maddison? You know the story, I expect, of the members of the National Free Trade Club being allowed into the Barbarian Club when their premises were blown up by a flying bomb. Well, as you know, sir, the Free Trade Club is mainly political, and most of its members wear what is known as Black Foreign Office hats? Phil came into the club one night and saw a double row of such hats monopolising two whole rows of pegs, and proceeded to turn them into what later, when apologising to the Committee, he called a Cuneiform shape, by pressing each hat into a narrow wedge, a—well—you know the Latin derivation, of course—
cuneus
. He explained that he did it to help restore the
morale
of the Free Traders, sir, ha-ha-ha!”

When a bottle of Plugge’s ‘gin’ was a dead man, Nilsson left to cable his New York office, suggesting research into the Doctor’s campus background. The cabled reply said there was no Doctor Caspar Schwenkfelder in the records of Medicine Hat Ethical and Philosophical Society.

In the meantime Rosalie Nilsson, who had been a journalist in her youth, had been doing some research for her husband into the background of Major Archibald Plugge, and discovered that he had been dismissed the Service. This information she got from a certain Brigadier Tarr (retired) living at Minehead.

She had also found out, by the simple act of looking in an encyclopaedia, that someone called Caspar Schwenkfelder had been a member of a Protestant sect founded in Silesia in the 16th century. Mr. Schwenkfelder had died in 1561, in his 70th year.

With this information, Nilsson paid a second visit to the Castle, where a number of serious young men and women, paying students, he guessed, were about to sit down in the Great Hall to a vegetarian lunch. He was invited to join them by a blonde young woman who said she was “the châtelaine”.

“Major Plugge asks me to give you his compliments, sir, with his apologies for absence. He is composing his weekly Report to the Doctor.”

“Then you know where Doctor Schwenkfelder is?”

“He is now with an order of Radamanthine Friars in Kent, meditating, sir.”

“Meditating on what? His Abraham’s Box? Or his birth in Silesia four centuries ago?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you, sir. The Abraham’s Box was left here by the British Secret Service, who requisitioned the Castle during the war for alien detainees, sir. Major Plugge will in due course be able to answer all your questions, I am sure. Ah, here he is! I’ll leave you two gentlemen to it.”

*

Late the next afternoon, after recovering from another bottle of gin shared with the hospitable Plugge, Nilsson went to the local club, and asked some of the members at the bar about the origins of the Castle, who built it, etc. This investigation absorbed
two-thirds
of a bottle of whisky, and his wife had to fetch him. On the way home he called on Plugge. In haggard mood next morning —for Plugge’s ‘gin’ was 100 per cent surgical spirit—Nilsson began his story.

After describing the set-up at the Castle, he reported that he had been unable to get ‘Doctor Caspar Schwenkfelder’ to face an interview.

*

The article was duly published in the Sunday Magazine Section of the New York newspaper; and one Fleet Street picture paper followed up with ‘Amazing revelation—Spoof Doctor or Spy Ring?’ The more sober
Daily
Trident
declared ‘‘Doctor’ Schwenkfelder was not at home when our reporter called at the Castle, but the P.R.O., ex-major Archibald Plugge read ‘an emended Statement’, because, he claimed, he had been misquoted by an American writer of garbled fiction called journalism’.