The Gale of the World (37 page)

After greetings, Lucy explained that Phillip was at work in his cot. “We thought it best to come down here, to let him get on with his writing.”

“It’s good news he’s started again, at long last, Lucy. How many years since he published a book? Six, I fancy. Still, writers mustn’t be too happy, or they won’t siphon off energy into
imaginary
worlds.”

Lucy thought how trim and easy Piers looked. She liked Beth. The two were staying in Lynton.

“England,” went on Piers, “is once again a stone set in a silver sea. Indeed, on the way down the tarmac was so hot that it blistered in places. One could hardly bear one’s hands on the bonnet after stopping for a couple of minutes by the wayside.”

The boys were admiring the low, holly-green Aston-Martin, with its two chromium-plated flexes covering exhaust pipes
issuing
serpent-like through the side of the bonnet. “Is it the same one you shot with your tommy gun?” asked Jonathan.

“No, of course it wasn’t shot!” cried David, frowning at his young brother to shut-up.

Piers said, “Quite right, Jonny. The engine needed a jerk put into it. Runs ever so much better now. I had the block welded. Being cast-iron, it had to be heat-treated first. That meant that the engine had to be entirely rebuilt. Goes like a bomb now. Well Lucy, I think perhaps we’d better not go to see Phil at the moment,
but do give him my love when you see him. We’re only here on a flying visit. I must go back on Saturday to see my garden. What wonderful weather.” He looked into the sky.

Cloudlets of high cirrus—mares’ tails—in the height of the sky, appearing never to move. Only their colours changed: deep red in the pallor before dawn, they turned pink before the sun arose out of the far reaches of the Severn Sea. As the solar rim appeared they were drained of colour, becoming streamers, vacant and pale: mere wisps, lying inert above bright day.

“If you go back on Saturday you’ll miss the great cricket match and the fireworks, Sir Piers,” said Rosamund.

“What are the teams?” he asked, aware of her budding beauty.

Peter said, “Colonel Bucentaur’s Crimson Ramblers are playing the North Devon Savages, sir”.

“I must see Molly again. Beth, will it be all right for you to go back on Sunday?” He turned round. “Why, here’s old Phil! My dear Phil, how glad I am to see you!”

Peter offered them his canoe; the two old friends paddled half a mile out to sea, and on return went to drink beer in the Rising Sun, feeling as they had felt in the old days.

*

Phillip in Shep Cot reading, with the aid of a magnifying glass, an official account of the anxieties of the German Main
Headquarters
Great General Staff at Douai, on 15th June, 1916, and the discussion.

‘Since the attack on the Somme front by the British Fourth Army shows signs of materialising, the British forces should be let through to create a large salient, and there be encircled by attacks driven into both flanks of the Fourth Army exhausted after their advance, with guns and transport, over the barren and upheaved crater-zone made by their own bombardments.’

*

The long light of evening lay gently over the moor, the sun burning away the west, fusing the moor to its own brightness: star and planet conjoined in an illusion of eternity.

Now he must start the engine of the Silver Eagle on the handle, to keep charged the battery.

Eight gallons of petrol, in four cans, lay on the wooden floor of the box-body, under a load of six hundredweight of oak-poles, topped by half-a-dozen faggots. The load was corded, ready to be driven to the crest of The Chains at night, with his father’s ashes, for the funeral pyre.

Matches had been arranged to take place during Festival Week between the Crimson Ramblers and various West Country teams, on their home grounds. The first fixture was with the Barum Barbarians. Their ground, immediately above the medieval bridge, lay upon what once was the Seven Pilgrims Marsh; an area of tidal swamp land rented from a local squire at a
peppercorn
rent for the purpose of dumping there the contents of Barum’s dustbins. Where burgesses of lesser sensibility might have run-up factories etc., based upon a decade’s deposition of urban garbage, flattened motorcars, bones and skulls of slain sheep and oxen, and other repulsive debris of
homo
sapiens,
the local councillors had created a pleasaunce of shrubs, trees, flowers and lawns amidst sparkling fountains and abstract stone effigies of local worthies, among them Bloody Judge Jeffrys (who once had slept in the town) and Hartland’s hero, the pirate Cruel Coppinger.

Now upon this beautified area stood a theatre, concert hall, ballroom, squash court and swimming pools built around a magnificent sports arena which included the cricket ground of the Barbarians.

Having played against this team and won, the Crimson Ramblers took on the Porlock Eccentrics, and were victorious. Next the Bideford Barnacles, who lived up to their name, boring into the bowling only to be scraped away by Peregrine’s bowling, which reduced a number of them by verdicts of l.b.w. There followed a session with the Plymouth Corsairs (known locally as the Plymouth Gin-tlemen); and, penultimately, the Instow Inquilines.

As already announced, the final match was to take place after the Presentation of Goats in the Valley of Rocks at Lynton: Crimson Ramblers
v.
North Devon Savages.

Lt-Col. Bucentaur’s eleven was composed exclusively of
ex-commandos
and paratroopers who had served with Brigadier
Tarr and one of his war-time lieutenant-colonels, Lord Cloudesley; a fact which, since Osgood Nilsson’s article in his New York paper’s Sunday Magazine, had not been missed by a certain Fleet Street editor.

*

Eight children were to have helped to pull the great roller across the cricket field in the Valley of Rocks on the morning of the match, but Miranda had not appeared. Her sister wasn’t very well, said Imogen. Soon she and Rosamund had paired off, while David and Jonathan became a team of buddies with Giles Bucentaur. What fun it was, to discover such jolly cousins! Only Peter felt a little apart from the younger ones. He wanted to go up to watch the meet of the staghounds on Summer House Hill above Lynmouth; but, being the eldest of the rolling party, he knew he should stay and look after the younger children.

“Look at the gulls!”, he said to his mother, when Lucy arrived at the field with Melissa and Molly, bringing a basket of food for the children’s lunch. “They’re flying like swallows, soaring and then flapping their wings to check suddenly. I wonder what they are after?”

“They birds be arter antses’,” said the groundsman, “that’s what they birds be arter. Tes the queen antses, they flee up and the stag-antses go arter ’m. ’Tes the nature of the queen-antses to fly up high to lure the stag-antses, and when the stag-antses hev trod the queen antses they drop dead. The queen-antses flee down agen to lay eggs in a noo nestie.” He pointed across the cricket ground. “They mounds you can zee over there be antses nesties.”

“I bet some antsies be falling in the Lyn, and trout are
jumping
at them,” said Jonathan.

“Aiy, you’m right, midear!”

Peter said, “Mother, the stag-hounds are meeting on Summer House Hill, I’d like to go and see them.”

“Who told ’ee thaccy, midear?” asked Jonathan.

“Mr. Riversmill. He’s gone to paint them.”

“What colour, ’bor?”

“All colours, of course, like any other picture.”

“I thought you said he was going to paint the hounds, ’bor.” At this the groundsman threw back his head and laughed. Jonathan’s face went red, then pale; he thought he was being laughed at, and walked away, while anguish consumed his spirit. Peter went after him, to assure him that the groundsman was laughing at
his joke, which was a very funny joke. But Jonathan, once stricken, took time to recover. So Peter led him among the rocks rising steeply above the bowl of the valley, and down to the path along the edge of the cliffs, where he said good-bye to Jonny, saying he was going on to the meet of stag-hounds on Summer House Hill.

*

Miranda was lying in her bed in ‘Buster’s’ house, suffering from migraine, and what was presumably an exceptional period of menstruation; but Melissa, who had visited her in the
morning
, believed that her state was due to acute emotional
disturbance
. Miranda had told her that Phillip was deliberately avoiding her: that it was all Daddy’s fault, for calling him a trespasser. She had repeated this again and again, with renewed waves of stress. “Daddy imagines that cousin Phillip is just like himself, which isn’t true! And he only
pretended
to have forgotten that he had promised to give me Capella!”

Renewed hysteria.

“It isn’t true what Daddy accused Cousin Phillip of!” and she hid her face in the pillow.

Melissa had to go on to Oldstone, but she promised to return before the presentation of goats, which was to take place at 2.30 p.m.

The girl lay mournfully in bed. It was not so much what her father had done, but the poetic feelings of the mind, her true or unbodily self, which had been hurt. Perhaps Phillip would now not want to have anything more to do with her, after what Daddy had done to her—

She must go and see Cousin Melissa, and tell her the truth about her father, in strict confidence. Perhaps she would explain all, one day, to Phillip … but at the thought of it, she broke anew into tears.

But Miranda must follow an idea once it had come to her. She felt the headache going as she put on breeches and jumper. Soon she was going downstairs to find Mr. Mornington, who was working in the garden.

“Your cob, miss? Certainly! He’s in the loose-box. I was just going to give him a feed of crushed oats and bran, with some chopped carrots.”

Voices approached. “My goodness, miss, here’s his Lordship back with a party—I’ll see to the cob in a jiffy.”

The gardener, quick-change artist into parlourman in black
trousers and striped linen jacket, put a tray of drinks on the table.

‘Buster,’ the Brig, and Laura were in high feather, having
returned
from a ceiling of nearly ten thousand feet; ‘Buster’ flying solo, the others in the two-seater. They had come down to a thousand feet above the Valley of Rocks to make a 6-degree descent to the Porlock marshes. There they had fitted oxygen bottles, and new batteries for the 2-way radio in each sailplane, ready for another attempt on the height record that afternoon.

Then, collecting Peregrine at the Polo Club, they diced—Hispano-Suiza versus supercharged Bentley—up the narrow
Porlock
hill with its 1-in-3 left-hand turn, roaring along the road winding through a heather-grown escarpment to the descent at Countisbury, with its view of a grey bouldered shore divided by the Lyn flowing into the sea. Down to nought feet; and up, up again to The Eyrie, happy as birds in preened summer plumage as ice clinked in tumblers.

Miranda saw the Hispano-Suiza on the drive. Unobtrusively she came into the room. How was the headache?

“Oh, better, thank you. I think I’ll hack up to Oldstone to see Cousin Melissa.”

“If you’re not fit enough to do a job of work on the cricket pitch, you’re not fit to ride, surely?” replied Peregrine.

Miranda’s eyes opened wide as she said, “I particularly wish to see Cousin Melissa at Oldstone.”

“Are you sure it isn’t someone else?”

In the silence which followed, ‘Buster’ said to the Brig, “Did I ever show you my father’s last letter, or rather testimony, which arrived on the Cornish coast some time after he crashed into the Atlantic?”

“I’d very much like to see it.”

‘Buster’ went to a corner cupboard, and returned with a bottle encrusted by small white shells, which he put on the table before carefully withdrawing a scroll of paper.

“I was a small boy then—” he began; but observing the
upward
glance of the girl’s eyes, which were full of unshed tears, he hesitated. “One day someone of your generation must write his biography. Laura and I have tried, but I’ve no gift
whatsoever
.” He hesitated. “Perhaps it would be better if you saw the message later on—”

He returned the bottle to the corner cupboard, aware of Laura’s darkening thoughts.

“You’ll one day write a fine novel around gliding, Laura. You’re on the way to being a first-class pilot. Don’t you agree, Brig? We must enter competitions. There’s a young woman, who ferried Spits during the war, organising trials in Surrey. We must foregather there one day.” He thought of twenty, thirty, fifty gliders one moonless night descending near the red-brick prison at Spandau—

He felt weary. He was worried lest Osgood Nilsson had written about his father on the lines of the Caspar Field article. Why was the good soldier always decried? The tyranny of the common man’s mental fixations—Caspar Field dedicated to revealing a way to clear the mind of its horrific convolutions: the snake in the Garden of Eden writhing through the potential genius of every small child—

“Damn and blast!” said Peregrine, looking at his watch. “I’m due at the hotel for luncheon with the box wallahs at twelve thirty. Blasted bore about the presentation.”

“We’ll ‘dove’ on you from the air, as the Yanks say, Perry!” cried the Brig.

“And drive the blasted goats over the cliffs, I hope!”

Globe-Mornington came in with a syphon of soda-water, an excuse to say
sotto
voce
to Miranda, “Your cob is ready when you are.”

Peregrine, waiting on like a falcon, repeated, “In my opinion you’re not fit to ride!”

“I feel ever so much better, thank you.”

“Well, be in time to observe your pet Capella settling down with the rest of the herd to resume a normal occupation of destroying everything in sight. Where she goes after the handing over is nobody’s business.”

“I shall only see Cousin Melissa for a minute, then I’ll come straight back.”

“Now don’t let her rope you in with that crowd of phonies in that bogus castle, or go to see that writing feller who claims to be our cousin.”

The girl said distinctly, “Phillip is married to Lucy, who is my mother’s cousin.”

“Anyway, he’s no good, like that other writing feller, that Yank Nilsson.”

“Nilsson wrote a good book on fishing,” said Brigadier Tarr.

“Maybe, Brig old boy. But I have no use for Americans, any more than you have, what?”

When the girl had gone ‘Buster’ said to Laura, “You might write to that young woman in Surrey, who is organising Glider Trials, and find out the form.”

“Yes. By the way, you know we’ve got tickets for ‘Yeoman of the Guard’ tonight, don’t you? Molly said she was bringing the cricketers’ wives in a coach, so I reserved twenty-four seats.”

*

The day was going to be even hotter thought ‘Buster’,
climbing
in a spiral above the incult valley. At a thousand feet he could hear voices distinctly; also little crackling noises which might be the bursting of furze pods. Drifts of air-borne seeds of rose-bay, willow-herb and thistle floated up past the cockpit. Strings of screaming swifts were cavorting above him, pursuing midges carried there on pulses of hot, dry air.

The troposphere lay plain up to thirty thousand feet: an
unlimited
container of the thunderbolts of Donner, the German god of thunder. Would the day come when scientists accepted that the ancients, who gave personalities to all natural phenomena, had divined the actual truth?

Down on the cricket ground, Jonathan was saying to David, “I hope it thunders. I love lightning. It pierces the air and the hole fills up so fast it gives a great crack. The crack echoes all over the clouds and that causes the rumble, ‘Buster’ told me.”

Still climbing in narrow circles, ‘Buster’ saw a motorcoach driving down the valley road to the cricket field. Behind were motorcars, bicyclists, and little groups of pedestrians spread out all the way back to the east end of the valley. Hundreds more were already spread out around the field.

*

The Bucentaur family, of various aunts, uncles, and cousins, had been sent printed invitations. Two cattle floats and one horse-box were parked on the edge of the cricket field in front of a group headed by the Lord Lieutenant and High Sheriff of the county, with their ladies. Near this group, but not too close, stood lesser dignitaries—the Chairman and various members of two County Councils, together with the Mayor of Lynton in the robes and chain of office; members of the Rural District and Town Councils. Offset from both groups was a Town Crier hired from Brighton.

As near to this figure as they could shift themselves while sitting down, a group of boys was waiting. One of them had a pea-shooter. Hidden behind a chum, he was attempting to hit the Town Crier’s hat. They were being watched, with some
amusement
, by Peregrine and his son Roger. Observing the apparent approval of two of the gentry, the boy fired his first round.
Plip
—a pea bounced off the top hat with its gold braided band.

“Go away you boys!” growled the Crier. “Be off.”

“Us’v as much right yurr as you, you ould booger!” replied the armed one.

The Crier pretended to gather himself to run; the boys arose and fled, the shooter of peas taking up the rear as guard.

“Like the old days at Arnhem,” remarked Peregrine to his fourteen-year-old son, as he lolled on a shooting stick and glanced around with an air of sardonic superiority towards the ‘
Box-wallahs
’.