The Gale of the World (4 page)

“Yes, he used to wear them, with his friends of the Bright Young People.”

“Talking of bright young people, there’s been a little to-do in the bar just now—Dylan Thomas throwing a bottle at Osgood Nilsson, who called him a fake and a no-good man. I’m about fed up with this club, honest I am. I suppose you don’t know of a country gentleman down your way who wants a, major domo, do you? A butler—valet—chef? House-parlourman is the modest term used nowadays among the new-poor, I believe.”

“I’ll let you know if I come across a country gentleman. There’s Mr. Osgood Nilsson, of course. He lives not far from me, in North Devon. Shall I ask him on your behalf?”, and Phillip let the whistle-plug dangle as he took up his pen.

There was a knock at the door.

“Excuse my coming once again, sir, but I felt you would want to read about your friend in the Late Night Final. If Sir Piers Tofield needs help, and he surely does, I’m his man. I can cook, mend, clean, sing, cut the lawn and do the gardening, so do remember me, won’t you? This is positively my last appearance. I hope it won’t be your lady’s after getting that letter!”

“It’s to Professor da Silva Hendrade, perhaps you’ll give it to him when you see him.” And signing the letter,
Yours
in
Brotherly
Barbarianship,
Phillip
Maddison,
he stuck up the envelope and went down the lift with the porter.

*

Once again through St. James’ Square to Piccadilly. It was 11.25 p.m.: he must find Piers. Down the escalator to meet the last train from South Kensington. It roared in; he hurried up the
platform: a few tired-looking people got off, he hurried down the platform, thinking that when he had been there during the war the platform had hundreds of metal bunk beds along the wall, filled by bombed-out families. Perhaps Piers was asleep? All
passengers
to the station appeared to have got off. The engine pulled out before he could get to the end of the train. Carriages flashed by with a roar of shaken metal and he could not discern faces, his left eye, which had been stinging while he wrote the letter, was now sharply hurting. It had been like that, when he was tired, ever since Billy had driven his fist into it. Whenever he thought of his eldest son, it was as though he was speaking to Billy’s image: Never worry, if you are near me, Boy Billy, it was all my own fault. We were both breaking down on the farm, the war was within us. I love you dearly, Boy Billy; I love you.

He was about to return up the escalator when he was touched on the arm. The girl who had been sitting beside the Commando colonel in the Medicean Club said softly, “Hullo. I don’t expect you to recognise the grub who crawled to see you at your farm six years ago. I was dumb, now I have wings! How are you Phillip Maddison?”

“Laura Wissilcraft!”

“You
do
remember?”

“Yes, to my shame! You rode on your bicycle miles up the coast to my farm, and I was bloody to you. You see, I was horribly frustrated, because the war with the old Alleyman, as we called him in nineteen fourteen, had come again. So I was no good to anyone. I was particularly bleak to you, I remember.”

“That’s all you remember?”

“And your eyes. I must find a friend I missed at the Medicean.”

“Piers?”

“You
know
him?”

“Yes.”

“He may be upstairs.”

“He is. Or was.”

Piers falling down the ascending escalator, turning over and over, first one leg uppermost then an arm. He managed to get to his feet and began to run down, a treadmill action in reverse. Then he got across the dividing barrier, but slipped on a descending tread and fell, tumbling to the bottom, where he got on his feet laughing with that sudden loud laugh remembered by Phillip: Piers then seeming to be clear and enjoying life fully, living
outwardly
as he had seldom been able to do in the constrictions of his father’s home, overlooked by a mother dedicated to the higher life of a Victorian heaven, after the death, in a seizure, of her elder son, who had passed on when eight years old. So little Piers had always been part of her grief. When Piers laughed like
that he was outside the penumbra of childhood and school, thought Phillip, now face to face with his friend after nearly four years: a face sharply thin, dark spaces under eyes, hair grey above ears. Half the front teeth were gone.

“How are you, Piers?”

“Oh, not so bad. Hullo, Laura. I must apologise for spluttering, my upper denture must now be somewhere in the machinery. How’s the farm, Phil?”

“Gone.
Force
majeur.”

“Where are you living now?”

“Shepherd’s cot on Exmoor.”

“You’ve travelled in a circle. How about Lucy and the
children
?”

“They’re in Suffolk. I bought a house for them.”

“Your shepherd’s cot sounds ideal for a writer. I must find one, having found myself homeless.”

“Have you given up the flat?”

So far Piers had been avoiding Phillip’s gaze. Now after a quick glance at his friend he went on, “I see you’re in the picture, as they say in the army, with the Wissilcraft. Well, I mustn’t keep you.”

“We’ve been looking for you.”

“I’m practically on the run. Deserter. However, that’s enough of me. If you’ve nothing better to do, shall we all go back to the Medicean?”

They returned up the escalator. At the top Piers said, “I must go to the lavatory, you won’t mind waiting.”

“So must I. See you in a minute, Laura.”

Standing side by side, Piers said, “She’s quite a girl. She found me lying in the gutter in Soho, stripped of nearly everything. If you don’t want her, I’ll take her on. Where did you meet her?”

“Six years ago in a Suffolk pub, one evening. Daughter of a smallholder on the heavy clay of Suffolk. Later she bicycled all the way up to my farm. Was almost entirely silent during the
twelve-hours
she was there. All I could do was to urge her to write.”

“If that’s all you urged her to do, no wonder she was silent.”

“It was rather a difficult time. Others were involved.”

“People always did revolve round you.”

“How long have you been home, Piers?”

“Three days. Sent a signal to Gillian telling her when the
troopship
I jumped at Rangoon was due to berth, and she promptly skipped. The morning of the day I arrived, in fact. With some
American colonel who dug himself a foxhole on the beach at Arramanches on D-day as soon as he got ashore, and remained there, saying he had battle-shock. Never stirred, not one thought for his men. So a commando type who hangs out in the Medicean tells me. Back came the American colonel with a Purple Heart decoration and not only slept with my wife in my flat and at my home at Field Place, but drank my port, wore my suits, and didn’t even bother to send my shirts to the laundry. I found them chucked in one corner of the bedroom.”

“Oh Piers, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t blame him. Looting is traditional in war. I gave Gillian power of attorney when I went out, and you know my woods going down to the Benbow Fishponds? She had all the timber thrown, and paid the nine thousand pounds from the timber merchant into her private account. That was two months ago. Well, it’s good to be with you again, Phil.”

Piers began to cry.

Phillip waited, hoping that Laura would not have gone when they got outside.

*

Piers’ longing for love, while fighting in the jungle with the Fourteenth Army, had made him idealise his wife, who had been his mistress before Virginia, his first wife, had divorced him while still loving him. Piers was what the Victorians called ‘two people’. His mind had a deeper bifurcation than most men of imagination marred by the prison house of an Edwardian
childhood
. The darkened Piers came out when he was drunk, the thwarted child of a stiff-starched nanny behind the discipline of his grace and awareness of the feelings of others. Thus his wives, first Virginia, and to a lesser depth Gillian, had been unable to remain with him.

Piers’ despair on finding himself forsaken had found no relief, certainly no solace or satisfaction, with the anonymous tart he had taken to his flat the night before, there to try to impose on her personality the image of the wife who had left him. Being unable to conjoin with her body he had begged her to whip him, but without the desired result: so he had beaten her in the hope of sadistic erection—in vain. Then to the brandy bottle, oblivion, and waking to find the flat pillaged. Even the unwashed shirts in the corner of the bedroom had gone. So he had sought to find another image of love. The same thing had happened; and he had come-to in the gutter, to see a gentle face above him. She had
helped him upstairs to a room, he had awakened to find her writing in a book of bound foolscap paper. She had looked at him and said quietly, “I am Laura.”

*

The three stood in Piccadilly waiting for a taxi. Tarts, male and female, hung about in darkened doorways, one little more than fourteen years old, hoping to meet American soldiers, black for preference, they were honeys, their skins soft, like a baby’s. But almost all had gone home to the U.S.A.

“Where are you sleeping tonight, Piers?” Phillip asked, as a taxi drew up.

“God knows. You remember my Ulster one-and-a-half litre? That American colonel Gillian hooked drove my motor until the canvas showed through the tyre treads. Didn’t use the right engine oil either. The bores were badly worn, you could drop pennies past the rings, the plugs oil up every few miles. That Aston was my real wife. I’m going to get her put in order, then build a pantheon for her near the house in the woods beside the lake, with a plaque. God!” he shouted. “I haven’t got any woods! That bitch Gillian sold them all!”

The taxi drove away.

“Come down to the Medicean, and have some supper, Piers. Then we’ll get your ’bus repaired, and go down to Exmoor and write.”

“A hard life, that’s a soldier’s end. You know it, too, Phil. Everything is money now! You can sell old rope in Bond Street. A faked Picasso was bought by Gillian’s colonel, ha! ha! Sold to him by Archie Plugge, for a thousand dollars in cash. I left Archie, dead drunk on the sitting-room carpet, plugged full of surgical spirit. Remember Archie? He’s a major, or was; fought the war at desks all over India and Ceylon, never without a glass in his hand. Good old Archie, he has an infallible instinct for where the going’s good. I wasn’t back in my flat an hour, with one call at the Medicean before unlocking my door, when Archie turned up. Fatter than ever. After the collapse of Germany he got a job as British Gauleiter in some Rhineland town or other, was sacked after a week—dead drunk most of the time, when he wasn’t fraternising with the enemy. Monty was hot on fraternising, so Archie got the push. He got as far as Southampton with a camouflaged B.M.W. motorcar he’d looted, left it there before questions were asked. Don’t tell him about your shepherd’s hut on Exmoor, or he’ll smell you out. Tells me he may get a job as
public relations to an American Doctor of sorts, called Schwenkfelder, who hangs out at Oldstone Castle, near Lynton. A new religion, I gather, based on a sort of psychology of the psychic mind, plus vegetarianism. That won’t suit Archie, I fancy. God, look at all the tarts. Is there a decent woman left in London?”

Laura looked unhappy, Phillip saw. Had Piers forgotten the good Samaritan who had picked him up from the gutter?

“What’s happened to that tommy gun, Piers?”

“The police took it. In fact I asked them to take it. Taxi!”

On the way down the Cromwell Road he said, “I may be arrested as soon as they find out who Bombardier Tofield is. I jumped a troopship when I got Gillian’s letter saying she wanted to marry her American hero, so I’m now posted as a deserter. I suppose you saw the evening papers?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve got my photograph now, and will be able to check up. So I can’t very well go back to the flat.”

“You can sleep on my floor if you like,” said Laura.

“Ah, back on the old rug! No promotion for bombardiers, I see!”

Phillip felt relief that his old friend was present. He was afraid of Laura: he feared to put himself into a situation of courting betrayal.

*

The Medicean still had a possibility of life. Rows of lighted candles, faces. Ginger-moustached Commando lieutenant-colonel still upright by the bar, reading his book. Pianist playing Paganini theme. Thank you, sir. Your health sir! Glad to see you back, sir. Did the drummer say that to everyone?

O’Callogan asked them to have a drink.

“Coffee please,” said Laura.

“I’m not drinking any more fusil spirit just now, thanks all the same, O’Callogan,” said Piers.

“Right you are, my boyo. Have brandy. What’s for you, Phillip?”

“Oh, brandy, please.”

“I think they’re rather hungry,” said Laura.

“How about eggs and bacon?”

“Sounds good to me, ‘old boy’, as Archie Plugge would say.”

Sitting at one of the small tables along the wall, Phillip glanced towards the longer bar. The Commando colonel smiled. Laura went to him.

“Go and talk to ‘Buster’‚” said Piers. “I’m going to have a nap.” He closed his eyes.

“Phillip,” said Laura Wissilcraft, “do you know my friend ‘Buster’ Cloudesley?”

“Yes, indeed,” replied Phillip recognising a suggestion in the face of the soldier from the Battle School who had come to
apologise
for the unannounced use of live ammunition on the farm meadows during the war.

“You came to see me when I was in hospital, I remember.”

“I do indeed, sir. You became a legend of chivalry in the Battle School.”

“An accident of an accident, Colonel.”

“May I offer you a drink, sir?”

*

After the brandies Piers collapsed. No food. O’Callogan told Phillip that he would put up Piers in his flat adjoining the studio. After the meal Phillip walked along the Embankment with Laura, hand in hand: a new Laura; the gentlest eyes which had seen suffering that transcended her own.

The black tide below the Embankment was lapsing fast, silently.

“How far are you going?”

“How far are you?”

“I’ve a long way to go.”

“So have I.”

“How far is that, Laura?”

“You should know, my Prospero. I am your Ariel.”

“Don’t dream of me, Ariel. I am no Prospero.”

“Then what are you, Phillip?”

“I think I must be like Francis Thompson—‘I am an icicle, whose thawing is its dying’.”

“Music comes from an icicle as it melts, to live again as spring water. Do not sigh, my dear. The dream of resurgence is over.”

“How did you know what I was thinking?”

“Because you kept looking at the evening paper. ‘Buster’ found a photograph in Berlin of him lying dead, clutching his mother’s photo across his breast. I suppose someone put it there before they poured petrol on the body and burned it in the Chancery garden. You know about it, I expect?”

“Yes. Are you writing, as I urged you to do?”

“Writing is all my life.”

“It’s all mine too, I suppose, when I can start—”

“You told Piers you had a shepherd’s hut on Exmoor. Where
is it? I know Exmoor, a little of it, anyway.”

“On the side of a coombe, among bracken and heather.”

“Do you know The Eyrie in the woods below Lynton?”

“No.”

“‘Buster‚’” she went on almost timidly, “is really Lord Cloudesley. He wants to use his place as a guest house for writers and painters.”

“Does
he
write?”

“He wants to. We’re going to write together a biography of his father, who tried to fly the Atlantic in an old one-engined
aeroplane
, and fell into the sea. Have you heard,” she went on softly, “of Manfred Carew-Fiennes-Manfred? That’s the family name. He was in your war.”

“Yes, indeed. He won the Victoria Cross in nineteen eighteen when he took on Göring’s squadron over their own aerodrome in Havrincourt Wood—called ‘Mossy Face’ because it was the shape of the ace of spades—and although wounded again and again, he continued to fight until he had shot down nine of their Fokkers.”

“Really, my Prospero, that doesn’t show much respect for your ‘Old Alleyman’, does it?”

“A Fokker, you fu— you funny idiot, was a fighter aircraft, designed by a Dutchman called Fokker. That was his born name!”

“A better name for a man I can’t imagine.”

She clung to his arm.

“Oh Phillip, I love you so. You were a bastard to me, you know, when I cycled all the way up the East Coast to see you, nearly five years ago! Why do you shut yourself away from women? Did you do the same thing to Melissa? Ah, you didn’t know I knew her, did you? We were at the same hospital together in, of all places, Calcutta. She saw me reading one of your books, and we became friends. Where are you taking me to? Are you going to abduct me?”