The Gale of the World (6 page)

For a week Elizabeth had been living in his cottage, and had come to see him only twice in that period, after the will had been signed. Everything to her, everything! A simple will, revoking all other wills, including the last one, leaving all to Phillip. Now, according to Elizabeth, Phillip was being divorced, and for cruelty. What could have happened? When he had seen him with Lucy, and her brother and his wife, during the war—a visit as unexpected as it was delightful—they had seemed to be the best of friends. Ah, well, one can never tell. Cruelty, too. Phillip had always been a wild boy, but never cruel.

Ah! No! Had he not pushed little Mavis in the nursery fire, when he was not yet three years old? He had grown up to be a little coward, going round with his bully boy, urging him to fight for him! There was that boy in the Backfield, what was his name —never mind, his father had come up from Randiswell later in the afternoon, with his boy whose face was covered in blood and his nose swollen. Phillip had said it was because Mavis had been lying in the long grass of the Backfield with the boy. So Phillip had only been protecting her honour. The whole thing was disgraceful, Hetty said there was no harm in it at all, the boy was very shy—and so he had hidden himself, beside Mavis, in the long grass!

His sigh ended in a groan. Mavis had turned against him ever afterwards, and used her second name, Elizabeth. Ah, the
christening
, his dear little daughter, his best girl! And then to behave like that, and hardly having reached the age of twelve! It was as though it happened yesterday. That was the point when he had found himself alone in his own house. Hetty and the children taking sides against him. Work, work, work for the family—and what had been his reward—to be regarded as an ogre in his own home.

His thought returned to little Myra. She had written him such a loving letter before his operation, and again when he was back in his room. And the two letters, kept under his pillow, had gone! Then his talisman had been taken from him: his lavatory paper roll! Had Myra been to call at the home? You could not trust that Matron. She was almost brutally rude, refusing to listen to his just complaint that no-one came when he rang the bell for a bed-pan, and saying abruptly that it was against the rules for
patients after abdominal operations to use the commode ‘on their own’. An uneducated woman: ‘to use the commode’ was
sufficient
. How else would one use a commode? While anyone else, and most certainly a woman, was in the room?

Richard was in pain. Sometimes the pain arose up like a great tooth-ache and at times the pain came in waves. It was after the doctor had given him injections of penicillin. And spots had broken out all over his legs and chest, followed by throbbing headaches. The doctor said it was the penicillin fighting an
infection
, and had given him another dose, with worse headaches, and vomiting, to follow. And his lavatory roll, kept hidden halfway down the bed, had been taken away. His sheet-anchor! Almost his only friend, a comforter during the sleepless hours of the night. For then in an emergency he could use the commode, and not disgrace himself. As he had when at boarding school, by wetting the bed. And been caned every time that happened, in school at Slough. Still, he had been only a bit of a boy, no doubt it was done for the best.

And now the same terror was with him in the dark hours of the night.

Even sunlight through the window had no power to help him now.

Voices along the corridor. No-one, he told himself, was coming to see him. No-one. Indeed, he did not want to see anyone. Certainly not Miss Myra! He was of no more use to her. No more tea parties, with his weekly ration of boiled egg
,
four minutes precisely, given to her, and also his sweet-meat ration. He did not want anyone to visit him. If only he had died when the Zeppelin bomb had blown him across the road, his clothes and beard covered with powdered glass. So Master Phillip, according to Elizabeth, was planning to write a family chronicle, was he? And, no doubt satirize his own people, as Thomas Morland had done in
The
Crouchend
Saga!
Would he write that he had not allowed his children to see their grandfather? Oh no—Master Phillip would not show himself up like that!

Footfalls along the corridor. Not for him. The footfalls would go past, and a good thing too.

Tap on door. A voice, who could it be. “May I come in?” and a face peering.

“Who is it, pray?”

“Phillip, Father!”

“Well, this is a surprise, I must say!”

“Glad to see you looking well, Father. The flowers are from a friend of yours I met outside, Myra. I remembered her from my visit to you during the war. She asked me to give them to you with her love.”

“Oh did she now!” Richard felt a glow of hope. So little Myra did care after all! He lay back, and sighed with happiness, his eyes closed; then drew a deep breath, smiled at Phillip, and the weak voice, hollow and reedy said, “How kind of you to come to see me, old man.”

I must make another will, with something for Myra. Phillip should have the family plate, and other
lares
et
penates,
whatever happened. Oh, if Myra would marry me! For that was Richard’s dream. In the young girl’s company the cark and care of the years fell away, as a London plane tree shed its sooty bark every year with the rising of the sap. Other men had re-married at his age, and even given their young wives children. Was there not the great Coke of Norfolk, made a widower when he was over eighty, who had married a young girl of eighteen and lived to raise another large family, and die at the age of one hundred and ten?

“What did you think of little Myra, old chap?”

“I like her, Father. She’s as pretty as she’s intelligent.”

Poor Father. Shrunken arms, drawn face, thin white beard, scraggy neck, blue eyes almost faded of colour. Was he dying?

“Have you seen your sister Elizabeth?”

“Yes. I stayed in your cottage last night.”

“Am I going home, Phillip?”

“She did say something about getting a nurse, Father.”

“Thank God!”

Richard lay back on the pillow, looking less haggard. He breathed deeply, respiring as slowly, and smiled at his son. “So I’m going home at last,” he said. He raised himself on an elbow. The room had lost its menace. The Michaelmas daisies suddenly took on a deeper mauve colour.

“I wonder if they came from my garden, old chap. Perhaps Elizabeth asked Myra to bring them. But I suppose you would not know.”

“I’ll come down and see you and Elizabeth, Father, if I may, from time to time. You will forgive me if I don’t stay this time very long, won’t you? I’ve got to get back to London before dark. My battery is rather dud, it’s gone all through the war, and you can’t buy new ones yet.”

“Well, don’t let me detain you, old man. Oh, before I forget,
did you see Matron downstairs, before you came up?”

“I walked straight in, Father. Your friend Myra told me the number of your room.”

“Well, I must warn you that the matron here is not always in a pleasant mood, Phillip. So if she says anything about me, take it with a grain of salt, old man.”

Matron was waiting in the hall. “Who let you up?” she
demanded
.

“I didn’t see anyone here, and knowing my father’s room
number
, I walked up, Matron.”

“Well, don’t do it again, if you please. I am in charge of the patients here, and Mr. Maddison is on a restricted diet, and so I hope you did not bring in any food for him?”

“No.”

“I would have warned you, had you rung the bell—the notice is prominently displayed on the board there!—that your father is mentally deranged, and any complaints he may have made should be taken with a grain of salt.”

“I understand from my sister that he suffered only from an enlarged prostate, and that has been put right, Matron.”

“He’s over eighty and has delusions, which are not unusual at his age.”

“What sort of delusions are they?”

“He keeps asking for some young girl he says has promised to marry him, when she’s older. Why, it’s positively indecent!” she cried; a short woman, imprisoned within fourteen stone of muscle, bone, fat and offal, held within a grey uniform in places nearly bursting, after half a century’s stuffing with the wrong foods. “Why she is barely sixteen! I won’t let her into my Home, not likely!”

“Is it his delusion that he is having penicillin, Matron?”

“Dr. Manassa is treating him with penicillin, yes, but that will not arrest the deterioration of his mind.”

“Is he well enough to go home, do you consider?”

“That’s for the doctor to say, Mr. Maddison.”

Phillip got the address of Dr. Manassa. He lived in a
mock-Tudor
house, of the style built in the early ’twenties, standing in grounds of about an acre, set with flowering and other shrubs. Seeing no-one about the front door, Phillip went round to the kitchen where he saw an elderly short man with nicotine-stained moustache washing out a bottle. He asked if he were Doctor Manassa, and the man shouted, “What the bloody hell are you
doing at my kitchen door? Go round to the front and ring the bell if you want to see me!”

This Phillip did, and waited awhile. The door was drab with cracked and blistered paint, the brass knocker and letter-box flap dull with a greenish tinge. Obviously the doctor was overworked in a town full of elderly retired people, and so an incipient spirit of Belsen prevailed about the nursing home. It was the war, which had brought exhaustion and excess everywhere. And criminals to an almost honoured position. How many thousand French
shopkeepers
had been murdered, their entire stock looted for the black market, and a note
Il
fut
collaborateur
beside the body? Veritably a cads’ war, a war of the spiritually damaged.

“Sir, I am Mr. Maddison’s son.”

“Oh well, that’s a different matter. There are a lot of bloody thieves in this town now, and how was I to know you weren’t a decoy to keep me talking while others entered my house and pinched what they could? You can sell old rope now.”

“I am sorry, I am a writer, not a totter. How ill is my father?”

“He didn’t let me know he was ill until complications set in. After the operation he got out of bed when the nurse’s back was turned and picked up an infection. I’m giving him penicillin. Some people are alergic to penicillin as you may know, but it was either that or the infection spreading. If he had come to me two years ago, it might have made things easier. But he’s turned eighty, and there’s not much more can be done.”

Phillip went back to the nursing home. Richard turned
imploring
eyes to his son standing by the bed, but managed to keep his feelings back sufficiently to ask how his grand-children were.

“Very well, Father.”

“I never knew them, you know. Ah well. I knew Billy, of course, what a bright little boy he was. He’s quite a man, now, I suppose.”

“He was killed in the war, Father.”

“Billy? Killed? Oh dear! I didn’t know. Oh dear!” The voice more reedy, fretted away. The old man lay back, weak eyes closed, tears dripping. Then he managed to say, “Elizabeth tells me you and Lucy have parted. Is that so? Oh well.”

“We are still friends, Father. She’ll feel free without me. You know, I think we men demand too much from our wives. I’m afraid I’ve disturbed you. I’m sorry.”

“Well, what is done is done, I suppose.” Richard sighed
inaudibly
, and murmured, “Well, I did my best, and now I begin to see I failed. Oh well, my father and mother fell out, now history
repeats itself.” He half-sat up, levering himself on elbows that revealed forearms almost all yellow skin. His eyes seemed larger. “Don’t bother about me any further, old chap! I’m a goner, and I know it. But Billy—he was such a bright little chap. We used to play chess of an evening. Very good he was, too. I’ll miss Billy,” he murmured, lying back with his mouth open.

The son put a hand on the father’s forehead. God help this poor lost father of mine. I ought to stay with him, Laura. What will you think if I do not return this night? Might we look after him together?

And Lucy, he must see her on the morrow. My poor father. Are you watching by us now, Mother, as you in a dream saw Grannie waiting to take Hughie away, when he died when I was a boy? And Father mocked your tears, when you told us at breakfast that you knew your brother was dead, and we three children sat silent at the table.

His father seemed to be sleeping. Phillip crept out of the room. As he was closing the door he heard his father utter a deep
prolonged
groan of despair. He went back to the bedside. Richard’s eyes were open.

“Father, I know it’s no consolation, but think of Billy, he and his crew had to bail out over the Alps, and Billy was held by his parachute on a crag, and frozen to death. Your grandson was a brave boy, Father.”

Richard turned his face to the wall, and Phillip heard what were to be the last words from his father.

“I begin to see you are against me too, are you? Well, you must be on your way—I must not keep you.”

FATHER DIED THIS MORNING

FUNERAL FRIDAY ELIZABETH

Michaelmas Law Sitting of the Court of Admiralty, Probate, and Divorce. Gothic arches of black, acid-eaten stone. Everything, animate and inanimate suffers ruin; changes; dies. Corridors dim with musty smell. The writing room. People sitting at little tables, some with solicitors. Men in neat suits, women subdued, pairs of hands clenched, one dabbing eyes with twisted handkerchief. Save for the orderliness it might have been an Aid Post in some church after an air-raid, without blood, without dust, without rubble. Yet in spirit all was there, on the battlefield; the desperate and aggressive were now in retreat, some ruined in name—others to be, by petrifaction.

His solicitor was approaching. “You have not changed your mind?”

“No. My literary reputation is gone anyway. My publisher says, ‘You have lost your public’. So I shall not contest.”

“Your wife’s solicitor tells me the Judge will hear the case in chambers before the court opens. At nine o’clock reporters won’t be here, so there should be no publicity.”

“Shall I be able to see her afterwards?”

“It’s not altogether advisable. Judge Aaronson is fairly hot on anything that looks like collusion.”

When the solicitor had left, Phillip wandered about in the hope of seeing Lucy. He would raise his hat and smile, no more. Where was chambers? The robing room behind the Court? It was five minutes to nine.

The man called ‘Buster’, now in plain clothes, was standing by a table, listening to be-wigged Counsel with his solicitor. Replies in monosyllables, lips hardly moving, he looked straight ahead, sometimes nodding. When the barrister went away, brief bag slung over shoulder, followed by the solicitor, he remained standing there, looking neither to left nor right. Phillip went over to him and said good-morning.

“Good-morning to you, sir.”

“Laura told me you are writing a book.” A lame enough remark; stupid; verging on the personal.

“Well, I’m trying my ’prentice hand at biography. The trouble is I find words a little difficult. Well, how are you? We’re all in the melting pot, I suppose. The old forms are gone.”

“It was the same in nineteen nineteen.”

“History repeating itself, what?”

Phillip felt foolish. He had obtruded on another, who might well be in pain, mental and physical. He was about to make an excuse to go away when Lord Cloudesley turned to him and said,

“After the politicians have killed off the soldiers, what next? We’ll be run by heroes of the New Statesmen. Then God help us all.” His impassivity broke, he flashed a sudden grin, gentlemen into fox. He brushed up his moustaches, as he had done at the bar of the Medicean after putting a pint pot under his nose.

“I believe that you have written somewhere that Hess, when he flew over in nineteen forty one, fell among thieves. Do you still agree? Not that I’m all that struck on ‘the old Hun’ as he was respectfully called in my father’s day, but I don’t find myself standing with the politicians in this matter. If we are out for justice, why did we sit with the Russians? They should be in the dock, too. There are eighteen million slaves working in Russian labour camps, sixteen hours a day. They talk of ‘genocide’, but what about the massacres of Polish officers in Katyn forest?”

The speaker again brushed up his moustaches, while looking casually around the room by moving his head in sections, as it were: examining first one section then another, then a third and a fourth, as though descending under a parachute. “Surveying the form what?”

“Or the formlessness.”

“Ah, yes.” The glance was no longer guarded, the eyes impersonal; there was sadness, friendliness, gentleness in the glance. There was communication. “I must look you up when you return to Exmoor, Maddison. We must foregather.” He appeared to be searching again, then turning to Phillip he said, “It is probably a foolish question, but do you happen to know anyone who has a four-and-a-half-litre supercharged Bentley cylinder block for sale?”

“I can think only of a certain maltings on the coast of North Norfolk, in a village where some of the Bentley boys had their workshop. It was the headquarters of one of the Le Mans team
who died of burns, after his motorcar had crashed in a race.”

“I know who you mean, and I know the village. Thank you so much. I’ll do a recce there, and let you know if I have any luck. Well, I think it’s about time I did my drill in order to retain some semblance of what I’m supposed to say. God bless.”

*

Lucy in chambers. Dark grey coat and skirt, her one hoarded pair of black silk stockings, black shoes, small close-fitting hat of black straw with grey goose feather to match her eyes.

“Pray come forward, Mrs. Maddison.” Lucy swore on the Bible. “Now, learned Counsel, will you be so good as to proceed.”

It was the young barrister’s first brief.

“M’Lord, I have the honour to represent this lady. Mrs. Maddison—”

Lucy heard it all as from another world—even her voice seemed to be coming from far away—Skirr Farm and the division in her husband’s mind, deepened by his inability to forget his first wife—yes, she died in childbirth, and he was really a writer, but was always trying to help other people—yes, she was afraid it was usually to the disadvantage of, well, himself and therefore of those near him. Yes, he had given up sleeping with her. Lucy blushed, hesitated, sought for words that would not hurt him too much, well yes, there was someone else. At Flumen Monachorum, yes. Yes, she had condoned the adultery. Flumen Monachorum, yes happy sometimes, yes, she was made to feel apart.

“Why did you condone the adultery? Were you greatly
unhappy
at this intrusion of another woman in your home? Tell his Lordship.”

“I tried to conceal it.” Should she say, “My lord”?

“Why did you conceal your distaste at the intrusion?”

“For the sake of his happiness, my lord.”

“Pray continue with your questions, Mr. Strangeways.”

“Thank you, m’lud. Now Mrs. Maddison, I must, with regret, ask you if there was any issue from this liaison with your husband and this woman.”

“You mean issue in the sense of a child or children, Mr. Strangeways?”

“Yes, m’lud. I understand that there was one child, Mrs. Maddison?”

“Yes.” Lucy breathed deeply, and told the truth. “I thought a child would be good for her, she was unhappy at the idea of not
having it. My husband,” said Lucy blushing again, “was the direct means of the child being born.”

“Does that mean that he wanted the child, to acknowledge it as the father? Pray tell his Lordship.”

“He didn’t want it to grow up feeling without a father, I think, my lord,” faltered Lucy.

“And did he bring his child into his household with you, Mrs. Maddison?”

“Only when he was a grown boy, my lord. It was on the farm we had in East Anglia, so that he should know his brothers and sisters.”

“Did the mother come too?” interposed Counsel. “Reply to his Lordship.”

“No, my lord. She had married, and lived in another district.”

“I see,” said the judge, making a note. “Now Mr. Strangeways, may we come to the evidence of your case for cruelty, if you find you can present the case within the short time that remains with us before we go into Court.”

More and more irritable as the war went on; moody; constantly complaining that she was hindering his life; spoiling it by her presence; until the neighbours had to close their windows to avoid hearing his chronic shouting; and finally he used violence against her in the presence of the children and threatened to shoot them all and then himself, so that she began to believe that this might happen and when he was away she left home and took the younger children with her, feeling that she could not go on any longer.

Lucy’s face was pale, almost sallow, when the judge asked, “And has the plaintive remained apart from her husband, Mr. Strangeways?”

“M’lud, my client wishes to ask for the discretion of your Lordship—”

“Does that mean the discretion of the Court, Mr. Strangeways?”

“With great respect, Yes, m’lud, in that my client returned to her husband, but did not share the matrimonial bed, because the farm had declined, with the ending of the war, to a standstill.”

“What is the connection between sharing a matrimonial bed and a farm which has come to a standstill?”

“M’lud, with all respect due to the Court, I am trying to establish the point that both the farm and the matrimonial bed had come to a standstill. After the war the farm was sold, and a trust made for my client and her children. The husband then
departed, and has paid only a couple of visits since.”

“To the farm which had come to a standstill, Mr. Strangeways?”

“My client’s spouse, m’lud, included in the trust a house elsewhere, but has not shared the matrimonial home for a year and more.”

“Where does your husband live?” the judge asked Lucy.

“On Exmoor, my lord.”

“Does he write to you?”

“Yes, he does, my lord.”

“Has he shown violence towards you since giving up the farm, during the two visits he has made to your new home?”

“No, my lord.”

“Where is your new home?”

“In Suffolk, my lord.”

“And he is supporting you, and the children, by the income from the trust he made in your favour, and that of the children?”

“He also sends extra money, from his writing, my lord.”

“Is he living with anyone else, any other woman on Exmoor?”

“My lord, with great respect, I was coming to that point.”

“I have already come to it, Mr. Strangeways. Perhaps you will be good enough not to interrupt any remarks from this direction. Now, Mrs. Maddison. Is your husband living with another woman?”

“I don’t think so. It’s only a tumbledown shepherd’s hut, my lord.”

“Does he live there alone?”

“Yes.”

The judge made notes. “Pray proceed, Mr. Strangeways.”

“M’lud, I have here several letters which he wrote to my client’s brother, a Mr. Timothy Copleston.”

“He,
Mr. Strangeways?”

“The husband under discussion, m’lord.”

“I am not aware of any discussion, Mr. Strangeways.”

“Yes, m’lud. I mean no, m’lud.”

“Make up your mind, Mr. Strangeways.”

“Thank you, m’lud. Well, as I was saying, or attempting to say, with the greatest respect, m’lud.”

“That is better, Mr. Strangeways.”

“Yes, m’lud. I have here several letters which my client’s husband wrote to his wife’s brother, who reveals a morbid frame of mind—or rather, the letters reveal the morbid frame of mind, in that they virtually disclose—”

“What is the distinction between virtually disclosing a morbid frame of mind and revealing a morbid frame of mind, Mr. Strangeways?”

“In this case, m’lud, it is my intention to prove cruelty arising from a morbid condition of mind, in that the writer of the letters, my client’s husband, clearly reveals sympathy with the fate of one of our late enemies of the first rank, Hitler’s Deputy, Rudolf Hess, and has declared in the letter that Hess flew to England on an angelic impulse.”

A British-born Jew, the judge looked severe. “Mr. Strangeways, you have introduced, indeed you have strayed from your
argument
into political propaganda which does the plaintiffs case no real service. I have heard what you have had to say, and although this case comes before me in the nature of an uncontested case I am bound to say that your argument for alienation by cruelty has not been established.”

The judge bowed to Lucy. “In the circumstances, Mrs. Maddison, I must dismiss your plea because, from what I have heard, there is no case. I understand that your husband has suitably provided for your support and that of your children, by this means showing that he is not without regard for your joint welfare. I will go further, and say that he has shown concern for your welfare. It has been a difficult war, the world is strewn with the wreckage of human hopes and ambitions, and before I leave you, as I must immediately, I must remark that I have perceived a feeling of loyalty remaining in you for your husband’s
well-being
. May you come together again as a family, to the easement and happiness of yourselves and particularly of your children.”

*

Phillip saw Lucy leaving chambers, and followed at what Tim would have described as a discreet distance. Phillip had written to Lucy’s brother, giving him permission to use his letters in any way he, Tim, thought fit; thus to allow himself not to feel critical of Tim for what, among some men, would have been considered to be a breach of confidence. After all, Tim’s Pa had been an old man when Tim was born, and Tim was only twelve when his mother had died, leaving Tim and Pa alone in Down Close. Lucy was seventeen, and had left school at once to go home and look after ‘the two poors’, as she thought of them when she saw them, standing side by side, looking entirely lost, by the garden gate, watching for her. It was in 1917, during the war in which many of her cousins had been killed. Seven years later she had
met Phillip, and his little motherless son, also ‘two poors’, and from a deep compassionate nature decided to look after them—if he wanted her, as he seemed, at first, to do.

Lucy walked slower, but Phillip did not catch up with her. Doubt suddenly appalled her. Supposing he had
wanted,
after all, to be free of her? Perhaps he could divorce her for cruelty, she had, in a way, caused him to suffer by not trying harder to
understand
the things he wanted to talk about with her, Wagner and other composers and authors like Dostoieffsky and all those war books. That was mental cruelty, but not allowed in divorce. Oh dear, she had let him down again. What would he think of her?

She stopped, and moved to one side to be out of the way of people hurrying past. She saw he had stopped, too. So,
summoning
up resolution she walked towards him, feeling the dreaded colour coming into her face, and smiling nervously, but
maintaining
her fortitude. He was looking as though he hadn’t seen her when she stopped by him.