The Innocent Moon (38 page)

“I’m a hermit!”

“That isn’t what I heard from my sister at Folkestone. You were at one of the Rest Camps, weren’t you, after the war?”

“Yes, I was. What else did you hear?”

“Ah, a little bird told me lots and lots about you!”

Relieved that the quiver of intimacy had gone from her face, he followed her line. “What did your—er—chronicler say?’’

“Don’t look so anxious! I don’t suppose you’re the first young man who has ‘gathered rosebuds while ye may’. Isn’t that what Fitzgerald wrote?”

“I like what Blake wrote, ‘O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, that flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed of crimson joy, And his dark secret love, Doth thy life destroy’.”

“My dear boy, you are far too young to think like that! The trouble with you is that you are too wrapped up in yourself, as J. D. Woodford once wrote and told you. What you need is someone to look after you, to see that you are fed properly, someone who will mend as well as wash your socks! Then one day when the right young woman comes along you will be ready
for her. Experience is all, you know. Have you read Rousseau’s
Confessions
?”

“No, but that chap I told you about, Julian Warbeck, had a copy, and was always talking about them.”

“I heard about that young man. He didn’t do your reputation any good, you know. A very wild young man, from all one hears. Well, if you would like me to look after you, here I am. I shan’t do you any harm. Now I’m going to send you home to your cottage, you’ve had a full day, and should get some sleep. We’ll expect you over tomorrow, but if you have work to do, I’ll understand.”

She got up. “Oh yes—when am I going to be allowed to see your mother?”

One morning towards the end of the third week in September, Phillip gave Annabelle a part of his journal to read. She sat on the concrete steps of Belle View and read it, then handed back the book, saying, “Most amusing!”

“Did you like it?”

“Bits here and there. I looked through the rest—was it private?”

“Not to you.”

“I liked best the poem about Julian and the Carrion Crow.”

“Oh, that’s feeble stuff!”

“So like you!” she laughed. “Here, give me the book.” She sought, and read aloud.

She shut the book with a clap. “Now I must wash my hair! Can’t go back to school looking like a gipsy, can I?”

The following day he made an excuse to go to London because Annabelle was to be on that train. He took her across London to Victoria where another girl who had left school at the end of the summer term met her. Annabelle was games-captain of her house, and was given rosettes to present to members of her hockey team. There was one spare rosette.

“What shall I do with it?” said Annabelle during tea in the refreshment room. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes shone in a way that devastated him. He had tried to kiss her in the railway carriage—she had leapt up and sat on another seat. Thereupon he had sat almost unspeaking during the rest of the journey. He behaved like Sophy, in fact: except that Sophy didn’t seem to show obviously any fears of being unwanted. Now he hoped that Annabelle would give him the rosette: foolish thought, he knew, and out of proportion; but he hoped she would, secretly, as the train moved out, put it into his hand.

*

When he got back to Devon Sophy and Queenie were packing before leaving for Essex. By their talk they were looking forward to the hunting season, badminton, dances, plays in London.

After they had gone away he felt lonely, and went down to the sands and wandered among the old footmarks where they had played and walked. When he returned there were letters lying on the table, with some press clippings of the second novel which had been published. Then recognising Annabelle’s writing he tore open the envelope, glanced at it and dropped it
on the table while struggling for self-control, before picking it up again. It was short, half a page only, and it said,
You
don
’
t
seem
able
to
hit
off
a
happy
medium
,
and
so
I
am
going
to
cry
off
for
a
bit
. He saw Sophy’s hand in that, and recalled Denis Sisley’s words.

*

Most of the press notices were unfavourable. A lady novelist in
The
Cape
Times
said, “Mr. Maddison is not discovered as a Keats.”

The
Pioneer
of Allahabad said, “Donkin never saves the day at cricket or football. Like his author, he is entirely devoid of humour.”

That evening he went down to give Porky a copy of the book, one of six sent by the publishers. It was a haven, that cottage by the sea; there was no nicer companion than Porky when he sat quietly at home, smoking old dried tea-leaves.

“Leave the flappers alone, Phillip, leave the little gels alone, as well as the decoys. Get on with the good work, old boy. Get on with your writing. I’m thinking of startin’ up again myself, under a new name this time.”

He tapped out tea-leaves from his pipe. “Goo’ lor’ yes!” He took a sip of barley-water boiled with sea-weed, to cure gout.

“Jacky was here only this morning, on Dum Dum,” he said. “Yes, Jacky’s an awful good sort, more your type, old boy, huntin’ and all that. You want to get out of that hermit mood of yours, y’know, Phillip. Goo’ lor’ yes! Forget all these sea-side flappers and their mothers, and settle down. Marry someone belongin’ to local society, not a summer fly-by-night, goo’ lor’ no!”

“Now tell me, Phillip,” said Mrs. Tanberry. “Have you seen Dr. MacNab yet? Well, you must, you know. If only to relieve your own mind,” she added.

He took the hint. Tuberculosis was contagious: she was thinking of her children.

Ever since his arrival in South Devon Phillip had put off going to see the doctor in the hope that his lung would heal itself in the
fresh air, with exercise; now, to prepare himself for the coming winter, he determined to begin a new life. He got out of bed at the same time every morning, disciplining himself to shave and wash before going downstairs to see what the postman had brought. To train himself further he practised shadow-boxing in the bedroom; and while going through the motions one morning, working arms and shoulder blades, he heard his breath coming harsh through his throat. Were his bronchial tubes eaten away by tuberculosis, after the mustard gas in 1918? The thought touched him like an icicle.

There was a disabled infantry officer staying in the village, who had a tubercular throat due to mustard gas. Phillip had met him in the Ring of Bells. He must find out where he lived, from the landlord. As soon as he entered the pub the landlord said, “Funny thing, I was just tellin’ the very same gentleman where you lived. He’s got a message from Dr. MacNab, he tells me. He be sittin’ in the bar now.” Phillip went in.

“The Doc. ’s looking for you,” began the visitor. “He said to me at golf the other day, ‘I’ve got an unpleasant thing to tell young Maddison’.”

Phillip sat down on the nearest bench.

“Now what have you been doing, old boy? Have a whisky—I recommend it—you look a bit groggy about the gills—yes, old boy, the Doc. says to me, ‘Some of the lady members came to me and demanded a general meeting to expel young Maddison from the Tennis Club’.”

“What? Is this a joke?”

“If it is, it isn’t mine, old boy. That’s all the Doc. told me. I said I’d tell you when I ran across you. Don’t let it get under your skin.”

Phillip went at once to find the doctor. It was the afternoon surgery. Waiting among the panel patients, leaning against the flaky lime-washed wall, he felt the precision of the biblical expression of bowels turning to water. The patients were all in drab clothes; they sat still, obedient and subdued as they had in the schoolroom. Each one seemed afraid of his or her voice. At last the doctor saw him. “Hullo! Come on in!” he said cheerfully. He was tanned of face, and began by praising Phillip’s book of essays. “It’s delightful! I’ve just read it with my small son. You’re looking well.”

He peered quizzically at Phillip, who found it hard to say anything.

“You want to feed up, old chap,” went on Dr. MacNab. “Living alone is not good for a man. What do you eat?”

“Oh, anything—mainly bully beef and sardines—bread and cheese.”

“Be damned to that, my dear boy! Can’t you get someone to give you meals? What about the landlord’s wife at the Ring of Bells? She used to be a good cook, so I’ve heard, when she was in service. They take in summer visitors, why not try them? It’s not good for you to be alone. Oh, I know what I wanted to talk to you about. There are some very conventional people here, as you know, and apparently your bohemian reputation has got about; all nonsense of course, but you know how people talk. Anyone a little out of the ordinary—Well, this is what has happened. When you went to that fancy dress dance at the Bay someone saw you there and said, ‘Why was that man invited here?’ Mrs. Carder, you know her, don’t you, replied, ‘Oh, we’ve had him to the house, and he seemed a pleasant young man.’ And this has apparently led to something else, for a certain person came to me and said I ought not to have let you into the Club without a Committee meeting. I suppose, really, I should have put you up to the Committee in the ordinary way, but it seemed rather unnecessary, as we had only about a score of members anyway. Well, there you are, old chap. I managed to pacify them, saying I knew you were nothing of the kind, and to stop the general meeting they wanted to be called to have you expelled. I told them I’d see you about it quietly. A lot of damned rot, but there it is.”

“But what have they got against me, Doctor?”

“Well, I’ll be frank with you: several things! One woman said she had been told you had been a co-respondent in a divorce case at Folkestone. Another said that you were mixed up with a visitor from the Far East, with a growing daughter, who stayed in your village last year. Then you are said to get fighting drunk, to shoot off your gun at people, including a friend who once lived with you. You know how rumours get about in a small place.”

“But it’s not true, Dr. MacNab! Mrs. Irene Lushington has not been divorced. And I’ve never hit any man, old or young, anywhere, except perhaps in the War, and certainly not in Devon. I did fire a gun off at midnight once, for a joke. As for being a drunkard, well, I’ve been tight in the past, but not for two years at least.”

“Well, there it is, I’ve told you all I know, old chap.”

“I see. By the way, Doctor, can I have a sputum test for t.b.? Would it be convenient now?”

The doctor sounded his lungs, then took a specimen of his sputum. “I’ll let you know, old chap. Meanwhile, don’t worry. Good food and exercise in fresh air will clear up any little pocket there might be.”

In Queensbridge the next day, to get his hair cut, Phillip passed a lady with whom he had played several times at the club: he raised his cap, she looked straight ahead, ignoring him.

Dr. MacNab’s advice about proper food was taken. He arranged to have lunch and supper in the kitchen of the pub, with the family. Supper, or high tea, eaten after the landlord and his son, a mason, had returned from work, washed, and changed their clothes by 6 p.m., was the time of day he looked forward to. The kitchen behind the bar parlour was warm, heated by the iron cooking stove, and lit by an oil-lamp suspended from the lime-washed ceiling. The only trouble was the landlord’s wife: she would talk to him when “feyther” and her son were serving behind the bar. But soon he found that he could read or muse under the amiable flow of words, shutting them off between ear and brain. On Sunday there was always beef, well-roasted or toughened in the village way in a coal-fired oven and served in dark-brown slices concealed by Beefo, a brown gravy out of a packet. He was soon on intimate terms with the family, who greeted nearly all he said with undisturbed amiability.

“Why can’t the British serve a meal without camouflaging it with ‘Beefo’? Every village in England should erect a monument to Saint Beefo, the patron of burnt offerings. Indeed Macaulay, in one of his essays, claims that William the Conqueror, after a few weeks in Britain, said it should be renamed ‘Great Beefo’.”

The landlord’s wife, an amiable hazy woman with an invariable sweet smile, appeared to take this seriously. “Go on, you don’t zay, my dear zoul, vancy that now,” as she shook her head.

On Mondays the weekly old-cow beef was served in hard dark slices with little or no taste left in the meat; on Tuesdays the scriddicks were put through a mincing machine for reappearance on the table as either rissoles or shepherd’s pie.

“I wonder how it got the name of shepherd’s pie,” said Phillip. “Since when have shepherds attended to the last rites of bullocks? It should be called drover’s pie.”

“My, vancy that now! ’Tes all the studying of those yurr books, no doubt,” was the good wife’s reply.

One evening she said, “You’m not looking very well, I do hope you’m a-right with the food I serve? ’Tes plain, I know, but ’tes what us be used to.”

“Oh, please don’t ever think I was complaining! The fact is I’m rather worried by something on my mind.”

*

Gales of the equinox blew away yellow leaves from the churchyard elms; rain drove over a misty landscape; smoke billowed down his chimney. No letter or visit from Dr. NacNab: he decided that the test had proved positive, and the doctor shrank from telling him the worst. He became a prey to various fears which could not be resolved by taking thought against them: what had seemed to be the piffling situation of the tennis club became vampiric. Chronically the thought recurred: why should all concerned, including Mrs. Nunn, suffer and so lose vitality when the simple truth could make everything plain? In this belief he wrote to Mrs. Nunn and asked her if she would be kind enough to let him explain personally what he felt to be an unhappy misunderstanding.

Mrs. Nunn replied by return of post saying that she was unable to agree to his suggestion, adding that she did not see what good it would do. This reply he showed, on impulse, to the good wife when she had got his breakfast—a boiled lump of what was called tea-fish, some of which were to be seen hanging up in the village store like little pale mats covered with frost—salted, kippered cod from the Newfoundland banks. He ate it somehow, munching away. Even Rusty refused a chewed mouthful, so he put it in a piece of paper for the cattle dog, who later scoffed it, apparently without tasting.

“Us wondered why you were off your food,” said the good-wife. “Us thinks it be a shame the way they do talk about ’ee. It ban’t for the likes of us to criticize the gentry, all the same Mrs. Nunn didn’t ought to say things like that. Mrs. Crang was lookin’ after Mrs. Lushington all the time she was yurr, and ’er says it ban’t true, and ’er ought to know, didn’n’m?”

“I can’t write, with this hanging over me, you know. Otherwise I wouldn’t care.”

“If you’ll excuse me saying so,” said the landlord, a quiet, steady man, “I don’t think a proper lady would say such things and then not give anyone a chance to defend themselves.”

Meeting Mrs. Carder in Queensbridge, he was about to go past with reserved expression and lift of cap, but she stopped him. “Those absurd remarks! I do hope you will stand up for yourself, because many parents will feel otherwise that they won’t be able to ask you to their parties.”

A week later he walked around the streets of Queensbridge and saw a brass plate with the lettering
G
.
H
.
M
.
Wigfull
,
Solicitor
and
Commissioner
for
Oaths
, nearly worn away by polishing, on the wall of a building. Against his better judgment he went in; hesitated before the clerks’ window, and went out.
Wig
full
called up a Johnsonian figure, without the wit of Boswell’s friend.

It appeared to be a lawyers’ settlement, for farther along the wall of the long building were other plates.
Gollopp
,
Mutton
,
and
Co
. was one,
Winkles
&
Gunn
on the final plate. Wigfull fires his Gun at Winkles and hits Mutton—let there be an end to it—“he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence”.

The odd thing was that Mr. Wigfull turned out to be bald, flabby, and big-faced. Phillip felt immediate unease in his presence, a feeling confirmed when Mr. Wigfull, after he had listened to his recital, seized a pen and said, “We shall soon stop that old woman’s mouth!” He wrote at his desk for several minutes. “This is a draft of a letter I suggest should be sent.”

The letter contained alarming phrases like “given our client considerable pain,” “unless we receive a reply within four days, a writ for slander and defamation of character will be applied for.”

“Now you go home until you hear from me,” ordered Mr. Wigfull. “We shall cut that old woman’s corns for her! Good morning.”

Two days later he was standing again before the roll-top desk, waiting while Mr. Wigfull read through correspondence which he imagined referred to the case of the farmer who had gone out just before. At last the big face jerked up and said, “Sit down!”

Phillip sat down and waited. When the other correspondence had been put aside, Mr. Wigfull said accusingly, “You didn’t tell me that Mrs. Nunn was a lady!”

The big, preponderant brown face with the almost lifeless eyes stared at him with a reserved expression. A hand took a pencil, waggled it nervously between fingers, and continued, “Now I must advise you to consider very carefully before you
decide to institute any proceedings for slander and defamation! For one thing, any questionable behaviour in your past life will be known and exposed by the defence. Of that you may be very sure! Now let me ask you, Have you ever been a co-respondent in a divorce case? You say you have not. Very well. Have you ever been drunk? You have been drunk. Be sure that will be known! You say you met this woman, a Mrs. Lushington, on the sands—you became friends. But what kind of friendship is it that begins by a chance meeting, a meeting which is, to say the least, unconventional? You say you made enquiries about a furnished cottage on her behalf in the village where you are living. The defence will naturally make the most of that.”

He stared at Phillip and went on. “I must tell you that I have had a talk with the other side’s solicitors. They say in effect that you are a very bad hat. They say that you were seen going into this woman’s cottage in pyjamas in broad daylight. You were observed shaking mats against the garden wall outside. You tell me there has been no divorce. Very well. You also tell me that three years ago at Folkestone you often took a married lady, the wife of a General, on the luggage bracket of your motor-bicycle. Did you have a chaperon as well?”

“You mean two on the luggage carrier?”

“Your answer reveals what we are up against.” Mr. Wigfull looked accusingly at Phillip. Shaking a finger, and with an admonitory look, he continued, “Be sure that the defence will make the most of that! Now I advise you to reflect seriously before thinking further of applying for a writ. There is another most important point. May I enquire if you brought letters of introduction with you when you came to live in South Devon?”

“No.”

“Ah!” remarked Mr. Wigfull. “Now you see what is confronting us! You arrive with no letters of introduction! You behave in a bohemian manner—on your own admission, by the act of speaking to a woman on the sea-shore without being properly introduced to her! The defence will plead justification. Furthermore, if you arrive without letters of introduction, how can you expect to be received in the company of ladies and gentlemen?”

“You mean at the dance?”

“Any dance—any social occasion, be it tennis party, ball, assembly, or any other function which generally is understood to include the society of ladies and gentlemen. Why, I tell you
frankly, I would not expect to find you in my house, among my wife and children, without letters of introduction!”