The Innocent Moon (40 page)

He walked it back again, and tried once more, this time using the spur. Roman Nose pranced, Jacky cried “Steady!” He pulled back the horse’s head to try again. Roman Nose slewed round, its hind feet scoring yellow clay under the thin grass. That was bad, he might have lamed it.

“Go easy,” said Jacky, quietly. “Approach at a hand canter, steady your horse, and then let him go at the bank.”

Once again he turned Roman Nose, and going forward with reserve, bent down to speak to it before saying “Hup!” while lifting himself in the irons and gripping with his calves as the gelding leapt upon the bank; he lifted the reins, allowed it to change feet, and with a slight pressure of calves, heels well down lest he touch with spurs, was down the other side safely just as the huntsman’s horn sounded the
Gone
Away!
; and he saw, as he held back the quivering animal, that riders were crossing the field lower down. Waiting for Jacky to lead, he set off after her at a gallop.

Thus began a wonderful run, Jacky now beside him, now in front at a bank. Half a dozen riders were well up with the pack, following the huntsman. He galloped down hill and crossed a stream, then over rushy places where curlew rose up, and on through thin, crooked oaks hung with lichen. He was sweating, mud on face and stock, he felt gloriously alive. Hounds were running a breast-high scent, judging by the full-throated music.

Roman Nose was excited as it saw hounds in front entering rough heather and bracken of the hill. He held it back lest it strain a tendon or burst its heart taking long striding plunges up the 1-in-7 slopes of Darkdown Camp. Once the summit was reached he gave Roman Nose its head, until Jacky yelled beside him, “’Ware rabbit holes, Drummer!” Yes, how dense he was: a foot in a rabbit hole, crack of cannon bone, shoulder twisted out of socket—anything, even a broken back. He held back, using the curb. Then, releasing the pressure, he found that the horse was sensitive to the laying of reins on neck for direction, and to pressure of calves—obviously it was an old Army charger! At last he felt at home with Roman Nose, he spoke close to its ear, patting its neck.

The fox was seen, a long lean animal. “Born in the open, never seen the inside of an earth!” cried Jacky beside him. “Making for the moor! Yii-io!”

Most of the field was now left behind. He rammed his hat over his ears, feeling himself to be a real thruster. This was the life!

The fox ran on, tirelessly it seemed. He hoped it would get away after showing such sport. Grey-green slopes of the moor were coming near now. Hounds were running silent. Looking back, he saw a few riders very small against the sky.

The crest of the moor loomed larger, they were going down to a road. They were beside the road, cantering along the grassy verge looking for a gate on the other side.

“Follow me, Drummer!”

He followed Jacky through a gate into a narrow lane sunken under hazel and thorn bushes, its banks pale green with hart’s-tongue ferns. There was the smoke of a railway engine in front; they waited while the London train, pulling out of Fernbridge, passed away eastwards.

Cantering under a bridge, they found themselves in a valley rising to the sky-line of the moor. Roman Nose was lathered with sweat, but still willing to thrust on. And then, among a small grove of trees, where bunched steers were backing away from the huntsman on foot among hounds, he saw the lifted carcase of the fox.

“Five-mile point, Jim!” said Jacky in her clear voice, as the huntsman laid the fox among hazel-stubs on the bank. “Well done, midear! Bold old stub-bred varx, I reckon!”

The huntsman sucked in breath with a lift of his chin, “Aye,
Miss Jacky, us ’ave rinned he before, proper old Jack Varx, but ’a didden get away thissy time, noomye!”

They killed another fox after sandwiches and port; and at half-past three, as the evening was drawing in, the four looped notes to end the day were wound on the horn. A glass of beer in the Turfcutter; a trot beside Jacky to where the Norton lay in the ditch; handing over Roman Nose to groom, and Drummer Boy, Jacky’s second hunter, to the stableman—and they were off to the crisp notes of the exhaust, back to Osswill House for poached eggs on muffins: two friends with no sentiment between them, friends of the hunting field and not outside it, soon to go their separate ways; for when he got back to his cottage Phillip found a letter from Sophy inviting him to stay at Tollemere for the hunt ball after Christmas.
Annabelle
is
leaving
school
,
and
will
be
‘
out
’
for
the
occasion
, she wrote.

He sent off a telegram,
Delighted
,
accept
with
greatest
pleasure
,
Phillip
. He saw Sophy with new eyes: she really was his friend. O life was glorious!

In London, Phillip went to Mr. Kerr, his war-time tailor in Cundit Street, to be measured for a dress suit, and hunting jacket of dark West of England cloth; and from a bootmaker in Panton Street a pair of hunting boots with patent leather tops.

When the boots were tried on for the first fitting they were too big around the calf. A hand, almost, could be thrust between boot-top and knee-button. Time was now short; he was expected to arrive in four days' time. The bootmaker said he would post them direct to Tollemere Park. Mr. Kerr promised to send his suit on the same day.

He was met by Sophy and the General in a Daimler at Chelmsford station. Was he deceiving himself again, or had a change come over Sophy? The General was a widower; perhaps——It was somewhat disconcerting; but soon they were on the friendliest terms.

Sitting in the hall—the General had driven the Daimler away, presumably it was his car, and he had gone home—Sophy said,
“Well, my dear, what have you been doing with yourself? You didn't answer my last two letters, did you? Were you busy writing a new masterpiece, or have you fallen in love again?”

“Again? Have I ever fallen in love with anyone?”

“Don't worry, there's plenty of time. Now tell me all about yourself. When is the new novel being published? That Pauline book will make you famous.”

“I'm rewriting it. J. D. Woodford said the other version was too hastily written.”

He looked round the hall; the fire was roaring in the wide hearth, split ash-wood branch lengths and coal. He amused himself by thinking how people could be revealed by their hearths. The Kingsmans had burned only wood, using the ash for the roses; they had been—well—a little different from the Selby-Lloyds, who one generation before had made money in Midland industry. The wood-burning Kingsmans had never showed any sort of class superiority. They were sure of themselves, and so had not needed to resent “common” people. Probably Sophy and the others regarded him as slightly common—all three, at times, had kindly corrected his pronunciation of various words.

“More tea, child? Sure you've had enough? Dinner won't be for two hours, you know!”

She took his hand and held it. Her face glowed, she laughed in her throat. “You look very well, Phillip. Been doing some good work?”

“Well—I don't altogether know.” He saw two packages, one from Panton Street, on the oak chest. “Ah, my boots have come, too!”

“Oh, they're boots, are they? Annabelle and I wondered what they were.”

Making his breathing steady, he said, “Oh, isn't she at school?”

“Surely I wrote and told you? Annabelle left at Christmas. She's staying for the ball and the meet the day after, then she's off to Melton Mowbray—her first invitation since she put up her hair! I had doubts of accepting for her at first, for the mother of a school-friend who invited her ended up ‘Yours truly,' to the letter she wrote to me. They are wholesale grocers, with shops everywhere, and came on a lot during the war—profiteers, one supposes, rolling in money, but Annabelle's nearly eighteen now, and was keen to go, so of course I didn't stand in her way.”

“But if you and this woman have not met, Sophy, isn't ‘yours truly' correct?”

“Well, it may be among such people, but not in our class. By the way, Queenie's young man, ‘Woppy' Raymond, is here, and so is Roger, you haven't met either of them, have you? They were both with the Mediterranean Fleet as snotties last year. Roger, my elder boy, was at Smyrna when the Turks drove through and set fire to the town. He took it a bit hard, seeing all the corpses of women and children floating in the harbour, so don't say anything about the war, will you?”

He said politely, “How much leave has Roger got?”

“Three months, in all. He's going to join Annabelle at Melton next week, so with Raymond and Queenie going about a lot together, we'll have the place more or less to ourselves. I hope it won't be too dull for you.”

“Oh, no. I hope to do some writing.”

There seemed little else to say.

“Tired, old man? Go up and rest yourself. You know your room, don't you? Ring if you want anything.”

“May I have a whisky and soda, please?”

“By all means—help yourself. The tray is over there. I'll leave you now, if you don't mind, I've got a few things to attend to.”

So Annabelle was grown up, and was going away almost at once. It was hopeless to think of her: he had always known it: and yet it had seemed—— He sighed: Annabelle at fashionable Melton—Annabelle a different edition of the girl wearing ready-made Swears and Wells boots and breeches. He imagined her riding astride in a new bowler and black coat, brown breeches and straight-sided black boots of crupp leather made from the hide of a porpoise—one of a set of rich and fashionable young people. Had Sophy arranged to get her out of the way? It was a wretched thought. He poured himself another stiff peg of magazine fiction, then a third, and with the package from Cundit Street, went up to his room.

*

There was a feeling of space, but of undeserved luxury, in having again a bathroom of one's own: almost a feeling of self-betrayal to lie in a hot bath when he had swum all the year round in the sea. He lay there until he heard the gong thrumming downstairs, and got out to find the water was chilly. Five minutes later, pushing the last gold stud through his boiled shirtfront after several attempts to get the white tie level—and
realising he should have tied it after pushing through the studs—he ran downstairs to find Sophy sitting in the hall alone. She was in a black dress, and looked fresh and lively.

“I must apologise for being late down!”

“Now don't pretend you didn't know that was the dressing gong,” said Queenie, coming down the stairs from another wing, in a pale blue frock with silver trimmings. She sat down with an ingenuous lift of azure eyes and patted the sofa, giving his hand a small squeeze as he lowered his length beside her. “You look so distinguished,” she murmured. “Have you been to those Moses people who sell cast-off clothing?”

“As a fact I did go to them, but they told me a hunt ball was being held near Chelmsford, so they had no second-hand dress clothes left. I went to Cahoon Brothers, their rivals, who charged me double when I told them I was staying at Tollemere with the Selby-Lloyds.”

“You ninny! But seriously, haven't you got a dinner jacket? The ball's tomorrow night, you know.”

“Oh, you mean a short dress coat! They're only worn by the socially damned, who wear gloves with black stripes on the back! Haven't you read
Way
of
Revelation
?”

“Now, Phillip, you're talking too much!” said Sophy, with a flutter of eyelids in his direction. “I don't think you've met my other son, Roger, have you?”

Roger was in age between Annabelle and Queenie, whom he resembled, being slight and fair; but where Queenie was talkative, Roger was reserved, with a faint air of amusement behind an almost unsmiling face. Was it shyness? Hardly so; for during some talk about books he said suddenly, in his faintly amused voice, “But are books so important? I suppose people who write them think they are, but does anyone else?”

“‘Many men, many minds',” said Phillip, quoting Mrs. Portal-Welch. “I suppose to a sailor the ship he serves in is a world entirely on its own?”

“Well, not altogether on its own, perhaps. There is some sort of remote connexion with Whitehall, so I've heard.”

“Oh yes, of course, by wireless!”

Roger looked round the table with his faint smile. Phillip, who had drunk several glasses of wine, persisted. “Just before Jutland, the Navy was in touch with Whitehall, who knew the German fleet was out by their wireless signals to Kiel. The Germans didn't think to change their wave-lengths, did they?”

Roger looked round the table again, faintly aloof, and made no reply.

Phillip withdrew into himself. He thought of other faces around that table, far away in time, the Kingsmans and Father Aloysius, and that wonderful night when he had first discovered Julian Grenfell's
Into
Battle
. Even then he had made an idiot of himself by talking about the absence of the R.F.C. at Loos—to learn later that the Kingsmans' only son had been shot down and killed during that battle. One day—one day—he would write the story of Loos—the gas blowing back—Colonel Mowbray and the adjutant wounded—‘Spectre' West taking command for the third assault on the Lone Tree position—‘Spectre' knocked out—then the terror of the Regimental Sergeant-Major's request,
Will
you
take
command
of
the
battalion
,
sir
—and his incredible luck during the next two or three hours.

Across the table the General sat, nearly as silent as Phillip had now become. Was he still mucked up inside by Queenie, the more so because ‘Woppy' Raymond, sitting beside Queenie on the other side of the table, was now home on three months' leave? What a strange undercurrent there was in the family: Queenie vamping a man old enough to be her father, Sophy after himself, who was after Annabelle—where was it leading them all? Was he himself but a spiritual seducer, as Jack O'Donovan had suggested? Had he betrayed himself first? He wanted to make a note of this idea; for Donkin, as he developed, must be absolutely real. Especially when he felt himself to be, as now, unreal.

At Sophy's suggestion after dinner he fetched his new boots to be looked at. The pale leather interiors were slippery with french chalk; even so, he found it difficult to pull them on, despite the thinness of his silk socks.

“Of course they will feel a bit tight now that your trousers are tucked into the legs. Walk around, and see how they feel, old man.”

He felt ridiculous when Annabelle laughed, and pretending to be amused said, “In the army my nickname was ‘Sticks'. But now I feel like a half-stuffed bustard, or a capercailzie!”

“‘Caper-cailly', you mean, don't you?” asked Queenie.

“The capercaillie is extinct. I mean capercail
zie
, cousin to the oo-ja bird,” he joked, to cover up the mispronunciation.

If it was not easy to get the boots on, it was much harder to got them off. It took ‘Woppy' and Roger five minutes while on his back he was drawn about the floor. At the General's
suggestion he sat in an armchair and gripped the arms while a tug-of-war took place between the General holding the back of the chair, in turn held by Queenie, and Queenie by Annabelle, while the two young men lugged and jerked at the boots until they became detached, amid much laughter.

More trouble followed the next day. He rode a 16.3 hands high raw-boned gelding which, like Roman Nose, was used to carrying side-saddle, judging by the sinuous way it cantered, throwing its rider forward and to the offside with every rise of its shoulders. He sweated much, and as the field was going through a gate the hunter shied at the eye-look of a mare with a red riband tied to the base of her tail, and stopped abruptly. Phillip felt a muscle tearing in his back. Thereafter every motion of the horse grated, so that he held his breath against the pain. It was humiliating; he sought relief by standing up in the irons, and managed to keep his seat to the end; but the pain remained when he got out of the open Sunbeam tourer in which Sophy drove the four of them home.

This time the new boots appeared to be immovable. Jacks were useless. Foolishly he had put on socks of a wool-silk mixture. The butler heaved and pulled, ignoring Phillip's suggestion that his trousers and cuffs were being ruined. ‘Woppy' and Roger joined the tug-of-war, and accompanied them to the bathroom, where Phillip held his boots under the cold tap, hoping to shrink his swelled feet.

The struggle was renewed with additional grips of hand towels. The butler and ‘Woppy' puffed and grunted and lugged, and then the butler had to go and supervise the laying of the table for a score of guests. Phillip's right boot by this time had been shifted about an inch and a half, so that the arch of the foot was fixed in a painful position. In desperation he cut the stitches, and was free. As for the other boot, it might have been human; for when he tried for the last time to remove it before using the knife, it came off at once.

*

Among the guests for dinner was the General's daughter, a polite and amiable young woman with spectacles, who at first spoke alertly upon a number of subjects, while Phillip sat on his hands to ease the pain in his back.

The party began to move when ‘Woppy', who had been eyeing the General blandly and treating him with scrupulous politeness, suddenly, after receiving a glance of languishing
tenderness from Queenie, became droll in what evidently was an approved way. He balanced glasses on his head; he threw up salted almonds and caught them deftly in his mouth; he pretended to tear off the General's waistcoat buttons one at a time with a realistic sound of ripping cloth; he imitated animal cries presumably to be heard in the Far East; he told stories of comic argument in two voices; and generally was entertaining in a way that kept them amused and laughing.

Phillip then volunteered an imitation of the bagpipes, by pinching his nostrils with thumb and finger of one hand, jabbing his adam's apple with the other, and with nose upheld like a dog when howling he gave
The
Campbells
are
Coming
until he saw that Sophy was not looking amused. He wondered whether her information, given to him quietly before dinner, that Raymond was the younger son of an Irish peer had to do with her tolerance of what she considered to be not quite the thing in himself.

This speculation was confirmed shortly afterwards when,
à
propos
of nothing, Roger looked across the table at Queenie and said, “Do you remember that night in the fog, when we were living at Blackheath, and we lost our way going to a dance at the Montmorencys, and found ourselves asking the way at some church mission room in a ghastly hole called Wakenham?”