The Innocent Moon (47 page)

*

The black Daimler limousine glided with tyres crackling on the gravel drive, and slowed up at the stone entrance porch, with its keystone ensculped in the head of a wolf, its tongue pierced by an arrow, crest of a defeated family whose home had been bought by the trustees of the estate of Sophy’s grandfather, a rich merchant of the City of London.

“Hullo, enjoyed yourself?” asked Sophy, getting out of the car. She did not look at Phillip. The General went into the house, after a wave of the hand, and a “Hullo, Maddison, had some tennis?” The chauffeur drove the car round to the garage. Sophy remained.

“Yes, it’s been a lovely day.”

“Where’s Annabelle?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her for three hours or more. Have you had a good day?”

“Yes, thanks. I’ve bought the tickets for the Easter trip to the Pyrénées. Have you been doing any writing?”

“Oh, are you going to the Pyrénées?” He felt a pang that he was left out. “Yes, I’ve done some work of sorts.”

“We’re going there for Easter, with Bay and Cynthia, before leaving the two girls to be finished in Paris. The Talbots are coming. Young Brian Talbot is Annabelle’s beau, you know.”

The arrow flew out of the stone, piercing his tongue.

*

Annabelle was silent, abstracted, during dinner, and afterwards she scarcely spoke. Phillip, too, was silent, searching for and reading Tennyson’s songs in
The
Princess.

“You’re tired, dear, go to bed,” said Sophy. Annabelle’s sight was unfixed.

“Oh, I left my tennis racquet on the lawn,” she said.

“I’ll go and get it for you,” Phillip said.

“I’ll go,” said Annabelle. “It’s rather hot in here.”

“You shouldn’t go out, dear.”

“I’ll get a coat, Mother.”

Annabelle went to get a coat, and Phillip opened the french windows for her and walked with her across the terrace, in the
clear starlit night: he had made up his mind to say he would leave the next day. As he stood looking up at the sky he saw a bluish-white streak. He had just been reading

The pallor of Annabelle’s gown under her coat showed in the darkness. She put her arm in Phillip’s, and they walked to the lake unspeaking, and then back again.

“Don’t go in there, come in the other way, I must talk to you,” she whispered. He hesitated. She held his arm. “Please come.”

She pulled him away from the french windows. They entered by the porch under the wolf’s head, through the heavy oak-and-iron door. A light burned in the lobby.

“Your racquet strings are damp. I’ll run up and get a towel.”

“Phillip!”

“Yes?”

“Is it Cynthia Gotley? I mean—do you——”

He scarcely knew what he was doing. He put the racquet down on a chest. Their arms hung at their sides. Her fingers touched his fingers, held them lightly, she leaned to him, her face like a sleep-walker’s, they kissed, his arms were round Annabelle, and her arms round him and their lips sought each other again.

“Oh, Annabelle, do you——?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “Don’t tell anyone, will you?” and with eyes averted she breathed goodnight and ran upstairs.

He opened the heavy door and walked by the lake. Returning later to his room he sat down and with a safety-razor blade cut the pages containing intimate details about Sophy and himself from his journal and burned them. Then he wrote a letter to Sophy, thanking her for all she had done for him and saying he had to go away and would write to her later about his things. After this a note to Annabelle, with a quotation from Lovelace’s poem to Lucasta slipped under her bedroom door. Returning to his room he hesitated: it was not true that he was leaving because of a question of honour, anyway he hadn’t any honour. He went back to her room and creeping in, withdrew the note.

The stable clock struck four. Tip-toeing down the stairs with his bag he let himself out. The dawn was chilly, he ran and walked round the lake, hearing the cries of coots and moorfowl in its
middle, and when he made his way to the coach-house the eastern sky was becoming pink. Wheeling out the Norton—bag strapped to carrier, driving belt removed—he walked the machine past the house and down the drive until he was beyond the lodge—then away to the Gravesend ferry and the Thames estuary gleaming with sunrise.

On the second day after leaving Essex, Phillip bought at a second-hand bookshop in London a copy of
Amaryllis
at
the
Fair,
by Richard Jefferies; and glancing through it, found a sentence that made the cause of the confusions of the past immediately clear.
True
love
is
likeness
of
thought.

Only people who saw and felt the same way about things could share a true life. That was a law of nature: wren with wren, owl with owl, moth with moth. Recognition of oneself in another! A hybrid likeness would cause—puzzlement. Spica and himself were only partly alike. Julian and he were unalike. Willie and he saw the same perspectives. Annabelle, Sophy, himself—each had been lonely, the more thereby longing to find fullness of life in another.

And yet he ached when he thought of Annabelle, who soon, with Sophy and all the others, would be leaving England for the Pyrénées.

Young
Brian
Talbot
is
Annabelle
’
s
beau,
you
know.

Ah, perhaps he could go and see Irene and Barley, and make that an excuse for going to see the Selby-Lloyds. How far was Argelès Gazost—he had written the name in his pocket diary—from Laruns? If only he had a map.

Calling at the office of
The
Daily
Crusader
that morning he saw Martin Beausire, the literary critic, and mentioning the Pyrénées, was told that Rowley Meek, sitting in the next room, was the man to ask.

“He knows the Pyrénées like the back of his hand. Rowley and Bevan are planning to walk in the mountains this Easter.”

Phillip went into the tiny cubicle where Rowley Meek daily struggled to be humorous for his ‘Sundowner’ column. At the other end of the writing table sat Bevan Swann, struggling to write his daily column, ‘Round and About’, in the company of Rowley Meek. Both welcomed the visitor with relief. Rowley Meek began to dance.

“The Pyrénées, boy? Why that is no place for an internally-combusted machine man and his synthetic thunder! Are you able to face the lightning around the peaks, and the roar of torrents? Are you trained to dig in the earth for roots, like the wild boar of Thangintwunka, who——”

Wearily Bevan Swann waved a hand at Rowley Meek for silence. “D-don’t take any notice of this rhizophagic f-fellow,” he said, with a slight stutter. “This m-mad p-performer of r-ridotto nonsense escaping from n-newsprint. He’s quite harmless. It’s a characteristic of m-metropolitan poets that they go mad at the sight of healthy h-human faces in the streets, a-alley-ways, offices, and
salons
that are the p-purlieus of p-poetry—so called!”

Phillip was invited to Bevan Swann’s studio in St. John’s Wood that evening. When he arrived, Rowley Meek was still apparently escaping from the effects of enforced humour.

“We shall sleep on glaciers!” cried Rowley. “We shall hear Roland’s ghostly horn in the Pass of Roncesvalles! We shall stand under torrents, and watch sunrise on the peaks of the eagles! We shall drink deep draughts of Schlammergei, and pour bottle after bottle of the rare Igharra, which is distilled in only one small valley, down our throats of leather, singing songs which will start the thunder of avalanches! Igharra! Drink of heroes!” He flung the swipes of his glass of pale ale violently into the fire.

“I’m sorry you don’t like Wildbrook’s Sussex ale, Rowley,” said Bevan in high good humour.

“Pah! Chemical poison! Filth of little human hogs with timid eyes and long furry ears, who whinny with excitement and cry Progress! because gasometers are now to be admitted to the League of Nations, and field mice fitted with little oilskin hats under the Education Acts!”

“Do you refer to the brewery itself, or to the surrounding countryside where the malting barley is grown, I wonder?” enquiried Bevan. “And did you actually see the mice in little hats? What colour were they, pink or puce?”

“Bah, you can make your tinned Fleet Street jokes, but wait until we are drinking Igharra under the Pic de Ger, where Rogomontoules slew the dragon of Rastigouche!”

“Hurray,” said Phillip.

“Exactly,” said Bevan. “Now sing, you fop you, give us ‘And I Ride’.”

Rowley Meek then sang a song which may have been written
by Belloc or Chesterton, it was a very fine song. Rowley shouted, he bawled about being turned out of doors more than twenty years ago, when his feet were set on stony ways, etc., but Phillip could not catch the words since Rowley was a sort of frantic singer. The climax to every verse was a triumphant
And
I
ride,
and
I
ride!
giving the impression that he had been riding for over twenty years in a certain condition. Phillip wondered if the ride had anything to do with Rowley’s joke, effected by taking into a taxicab in Fleet Street a large parcel, looking like an immense musical instrument in a cloth; which appeared as a horse’s head looking out of the taxicab window, a most astonishing sight to those the cab passed, since the illusion was that an entire horse was inside the taxi and turning its head this way and that as though to look at the strange sights to be soon in the Strand. The horse was called Donnegar, and of course was descended from one originally owned by Pantagruel, according to Rowley.

The song ended abruptly, and Rowley turned to Phillip and said in a polite social voice, “You won’t forget your morning coat and top hat and white spats, will you, because we shall of course be received by the Mayor. Also they will be useful when we sleep in ice and snow, and on glaciers pouring with moonlight, while wolves, bears and bandits stalk us. We may be weeks among the peaks, so bring your ration card with you.”

Phillip said that he would go in the morning to Cook’s in Ludgate Circus and buy his tourist tickets.

“What for?” roared Rowley Meek. “And don’t forget your Rolls-Royce, will you? We may need it.”

“I certainly will, because, you see, the front tyre of my tricycle will be flat.”

“Cuckoo,” said Bevan. “Have some more beer, my dear fellow.”

That night Phillip slept in the studio with Rowley; there were several couches around the walls.

After a merry breakfast they set out for Fleet Street. Rowley Meek walked ahead, singing lustily and whirling his staff. They took a taxicab down Regent Street, while Rowley, who had not Donnegar the Horse with him, looked out of the window. Suddenly surprise and delight came over his face as he stared at a strange man, and raising his broken hat he half got up and bowed. He continued to do this all the way down Regent Street, and the expressions on the faces of most men so accosted
were amusing. But the face of one man set instantly in a ferocious scowl, the points of his canine teeth showed under his moustache, and he started running after the taxicab. Leaning out of the window, Rowley beckoned him on violently, while Bevan told the driver to go faster. When the fellow had turned back, Rowley stopped the taxi by a red pillar box on a street corner; and stooped beside it, ear pressed to the red cylinder as he pretended to be listening intently. Soon several people were standing and staring at the box. Rowley listened the more intently. Others listened, too. A crowd collected. Rowley then moved away and got back into the taxi, which drove off as a policeman walked across the road to find the reason why various puzzled people were listening and peering at the letter box.

“He’s quite mad,” said Bevan. “A mad wart-hog of a fellow.”

*

Phillip got his ticket and passport, stayed for the week-end at his Uncle Joseph’s house in Surrey, playing tennis and walking with his cousin Arthur, before returning on the Norton to Devon. His cat and dog, well looked after by the Crangs and the landlord of the Ring of Bells respectively, greeted him happily, and within five minutes of opening the cottage door the old cattle dog had removed a pound of sausages from the table, pursued by the furious but incompetent Rusty. What did it matter? He bought some more. A delightful sense of adventure possessed him. Life was wonderful. Very soon he would be meeting his new friends at Victoria station in London, for the mountains of Spain! He wrote to Irene at Laruns, telling her what he was going to do, saying he had no idea where they would be going, and doubted if they would be anywhere near civilisation: it was a party of very tough fellows, who were used to sleeping on ice and snow.

*

At last he was standing on Victoria station, feeling suitably dressed to cross mountains. Thick nailed shooting boots, leather anklets, thick stockings, tweed plus fours nearly down to his ankles—the latest fashion—tweed jacket and cap. His pack held, beside sleeping and washing things, a thick sweater and a heavy moorland hunt coat made of layers of cotton and rubber, with a full skirt reaching between knee and ankle. This ought to give some protection from the snow and ice on which, according to Rowley Meek, they might have to sleep.

Bevan turned up with the fourth man of the party, a cousin of Meek who was as quiet as Meek was noisy. With them was a sallow-faced bony man, Mr. Manley Meek an uncle who was a commercial playwright and
feuilleton
writer. To Phillip’s surprise Bevan and the fourth man were dressed in ordinary town suits with thin-soled pavement shoes. Bevan had no luggage except tooth-brush and shaving kit; his companion carried a small haversack, half-filled. Rowley, who had gone on, was to meet them at the Spanish frontier the following morning, which was Good Friday.

It was a placid Channel crossing. He looked for the Selby-Lloyds, hoping against hope; and was relieved that they were not in the boat. The three men drank bottled beer downstairs in the saloon while the sun shone through level port-holes.

It was great fun, thought Phillip; he was living! The war was over! Everything in France was of tremendous interest. Onwards from Boulogne it was dykes and polders; corn fields; and occasional weed-grown spaces, wide and level in the chalk, where once dumps of shells and wounded men and bales of wire and boxes of boots and plum-and-apple jam had stood. Seeing the sites of old encampments, Phillip felt as though part of him were crying out to bring back the scenes and faces. One day—one day, he would: at the moment it was too vast, too involved, even to think about.

The train jolted and jerked around Paris, from the Gare du Nord to the Gare du Midi, in twilight. He felt elated that this was Paris, the city of beauty and light and laughter: the houses and roofs of the suburbs were the Paris of Charpentier’s
Louise
and
Julian,
operas conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham at Covent Garden in that wonderful year of 1920—the Doves Nest! And Arnold Bennett was in this very train, going down to Madrid, paying his expenses by writing articles for
The
Daily
Crusader,
which had widely advertised their imminent appearance (at one hundred pounds an article, according to Bevan). He was on the same train as the author of
The
Old
Wives
’
Tale,
and
Clayhanger
!

After some delays the train was off in earnest, and it was time to think about dinner. They shared a bottle of wine, and then another bottle, and after that café, cognac, and cigars. Phillip’s boots and tweed plus-fours were hot, but when they got to the glaciers, and slept on ice…. That night he lay upon the floor, selecting that place as two girls were in their second-class
compartment, and he gave up his corner seat to one of them, apparently in a chivalrous moment, but really because it was anyway inevitable; and if he took to the floor first, he would be able to lie stretched out, and at ease all night, while others dozed fitfully with bent backbones. He was soon used to the noise of wheels directly under his ear; and no one trod on him, as he knew they would not. The oldest soldier had the best sleeping place!

*

The night sped away; and at last the train was slowing up at Bayonne. Bevan opened the window, and the cold air of a Pyrenean morning greeted them. And there on the platform stood Rowley, several days’ unshaven, old kerchief knotted round neck, pack on back, his great staff and companion—named after Roland’s sword—in his hand. He said he had walked continuously through the night, the day before, and the night before that.

“Why in heaven’s name are you fops getting out?” he cried irritably.

“We want to get breakfast, you p-perambulator, you,” replied Bevan.

“Haven’t you cretins stuffed yourselves sufficiently on this Midas Express? Don’t you want to go to Spain? Why didn’t you stop at the Savoy? Where are your silk hats, your white spats and gold-plated walking sticks? I came here to walk, not to loaf!” After some argument they took a taxi to a white and gold hotel in the town and drank coffee and ate rolls and butter. There they discovered that the train they should have taken to Pamplona in Spain was the one from which they had alighted. The only other train that day was a local to Hendaye, where there would be a wait of some hours.

“I do not say, ‘I told you so’,” yelled Rowley. “But merely mention in passing that with enormous reluctance I find myself in the disgusting company of utterly beastly British fops. Why didn’t you go your whole bacon-factory ways and go by Cook’s Tour? Where are your umbrellas and stinking bowler hats?”

There was a long wait at Hendaye in the sun of Spain, under which they lay hour after hour on the empty platform. Everything was strange to Phillip—the Customs officers with their cloaks and carbines and queer flat tarpaulin hats turned up at right angles at the corners—the crude and filthy vault of the “lavatory”—strange foods in the railway buffet—even Rowley’s
conversation with the waiter in Spanish, his knowledge of the language being limited, it seemed, by the use of two words—
quando
tiempo
?—for when the train would arrive for Pamplona.

As the heat of the day increased with the height of the sun he made a parcel of his hunt coat and jersey and posted it to Devon. They walked into the town, having two further hours to wait, seeing pasty-faced Spanish women in black shawls, swallows already nesting under the wide eaves of houses, a white-faced mother suckling her infant while selling oranges in a shop. Phillip felt the general quiescence of the place, the apathy of poverty and lack of hope or endeavour: Spain, neither old nor new, but stagnant. In the late afternoon a train of ancient appearance and slowness arrived: its performance further displeased the imaginative admirer of ancient days and leisure, Rowley Meek. But this was a superficial concept, for the former grandeur and vitality of Spain was gone, it seemed to be between two worlds. Rowley was by now almost silent.