The Innocent Moon (54 page)

“His mother was a widow, and had been in an asylum part of the time during the war, recently coming home. But it wasn't that, really. I simply didn't care what happened to me after the war.”

“What's it like in prison?”

“I could
sleep
at night, out of the rain. Nothing could ever be as bad again as the war. It's a kind of touchstone.”

“Did you wear a broad arrow?”

“Only a grey uniform, I'm afraid. Second division in the Scrubs.”

“Why weren't you in the first division?”

“Oh, I bribed the judge!” It was wonderful to take everything lightly.

“While we're about it, is there anything else in your past you want to declare?”

“You sound like a Customs officer! Yes, I had an
affaire
or two.”

“Were they fun?”

“Not altogether. Do you mind?”

“Why should I?”

“I thought that perhaps if one loved anyone——”

“You mean I should be jealous? I'm not conventional, P.M.”

This started a deteriorating train of thought. French boys were supposed to be very precocious. The idea of Barley having been involved similarly put him out.

“What's on your mind, P.M.?”

“When you call me ‘P.M.', I feel almost as though we are part of a French marriage of convenience.”

“Well, aren't we? I want to be with you; you want to be with me. Voilá!”

Just as Eveline Fairfax had cried, ‘Voilà!', taking lightly all ideas of morality. “I've told you about my
affaires.
Have you had any?”

They were now in the woods where he, Quick, Willie, Broughton, and Poppett had walked on the way to the deserted chalk quarry.

“No serious ones.”

“Depends on what you call serious.”

“You mean what
you
call serious?” When he gave no reply she went on, “You mean, have I slept with any man? No, I haven't, but I nearly did once.”

His morbid curiosity, his fear, had let in ‘the worm that flies in the night, in the howling storm——' She kept pace with him, determined not to let him lose himself. “I'll tell you about it, Phillip. He was very attractive, you see.”

“Was this after you met me?”

“No, before.”

“Did he ask you?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Then why didn't you?”

“I knew it was wrong.”

“In what way?”

“Because I didn't love him. It was only an attraction, as I told you. Besides, he was married already.”

“If he hadn't been married, would you have done?”

“No, I don't think so. Not until I was married, anyway.”

He stopped and faced her. “What! You believe a wife should have lovers?”

“Yes, if she wants them. I said
if
she wants them. Are you satisfied?”

He strode on alone. She caught up with him and pulled him round to face her. “I said
if
she wants them,
if
she is unhappy,
if
she isn't loved, don't you see?”

They clung together against an oak. She was so beautiful that his tears fell. She stroked them from his cheeks with her finger, putting each one to her lips. “Darling, there's only you, for ever and ever.”

*

On a cold day in January Phillip was standing as he had stood nearly four years before, on Victoria station, by the waiting boat-train to Folkestone; only this time the girl he was seeing off was Barley, on her way to Paris and the last term at her finishing school.

“Look after yourself, Phillip. You
will
go regularly to your meals in the Ring of Bells, won't you? Promise?”

“I promise, Barley. You'll come back, won't you?”

“Of course I shall! I wish I had left school.”

“So do I, Barley. Give my love to Irene.”

“That's four times you've sent Mummie your love. What a loving man it is, to be sure!” The bright puma-cub eyes were almost hidden in the creases of the smiling face. “Hullo, there's Spica!”

Tabitha Trevelian was coming along the platform. She had already seen them, her face was pink, her eyes alight with pleasure. “I saw you as I came through the barrier! Well, this is a surprise!” For a moment those eyes became reflective, the smile faded; then she was beyond that ghost of old personal feeling. “Barley, you look radiant, my dear!”

“She's going back to Paris, that's why, Tibby my dear!”

“Nonsense! And my name to you is Spica! I am one of your first stars, remember!” She embraced the younger girl. “How fortunate for me, I shall have your company as far as Folkestone! Are you going back to your finishing school?”

“Yes, the last term, thank goodness! I don't in the least want to go.”

“Then why do you go?” asked Spica sharply. “Oh, of course, Irene is there, isn't she? Well, I must go and get my seat. See you on the train!”, and she was about to move off when she hesitated and reached down into her bag. “I'd like to give you Nip, the only surviving son of Nig,” she said, holding out a small grey mouse, and putting the little beast on Phillip's shoulder. “Mother's got a cat now, and I don't want Nip to get nightmares.
Mice do, you know! I've seen them twitching in sleep, and uttering squeaks of fear, while they can't move their legs. Would you like him?”

“Thanks,” said Phillip, as she put the mouse on his shoulder, and walked down the platform. Warming the mouse in his hands he said, “I wish you hadn't got to go, Barley.”

“So do I.”

The same elderly guard was walking to the rear of the train, furled green flag in hand.

“Must you go?”

“No!”

His legs trembled. “Would your Father—do you think—his permission—if——?”

“Yes!”

“How d'you know?”

“I've already asked him. I sent him your book of essays.”

“Well?”

“He said they are beautiful, and advised me to marry you!”

“Will you?”

“Yes!”

“Now?”

“All right! I'll get my suit-case!'' She lugged it from the rack. “Sure you want me?” pausing at the door, eyes almost hidden in a grin.

He pulled the suit-case through the window, while she opened the door and almost fell with it on the platform, just as the guard was taking out his watch.

“Quick, say goodbye to Spica!” They ran, hand in hand, to the next carriage.

“Barley's not going! We're going to get spliced!”

Spica hesitated and said, “In that case you won't want Nip, so I'd better take him back.” Phillip stuck Nip on her shoulder, as she leaned down and kissed him, and then Barley. “My blessings on you both!”

The whistle blew, and they stood waving to Spica whose last words were, “You'll have to use your signet ring, Phillip, until I send the ring I promised you for Barley later on.”

*

Phillip applied for a marriage licence at Caxton Hall, and every day they went to London to look at the notice pinned on the board. The last day for any objections was a Thursday. The next morning they were to be married at 10 a.m.

“A pity Irene can't be here” he said, once again. Irene had sailed from Marseilles to the Far East, her husband had had a ‘serious operation', the cable said. On Friday Teresa Jane Lushington, spinster, was married to Phillip Sidney Thomas Maddison, bachelor, in the presence of Henrietta Eliza Maddison and Hilda Rose Neville. The wedding breakfast was coffee for three, rock cakes for two, and tea for one in the Paddington Station buffet; and tears on the departure platform for the elderly women left behind as the train pulled out.

Mrs. Neville took Hetty's arm, for the first time. “Now that we know one another better dear, do come down to the flat whenever you feel like a little chat and a cup of tea,” she said as she dabbed her eyes.

*

On arrival at Queensbridge Phillip suggested that they have tea at the Britannia Inn and then walk to Malandine. On the way down the High Street from the station he saw a bulky form under a Stetson hat coming towards them, and with a muttered “Damn Wigfull!” he pulled her by the hand down a side-street, laughing as they ran to hide. After a tall heap of buttered toast and two boiled eggs each for tea, followed by whortleberry jam tart with cream, they went shopping, Barley to buy ham and bread for supper, and Phillip a bottle of sherry. After this, each carrying a bag, they set out for the five-mile walk to Malandine as the full moon was rising above the line of hills to the east.

Their shadows drew in as the moon rose up. Ghostly pale upon the skyline to the south, as they came near the sea, was the stump spire of Clayborough church, reminding him of the Hospice on the Wytschaete ridge on Christmas Eve, 1914.

“You were seven years old then, Barley. It was very cold that night, but now you are with me it is warm, warm!” He laid his cheek against hers. “You hair is all moonlight.” He bowed to the moon, then embraced his little girl once again. “All true poetry is love, Barley.”

They went on, hand in hand, swinging arms together so that the bags caused them to sway about. They swung the bags at one another, playfully; then, bags on heads, started a race. She fell while trying to catch hers, he was all concern, and insisted on carrying both her bag and herself, keeping this up for a quarter of a mile when he went into a field and tipped her gently over his head upon a half-cut hayrick. After a rest they played leapfrog around the rick, then humped up bags and went on.

At Malandine no one must know who they were, so they walked with short synchronised steps, as though a very old woman was shuffling past the lighted cottage windows. Up the short hill to the pump, creeping down past the Crang's window, Barley going on while he stopped to knock and ask for the key.

“Why, it be Mis'r Madd'zn come! Plaize to come in, and zit by the vire, zur!”

Mrs. Crang said, “If us'd knawed you was comin', us'd had a vire put in for 'ee. You'll catch your death o' cold, slapin' in a damp bed!”

“'Ave 'ee'd zupper, zur? You'm welcome to what us'v got, you knaw that.”

“I'm not hungry, thanks very much, Walter. I'll soon get a fire going. I just called in for the key.”

“You be in a master hurry, midear! Don't 'ee want vor zee Moggy?

“Thurr 'er be, by th' vire.”

“I'll come back later.”

Fortunately there was some driftwood on the hearth. First, a blanket over the kitchen window, and then to light a candle, watched silently while the flame crept up the wick, giving off sparks of dust and sputtering out with a dead moth embedded in the grease, the room again a dark cavern.

Other candles were lit; and while Barley put the groceries and bread in the crate-like cupboard behind the damp printed curtains, Phillip lit a fire. Pitcher to pump, on tip-toe, pre-arranged double tap on door, creeping in. So far so good, all done without a word exchanged. Then the whisper, “I'll go up to the pub and get Rusty. And then some milk down the street. Lock the door after me, open it only to my double tap.”

As he went along the village street there fell from the air a curiously remote pealing of bells, and looking towards the church he saw a light in the splayed west window. Pausing in the shadow of the churchyard wall he heard the harmonics of each bell-note softly following in the pause after the clapper-stroke. It was the most gentle ringing of the quartet of small bronze 16th-century bells in their oaken cage that he had ever heard.

It seemed that each of the four bells was subdued, one pausing to allow the other to sound its harmonics as an echo: a strange effect in the moonlight, as though each note was of the body of the metal, and its following harmonic the departing soul. Too fanciful, he thought; and was the more startled a few minutes
later to hear from the landlord of the inn that the muffled peal was being rung for Mr. Tanberry, who had died three nights before, and this was the practice ring for the funeral on the morrow.

“'A was found lyin' in the stream, zur. And 'a had taken only a glass of whiskey, too, in my house. 'A zaid 'a didden feel very well, and went oomwards soon afterwards.”

Phillip hastened back with the news. “I ought to go down and see his wife. She may need help.”

“I'll come with you.”

“We'd better go in and see the Crangs first.”

They went next door just as Walter Crang was opening a bottle of whit ale.

“I'd like vor drink a health,” he said. “To Mis'r Tanberry, God rest his zoul. I've a-kep this yurr bottle for best part of two year, and 'twas full of raisins when I put's down in th' backhouse, and they'm all gone now, all ate away. 'Tes clear, you zee!” He held the bottle to the light.

After a drink of the pale yellow ale everything became free and easy for Phillip. “I'd like you to be the first to know that we were married this morning!”

Another toast was drunk; then Mrs. Crang offered to air their blankets, and to lend a pair of sheets. “You'll know them, Miss Barley, aw, what be I sayin', I beg your pardon, you'm Mrs. Madd'zn now——”

“Please call me Barley!”

“No, 'tidden my place vor call 'ee that; Miss Barley you've always been to us yurr, so Miss Barley you'm still, midear! Wull, as I was zayin', you'll be 'omely like in these yurr sheets, for your Mother gived them to me when she left, when was it now, nearly two years and a half ago! My, how time flies! I can mind you then, beside Mr. Madd'zn, I could zee then one was made for t'other, I said zo, didden I, Walter?”

“Aye, us both zeed it comin', zur, and I be very plaised that you both be man and wife, beggin' your pardon, zur.”

“Walter Crang,” said Phillip, turning to Barley, “has the most beautiful manners of any man in the village. It is I who ought to beg his pardon, for not letting him know we were coming! Old soldier of the Devonshire Regiment, I drink to you! May you never fade away, like they raisins in this yurr wasp wine!”