The Phoenix Generation (37 page)

That night in Horatio Bugg's house the steward said, “You know, I reckon our boss may be going bust.”

“In my opinion,” replied Horatio Bugg, “that man Hurst what gave your boss notice today is a Denchman. He scowls like one, an' he wears that Swass-tika badge. I shouldn't be surprised to see the whole lot picked up one day as spies. There's always a beautiful woman among spies, and that Felicity is her, I reckon. As for that monk, whoever saw a genuine priest ever do any work?”

*

Hurst had already arranged to work for a man who owned a considerable landed estate. This country gentleman was trying to rouse his neighbours to the evils of what he called the coming Bureaucratic State, or British Stalinism. It was a relief when Hurst was gone. Phillip spent the evenings re-decorating the interior of the Old Manor. He must not drive himself too hard, repeated Brother Laurence when the New Cut was completed: he was on the land most of the day with the tractor, or helping the men to pull mud from the grupps or dykes and to cut overgrown hedges when it was fine weather, or working on the premises when it wasn't possible to go on the land; at night writing articles for the
Crusader,
and scripts to be broadcast from London once a week.

*

These articles had brought several more strangers to the farm, most of them young. Phillip also had many letters, for the tone of his writings was light-hearted, idealistic, and at times passionate for the land and its renaissance. Old acquaintances and pests were attracted for varying reasons. One morning Phillip saw an old saloon car smoking along the drive, then Cabton got out with a walking-stick gun under his arm. Forewarned by memory of Cabton's indiscriminate potting at anything that moved on land, in air or in water at Fawley some years before, Phillip got in the first shot. “Have you a gun licence? The local bobby is very hot on licences. Also a syndicate has the sporting rights over my land.”

“How are you,” replied Cabton, holding out his hand. “Are you in the syndicate?”

“No.”

“In that case, why worry? You haven't seen me, that's all.”

Cabton and his wife were dressed in rather smelly sheepskin coats. She carried a small flat wooden box. “We brought you a box of kippers from Yarmouth.”

“Thank you. Are you touring round?”

“We never make plans, as I told you when I saw you last.”

“He asks us that as soon as we arrive,” said Mrs. Cabton. Turning to Phillip, “I wonder you have any friends left, if you treat them all as you treat us, when we come to see you.”

A red touring motorcar turned in by the broken gate, and came towards them with a coughing roar. With joy Phillip recognised Bill Kidd. At the same moment the driver saw him, and the klaxon began to stridulate in Morse the dots and dashes spelling out MY MAD SON, ending as the car stopped on the gravel.

“How are you, my Mad Son? You old scrounger, you? My God, if it isn't little old Cabton with his blasted poacher's gun! How are you, Masson old boy? Salaams!” as Bill Kidd got out, hatless, and bowed to Mrs. Cabton. “Who's that bloke at the window? The family ghost?”

Ernest's face at an upper window was at once withdrawn. He had come back to give more help, urged by Lucy, and was making a model of a traction engine for Billy.

“The ghost of an old retainer, Bill. Pensioned off. He died in seventeen seventy-seven.”

“I suppose you think that's funny,” said Cabton, turning the handle of the walking-stick gun and opening the breech.

“Now look here, my lad,” exclaimed Bill Kidd. “Don't you load that bloody poacher's gun here. That's not funny! Bill Kidd's telling you, mind! I remember when you nearly shot Masson's little boy, you had your hand on the button, remember? Your life may or may not be of any value, but mine is, see? How's the missus, Masson old boy? Is she here?”

“Still in Dorset. Her brother and I are getting the place more or less habitable first, then she'll come with the kids.”

“I've got a fine boy, you remember my nipper? Hell of a chap. No nonsense about the coming generation. Tells me to go to hell if I get on old man whisky. Quite a wheeze, what, tellin' off the old man, what?” and Bill Kidd's head shrunk into his shoulders with the wheeze.

“Like to see the house?”

“Of course I would. That's what I came to see, with you, you old leadswinger! Just to check up on what you write, and see if it's all Sir Garnett.”

“Would you like to see over the house, Mrs. Cabton?”

“I think we'll go. We know when we're not wanted. Come on, Cabton.”

“The scrounging bastard,” said Bill Kidd cheerfully. “Had the nerve to bring out that walking-stick gun, without so much as a
‘by your leave'. Those bloody dagoes never were any good. Miserable bastards.”

Bill Kidd had all sorts of ideas for improving the house. One was hens.

“I've seen it in Lincolnshire, where I'm living now, Masson old boy. Fill the rooms up with hens. Laying White Wyandottes. Tons of eggs. This place will cost a packet to put in order. Get some incubators, hatch off some pedigree eggs, and next time Cabton comes he'll look up and think he's got dee tees, thousands of old gels in white lookin' down at the bastard!”

Another of Bill Kidd's ideas was to get the hot-water system cleared. With acid.

“Sulphuric acid, old boy. Fill the blasted tank with H
₂
SO
₄
. Then light the fire and get it circulating. Keep all taps open, let the water work up the pipes followed by the acid which has a lower specific gravity. I used to be with the Chemical Warfare
Department
, old boy, and know my stuff. The acid will reduce the lime to hydrocarbonic acid, CO
₃
HSO
₂
. It's simple. I fixed it up for my wife's uncle's place in Sussex. Stenning Towers. Cost you a fortune to replace all the pipes otherwise. I guarantee the result.”

“Will you do it by contract, and then give me a guarantee, Bill?”

“Spit in my eye and choke me if I'm a liar, my Mad Son. From now on I'm O.C. Petrified Waterworks of the Old Manor. I'll buzz off in the old boneshaker and get half a carboy of acid from the garage in Crabbe, where the bloke tried to sell me a Railton Terraplane. Offered me fifty quid for ‘Otazelle' my old 'bus. Damned impertinence! I wouldn't sell the old gel for five hundred quid. She's an ancient monument. Now I'll go and get that carboy. It won't take a brace of shakes to get your bathroom working again.”

It took a lot of screw-wrenching and tapping of nuts with cold chisel and hammer. Then the hot-water tank was drained; the screwed metal plug replaced; another plug removed at the top for the acid to be poured in by glass funnel. Acid must never be poured into water, but water into acid, said Bill Kidd.

“Otherwise it will blow up the whole caboodle. My tactics are to infiltrate, like the Boche did in the Bird Cage on the twenty-first of March, nineteen eighteen. This acid will bomb down the whole system of pipes, until the garrison cries
Kamerad!
and ups with their hands. Leave it to Bill Kidd, old lad.”

He seemed to know what he was doing …

The next visitors, Phillip wrote to his faithful Lucy, were a little more conventional. He saw one morning an elderly woman accompanied by a man in a city suit and black Homburg hat walking among the weeds of the drive. At once he recognised Mrs. Ancroft and Felicity's guardian, Fitzwarren.

He went to meet them. Mrs. Ancroft stopped, and put a hand to her side. Fitz said something to her.

“How d'you do,” said Phillip, who had not the least idea what to say next. Mrs. Ancroft said, “My charwoman reads the
Daily
Crusader,
so I was able to find you here. I will come straight to the point. Is my daughter with you?”

“Well,” he replied, “she is in the house somewhere, I think.”

“You only think?”

“She may be with the goslings. She looks after the incubator, Mrs. Ancroft.”

“Is your wife here?”

“No.”

“Are you being divorced?”

“Not that I know of. Lucy is coming with the children as soon as we've got two cottages put more or less in order.”

“Who is ‘we', may I ask?”

“My brother-in-law, Ernest Copleston, and—let me see—well, that's about all at the moment. And Felicity. Oh, and an older friend of mine, who served in the war and is now a friar.”

“A friar, did you say?”

“Yes, then there's Edward. He goes to the village school, and is what is called a ‘first-class infant'.”

“And you are living with Felicity as your mistress?”

“No.”

“Then why is she here, may I enquire?”

“She is secretary and book-keeper of the community farm.”

“You say your wife and the children are coming from the West Country to live here also?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Ancroft turned to Fitz and said, “Thank God Felicity will not after all be marrying a divorced man. Fitz, give me your arm.”

“Do come into the house,” said Phillip. “It's a bit of a ruin, but all we have at the moment.”

Mrs. Ancroft saw a hall which went up halfway to the roof, with doors going off into other rooms, and at the end of the hall a broad staircase leading up and round to a landing with a heavy oak rail supported by twisted banisters.

“And what do you think you are going to do with a community?''

“Farm land and make a profit, Mrs. Ancroft.”

“But do you think, having failed once, that you are likely to succeed a second time?”

“I have an idea that the depression won't last. Do come up into what was once, and we hope it will be again, the drawing room.”

Here was a trestle table, a pail of ceiling whitewash, an old pair of dungarees, and some kitchen chairs.

“Do sit down, I'll go and find Felicity.” And warn mon père if I can find him, he thought.

The warning was unnecessary. Felicity's voice was heard saying, “I'll make your favourite herb omelette for your lunch, mon père. Have you seen Phillip? I thought I heard voices. Some more of his fans, I suppose.”

She looked round the door. She saw who the visitors were and went forward to greet them, saying, “This
is
a surprise! Where have you come from? Edward's at school, he'll be home shortly. It's only just up the road. I suppose you've read about our
community effort?” She kissed her mother. “How are you, Fitz? How's publishing?”

“Oh, much about the same.”

This was a different Felice, she made him feel uneasy. He hadn't wanted to come with the old girl, there was nothing left but habit between them, and latent antagonism.

Phillip came upon Brother Laurence in the courtyard. He had been ploughing the Steep with the hydraulic tractor, an innovation in the district. Even the steward had said, when he saw Phillip creeping up the one-in-five gradient without turning over and without digging in, “Blast, I like that patent. It'll beat hosses, won't it tho.”

“Visitors, mon père. Felicity is looking after them quite happily. My word, that girl has acquired poise since you turned up from the grave.” He looked steadily at the friar. “It's my illegitimate mother-in-law, with Fitzwarren, an old family friend, I gather.”

“I saw them, Phillip. Nora has a weak heart.” He walked up and down, dissolving. “What shall I do?” he said, weakly.

This was a pierced Brother Laurence. We all lose form with some people, it is wrong to think of them as fools, for we ourselves may be fools to them. One must abdicate from the little ego in their presence, one must not hurt their feelings.

“Let Felicity tell her. I'll call her down. You stay in the apple room, mon père.”

“Phillip—don't think me callous—but I could never return——”

Phillip nodded several times, as though he were a puppet. He felt levitating tears. Lucy would understand. You looked such a poor one, she said once. What generosity, what quality of spirit in Lucy … and he had called her stupid, unimaginative, dull … killing him. Killing the devil in him, not the gleam he had
inherited
from little Hetty Turney. Now he understood the tag, used of Suffolk—
saintly
Suffolk, which was also
silly
Suffolk, said to be due to misspelling.