The Power of the Dead (40 page)

“It’s a direct road from there to Horsham and Worthing. All the best, sir. By the way, you motorcar isn’t licensed. There’s time before Spring Gardens close——”

“Oh, I’ll see about it when I get home, thanks all the same.”

He soon got into the car’s ways. The disc wheels drummed like
the flight of the July Bug, dumbeldore, or cockchafer. He
considered
what name should be used; and returned to Cockchafer, emblem of the Kaiser’s Foot-Guards. Cockchafer rode easily on her large tyres and long springs. He had brought his goggles, and went along with the windscreen open to feel the rush of air upon his face. Many times he rejoiced at his luck in finding just the right car for Lucy to drive. It’s maximum speed was 42 m.p.h., but it cruised happily at 35, battery charging 10 amps and oil pressure steady at 20 lbs. Only the faintest suggestion of pale smoke behind; and looking at the dipstick when he stopped in a valley between tree-crowned hills along the South Downs, he saw that the oil was up to the maximum mark and still clear. No blowing past the rings! He held each cylinder’s compression against the starting handle. Gas sighed through the exhaust valves of each cylinder. He would have the engine decarbonised and the valves re-ground when he got home. He took off his coat and sang.

*

Martin Beausire liked having people about him while he wrote at a large desk upon which stood many columns of books, rising to three feet and more in height. He was confronted and flanked by books—review books, reference books, encyclopedias, a
hundred
-weight and more of books, constantly being consulted, changed, lent, given away, and sold. There he usually sat, holding a large fountain pen, one of half a dozen lying before him, mixed up with pencils, bottles of ink, telephone pads, engagement pads, and bookcases rising to the ceiling; pictures hanging in the
otherwise
bare spaces. Against one wall was a glass-fronted cupboard holding silver trophies and mementos of a sporting life. Upon the chimney piece—for Martin liked an open hearth—were hanging a variety of miniature shields of school, college and family
coat-armour
, the latter representing the millennium-old Saxon family of Boocer, rooted in the West Country, according to Martin, before the Norman upstarts arrived at Hastings.

There were photographs of bob teams, ski-teams, rugger teams, tennis teams, running, high-jump, long-jump, rowing, cricket, and curling; Old Boy dinners; skating in the Fens; Martin
following
hounds on foot; Martin swimming; Martin running. Martin was no recluse; he lived a full life and liked his friends to be always with him as he wrote at his desk.

It was after midnight on Saturday evening in Worthing. Phillip had gone to bed. Martin sat, pen in hand, writing a word or two;
pausing before he added another word. It was a book about
coal-mining
sponsored by an association of young owners with the hope of promoting a New Idea of Industry: garden suburbs, swimming pools, sports’ grounds; whippet races, underground skills, courage, comradeship—an entirely new conception of life for men who spent most of their lives away from the sun. In a phrase of Mr. Lloyd George, ‘a land fit for heroes’.

Many of these young owners had fought in the war, from which they had returned with the burning idea of comradeship between men and management. In this they were opposed by the ‘economic’ ideas of their fathers.

Pinned half-way up one pile of books borrowed from the London Library was a curled photograph by flashlight of a dirty fellow with a black face and eyes like a sick eagle’s under a leather skull cap to the front of which was fixed a small electric torch. In his hand this grimy fellow carried a Davy Safety Lamp. One side of his dungaree overalls were partly white from chalk dust thrown too vigorously from his left hand as he had walked along the gallery of a mine in Wakefield, sweating as he thrust himself forward in the low hot tunnel beside a track of miniature steel rails. The chalk was thrown out, as requested, to reduce the risk of a spark struck by nailed boot on rock-fragment, and liable to cause an explosion 2,000 feet below the surface of the ground.

Martin had worked a 4-hour shift below, at the end of a gallery. Most of the time was spent lying on his back and side at the
cragging
lip of a 19-inch seam of coal compressed between two layers of rock. He had crawled to the coal-face past pit-props which occasionally had given out sharp cracking noises; while all the time he had suffered because he was not at his home writing what he had seen. Now he was making up for time lost in
travelling
, prepared for a 20-hour shift at his desk.

*

Phillip, asleep in bed, heard a telephone bell ringing. He was immediately alert. Footfalls came up the stairs, a tap on the door. Horn-rimmed spectacles low on nose, Martin said in a very
subdued
voice, “Someone calling himself Piers Tofield wants to speak to you. He says it’s rather important.”

Phillip ran down to Martin’s study.

“Hullo, Phil. I’ve been trying to find you, to give you some good news. Congratulations on having a daughter.”

“Thank you, thank you! Is Lucy all right?”

“She looked extremely happy when I saw her an hour ago, after I’d taken her to the Shakesbury nursing home. A
seven-pound
daughter, dark hair, some weeks early.”

“Thank you ever so much for telephoning. However did you know I’d be here? I didn’t know myself until this evening.”

“I’ve been telephoning to various people, and at last thought of Archie Plugge at the Game Pie. He told me you were going along the South Coast, and said you might call on Martin
Beausire
.”

“Well done. Where are you telephoning from?”

“Skirr. Your home.”

“What time was the baby born?”

“Half an hour ago. Virginia and I called here on our way down to Devon, and Lucy gave us dinner. It was unexpected—the baby, I mean. So I ran her into Shakesbury while Virginia looked after Billy, who was a little anxious, and asking for you. Mrs. Rigg’s here, so don’t worry.”

“What made you come down?”

“Virginia and I want to find a furnished cottage near the sea, to spend the summer.”

“You can have mine, at Speering Folliot. The Mules—he’s postman and sexton—have the key. No water or light laid on, I’m afraid.”

“May we take it? We’ll rent it from you, of course.”

“You won’t. May I join you?”

“I’d like nothing more. Here’s Virginia.”

“Hullo, Phil. What a lovely baby. I adore her. Lucy looks too, too radiant.”

“Stay the night, won’t you. Take any bedroom. I’ll be home for breakfast. Give Piers my thanks, and some to yourself of course. I must tell the others here. Au revoir, my mermaid. I’ll start home shortly—it’s a lovely night.”

*

Cockchafer ran splendidly in the night air. Through Arundel and on to Chichester without a plug missing; past harbours and reedy inlets of the moonlit sea; up Portsdown Hill with its memories of Lucy and Billy lying in the sun on their way to Dover, all those years ago, soon after his marriage … he stopped the engine, and walked through the dewy grass. O world, O life, O time—but nothing of the past ever was found except in the mind; onwards, leaving Southampton on the left, and along the lonely road to
Romsey. Here is the New Forest, deep dark woods and a filigree of leaves above yellow headlamp beams. Through a ghostly town of sleeping houses, and at last open spaces on either side of the road, a road sinking but to rise again, second gear slipping out—engine slowing as though over-heated—into bottom gear—and only a gentle seeming rise. That woman driver hanging on too long in a higher gear, and slapping piston-skirts against the pots. Up to the crest—and dawn coming in the east. Larks were singing. Afar lay the dark sheen of Salisbury, he was within rejoicing distance of home.

Leaving Cockchafer in the lane, hood up lest it rain, he entered by a window and crept upstairs to the night nursery. The cots were empty, without bedding. He looked in Lucy’s room, drawers were open, a pair of shoes left on the bed. He cried out; no reply; was going downstairs when he heard the key in the door and Mrs. Rigg’s voice called behind the door held just open, “Anyone thurr? Ah, tes you, sir, I be very glad vor see ’ee!” She came in,
breathless
. “I’ve a-got thik childer auver to mine—they wor crying when Mrs. Madd’zn was took away by Mr. Piers—me an’ that young leddy stayed yurr with them, dear li’l boys they be.”

“Where are they now—the lady and gentleman.”

“They’m asleep in your room, zurr. And the childer be to my place now, zur, they’m quite all right, they be slaping side be side together on two pillors on th’ vloor, happy as kings they be, dear ’ms.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Rigg, thank you. No, I don’t want anything to eat, thanks all the same. I’ll wait here, on the sofa, until
breakfast
. I’ve got a car, and tomorrow, no it’s Sunday—this afternoon, if you like, I’ll take you all in to Shakesbury to see Mis’s and the babby!”

He walked up beside the Longpond, now rosy in the dawn rising above the black line of the downs. He had a feeling that he could accomplish everything. His euphoria increased when, returning from the crest of the downs, he saw Piers and Virginia strolling to meet him.

*

On returning with Mrs. Rigg and the boys from the maternity home in Shakesbury that afternoon, Phillip had a shock when he answered the telephone.

Hilary said that his brother John had had an emergency
operation
in order to examine an obstruction in the bronchus, and an
advanced state of carcinoma was discovered. His voice was not steady when he continued after a pause, “It’s a landmark gone, Phillip. My brother—hullo, you there?”

Phillip said with an effort, “If only I had taken him for walks. My damned writing’s made me utterly selfish.”

“What did you say?”

“I—I’m really most awfully sorry, Uncle Hilary. Please accept my sympathy in your loss. Yes, I’ll tell Lucy. By the way, she had a daughter early today. I was going to telephone.”

“A daughter, you say. Give her my love. And accept my congratulations, old man.”

“Thank you, Uncle Hilary. I’m sure Lucy will want me to send you her love—with mine, Uncle Hilary. We loved Uncle John.”

“It’s the end of an age, Phillip.”

“Yes, Uncle Hilary. I’m so sorry.”

“We must pull together.”

“Count on me, Uncle Hilary.”

He went over to tell Lucy. “If only I’d gone for daily walks with John. Look how Pa recovered from your mother’s death when you and the Boys took him into your lives. Poor old John must have been corroded right through with loneliness, like an iron pipe with this hard chalky water.”

“He knew how busy you were. Don’t forget that you always found time to go and see him, so there’s no need to reproach
yourself
,” she said, quietly.

“I must make it up by looking after my parents and sisters. I shall invite Father and Mother to live at Fawley.”

*

Ever since Richard had retired from the Office at Midsummer he had been talking of finding a cottage in the country where he might end his days. Hetty, having him at home all the time, had felt more enclosed than ever. Yet during the journey from Paddington she felt she was on the way to freedom, with the imagined faces of Billy and Peter, and now little Rosamund, ever present in her mind.

It was Richard’s first long railway journey for many years. He looked for old landmarks, murmuring now and again to himself, “God bless my soul——”, feeling ravaged by the changes; but when the downs came into sight, his spirit settled upon the hills.

Lucy and the little boys momentarily restored his youthfulness. The burial service, the church, the coloured form of St. Christopher
hidden behind plaster when he was a boy, were as spring-water to his being; the innocence of early life came back, with his tears. Happiness succeeded this restoration of faith: the years between were levelled with the sight of the open vault wherein his parents, and the grandparents he had known, were resting. And now John had joined them.

The will was read in the library, whence the dust sheets had been removed. Phillip was left the house and the furniture; there was little else. John William Beare Maddison had lived on an annuity purchased years before. Dora had been unable to come, so had Belle, who was living at Westcliffe-on-Sea in a boarding house, partly crippled by arthritis. Hilary had motored from Bournemouth with Viccy. She had kept her pale face and girlish voice with its clear tone; but she had little or nothing to say. They had tea in the farmhouse.

All thought highly of Lucy. In her presence the awareness of death gave way to a light, happy feeling. Phillip rested himself quietly among them, telling himself that never, never must he use satire, as Thomas Morland had used in describing his relations. It was the life within, human hopes and fears, and above all the tragic estrangement of love, which must be kept steadily in mind.

He went for a walk with his father to the Longpond. “Father, I shall be very pleased to offer you the house—your home really—for as long as you and Mother care to live there. Rent free, of course. I’ll pay the rates, naturally.”

Richard was inclined to refuse: the garden would be beyond him; but his son’s thought for him must not be rebuffed. As for Phillip, he felt that his father was so used to not wanting presents that his offer had been made rather crudely.

“I know the house is rather large, but it seems to me a pity that the Aunts, I mean Dora and Belle particularly, should all be so far apart. Aunt Dora’s ‘Babies’ are over eighty, and can’t last for ever. You could have your own part of the house, and now I’ve got some cash of my own, I would like to put in an extra bathroom, and also central heating for the winter.”

“I suppose you and Lucy will live in another part of the house, old man?”

“Eventually, yes, Father. My idea is that you and Mother, and the Aunts, shall all have your own quarters, and have a sort of mess together.”