The Power of the Dead (46 page)

“Well yes, it did look something like that, sir.”

“Then his fly is an ordinary Badger. I think I recognise your companion. Last year I caught him poaching this beat, and he began coughing when I spoke to him, telling a tale about gas at Oppy Wood. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and told him that he might finish his day’s fishing. And I happen to know that he has returned many times during the past spring and summer and moreover has not only claimed to be related to my cousin, General Ironside, but in addition to that has brought his friends here, including the editor of
Countryside
Life
,
who wrote an account in his journal of the fishing on this water, illustrated by a
photograph
. Tell him from me that if he comes here again he will not only be apprehended, but lose his tackle as well. Good-day to you.”

Phillip returned to Bill Kidd.

“Well, my Mad Son, what did the lawyer bloke say? Rusty old Tory stuff, to which you quoted Lenin and the New Testament?”

“How did you guess, Piscator?”

“What were you two jawing about?”

“Oh, among other things an article in
Countryside
Life
——”

“That silly bastard Frank Spinnaker went and advertised this beat to every poacher within a hundred miles. Now, here’s my plan. We’ll wait till this bloke’s off the map, and then you can have a few casts. Pity we didn’t hold on to that fish, she was a beaut. Hen fish, not such deep shoulders as a cock. Not an ounce under three pounds.”

“I really think I ought to go home now. I’ve quite enjoyed this outing, and my first adventure in fishing under a master.”

Phillip motored to London and left the Cockchafer under the Adelphi arches, a series of caverns faced and arched with
London
Brick once yellow but now dingy with soot. These had been built when a wharf lay beside London river and small shipping bore up with the tide to discharge wine and other merchandise for storing in the great cellars.

The Barbarian Club was a place of good-fellowship among writers, actors, painters, lawyers, and doctors of distinction. There were small bedrooms in the garrets, a library, billiard and card rooms, and on the first floor a large supper room and an adjoining bar. It was near the theatres, and the supper room was a place of convivial talk which often went on after midnight.

The new member found much kindliness at once. He did not know who the older men were, except those with internationally known faces—two pianists in particular, men with hard eyes in austere faces set to concert pitch, as it were, before attentive
mankind
. To escape from mental, spiritual, and physical devotion to their art, such men were to be found in the card room, playing poker. That, and golf some week-ends, appeared to be their only relaxation. They never drank and made merry like other Brother Barbarians who lived mainly on hope—the comets and shooting stars below the established constellations.

Phillip felt that this was his home in London. Within the Adelphi Terrace house was warmth, light, and joviality; below, along the Embankment, the leaves of the plane trees were falling; the Strand was a hurrying place of people, near-homeless most of them, transients or inquilines as Compton Mackenzie had called them in
Sinister
Street
—men and women like himself, conscious of the appalling loneliness of the soul as they hurried to find, to meet, to hope for—what?

Whom could he see, or go to? Was the best of life to be lived only within the spirit, the mind which was made up almost entirely by memory? He walked along the crowded Strand, wondering how Piers and Virginia were getting on in Austria and Germany, or would they now be in some
pension
or
auberge
on the Riviera; wondering what his mother and father were doing, and his sisters—Doris now on her own, for Bob had disappeared: simply gone to work one morning as usual and never returned. No letter, no card: nothing. A week after returning from Devon he had vanished. Doris had given up her school-teaching to marry him; now she was left with a small son and a baby soon to be born.

Should he take them in, and look after them? Lucy was willing. That generous, kind, and tolerant woman, what was she doing at that moment? Sitting in the parlour at home, by the fire, knitting or sewing in the light of the oil lamp, perhaps making herself a cup of tea, happily absorbed by thoughts of her children sleeping in the room above her, having seen them all tucked up and settled for the night. And he was so regarded: one of her children, sitting in his room listening to the wireless, or trying to write—and
nothing
beyond sketches or articles, mere journalism, ever attempted nowadays. One could not write in that house; one was no longer self-sufficient, no longer a writer. It required a space continuing, a wilderness extending for hundreds of consecutive hours of imaginative living to begin, continue, and finish one real book. The artistic imagination must be free, unhindered, and never adulterated by material life.

He turned back at Waterloo Bridge and hurried to Adelphi Terrace. There was the old porter, Flanagan, in his small lodge, the old soldier of the Chitral campaign, and other small wars on the mountain passes of Empire. Lucy’s grandmother, Mrs. Chychester, had told him that what was ‘colonial exploitation’ to many stay-at-home critics, was ‘service’ to those who helped
to keep the peace, and improve the living standards of the natives.

“Where may I telephone, Flanagan?”

“Box over there, sir.”

He asked for a trunk call to Lucy. After a while the soft voice said, ‘Hullo’. It quickened when he asked about the children.

“I think I’ll remain up for a few days and start my trout book.”

“Yes, do that. But don’t work too hard. You deserve a holiday. Oh, I’m quite happy. The little boys ask after you every evening, when I put them to bed. Rosamund is a pet,
so
good, and putting on weight nicely.”

“Any news of Nuncle?”

“Only that he’s coming in October. Oh yes, before I forget. Shall I invite Irene to stay here for the shooting week when Uncle Hilary comes with his friends? I think it would help things along, don’t you? I heard from her yesterday. She’s coming over from France at the end of the month—goodness, it’s nearly that now, isn’t it? She’ll be staying at the Ladies Carlton Club, she writes, her usual place in London, in case you want to see her. How do you like
your
new club?”

“It’s rather romantic, in a way. I have an attic room and can see the lights on the Thames when I turn my head on the pillow.”

“I am so glad. Do you know anyone yet?”

“Oh yes, there’s Anders, Channerson the war painter, and lots of other famous people. I’ve met Archie Plugge here, but I don’t think he’s a member. I must invite him to supper one night. Poor old boy, he hasn’t got much money.”

“Yes, do. Remember me to him, and to Mr. Cornelian if you see him.”

“I’m going to see Edward Cornelian tomorrow at the Soho restaurant where they all go to on Fridays. I wonder how he’ll regard me.”

“Oh, I expect he’s forgotten all about
that
. Have you seen Felicity?”

“Do you think I ought to?”

“Why not? She’s not very happy, and you might be able to help her.”

Phillip laughed. “In what way, do you mean?”

“Well, she doesn’t have much fun, I imagine, in the
circumstances
.”

“What circumstances?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I rather gathered from what she told me that she feels a bit out of it, with her mother having her own
particular
friend. What Felicity wants, I think, is to meet young people with tastes similar to her own.”

There was a pause, then he said, “Young people, yes. I’m not young any more.”

She replied, with a light laugh, “Well, if you see her, give her my love.”

“By the way, do you think I ought to have a secretary?”

“I certainly do.”

“Felicity?”

“Why not?”

“You really
do
like her?”

“Yes, I do. The little boys do, too—very much.”

“Well, au revoir. I’ll let you know when I’ll be coming back.”

He looked at the London directory, and found the telephone number; hesitated; then went upstairs to the bar to drink whisky. A little man with a long head was standing there, swaying on his feet several inches clear of the counter, his eyes half-closed, his hands hanging down by the seams of his trousers, which were crumpled like his coat. His starched collar was frayed, he was without a tie. An empty port glass, which had been full when last Phillip had seen him standing in the same place like an
upright
mooring buoy in slack-water, was turned down before him on the counter.

He had been a gag-writer for a number of music-hall comics since 1902; he was still a gag-writer, spending nearly all his conscious hours trying to think of new jokes. For five years he had lived with despair and self-ridicule; and port wine, his only tipple, gave him some sense of what he thought of as Nirvana. The moving pictures had reduced the halls; now talking pictures were the coming thing, and he had sudden flashes of hope, and with each flash as he stood at the bar he asked for a small port, and slipped back into Nirvana.

Phillip said to him, “Will you honour me by having a drink with me, sir?”

The little man did not move.

“He don’t hear you,” said the barman.

Phillip swallowed his whisky and said, “Well, I must go,” and running downstairs went to the telephone box and asked for the Ealing number.

“Hullo, Felicity?”

He heard a sibilance; then an ‘Oh!’, as of relief. “I thought at first it was someone else.” He could hear her breathing irregularly.

“Lucy sends her love.”

“I was just thinking of her. How is she?”

“Oh, very happy with the children, as usual. Did you get back from Rookhurst all right?”

“I should have written to thank you—I did mean to——”

“The Beausires are fun, aren’t they?”

“I stayed three days with them. I see Coats is advertising your novel. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for tomorrow.”

“I suppose you’ll be too busy to meet me.”

“Where are you?”

“In London. At the Barbarian Club.”

“Oh! Yes, of
course
I’ll meet you.”

“How about tonight?”

When she did not reply at once he said, “Perhaps you’re busy? How about lunch tomorrow?”

“I’m trying to think. It’s all so sudden. Yes, of course I can come tonight. I’m alone here, Mummie is away for the night. So it doesn’t matter when I come home.”

“Good. Where shall I meet you?”

“I’ll be at the Underground at Charing Cross in half an hour.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

“It’s by the Embankment—not the Southern Railway station.”

She could think, she could anticipate; she would help him in his work. They met gladly, and walked arm in arm along the Embankment to Cleopatra’s Needle.

“This is where I collapsed eight years ago. I had a groggy lung.”

“You poor dear,” spoken with almost the same intonation of voice as Irene’s.

“I’m all right now. Devon and long walks cleared it up.”

“I dream of Devon, and our walk on the Whale Back.”

“I’ve never really realized how beautiful London is at night.”

“I thought I was never going to see you again.”

“I’m an icicle whose thawing is its dying.”

“You’re not.”

They looked at the Zeppelin bomb holes in the Sphinx.

“My father was killed in the war,” she said in a shaky voice.

“I’m sorry. You must have been very young.”

“I just remember him.”

A string of barges was going with the tide down-river: dim red lights, shadowy figures on the bridge by the big brass funnel of the tug.

“They have to go so fast, to keep way-on in order to steer. It’s as swift here as the spring tides past Aery Point.”

“What happened to your canoe?”

“I abandoned it.”

“I’m so glad.”

“I abandon everything—before it abandons me.”

They walked under the gas-lit Adelphi Arches.

“Quite Dickensian, isn’t it? The Cockchafer is up here somewhere. But no-one would want to pinch her. There she is. And up above us the bright Strand, where my grandfather was run over by the brewer’s dray—let me see, it was in the winter of ’ninety-four—I was born the following April. So you see I am very old—thirty-four—and you are eighteen—a child.”

“I’m not a child.”

They climbed steps to Adelphi Terrace and stopped outside the Barbarian Club.

“Ladies are allowed in. Would you like a drink? Coffee?”

“May I have some beer?”

“Better still.”

Within the hall was a small divided space, the ladies’ room. Here sat Channerson, the war painter, with other men and a thin pale-faced girl whose continuous remarks in a pert Cockney voice were making him bellow with laughter. His hard eyes recognised Phillip, he said gravely, “Come and join us. May I introduce you to the Virgin of Soho.”

The Virgin of Soho waved a hand, and said to Felicity, “Hullo darling, what fresh cheeks and wind-blown hair. Stars in your eyes, too. Hope they get a rise out of your boy-friend,” at which Channerson’s hearty-hollow laughter again filled the hall.

Phillip concealed his feelings by playing the part of a West End
roué
of fiction.

“We’re going to drink champagne. Anybody wearing gilt dancing shoes? I’ve got a book coming out tomorrow, so let’s all drink to it.”

The bottle came with a plate of ham sandwiches. Felicity appeared to be hungry. Other men from upstairs attracted by the liveliness‚ joined the party, ordering more bottles. At eleven o’clock
the actors began to come in, some accompanied by women friends. Phillip told himself that this was life.

“What time is the last train to Ealing?”

“About twelve. But I’ll go now if you’re tired.”

“I was thinking of you. I’ll see you catch the train, anyway.”

The door opened and a tramp with a raggedly forked white beard and beaky nose entered. He stared with the tragic eyes of the very old, then with battered silk hat still on head went up the stairs. The next to enter was a heavy clean-shaven man who looked like a retired pugilist. He also stared at their faces before going to the lavatory. When Phillip went there the man was cleaning his shoes. He looked up and said, “You’re a new member, aren’t you?” His voice had a metallic accent.

“Yes.”

“Don’t you want to insure your keys?”

“Keys?”

The bald man took a ring from his pocket. The metal label attached to the ring was numbered, he said. For half-a-crown a year anyone finding the keys on that numbered ring would be rewarded by the insurance company when they sent them back.

“I’m an agent,” he said. “Ain’t it worth it, gettin’ your keys back?”

Phillip gave him half a crown and took the ring.

“Aren’t you going to put your keys on it?” asked the agent.

“I haven’t got any keys.”

The bald man explained that he had insured the keys of over ten thousand people in Australia, New Zealand, and London.

“I’m Zorago the contortionist,” he said. “I’ll lay an even dollar that you’ve never even heard of Zorago the Human Python.”

“Yes I have.”

“A long time ago?”

“No. Quite recently.”

At half-past eleven Channerson got up to leave with the thin Cockney girl called the Virgin of Soho. She came over to kiss Phillip, putting her lips on his and waggling the tip of her tongue in his mouth. He concealed his distaste. “What can you do with an elemental force?” said Channerson, chuckling. “Isn’t she a marvel?” Then he said in a quiet voice, “Do you know what it is to be poor?”