Lucifer Before Sunrise (44 page)

The fact was that Christie knew only too well what was going on, and except for a General Meeting every Sunday night, with a free discussion and lecture by himself, he usually appeared only at meal times.

Several ruinous cottages stood at odd places in the lanes around the farm-house. These had been bought for a small sum by Christie, and were being rebuilt, first-class jobs, by tradesmen in the
Community
—bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers, etc. These became the property of the Community Centre. What happened if someone left, did he or she have shares, Phillip asked? No, said Christie; the Community was based on the farm. Individuals might leave, but the Centre remained.

It was his capital which had made everything possible. There were many breakages, losses of stock and poultry. In the kitchen stood a new Aga stove, a rare object to acquire in war-time, but it worked erratically. Something was wrong with both the chimney draught and the cook, or her helpers. The stove was either roaring away like a furnace or silent and cold like a refrigerator. It had been put in only six months, but already looked burnt-out. The cook was a blonde young woman of Saxon appearance, called Hester. She had been sent down from college at Cambridge for having had a baby without marriage. She was now being courted by several young men, also by a sad elderly fellow known as Vincent. His world seemed to have collapsed, so he had come hoping for a reprieve in the Community. Phillip was talking to him alone in the kitchen after supper—the others had gone out, or were in their rooms—when Cabton came in.

“Still talking about wheat? Aren’t you thinking of the ‘Tiller Girls’ at the Coliseum?”

“I’m thinking of your absent sheaves in August—the Corn Dollies. If you don’t take off your sheep at once, you won’t have any waisted sheaves to set up.”

Cabton was still in gumboots. He looked permanently
unwashed
and unshaven, like one of the extraordinary characters in his stories of a countryside known among comic playwrights as Dummersetshire.

The elderly man, who spent his time trying to be of use to the blonde girl, sighed, and went out of the kitchen.

The next morning, as Phillip was about to seek Mrs. Christie, to give thanks and to say goodbye, the secretary came down the stairs and said, “Wally would like to see you in his room. Could you come at once?”

“You’ve got past the Janitors, I see,” Cabton called out. “Don’t forget to tell him about the Tiller Girls!”

Christie was standing at the top of the stairs. “Come in, Phillip. Sit down. We aren’t really started yet,” he said, wearily. “I was wondering if you could stay on for a week. You see, I’m editing
Peace
News,
which means three nights in London with my wife, every month. I try to keep things going here, on my salary. The farm was in a terrible state when we took it over. Of course there are errors here and there, and we try to learn from one another at our Sunday night meetings, when all are welcome to say what he or she cares to complain about, or offer constructive criticism. Phillip, will you help me?”

In the next room the telephone was ringing. After awhile the secretary came in to say, “It’s the police. I’m afraid it’s bad news. Vincent has been found dead behind a hedge, he’d swallowed carbolic acid.” “Oh,” said Christie. He sighed deeply. “What a selfish thing to do, particularly at this time. Now I’ll have to go to the inquest——” He hesitated. “I wonder if you’d mind looking after things for me on the farm while I’m away in London? Otherwise I shall not be able to leave. Vincent left a note behind for me. It mentions Hester, which complicates things. The
question
is, will the truth be best served by suppressing the letter? On the other hand, if we do hold it back, it might look as though the Centre has failed him. What do you advise?”

Phillip suggested that Christie let him see the coroner on his behalf, and ask that the letter be regarded as confidential. “In any case, they never read out such letters.”

Christie hugged him with sudden release of tension. “Phillip! Will you stay here a week—the change will do you good—and give the Community the benefit of your knowledge? You see, I must get on with my writing!”

“Well, I don’t really know local conditions. And one can only really find out by trial and error.”

“But you were right in what you said about the wheat. The plants have tillered, and now the sheep have eaten out the crowns of nearly every plant. We’ll have to plough up that field, and take a catch-crop of white turnips.”

Phillip stayed. Cabton was on the tractor the following day, ploughing up the wheat. Phillip suggested that it be left, to provide some sort of sheep-feed, but Cabton went on ploughing. When Christie returned, Phillip said he’d learned something from the Sunday evening discussion.

“That’s what we need on the Bad Lands. Being the boss, one feels so alone. Well, thank you, Mrs. Christie, and everyone here, for giving me such a splendid time.” He meant it, too.

So work began upon the ruins of what, once a garden, had been turned into a rubbish tip, an eyesore, a trash dump, a waste land upon which villagers had dumped broken bottles and parts of bicycles, sheep heads and rusted soil-pails.

Out came the age-long weeds and heaps of rusty iron and rotting wood. Steve hacked down a great self-entangled bush whose shoots were said to be very palatable to ducks. In the middle of the bush he discovered the timbers of an old boat. He gathered the pieces and set them aside as basis of the bonfire of weeds and other rubbish. Then the tractor, drawing the pitch-pole harrow, moved in. Out came the yellow ropes and knotted tentacles of nettles apparently thriving on broken glass, bones, and old mortar of fallen brick walls. Never elsewhere had Phillip met a nettle which sprang up and grew so amazingly, with malice-glinting spines on leaves that raised a white rash on the forearm it touched. The broken glass and old bicycles and shattered pots and china were carted away to fill a depression in Denchman's Meadow, that afternoon to be covered with chalk and soil; while in the garden a bonfire smoked and flamed beside what had been an overgrown and sombre sprawl of lank elderberry branches, wild plum trees, and abandoned bedsteads without the brass nobs.

Only one mental picture had relieved the sight of that wilderness in all the years it had remained untackled: the nest of a partridge with its cluster of olive-brown eggs under the thin head of a wild cabbage, three years before.

All hedgerow trees had now been cut down to the stub. At last there was light and space! When the fire was out, the entire surface of the garden was reversed by Billy on the tractor; the weeds of the wilderness buried deep by the trim and shining breasts of twin ploughs of the original Ferguson—the ‘little grey Dicker'—now six years old. It had given splendid service, with one engine
reconditioning
during that time. Alas, when Billy was reversing to leave
the garden, with the plough-beam raised, he went back too far into the hedge, and touched a sawn stump of elderberry. The beam acted as a lever, the aluminium body of the bell-housing cracked, the top was lifted off, and the hydraulic gear rendered useless. There were no spare parts obtainable. The only thing to do was to take the tractor on the green trailer to Yarwich, there to have it dissembled, and a cast-iron bell-housing body made. This would take anything up to six months. The estimated cost,
£
170.

*

One day, standing on the mown grass path dividing two plots extending to the river-bank, where he wandered every day, Phillip saw fruit forming on new currant bushes and raspberry canes given him by a neighbour living beyond the Henthorpe airfield who grew the best Cox's apples in the district. There were rows of shallots, carrots, lettuces, and broad beans. At the bottom of the garden were young bush-trees laden with clusters of plum, pear and apple. All were set out methodically; a pleasing place in which to stand while the goldfinch sang above its nest in the fork of the yellow damson tree.

The setting of this excellent garden was the work of a Dunkirk man who had been invalided from the Army. Phillip had respect for this young old-soldier. He was what in East Anglia they called tradesman, a man who puts his job first. Joe had a well-paid civilian post on the Henthorpe airfield keeping the electric light plant running, and he came to work in the garden of River View in his spare time. He said he liked being with Phillip. It was not easy to realize this; it made Phillip feel, like ‘Ackers'
white-washed
cowhouse, a little unreal.

The sunflowers in the garden had swung imperceptibly to the westering sun when a 1933-model touring-car turned from the road into the yard and the crackle of worn tyres on gravel stopped
outside
the open door of the Studio. The driver, his eyes seemingly fixed beyond Phillip's head, said diffidently he hoped he wasn't intruding, and if Mr. Maddison was busy he would of course go away.

The reply was an invitation to go swimming with the family, and stay to supper. Meanwhile, how about a plate of raspberries, with cream skimmed off the two-gallon bowl of milk in the larder?

For this pilot had made friends with Boy Billy while Phillip was in hospital. Now he was almost one of the family. He was not very tall, but sturdy and broad. His width was emphasised by two ginger moustachios which grew in horizontal extension beyond the
lobes of his ears. ‘Ginger' claimed that there was ‘a Society for the Preservation of That Moustache, the width of which had created a record in all countries above the Equator'.

Despite the moustache of a fighter pilot, ‘Ginger' was one of the Night Bomber boys. That accounted for what Jonny called his ‘gazing eyes'. He had done many ops over the Rhineland. At times those eyes had a strained, fixed stare. Phillip knew that stare, and its cause: life ever on the verge of annihilation, causing a sensitivity that was sharp; perhaps too sharp at times. And
superstitious
. Never must a flying suit be washed: the smell of sweat was a reassurance. It held continuity, a thread of life holding from one op. to the next op. For the old life was gone, it seemed for ever: the life of sunflowers sensitive to the sun, of trout and nymph to the buoyancy of air and water, ploughman and his team to the temper of the soil. Alas, thought Phillip, for the deviation of genius which had sent a generation of youth out of the sun, and down to Pluto's dark halls …

“You're not working then? Sure I shan't be a bore?”

It was his first motorcar, that was obvious from his pride. And Phillip was expected to admire it. The Rover's lines were still those of a good-looker; the tonneau cover faded a little and torn, but patched neatly. The engine? Oh, it did an easy seventy. Phillip said nothing to that. The owner wiped away a speck of dust from the bonnet, and stood back to watch the effect of the
inspection
. For by now there were standing in the yard five others to share the interesting spectacle—Lucy, Billy, Peter, David, and Jonathan. Billy had just changed from farm overalls to the uniform of the Air Training Corps. He gazed at the ribbon of the D.F.C. on the blue tunic of his new and great friend. He was hoping to
escape from the perpetual drudgery of the tractor, from the authoritarian restrictions of the farm, if only the County War Agricultural Executive Committee would release him for the Royal Air Force.

Phillip's second son, Peter, had bicycled thirty miles from school for the week-end. David and Jonathan had rushed to greet ‘Ginger' from their haymaking on the lawn. Rosamund was away somewhere.

“Are you cutting your hay, sir?”

“Yes, we started four days ago.”

“Cor, we are, too. Come and see
our
haysel, sir!”

What ingenuity in fancy those two inseparable friends and brothers, David and Jonathan, displayed! They were making their hay on the little lawn under the apple-trees. The horse-cutter (lawn-mower) was harnessed to a pair of horses (two smaller village boys) with bridles and lines. While David drove the horse-cutter, Jonny made the haycocks, one with a pheasant's nest (stones) marked with a stick, lest it be taken to the stack. All this was a more or less faithful replica of the haymaking on the fifteen acres of the Scalt. The only criticism Phillip had to offer was too much shouting at the horses.

“The good teamsman talks to his horses, only the ineffectual man shouts at them.”

David replied, “Yes, sir,” modestly.

“A good farmer doesn't shout, either.”

At this Jonny gave his father a slightly puzzled look.

“You see, I am not a good farmer, Jonny.”

“We think you are, sir,” said David, adding, “when you're not tisky.”

Packed in ‘Ginger's' car, windscreen flat, with towels (a bit ragged after five years) they went for a bathe. When they stopped inside a gate and got out, the meticulous owner carefully fixed the worn tonneau cover on all its studs. By the side of a wide dyke they walked through tussocks of blue-green grasses and came to the
sea-wall
with its view of marshes beyond.

From there they made for a point of land called Gibraltar. Here two guts or channels met. On the broken bank of brown clay above the main channel they undressed, and then the fun began. Jonny saw what he excitedly claimed to be a dilly-crab moving in water at the base of the broken bank. Supposing it nipped his toe? Why didn't they bring the drag-net, for the plaice and bass now moving in with the tide to feed on ragworm and shrimp? Phillip
said that the current hereabouts was strong, the water deep, and do be careful everybody.

Thereupon the guest, arms vertical and moustache horizontal, dived in. Unexpectedly he fell flat and stood up in fifteen inches of water above the mud.

“Admiralty Sailing Directions,” Phillip explained, “emphasise the unnavigable condition of the shallower parts of this coast. There is no danger.”

Thus reassured, they all went in, the little boys capering and squeaking and their eyes shining with joy.

Cirrus clouds high in the sky. Terns from the sandy shore of the Point flying white-crook-winged—to pause, flutter, sharp beak down-peering—drop, splash, arise with sprat in beak—and away to their young in the marram grasses distant in the haze. A pair of mallard passed overhead. Gull, greenshank, sandpiper, redshank, and dotterel fed at the creamy fringes of the flowing water.

Rapidly the tide flooded. Already, in mid-channel, the tallest could not touch bottom. They swam against the flow while Gibraltar was ever receding; they turned round with the current and saw it slide away behind them.

“Be careful, boys, you can't swim, and the current is now swift.”

The warning was too late. For, rushing over the turf above the broken bank, there appeared an apparition with fair hair streaming and blue eyes alight, and without pause it uttered a crowing screech and flew leaping into air, to disappear with a splash into eight feet of water. It was David, the wild boy, who could not swim a stroke. Yelping and croaking with laughter, he managed somehow to splash and scramble like a dog to the muddy bank again. Yippee!

Afterwards they dried leisurely in the sun, and young Jonny, covered with mud, was dipped in an eddy, splashing his legs and beating arms with cries of delight.

No fear of water; no fear of anything in the sunshine. That was the form of life: the sharp senses based on agility, as the speed of the stag, the rise of the trout, the flight of the wild duck, the beam of the sun. This was the first time Billy had come with them. Lucy had said he felt ashamed because he had never learned to swim. Now, he was splashing with the little boys.

How long had the haycocks been standing on the Scalt? Rain had fallen day after day, week after week. There they lay, sodden and flattened. Had they been built more upright, as requested, more the shape of a mushroom stalk instead of a mushroom, the
rain might have run off, and not into a quarter-ton or so of winter-feed standing in each haycock.

But words had value no longer. Only the thundering of the bombers, by day and by night, was reality to Billy now.

The hay was beginning to get mouldy. Cattle will not eat mouldy hay any more than a man will eat a mouldy egg
.
One Sunday afternoon, when the sun was at last shining, the smaller children and their father went down the hill and over the bridge and along the causeway to the Scalt, to open the heaps of hay and let the drying wind pass through them. The work was hard. There were many tons to lift. The small boys were soon red in the face, and had to be told to work slower and easier. After three hours they stopped and rested. Lucy brought tea, then they went on with the work.

In the evening as they sat at the supper table the casement windows were splashed with rain. Jonny said to David, “Blast, there goes the price of my little old promised pony, and yar'll hev to stay at the village school, 'bor.”

*

Mrs. Valiant's husband, Tom, nearing seventy years, was now working for Phillip. Before coming to the Bad Lands, he had worked fifty-four consecutive years at Henthorpe, and during that time never an hour on Sunday (except in the stable, feeding his horses, which he did not reckon to be called working on the Sabbath). Tom Valiant had for some years been occupying one of Phillip's service cottages; and, desperate for help, Phillip had to ask Tom to work for him. Before this, out of courtesy, he had asked Charles Box if he would release him. “It's nothing to do with me,” Charles Box said. Later, Phillip realized that it was not even the affair of Charles Box's steward. It was up to Tom to give a week's notice. Maddison had the tied cottage, so Maddison had the man; the rest was mere fuss.

“I don't want to see no master wrong, but no good ever come o' Sunday wark and never will,” Tom declared, and that was final. So Phillip and the children, with Steve, worked during Sunday, a fine day.

Horatio Bugg, standing in his yard, walked out of his way to tell Phillip, “I won't say who it is said it, but I will tell you what he said, and that was that you are burning your children up by Sunday work.”

“Europe, and England, have been burning, and may soon be starving.”