The Power of the Dead (3 page)

For himself, Hilary, whose life had been spent first in a Glasgow shipping office and then on the high seas until he entered the Ministry of Shipping in the war, and incidentally made a small fortune in the buying and selling of tramp steamers, had no desire to play the squire. He had been driven by an idea to see his father’s land back in the family, and thus, in part, to heal the despairing early memories of a father who had kicked over the traces and broken his mother’s heart. Now the land was back in the family, the ambition of his life had been realised; but so far it had not yet given him any satisfaction.

*

Phillip saw the red car stop outside in the lane and ran down from his writing room. Nuncle was just opening the door to get out.

“Good afternoon, Phillip.”

“Good afternoon, Uncle Hilary. How are you? Have you had a good journey?”

Hilary looked at Phillip’s beard. He paused with his hand on the top of the door and said, “You can’t go about looking like that, you know. That beard looks simply awful.”

Phillip, as though complimented by this remark, waited a moment before saying, “May I take your bag? How are the trout in Wales?”

“Oh, local poachers have taken out most of Captain Williams’ fish with a prawning net. He tried to stop them using a seine net for sewin at the mouth of his river, you see. How are the rainbows in the Longpond doin’?”

“I’ve seen several. They’ve grown a lot since they were put in. They like the deeper water at the bottom end, near the reeds.”

“They’re probably tryin’ to get down with the stream to spawn,” replied Hilary, as he squeezed himself out of the roadster. “Rainbows usually disappear in land-locked water, you know, after a year or two.” There was a pause, then he said, “You must shave off that beard, you know.”

“Oh.”

“It doesn’t become you.”

“To tell the truth, I haven’t had time to look. Where’s your bag?”

“I can manage it, thanks. But be a good fellow and give me a hand with the wireless set.”

At the back of the boot was the biggest loud-speaker Phillip had seen. “I say, that looks a magnificent job. The promenade concerts from 2LO are starting again. My little Cosmos
crystal-valve
set is very feeble, except late at night. How many valves has this?”

“Twelve. I can get America on the Welsh coast. I get New York sometimes very late at night at Bournemouth, but I don’t anticipate it will pick up many foreign stations here, being so far inland. Well, Lucy, my dear. You look blooming.”

He was about to kiss her when he heard Phillip’s voice behind him saying, “Oh hell. Don’t look up the lane, anyone. I’ll take in the wireless set,” and he staggered away with the cabinet.

Hilary turned to look up the lane and saw what was evidently a country gentleman approaching about two hundred yards away, walking with a shooting stick and a retriever on lead. He asked Lucy who he was.

“It’s Major Crichel, I think.”

“Why doesn’t Phillip want to see him?”

“Oh, I don’t really know, exactly. I think it’s something to do with politics. He’s the local Conservative chairman, I think.”

Hilary went after his nephew. “Major Crichel has called. You must see him.”

“But I don’t want to have anything to do with politics.
Anyway
, I believe in socialism.”

“Well, the sooner you learn sense the better. You’ve come to live in the country, so you must take your place in the normal life of a country gentleman. And politics apart, it’s a matter of
common
courtesy to greet a guest, for whatever purpose he comes. You can’t allow Lucy to stand there by herself. Come along.”

They went out as Major Crichel raised his cloth cap. Lucy said, “How very good of you to come all this way, Major Crichel. You’re just in time for tea! This is Captain Sir Hilary Maddison—Major Crichel.”

After a few words Major Crichel excused himself, saying he had to be on his way, but might he include their two names on his list? Having made a tick against the names he enquired about the corn harvest and left.

Hilary approached his nephew on another course.

“I thought Crichel looked a thoroughly decent fellow. Why don’t you like him?”

“He wouldn’t let his wife read
The
Constant
Nymph,
which I lent her when she came to see us, but sent it back the next day by his gardener, with a terse note of thanks.”

“That’s a very slight reason for not wanting to see him, surely?”

“Just before I lent the book he asked me if he could count on my vote at the next general election.”

“Well?”

“I told him that I felt I couldn’t allow him to count on me, as I was unreliable politically.”

“Why couldn’t you say straight out what you meant?”

“I thought I had.”

Hilary turned away impatiently. He faced his bearded nephew again. “What’s all this nonsense about your being a socialist?”

“But mayn’t I decide for myself at the polls, Nuncle? Probably I shan’t vote at all in the next General Election.”

“It’s high time you learned sense. And don’t call me by that awful name.”

Lucy came in with the tea tray. The guest settled himself in the only armchair in the room—it had come from his old home—and read
The
Morning
Post.
Soon he was snorting about the unrest in the Durham coalfields.

“Here you are, Phillip. You ought to read Birkenhead’s speech, and learn what your precious socialist agitators are responsible for—unsettling the men, so that the Geordies won’t do an honest day’s work.” He looked round, “Hullo, where’s he gone, Lucy?”

Phillip had crept quietly upstairs; he had heard what was said, and thought, Five thousand poor bloody Geordies lying out on July the First, in Sausage Valley. You’re right, they hadn’t done an honest day’s work, the machine guns from Ovillers and the Glory Hole got them first. Then, not wishing to cross Nuncle further, he pretended to sneeze and returned downstairs after blowing his nose.

“I’m afraid there’s a lot of doust, as the men call it, in the barley sheaves, Uncle. It gets in the nostrils.”

After tea Hilary let down an aerial from his bedroom window, and pushed a portable copper earth into the flower-bed below. Having heard the 6 o’clock news, he disconnected the battery and said to Lucy, “I don’t suppose you’ve had much chance of leaving
the house while the harvest was on, why not drive with me over the downs, to Stonehenge? We’ll take Uncle John with us. There’ll just be room for Billy beside us.”

Left alone, Phillip went up to his room, and tried to write, but his mind was crossed. He wondered where he could go. On the Norton to Stonehenge? No: he wasn’t wanted—there had been plenty of room in the dickey seat. So he went to Colham, and sat in The Rising Sun, drinking beer and playing skittles with the landlord, a fish-poaching ruffian named ‘Bosun’ Tinker, whom he had found to be a kind man under his rough exterior. Once again he determined to leave the village more often, and mix in the world outside. After three pints of ale he rode home, and was putting the bike away when he heard the sudden blaring music of the loudspeaker, followed a few moments later by silence.

He stood in the sun, irresolute; then going through a side-door beside the neglected croquet lawn—both he and Lucy were
waiting
for a chance to restore and level the grown-out turf—he entered the parlour; and stopped abruptly.

Hilary was sitting in the armchair, doing his cross-word puzzle; while, held between his legs, was Billy. The child was striving to crawl away, heaving with red face which, turned in his father’s direction, showed imminent tears of hopelessness. Phillip felt enervated; the sight recalled his own feelings of desperate
weakness
when his uncle used to hold him on the lawn at Epsom, chuckling at his puny efforts to escape.

“No!”

At the cry Hilary looked up. “What’s the matter?”

“Shall I take Billy, if he’s annoying you, Uncle?”

“Of course he’s not annoyin’ me. Billy and I are gettin’ along famously, aren’t we, you young rascal?”

“I rather fancy he wants to go to the lavatory.”

Hilary uncrossed his legs. Phillip held out his arms, but the child gave him a mournful look before hiding his face on an arm and lying still on the hearth rug. Rusty the spaniel looked up, wagging his tail-stump, then crept to lie beside the child.

*

After supper Hilary lit two joss-sticks and stood them in a pot upon the chimney shelf. The ends fumed slowly; a pleasant scent spread into the room; bringing to Hilary an almost poignant memory of his early life in the Far East; and particularly of his
first return home, just before the Old Queen’s Jubilee, with souvenirs of travel, including lotus flowers (in paper) from the Feast of
Homeless
Ghosts, during the Seventh Moon. The lotus lanterns, each holding a tiny lighted taper, were launched upon the moonlit waters to guide lost souls to heaven. He had brought home a boxful, meaning to sail them on the Longpond, in the company of his parents, brothers and sisters: but he had found the estate sold, his mother forsaken by his father, and the old home in disintegration.

The shock of that homecoming was still active in memory. Hilary walked alone to the Longpond, to return and pour himself a stiff drink from one of the two bottles of the special malt whisky he had brought with him, and kept hidden in his portmanteau.

*

A beam, the trunk of a medium-sized oak shaped by the strokes of Elizabethan adzes, crossed the parlour of the farmhouse. On first seeing it, Phillip had spent a whole day in ‘feeding’ the wood with linseed oil. The beam gave a feeling of enduring strength, although its sap-wood was riddled by the death-watch beetle.

The walls of the farmhouse were thick, the new plaster smooth; but it had been distempered too soon, and after a few weeks had flaked here and there. The stone floors were liable to sweat; and were cold, even in summer, to the feet. Other defects became apparent. The bathroom, put in by a local builder, was too small. It had been part of a bedroom. The walls were of asbestos sheeting, a mere box. The bath, a second-hand affair of heavy enamelled iron and mahogany, had been carted from a Victorian country house which had been occupied by the military authorities during the war. The house had been bought by Hilary’s agent and gutted for the panelling and fittings.

The bath was deep and it took most of the contents of the
hot-water
boiler to bring the water-level one-third up the sides. The flue of the boiler had been led into one of the wide, wood-burning chimneys, wherein the fumes of coke now wandered, to drift erratically with the wind. In the south-west gale the coke burned yellow-hot, causing the copper tank to rumble, while steam from the safety pipe bubbled through the cold-water tank in the attic. When the wind swept from the downs, eddying about the elm spinney to the east of the house, the fire went dull and sometimes out. It was not wise to think about preparing a bath without listening to the B.B.C. weather report. When the copper tank
rumbled, look out! The water was liable to fizzle and spirt from the heavy brass tap, with its lever-like handle; again, when the N.E. blew, the boiler went sulky, according to Mrs. Rigg, who helped Lucy about the house. The water was tepid when one got in, to feel the cold iron under the soles of the bather’s feet; the bather being Lucy, for Phillip always had a cold bath in the morning.

Even so, the cold tap was temperamental, like the hot-water boiler. When opened full-bore the water was liable to flood over the rim of the bath very quickly. It was stiff, to stop dripping; fortunately Billy could not turn it on.

Hilary, upon introducing them to the place the previous June, had explained that it must serve until markets improved, since the yield from his investment was already swallowed up by more urgent repairs to the estate.

He repeated this intention on the morning after his arrival. “I’m prepared to forgo, for three years, any return on my money, Phillip. I regard this farm as a capital investment for the future, which means your future, provided all goes well. To put everything in first-class order now would result in an inverted pyramid. The agricultural market won’t stand capital improvements just now.”

“What’s an inverted pyramid, Nuncle?”

“Spending all one’s capital at once, as Lucy’s brothers have done in their so-called Works. And don’t call me ‘Nuncle’. I’ve told you before that I don’t like it.”

“Sorry. It slipped out. ‘Nuncle’ is the nickname of the king, or the lord, in some of Shakespeare’s plays.”

“Well, you’re not Shakespeare. Now please pay attention. If we can hang on through this present slump—and, as I said, I’m prepared to—and you learn to do your job properly, you’ll live to reap the benefit of what I am doin’ for you. But put your heart into it, and chuck trying to write novels. Aunt Viccy tells me they’re rotten.”

“I agree. I wrote them. But what are we two against so many?”

This joke, in imitation of G.B. Shaw’s reply to a solitary shout of ‘Rotten!’ from the gallery, after Shaw had held up his hand for silence following enthusiastic cheers and clapping at the first night of
Arms
and
the
Man,
missed fire.

“Well, you yourself have told me that your books have sold only a few hundred copies all together, so why not regard this writing business as belonging to the past?”

“That’s exactly where it does belong to, as a fact.”

“Good. I’m glad you see the sense of it, Phillip. Now to get down to brass tacks. You will pay the half-yearly rent to the agent, Captain Arkell, at his office in Colham. My bank will continue paying sixty pounds a quarter into your account until next
Midsummer
, after which we shall be in a position to review the situation.”

“Well, thanks very much, but I think I can manage without the allowance.”

“If you’ll kindly let me finish what I was going to say——”

“Sorry.”

“There’s Lucy to be considered, remember. After all, she comes of a good family, and it won’t do to have her going about looking like a field woman. Also, you’ve got a position to keep up now. The Maddisons were here in the fourteenth century. That reminds me, I see you’re wearing a signet ring with some sort of crest on it. Whose is it?”