Wild Geese Overhead (3 page)

“Yes, the garden is to the side of the house.”

“I did not think”, he tried to explain, “that you would have much time for a garden. Shows all I know!”

“Well, indeed I don't, but I get one of the men to do the heavy digging, and then my niece comes at the week-ends and looks after it when the time comes.”

“Is that the girl in the photograph on the table downstairs?”

She looked at him, astonished. “Yes.”

“I just happened to glance at it,” he said. “I think she passed me on the road last Sunday. What a bright airy room!”

“I'm glad you like it.”

There was a pause.

“Well—is that all right, then?” he asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“I think so, too,” he said.

There was a moment's awkward hesitation, then they both laughed and shook hands.

The following Saturday afternoon, he moved in.

That was three weeks ago, and he had stuck it out manfully. For the first week there was the novelty of the situation, particularly the incredible quiet of the evening, so that sometimes it made him listen with breath held, caught him out of his chair to walk about and stand and listen again. Once or twice he experienced an almost ominous tension in the quiet, as if space or time were made of an invisible glass about to crash in on him. Occasionally he caught himself all taut by the closed door hearkening for the slightest sound from the kitchen premises. The farm cottages were on the other side of the steading, below the edge of the wood.

His landlady had even improved on acquaintance. A mothering women, with bright greetings and a warm husky laugh. Her eyes would move over the supper table even while she was speaking to him, anxious that everything should be there. He had already developed the habit of bringing home the last edition of his paper and any special tit-bit of city news. She loved this and he knew she looked forward to it. Yet though she would stand talking in the friendliest way, she was never obtrusive and always withdrew at the right moment. She respected his privacy and he hers; and it was as well perhaps to keep that up, for a time anyway. Besides, he wanted to do some reading, quiet reading in which he might gather some ideas to turn over and feed on.

His reviewing for the parent daily often dissatisfied him, because he was conscious of using ready-made, if high, standards. Academic and correct, rather than fresh and pungent. There was a sense in which even the best of his reviews were almost automatic. He knew at once when to apply Aristotle!

He got his deepest interest out of books of literary criticism. They excited him more than any other kind of book, certainly more than the usual modern novel, play, or even poetry. He saw the obvious weakness in this for it implied greater interest in the criticism of a thing than in the thing itself. But the implication was only half true. Great literature did not excite him: it quietened him, gathered all his warring parts into a harmony that was self-illumined. But criticism excited him. A Communist turning the Marxian dialectic on H. G. Wells or on Surrealists or on Ezra Pound was enough to whet his mind to a cunning edge. A point for analysis and challenge on every page! For he abhorred a special or propagandist pleading that blurred exact analysis by inexact or partial definition, and none the less because he might agree with the essayist's main position. For his one birthright that he was not going to sell to any one, or to any cause however he might believe in it, was that ultimate apprehension of truth which brought illumination and, in the complete suspension of disbelief, the spirit's clear freedom. It was a fundamental of the spiritual life of man as a farm was a fundamental of his economic life. If ever he did write a book, it would probably be a long essay with some such title as
Definitions
. And with luck it might show a passion for fineness of thought rather than a pedantic appreciation of lucidity!

Yet though here he was in the right spot, with whole long evenings to himself and a quietness he could feel—surely the perfect environment for careful thinking—he found he could hardly even read! This astonished him. And when he tried to think it out, his mind fumbled. Even simple issues slid away unresolved as if his mind were in fact going vague and woolly. The vacant earth! Or the bovine stare!—out of which he had already wakened himself more than once.

True, in that first week a certain positive value did accrue; the morning walk to the bus-stop, the evening walk back, the regular hours and the quiet living—particularly the cutting down of drink—did have a beneficial effect on his health. Imperceptibly his reservoirs began to fill with energy. The coughing that had troubled him on going to bed had diminished to a few dry hacks quite free of discomfort. (After his first night's performance his landlady, in deep concern, had put a fire in his bedroom. She would lose money on him yet!) More than once when walking to the bus-stop in the morning, he had been invaded by a feeling of physical well-being. It would suddenly come over him, send his eyes happily questing around and his legs in long spanking strides down the road. He had time for a walk in the gloaming, too, and went up through the farm fields, into the wood, and generally explored his immediate environment. Twice, before going to bed, he had had short walks in the moonlight and had heard the owls hooting in the wood.

But the one thing he could not do was concentrate.

The more he recognized the fact, the more restless he became. He could listen, he could “stand and stare”, but he got none of the poet's sensation of pleasure or fulfilment. On the contrary he was merely pervaded by a feeling of personal futility that, dwelt upon, rapidly mounted into irritation. He found he could do nothing with his physical well-being in the country. There was no way of spending it. Deep in him he began to realize by the end of that first week that the country was of no use to him—apart of course from the animal matter of physical health. He could now understand the gold-diggers who came back to the nearest town to squander their “dust” in a glorious blow-out. One endured in the country for specific reasons.

Deeper than all that, too, lay this thought—the only one he found no difficulty in sustaining. It was a thought or theory that had begun to divide the whole modern world. It dealt with the conception or nature of freedom. Hitherto we had believed that a man could not be absolutely free until he found himself independent of his fellows, with the power to go where he liked and do what he liked. No one man must have dominion over another. So feudalism was fought and conquered and man became free. But soon it was found that man was not free, that he was still everywhere in chains, and more inhuman chains, because they tied him to machines rather than to other human beings. And the results were certainly more inhuman than the world had yet known, in the form of slums, unemployment, poverty, and wars of a brutality and magnitude beyond any medieval dream.

So there arose in the modern age the new school of thought which said that man does not attain freedom by being able to break away from society, but, on the contrary, attains freedom only in and through society itself. Only in a community working, not for the profit of a few but for the good of the whole, does man really become free. For he is a social animal and without his social inheritance would be no more than a beast of the jungle. The old bourgeois conception of the freedom of the individual apart from society was a pretty myth with a hellish inheritance.

So the opposition went. And Will had to admit to himself that, as far as his little effort to attain solitary freedom in the country was concerned, the new school of thought won hands down!

And the experience of being introduced to the landlady's niece on his second Sunday on the farm did not disillusion him. He could see by an instinctive withdrawing movement the girl made on his unexpected approach that she would have avoided the introduction if she could. But that was now impossible for she and her aunt were standing on the grass in front of the house regarding the dying crocuses, and Mrs. Armstrong, turning round, greeted him, and could not but present “My niece, Jenny—at least I should say Miss Baird.” Her laughing words were a trifle self-conscious, for there was little natural guile in this warm-hearted woman. They bowed without shaking hands, and Mrs. Armstrong to cover her astonishment at such behaviour asked him where he had been and he told her, adding a question or two and being answered. Jenny showed no interest, and looked politely at her crocuses. She was without coat and hat and her hair had deep gold lights in it. There was admittedly a cool distinction in her face. Lifting her eyes unexpectedly, she met his—and did not waver—but calmly regarded him so that he got the impression of the eyes being set wide apart and so clearly blue as to seem translucent. He removed his own as if they had been contemplating her absentmindedly and had in no way been impressed.

He walked into the house chatting to Mrs. Armstrong and, without turning round to acknowledge Jenny, entered his room.

That should about suit her! he thought.

All the same, something in the encounter excited him and he felt acutely annoyed. He understood her attitude perfectly well. Like himself, she wished to be free of the city; had enough of its contacts during the week; did not want, in particular, to run into the city male type. And here she comes to her small estate in the country and finds it invaded by—of all things—a city lodger! It must be a bit galling to her, obviously. And she must have exercised restraint in not persuading her aunt to refuse him. Yet there again, restraint was palpably her most striking characteristic!

But, above all, what right had she to do the whole thing with so calm and untroubled a face? He could see the face still. Primavera in the picture! Her cool grace did not impress him, and if she was afraid he might claim her acquaintance, either here or in town, she was mistaken, vastly mistaken. The legend of her little country estate was safe enough as far as he was concerned!

Finding himself all worked up, he paused, contemplated himself, and began to chuckle.

His landlady came in to set the supper table. They talked about his walk again, where he had gone and the degree of less cold in the air. There was nothing else to talk about—except the new item, the niece.

“She works in town, but loves to come out here for the week-end. She's been giving me my orders to-day about getting the garden dug and manured! She's daft on flowers.”

“Is she?”

“Yes. Every week-end she'll be out, after the next one. It's a craze with her. And she knows every flower there is, I think—Latin names and all!”

“Really!”

“Oh, she's a one! And very clever. She works in an office in town. She's the private secretary to a partner in a big firm of exporters.”

“Very clever of her.”

“She had to know Spanish.”

“Oh!”

“Yes. She had to learn it specially.”

“She would, I'm sure. I mean you don't usually get it at school.”

“No.” She was modestly proud of her niece. “Do you like this stew?”

“I think it's delicious.”

“You are not difficult to please, I must say.”

“You don't give me a chance to grumble. By the way, if I should be late any night getting home, for goodness' sake don't wait for me. If I'm not here at my usual supper time, you'll know I'm eating in town.”

She paused. “I hope you're not going to start working late. If you don't mind me saying so, I think you're looking better since you came. And that cough has got less a lot.”

He reassured her. It would only be occasionally. And if he was delayed beyond the last bus and didn't turn up at all, she mustn't worry.

When she had gone out he asked himself ironically: Paving the way for return to the fleshpots—already?

He was not blinding himself any more. The whole final truth of his retreat to the country was no more than an elaborate (and rather silly) pretence.

Then one morning, on the way to the bus, a cold morning of sleety rain, he got wet from the thighs down and spent a miserable day with a swelling throat, drank hot whisky toddy in a cosy corner with some of the boys, caught the last bus, and got soaked again on the mile-walk home. That weather kept up for several days. He bought waterproof leggings and a sou'wester.

With blind darkness and rain over the face of the country, Don asked him on the third night: “Honest to God, is it worth it?”

He got up and stretched himself before the fire in the saloon bar. He could not give in to them. That was his trouble now. The argument grew hot.

“All the same, that's what gets you,” said Will. “You live in this fetid atmosphere, you crawl home through the streets, like rats through open sewers, and tumble, half-sodden, into your bunks——”

“And what do you do?” interrupted Mac.

“Ah—I stride through the country, wind and rain in my face, exhilarating, like a song. In fact, I often do sing. I arrive in a glow. I strip—and into a bath—and then——”

“You don't sing again?” Jackie raised his eyebrows.

Rob intervened for the first time. He had been watching Will. “You're all wrong. I know what it is. The dam' fellow has got a woman.”

Light broke on their faces. There was a clamour.

Will glanced at his watch. “Good heavens! She'll think I've got run over. I'll have to sprint. So long, you bunch of soaks!” and he grabbed his hat.

“You dark horse!” cried Jackie. “So that's why you have never invited us out!”

Now he had not invited them out because he dared not, because there was nothing to show them, nowhere to go. All he could do was to take them to the nearest country pub and that meant a walk of over two miles. He could not ask fellows, bright intelligent fellows, out to his place for the privilege of gazing at trees and hedges—all bare—in a cold wind and expect them to be excited! After the first few minutes, they would feel helpless, awkward, and would begin looking around for some way of escape. All that could possibly be done at such a moment was to put more coal on the fire and produce a bottle. They would then brighten up at once!