Читать книгу The Interpreter - Philip Gibbs - Страница 12

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English village life had been a new experience to John Barton, and he liked it so much that it was one of the reasons for his reluctance to leave England for that journey to the United States.

Spurfold was a friendly village, he found, and its inhabitants had been kind to the Americans on the hill in the old cottage with the big chimneys, weathered tiles, and lattice windows. Judy and her baby had been the first to get acquainted with them. Old ladies had stopped in the lanes to make love to the infant Hercules, as John called his distinguished nephew, Robert Bramley, junior. That had led to invitations to tea from young ladies as well as old, and presents of fruit, vegetables, and honey, brought to the cottage door. They fell in love with Judy as well as with her baby. They liked her frank way of speech, her American accent, and the laughter in her eyes—those dark eyes which laughed out of the canvas of her husband’s portrait on the wall of the sitting room. The old ladies took a liking, too, to Mrs. Barton, with her white hair, her downright way of speech, and her pursuit of truth into the mysteries of the spiritual world, including all the prophecies which foretold the downfall of the German eagle and the victory of the lion and the white bear.

“A delightful woman,” said Mrs. Mulberry Jenkins, the vicar’s wife. “For an American she’s really most pleasant and sympathetic. She is very angry with those dreadful isolationists in the United States.”

“That girl Judy is one of the best,” said Eve Martindale, the young woman in riding breeches and polo shirt who did the village milk round in a filthy old car, now that Farmer Joyce’s son had been called up for military service. She was the daughter of a retired colonel who was in the Spurfold Home Guard with his former gardener, whose wages he could no longer afford, and with a miscellaneous company including a garage hand, a schoolmaster, an Indian civil servant on the retired list, a writer of detective stories, and the man behind the counter of the village store, whose favour it was necessary to have if one wanted cigarettes, chocolate, and other precious things now rationed and getting scarce.

“Friendly folk,” said John Barton, who came to know these people and others in the neighbourhood. “That American legend of the English being standoffish and icy to strangers is all wrong, although I used to believe it myself.”

“Perhaps the war has broken the ice,” said Judy. “I find them all very sociable, and they heap little kindnesses on me because Robin is a prisoner of war.”

“I still find some of them very comical,” admitted John. “When some of those old dames come to tea, and the old colonel gives tongue on India, and the vicar upholds the virtue of the old-school tie, it’s like a stage play by Somerset Maugham. I have to retire now and then to laugh outside the door. It’s almost unbelievable.”

Judy laughed. She was glad to see that John could laugh again.

“There’s a lot of quality in them,” she said. “Those old dames have the spirit of Queen Elizabeth. They make a joke of being bombed.”

“Some of them are like Bloody Mary,” said John. “They would like to chop every German into small bits. I’m getting a bit bloodthirsty myself, but I don’t go as far as that.”

This village life amused him when he came down from the hill to post a letter, or buy a packet of cigarettes. He liked to hear the friendly greetings from those he met.

“Good morning, sir. Nice weather.”

“Good morning, Mr. Barton. How is your charming sister?”

“Fine morning, sir. How’s the war going, do you think? Are the Russians going to hold Moscow?”

“I ’eard your President Roosevelt on the wireless last night. ’E knows ’ow to talk, don’t ’e? You’ll be in with us one day, that’s certain.”

The man behind the counter in the village store winked at him with an air of mystery, stooped behind his counter, and slipped a packet into his hand as though it were a deadly secret.

“Fifty Gold Flake cigarettes kept for an American customer.”

“Thanks a lot,” said the American.

He seemed to find the real spirit of England in this village, as he had found it in factories, and dockyards, and underground shelters. It was not all good. He came up against snobbishness now and then. He found an irritating condescension towards his own people from the retired colonel and the Indian civil servant. Some of the “old dames,” as he called them, liked their little bit of scandal, and did not obey the Christian command to “love thy neighbour as thyself.” They were down on Eve Martindale because she had been seen about with a Canadian officer late at night, sometimes on the heath. They were bitter about Gerald Monk, the poet, whom they accused of being a pacifist and a defeatist.

“Why doesn’t he join the Home Guard?” asked Mrs. Mulberry Jenkins.

“He has a bit of a heart,” said John Barton, who liked him.

“I doubt it,” said Mrs. Mulberry Jenkins grimly. “Anyhow, he hasn’t got guts.”

But on the other side, thought John, there was valour, a stoical acceptance of adversity—the war was going from bad to worse—and a fine spirit of service for England’s sake. Almost everybody in the village had taken in mothers and children during the blitz. The peace of their home life had been broken up by this invasion from the London slums. Some of those refugee mothers were very troublesome with their feuds and grousings and unpleasant habits. Some of the refugee children were little demons. Valour? Yes. As the war went on in the skies and in the desert, village names appeared in the casualty lists. The grocer’s son had been taken prisoner in Libya. The vicar’s son had been killed in a raid on the Ruhr. Eve Martindale’s brother had been blinded by a mine. The schoolmaster’s boy had died as the result of a crash in his Spitfire. From one small village death had taken its toll of youth—the only sons. There was a wonderful acceptance of this sacrifice. The grief was hidden. Just a word or two with wet eyes, and then the daily round as usual; no outward sign of agony as John Barton had shown when Anne was taken from him.

It’s their code of expression, thought John. It’s their old tradition. They’ve had a thousand years of war. But those mothers of the only sons have broken hearts, I guess. They just don’t make a fuss about it, that’s all.

From the hilltop where the cottage stood there was a panorama over the countryside, looking across the south downs on the far horizon. There was always a wonderful play of light over the woods and fields and those distant downs. On brief escapes from London it was a pleasure to John to have this view of England beyond his porch, though sometimes he found its beauty painful, because it made him think of Anne. She had loved this countryside, not far as the crow flies from her own home. She had ridden down its lanes and bridle paths. She had felt its wind and rain on her face. She had grown up in an English garden over there.

Spurfold was not quite so safe as John had believed when he sent his mother and sister there with the infant Hercules. On many nights when he stood on the little terrace with Judy or his mother he could see the flash of gunfire along the coast and hear the sound of the guns. More than a thousand bombs had been dropped over the woods and fields within a five-mile range of Spurfold. Thousands of incendiary bombs had lighted little fires hereabouts, threatening thatched houses and old barns. They had hardly done any damage, but only by freaks of luck. Mrs. Mulberry Jenkins, the vicar’s wife, had a bomb explode within a hundred yards of her front door. It had made a crater as deep as a small cottage. A hundred yards this way or that was just the difference between life and death—a matter of luck, the odds of chance.

There was a respite from the bombing over London. The Germans were too busy with Russia. But a few raiders came over the south coast. A number of times during these summer nights, and several times when he was home from his work in London, or after a journey into provincial towns, John heard the wailing of the sirens sounding the alert. It was always after black-out time when Judy had pulled the curtains close.

It happened one night when Judy and he had invited Gerald Monk and his sister to supper, a frugal wartime supper of shepherd’s pie, followed by stewed plums somewhat tart for lack of sugar. Mrs. Barton was apologizing for this meagre fare to Belinda Monk, who seemed very pleased with her portion of shepherd’s pie, which she thought was perfect.

“Gerald and I,” she said, “don’t bother much about food, as long as we have enough to keep us alive. Gerald is so absent-minded that he doesn’t really know whether he’s had a meal or not unless he feels faint for lack of food; and when I’m painting I just grab at anything in the larder. This is luxury.”

She caught John’s eyes and smiled across the little table at him.

She had a very charming smile, he thought, and he had been helped at times after the death of Anne by her sympathy—never spoken in words, but somehow expressed.

It was when she smiled at him that the alert sounded over Spurfold village, rising to the hill on which this cottage stood. Down in the village someone blew a whistle. That would be old Bugwood of the British Legion, who rode round on a bicycle with a policeman’s whistle in his mouth.

No one at the table paid any attention to it beyond lending an ear to it. Judy listened for a moment, glanced at John, and then went on with a little argument she was having with Gerald Monk. He had been telling her that the war had brought his writing to a full stop. It made him feel completely dead as far as any creative work went. Needless to say, he couldn’t write a line about the war itself.

“That surprises me a lot,” said Judy, in her frank, blunt way. “I should have thought that the war would have given you everything that a poet needs for inspiration.”

“Good God, no,” said Monk hastily. “What kind of inspiration is there in the competition of mass murder and in all the demons of hate and cruelty which have surged up from the dark pit of man’s apelike ancestors?”

“There’s more in it than that,” said Judy. “Not that I want to lay down the law to a poet. No sir! But as the wife of a painter, I see wonderful pictures which might be put into words, or paint, or music.”

She blushed a little at her own boldness in talking like this. It was not a habit of hers. She didn’t pretend to be one of the intellectuals. She was just “Plain Judy.”

“What kind of pictures, Judy?” asked Belinda Monk.

Judy laughed and looked self-conscious.

“I think I’m talking nonsense. But sometimes I see little pictures down in the village and round about which make me want somebody to write about them, so that this life of England in wartime may be recorded for future generations. I mean so many little things will be missed. Children looking up into the sky at bombing airplanes when they ought to be seeing fairies. A cricket match on the village green when England was expecting invasion. A mother meeting her soldier son home on leave. Oh! Lots of little things like that which make me want to weep.”

“For heaven’s sake, Judy,” said John with a short laugh, “if you go on like that I shall suspect that you are writing a novel in secret.”

“Sorry, John!” cried Judy, now thoroughly embarrassed.

“What Judy says cuts pretty deep,” said Gerald Monk thoughtfully.

Over the cottage with its big chimneys came the dull, heavy drone of bombing airplanes.

“John,” said Judy suddenly, “I believe those are Germans.”

Her face had gone suddenly white. There was fear in her eyes.

“I guess not,” said John. “New British bombers. Big fellows.”

He guessed wrong. The answer came instantly—five heavy explosions which shook the ground under Dawn Cottage like an earthquake. The oak table at which they were having supper seemed to rise and fall; a silver candlestick on the mantelshelf tottered and fell. There was a heavy pressure against the leaded windowpanes and the old plaster walls, and everything rattled.

“Not enormously far away,” said Belinda Monk thoughtfully but quite calmly.

Her voice broke the silence which followed those explosions.

“I must go and grab the baby,” said Judy.

She darted from the table and they heard her run up the narrow stairs.

“Silly business,” said John Barton. “What do they think they’ll get by dropping bombs on this hillside?”

“Most annoying,” said Mrs. Barton. “It breaks our little spell of peace. Judy is always so scared, poor darling. It’s because of the precious child.”

“This bloody war!” said Gerald. “This war against women and children!”

“I expect the searchlights are up,” said John. “Let’s go and have a look. It’s quite like old times after the respite we’ve had.”

“Glad you enjoy it,” said Gerald Monk grimly. “It makes me boil with rage.”

He followed his friend into the cottage garden on the top of Spurfold hill.

The searchlights were up for the first time after several months following the Battle of Britain and the great blitz from the air. Long white fingers of light felt about the night sky, luminous because of a harvest moon. They made geometrical patterns, as though a lesson in Euclid were being demonstrated in the heavens. The trees and hedges were black below the sky, and the fields were a pale, unearthly green.

“How lovely it is here,” said John. “England at night. God! How I hate the idea of leaving it.”

Gerald did not speak for quite a time. His tall figure and lean, haggard face were motionless as he stared across the landscape to where the downs were faintly visible.

Presently he spoke.

“What Judy said was very interesting,” he said. “If I could put the picture into words, this night sky, those searchlights, and the meaning behind—the meaning behind it all—I should be doing something wonderful. I wish to God I could.”

“Why not have a try?” asked John, who admired this man’s verse beyond all others of his time.

“Inside myself,” said Monk, “I’m in a state of hideous conflict. I can’t get it straight. I can’t get myself straight with any integrity. If I were to write about the war—and what else is there to write about?—I should feel a charlatan and a blasphemer against the light.”

“I don’t get you,” said John.

Gerald Monk spoke with a kind of passion, though very quietly.

“I can’t see how anyone who calls himself a Christian, or believes anyhow in the Christian ideal, can reconcile this war with that code.”

“Why not?” asked John. “We’re fighting evil, aren’t we?”

“With the weapons of evil,” answered Monk. “An all-out competition with the enemy in the forces of destruction. Bigger bombs for destroying fine old cities and the civilians inside them. More powerful high explosives for blasting greater areas, with women and children in their ruins. How can one reconcile that with the command of ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself,’ or with the Spirit of Christ as far as we know it? But I speak as a man who writes verse rather than as a Christian. A man who writes verse cannot be a liar to his own creed. He tries to find the truth, or he damn well ought to. And the truth of life, as far as I have found it, is the direct opposite of all this orgy of hate and killing, this war in the air in which civilians are the victims, this utter degradation of humanity and swingback to the beast, highly mechanized, and very scientific. Man has sold himself to the devil for the secrets and the power of destructive science. Don’t you agree, Barton?”

Barton tapped a cigarette on his thumbnail, and lit it before he answered.

“I’m not one of the world’s idealists,” he said. “I’m just a tough American guy.”

Gerald Monk laughed quietly.

“A most inaccurate description of yourself,” he said. “You’re one of the thinkers, Barton. It’s your job to think. You can’t brush the Eternal Verities on one side by just saying you’re a ‘tough American guy.’ Besides, you go about with a broken heart. Hasn’t that brought you to a more spiritual view of life?”

John Barton winced. He did not like this touching of his wound.

“Leaving that on one side,” he answered rather harshly, “I don’t deny the inconsistencies of praying to the God of Love and Peace, while getting more young women to make more and better high explosives. But that doesn’t worry me a lot. It was Germany who sold herself to the Powers of Darkness—represented by Adolf Hitler and his murder gang. We’re out to kill that evil thing, aren’t we? Well, then, until we’ve scotched it, the innocent must suffer for the guilty. In a way they support that evil thing—German women who idolize Hitler.”

“German children?” asked Monk.

“Growing up to be faithful little Nazis,” answered Barton. “Of course, if you’re a pacifist——”

“I’m not,” answered Monk. “If I were, I shouldn’t have this conflict in my mind. I’m not honest enough to be an out-and-out pacifist. I’m in the Home Guard. I practise the belly crawl. I keep my bayonet polished and sharp for a German belly, the belly of some German boy of eighteen or so who may come my way and shriek when he sees my shining steel!”

“He shouldn’t come,” said Barton. “If he sets foot on English soil, he will have to die with the rest of them. You don’t propose to let him get away with it, do you? I’m sure you will help to defend Judy and the baby while I’m away—curse it!”

He hated the idea of being away from England—perhaps in her supreme hour of trial.

Gerald Monk laughed again, very quietly, under the luminous sky where the groping searchlights suddenly went out.

“You have me there, Barton. I shall do my best to defend your Judy if parachute troops drop down into Spurfold one day—or night. As a matter of fact, the Home Guard fellows think I’m a bit of a thruster, and that’s why I can’t write a line nowadays. I’m Mr. Facing-Both-Ways. I believe in the Spirit of Christ—I’m a corporal in the Spurfold Home Guard. A grotesque inconsistency, but what the hell does it matter if I give up writing? All my stuff was slush, anyhow.”

“Far from it,” said John. He gripped Gerald Monk’s arm.

“I see your trouble, old man. We all have this secret conflict, I suppose. You say it’s my job to think. That’s nice of you. I’ve done a hell of a lot of thinking lately in the small hours. I’m looking for some proof of the survival of personality after death. I’ve been reading some of your stuff again, and find you have that faith.”

“Without doubt,” said Monk. “If I didn’t believe that, I shouldn’t be worrying about Christ’s message to humanity.”

“If we lose this war,” said John Barton, “there will be no more civilization on the Christian pattern, or at least with a Christian tradition behind it. No more liberty of faith or opinions. Say ‘Heil Hitler’ or be beaten to death by rubber truncheons. That’s why I’m a passionate propagandist for little old England. That’s why I’m going back to my own country to tell them the tale of English heroism, in the hope that they will come over for the same crusade.”

“It’s damn decent of you,” said Gerald Monk, forgetting the conflict in his supersensitive soul. “Good luck to you, old man!”

A voice spoke to them from the cottage doorway, opened just a chink. It was Mrs. Barton’s clear New England voice.

“Now, you two earnest talkers, come in and make a foursome at bridge.”

Though Russians were being beaten back round Smolensk, though British boys in night bombers were flying through the barrage of fire above Essen, although British ships were being sunk that night in the convoys creeping across the Atlantic under the big moon, Mrs. Barton liked her game of bridge, or, if no foursome were available, a nice, quiet time with a game of patience. As she truly remarked: one couldn’t go on worrying about the war at all hours of the day and night. It was a pity the nine-o’clock news interrupted the game. It was not good news.