I CLOSED my cottage door behind me, and set out to feed the farm horses. It was too dark to see the pines on the hillside, though within an hour they would show black in the dawn. I was late, I was hurrying. We were short of labour. It was January, 1941. I was looking after the horses, driving the tractor, loading sugar-beet, and sometimes plowing all night by moonlight, as well as doing the farm business and writing when I could. My day, after broken sleep due to anxiety, began about 4 a.m. and ended any time up to midnight. My mind, my anxiety, my will sapped by self-criticism, seldom let me rest. My footfalls in the rimed grasses seemed the only sounds in a spectral world. I knew the way by hearing rather than by sight. For many mornings I had followed the path through the grasses of the paddock in front of the Old Castle, by permission, and crossed the river, with its quivering star-points, on my way to the farm premises.
I opened the stable door, and felt my way to the corn bin, to light the candle stump in the battered empty biscuit-box lying on its side, amidst a hundred match-stumps coagulated in grease. As the flame mounted, I had to close my eyes, for the light stung the eye-balls. When I could open them, the cavernous stable seemed flooded with light, and the shapes of three cart-horses loomed near, Smiler, Blossom, and Gipsy.
The stable roof was old, with uneven pantiles, and glass tiles among them. I was anxious about the candle-light, for I was an object of suspicion ; my farm had been searched, I had been arrested under 18-b, and on my return patrols at night had moved about the farm with orders to shoot first and ask questions after¬wards, if they saw any signs of signalling to hostile aircraft. Indeed, the Local Defence Volunteers, later to be called the Home Guard, had threatened to resign to a man if I were not put back in prison ; but the parson, an old Navy chaplain, had preached about it one Sunday, and among other things had mentioned that those creating alarm and despondency by false rumours were doing Hitler's work. So the L.V.D., patriots all, decided not to resign. However, some (who as youths had dodged the first war) were still looking out, and so my candle in the biscuit box had to be doused at any moment. On this morning, hearing the drone of an aircraft approaching, I blew out the flame, and listened, while the horses remained part of the ammoniacal darkness. Was it a Heinkel, or a Hudson of Coastal Command ? I judged that the beat of the engines lacked the coarse burring exhaust note of the Mercedes-Benz engines, and lit the candle again.
Every morning, while watering, feeding, and grooming the horses with brush and curry-comb, trying to remove mud and dried sweat from their bellies, and the mites in their fetlocks (the clipping machine I had bought for the teamsman, who had left to go elsewhere for better money, and also because he could not stand my ways, had been smashed ; the mercuric ointment, which he had not liked using, lost. " Nobody else does that in these parts "). I had plenty of time to muse about the alteration of my life, and that of the countryside whither I had migrated with wife and family four years previously, and of the sad condition of Britain and Europe.
We were back in pre-Napoleon prices for wheat, round about sixty-five shillings a quarter of two coombs or sacks. Chalk was once more being put on land to sweeten it; the practice of our great-great-grandfathers had been revived. Water-logged land was being reclaimed. There was talk of derelict water-mills being repaired to grind local wheats ; and even of whole-meal bread becoming common food again. The windmills, too, might be flinging round their great sails in the breezes. What would the millionaire milling interests, controlling the great mills at the ports, say to that ? Well, German bombs were falling on the ports of Britain ; the continent of Europe was conquered ;
Britain stood alone. Her ships were going to the rocky bed of the Atlantic faster than the yards could build new ones. I paused, leaning my head against munching Blossom's shoulder-muscle, my eyes shut tight, trying not to think, trying to rest myself. In vain ; I was the microcosm, I was part of the macrocosm. What happened to England happened to me. I dared not think to the end of that parallel or connexion. How strange, after Ypres and Somme and Passchendaele, for the war to have come again.
The war had put farming on its feet ; but how many British youths would it lay in their graves — head to head, boots to boots. No brown blankets in the graves this war ; the ships were sinking too fast. But I must try and sleep ; I had to work all day, and after 5 p.m. when the men were gone, the 10-ton lorry was coming and we had to supply a man to help the driver load it, and I was the only one available. Thank God for the whole-wheat scones and butter and honey our farm gave us, the bakers' bread was poor stuff to work on. That was why the men went home at 5 p.m., wearied out.
Brushing the fetlocks of patient, sedate Blossom, eighteen years old, while she munched quietly in her stall, I thought of some of my friends and acquaintances, in prison because they believed in the land feeding their own people, in giving work and health to their own kith and kin, and full service of the nation's true strength to the Empire. That was the fundamental truth : they had challenged the money-interests of the world of the urban Black Hats, who were now at war to preserve those interests.
Different aspects of truth, of course. The Black Hats believed that the strength of Britain was in International Money ; they cared nothing for the rotten teeth of the slums, largely due to the white-sepulchral bread of a financial democracy. And having near-ruined the land of Britain in peace-time, the Black Hats were wont to quote the extent of their ruin as the limits of the land's productivity. In war-time they locked up the true voices of the land, even as in peace-time they stripped away the truth of the wheat-berry, its sun-coloured skin, calling that precious essence, offals. And in war-time they called the voice of the corn, the would-be reformer of the slums, traitor.
Bitter thoughts, leading, many had told me, to the death of the artist. Then let the artist die, if it was the function of the artist to write only smooth things — white flour paste — smooth inscriptions for the whited sepulchres of the minds of a petrofact civilisation.
What did the Black Hats know of England, who only the Stock Exchange knew ? Perhaps this war would teach them : for no longer could they send their money abroad to get " a better rate of interest by sweating the East than by equipping the West", in the phrase of the man most hated by the Black Hats, who held him in prison without trial — because there was nothing to try him for. He was an innocent man, as innocent as Dreyfus had been when the Black Hats across the Channel had sent him to Devil's Island for twenty years.
How ironic that a main principle of Sir Oswald Mosley's creed and preaching during the years in the wilderness was now, through necessity, being made real. No British capital was now permitted to be invested abroad ; indeed, by law it must be declared, and called home to the place where it had been originally created. (One popular actor and song-writer of patriotic ballads had been caught with money hid in New York, and fined thrice the sum banked there, and the sum also confiscated). Now the Black Hats, through necessity, were actually beginning to invest their money in British land ; indeed, British land was considered the best investment. And, mirabile dictu, there was actual talk in Parliament of guaranteeing security of markets for farmers for a "long term" after the war's end — twelve months being the " long term " mentioned. It just showed how scared the Black Hats were. Fancy being willing to guarantee British markets for British farmers for twelve months after the war !
Blossom munched on, enjoying the strokes of the brush on her itching legs. The candle had now been puffed out, for economy ; and because the darkness was more desirable than the day. To sleep, to sleep . . . could I have been asleep, leaning against Blossom ? Chinks in the tiles were just visible, causing a slight wincing upon my sight. Fear dilated within me : but with a sigh of relief, I remembered that I had already fed the horses. The cock crowing outside was Hawkeye, the favourite of Windles, my eldest son, a boy of fifteen, who had been taken away from school to help on the farm. Hawkeye was a veteran now ; we had not killed him because he was a " pet". The pet flew at nearly everyone from behind, and jumped at their legs with his spurs. But I liked Hawkeye ; it was he who, two years before, had challenged and fought all the turkeys when they stalked down from the Home Hills to invade the territory of the hens in the yards. Hawkeye had fought fifty turkeys, dashing to attack again and again, but to retreat inevitably. With their floppy loose " caps ", the turkeys had looked like some sort of East Europe cavalry, pouring down from the grassy hills.
Hawkeye crowed again. Cows in the yards were lowing softly to their calves in the boxes. I knew that the stockman had arrived. The calves replied with loud blares. The stockman was the middleman, as it were. Pigs in the empty stall beside Blossom were starting to squeal. They had been weaned from the sow only a week ago. They knew by the calling calves who had arrived. The pigs were clean little beasts : from birth onwards they went as far as possible from the communal bed and playground to do their little jobs. As I looked over the wooden partition, one had just returned, and was trying to push itself into the serried elongation of pink and happy warmth. Querulous cries of protest greeted the cold outsider trying to get in.
He stood there, fore-trotters between two pink backs, the image of sensitivity, until the mass-breathing was deep again ; then gradually, warily, he squeezed himself into a warm place. A smaller pig on the outside was shaken off, and feeling chill, gave a squeal of unhappiness. Grunts from the drowsy and comfortable told him to keep quiet.
Blossom munched on. The brush was in my inert hand. The pigs slept. An irresistible desire to sleep too, came upon me, and with outstretched arms, and lids tightly pressed, I moved to the heap of clean barley straw beside Smiler. Pushing myself backwards into the heap, I turned over, pulled straw over mv legs against the frost, and hid my face in my arms. Although I was supposed to be master, yet to wake up late in bed and be late at the stables, was something I dreaded ; for we were now chronically behind with the work. And the only alarm clock we had in the cottage, borrowed from my wife, was unreliable. Lately dread of oversleeping had reduced me to comparing, at intervals in the darkness, the luminous face of my wristlet watch with the face of the loud-ticking clock under the bed. I seemed to be spending most of my time leaning out to feel for the torch also under the bed, shining it on the clock-face, and thus finding that it had lost ten minutes, or gained half an hour : and having adjusted it, try and go to sleep for another forty minutes, or five hours, before I need go down to the stables.
It was queer how time and sleep passed erratically in the bomber-haunted nights. Sometimes I would spring up in anxiety lest I be late, for an immensely long time seemed to have elapsed since last I had leaned out of bed, and I had meanwhile dropped asleep : but it had been only seven minutes. So I would draw the blanket round my neck and with chin on knees for warmth, try to convince myself that I need not worry for five clear hours. O blessed rest, five hours before I need get up ! Yet it was of little use to try and order myself to be tranquil : the thought of not being late ruled my mind : and sleep was snatchy and broken.
No new clocks were to be bought anywhere ; most clockmakers' shops were closed in Norwich. I asked myself many times in impotence how I might get a new teamsman, with always the countering thought, I cannot get one, I have not got a cottage. Of our three service cottages, rebuilt just before the war, two were occupied by families who did not work for me. So many cottages had been dark, damp, condemned in the village before the war : and as there was " no money to recondition them " from Council Funds, so the tenants were forced to continue living in damp and darkness. Several had pleaded with me for a new cottage ; I had not the heart to refuse ; and in those days I was confident that there would be no war, but a change of system, by which people would be given heart and zest to arise under a resurgence of new leadership and put the countryside in order, as part of the Renaissance of the West, rather than Spengler's prophesied Decline.
I was apprehensive, too, about a new teamsman. Suppose he were like the old one, his mind formed in the habits of decadence, crystallised by habit to deny a new and fluent system ? Horses always stamped, it was nature ; mites ? — shake of head. Clip hairs to kill mites ? They'd catch cold. People would say ... He knew his job . . . doggedly. And the hay. It was short. I said the horses must be rationed to 14 lbs. a day each. I spoke of the siege warfare. Fourteen pounds, a stone of hay, whoever heard of it ? No one else round about . . . etc. I showed him what a stone of hay looked like ; weighed it, a large double armful, on a spring-balance. It made no difference. As before, he stuffed the racks full, more like 20 lbs. each, every night. The horses wouldn't eat it all; it remained stale ; unstimulating. Even when Alfred Munnings arrived one day, and told him that horses liked their hay fresh — and A.J. was a Suffolk man, I said afterwards, a famous painter of horses — it made no difference. Then I had asked him to water his horses before feeding — to avoid stoppage or colic — but he still liked to water them afterwards, when he thought I was not about. I said that we had not had one case of stoppage during the four years I had been on the farm, and he has often told me that, before I came — when he had worked many years for the previous farmer, until the farmer had gone bankrupt — he had often had stoppages. " 'Tis nature, you can't help nature ", was the argument.
Life without trust was not worth living. He had wanted his way ; I had wanted mine. " I like to do the best for my horses, you know " — so let them drink when they wanted to, and have all the hay they could eat. That teamsman had seemed afraid of Gipsy, the black mare, and seldom worked her. She was a nice animal when properly handled. So she stood in her stall day after day, unworked, until her hind legs swelled up with over-eating that dark-green, rich clover. Kidneys overloaded with protein, recognisable from the too-strong smell of ammonia. And the bloodshot eye, the " staring " coat. He didn't accept a word of it. " Her legs was wrong when she came" — and that decided the matter. Then he left, for a better job with a big annual bonus. Labour was scarce. Eighty bomber-stations were being built or extended in Norfolk alone.
In everything it had been like that. And he had been the best man. His father, the stockman, refused to wash his own hands or the cow's udder before milking. " Jarms ! My dear man, whoever saw a jarm ? I'll tell you what, master, 'tis all book squit, about jarms ! " So the hands that pared the rotting sheep foot one moment and milked the cow for the house the next, remained unwashed. He was kind and gentle, a fine man with stock ; a Suffolk man, South-folk man, Brythonic, small dark man, brown eyes ; unlike his son, who had the blue eyes and longer head of Scandinavian stock — the dreaded Nor folk who had come over the sea in their galleys, seeking lands better than their own bleak uplands above the fijords, a thousand and more years before.
The deadlock of ideas within my small scope, it seemed to me with gathering acuteness, was but the deadlock of ideas in the world outside ; and could end in but the same way. It was cold in the straw, as I lay there, trying to remain inert, to relax. Was I caught without hope in the events of this alien living, rucked too deep and too thick to extricate myself ? I knew I could not, that I would never, give up what my mind had set me upon, of my own will. I could not be other than myself, or what impelled me to be what I was. Those nearest to me at times seemed to be more remote than those with whom I, in my self-deprecating way, struggled to change mentally. How truly was I a microcosm of the macrocosm ? Even to the same nervous defects of one of the European protagonists, the defects of whose qualities must become more and more apparent as stress and strain increased, until the personality was indeed split. Was my plight, my hopes and their frustrations, truly a part of the same ideological war violently being made real beyond the boundaries of my little farm ? And, most insistent thought of all : — How far were those defects — impatience, self-will, intolerance, and worst of all sarcasm which hurt a slower man's pride, — the cause of making negative my initial success, an " A " farm rating after four years, into what was now a decline ?
I was pulling more straw on top of my cold legs when suddenly a roar was upon the stable building and in the corner of my eye I saw, through the open top half of the stable door a glowing orange curving through the air, then another, another, another rising over the dark pines on the hilltop. The chatter of guns was subdued by the vaster roar of dark wings, three pairs of dark wings, one behind the other, banking steeply to dive upon Twenty One Acres beyond the wood, where the Searchlight Camp was sited.
The German tracers were red, and seemed to have a natter, quicker trajectory than those from the Lewis guns in the camp. One red point arose in richochet, and seemed to pierce the morning star, before burning out, the tracer burning black in the silver point of Lucifer. I thought of the belief of the poets of the ancient world concerning Eosphoros, the Light-bearer, the planet which led up the sun to shine upon the living. God had two sons, but one was dissatisfied with the world, wanting it fairer ; so he left his appointed place and inevitably fell from grace, becoming the Prince of Darkness, where before he was an angel of light, Eosphoros the Light-bringer ....
Henry Williamson
Published in The European - January 1956
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