Free The Innocent Moon by Henry Williamson Page B

country, I beat my wings if I am caged in a town, I do not like living here in the suburbs; when I am outside my dug-out room I am hesitant and afraid. I dread the period before I sleep at night, the eternal battle of the brain with weariness, I awake at 1 a.m. usually, light the candle, and try and write—in vain.
   The woman (I feel sure it is a woman) is now playing ragtime on the piano, and playing it well. It goes into my deepest nature. The answer to my cry is given—this feeling within me, growing every day, is killing my youth, and joy, and happiness. It preys on life and love—while “Dance with your flowing blood” cries the music. Loneliness, isolation, outcast answers my heart. Damn that blood-stirring music!
   Grieg and Debussy, Blake and Thompson, Wagner and Delius: or Nature and Youth, Life and Beauty—which? The light rain sighs in the leaves, blurring the light of the lamp-post seen across the Backfield like a cocoon, the piano notes haunt across the night, while I sit here alone—and why? Let Spica continue with her dancing, her social life at Cambridge, and her occasional and wistful letters telling me that friendship is greater than love, and thus barring me from either. Friendship is love.
   Away with these cries of the fainéant !
   And damn that music!
   After an hour’s thought I have only succeeded in putting downone sentence of my motoring notes. “The light car has a great future, if manufacturers will cease to make it, as a so-called cyclecar, of bits and pieces and start to design it as a thing on its own.”
   (A knock on the door; I start as though hit by a bullet, my heart races, I sweat. Then, “May I come in?” says the gentle voice of my mother. My pen-nib has jabbed into the paper.)
   “Oh, come in!” I call out, with concealed savageness.
   She brings in a plate of stewed cherries and blancmange.
   “So nice, dear,” she coos, timid to her son. “Do eat them.” (I am still her little boy.)
   “No thanks, Mother, I really don’t want them.”
   “Oh”—with disappointment—“I saved them on purpose for you.”
   “No thanks, really…. ”
   She goes out, timidly and quietly. I am a beast—but do not care.
    On Phillip’s first morning in Monks House the News editor, a young man with a half-amused, half-surprised expression on a face sometimes overspread by a mild grin, said to him, “My name’s Ownsworth.” They shook hands, Ownsworth saying, “Pleased to meet you. Nice day, isn’t it, for cricket. Brebner the Sports editor wants you to interview Parkin, the Lancashire bowler. You do play cricket, don’t you?”
    “Oh, yes, I’ve played,” he replied, thinking of house matches at school.
    “Right, that’s Brebner over there,” and he pointed with a pencil at a man writing at a small mahogany table in one corner of the room.
    The Sports Editor said that Cecil Parkin had signed for Rochdale, the Central Lancashire League Club, the previous year. He was a friend of Jimmy White, the financier, and received, so it was rumoured, the largest salary ever paid to a cricketer in the League. He was one of the best bowlers ever known in the North, and Rochdale had released him often, to play for the County. There was a rumour that Parkin had been selected for the Test team, which was going to Australia in the winter. “Parkin’s refused to open his mouth to reporters so far, but go to Lord’s and see what you can get out of him, will you?”
    He took the underground to St. John’s Wood, and paid to go in. Parkin was pointed out to him, standing by a roller. It was early morning; a match was to start in ten minutes. He winced at the idea of pestering anyone, and while approaching the tall thin figure standing by the big roller knew that he had equal butopposite feelings about being accosted. Then he saw that Parkin was spinning a ball with nervous restlessness between the third finger and thumb of his right hand. Parkin