A Solitary War by Henry Williamson

the breaking away point, he thought, as he had his tea alone in the old armchair by the fire, books at his back, fire at his feet, hire-purchase radio by his elbow, shaded electric light flooding the tray by his side, windows framed with black paper over his shoulder. Shoes off, not bothered to find slippers. It was good to sip tea and read a different newspaper and turn on the wireless by his side instead of having to go up into his bedroom to listen to the news—no news, as usual.
    And as he sat there his mind strayed into the past, to the cottage by a moorland stream of pellucid water where the pale green olive duns hatched from the clear running rills at noon, to shed their pellicle-dresses in the afternoon and assume another of tawny hue, to rise and fall in the motion of a spinning shuttle, laying their eggs on the water until the trout took them in the runs.
    How often had he watched them by the bridge at Monachorum . How simple a life that had been; yet it had not satisfied. Why was that—not enough to do? No: no likeness of thought. The mayfly swimming up as a wingless nymph—meditating deliriously as it waited for its pellicle to split, its winged essence to mount the bright heaven of all being—no melancholy, no shadow of itself. To love—to lose oneself in beauty—to be calm, to be happy. Then, and only then, might a man be able to say within himself, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
    Otherwise, man was an object offset from life, mislaid in the flow of time. Was it true that his isolation had begun when he grew apart from his mother, in that hollow-wasted home? The sense of being completely outside time had been strong almost from infancy. This sense had taken care of him sometimes in thewar, when all sense of danger or fear had lifted, and he had walked into the hissing flêches of machine-gun bullets, exposed and indifferent , not from bravado, but to be calm, to be free, apart from his body.
    Whatever the cause, this sense of misplacement in time, this sense almost of predestination had brought him to where he was now. He had never really wanted to be a farmer. He had just let it happen to him, driven on as by a sort of doppelganger in opposition to his real self. He was not by nature a man of action, he was a contemplator of action. That was why he always preferred to watch things happen rather than make them happen. He could describe in words, without effort, anything he had observed; it always had given him pleasure, provided there were no ulterior necessity to force on the writing, such as the need for money.
    That was the solution to his self-made impasse: he was not a farmer, but a writer. So all he had to do was to sell the farm, and buy or rent a little house like No. 2, The Glade, not too far from town, on a ’bus route, so that he could shop and meet friends and go to the pictures without trouble or waste of energy; and his problem was solved. No more sleepless mornings, no more lying awake at 3 a.m. and wondering what to order for wet-weather work for three men, should it be raining at 7 a.m. How wonderful not to have to think anything in terms of necessity.
    “Hullo, my dear,” said Lucy, coming into the room with her brother.
    “By Jove, Phil,” said Tim, “it’s good to see you sitting in Pa’s chair again.”
    “It’s good to sit in it, Tim. How about the talkies, when the trailer’s unloaded? Or need we unload tonight?”
    “I’ve got the bags out already,” said Lucy. “Let’s leave the rest till tomorrow. Pictures? Certainly! Tim says a neighbour will come in periodically and listen if the little boys are all right. Pictures, Tim-o?”
    “By Jove, yes, Lulu! I’ve not been for weeks. How jolly nice to ride in a car again. I’m sick of my bicycle, every morning going to work in the dark, and returning every night to an empty house in the same dark. I say, how absolutely splendid it is that you have come!”
    The two boys ran into the room, uttering cries of