The Day Gone By Page 12

  ‘’Ere, Doctor, I’ll tell yer what. Yer go’er watch aht yer don’t get this ‘ere vitamin deficiency what they’re all on abaht naow.’

  ‘Do you suffer from it?’

  ‘Never in yer life! You ’ave a coupla pahnds o’ these ’ere oranges wot I bin keeping for yer special, Doctor, and yer’ll keep yerself away from yerself. ‘Be dancin’ on the ’igh wire. Wrap ’em up fer the doctor, Joe. ’Ere, ’e can’t carry that lot. Tike ’em across to ‘is car.’

  Bananas, oranges, lemons, tomatoes and grapefruit were what my father bought, together with pears in season. (We grew pears, but not always successfully.) Grapefruit were the latest thing; quite a novelty. For some reason it became my brother’s job to ‘do’ them in the evenings before he went to bed. This meant cutting them in half, loosening each segment and then sprinkling on the sugar ‘to soak in’ during the night. When he had finished, he put them away in the cool, stone-shelved larder against next morning’s breakfast. Yet somehow I never took to them; too bitter.

  ‘Thursday,’ my father would say. ‘What d’you want me to get from the True Messiah? Dee-ee-eeply wailing, dee-ee-eeply wai ailing —’

  Like all the upper middle classes in those days, I was brought up to regard Jews as beyond the pale (have you actually read Bulldog Drummond?), but it didn’t count if the Jews were (a) reliable tradespeople or (b) ladies and gentlemen (like the Behrends). As I grew older, it amused me to observe how my mother was able without - apparently - the least sense of inconsistency, to switch almost between two breaths. ‘Mrs Somerset says those nasty Jews are building a lot more houses up at Donnington.’ ‘Oh, Daddy’ (for she called him Daddy, as we did), ‘Mrs Cohen rang up, and said Wendy seemed to be getting over the ‘flu very well, but could you go in and see her this afternoon or tomorrow morning? She asked about Katharine: we had quite a little chat.’

  Now that I have two Jewish publishers, a Jewish accountant and a Jewish literary agent, I feel I have unravelled this strange tangle in which I became unconsciously enmeshed during childhood.

  Mr Dalby was an archetypal figure; and indeed I can never go into a greenhouse without remembering him. He was head gardener to that same, fearsome Mr Baxendale, at his fine establishment above the race course, on the edge of Greenham Common. Mr Baxendale was a patient, and it was while sitting in the car one morning in the drive outside his house, waiting for my father, that I first watched red squirrels. They came down from a cedar and scampered about on the grass.

  Mr Dalby was always correctly dressed as a head gardener, in shirt-sleeves, brown waistcoat with watch-chain, and a brown bowler hat. He had a short beard, too. Towards me he was grave though kindly in manner. He must have been a north countryman, for I remember how oddly it struck me that he talked of ‘cootting off the boods’. His long, knowledgeable conversations with my father, as they walked together through the greenhouses, made me realize that gardening is not a job or a hobby but a sacred responsibility (as to Adam and Eve). Years later, when I first became a householder in Islington, and encountered a neighbour – a barrister - who did nothing whatever to his back garden, it embarrassed me as an indecency might have. I did not avoid him, but I avoided all mention of the matter, which seemed inexcusable.

  Mr Dalby was an expert on carnations. They grew for him in hundreds; scarlet, white, streaked, lemon yellow, pink and darkest red. Their scent, above the still, ferny pool for the watering-cans, also seemed coloured; opulent and sumptuous as oriental robes, intensely aristocratic yet in no way frightening (like the parties). It was at one and the same time natural, yet a smell of culture and wealth, so that one thought of languid, slant-eyed beauties with fans, leaning upon curved bridges beneath cobalt-blue skies, gazing down at the golden fishes half visible below their roof of water-lilies. One carnation does not possess this magical quality. It requires hundreds, blooming on the stem in humid, windless air.

  The scale on which Mr Dalby was able to do things enraptured me. He had about twelve people under him. There were whole beds of penstemon and gladioli, banks of lilies blooming half beneath the trees, expanses of bright red salvias, whole hothouses full of great mop-head chrysanthemums. Through my father I had already learned to love roses: it was through Mr Dalby that I learned to love ferns. I had hitherto had little or nothing to do with ferns. The south country, unlike, say, the Lake District, has few wild ones, and what there were in our conservatory had never caught my eye beyond the primulas and cyclamen. Mr Dalby had fern-houses; and to me, with my penchant for a surrounding refuge, for seclusion and solitude, these were wonderful places. There were no colours; only the various ranks of varied green rising all around: no scents except the smell of moist greenery; no sound except the infrequent drip of a tap into water. I used to try to be left alone in the fern-houses. Then - or so it seemed - the singularity of each fern - the undivided fronds of a Hart’s Tongue, the lacy, weightless quality of a Maidenhair - could impart itself. You had to keep still as though you were watching birds; ferns spoke in low voices. They didn’t come at you like orchids (for Mr Dalby had those, too. Yet somehow they didn’t bowl me over; he sensed this and wisely refrained from dwelling on them).

  Mr Dalby once gave me a maidenhair fern for a personal possession. It was a scion, for I remember him potting it himself It grew and thrived, and remained healthily in the conservatory until Oakdene was sold in 1939. What happened to it then I don’t know.

  Chapter V

  Six years old. 1926: the year of the General Strike. I heard and knew little enough about that at the time, even though we had just got a wireless. (I remember it had a lidded cabinet and inside it a small picture of a polar bear. No doubt some true radio buff will be able to tell me what sort of a set it was.)

  Day by day, at winter’s end, the big field across from Monkey Lane was ploughed - the field which led across to the Bluebell Wood. If you were in the kitchen garden or the paddock, you would near the horses come jingling and clinking up to the top of the field, followed by the ploughman’s cry of ‘Log off!’ Then they would turn the plough and rest for a minute, until he called ‘Log on!’ and off they would set on the four or five hundred yards back to the Bluebell Wood. They did this steadily all day, with the plovers wheeling and calling above them.

  In what seemed to me the early morning (while the Marguerite bird sang), I would hear the village children going by – walking down Wash Hill to school in Newbury, well over a mile away. Sometimes odd, ragged groups of adults and children were to be seen going the other way, pushing rough, home-made handcarts or old pram chassis.

  ‘Who are those?’ I asked my mother.

  Those are the Penwooders,’ she told me.

  Penwood is an extensive tract of woodland in north Hampshire (most of it’s still there), between the Enborne brook and Highclere. In those days it was common for poor people from Newbury to trudge the two or three miles up Wash Hill and out to Penwood to pick up and bring home as much ‘firing’ (e.g., The Tempest, II, 2,

  Caliban: ‘No more dams I’ll make for fish,

  Nor fetch in firing

  At requiring,

  Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish . . .’)

  as they could handle. Hence the handcarts. But when you think how quickly wood burns, it still seems sad that they should have found these expeditions worth the time and trouble. They had little, if any, coal to keep in the bath. I used to feel uncomfortable and guilty to see them go by. They were hard-faced and ragged, and I knew I didn’t deserve not to be.

  Still the time had now come when I too at least had to be up at a reasonable hour. I was going to school - to the mixed kindergarten of the Newbury Girls’ High School at the foot of Wash Hill.

  The school, which charged moderate fees to the respectable Newbury bourgeoisie, was run by Miss Jane Luker and Miss Cobb. They were true blue-stockings in the tradition of Miss Buss and Miss Beale.

  (‘Miss Buss and Miss Beale

  Cupid’s darts do not feel.

  How
different from us,

  Miss Beale and Miss Buss.’)

  To a six-year-old, Miss Luker (‘Old Jane’) seemed a remote and formidable figure, inspiring awe and even fear by her reserve, her incisive manner and lack of humour. However, in the kindergarten I had little enough to do with her. The kindergarten mistress, Miss Binns, was a good teacher, with a kindly warmth to which we could all relate. She seemed ‘one of us’: she understood us. I owe her a lot, for with her I found that I liked learning and enjoyed the business of becoming literate, doing elementary arithmetic and finding out how to tell the time. My school-mates were either friends already - Jean and Ann were both in the class - or soon became friends. There wasn’t a bully or an enemy in the lot.

  Whom else do I remember from those days? Well, principally Miss Langdon, perhaps the most sheerly kind-hearted person I have ever known. Miss Langdon surely deserves to be recalled. She was the Nature mistress, and she also taught us what I suppose must be called Divinity (Bible stories). In both these subjects she was, as far as I was concerned, completely successful; that is to say, she excited my interest by being herself committed. I can’t remember anyone ever wanting not to listen to Miss Langdon. That, surely, is the secret of good teaching. She was gentle to the point of simplicity; rather like Mrs Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By; and because she expected us to be good, we mostly were.

  I remember her bringing into class a thick glass tank half-full of straw, from which she enticed a fine toad onto her hand. It had never occurred to me to take a toad onto my hand; but now I was eager to - and did. Spiders, too, I handled happily; and once, a mole. (They don’t bite.)

  At one time, while I was in the kindergarten, I began, at home, to make a sort of ‘collection’ of butterflies. This could not have been more crude or useless. I simply caught the butterflies - cabbage white, peacock, red admiral, painted lady - killed them by pinching off their antennae and heads, and put them loose, all together, in a cardboard shoe-box. One day, when Miss Langdon came to tea, I showed them to her. Without actually saying an unkind word, she succeeded so well in conveying her pity and revulsion that I then and there gave up, and never killed another butterfly.

  One day in class she was telling us the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis, Chapter XX). ‘And,’ she finished, Abraham was so glad that God had said he hadn’t got to sacrifice his dear son Isaac after all.’ My friend Denis Hodder put up his hand. ‘Yes, Denis?’ ‘I bet Isaac was jolly glad, too.’ I felt that Miss Langdon - dear, kind Miss Langdon - had rather asked for it.

  She was a great stickler for correct, clear, rounded diction on all occasions, whether appropriate or otherwise: my sister, up in the sixth form, once told me how she - Miss Langdon - was directing a school play in which some people had to be shut up in a locked cupboard. They were beating on the door and calling, under Miss Langdon’s tutelage, ‘Let - us - owt! Let - us - owt! This, too, became a family catchword.

  Singing we learned, of course: and here I remember one experience which had a great effect on me. One morning I was called up by Miss Binns and given a note to deliver to Miss Luker in her study. This involved walking the whole length of the school while classes were going on. The long corridor was empty and very quiet, but from behind doors and frosted glass walls, as I passed them, came murmurs which showed that lessons were in progress. It was like hearing the Niebelungs working underground: nothing to see, but evidence enough that hundreds of people were close at hand and concentrated.

  Suddenly I heard, though from a distance, a louder sound; the sound of singing. As I approached, I could recognize the tune. In the silence filling the school, a class were singing ‘Dashing Away with the Smoothing-Iron’. I stood entranced. It seemed unbelievably beautiful, like the song of angels.

  All the brio of the song, its immediacy and delightfully happy melody, hit me as few other musical experiences have ever quite done. I stood and listened entranced. It was all just for me; or that was how it seemed.

  ‘’Twas on a Thursday morning

  And there I saw my darling.

  She looked so neat and charming

  In every high degree.’1

  ‘Now then, young Richard, what do you think you’re doing?’ It was Miss Muirhead, the gym. mistress, on her way down the corridor. I hurriedly explained and then I, too, went speedily off.

  I said I had no enemies; but perhaps I had a sort of one. Anyway we didn’t get on, and I reckon it was mostly my fault. Ruth Hubbard was a hefty little girl, a bit older than I. She was the daughter of our village policeman, and so bitter sometimes was our scrapping that I rather wonder, now, that he didn’t step round and have a word with Dr Adams. Small children, of course, always tend to quarrel unless they are restrained; but Ruth and I would often go at it, restrained or not. I discovered that although Ruth was bigger and stronger, with her it was mostly tongue. She didn’t punch much. However, the tongue could be mortifying and painful, as I knew from dealings with my big sister. I reacted to Ruth with anger and resentment. Usually it was I who got the reproof from Miss Binns, partly because I deserved it and partly because I was a boy. In those days boys were taught that girls were to be teated with courtesy, looked after and protected. (I hope they still are, but Ah whiles hae ma doots.)

  One day our lot were taken out for a nature walk. Miss Binns, not Miss Langdon, was in charge. We went along the Buckingham Road and so to the Enborne Road, with its gravel pits on waste land west of the Grammar School. Here the ground was rough, broken by low mounds of left-over gravel and corresponding pits full of stinging nettles and brambles. Yellowhammers and greenfinches flew up from bushes and yellow-and-black cinnabar moth caterpillars throve on groundsel and ragwort.

  It was here that Ruth and I began to quarrel once again. I can’t remember what about; only that this time it was unusually bitter. It grew worse and worse, until I lost my temper completely. Reckless what I did, I took a step forward and pushed Ruth. What happened next had been no part of my intention. She staggered backwards, lost her balance, screamed and went over the edge of a pit into the nettles.

  I was aghast. It seemed — and perhaps was — the worst thing I had ever done. Whatever would happen? Somehow Ruth scrambled out, sobbing bitterly. There was no fight left in her. Her face was all covered in white lumps, and her arms and knees too. I had never seen such a sight. She was obviously in horrible pain.

  And now came something which I still feel to have been unjust. Miss Binns refused to take Ruth’s part. ‘It was your fault, Ruth,’ she said. ‘You started it.’ I didn’t think she had, but seeing which way the wind was blowing, I kept quiet. So did the others. All the way home poor Ruth was crying and pressing her lumpy face, but Miss Binns remained like flint.

  Ashamed, I had no more quarrels with Ruth for a long time.

  Yet this episode taught me something else besides. When you think - or even if you feel sure - you’re in the wrong, keep quiet. You may be lucky – even inexplicably lucky. If there is a judge and a ruler over you, you’re under no moral obligation to blame yourself. The thing will be sorted out and if they blame you, then you can start, if you feel it, admitting wrong. But to start by admitting wrong - is wrong. You may not have been. You may have a natural tendency to think yourself in the wrong whether you are or not. Leave it, initially, to the judge, who is detached. (Unless, of course, you have reason to think he isn’t.) I’m still sorry for Ruth: I think she was unjustly blamed, and considering her serious pain, unkindly treated (which was unlike Miss Binns). But perhaps I’m still wrong?

  Martin Butcher was something else. He gave most of us the willies. No one could make him out. I think he must have been one of the unhappiest people I have ever known. Solitary, subservient and silent, he kept himself apart, even in playtime. He seemed life-defeated: there was no least go in him. Invitations to join in play he would quietly refuse. No one ever knew him to sing. When you could hear him - which wasn’t often, for he seldom spoke - he had a low voice and a noticeable Berk
shire accent, which put us snobbish little middle-classers off. The quality of his work was poor. At kindergarten level we weren’t in competition, but you couldn’t help knowing about Martin, from the way Miss Binns would look over his shoulder and say ‘No, not quite like that, Martin,’ or again ‘Come along, Martin, don’t copy Richard’s book any more.’ But he was sly and unscrupulous in his efforts to keep out of trouble, and would not only copy your book but, as though desperate, pinch your india-rubber to copy your later corrections. (We worked in pencil, of course.) The flesh-creeping thing about him was that he so obviously hated the whole set-up and was beyond any attempt to fit in or make friends. He lived in another world, where he simply suffered. Lacking all aggression, he had no resort but to keep his head down. We let him. It might, we felt, be Miss Binns’s job to try to break the barrier and get him out. It certainly wasn’t ours.

  One episode I recall about Martin may, I think, throw a swift, momentary shaft into a murky woodshed. One day Miss Binns, going round the form to look at our work, stopped at Martin and said ‘Not coloured, Martin? Where are the crayons you had on Tuesday?’ In a low, expressionless voice he replied ‘Dad took ‘em away.’ (We didn’t refer to our fathers as ‘Dad’.) It was, plainly Miss Binns rather than Martin who felt embarrassed and anxious to end the conversation. What I have never understood - setting other considerations aside - is why, given that Martin’s father had presumably agreed to send him to the High School, he should take away his crayons. But Martin’s world was beyond guessing or comprehension.

  He represented something new to me — something hitherto unexperienced. I suppose all of us – a few consciously but most unconsciously - felt the same. I had never before come up against someone who was openly unhappy all the time, as though that were his natural condition. Martin didn’t try to do anything about his unhappiness; he merely endured it; for him it was normality. As a child of six or seven years old I had always, unthinkingly, taken it for granted that happiness was the natural condition of myself and all children - all those whom I knew, anyway. Martin was unhappy as a matter of course. In all actuality he had neither will nor power - so it seemed - to take a step to meet you. In such a case children feel no particular obligation. Faced with something they don’t understand, they do their best to ignore it. If Martin had some strange gestalt of unhappiness, it was no business of ours to go out of our way to penetrate or mitigate it. The class distinction thing made it worse. Since we didn’t fear him, his presence embarrassed and irritated us. We felt no particular pity for this poor creature who had nothing to say to us, whose home was, one could infer, very different from any of ours and who patently disliked his life. But beneath this - to me, at any rate - lay something more frightening. It was possible for a boy - here it was, before your eyes - to be wretched all the time and to have no way out. What did he want? What would he have liked? No one knew: he didn’t know himself. He’d never known anything he liked. This actuality was disturbing and best avoided. However - as will be plain by now – I never, from that day to this, entirely got Martin off my mind. Things ought not to be like that for anybody: but they are. To come up against this — and instinctively to duck - is part of growing up.