Of course, it was not always quite so exhausting.
Now and again there were days that one loved: blue, gusty afternoons when the wind-sprites chased each other among the tree-tops and there was only quiet raking and weeding to be done. Or mild, still mornings of mother-o’-pearl and silver, spent in the comparatively effortless occupation of preparing the soil. I used to love forking-in the tobacco-coloured hop-manure and scattering a rich top-dressing of soft grey wood-ash and velvety soot.
But to me there will always be something unsatisfying about looking after other people’s gardens. Rather like being nursery governess to someone else’s children instead of taking care of your own.
(5)
We will now return to my horarium.
The lunch hour was always rather a scurry. One rushed in, removed the more outstanding traces of one’s morning’s work from one’s person and then joined Mrs. Cornish in the dining-room. As always, her conversation was entrancing. I seldom, however, felt capable of assimilating what she said. My only longing was to devour my dinner with the utmost rapidity and fling myself in an attitude of slightly abandoned relaxation on my bed.
I still wonder what my hostess—or, to be more exact, my mistress—must have thought of me at meal-times.
I suppose the long hours in the open air were largely responsible: anyhow, the ferocity of my appetite reached such a pitch that I myself became alarmed. It still puzzles me how such an ethereal being as Mrs. Cornish survived the ordeal of watching, three times daily, such a display of ravening wolfishness. It must have been only too evident that I could and would easily have swallowed not only the dining-room table but the contents of kitchen and pantry, with herself and the cook thrown in.
To my last hour I shall maintain that Mrs. Cornish deserved a decoration for the quasi-miraculous way in which she always provided me—despite the difficulties of war conditions—with enough to eat.
In common, I fear, with a number of other elderly persons, the last thing I felt inclined to do immediately after lunch was to start working again.
Especially when it rained.
One then had to buckle oneself firmly into one’s barrage-balloon, cram on a sou’-wester and get on with the job as best one could.
I remember one almost unbearably frightful afternoon when a species of deluge was emptying itself with unusual élan from the skies.
It was my business to bed out several rows of adolescent onions in what had become an almost completely liquid stretch of bog. As fast as I planted them, the swirling rain washed away the soil from their roots and the things collapsed, like Victorian ladies with the vapours, into the mud.
Half-blinded with the rain I struggled on, my back bent into the shape of a hairpin, while the wind perseveringly destroyed my handiwork as fast as it was done.
At last, after about a couple of hours’ ferocious battling with the situation, I emerged victorious.
Three rows of subdued-looking onions stood before me, all erect as grenadiers. I eyed them with the same emotions as those with which Alexander must have viewed his battlefields.
At half-past five my working-day was over.
To say that I was by then dead to the world would be an understatement. Tea, however, restored me sufficiently to prepare the food for Mrs. Cornish’s fowls. This, when she herself was not well enough to do so, I generally took out to them.
The way lay through an exquisite tiny coppice of silver birches. I still remember with delight the lace-like tracery of their delicate sepia branches against the twilight sky.
After supper we sat together, I fighting miserably against the ogre of sleep until it completely overwhelmed me; she talking, always so delightfully, of birds, dogs, her grandchildren, books, flowers and the well-beloved cows.
(6)
The most unpleasant day in the week was Saturday morning.
I had to sweep the cobbled courtyard with a stable-brush; dig out the detestable tuftlets of grass that clung so tenaciously between the clefts; clean the foot-scrapers and shake the dust from the heavy outside doormats by beating them vigorously against the wall.
It was work which, in the convent, would have been described as ‘extremely against nature’.
Which is exactly what it was.
Saturday afternoons were free. I usually spent them in answering letters and in washing and mending my clothes.
Sunday—so far as I was concerned—was hardly a day of rest.
One rose early, because the nearest church was over at Stourport, which meant a three-mile walk each way.
Try as I would, I could never bring myself to do anything but dislike this tiny chapel-of-ease.
It was cold. It was hideous. It was airless. And it was crammed to bursting point with Welsh and Irish factory hands.
Mass could only begin when the priest had finished hearing confessions, which went on indefinitely. During Mass, those members of the congregation who were not engaged in unrestrained bouts of coughing, sneezing or making almost unbelievable noises with—or without—the aid of a pocket-handkerchief, sang, unaccompanied, the more flowery and unctuous of Father Faber’s hymns.
The only possible way to prevent oneself from flying from these horrible surroundings before one’s obligations had been fulfilled was to stamp heavily upon one’s feelings whenever they attempted to raise their heads.
One just had to seize one’s soul firmly by the scruff of its neck and lash it mercilessly into those stratospheric regions of faith which completely transcend the world of sense; to remind oneself, over and over again, that the cold, the discordant voices, the stale odour of unwashed persons, didn’t matter one bit. What did matter was that there, just before one, on that shabby and hideous little altar, the most stupendous Event in the world was taking place. The Sacrifice of Christ was being offered by Christ to the Almighty and Supreme Creator, for the purpose of bringing all the graces of the Redemption to the souls of men. Surely one could put up with a little discomfort to be present at such an Act?
After all, it was faith that mattered, not feeling. And didn’t St. Thomas Aquinas define faith as ‘an act of the intellect which assents to a divine truth by the influence of the will’? No mention of feelings at all. They simply didn’t count; which, considering what my feelings would have said if I had allowed them to express themselves, was just as well.
Later, Mrs. Batley very kindly arranged with Sir Sydney Lea, a neighbour of hers, to drive me part of the way back with two of his own Irish servants. I remember being much impressed by his amusing conversation, cerulean corduroys and Quartier Latin tie.
One Sunday the servants waited for me after Mass to say that there wouldn’t be any car that day as the master was away. So we all walked home together. They treated me quite as one of themselves and I can only hope that my conversation entertained them half as much as theirs did me.
Now and again I was invited up to Astley. It was only a few minutes’ walk along the lane, and the park seemed always to be full of snowdrops. I wish I could find something new and beautiful to say about them but they have been done to death by the younger authors of to-day. Perhaps their exquisite virginal aloofness has a special appeal for the corrupt and rotten civilization in which we live.
On these occasions I generally paid a visit to my friends Ridler, Aunt Cissie’s maid, and Adams, the chauffeur.
One of the first things I discovered when I started to earn my living was that the best people from whom to ask advice upon the problems that beset one were those who, like oneself, were obliged to work.
Ridler and Adams showed great interest both in my future career and present welfare and always did everything they could to help me when I consulted them.
It was from them that I learned all about Insurance Cards and Hospital Schemes and Approved Societies. In fact, I really don’t know what I should have done if it had not been for their advice.
I shall never forget being driven into Stourport by Adams on the important occasion when I mad
e what perhaps might be described as my début at the local Labour Exchange. Talk about being presented! I don’t know when I ever felt so proud of anything in my life.
All the same, it would have felt a little odd to drive up to the place where you were about to be registered as an agricultural labourer in a magnificent Rolls Royce, complete with coronet, cockatrice, Garter and all that, emblazoned on the doors. So I and the Astley car parted company at the corner, and I trudged up the remainder of the dingy little street on foot.
I detest Labour Exchanges.
They generate an atmosphere of bleakness, bureaucracy, and belligerence which it would be hard to beat. On this occasion, the belligerence emanated from the young man behind the counter, who received every statement I made with an incredulity which he made not the slightest attempt to conceal.
Nevertheless, when at last I succeeded in extracting from him the coveted card which established me definitely as one of the world’s war-workers (for such was the light in which I perhaps rather optimistically viewed my job) I was, to put it mildly, exceedingly content. Had I guessed what lay before me, it might have been otherwise.
This episode, however, belongs to the earlier stages of my career as a Land Worker. I cannot imagine how it pushed its way in here.
(7)
The end came—as ends sometimes have a way of coming—rather unexpectedly.
One evening, as I was dragging myself home along the lane after a more than usually exhausting day, I felt my knees suddenly beginning to wobble, while the surrounding landscape gave rather alarming indications of being about to disappear from sight.
Feeling quite unable to proceed, I sat down, rather unhappily, in the hedgerow and awaited developments.
Presently a farm labourer appeared in the distance. As he drew near, I called out,
‘Hi! Can you help me, please?’
I thought he looked just a little shocked, and concluded that he had judged me to be slightly drunk.
He approached. When I had explained the situation, his disapproval melted into a solicitude that was really touching. He then extended a pair of immense, earth-blackened hands and hauled me to my feet.
Unfortunately, I still found progress impossible. My knees, like those of the man in the psalms, had turned to water. I therefore stood still and continued to cling.
The labourer—he was elderly and enormous—looked down at me very much as he might have done at a sick calf or a newly-born foal.
‘If you wouldn’t ’ave no objection to my catchin’ ’old of you …’ he suggested, apologetically.
I assured him that, far from objecting, I was only too thankful for his aid.
Upon which he twined a brawny arm completely round my person, thus relieving me entirely from the burden of my own weight.
And in this romantic, if slightly misleading, attitude we proceeded down the lane.
It was perhaps fortunate that Mrs. Cornish’s cook—who disliked me—was out of the kitchen when my escort finally deposited me at the back door.
That night, after long meditation upon the subject in my bath (how astonishing is the power of a really boiling bath to restore temporarily exhausted vitality), I determined that henceforth my humble contribution to the war effort would be made in some other capacity than that of substitute for anybody’s Outside Man.
1 Though theirs was in no sense a ‘teaching order’, the nuns did not consider the work of education incompatible with the contemplative life. Their ideal was a high one. A religious who was ‘sent down to the school’ was expected, not only to teach well, but to aim at such close union with God that Christ truly lived in her. Thus, and only thus, could she transmit him to the children. The measure in which she achieved this aim would be the measure of her success.
CHAPTER FOUR
(1)
So, early in April, feeling a little pensive because my cousin Margot insisted that by giving up my job I was letting Mrs. Batley down, I went to London.
The aunt and uncle with whom I had spent my first night after leaving the convent had invited me to stay with them. They were struggling to restore some kind of order to their partially blitzed house, and it had been intimated that my assistance would be acceptable.
Naturally I was anxious to do anything I could to help. Indeed, the prospect of handling grand pianos or carrying billiard-tables up and down stairs held no terrors for me. Anything would have been child’s play after the output of physical effort demanded by my brief adventure in Worcestershire.
I determined, however, that, before undertaking further activities, I would insist upon twenty-four uninterrupted hours of brutish slumber. After that, they could do with me what they pleased.
Unfortunately, this delightful project was never realized.
The moment I set foot in Portland Place, I was told that my services would be required for other purposes.
At this point, my cousin Desdemona steps into the story.
There is not a great deal to be said about her, for the simple reason that, after whisking unexpectedly into my life for the briefest of periods, she as suddenly whisked out again. And—so far, at least, as I am concerned—she has not been heard of since. I only mention her now because, in her person, I came up against two scraps of Experience of Life which were new to me. One was a ‘modern marriage’, which had not worked according to plan: the other, that peculiar new religion known as Anthroposophy.
I do not feel in any way competent to hold forth about modern marriages. I know little about them. But even the few months that I had spent in the world had made me realize that the angle from which most people now looked at marriage had altered considerably since I was a girl. As a Catholic, my views on the subject are naturally those of my Church. I am not now, however, speaking of Catholics. And I was astounded when someone whom I knew intimately told me of how when she and her husband married, they arranged beforehand that, if it ‘didn’t work out’, they would divorce.
Another story that made me open my eyes was that of a husband and wife who agreed to divorce simply from boredom. Both subsequently remarried, the four persons involved remaining on most friendly and intimate terms—even going so far as to stay for long periods together in one another’s homes.
On the whole, the impression I received was that in marriage—as in so many other states of life to-day—society seemed far more eager than it had been in the past to discover and seize upon easy ways of escape from difficulties and responsibilities.
It appeared that my cousin—a leisurely and decorative blonde with a small son who made one think of a portrait by de Laszlo—was at that moment in the throes of house-moving. Since her husband was henceforward to be excluded from the ménage and she had as yet engaged no servants, it seemed likely that she might be glad of aid.
‘So we think, Monica,’ said my aunt, readjusting her lap to the requirements of the plump treacle-coloured cat whose slumbers had been disturbed by my arrival, ‘that it would be a good plan if you were to go down and stay with Desdemona, and do anything you could to help.’
Looking back, I shall always remember that visit to my cousin as the supreme revelation of my incompetence. It is humiliating to confess it, but I was not of the slightest use to her. I had no idea how to light a fire. (My experiments with the kitchen stove are best left unrecorded.) I knew nothing about cooking, not even how long it takes to boil an egg. When I went out to buy groceries, everything had to be carefully set down in writing, because the names, quantities and prices of things conveyed nothing to me. I knew how to make a bed, and I could dust. And there my accomplishments ended.
The only way in which, perhaps, I may have been of service to my cousin was that I provided her with something of which she appeared to be sorely in need—a Listening Ear. And, as I listened, certain things became clear to me.
One of them was that the complications which had invaded her life appeared to be due, either directly or indirectly, to the outlook induced by the teaching of Mr. Rudolf Ste
iner.
What I feel about Mr. Steiner coincides very closely with what St. Augustine felt—and said, with some vehemence, in his Confessions and elsewhere—about a certain Manichee called Faustus. Their doctrines had much in common, though that of Mr. Steiner struck me as the more fantastic of the two. Though his name had been unknown to me, I had not been long in the house before I knew all about him. In her deep-voiced, rather fascinating drawl, Desdemona explained to me with what amazing thoroughness the prophet of Anthroposophy had gone about his work. While we unpacked trunks, set up beds, cooked meals, or wandered among the delicate spring greenery of the Surrey lanes, I was shown how profoundly each aspect of life had been explored and dealt with before being woven into the vast and complicated tapestry of Steinerism. Folk-lore, Theosophy, High Anglicanism, Natural Science, pseudo-Mysticism, all seemed to have a place in it. And, permeating everything was a strange, and—to me—slightly sinister occultism, intended, so far as I could gather, to develop those supernormal faculties which, Mr. Steiner declared, were latent in every human soul.
Like all devout Anthroposophists, my cousin brought up her child on the lines laid down by the Master for those in whose temperaments fire and air—as opposed to earth and water—predominated. And, at night, when she had sung him to sleep with lieder, whose Teutonic origin simply refused to be camouflaged, the lovely creature would sit on the hearthrug and discourse to me of reincarnation, of the purifying effects of vegetarianism, of the spiritual interpretation of Grimm’s fairy tales, of the marvellous properties of herbs and minerals and of the strange influence of the stars….
Even at table there was no escaping Mr. Steiner. Our menus were rigidly Anthroposophical; and each meal was prefaced and concluded with a mystical incantation in lieu of grace.
I Leap Over the Wall Page 7