A Postillion Struck by Lightning

by Dirk Bogarde

  We were dragged to our feet, I stiff with terror at the pulp-face before me; he barking in a loud hoarse voice, groping about in the air, blood streaming down his face.

  Whitefaced, they half carried, half led, him across to the school. I stood alone in the middle of the yard. No one moved or spoke. They stood and watched me. Somebody pointed silently to a water tap over by the wall, and they watched in little groups as I bathed my face and washed off the blood which seemed to be more his than mine. When I straightened up they had gone. I was never bullied again. Avoided for a time, but never bullied.

  Naturally there was an Inquiry in the Head’s office. He was a big, heavy, jovial man. Wise and aware. He knew damned well what had happened but he in no way blamed me, he merely suggested, mildly, that fighting was not what I was there for, and that he didn’t want to hear another complaint about me again. I was unaware that he had had any complaints before but was grateful for his leniency. As for Bell—well, whatever I did to his eye in my terror and rage kept him in a bandage for some time. And away from the school for more than three weeks. But I didn’t care; from then on I ate my hot pie in peace and found school life peaceful, if lonely.

  Chapter 11

  Self-Preservation became my main preoccupation now. Not merely against bullying; I had got that one sorted out by some strange fluke. Not only against the isolation which my foreignness caused among my school mates. I swiftly learned a thick, and unpleasing, Glasgow accent, and was grudgingly allowed to pass as more or less one of them. However, the fact that I played no games, read during the “breaks” rather than hacked away at lumps of wood stolen from the Woodwork Class, didn’t know the difference between H2SO4 or 5 or 9 or whatever, and spent most of my time dreaming away plots and ideas for stories which never really got written, all these things set me clearly apart from the rest, and they resented it; and in their resentment isolated me.

  I was supremely unbothered by this. For I liked none of them and preferred my own company to anyone else’s, except, perhaps, for Tom whom I seldom saw apart from the hurried meat-pie at lunch on the dustbin walls.

  My main self-defence was against Bishopbriggs. Not, you understand, against the town itself. It couldn’t help what it was, a sordid, cold, unloving and unloved scatter of grey concrete council houses surrounding, like a belt of cement death, a grim, solid, dour little town of granite block and slate roofs. The town affected me only in so far as it was ugly, sad and apparently constantly in a drizzling rain. It was more the life I lived in the town which needed my defence. I found it almost impossible to realise the gentility and coldness of it without shock.

  At home, among an easy-going family, we always showed our full emotions; it was, indeed, encouraged. I embraced my father nightly before going to bed, and we all touched, and liked touching, each other. Nakedness meant not having your clothes on. Going to the lavatory a normal, essential, function performed, as far as Lally was concerned, every morning after breakfast. And she wanted to know full details. Puppies, kittens, rabbits and everything else were “born”: we aided the mothers and sat entranced at the births. Everything in life was totally normal and I was quite unprepared for the opposite side of the coin, the Repressions.

  The first time I offered to kiss my uncle on the cheek before I went to bed he recoiled as if I had physically assaulted him and, with a crimson face, gruffly said, “we don’t do that sort of thing here.” And offered me his hand. My aunt received her kiss as if I had threatened her. She winced uncomfortably. The Lavatory became the “Bathroom”. You never spoke of Birth, only ever of Death. If a woman was pregnant she was “a wee bittie under the weather”. And one was never seen in the corridor of the house in pyjamas. Always, if we had to go from bed to the “Bathroom” a dressing-gown and slippers were obligatory. I am not blaming. This was how it was, and it was I who did not understand and so had to re-learn the rules. After all it was their house not mine. And their way of life. I would have to conform.

  That settled, and accepted, the Routine had to be followed. Every weekend was planned months in advance. A constant cosy roster of relations or friends to be visited. Few ever came to our house because the change of Style had been a grave sadness to both my uncle and aunt and they preferred to keep their grief to themselves. Hence on the first Sunday of the month we went to Isa for a tinned salmon tea, where I read knitting patterns; on the second Sunday it was Aunt Teenie, who was a million years old, wore a black velvet ribbon round her throat, was blinded in one eye, and scarred dreadfully down her whole left cheek from an accident with a penknife many years ago when she had been a girl skating. She shook and trembled constantly, like a cobweb in a draught, and presided at a gigantic tea table covered with cakes and scones and home made bread. A silver teapot smothered by a crinolined celluloid doll, its pink shiny arms held out in supplication, a simpering Madonna. A small hand-knitted pom pom hat on its head. A brass kettle steamed gently over a spirit imp, and we ate constantly, in more or less complete silence. It was, as far as I was concerned, like force feeding a goose. Later we retired to the sitting-room, lace and velvet draped, submerged in dark ferns, and while they knitted and did embroidery, the women, my uncle slept discreetly under his Sunday paper and I played eternal games of Solitaire with glass marbles on a round mahogany board.

  The third Sunday in the month was usually at Meg’s where we sometimes had a Smokie for High Tea, from Dundee, after which I was given a volume of photographs. The clasp would be unlocked, and I was offered a sepia world of bustles, dog carts, sailor suits and family groups of improbable strangers bug-eyed round bamboo tables.

  The final Sunday was usually spent over at my maternal Grandmother’s house in Langside. A long table often or fourteen of us, uncles and aunts, and elder cousins. Grandmamma at the head in black, a table laid as for a wedding; cakes and jams, scones and bread, tarts and sandwiches. We ate and talked of Family Matters and what had happened to us all in the month. My uncles were, without exception, handsome, dark and jolly. My aunts pleasant and kind and knitted. The cousins quiet and gently smiling. Later, in the big sitting-room upstairs, the fire was lit for Sunday and the younger of us played a new game called “Monopoly”, or else “Snap”, “Happy Families”, or “Bezique”. My grandmamma, who ruled her house with a deceptive firmness, sat in a chintz armchair and played games of patience. The uncles read papers and were allowed to smoke there.

  This routine I accepted easily. It was not at all unpleasant, and sometimes comforting to know that every Sunday was so well taken care of. Of course, in the morning, wet or fine, it was a long walk to church. We left early for the three mile walk through the gritty Estate, out into the ruined fields, and then, quite soon, the real country started and the journey was always very agreeable, even in snow or sleet. The road to Cadder, where the church was, swung up and down gentle hills, across a tumbling, rocky river, through silent beech woods. The Service was dull, slow and incomprehensible. Church of Scotland. Spartan, un-decorated. None of the sweeping colours, the gilts and blues, the purples and viridians, the soaring music and the heady smell of incense to which I had grown accustomed and incorrectly associated with every church. This was white and charcoal, a place for penance not praise. I watched the sun sparkle through the branches of the trees and make dancing shadows on the whitewashed walls. My aunt, inevitably, and elegantly dressed by Pettigrew and Stephens, used always to try and wear a different hat or a different costume, or coat, in the winter. She was hopeful that it would be noticed and sad when, sometimes, it was not. The Service was mostly a weekly check up on who was who and what they had been doing. It was a Social Affair, conducted with religious fervour and a great deal of kneeling and singing. But I enjoyed the walk in the country.

  After lunch, which had been put in the oven while we were at our Holy Orders and Social Spying, I had to write my weekly letter home. This was thoughtfully corrected by my uncle for faults in grammar, spelling and punctuation. Should I, by mistake, miss out an interesting bit o
f news, such as a trip to the Orpheus Choir, or a visit to a Football Match, this was delicately inserted, even if it meant re-writing an entire page, for my uncle was at great pains that my family should know that my life in Scotland was not just one long grind of scholastic chores. In this way, of course, I had no possible chance of saying anything the least critical. And my letters were dull, dutiful, a long list of totally boring excursions and activities at school.

  My parents were relieved that I had settled down so well into the family life, that I was being so warmly welcomed, and that according to the note, always appended to my letters by my uncle, my school work was improving slowly but steadily. There was, they felt, no cause for concern. Why should there be? And so, although they none of them meant to, I was gently put to one side while they went on with their affairs, and those affairs revolved mostly about the Baby and “The Times”. When I went back on longed-for holidays, it never ever occurred to me to say otherwise; I mean that life there was simple, pleasant, and everyone was good and warm, which they were. With my usual flair for obliteration of anything unbearable, I refused to spoil the treasured days of my holiday with remembering what I had left behind me up in the bleak, melancholy North. The moment the train rumbled over the railway bridge across the river at Carlisle my heart grew wings and sang all the way down to Watford. From there joy was so heady in my breast that the sights and smells of Euston swiftly erased all traces of any aching despair or loneliness. I was a very quick recoverer.

  But of course, life at home had altered subtly too. It was no longer quite the same. Lally was now in charge of my brother, and also my sister adored this living baby doll. I was not included any longer, and there was never really time for us to be together again. Gradually, over time, a thin wall of dislike and indifference grew between us, and we started the inevitable growing-away process. It was not to be healed for some years.

  The Cottage too had gone. The auction had not been successful for my parents, and strangers bought it. We moved the wheel- backed chairs, the lamps, the beds and the wooden kitchen table across the valley to a smaller cottage up on the other Down at Winton Street. A collection of cottages grouped round a tithe barn and a well. It was not, and never could be, the same as the Cottage. But it was agreed that this should be only a halfway house until we found something we all liked, and which was really big enough for a now large family, where we would live for ever in the country because my father hated, with all his heart, the idea of living any longer in London. With this news at the back of my mind, the grief of losing the main pivot of my life was eased a little. I accepted. There was very little else that I could do. Holidays at Winton Street were almost, but never quite, as good as they had been: there was no gully, but still the same river, no Great Meadow, but another one almost as splendid, and the village was as near, and the same faces were still about in the lanes and fields. Sometimes I used to stand at the stile on the path down to the village and look across the valley at the soft smooth side of Great Meadow rising up to the crest of the hill and see the late sun flashing on the windows of the Cottage. Then, and then only, I got a lump in my throat and stumbled on down to the grocers.

  “It’s the wind!” said Lally one day, coming down with me. “It seems to blow much harder up here than it ever did over there. Must be straight up from Cuckmere and the sea. Breathe it all in, it’ll do you a power of good.”

  But she knew.

  After a year in Bishopbriggs things gradually began to deteriorate. Inevitably. I returned back from one holiday to find that I was no longer sleeping in the pink bedroom but on the Put-U-Up which now occupied the place of the piano in the sitting-room. The piano was in the dining-room. My uncle explained nicely that I was, after a year’s wear, starting to destroy the furniture in the bedroom, that the chest of drawers, his only remembrance of his mother, was creaking badly because of the weight of the things which I placed in the drawers. Books and writing materials, as well as all my clothes. Also, far worse, the foot of the yellow oak bed had been hopelessly scratched by my long toenails. So it was decided that they should move back to their own room and I should from thereon sleep on the Put-U-Up.

  That the culprit, or culprits, of the scratched bed end were not my toenails, but instead the scalding aluminium “pig” or the hot brick in flannel splitting the veneer, were unacceptable excuses.

  “I have repeatedly told you about cutting your toenails,” said my uncle, “every bath time. We are not made of money up here, you know, there’s a Depression on.”

  He had never ever mentioned my toenails, although he was frequently in the bathroom on Friday nights which was the allotted time of the week for my “ablutions” as he called them. At first I had been rather surprised that he seemed to wish to brush his hair at such an odd hour in the evening, and when I, once only, locked the door, I was firmly admonished not to do so again because how could they help if the geyser blew up or I had a fainting fit suddenly? They, after all, were responsible. So no locked doors. I only minded because it was the one place where I could sing away and feel totally private without being a “noise” either to them or the people who lived up in the house above and who, from time to time, did complain that my piano playing, pretty dreadful, by ear, and limited to a range of three melodies, “The Wedding Of the Painted Doll”, “Always” and “Over My Shoulder”, all played very loudly with both pedals firmly down, disturbed their rest and also made it difficult to hear the Football Results on the Radio. The complaints were always very tactful and genteel. However, they were complaints and the piano stopped. So the bathroom seemed the next best thing musically. And also the mirror over the washbowl was useful for trying out expressions.

  However, my new bed-sitting-room was pleasant enough, and we all settled down together again, although the constant worry that I refused to play all games, and had no friends, was still a source of dismay and anguish. I tried (not to play games naturally, at which I was useless and by which I was desperately uninterested), but I tried to make friends and even to bring them home to tea, which was my aunt’s greatest desire. This, I suppose, to prove that I had friends. In desperation Tom once came all the way from his tenement in Paisley, and brought with him a slow boy called Gregg. They seemed the best two suited to our sort of house.

  My aunt did a vast baking the night before and was astonished, and saddened, that Tom, in a tight blue suit, and Gregg in his Fair Isle sweater, sat for most of the meal with their hands under their thighs on the ladder-backed chairs, hardly spoke above a murmur and merely nibbled at the enormous wealth of Coburg Cakes, Soda Scones, Treacle Tarts and Fairy Cakes.

  Unused to young people about them, they leant backward to be sociable and warm. But it was useless. All of us were inhibited with a deathly shyness. I hardly knew Gregg; he was usually busy in the Metalwork Class with a welding iron and solder while I battered mournfully at a copper disc beating it to death with a design of palm trees and pyramids. It was to be an ash-tray. Apart from that we hardly ever met, let alone spoke, and Tom was as out of place at a High Tea in Bishopbriggs as, he put it himself, “a spare prick at a weddin’”.

  Discovering, during desperate cross-questioning, that he was studying to be an engineer, my uncle, who was one, launched into a long lecture on valves and steam compression. Tom sat mute and merely mumbled “aye” from time to time. It was a total disaster. All the more so after they had left when my uncle found that they had, in their nervousness, picked away at the rush bottoms of the ladder-backed chairs, thereby “ruining them for all time”.

  I did not ask friends back again, although it was often suggested by my good, worried aunt.

  The Summer Highlight for Bishopbriggs Society was the weekly Tennis Match held at the Club on the other side of the railway embankment. That is to say on the Right Side of Town. No one who was a member could be a member without being vetted. It was very stringent, and the waiting list was long. Naturally no one from the Estate was allowed on to the ash- courts, and nor did they
ever try. I was allowed, with my aunt and uncle, because it was understood we all had “known better days”, and it was politely overlooked that we lived in the unspoken-of area.

  Every Friday my aunt did a baking: it was the rule that every lady should take some of her own baking for the Club Tea. My life seemed to be governed by the Bakings as much as my aunt’s. The Club House was built of varnished wood and smelled like a coffin. It had a tin roof and a veranda, a tea urn and a cupboard filled with white china cups and saucers. Each week a different lady supervised, and each week we all eagerly read the lists typed and pinned to the green baize board as to who was playing whom. The day was filled with light, high, cries of “Good show, partner!” “Well tried, I say!” or “Love three all”, “My game, I think!”. The thwick and thwock of ball against gut lasted well into the evenings, for it was always light enough to play there until at least ten-thirty p.m. It grew boring sometimes, even though it was my job to retrieve, like some wretched little dog, the balls which loped and scattered about the chicken wire enclosure.

  After The Tea, at which I helped to serve, and later wash up, they sat, if the weather was fine, in deck-chairs knitting and sewing until their game came up. The time passed slowly enough and I was often allowed to go home before the final game was over, to open the house and set the table for supper. I was always eager for this excuse because it meant, if I was pretty quick, that I could get back in time to put on the brown bakelite radio and just catch the nightingale singing from a Surrey wood. If it sang. It was a delicate thing to do. On with the radio, lock the front door, hang out of the window, eyes glued to the road from the tennis courts, willing, pleading, aching, for the blasted bird to sing. All Surrey flooded into the cramped, beige-and-ladder-backed room. But, as I said, I had to be quick, for apart from prudery I had learned deceit. The radio was expressly forbidden to be touched. So it was only when I had the house to myself, and played it low so that Upstairs could not hear and give me away, that I dared to put it on. And then only with a wet towel standing by, because the machine had a habit of getting warm as time went on, and the moment my uncle came back from Tennis the first thing he did was to cross the room and caress the sleek bakelite sides. Just to see. I had once been caught—the room filled with nightingales and cellos, my eyes maudlin with tears. My uncle’s anger was controlled; I was being deceitful and morbid. He was polite enough in a steely way and for a short time the radio was removed to their bedroom. But I managed.