The Path Through the Trees

by Christopher Milne

  The answer was no. She groped for a word to describe what I lacked and came up with two: noncuranza and disinvoltura. And I have to grope a little to find the English equivalents of what she meant. Self confidence, nonchalance, an easy manner but with a slight hint of superiority and superciliousness, the manner that in a restaurant needs only a raised forefinger to bring waiters hurrying across to you, that in a queue automatically finds you at the front without anyone quite knowing how you got there. I knew what she meant. I had met it in Germans.

  Perhaps in my smart officer’s uniform I had looked more the masterful husband she needed, the husband she and others could admire and respect. Perhaps therefore when I made my promised reappearance in March, 1947, but now wearing grey flannel trousers and a tweed jacket, she began to have doubts. We met in Venice. We had made no particular plans. Perhaps we might stay in Venice, perhaps go to Bolzano: we could decide when we met, and the decision was really hers. We met, and her decision was to return to Trieste where she could introduce me to her various friends and relatives: this she felt was the proper thing to do. And because there wasn’t a spare bedroom in her apartment, she had found me a nice hotel. ‘You don’t mind, do you? After all, we will be spending the rest of the day together.’ I only minded a little bit and tried not to show it.

  So we travelled to Trieste by train; and since I was now a civilian and the town was still occupied by Allied troops, I had to acquire an entry permit. She knew where I had to go to get it and together we went; and it was just as such places always were in those days, a milling crowd of Italians and somewhere out of sight in the distance an official behind a desk taking no notice of them. The perfect situation for testing one’s disinvoltura. ‘Say you are English and go up to the front . . . of course you can . . . of course you must . . . of course it’s all right . . . you’ll never get your pass if you don’t. Please . . . to make me proud of you.’ So I had to. ‘Permesso . . . Scusi . . . Inglese . . .’ I muttered my passwords and edged my way forward. It worked. As the waters of the Red Sea had fallen back on either side to allow the Children of Israel to pass through, so did the flood of gesticulating, chattering, documenti-clutching Italians give way before the Englishman, and I passed dry-shod to the man at the desk. The Englishman secured his permit, honour was satisfied, praise was awarded, smiles returned; but I suspect that we both knew that the Englishman who had pushed his way to the front of the queue was not I. And so, although my visit was a happy one and although when I said goodbye to her we were outwardly as confident about the future as we had ever been, I think inwardly we both wondered if we would ever meet again.

  We didn’t. For another six months we continued to write to each other and I continued to think of her as my fiancée. Then, without too much heartbreak and with no ill-feeling, it came to an end.

  I last heard from her on May 7th the following year. It was one of a number of letters I received around that time from various of my friends. For sentimental reasons I kept them all and so I kept hers; and the other day, thinking I might find it there still, I looked, and there it was, the last to reach me and so at the bottom of the pile

  A te e a Lesley i sensi della mia più viva simpatia e auguri vivissimi per il vostro fidanzamento avvenuto al 17 aprile.4

  To discover what you are you must also discover what you are not. To learn what sort of husband you might make you must learn what sort of husband you can never make. Hedda taught me this. She taught me a lot of things: about Italy, about Italians, about women, about love, about myself. She even succeeded in teaching me the two-step. She helped to loosen the bonds that tied me to my father, and she prepared me for new bonds, bonds that have tied me now for nearly thirty years in a happiness that I could never have found with her.

  On July 24th, 1948 I married Lesley.

  PART TWO

  The Road to Work

  1. A Walk Through the Hills

  On a spring day not long ago Lesley and I set out to climb a mountain. We drove our hired car along a narrow road to the point at which it entered a beech forest; and here, where the smooth tarmac gave way to rough stones, we parked, got out and set off on foot. The road continued uphill for a while, and though it was not particularly pleasant to walk along, it was at least going in the right direction, upwards, and we were happy and hopeful. But after a little it went through a cutting and then began to descend. It was a twisting road and the trees were close at hand on either side, and so we could not see what was around the next corner. So, for a while, we were able to hope that the descent was only temporary, the climb shortly to be resumed, for the road must surely lead to the mountain top. But at each turn the descent became steeper; and the lower we went, the stonier and dustier and drearier the road became and the lower fell our spirits, until at last we stopped. Where was it taking us? What should we do? At the point where we were standing it did a sharp turn to the right, but down through the trees on the left we could see a small patch of sunlight, a small grassy glade in the middle of the forest. It was some way beneath us, for the ground here fell away steeply, and if we scrambled down to it we would have lost even more height and be even further from our mountain top. But it invited us and so we went. And there for a while we sat, in sunshine once again, and drank a little wine and ate a little bread. Then, after we had rested and were refreshed, came the question: Where next? Up or down, back to the road – or what? At the far end of the glade was a very faint track, really more of a gully washed out by winter rains than a path worn by man. It continued downhill; but by this time we had abandoned the hopes we had set out with. Instead we would follow our instincts, going where the going seemed most pleasant, taking whichever path seemed the most inviting no matter where it might lead us. And so we followed the gully, and it led us to another glade, rather larger than the first, and at the far end of it, there was our stony road again. Bother!

  Then I noticed something. On the far side of the road the ground, rose to a line of beeches. But it was only a line: there were no trees beyond them, for between their trunks was the sky. We crossed the road and clambered quickly to the crest of the ridge. And there below us lay an immense plain. It was about half a mile wide and it stretched away into the distance. It was clothed in short green grass, like a lawn, and it undulated gently like a giant sea, each wave crest a foam with an outcrop of white rock. We stood for an instant, then, as we slithered down the little slope on to the grass and out into the full sunshine, so our spirits soared with the lark that rose from the ground ahead of us. We need search no further: we had found what we wanted.

  We set off, keeping at first to the troughs between the waves, and at first they were grassy. Then suddenly we came upon one that was all purple and mauve: pansies in such profusion as I had never seen before, never imagined possible. We walked through them, treading on them, then sat down among them, drinking in their colour so thirstily it seemed we were absorbing it not just through our eyes but throughout our entire body. And not until this great thirst was quenched did we go on. And now we were like two dogs following a scent, or rather each following its own scent, for we no longer moved forward side by side. And indeed we were on a scent, the scent of wild flowers, hunting for new ones to add to our collection; and every time one of us found one we would stop and I would bring out my notebook and write down a description and make a guess at its family and perhaps do a quick sketch. Then on again, this way and that, up and down, wherever there was the promise of something new to find; and it was Lesley who made the discovery we had been hoping for: spring gentians, the most brilliant of all the gentian family, as if the entire sky had been distilled to provide the crop of colour with which their starry faces were painted. Here were half a dozen, growing among the rocks.

  Then on to the next hillock and here were so many gentians there was just not room for them all, and some had slipped off the edge and were growing in the grass at the bottom, where, against the green, their colour was if possible even more vivid.

  Then
came the stop for lunch, choosing a place that looked inviting and where we might be sheltered from the wind, but not knowing until we had opened our bags and spread out our picnic that we had chosen a place where fritillaries grew. There were three flowers we had been specially wanting to add to our list, flowers we had met on other occasions, past holidays, and hoped to meet again: these were two of them. The third was the narcissus.

  After lunch came the storm, and though it never reached us, it stood between us and the sun and hung its gauze curtain over the mountains and rumbled and muttered threats that could not be ignored. If it swept across the plateau as we feared it might where could we shelter? We looked around and there seemed to be only one place: on a distant hill stood the remains of a small stone hut. Thither we went. The hut itself was of little use, but standing there we saw something else. We had come to the edge of the plain. Beyond the hut the ground dropped away steeply and suddenly to a narrow valley. On the other side of the valley the beech forest began again. Here among the beech trees was the shelter we were looking for, and all we needed now was to find a way down, somewhere where the slope was not too precipitous. Lesley found the place and we set off.

  And so, just as the forest had led us to the plain, the plain in its turn now led us to the valley. Having shown us its delights, it now showed us the way forward to whatever was to come next. But before it took its leave of us it had one final delight in store, kept back to the last possible moment. As we made our way down between the rocks to the waiting valley, Lesley saw them ahead of her, waving white heads at her, so perfectly placed, so perfectly timed, we were almost expecting them: our narcissi.

  In the valley stood a man, the first human being we had set eyes on since parking our car, a small, solitary figure who looked from a distance as if he had come from the opening paragraph of a Hardy novel: someone, clearly, not to be ignored. We approached him and learned that he was a cowherd out looking for his cows. All day – so he told us – they were free to wander as they pleased. Then in the evening he would come for them to lead them back to the place where they spent the night, a place back down the valley where there was a spring. We had seen a cow from the plain and pointed out where it was. There were another five, he said, smiling, and went on his way to find them; and we moved on towards the sheltering trees.

  The storm never came. It moved away down the mountains and in a little while the sun reappeared. We lay in the green grass on the edge of the forest, drank a little more wine and added a few more flowers to our list, then looked at the time and decided we ought to be making our way back. But which way? We could retrace our footsteps, meeting again our narcissi, our fritillaries, our gentians and our pansies, but this would be a little dull. We had seen them once and didn’t specially need to see them again. The alternative was to keep to the valley, skirting the edge of the forest, and thus work our way round to the point where we had first left it. And this was what we chose to do. And so, without intending to or expecting to, we came to the spring. There was no doubt about it: there were the cows and there was the water, looking at first like a little stream threading the grass, until we noticed it was not moving, held in the valley bottom. We passed the cows, crossed over the water, climbed a short way up the slope on the far side and sat down. What else could we do? For here was a natural open-air theatre, with a back drop of beeches, a sloping grassy stage, and glinting water to give the impression of footlights. The cows were already on the stage. We took our seats, not knowing that this was only the start, that the show was just about to begin.

  A fanfare of trumpets? You could call it that. It was the whinny of a horse; and then round the back of a hillock they came, a troop of horses, mares and their foals, a dozen or more, moving towards us, then stopping to take up their position on the left of the stage. A pause; and then the next arrival, coming this time from the right. More cows, lots of them, the mothers walking in stately procession, their calves frisking and galloping, showing off their paces. Horses in a group on the left. Cows on the right, spreading across, moving down towards the footlights as if to take up their positions for the opening chorus.

  ‘All we want now,’ said Lesley, ‘are the Indians.’ And as if in answer to her words a column of smoke rose from the trees on the far left. . . .

  A day to remember – and also to ponder on. There was nothing special about what we had seen. The flowers were there for anyone to find. They had been growing there maybe for centuries, and every year had made their annual appearance. Nor was there anything very special about the cows or the horses. Here was the spring to which they returned every evening as the sun began to go down. Their entry had been dramatic, but then they were Italian cows and Italian horses and drama is in the Italian blood. The only unusual thing about that day was our presence on the scene. And so, as I pondered, I found myself stringing together the apparently chance happenings that had brought two people who had set off from their hotel after breakfast with every intention of climbing to the top of Monte Camiciola to find themselves instead seated in a tiny valley hidden in the middle of a beech forest at just the very moment when the daily drama was about to begin.

  Such were my first thoughts, and I recorded them on our return to England. It was a story with a moral perhaps, the moral being that it is not always a good thing to have a preconceived idea of where you are going, that sometimes it may be better to take life as it comes, set your sails according to the winds that blow, go with the tide, follow your instinct, choose the grassier, less trodden road, if that is the one that appeals to you and choose it for its own sake and not in the hope that it might lead anywhere very special.

  It was not until some months later that I saw the episode as something else. I saw it as a microcosm of my career.

  What young man leaving University with a Degree (even if not a very good one) has not aimed for the mountain top? My aspirations were vague. I had no very precise idea where I wanted to go or by what route, just that I wanted to climb, and I was willing to take any path that appeared to lead upwards. The road I chose was broad and stony and well worn, for many had travelled that way before me. It took me to London, into the forest, away from the sunshine. But where else could one go to seek one’s fortune? I turned my back on the valleys where lesser mortals laboured, and strode confidently forward.

  Then came disillusion. The road that had started off with such promise, levelled out, then began to descend; and there was no escaping from it, no path however narrow that would take me upwards again. Down I went getting more and more depressed, until I saw a glade, a gleam of sunshine, offering a moment of pleasure and a ray of hope. Now I had left the road. I had resigned from one job and been sacked from another. Now, unable to find anyone willing to employ me, I was on my own and having to make the best of it.

  Thus I came to the plain. It was not what I had set out to find. It was well below the mountain tops. It was a modest plain but it offered me what I wanted. Here, out in the sunshine away from the forest, I was free, my own master, going where I pleased, following my instinct. With new and unexpected delights waiting to be discovered round every corner, what more did I need? Selling books in Dartmouth, what happier occupation could I find.

  Then after many pleasant years of bookselling, came the curtain of cloud that obscured the sun. . . . But it would have been time to leave in any case, for my plain had been explored: I had found all that I had hoped to find, all it seemed possible to find. So I left not unwillingly. I could no longer be a full-time bookseller. I didn’t want to be a part-time bookseller, nor, luckily, did I need to be. I knew what I wanted to do instead. The valley lay beneath me green and inviting. I climbed down to it. Here were new delights waiting to be discovered, new treasure. I walked along it a little way, then sat down. I was fifty-four. It was late in the day. The sun was already losing its heat. But I had timed it nicely. . . .

  2. Downwards

  On a May morning in 1947 I made my way to the offices of the Cambridge University Ap
pointments Board to begin my search for a career.

  What sort of a job had I in mind? I really had no idea and hoped they would make suggestions. I could list my various qualifications – a good scholarship in mathematics followed by a bad Degree in English Literature; it was up to them – I hoped – to tell me in what direction they pointed. There was only one direction I would utterly refuse to consider. I would not – could not – become a teacher. Teaching meant talking and my voice was still not to be trusted.

  Just as every seed has somewhere written inside it the most exact details of the plant it will eventually become, so it must be with the human being. We may carry our hopes with us to the grave but often it will be like hoping that the apple tree will one day produce a crop of plums. No doubt a perspicacious interviewer could have read it all in the young man who sat before him, and no doubt my interviewer did in fact read a lot of it. But would it have helped if he had told me what he saw?

  When one is twenty-six and in love, a year is a lifetime, and it was just as well I did not know what lay ahead of me: that it would be four years before I found a career I was going to be happy in, that this career would be in bookselling, and that I would have to wait nearly thirty years before my own first book got into print.

  So my interviewer was tactful and I came away confident that before long something would turn up, something that, in some modest fashion, would blend Newton with Shakespeare. Though there might not be many such jobs, there were surely not many graduates who could rival my particular qualifications. The road to the mountain top had entered the forest. It was a little hard to be sure exactly where it was leading, but never mind: it was going uphill; and I strode happily along.