It has happened and I am home again. There’s a sense of awe when the impossible thing that you refused has happened, and it’s over, and you don’t know whether you went on refusing and it happened just the same, or whether somehow you accepted. But anyhow it’s over. But I am not as happy as I thought I’d be because when something you have dreaded comes to an end there’s a sense of anticlimax, like dust in the mouth. All the crashing ruin, the falling and tumbling, are over, but the dust is horrible. They say it won’t happen to me again but I expect they only say it to comfort me. But I must think it won’t. I must be like the people who plant gardens and build houses all over again where the earthquake has been. At the back of their minds they know there may be another ’quake but with the front of their minds they plant gardens. I wish I had a house and garden of my own, in the country and quiet. Though it’s the suburbs here it’s never really quiet and all the people coming in and out make me so confused and sleepless and tired. I’d like to live in the deep country with my dear Jenny Kennedy, just the two of us; not with Father and Mother and their anxious looks, wondering what next. Jenny doesn’t wonder what next, she just loves me and takes what comes. I can’t marry with this thing hanging over me, and I’ll never be able to do much because when I get tired the desperation comes. They’ve never understood that. They’ve always thought I was lazy. I’m not, only when I am tired it comes. It wouldn’t have happened as it did if Mother hadn’t made me go to Paris with her. It was the noise and the heat. All those people chattering, the traffic, and the dreadful sin of the city pressing in on me. Father could give me a little house in the country if he wanted to. I’ve begged for it but he won’t listen. And Mother says it’s impossible, Father couldn’t afford it. But I’ve that bit of money my godmother left me and he wouldn’t have to add a great deal to it. If I were like Virginia and got married he’d give me a dowry and trousseau, as he did her. When God is cruel to you everyone else is cruel too. When He turns His back He turns the whole world with Him.
The diary broke off abruptly and began again a few days later.
I oughtn’t to have said that about God. I don’t know enough about Him. I don’t even know if He exists. Only if He doesn’t exist why did I refuse? When you say, I won’t, you refuse somebody and when you say, Yes, I will, you say it to somebody. I remember now that I did accept, that night when I woke up in the hospital room and there was the night light burning, and the night nurse moving in and out, and I realized that I was sane again. I was so thankful that I said, Yes, I’ll do it. You might say that wasn’t a real acceptance because what I’d refused had already happened to me. But yet it was. You can go on refusing even after it’s happened to you, like the child who screams and kicks the door after it’s been shut up in the dark room. Or you can sit quietly down in the dark and watch for the return of light.
Now it’s out. I have said I was sane again and that means that I was not sane before. I have written it down. For I’m to be honest in this diary. That’s why I’m writing it. I’m writing this to help myself by speaking out exactly what’s in my mind. I can’t talk to people because this illness isn’t like other illnesses; all that’s worst in it you have to keep buried so as not to distress people, for one must not spread fear. And anyhow they wouldn’t understand. I remember Mother didn’t when I was a child, and screamed after I was in bed at night, and when she came and I said I was lying on stones, and the black walls were moving in, she said I was a silly child and gave me a biscuit. I threw the biscuit on the floor, for I had wanted her to put her arms around me and tell me she knew about the stones and the moving walls. Only of course she didn’t know.
When did I begin to realize that other people don’t wake up every morning in unexplainable misery, don’t, as soon as they are ill or exhausted, become sleepless and desperate? People mean different things by desperation. I mean the terror of impending disorder. For disorder of mind or body is evil’s chance. At least, I think so. It seems to me to be integration that keeps evil out. I don’t know when it was, I only know I struggled to keep my difference hidden just so as not to be different. There is a sense of safety in being like other people.
I scarcely remember how it happened, after we came back from Paris, for it’s all a blur, but I do remember the insomnia and trying to get out of the window to escape from the evil. The time at the Home I only remember as a confused nightmare. But it’s odd, I do remember one thing very clearly. I remember who among the nurses was kind to me and who was not. It would be awful to have to go back there and I’m going to ask Father once more if I may live in the country with Jenny. Mother will be furious because Jenny’s her maid, and a good maid, but I know that if Jenny has to choose between me and Mother she’ll choose me.
The next entry was some weeks later.
Father refused. It wouldn’t be good for me to mope alone in the country. What I need is cheerfulness about me. Plenty of distraction. I tried to explain that what I need is just not to be tired, but I couldn’t get the words out and suddenly I began to cry, and he kissed me lovingly and told me to go with Mother and buy myself a new hat.
That was a month ago and it’s been a miserable month until yesterday, when Mother thought it was her duty to ask the queer old man to tea. He’s staying at the vicarage taking the services while the Vicar is having a holiday. The Vicar apologized about him. The man who should have come got ill and there was no one to be found but this old man. The Vicar has cut his holiday down from three weeks to a fortnight, and only one Sunday, because of being so apologetic about the old man. He’s very old and eccentric, and he doesn’t shave very well though one can see that he’s tried. At tea he was by turns very shy and very fierce and he mumbled sometimes and dropped cake on the carpet. There were other people there and Mother was annoyed, and after tea she asked me to take him out in the garden and show him the sweet peas. He was like a child about the sweet peas, he enjoyed them so much, their color and lightness and scent. He said he’d never had a garden and when I asked him where he lived I found it was in lodgings down in East London, and for years he’d been a curate at a church in the slums. He wasn’t at all sorry for himself but I was sorry for him because he loved flowers and had no garden, and suddenly I burst out and told him how I longed to go and live in the country. He looked at our beautiful garden as though he wondered how anyone could want anything better, and then he looked at me very keenly out of his bright blue eyes and said, “Why?” The question came out so sharply and suddenly that I answered with the truth. I told him everything. It was the queerest thing that ever happened to me because I take such infinite trouble always to cover it all up. I hide it like a crime. And yet here I was laying it all out in front of him. I was like a criminal emptying his pockets. I took out everything. He was silent for a long time, rubbing his chin, and then he said, “You’re afraid of it?”
It seemed such a silly question and I spoke sharply I think when I said, “Of course I am, I’m terrified.”
“Why?” he asked. “If you lose your reason you lose it into the hands of God.”
I said, “Why does God let us suffer like this?” and he answered, “My dear young lady, how should I know? Job didn’t know, but he repented in dust and ashes.”
He wasn’t helping me at all and I said crossly, “I haven’t done anything frightfully wrong. Nothing that calls for dust and ashes.”
He said quietly, “No?”
I said, “It makes one hate God.”
He said, “Where you’ve put Him?”
“Where have I put Him?”
“On the gallows.”
And then suddenly he caught sight of a tortoiseshell butterfly drifting down the path and he gave an exclamation of incredulous joy and ran after it. When I caught up with him he was standing in front of the buddleia tree, which was covered with butterflies as it nearly always is, and he was speechless with wonder, his face absorbed as a child’s when the candles have been lit on the Christmas tree. It was almost as though the b
utterflies shone on him and lit his face. Or else it was the other way around. For a moment there seemed light everywhere, though it was a gray day. It was queer and I didn’t want to move; until there was a sound of voices and we saw Mother and her guests coming out into the garden. The old man looked around at me and the light had been wiped off his face; it was puckered and distressed, like a sad monkey’s, and he said to me in a hoarse whisper, “My dear, I think I should be going,” and I realized that he was terrified of Mother and her guests. He must have been terrified all through the tea party, when he mumbled and dropped crumbs on the carpet.
“Come this way,” I said. “Around by the greenhouse. I’ll say good-bye to Mother for you.” We went into the house through the side door and when we were in the hall he said to me, “I think I had an umbrella. I feared thunder.” He had brought a baggy old umbrella tied with string and while he was fumbling to get it out of the stand he said to me, “It’s safe there, you know.”
I said, “The umbrella?” and he answered, “No, no, no! Your reason. It’s the only place where anything is safe. And when you’re dead it’s only what’s there you’ll have. Nothing else.”
He had a round clerical hat, dusty and green with age. He put it on, gripped his umbrella in his left hand and held out his right to me. I held it and it was dry and rough and hot. “My dear,” he said, “I will pray for you every day of my life until I die.”
Then he abruptly let go of my hand, turned his back on me and stumbled down the steps that led from the front door to the drive. At the bottom he turned around again and looking into his face I noticed that when he was neither eager nor alarmed his eyes had the most extraordinary quietness in them. “My dear,” he said, “love, your God, is a trinity. There are three necessary prayers and they have three words each. They are these, ‘Lord have mercy. Thee I adore. Into Thy hands.’ Not difficult to remember. If in times of distress you hold to these you will do well.” Then he lifted his hat and turned around again. I stood at the door and watched him go. He had a queer wavering sort of walk. He did not look back.
I went to the garden, for I knew Mother would be vexed with me if I didn’t go back to her guests, though I didn’t want to. I walked soundlessly over the long porch to two women who were standing in admiration before one of Mother’s rosebushes, which was full of bloom. But they weren’t looking at it. “Horrible old man!” one of them was saying. “Anyone can see he drinks. What was the Vicar thinking of to have him here? Better to have left us with no one. In and out of asylums for most of his life, I’m told.”
I stood quite still. He hadn’t told me. He’d stood aside, speaking only of God and me. I wanted to run after him but when I moved they saw me, and the one who had spoken blushed crimson and I had to go forward and speak to them and pretend I hadn’t heard.
And now it’s night and I am in my room and writing down everything he said before I forget it. He said so little and he explained nothing. He couldn’t. But it has come into my mind that what he couldn’t explain is that treasure hid in a field in the old story. If one were to spend a lifetime digging for the treasure, and in this time of one’s life not find it, one wouldn’t have wasted the time. There would be less far to dig in the next time. Only one must possess the field, whatever it costs to buy it, and it has again come into my mind that fields are quiet places. And so I’ve got to have that home in the country with Jenny. My old man had the quietness within himself and I’ll never know how he came by it. Perhaps for him outward quietness isn’t necessary, but for me it is. I’ve never got on with Father and Mother. I’ve always been the one of their children they cared for least, and now I’ve brought this trouble upon them. Once the tussle is over, it will be as much a relief to them as to me if we can live apart. I’ll start fighting again tomorrow.
The beautiful handwriting broke off and did not begin again for another three months. The date was October 14th and under the heading Cousin Mary had written:
The Laurels, Appleshaw. My first night here and I can’t sleep I’m so happy. I’ll sit up in bed and write a little. Fighting Father and Mother nearly cost me another breakdown but I managed to keep saying the three words of the three prayers and though they didn’t mean a thing to me I kept my head above water and I brought the doctor around to my side. He told Father to let me do what I liked.
It was Jenny who found this house. She has a cousin, a Mr. Postlethwaite, who lives here, and he told her about it. She came down to see it, by herself without telling anybody, and she liked it. So when I was well enough she and Mother and I came down to see it and Mother thought it was awful but I knew it was home.
And so here we are, and Mr. Postlethwaite is going to keep the garden in order and carry the coals for Jenny, and find someone to scrub the floors. But all the rest Jenny will do. She’s always been a lady’s maid and now she’ll be doing everything. She’s given up so much for me and there are times when I feel miserably guilty, and then at other times I realize that looking after me is as necessary for her as learning to be quiet and to dig are necessary for me. We just have to do it.
I shall live and die here. Perhaps I shall never be well but this place will give me periods of respite that I would not have found in any other, and though I am able to do nothing else in this life, except only seek, my life seeming to others a vie manquée, yet it will not be so, because what I seek is the goodness of God that waters the dry places. And water overflows from one dry patch to another, and so you cannot be selfish in digging for it. I did not know anything of this when I began this diary and I don’t know how I know it now. Perhaps it has something to do with the old man.
It is quiet in this room. I’ve only been here a few hours and yet already I know my home so well. There are no curtains at my window, for Jenny and I have only got the barest essentials as yet. I want to get the rest very gradually, old pieces of furniture to match this old house, just the right curtains and carpets. An old house that’s come alive through the centuries is not just a shelter from the weather, it’s a living thing and can be served. I could feel the life of this house as soon as I came through the door in the garden wall. And so there are no curtains at the windows and the moonlight is shining in so brightly that I hardly need my candles, and when I lean forward I can see a sky crowded with stars behind that great tower. I’m glad I’ve come here in still, mellow October weather. The great lime avenue was thick with piled gold when we drove through it, but when the trees bent to possess us and I looked up at them I could see the blue sky through the gold leaves because though there were so many of them they were worn thin, like very old coins. The fields were blue and hazy and when we got to the village green I could smell bonfire smoke and blackberry jam boiling. The wistaria leaves are a fall of golden rain on each side of the pillared way and on the south side of the house the Virginia creeper is scarlet on the wall. Down in the coppice at the bottom of the garden there are crab apples and the haws are scarlet.
I am learning it all by heart. I expect the winter will be hard in spite of the country snow like white fox fur wrapped about the house, filling the rooms with light. The snow will melt and it will be cold and wet and I shall be ill, as I always am, with the vile asthma and bronchitis, and I shall fall into black depression, and perhaps desperation too, but it will pass and the spring will come with celandines and white violets in the lanes, and then the late spring with bluebells and campion and the wistaria coming out. And I shall learn the spring by heart, and then the summer, and I’ll learn the bells and birdsong by heart, and the way the moonlight moves on the wall and the sun lies on the floor. I’ll grow older and lose my beauty but the spring will not grow old nor the moon nor the snow. Who will live after me in this house? Who will sit in the little parlor reading by the fire? And then she will put out her lamp and come up to this room and light the candles and kneel by the bed to pray. I don’t know who she is but I loved her the moment I walked into this room, for that was a moment that was timeless. I shall have my sorrows in t
his house, but I will pray for her that she may reap a harvest of joy. I will pray for her every day of my life, as the old man is praying for me.
Mary closed the book. That was all she would read tonight. It was as much as she could bear. She put out the lamp and went upstairs to bed. In her room she lit the candles in the two brass candlesticks and knelt down beside the old-fashioned bed. It was only for the moment that it seemed strange to be kneeling, for those who had lived in this house during the past centuries had belonged to the years of faith and her body relaxed easily into their habitual posture. What should she say to her discarded God? Her childhood’s prayers came to her mind but they were too infantile. But the old man’s prayers were not infantile and she repeated them.
3
Paul, at work at this hour in his small study with Bess asleep on the floor beside him, needed no candles. It gave Valerie the horrors, when presently she looked in to say she was going up to bed, to see him sitting in the dark. “It’s so morbid,” she said. “Why can’t you put the light on just for the look of the thing?”
“Why waste electricity just for the look of the thing?”
“You waste so many things, why not the electricity?”
“What do I waste?”
“Your time for one thing. When you’re in here half the time you’re not using your typewriter at all, or your tape recorder, you’re simply sitting doing nothing.” He smiled, his slow amused smile that so maddened her, as though he had a private joke with himself from which she was shut out. “And you call that work; I believe you think you’re earning our living. Don’t stay up late. When you come up so late, and wake me just when I’ve got off, I can’t sleep again for hours. You know I can’t.”
“I’ll be quiet, Val.”
“You never are. You knock into things. Why can’t you work in the morning when other men do?”
The Scent of Water Page 9