by Denton Welch
Up in the roof, the rafters soared into blackness, while down below the lights shone on us as they do on the ring at a boxing match. My Irish jig was a terrible combination of pride, self-consciousness and concentration. Afterwards we all joined in the Christmas dance, where you clap your hands and shuffle your feet as the partners work up and down. Miss Sharp had nothing good to say for us, although I think she was proud. As I rushed down the dirty stone stairs that must have been built for elephants, a Catholic girl buttonholed me and told me how she was going to be christened. I was horrified. She was eight years old and I told her it should have been done when she was born. She only smirked and looked knowing and told me about her white clothes. The Catholic religion gave me the same feeling as those white porcelain flowers under glass globes which I saw in cemeteries—something old and depraved and florid and fly-blown.
Strangely enough, some of the Jews in Shanghai gave children’s Christmas parties and one to which I was asked at this time was an eighteenth-century party. I went in a blue suit with knee-breeches and powdered hair. There was noise and light when the door was opened and my hostess appeared, rounded and benign, with her small son who was in lemon-coloured satin with an elaborate silky wig on his head. I immediately felt that my get-up was very homemade. My powdered hair was not nearly up to the standard of this curled wig. I was led to the long narrow tables which were glittering with candles. There was cream in everything. Cream horns, cream stuffed into brandy-snaps, éclairs squirted when you bit them. I felt almost sick and longed for jelly and sorbets. After this we were taken to the drawing-room where a Christmas tree that reached the ceiling was blazing. It was fiery and barbaric and a fitting background for our hostess, who stood in front in her black velvet and pearls. Her grown-up nephew fished the presents off with a long stick and she graciously gave them to us. I had a richly bound book of Greek myths. I turned the pages idly, for I could not yet read, until my eyes fell on a picture of Prometheus chained to the rock, a vulture hovering over him. He was nearly naked, his athlete’s chest and arms pinned to the rock, his powerful legs straddled apart, his perfect features contorted with pain. It gave me the same feeling that crucifixes did. I felt shame and admiration. I shut the book quickly. I did not want anyone to see me looking at the picture.
The grown-up nephew was now doing conjuring tricks. He had taken off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. His arms were thick and muscular with light hairs on them in spite of his dark chin. He was young and full of horse-play. He put eggs in his mouth and made them disappear. He drew them out of other people’s ears, then made to throw them against the wall, but they always vanished in time.
At last Wooly said that it was time to go home and I was soon undressing in the nursery and looking at the other pictures in my new book.
We were going to spend Christmas on a house-boat, up the river. I had never been on one before and was thrilled by the little saloon, the still smaller cabin that I had and the shining paint and glistening brass. Soon we had left Shanghai and were sailing upstream. The servants were chattering and cooking in the galley, and little green curtains in the saloon were fluttering in the wind from the minute portholes. I went to look at my cabin again. All the woodwork was dark old mahogany. There was a glistening, metal tip-up basin and two bunks, one on top of the other.
I climbed up to the top one and lay down on my back, feeling the gentle motion of the boat and holding over my head the strange toy I had brought with me. I should really have outgrown it by now; it was a curious home-made cross between a gollywog and a doll. It was made of green velvet and had a white face which I was always touching up with my paints. Its eyes and lips grew ever blacker and redder. I leant with my toy out of the porthole. I held it negligently and it fell. Its white face faded into the green water. I was horrified, as I would have been if a human being had fallen overboard. I rushed up on deck for a pole. One of the hands tried fishing with a hook. It was useless, my toy was drowned. Its painted face would all be washed away. I moaned and wept for it of course, and my mother was very silent. Knowing that I liked to taste strange things, she slipped away and came back with two glass jars.
We sat there in the stern of the boat, eating the pearly little onions and the green tomato chutney with our fingers, watching the grey clouds and the grey water go swirling by. The strange harsh tastes bit into my tongue and pleased me.
My mother was so clever. The next day when I woke I was almost happy without my toy. We spent most of the day on shore. The houseboat was moored at the side of the river in front of the ruins of a temple. There were only a few, spiky columns rising out of the weeds and a huge, broken incense-burner, carved out of granite. My mother coveted it and wanted to take it back to our garden and put it so that it could be seen and to fill it with water for the birds. We went in search of someone to ask about it. We found some priests in their ramshackle, flimsy monastery.
I thought they would tell my mother that it was sacrilege to remove the incense-burner and that they would be angry with us; but their eyes were rapacious and their lips smiled smoothly as they bargained for dollars with my mother. When it was settled, they sent us coolies with long poles, and the incense-burner, settled stiff in the earth and weeds, was slowly prised up and lashed with rope to the poles. Then began the procession, bearing it to the ship. The poles were bent like a crescent moon and the coolies’ faces shone with sweat. They gave theatrical groans and sang higher and higher in their strange falsettos as they strained to get it on board. The stern sank noticeably as at last it was secured to the deck. We waved to the priests and were off. They smiled and turned their backs. I saw their discoloured black gowns and shaven heads disappearing into the jungle of dead weeds and broken columns.
The next day was Christmas and there was lots to eat, but my presents had been left behind and so I had to wait for those. After lunch we went on shore and walked up into the hills. It was cold and grey and the wool of my scarf rubbed my ears and neck. The hills were honeycombs, the cells of which were tombs. There were mounds of earth and small shrines with top-heavy roofs. Many were excavated in the shape of a horseshoe, with an altar in the middle. Here the families would come to worship their ancestors. The ground was littered with gold and silver paper money which had been offered as a sacrifice.
I wandered off by myself and went round the ridge of a hill. The dry grass grated and rattled about my bare knees. I saw a ruined grave and went up to it. Its side had broken open and I saw the rotting coffin and a faded piece of blue cotton. I went nearer and saw a skull, the reddish hair and livid flesh still clinging to it in strips. I was covered with fear which held me tight inside. I ran round the ridge, scratching my legs, but never stopping till I found my mother and father. I did not tell them what I had seen; it was too horrible and fascinating. That night in my bunk I lay on my back and thought of the skull. The red hair was the detail that horrified me most. All Chinese have black hair. They never dig a hole for the dead; they raise a mound or build a little brick house over them.
We arrived home a few days after Christmas and I rushed upstairs and looked at all the parcels that were waiting for me.
School began again and everything settled down monotonously until the spring, when there was general turmoil as we gradually packed and got ready to sail for England again to see my brothers. All my childhood was spent in travelling backwards and forwards from China to England and England to China. In this way my mother divided her time equally between my father and my brothers.
VIII
The year 1914 saw us in England, looking for a house to spend the summer in. A friend in Oxfordshire found us one near her and we spent the time before we moved in touring. I loved this, although the car made me feel a little sick. My father had come with us this time and he drove while my mother sat next to him and I was alone in the back. The car was new and needed breaking-in, so we climbed and descended the hills very gently.
We went to all the places that Americans and strangers go
to. We stayed at the Lygon Arms and I was spellbound as a pretty American told me, while we were sitting in front of an enormous fireplace, that she had Cromwell’s room. She said that it was the only one which hadn’t been fitted with electric light, as this might have spoilt its atmosphere.
We stayed at the Peacock Inn at Naseby and my father and mother had the room with Queen Victoria’s bed in it. I seem to remember that it was heavy mahogany with a patchwork quilt on it. My own room was on the top storey, with a little dormer window that looked onto the garden and the rushing stream.
My father had bought me a little Wedgwood plaque that must have once ornamented some clock or candlestick. Hope with an anchor was pictured on it. I would wash it lovingly with my father’s shaving soap and then lie on my bed staring at it and listening to the rushing water.
We visited Haddon Hall from there. It had not then been reinhabited and was almost empty of furniture. The Manners had deserted it for more than a hundred years, and our guide pointed out where the raindrops had sunk into the huge wooden tables in the hall.
The gardens were wonderful, in terraces, falling into the woods, lost in the early summer haze. I was enchanted. I had never seen a great, historic house before and could think of nothing else.
My parents, seeing how interested I was, took me to Chatsworth and to Hardwick, and I wandered through the lovely, tarnished rooms believing every word the garrulous guide said.
From Naseby we went to Repton, where my eldest brother was at school. We stayed at Burton and went over to see him each day. The hotel was Georgian and they still had much of their old china and plate which they kept in a cabinet. This was a new period to me. So far we had only stayed in Tudor places. My mother told me what she knew about the eighteenth century and I became absorbed. Something inside me told me that this sort of architecture was greater than all the beamed cottages put together, which I had had such a mania for.
I wandered with my mother down the soiled streets of Burton looking for ‘Georginical’ houses, as I called them. The air was heavy with the smell of beer. I had never been in a manufacturing town before. My mother bought me a small book about a family of rabbits, and I always associate this sentimental, domestic story with the dirty gutters and greasy dust of Burton.
At Repton there was more history for me. The old priory was being drastically restored and battered Norman columns in the undercroft were being displayed. My brother told me how a whole set of medieval tiles had just been unearthed and how they had been stolen almost the next day. I worried over this and carried about with me a real sense of loss.
The first day we arrived was Speech Day and I loved the salmon mayonnaise and claret cup we had in the huge marquee. I only was allowed to sip the claret cup, but I loved the very thought of it—to drink real wine, and such strange wine, with grapes and strawberries and cucumber in it. Cucumber has always seemed exotic to me—ever since I saw my mother’s glycerine, honey and cucumber hand-lotion at Birchington.
The cricket and speeches I found monotonous, but otherwise I was enjoying my day. The art school, in the old priory ox stables, I thought very romantic, especially the plaster casts. All through my childhood I had very reverent feelings for Greek and Roman sculpture, ever since my mother had showed me the collection of photographs she had made when she was at school in the convent at Florence.
Before we left, my father climbed with me up the tower of the parish church. We went round till we were dizzy and every now and then I caught a glimpse of the green land through the narrow lancets which were like the slots of a money-box. The stone spiral wound itself out at last and we were on the parapet, wind blowing and sun shining. I dared not look over the edge till my father took me. Then I felt I was in an aeroplane. All the stairs I had climbed didn’t count any more. I was suspended and swaying in the air.
On the way down we stopped to look at the bells. I remembered the terrible story of a girl who had clung to a bell to muffle its sound with her body. I was in a fever to get away before someone should start ringing them downstairs.
When we left Repton we went to stay with the friend who had found the house we were about to move into. The first night we were there I had a scene with my mother. We were in the bathroom and I was being unbearable. Suddenly she picked up the ivory hairbrush and began to smack me with it; I began to hit her behind with my hand and we went round in a circle of whirling hands and brushes. The situation was rapidly developing into farce, but although we were both almost laughing, neither of us would admit it, and after the exercise had calmed us down we both separated and went to bed quite quietly.
I slept in the next room to Mrs Hayes’s small girls and before I got into bed I went in to say goodnight. They were cleaning their teeth, the nurse standing over them. The toothpowder they used was kept in a glass salt-pot with a china lid with a hole in it, such as you see in hotels; it even had a monogram on it. I wanted to know where they had got it. The girls, with great glee, told me that their nurse had stolen it when last they had stayed in a hotel in London.
I was very surprised and felt she ought immediately to be taken to prison. Nevertheless, I thought her very bold and daring, and have never been able to look at a hotel cruet since without thinking of her.
The next day, down in the drawing-room, Katherine, the eldest girl, showed me an old blue and white doll’s tea-set, kept reverently in a cabinet. As we fingered and touched the pieces, she said very carefully but casually that it was several generations old. I knew about centuries but I could not imagine what generations were. I carried the word about with me all day, and by the end of that time had placed the date of the tea-set quite five hundred years back.
In the afternoon we set off to see the house we had taken at Benson. The car was full and we children were getting more and more unruly. By the time we got to the house, I felt as if I had never lived in anything but a bear garden.
I looked up and saw the new hedge and the red-tile-hung house. It had a very repressed unmarried look. I screamed, ‘It’s much too tidy for us!’ Dreadful frowns and grimaces were made at me and I was silenced. We walked up the brick steps and opened the gate into what once was a very precise formal garden.
It was not precise now. The little box-hedges were ragged and there was much long grass where no grass of any sort should have been.
The gnarled little fruit trees, trained against the walls, hung in a crucified way, as if the nails were supporting them, not restraining them.
The appearance of the house from the road was deceiving. Nevertheless there was a certain decayed charm about it. We rang the bell and waited at the open front-door. I could see through the cracks between my elders a picture of a man on a white horse and above it two crossed swords. At last a fat woman appeared and Mrs Hayes introduced us to her. She talked a lot and her eyes looked vaguely and shrewdly into the distance. Her dress was white and tousled. She showed us all over the house. It had been added to at various times and the rooms had low ceilings and were interesting shapes. They were dark and cool and heavy with the undisturbed atmosphere which only comes through years of neglect. Everything had been arranged, so we could not have refused to have it, even if we had wished to. I could see my mother looking and planning in her mind.
After we had seen everything the fat lady told us that her daughter was out in the paddock, helping to make the hay, and took us out there so that we could play in it too. The fat lady’s daughter was several years older than we were and rather imperious. I thought she looked very like a gypsy, with her pouting lips and hair matted with hay.
When we came back to the house, Colonel S., the fat lady’s husband, had arrived and after some more talk we left.
The next week we moved in. My mother was convinced that the whole house had to be spring-cleaned. Soon the place was in chaos. A huge machine from a vacuum-cleaning company was chugging on the lawn and dragging as much dust out of the carpets as it could. They lay flat on the lawn, pale and exhausted after their ordeal.
The sun glinted on the polished Regency and Victorian furniture which was waiting to go back into the rooms.
Inside, the naked squares of white floor and the stained surrounds were being scrubbed. Often when a bit of furniture was moved, it was found that the distemper on the wall only stretched to its edge—then was a different colour behind. The walls had been repainted with the furniture in place!
I took several of the old dark paintings off the walls, including the man on the white horse which I had first seen, and ran upstairs with them. With a nailbrush and my father’s shaving soap I began to scrub them. I was delighted; the water acted as a varnish and made everything look richer and brighter. I got lots of dust off and then I dried them. They looked dull now, and I was disappointed, but I waited for a little, and then polished them with Adam’s furniture polish. I thought they looked lovely and took them down proudly to show them to my mother. She was horrified at my drastic treatment of them, but had to admit that they looked nice. I hung them up again and turned my attention to the dining-room table. It was round and early Victorian, with a very elaborate walnut veneer all over it. I looked at the lovely grain and then began polishing furiously.
I was obsessed with the idea of cleaning and polishing, and went round the house, looking for things to do.
Much of the house was covered with thick creepers, and in the long, narrow room which I had chosen for my own the light seeped in greenly, as into an aquarium. The clustered leaves were slowly narrowing down the windows.
The drawing-room downstairs was the only room that the S.s had kept in any sort of order. The floor was parquet and on it was laid an old Brussels carpet of cabbage leaves and cabbage roses.
Instead of the dark oil paintings there were faded watercolours in this room and the walls were covered with a striped paper which resembled watered-silk.