by Denton Welch
There were three steps down into my mother’s and father’s room, which was very large. The whole time we were there it had a bare look, as my mother said that the carpet was too old and dirty for even the vacuum cleaner to be able to do anything with, and so she had the floor scrubbed and the white centre and the stained surround left bare. The bed was twisted mahogany placed on a raised platform and the old swinging cheval-glass gave one a grey, dream-like appearance when it was gazed into.
The S.s and their family had lived in this house for many years, gradually getting poorer and poorer. The war was the last blow; from then on they must have lived in cheerful and unpretending squalor.
By the time the house was again in some sort of order my brothers had returned for the holidays and I suddenly lost my interest in polishing everything and began to bicycle, with Paul as my teacher. He would guide me over the little paths in the garden and round the tennis-court. At the entrance to the court there was a terrible obstacle in the shape of a crab-apple tree which scattered its bright little hard fruit all over the path. I would strike one with my front wheel and would be off in a moment, lying on the humid earth, laughing rather anxiously; then I would finger one of the little red balls and bite into its crisp, acid heart. I would feel the juice skinning my teeth, roughening my tongue, as a cat’s is rough. I thought all cleanness lived in crab-apples.
My brother, with male vanity, would show off in front of me, rushing at a grass bank and, as he was upon it, skidding so that the flat lawn showed the brown, fan-shaped scar his wheels had made.
The first day he took me on the road we went along the quiet lanes and my confidence grew; then suddenly I heard a car. It was in front of me—I saw its nose appearing round the corner—the whirr of its engines was in my ears and my courage failed me. I slipped off into the ditch and felt the cool cow-parsley closing over me. The wheels of my bicycle were revolving aimlessly, as a chicken walks about when its head has been cut off. My brother rode up, furious with his pupil. He called me coward, funk and clumsy lout.
As I picked myself out of the ditch, shamefaced and casual, I saw the car slowly backing towards us. It was filled with an open-faced family party who stared and smiled nervously. There were more explanations and more contempt was poured on me by my brother. At last they drove off, satisfied that they were not responsible for my mishap, and we returned into the stable-yard. We found my father doing something to the car. When he saw us he turned to my brother and asked him to take a message to Mrs S., who, when she left the house we were living in, had retired to an Army hut, with her Colonel and her grownup children. Paul was very shy with strangers and he made weak explanations of why he could not go and then darted into the house. I was left to take the message, and proudly conscious of my ability to talk to strangers even if my bicycle riding was not up to Paul’s standard, I went towards the hut. I was not prepared for the sight that met my eyes when the door was opened. If I had been told beforehand, I should never have gone.
Being a child, my voice was high pitched, and I can only imagine that Mrs S. thought by it that I was one of her daughters.
I had knocked on the door and waited until I heard someone ask, ‘Who is there?’ Egotistically, I had answered, ‘It’s me.’ The door was opened, disclosing Mrs S. in her elaborate, soiled corsets, the suspenders dangling about her heavy, blue-veined legs, her hair like a slovenly rook’s nest. With an impatient, outraged exclamation she turned about, displaying her huge buttocks, like dirty blancmanges, and fled into her bedroom. From there she carried on a ladylike and furious conversation, either with herself or with me—I could not tell—emerging at last in the ruin of a feathered peignoir in that shade of off-white which nature reserves for soiled articles.
She was queen-like and austere, almost making me feel that I had appeared naked and in an obscene attitude before her. I went back to the house rather shaken, with a horror of corsets firmly fixed in my mind, which has never left me.
The next day it rained and I was disconsolate. I went out of the back door into the stable-yard and pattered through the puddles to the disused barn. I entered by the huge, crazy door and shut it behind me. I was in darkness with the smell of dust and mice and hay in my nostrils. The light came in through the cracks in the doors and the walls. I climbed up on to some boxes and hung on to a beam, pretending I was a monkey. I took my raincoat off and jersey, to be freer. I gnashed my teeth and made contorted faces, I gibbered and tried to hang on with one hand as I scratched myself with the other. I pretended to eat imaginary peanuts and to crack the shells with my teeth. When I grew tired of this, I sat down on the boxes and thought how miserable I was. Suddenly, it flashed through my mind that I should pretend to be a slave who had to live in the barn and sweat and labour all day. I remembered the pictures of Greek slaves I had seen and, with a tremendous sense of daring, I pulled my shirt over my head and saw myself white, in the cracks of light. It was a much easier matter to take off my trousers, as I had always felt much more self-conscious about exposing my chest than the lower part of my body. I stood naked in the dark barn. The excitement was bubbling from my heart into my throat. I felt I was an ancient Greek, free and fierce and like a clever animal. I wanted to appear naked in public. I looked out of the barn and saw the rain and the blank windows of the house. I thought I would feel the rain spitting on me, so I glided into it and began to dance, concentrating fiercely on my movements. I bent my wrist and elbow joints sharply and began to feel very religious.
I wanted to belong to a sect who did devil dances all night round a bonfire on a wild moor.
Suddenly my brother appeared, but he seemed to show hardly any surprise and followed me into the barn, where I began to swing like a monkey again from the beams. Soon he had no clothes on too and we were dancing and swinging like mad mice. We sang and shrieked, we were so excited and then as suddenly we subsided and began to put our clothes on again. I thought it all the greatest fun, especially as I felt that the grown-ups would be horrified. Suddenly, desperately, I thought I would tell my mother. I was so vain about my wickedness.
She laughed and smiled and I saw she had a far-seeing, inward look.
IX
One day I saw one of the Miss S.s coming up to the door, so I ran to open it before she could ring. She had come to ask us to go to a pageant in which she and her sisters were taking part. An aunt was staying with us at the time and the next day we all got ready to go. I was excited as I was told that I should see Queen Elizabeth riding on a horse with her foot in the original stirrup which had been kept in a nearby country house ever since her visit.
The day was hot and thunderous and we wandered in the lovely garden in which the pageant was to be held, waiting for it to begin. My aunt, who was fat and tired, sat on the grass and spoilt her dress which I admired very much; it was thick white Chinese silk with a charming pattern woven in it. When she got up, there were the great green and brown smears where her big thighs had crushed the grass. I felt that she ought never to be trusted with nice clothes.
By this time the pageant was nearly in sight; it was winding slowly round the great garden. At last I saw the red wig and false pearls of Queen Elizabeth’s head. I could see very little else until I was lifted up; then I saw the famous stirrup. It was very large and heavy, like a boat. Miss S. was a page in green velvet. She looked rather outsize for a page, but I suddenly realised that male clothes suited her much better than female clothes. Her eyes were dark and flashing and she had that heavy brick-red colour which is so masculine.
I was a little disappointed in the pageant. I felt that nobody had taken it quite seriously enough.
The Thames was very near us at Benson and we would go down to swim or boat nearly every day; we often would take tea out in a punt and I loved trailing my hand in the water and watching the weeds at the bottom being torn and driven by the current. My father once fell in, which excited me very much. The boat began to leave the shore when he had only one foot in it. He began to do the sp
lits and, as he wasn’t a ballet dancer, he couldn’t conclude the operation. It shook my belief in the infallibility of adults.
There was much lemon and orange squash drunk at home. I always remember a thick orange grenadine which I liked to drink neat, pretending that it was a liqueur.
We often would go over to the vicarage at Ewelme. It was a severe Georgian house, tall, with some blocked-in windows. The vicar’s wife would say, ‘If the blocked-up windows were unblocked, there’d be no walls to put furniture against!’ In the hall were old prints and there was a red, blue and gold Derby tea-set in the drawing-room. I loved the stately house and its contents and would get the vicar to tell me about it and also about the church. He said that his predecessor had taken all the eighteenth-century pews out of the church and had put in pine ones instead.
Everyone at this time was talking about appendicitis and this had so frightened the vicar and his wife that they had just had their daughter operated on, in spite of the fact that she had shown no signs of poisoning at all.
They explained their reason by saying, ‘What should we do, out there in the country, if Maisie should develop appendicitis? It was much better to have it out before the trouble began.’ I always wondered why they didn’t have themselves operated on too. I suppose the reason is that one always fears for the people one loves, but feels that God will not allow anything like that to happen to oneself.
The vicar’s wife would often complain of Maisie’s cousin who had come to stay for a few days. She was a modern girl and used lipstick; she had her hair permanently waved and was very restless. The vicar’s wife had given her a trowel to do some gardening with, but Maisie’s cousin could never stick at anything. In half an hour she would be in the house again, standing about and saying that she’d go mad with boredom. My mother tried to suggest that perhaps she would get over this restlessness, but the vicar’s wife felt that the whole modern generation was damned and only hoped that she would be able to preserve Maisie from its influence.
Some other friends of ours were staying in a hotel nearby which had once been a country house. The Thames flowed at the bottom of the garden and two swans always sailed there.
Sometimes my father would take us in to the small town of Warborough, which was quite near. Once he took us into the jeweller’s shop to fetch his watch which had been repaired and while we were there the old jeweller showed us some filigree work out of the backs of old watches. My father bought us each one of these watch backs. Mine had ostrich feathers and an urn on it and Paul’s had a classical mask and foliage. I soon persuaded Paul to give me his too. I also discovered an early-Victorian fourpenny piece, or groat, which I carried away with me.
When we first went to Oxford I was terribly excited, but I can remember very little except that the twisted pillars in front of the church in the high street amazed me, and when I saw the Martyrs’ Memorial I thought of all the martyrs shrieking and screaming while dense smoke and flames were blown about all round them.
My father bought me an old print of Christ Church staircase, which I took home very carefully between its sheets of cardboard. I put it with my other treasures in the tiny room which opened off my bedroom. I would sit in this small cupboard and polish my things by the hour, and as I polished my thoughts would flow easily and I would have strange ideas and imaginings about the past.
My brother had got an airgun by this time and we would put old bottles in the stable-yard and try to shoot them. We tied them to a tree too, so that they swung, which made it even more difficult. I never hit anything at all.
One rainy night a tramp arrived at the back door and asked if he could spend the night in the barn. My mother said that he could and early next morning I got up and saw him go. He was grey and unwashed and quite young.
My mother had discovered a very good cook in the village; she made delicious spaghetti and knew many recipes for savouries. I think she liked devils on horseback best and I remember eating the strange combination often.
Suddenly my father began to look ill, and before I knew what had happened I saw him being carried into an ambulance and then disappearing down the drive. I learnt afterwards that he had had to be operated on for appendicitis and I remembered what the vicar’s wife had said about it. I did not go to see my father in the nursing home, but I can remember when he came back, rather pale and thin. He went back to China at the end of the summer, and when my brothers had left for school I learnt with horror that I was also to go to school until Christmas, when we should all be going to Switzerland together.
The school was in Queen’s Gate and I was to board with some people whose daughter also went there until my mother should come to London to join me.
I can remember the terrible day she took me to the door of their house. I was crying bitterly and the horror of the long row of coloured brick houses almost overcame me. I had never lived amongst such dreariness and did not know what I should do.
Mrs Spencer, whom neither of us knew, came to the door and let us in. She was small with a sweet face and was very kind. I looked at the varnished paper in the hall and didn’t know what to do. I trusted my mother passionately not to leave me here and yet I couldn’t trust her, as I knew she would. When she finally abandoned me I thought I should burst. Mrs Spencer tried to comfort me, and when I was quieter she went to the kitchen and made me some custard. I watched her and was interested. I had never really watched cooking before.
When it was ready I tried to eat it, but did not like it, as I had seen it being made. She asked me about China and travelling, and I told her about the boat called the Empress of Scotland. She said, ‘But there isn’t an Empress of Scotland.’ She of course meant a person, but I thought she meant a ship and so went on trying to persuade her that there was, as I had travelled on it.
When her daughter came in I made friends with her too and she took me up to bed. I undressed and cleaned my teeth and looked out of the window at the fading chimney-pots and backyards.
I did not know how to bear it and I went to bed crying again.
In the morning Gwen, the daughter, took me to school after a hurried breakfast in the grey little dining-room at the back of the house. We caught buses and tubes, and once Gwen told me to get up, as a lady wanted to sit down. I could not bear doing this; I hated showing what I considered exaggerated respect to women just because they were women. It made me feel debased and ashamed. I always felt that chivalry was just a game that titillated the sexual feelings of both parties, and when a French governess said to me once, ‘Les gentilhommes sont toujours galants’, I went red with shame.
When we arrived at South Kensington tube station we walked past the starched chalky bulk of the Natural History Museum and turned into Queen’s Gate. Inside the door of the school was a subdued buzzing of girls’ voices and the insistent smell of turpentine and beeswax. This was a girls’ school where a few small boys were also taken. In the clean-smelling darkness of the hall I saw all these girls with their soft brown hair, and one in particular caught my eye. She must have been about sixteen. She was quite olive coloured, as smooth as rubber, with big animal’s eyes and tight curled hair as dark and shining as black treacle. She was quite beautiful and very arresting. Later on I was to be at another school with her brother.
Gwen, who was much older than I was, left me in the hall and soon I found myself with the other small girls and boys in the tall Victorian drawing-room on the first floor. Our mistress was a charming woman, tall, fair and kind. I admired her and felt completely safe. I was bad at everything except handwork and drawing.
This was the only school I ever really enjoyed. Everything seemed to be done for the interest of doing it. Perhaps it was because it was a girls’ school and so more or less civilised.
There were such charming interludes as being read to after lunch, lying on the floor with cushions underneath our heads. We sang round songs and made strange bags in very big cross-stitch. Although I was nine I could not read, and I hated this lesson almost
as much as mathematics. There was the poetry lesson when our mistress asked a small boy why he looked so sulky and he said because poetry was sloppy, and I remember her answering that all the best poetry was written by men. I cannot understand why he thought it was sloppy, because what we were learning was ‘A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sail’.
There was the thrilling moment every day when the bell went the end of the morning’s work, and we who stayed to lunch had that half hour with our mistress, alone in the upstairs room, when she would read us the most exciting book about a boy and a girl who by chance discovered some caves under a ruined church in which many strange things were going on. To me it was not hackneyed and still does not seem to be.
This little private reading was quite different to the after-lunch reading, which was listened to by the whole of the school.
In the evening I would go back with Gwen. By the time we got to the rows of little houses it would be dark and Mrs Spencer would let us in with brightness and rather sad gaiety.
After the custard or tapioca pudding made on the gas-ring in the dining-room, I would go up to the back bedroom which was mine and, after cleaning my teeth, would get into bed. Gwen and her fat friend would often come in and talk and laugh before I went to sleep. I used to offer fantastic remedies to the fat friend, as she was always talking about slimming.
We laughed and laughed, then I would fall asleep wondering how everything could be so squalid and frightening and yet bearable.
In the morning the sun would sometimes still be red and, as I looked at myself in the mirror by the window, it would light up my face and hair so that I looked dipped in red.
One morning Gwen stopped at South Kensington to buy fruit. We were all going to take some fruit to school that day so that it could be given to a hospital. Gwen bought apples, then turned to me and asked me what I would like to buy for the hospital. I bought grapes and felt very self-conscious and ashamed, as I always have of charitable actions. I was very glad when I got rid of them at school.