by Denton Welch
Lunch in what must once have been the billiard-room was always gay at school. The light from the cast-iron and glass dome broke on our heads and gave the room a sad, hopeless look, like an aquarium or prison, but from the long tables rose the streams and clouds of talk, like the argument of sparrows in a tree. At Mademoiselle’s table only French could be spoken and at this table I was silent except for ‘Oui’ and ‘Non’ and ‘Merci’. I was glad when the next week came and I could move on to another table. Shepherd’s pie was born every few days in the kitchen and eaten with relish by us. There seemed no monotony in its constant reappearance.
Twice a week we would go to some fields in a train and play hockey. I hated it and was very careful about my behaviour. I would watch what the big girls did and would imitate if need be. I was always put in some unimportant place at the back of the field and would have plenty of time to study the ribs of my brown corduroy trousers and the curved grain of my pearl-coloured hockey-stick.
Every Sunday I would be collected from Mrs Spencer’s by two friends of my mother’s. One was a painter and we would often have tea in her studio, where the smell of paint intoxicated me. The size of her paint tubes thrilled me too. They were as large as my toothpaste tube.
I was taken for many expeditions on these Sundays. Once we drove to Windsor and finished up at a restaurant in Eton where we decided to have lunch. It was dark with beams and orange curtains, and we were the only people there until the door burst open and three Eton boys came in holding their cruelly used top hats. They talked loudly and ordered a great deal to eat. When they had gone our waitress told us that they had gone back to their lunch. My friends turned to me and said that I would have to eat as much when I went to public school. I was horrified—I loved food, but I could not bear to be stuffed. I really believed them. It worried me for the rest of the day.
Soon after this my mother came to London and we went to see the hotel where she had booked rooms. We looked at the drawing-room—it was red and white with a loud-speaker like an enormous ear-trumpet—and our bedroom too was very depressing. I could see that my mother could hardly bear it. The manageress was talking in a soothing, confident voice, as if we were new lions to be coaxed into our cages. We returned her smiles and when she had left we quickly shut the bedroom door and kissed each other. We felt cleaner soon and made up our minds to leave at once. We walked to another hotel we remembered and booked rooms there, then we went back to beard the manageress. She was terribly upset. She said that she had never had any trouble before. I felt very sorry for her and wished she would get annoyed so that I need not feel! sorry any more.
The new hotel seemed quite like a haven and I arranged the small things I most cared for on a corner of the dressing-table and I watched my mother unpack. My father had gone back to China and she was unhappy in those first few days, so she took me to Harrods and bought me a fairy-cycle so that I at least should be happy. The present made me delirious and I rode it all over the huge pavement outside the Victoria and Albert Museum, utterly delighted. I bumped into an old lady, but would not wait to apologise, and I heard my mother trying vainly to excuse my extreme rudeness.
Our hotel was so near the school that I was surprised when I was told that I should still stay at school for lunch instead of having it with my mother, and I was even more resentful when I found that a friend who needed a job was going to sit and read to me or take me out when school was over so that my mother could be free.
I did not realise that the illness which killed my mother was just beginning to show itself. She, who had been so young and full of life, was just beginning to die, and the change must have been terrible for her. Once I found her resting on the bed and it made me cry. My mother never used to rest. She looked the same, with her wonderful gold-brown curls and the brick-dust colour of her cheeks, as if they were wind-whipped; but when the curtains were drawn at night, she would feel stifled and ask for them to be drawn back again, and going up steep stairs she would be tired and wait a little on the landings. It made me harsh and cruel and I would tell her not to be silly, not recognising in this the mother who danced, played games and swam and pushed me under if I would not swim too.
I was lonely, seeing so little of my mother, but I still enjoyed school, and Molly, the friend, would read to me and try to amuse me conscientiously. I enjoyed sitting by the fire while she read. It was generally a rather grown-up school story Stalky & Co. I would follow the stories of the boys who seemed as decisive as men and wondered if I should ever be like them.
At the weekends we would go into the country, if we had been invited. Once we were going to Guildford and were late for the train. We ran stolidly, desperately, and when we were in the compartment my mother nearly fainted. I could hardly believe it and was very callous as the man next to her grew more serious.
At Guildford we were met and taken to the big, ugly villa where our friend lived. I can remember now the long drive through the dripping rhododendrons and the gleam of the great plate-glass windows as the tyres crunched the gravel underneath them.
The servants were all silent Indians with white coats and crimson turbans, and the house was ugly with tiger skins and Japanese carved-ivory.
Our friend was an invalid in a wheelchair and his housekeeper-companion was Eurasian. Her magnolia skin and Chinese eyes were sinister in the smart Western clothes, and her competence and metallic cheerfulness were disturbing. The invalid seemed to me a charming old man and his gold snuff-box with the diamond initials on it entranced me. He is the only person whom I have ever seen taking snuff. He knew someone who was an expert jeweller and silversmith at one of the London art schools and had got him to make many precious things such as this wonderful snuff-box, which lately I have been told cost £2,000. The whole house showed the riot of wealth without taste, even conventional taste, which was perhaps its saving grace.
NARCISSUS BAY
One summer, when I was staying with my mother at Wei-hai-wei in China, I remember seeing four men and one woman coming down through the woods from the mountain. Two of the men had their hands tied behind their backs; their chests were naked, and they had thick ropes round their necks. The other two held these ropes, which they made to curl and ripple as they drove their prisoners on. The woman walked behind. Her dusty black hair was torn down over her face and shoulders. Blood oozed from cuts on her scalp; a patch of oiled paper had been stuck over one gash, and her lips were swollen and bruised. White cotton puffed out of the sharp tears all over her quilted clothes. She was crying and shaking her head exaggeratedly. In her hands she carried a thick stick broken in two. Where the bark had peeled off, I saw blood on the white, silky wood.
I stood dumbfounded, watching them pass out of the lemon-coloured light under the leaves into the biting sunshine. The woman as she passed me held out the broken stick in pantomime. She ran her cries together, making them into a sort of whining song. The two men holding the ropes jerked the necks of their victims, swore at them, spat on their yellow-brown backs. Then the little procession moved on down the rocky path to the town.
I watched until they disappeared round a bend. My fascinated eyes came back to the cool leafy place where I was, and I could hardly believe what I had seen. I pictured it all to myself again, and the story was unfolded. I saw the men beating the woman outside a thatched hut, close to a smouldering fire. She had exasperated them in some way and they both set on her. But her screams at last roused the village policemen, who came running to help her. They threw ropes round the necks of her attackers, and tied their hands behind their backs.
Now they were all going down to the court house in the town, where the woman would show the blood-stained stick and tell her story. She was nursing her tears—just as I had done myself—because she wanted the judge to be sorry for her.
This all came very vividly to me. Perhaps the woman’s expressive dumb-show had made it easy for me to reconstruct the whole story.
I thought again of the blood seen through her ma
tted hair. It was the most barbarous sight I had yet seen and I held it to me with all the violence of new possession. I could not have rid my mind of it if I had tried.
Gradually the picture so overwhelmed me that I began to hate the glade where I had first seen the sight. I darted away, down towards the beach, and did not stop running till I felt the sand under my feet.
On the beach I found two girls I knew, playing outside their bamboo-matting bathing-hut. They were both older than I was; they had reddish down on their thick arms and legs, and their lips were full and well shaped. They treated their Belgian governess with the utmost harshness.
Now, as I approached, they called out and said that they had decided to eat nothing for the whole day. They would touch no meat, no sweet, no wheat, no beet; no fruit, no root; no nut, no gut. They rhymed until they had nothing but nonsense words left; then, to fill a gap, I said, ‘Where is your mademoiselle?’
‘Elle est grosse et grasse,’ chanted the elder girl, taking no notice of my question, pleased only to have an opportunity of abusing her governess. She repeated her sentence several times in a very loud voice and curved her hands in and out in imitation of the repulsive lines of Mademoiselle’s body.
I knew then that their governess was quite near, though hidden. I guessed that they had driven her into retreat behind some rock, where she was knitting. They would go on insulting her until they were tired of the game.
I wondered whether to tell the girls about my extraordinary experience or not. I really wanted to keep it to myself, but I had not the control. I wanted, too, to describe the horror to them and the unreal, magic atmosphere.
I began to tell them about the ropes, the wounds, the blood and the broken stick. They listened contemptuously, sometimes throwing out their arms and legs, or twitching their nostrils in disbelief. But I knew that I had stirred them.
‘What a liar!’ the younger one said when I had finished. She said it mildly, as if she’d known me to be one for a long time.
‘Which way did they go?’ the other asked with heavy sarcasm; but her eyes were watching sharply.
‘Towards the town,’ I said. And immediately they were away, over the sand and the rough tufted grass. They were running down the white road and Mademoiselle had risen up from behind her rock and was screaming to them to come back.
‘Mary! Rosalie!’ she cried, but they never turned their heads. Hopelessly she started to run after them. The town was forbidden and she did not know what she was going to say to their mother.
I watched her fatness jellying for a little; then I turned away and searched for fan shells along the beach. Once or twice I had found softest pink ones and ones of coral scarlet, but now I found nothing. I wondered whether to go home or to go on to the end of the bay and have tea with Adam Grant and his mother.
I decided to visit Adam. I was still restless. My thoughts were seething and my body tingled. I would arrive a little early and perhaps a little dirty, but I hoped Mrs Grant would not mind.
I walked slowly over the wet sand, close to the waves; but I soon reached the stone steps and the rock pools. I idled on the steps, leaning on the iron rail and staring into the depths of the pools from above. At last I climbed up to the terrace and found Adam lying there in a wicker chair. He looked up and told me importantly that he wasn’t very well, he wasn’t allowed to bathe, and his mother had pinned a flannel band round his stomach because she thought he had a chill there.
This struck me as ridiculous and rather disgusting in hot weather and I said, ‘But what good will that do?’
‘Of course it’s the thing to put on for a chill in your stomach,’ Adam replied pompously; then he pretended to go on reading his book.
I stared at him. He was rather a fat boy with hair like coconut matting. I laughed to think of the flannel band round his stomach. Still he kept his eyes on his book; but I smiled, knowing that I could make him drop his show of indifference.
‘Today I saw two men with ropes round their necks, and a woman who’d been beaten all over,’ I said flatly, without any colour, to give my words their greatest effect.
Adam’s head jerked up.
‘Where? When did you see it?’
He seemed about to run out to look for the sight as the girls had done.
‘Oh, it was a long time ago, up on the edge of the wood,’ I said languidly.
Adam poured out questions and I answered them with maddening slowness and vagueness. The story filled him with excitement, but at the end he remembered to say, ‘How awful for two men to beat a woman like that!’
He was still showing horror at the brutality, when his mother called out in a boisterous sing-song voice, ‘Tea’s ready!’ and we both got up to go into the cool shaded dining-room.
There we found Mrs Grant and another, younger boy, who, with his nurse, was also staying in the house. We sat down at the long narrow table and Mrs Grant began to pour out. While Adam passed the bread and butter, I watched her. She was a soldier’s wife, and I had the idea that she was very superstitious. Perhaps I exaggerated, but I imagined that her religion was made up of patent medicines, charms and unmeaning rites—such as the pinning of the flannel round Adam’s stomach. I felt sorry for her—she was so very benighted and unaware of real things.
The other boy was silent. He was nervous and puzzled because he believed nearly everything that was said to him.
I looked at the tea and saw that it was good: peanut-butter, brown bread, chocolate biscuits and sponge cake. At first I was pleased; then I began to feel out of sympathy with everyone, and I longed to get away and be alone.
We played in the garden after tea, hiding behind the huge hollyhocks, springing out at one another.
Adam told the younger boy to eat one of the dead flower heads, then to drink some slimy green water in an earthenware crock. He shouted at him, ‘If you sit on the lavatory seat too long a swordfish will come up and bite you.’
I saw Derek’s face jump. He really believed it, and the thought was going to frighten him for ever.
Adam followed up his success with other horror stories.
‘If you swim into a jelly-fish and it stings your face, it’ll blind you; and if even a baby octopus gets hold of you it can suck the life out of you. A shark too can bite a leg off as easy as anything. Once they brought a man in with no arms or legs left.’
Derek put his arm across his mouth and bit the flesh. His eyes were terrified. He wanted someone to deny the stories, but I was too lazy and uninterested to do so, and his nurse was far away, gossiping to Mrs Grant on the verandah.
Adam made a lunge at him with a pole and when he flinched said, ‘What’s the matter? I was only pretending that I was harpooning a whale.’
To get away from us Derek ran into one of the bathrooms and locked the door. Adam climbed up to the window and made terrible faces through the glass; then he said, ‘You won’t sit on the seat, will you, because of that swordfish.’
At this Derek burst into tears and wailed so noisily that his nurse came and reprimanded us all, not sparing Derek. I could see his eyes still puzzled, terrified, longing to find protection somewhere. I turned away, ashamed for myself and ashamed for him. His nurse began to undress him for bed. I heard the bathwater splashing.
Adam followed me out on to the rocks below the terrace. I disliked his stomach band, his fleshiness, his superstitious mother, and wished he would leave me. I wanted to be alone to watch the orange sun sink down into the sea.
To get away from him I moved from rock to rock until I was on a level with the pools. Still Adam followed me. I remembered that he was not supposed to bathe, and, lying down on the edge of a pool, I dipped my arm in and said, ‘How lovely the water feels this evening!’
‘But you know I’m not allowed to bathe,’ he said accusingly.
‘Aren’t you?’—and I rolled into the delicious water with my shirt and shorts and sandals on. I beat about with my hands and shouted out my delight.
Adam went stiff
with envy and resentment, but I took no notice of his venomous remarks until I had played and splashed enough; then I climbed out and said, ‘Lend me a lantern, I’m going home.’
It was not really dark enough for a lantern, but I wanted to carry a lighted one along the beach.
Adam grudgingly found me his, and I lit the candle; then, after asking him to say goodbye to his mother for me, I set out along the ribbed sand.
The oiled cotton of the lantern was painted with large scarlet and black characters. I danced and jumped about, making the light bob up and down and throw shadows like ghosts. Showers of drops fell from my soaking clothes. Far out in the bay the phosphorus was beginning to fringe the wavelets.
The scene of the early afternoon came back to me with sudden violence. I saw again the woman and the four men winding down through the trees; and for some reason my thoughts jumped to the shrine which I knew was on the mountain above them. My mother and I had once climbed up to it and eaten our picnic on the thymy grass in front. With my fingers I had picked out the little rock-plants, like the flat round bottoms of artichokes.
The walls of the shrine were covered with peeling vermilion plaster and under the black curling roof were gods with little plates of food set before them, and joss-sticks, and gold and silver paper money scattered everywhere.
The clouds came down so low that they turned into veils of rainbow mist when the sun shone through them.
I thought of the utterly still, deserted place and I thought of the baked mud gods, all painted bright and gilded, gazing down, unmoving, caught in a trance, just watching everything, holding up their fingers, flashing their eyes and teeth for ever.
AT SEA
Robert sat on the deck holding a book in front of his eyes and wearing a very preoccupied and intellectual expression. He was pretending to read. He mouthed words silently, smiled as if amused, then looked grave and serious. Every now and then he glanced about him, to see if anyone was noticing him. The stewardess came up with a cup of hot soup. She bent over him and said, ‘What! You reading to yourself! Clever lad. Here’s your soup and your mother wants you when you’ve finished it.’