Where Nothing Sleeps

by Denton Welch

  I did not see these relations again until 1933 when I was on a walking tour. They had changed their house, but I knew the address, somewhere near Petersfield, I think. I was very tired and the sun was hot on my back and I wanted a nice bed for the night. I sat down in the grass at the edge of the long straight road and rested for a few moments. Children were playing near me, shouting. Then I took my courage in my hands and walked up to their house, down the drive, till I found a building so like their last house that I knew the same mind had chosen it—the sober tiles and bricks, the oak door, the leaded panes, Lutyens country covention watered down, made unspectacular.

  I knocked on the door rather desperately and rang. I was taken to my uncle, who had just come in. I explained myself and brazenly asked to stay the night. He looked at me like an old turkey or vulture with a loose scrawny neck; then he said rather uncertainly, gently, repressively, ‘Of course, there are buses.’

  ‘I know, but I am tired,’ I said, determined to stay the night, determined to be made welcome, to reap the benefits of their comfortable home, to have a new experience, not always to miss new happenings and surroundings because of timidity and other people’s dried, dead hearts.

  It is only the sort of thing one does when one is very young, but there I sat having tea with my uncle until my aunt and cousin came in, gazing at their stag’s head crest all over the tray, the pot, the cream jug.

  When the others came back from a garden-party-of-work my uncle said quietly, ‘This is Denton Welch, he is going to stay the night.’ My aunt’s eyes fixed on me (she was not then mad) and my cousin said, ‘Oh, then we saw you in the long grass on the side of the road. I recognised your blue shirt. We drove by.’

  I was made conscious of my lack of clothes, only khaki shorts and the skimpy Aertex shirt that wouldn’t keep buttoned. I began to regret my ruthless gate-crashing, but I felt that it was weak to repine, that I must push forward, enjoy, not feel embarrassed. Were they not my relations? Was I not entitled to stay with them?

  After the good, cold supper that night my aunt said to my uncle, ‘Now take Denton out on the terrace while Marjorie and I deal with things.’ I saw that she meant to clear the table and take the things into the pantry, so I said at once, ‘Oh, let me help,’ and went to pick up the tray. But my aunt seemed quite flustered and appalled that a man should even think of helping in the house. ‘Oh, no,’ she said agitatedly, ‘you must go out with Percy, he will show you the garden. We are suffering from the universal servant difficulty. The cook won’t do anything, it is one maid’s day out and the other has left.’

  I was surprised at all this explanation, at the refusal to let me help, at the almost shame my aunt seemed to feel because she was left to clear away her own table. She did not even have to clear up, only to clear. I saw that it all came down from another day, when servants were considered absolutely essential, as a part of life so important that they could not be done without under any circumstances.

  At night I walked down the wide passage filled with curiosities to my bedroom, so Edwardian-bachelor that I half expected to see a hip bath in the corner.

  In the morning there were horrors over the tip to the one remaining maid. How I rejoiced that the other one had left and that I should never see the cook!

  But what should I leave? I had so little money for my journey that to leave two shillings would leave a painful hole, and yet to leave less seemed trivial and mean. I was so inexperienced that I felt everything had to be all or nothing. So I left nothing because I could not afford two shillings. I think now that the maid would even have preferred sixpence to this blunt nothing, but I was too proud to be little so I decided to be nothing at all.

  I went into the downstairs cloakroom and then said my goodbyes—so funny, so cold, so woolly. It was exhilarating to get out of the house and walk on the common road; yet I was glad in some way to have been and to experience their life.

  A HOUSE LOST IN THE DARKNESS AND WINTRY FIELDS

  It is 1924 and the winter. I and my mother have been asked into the country for the weekend. I race into the great murky station, tugging at my mother’s hand. I am joyful and excited, but also terrified that we may miss the train.

  I have forgotten where we went, that is, the name of the place; everything else is in a series of charming, sharp pictures.

  I know that we took an ancient taxi at the station. It belonged to the only sort of car that I really love, the sort that is tremendously high and old-fashioned, with musty elaborate upholstery inside, little cut-glass flower vases, straps, mirrors, and a sliding glass screen between the passenger and the driver.

  We must have driven in the gathering darkness for some time, for I had the feeling that we had pierced into the very heart of the country. I talked to my mother excitedly and held her gloved hand, sampling the new feel of the suede leather warmed from within. She was happy too and I knew she was smiling, although I could not see.

  At last we entered some park gates and bowled along the curving drive until we branched off into a narrower road. I felt that we might continue our journey for ever, on ever-narrowing roads.

  At last the car stopped on what seemed to be completely bare and desolate fields; but then I saw in front of us a low house, obviously old because of its irregular outline against the sky. Warm orange lights were showing, and my excitement suddenly rose to fever pitch.

  ‘We’re here, Mummy, we’re here,’ I shrieked.

  I remember looking across the misty wet fields to the lightest patch of sky beyond some hills. I think there was some sort of pink in the collecting darkness. It must have hung in the air for a few moments before the thick grey night clouds rolled up. I knew that the setting for the black house with the orange lights seemed wonderfully lurid and romantic to me. It was mournful too, and this I loved most of all.

  My mother paid the taxi man and we both walked up to the jutting-out porch. The door flew open and my mother’s friend stood there with her hands out to welcome us. She was a short, dumpy little birdlike woman called Mrs Aldridge (later in her life to be nicknamed Quail).

  She kissed my mother and was boisterous with me, treating all boys in exactly the same way. Her big, ungainly husband in rough, hairy plus-fours hovered behind her and smiled at us. I remember thinking the purpley-red colour of his face very ugly.

  Mrs Aldridge led us down the side-passage into the drawing-room, which was long and low and must have had, I think, early Victorian rosewood furniture and things of that period. Everything seemed brilliantly polished and clean; there was an aromatic whiff in the air, perhaps the combination of logs on the fire, the furniture polish and the ghost of some pot-pourri or lavender and leather.

  ‘This is the dower house,’ Mrs Aldridge was saying to my mother. ‘Don’t you love it? We were so pleased we were able to rent it. It’s in very good order, but it hasn’t been altered for years. The water has to be pumped and we only have lamps, but aren’t they lovely lamps! They’re all solid silver.’

  I looked at the lamps while Mrs Aldridge went on talking about the dower house and the estate to which it belonged. The lamps were made in the shape of heavy Corinthian pillars with cut-glass bowls for the oil at the top. They had warm pink-silk ‘party-looking’ shades.

  ‘They’re really solid silver,’ I thought. I was impressed.

  But there were other delights for me upstairs. When we were led up to our room with much chattering from Mrs Aldridge and shy silence from her daughter, who had now joined us, I saw with a thrill of delight that it was entirely lit with candles in brass sconces. I counted eight round the wall.

  ‘But Mummy,’ I cried, bubbling over with excitement, ‘it’s like hundreds of years ago. Our room’s lit only with candles! There’s nothing else. Oh, isn’t it marvellous.’

  Mrs Aldridge laughed as I jumped about, and my mother said, too, how lovely it looked.

  The daughter, Ba, who had joined us, was a shy girl of about fifteen. Of course being twice my age she seemed almos
t grown up to me. I thought her rather pretty, in a white, delicate, fragile way. She seemed just a little conceited in her quiet shyness, too.

  I think I must have been allowed to stay up to supper that night, for I seem to remember Mr Aldridge pottering around the sideboard as if he were carving there, or drawing the corks from bottles. I think the dining-room must have had light Sheraton mahogany furniture, an old green silk curtain hanging from a brass rail behind the sideboard, and steeple-chasing prints with romantic men in side-whiskers and nightcaps.

  I remember one of the heavy silver lamps being carried back with us to the drawing-room.

  That night, as I undressed and my mother unpacked, all the candles would waver, and then right themselves as secret draughts, like invisible ghosts, struck them.

  Mrs Aldridge said to my mother, ‘Rosalind, when you bath Denton, will you only take six inches of water? As otherwise the man will have to pump for hours in the morning.’

  My mother went into the dark bathroom, each carrying a candle. It seemed, at first, grim and sinister in there. I saw the little illumination notice on the wall about not using too much water.

  I turned on the tap. The water was beautifully hot and comforting. I undressed and splashed about in it. My mother and I laughed and talked about the charming house; then she wrapped me in the big warm towel and I rubbed myself fiercely.

  I lay awake in my bed, near my mother, thinking still of the house. I was longing to see it in the morning. I thought I would get up early before breakfast and explore.

  I did wake up early, so I dressed quietly and went on to the landing; a tiny gallery surrounding a well where the staircase lead down. I could hear the man pumping the water with metallic squeak and groan.

  I ran down the stairs and went into the drawing-room. The servants had tidied it and a fire was just beginning to burn. I was filled with delight and joy. I ran to the French window and pushed it open. The warm, damp winter feeling struck me from the grass and the sky. I could see nothing over the gently curved hill, but I knew the big house brooded on the other side. I imagined it all stone battlements and huge library windows. I saw scarlet geraniums in huge urns on a balustrade (imagination does not confine itself only to one season of the year). I know I identified the whole scene with little Lord Fauntleroy too, which an old-fashioned governess had lately read to me. The scene was absolutely right and perfect. The great house was there for the old Earl, and this perfect ‘dower house’ for ‘Dearest’.

  I walked about in the garden, looking up at the eaves or out across the fields. I began to feel hungry. I went back into the drawing-room and found Barbara by the fire. I ran to fetch my tiny pot of marmalade and minute Times which I had got when I went to see the Queen’s dolls’ house at Wembley. She did not seem quite as interested as I had hoped.

  ‘It’s real marmalade,’ I said, ‘and you can really read the Times with a magnifying glass.’

  She was polite but a little lethargic; the sort of child who is always considered a little ill by its mother.

  My mother came in and complimented Ba on her checked skirt.

  ‘I’ve got stockings that almost match it, but Mummy says there are too many squares if I wear them all together,’ said Ba. We, all laughed, and Mrs Aldridge led us in to breakfast.

  After breakfast we sat and talked. I remember Mrs Aldridge saying that she made charming flesh-coloured stockings for Ba by dyeing them in water tinted with a few drops of red ink and some coffee. Then she turned to Wycome Abbey, where Ba was at school, and said, wasn’t it disgraceful, she had paid for Ba to have extra coaching and she’d had none at all.

  I wondered what extra coaching was. I felt it must have something to do with learning to drive a coach; but I was doubtful, because this seemed such an extraordinary subject to teach at a girls’ school. It seemed important. I said the words ‘extra coaching’ over to myself several times. I even imagined Ba tearing round the countryside in a rakish carriage. I knew she would be terrified. She must be glad, I thought, that her extra coaching had fallen through.

  Mrs Aldridge told my mother how unhappy Ba was at school, and how she’d like to take her away, but didn’t know where else to send her.

  ‘It’s supposed to be the best school,’ she said.

  Ba said nothing until spoken to, but she did not seem to mind them talking about her as she sat there.

  I think that I must soon have gone off to wander by myself. I can remember no more.

  All I know is that when we left the next day, I felt that I had had a wonderfully romantic and exciting time; and I have remembered it ever since. Really, the whole adventure, I suppose, boils down to the excitement of the arrival at the unexpectedly charming and old-fashioned house, lost in the darkness and the wintry fields.

  As the taxi bore us away I am sure that I felt a great sadness. Now I should like to be able to know where that house was and whether I could ever see it again.

  AT SIR MOORCALM LALLI’S

  Here, in my warm bed, on this gusty bleak evening, it amuses me to recall that day, twenty years ago at least now, when, as a little boy, I was taken to lunch with the old Levantine in his grotesque Prince’s Gate house. It is just a twinkling little experience that lives and lives and lives and will not die, although for months, even a year or two, it may be leathery and vapid, like chewed meat on the tongue, a tasteless, pointless thing, just one of a thousand past experiences that almost irritate because nothing seems to be left but a sort of unmeaning poignancy.

  His own name was fantastic enough to English ears, but since it would be incorrect to use it here, I must try to think of something of my own; so I shall call him Sir Moorcalm Lalli. This is, no doubt, an impossible name for anyone of any ancestry, but since Sir Moorcalm’s was so mixed and I never had any true idea of what the mixture consisted, it will do well enough. My father, who had a great respect for him, would nevertheless talk laughingly of Baghdad, Cyprus, Jerusalem and Constantinople. Clearly it was vain to look to him for accurate information. He had only met Sir Moorcalm in the course of business in the East, and he was not the man to probe or be inquiring.

  Sir Moorcalm had only lately settled in London, to contribute to party funds and so, in due course, to receive his knighthood. Now that everything was accomplished, it seemed likely that he would soon be returning to a warmer country and one more to his taste. He met us in a little room at the end of the long dark hall. At first I was so amazed by the decoration of the room that I could not fix my attention on him properly, but I saw that he was very small and at once approved this littleness; I suppose, because I myself was small for my age. My next thought was, ‘That man in the hall shouldn’t have taken away my red coat. I would have matched perfectly in here,’ for all the furniture, and there was a great deal of it, was of scarlet buhl. It bulged and glittered and looked cruel and hard. The ormolu mounts of naked breasted women struck me as both ugly and improper. I was not to know then that in this sort of work tortoiseshell is laid over a ground of red paint, so I took it that the cabinets and tables were all manufactured from some garish imitation. The objects in the cabinets, the bronzes, the ivories and porcelain figures, both horrified me and lured me on. I wanted to inspect everything, but knew that I must sit still and not appear inquisitive. Sir Moorcalm had taken my mother to a ridiculously dancing French chair—I felt that at any moment it might begin to bounce about, carrying her with it. He was saying to her, ‘But my dear lady, abroad I have a palace compared to this.’ He waved his hand contemptuously at the room, the house, the whole of Prince’s Gate. ‘It is incredible, the expense in London; and what do you get for your money? A house in a row, looking onto Kensington Gardens.’ I was immediately aware of the humiliation of such reduced circumstances. Sir Moorcalm was speaking again: ‘Abroad my house is all white stone, marble you know. All along the front is a great closed-in terrace, and every pane is bevelled plate-glass.’

  Sir Moorcalm almost waited for my mother to gape. I was aware that this wa
s ‘boasting’, but never having known it before in grownups, I felt that perhaps they were allowed to do it. Besides, I rather enjoyed it. I wanted too to be told of greater magnificence, wilder extravagance. If he were not discouraged, he might go one better than bevelled plate-glass in all the windows. My eyes left the room and I began to watch Sir Moorcalm. I noticed that, although he called my mother ‘dear lady’, he leant towards her with a hard, eager, unhappy expression, as though he were chiefly interested in keeping her pinned down to her chair. He seemed afraid that her attention might wander or that she might jump up and walk about the room capriciously. He would glance anxiously at my father too. I was the only one who was not expected to listen to his complaints. I was relieved, but also a little hurt, that he should dismiss me as too young to be treated seriously. My parents listened to him with polite and careful sympathy, but he seemed to refuse their understanding, as though he were not to be cheated out of his dissatisfaction by a kind word or two. I began to take in the details of his face and form. The little hooded eyes, the hooked nose and nutcracker chin, the slightly bowed back all reminded me of a witch. I had a picture of him dressed in witch’s clothes, carrying a very new broomstick; but I could not see him with a cat. He would be as indifferent to a cat as he was to me.

  The door opened and a footman came in with drinks and emerald-green pistachio nuts in little silver bowls. I had only seen these nuts before on chocolates, where the isolated little patches of green had been taken for granted; but here, in this scarlet room, the colour sang out, fixing my attention, making me aware of the strangeness of such food instead of the usual roasted peanuts or almonds. I nibbled one after another, savouring their flavour and peculiar hard-soft consistency. Titbits of vivid green were just what to expect in some story of enchantment and witches. I let my imagination play round the nuts, pretending that they were poisoned.

  Outside, the grey day pressed against the window. Sir Moorcalm began to apologise for the lateness of his sons. As he was speaking, they appeared, smiling in the doorway, rubbing their hands vigorously. They were both very much alike, both tall, well-covered, with glowing faces and rather large teeth. They wore striped double-breasted suits. Their robustness made their father seem frailer, more witch-like than ever. Their manner was embarrassingly optimistic and boisterous, especially to me. Sir Moorcalm’s querulousness retreated into the corners of the room. He appeared to look on his sons with a sort of grudging pride, as if they had no right to be so tall and young and glistening, and yet he would not have tolerated them otherwise. The rather mechanical liveliness that they brought with them, as soon as it was switched from me back to my parents, left me with a feeling of greater freedom. I was satisfied somehow that the grown-ups were now fully occupied, would notice me less and less. I could stare to my heart’s content, perhaps even pick things up and examine them. My eyes had been caught by a marble portrait bust in a dark corner. It was of a woman with Edwardian ‘cow-pat’ hair and a lot of lace at the throat. I marvelled at the carving of the lace, but it was some moments before I gave any thought to the sitter. Then it came to me suddenly that here was the likeness of Sir Moorcalm’s long lost wife. I had once heard her story from my father and it had caught hold of me. Years ago there had been a terrible fire in Sir Moorcalm’s house. His wife had had a favourite parrot. She had insisted on returning to her burning bedroom to rescue it. She did rescue it, but lost her own life in doing so. This bald little story had turned the unknown Sir Moorcalm’s wife into an abstract heroine. She was the woman who had given her life for her pet. She had braved the flames. Small wonder that a bust had been made of her! I sat and gazed at it, taking in her rather heavy features, trying to read kindness and courage into every line. I wished Sir Moorcalm could be made to talk about her, but I guessed that her name was never even mentioned in his presence. I must contemplate her effigy in silence. I longed to know if my father or mother had recognised her. Were they too thinking about the heroic rescue? The remembrance of it had brought the whole room to life for me.