by Denton Welch
I left them there, still eating. They all called out and waved to me as I walked away. I wondered what all the laughter was about and decided that it was about me.
Almost as soon as I was on the other side of the hill I found myself on the edge of another bog. That there should be a bog on the side of a hill amazed me. I could not understand why the water did not drain away. Again I jumped nervously from clump to clump of coarse grass. At one point I thought I was quite surrounded. I thought of calling out to the four girls, but decided that they would laugh even louder if they discovered me in difficulties. I jumped and sank in over my ankles. Jerking my feet out and almost leaving my shoes behind, I floundered on till I reached a firm part.
How I hated the bog! It had not swallowed me whole, but the very thought of it was horrible. My wet feet squelched in my shoes. Gradually the black mud dried into a hard case round my ankles.
I had come to the edge of the moor again, where there were stone walls and green fields. Before nightfall I must find the hostel, somewhere near Gidleigh.
When I did arrive, I found the wooden hut at the back of the farmhouse full of small boys. A young master was in charge of them. He came up to speak to me at once, telling me that they had come from a school in the north and that they always went for a jaunt in the summer.
The boys were rushing around, shouting and making such a noise with their feet in the flimsy shed that I could hardly hear what he said.
‘We’ve got to have supper now,’ he yelled; and he went off cheerfully to marshal his boys.
He seemed very strict and full of orders, I thought. The boys were not particularly obedient, and I heard him shout exasperatedly, ‘That’s not playing the game—do it properly—don’t play the goat,’ many times.
The boys were perfectly sure that he would not get too angry. They banged about with enamel plates and mugs; a group of them hung round him continually, waiting for orders, but doing nothing.
At last he had them all sitting at the trestle table with their bread and butter and cocoa before them. He appealed to their better natures, telling them not to be greedy or to eat nastily. All the time he was working very hard; his dark hair began to hang down limply over his white, damp forehead, and his mouth was continually open.
The boys shouted all their jokes to him, asked him absurd questions, hung on his arms, and passed him food.
After the meal, when they had banged and rattled all the mugs and plates into the sink and wiped them on their dirty towels, they grouped round him in a spreading mass; the whole floor seemed to be covered with boys. An amazing silence reigned. What was going to happen? Were they going to pray?
The young master sat above them on the trestle table, swinging his feet. Several boys climbed up from the floor and clung around him. He shook them off half-heartedly, then decided to take their arms in his and hold them in subdued positions in this way.
‘What’s it going to be?’ he asked all the boys with verve.
They shouted different names; the master decided on the most popular and called out: ‘Very well, we’ll have “Chestnut Tree”.’
A roar of delight went up followed by as sudden a silence; then the singing and miming began.
The master led with athletic energy. He beat his chest, tapped his head, held out his hands, till the sweat grew in diamonds on his face. The chorus of piping shrill voices affected me curiously. It was such a green, unfeeling, assured sound. It was like listening to a roomful of green parrots who knew that they were saying their pieces properly. It was a charming sound, but also very indifferent and cold. Towards the end of the song I noticed the farmer and his wife creeping into the room. They sat down quietly by the window and listened.
The boys had to rest for a moment after the ‘Chestnut Tree’. Some sprawled full-length on the floor and kicked their legs in the air. Others started wrestling, rolling over and over till they were covered with dust. The more facetious trod on their neighbours and then offered elaborate apologies in what were supposed to be ‘Oxford’ accents.
The master looked at his watch, then called them to order. They all sat up straight and put on serious faces, for now it was to be the ‘Londonderry Air’.
The master conducted gently and absently with one hand. As he waved it to and fro, and with his abstracted gaze, he looked as if he were trying to weave some spell. His rather prominent dark eyes were turned upwards and his whole head was thrown back a little, so that one saw the adam’s apple moving in his throat. With his free hand he clutched one or two of the boys to him, until they wriggled with pleasure at being trapped so tightly to his side. The dark eyes were glistening now and the black curly hair quivered on his damp forehead. The whole scene seemed one of most extraordinary fervour to me.
I saw the farmer’s wife gazing far into the distance; her mouth was set and her plump, rather mottled cheeks held firm. She wore the tragic look of someone who is enjoying an unhappy feeling. Her eyes began to brim and sparkle, then I saw the tears running down her face. She took no notice, but left them there, glistening like shiny snail tracks. Her husband sat stolidly at her side, not looking at her, and the boys were too busy singing. I think I was the only one who saw.
I got up to go out, feeling angry at the sight of her tears. Crossing the yard, I walked into the front garden where coarse ferns grew between grey rocks. Up above me, on a hillock, a ruined wall and an archway showed above the tops of trees. I tried to reach the ruin, but tangled undergrowth and fencing barred the way wherever I tried to enter.
Another man, just arrived, joined me. We both stood looking at the forbidden hillock, wondering what its history was.
There was so much pandemonium in the morning that I decided to leave without making any breakfast. I said goodbye to the master as he tore by me with a frying-pan in his hand.
‘Goodbye,’ he said, squeezing my hand very hard, pressing the bones brutally together. ‘They’re good lads, aren’t they?’ he added anxiously, afraid, it seemed, that I was about to make some criticism. I agreed, and left him mobbed and besieged by the hungry boys.
I walked towards Chagford, hoping to have my breakfast there. The morning promised a wonderful day; heat-mist hovered over the moor and made the white houses in the little town shimmer. I looked at rather a large hotel and, after a little deliberation, decided to go in. The bright housekeeper met me in the hall.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said with a pleasant smile, ‘breakfast will soon be ready. Would you care to wait in here?’ She opened the door of a little room with magazines on the table. I sank down in the brown velour armchair and picked up one of those red and blue papers, perhaps the Illustrated London News or the Tatler.
She had not worried about the caked mud on my shoes and socks or my general ragamuffin air. How nice it was not to be stared at by insolent servants!
The gong boomed. I went quickly into the dining-room and sat down in the window. Hotel rolls and coffee delighted me after so many meals made by myself. I listened to the conversation of other breakfasters. Some early-morning riders had just come in—young girls, their mother, and a man. They talked of good cheap jodhpurs for the children and where one could get a green and brown check coat. One of the girls had evidently set her heart on this.
I did not want to feel at a disadvantage to the riders, but I did. They looked so clean and smart and trim. When I heard them asking each other what they would do for the rest of the day, I felt happier. I knew what I would do, but they seemed lost and bored, now that their ride was over.
I paid my bill and then walked through the town until I reached the moor again. I had decided to make for Dartmeet where there was another hostel. I did not love the moor, I thought, as I trudged along; it was too unrelieved and hostile, the colours were all torrid, smouldering purple, burnt orange-peel, dull green and ash colour.
At one point, just before I reached the hostel, I went down to the river and jumped from rock to rock until I reached the middle of the stream. No one was about; the silver water
gushed over the stones in sparkling ribs. I pulled my clothes off hurriedly and slid in, holding on to the side of the rock with my hands. The current was swift; I crouched down and let the water race over me. It turned my skin to gooseflesh, making all the hairs erect on my body. I pulled myself out, shuddering, and rubbed my arms roughly with my dirty towel. I wanted to lie on the rock, quite naked, so that the sun should warm me through, but remembered that in this country one is arrested for that sort of thing.
Up I climbed to the hostel; my teeth chattered and my chest and arms still felt rough, like shagreen under my shirt. This hostel, like the last, was part of a farmhouse, but the whole scene was different; there was a gloomy, evil atmosphere of dirt and boredom. The meat-red walls of the outhouse, which served as a common-room, soared up into black dust-laden rafters. Over the green glass panes was a murky film of concretion. This one window let all the light in that there was.
I talked to the youngish farmer and his dogs—one had a blind eye, grey and opaque, like a boiled cod’s eye. Then I wandered about in the nearby fields, not wanting to go back to the common-room.
When at last I did return, I found other arrivals. How pleased I was! I didn’t care what they were like. I talked away the evening with a beefy man in a very white shirt and his smaller, quick-moving friend. It was all about food and distances, map-reading and the north of England. It was very nice and placid.
I walked to Princetown in the morning; I dawdled over the moor, only seeing it when my thoughts returned to me from far away. The prison loomed up and brought back my attention to my surroundings; I had the sudden fancy that it was really a fortress, not a prison, that the inmates would pour fire and molten lead out of those rows of blind, unwinking windows if anyone attempted to go near them.
In the grey town, the first thing I noticed was a name-plate on a door, stating that a warden or some official of the prison lived there.
I went down the main street; the prison had coloured all my thoughts, and I saw the stone houses as grim faces with mouths shut like traps. The upstairs windows were eyes, the chocolate-brown doors the trap-like mouths.
I suddenly felt very hungry. I walked quickly to a shop and saw with exaggerated delight that I was able to buy my favourite wheat biscuit. I brought the sunset orange and red packet (so accurately square) and some tenderised prunes.
Taking these with me across the street, I sat down with no more ado at the foot of the war memorial and started to eat. A wave of guilt spread over me as I munched with so much pleasure; the guilt seemed even to add to my pleasure in some way. I thought of all the prisoners in their cells, with their shaved heads and their canvas clothes. I thought of the warder’s eyes staring through the grating, watching the furtive pleasure one might try to snatch, seeing the little things that people do when they’re alone, which it is so shameful for other people to see. I thought of the dreadful food, the offal in the stew, served in billy-cans. I saw the chaplain with damp hand-clasp, bringing tattered novels. Then I heard all the convicts battering on their doors, screaming and blaspheming half the night.
I got up, having at last filled myself with disquiet. I thought my mental picture was probably twisted all awry, but whether it were only novel-trash or not did not matter, the reality would be just as horrible even though it were in a quite different way. The real horrors and barbarities that were only able to grow between one stupid man in power and one stupid man his victim. Horrors of petty torture, such as are practised in private schools, only now with the face uncovered, the white teeth showing.
From the prison I walked to the abbey. I wanted to see the monks of Buckfast at work. I even played with the idea of giving myself up to them and asking to be allowed to stay. I thought of the youth I’d read of, who’d run away from the sea to go to them. This was an inversion of the old adventure story that appealed to me. Now he was quietly working, laying bricks or digging trenches. I thought that I too was just the right age to surrender myself. I remembered how as a schoolboy, when I’d seen the sandalled monks at Cowfold, I’d had the same feeling of excitement, the desire to join them, to see what it was like.
But when I thought clearly, I always realised that my idea of being a monk was that I should have a stone cell in a garden with honey bees buzzing close to me in an old rush-woven hive, and with enormous sunflowers nodding their black faces along my hedge; that I should have a crystal crucifix and the loveliest old primitive that money could extort from its original monastery; that I should have a gushing spring and delicious food from heaven, and that in the evenings when I wanted change and company I’d walk across the fields to the abbey and sit talking half the night with other monks I loved.
When I came to Buckfastleigh I did not even go to look at the outside of the abbey. I knew I should not dare to go in. I have always felt anxiety in the company of monks and nuns. To see them staring at one through the grille in the gates of their monasteries is alarming. That inside world seems likely to trip one up and confuse one at every turn.
I walked on to Dartington where I found the hostel housed in a spotless cottage belonging to the Hall. I read about the school of mime, the handicrafts, the agriculture, the children’s school, the ancient building itself. It all seemed so vital and interesting an experiment that I left straight away to find the Hall. When I got to the gates, I found that I could not go in. A time was set for sightseers earlier in the day. I looked along the huge expanse of gravel and saw at the end what I imagined to be the banqueting hall. It looked medieval, with buttresses.
Walking back along a wooded road I came upon a shop which sold things made of wood and tweed materials. Without any intention to buy I went up to it and looked around me. One could tell how uncommercial the whole concern was. The building was expensively simple and the woman who came out to me just smiled rather ineffectually and pleasantly, then went away again.
This experiment in living excited me. Here were some rich people actually trying to construct something from their money.
Back at the hostel I tried to find out more about the place, but nobody could tell me much. There seemed to be no warden, only a woman who came in to clean every day.
The cottage was in a little hollow, and on the very edge of a stream. Already a mist was gathering over the water and blowing in at the windows. The walls outside and in were whitewashed and the floor was scrubbed concrete. The stoves were in perfect order and there was electric light.
I went in search of food for my evening meal. I was only able to buy porridge oats, and the shop man directed me to a farm where I could get cream.
I stood waiting at the door, and then the woman led me down to the stone dairy. The smell was a little revolting, and I did not like to see her breaking the thick yellow crust of the bowls of cream. It looked so like a scab on a wound, and broke in just that way.
I took my carton back with me and started to cook my oats. I had never made porridge before and I was afraid that it would be lumpy or burnt. I watched it with great care, stirring and smoothing it with my spoon until I thought it cooked.
Others who had arrived laughed at my care and told me that it was not breakfast time but supper. After the meal we sat round the open window, which now was belching in the white mist, and talked. Nobody thought of shutting the window. The stream tinkled mournfully over the stones. I watched a spray of creeper waving against the dark sky, then decided to leave the others and go to bed. They came in just as I was about to go to sleep. I heard them talking about waterproof capes, and telling dirty jokes. The jokes got more and more preposterous and led gradually to lustful imaginings and serious stories. Knitting the anecdotes together, binding the whole conversation, were the swear words; they were sprayed into every nook and cranny, to leave no void or empty space.
I woke once in the night, and saw the mist eddying about in the black room. Men snored gently; the grey square of light from the window seemed flat and opaque as a wooden hoarding.
By twelve o’clock the next mornin
g I was at Thunderstone [ed: there is no village of this name in the area—Thurlestone is probably correct]. Some people in a car had stopped and given me a lift. We hardly spoke as we sped along. At Kingsbridge I got out and thanked them. They smiled fat, animal smiles and sped on their way again.
I walked between two folds of hills, down to the little village. At the end of the stone breakwater, where it joined the rocks, I saw someone bathing. I walked out, gazing at the figure idly. He had pulled down his bathing-suit and was drying himself now. When I got to the end I saw, with a shock, that it was Green Anderson who had been at school with me. His flesh was just as green—yellow, sallow green—and his hair stood up in the same black, grass-like tufts. I remembered his juttingout jaw and the rather atavistic sloping back of his low forehead. He looked up at me and then shouted, ‘Good God, hullo Welch! Did you see me down on the beach?’
‘No,’ I answered, ‘I didn’t know it was you until I reached this spot.’
We talked quite animatedly while he dried, and pulled his clothes on. He jerked the towel over his golliwog’s hair until it stood out in all directions. ‘Come back and see my people,’ he said.
We returned along the breakwater and I found that Mr and Mrs Anderson were two fat people sitting on the beach. There was a little too much dignity about them for their situation. They smiled at me and said, ‘So you knew each other at Brook House.’ They asked me where I was going to next and what I was training to be.
I wondered if they’d ask me to lunch, and if so, whether I should accept or refuse. I wondered what their lunch would be like.
When they clambered to their feet ponderously I decided that it was time to leave. I said goodbye, they all smiled, and we parted with no pain or pleasure.
Up on the hill stood a large hotel. I went into it and sat down self-consciously in the dining-room. The dreary family parties came in and looked at me as a stranger, then they smiled and went on with their cold meat and prunes and rice. The children seemed particularly unatattractive. Life in this sort of seaside hotel is at its lowest ebb, I thought. Everyone’s bored, even the slovenly waiters are bored. The food has no taste; and this afternoon people will lie on their beds and read novels, hoping in that way to shorten the interval before dinner.