by Denton Welch
He sat down on the ground, unlaced his boots and peeled off his sweat-sticky socks, and the breeches which were exactly the colour of the mud and the cow-dung caked on them. The image jumped into my mind of myself as a small boy peeling a stick. It was the same—the scabby, silvery bark peeled off, leaving the living whiteness unprotected.
The man stood up, shook back his hair, and dived into the water. He came up spitting and laughing. ‘Fucking filthy water!’ he yelled. ‘Fucking filthy, but it feels fine. You ought to come in.’
I shook my head again and went on staring at him. He stood up near the bank, so that the water gartered the middle of his calves, making him look like a broken statue in the bowl of a fountain. He disappeared again under the brown water.
He went on floundering, splashing, spitting, cursing, laughing until at last he crawled up the bank and lay down beside me with his eyes shut. I watched the water coursing off his body; the main stream flowed down his chest, over the mushroom-smooth belly, and lost itself at last in curly gold hair. I could just see the quicksilver drops fastening round single hairs, or weaving painfully through the golden bush. He glittered all over with these drops clinging to hair-points.
He opened his eyes, sat up, and started to rub his chest and arms roughly with the dirty towel. Red tingling lines and scribbles appeared on his skin.
‘I’m down here working on the farm,’ he volunteered abruptly.
I felt that I had to tell him what I did, in return. ‘Oh, my sister’s a very clever artist too,’ he said. ‘She’s won scholarships and all sorts of things, and now she’s going abroad. She’s the pet lamb and I’m the black sheep,’ he added with a rather too devilish grin.
How he interested me! I wanted him to go on talking until I knew his whole story. I waited, not asking any questions, afraid to show too much eagerness.
Gradually, in sharp jerky sentences, mixed with bravado laughing, he told me that he had no more to do with his family. They had given him up, and he had given them up. They didn’t even know where he was. He earned his living as a farm-labourer.
‘I like it, and one day I’ll have a farm of my own,’ he said.
It was delightful for me to be with someone who was in disgrace with his family; I warmed to him more and more. I wanted to tell him all about my aunt’s cold welcome, but it sounded so tame after his daring story that I only allowed myself to hint that I too was not in high favour at home.
‘I get tight most evenings, when I’ve got any money,’ he said suddenly. ‘There’s nothing else to do. That was one of the troubles at home—they hated me boozing in the village pub. They said it was low.’
He went on to tell me of fights and brawls. Once on Christmas Day he had been locked up for fighting in the village street, outside the pub, when it closed in the afternoon. Even as I listened to these exciting stories I wondered how much was exaggeration. It seemed wonderful to me that his beautiful white teeth had not been knocked down his throat a long time ago. And as I imagined this happening, I had a real pain; the sort of pain that stabs at you when you see some beautifully made intricate thing threatened. I too, like his family, wished that he wouldn’t booze so much. I wanted to ask him to be more sober, but of course did not dare to. Already, I felt, he must think me quite mild enough.
‘And where are you going to sleep tonight?’ he asked, looking at my rucksack.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said with special casualness. ‘I just walked out as they didn’t seem particularly pleased to see me. I only came back today from one long walking-tour. I’ve been right down to Devonshire,’ I explained.
‘I’d like to do that,’ he mused, looking far away. ‘I’d like to go walking all over Europe. I could earn a bit as I went along. They wouldn’t give me anything!’ he spat out at the end.
I waited a moment, then blurted out, ‘Couldn’t we do that together then? I think I could get a little money, and as you say, we could earn some more.’
If he had not taken me seriously I should have felt humiliated, but when he did take me seriously I saw immediately how badly matched we were. I saw us sulking or quarrelling as we trudged along a dusty white road in France or climbed a mountain in Austria. I would always fall below his bold bad standards; we would never understand each other. Yet, oh, how I wanted this adventure!
‘I say, do you really think we could do that?’ he asked, his eyes lighting up. ‘It would have to be later in the year though. I’ve got to work here till the autumn.’
‘That’ll be just when I have to go back to the school,’ I said.
I started to demolish the whole idea, except as an idea. I felt cowardly for not making it happen in some way; more than anything else at that moment I wanted to go on the journey with him, yet I still went on talking vaguely.
‘It would be nice sometime,’ I said.
He pulled on his clothes, then stood up, buckling on his belt. He held out his hand and I grasped it, getting a shock when I felt the horny palm, hard and brittle as celluloid.
‘Goodbye,’ we said, not even asking for each other’s names or addresses.
I watched him the whole way. The legs, the shoulders and the towel swung in rhythm till he reached the garden gate. He turned and waved. I waved back and then started to run over the tussocks. I let the rucksack bang viciously on my back, and when I turned my ankle I was pleased at the pain. It made me feel less unbearably angry and frustrated.
I walked and ran until I had reached the deserted little railway station. There I boarded the first train to come in. It took me to Horsham where I had to wait for several hours.
When at last I got a train to Winchester I sat back and listened to the drumming of the wheels. There was no one to talk to; the other passengers looked ugly and they were half asleep.
But it ought to be exciting to travel at midnight, I thought. I ought to have adventures. Then I realised that I didn’t want adventures, I wanted to be sleeping in a bedroom, with people that I liked near me. I felt sorry for myself, that I had to travel at midnight in a train to a strange town.
I seemed to be the only person awake in all Winchester. I had the midnight sense of power, the feeling of owning the streets I walked through to get to the City Mill.
I knocked on the door and waited guiltily. There was no sound and I knocked again. It was now two o’clock; I heard it striking.
The warden came with her eyes bloated and thick with sleep. She had dragged on a curious khaki cotton dressing-gown which made her look like a rolled tobacco-pouch, and her short hair was sticking up in squalid spikes. She was furious.
‘What the devil do you mean by coming at this time of night,’ she said. ‘I ought not to let you in.’ But even as she spoke she held the door open and stood back for me to pass. She went on muttering for form’s sake, but I knew it meant nothing.
‘Cut along,’ she said, ‘and for Christ’s sake don’t wake the others up. If you do I hope they’ll slay you.’
I stumbled through the whole length of the mill, not daring to put a light on. Draughts blew along the floors, up in the high barn ceiling, from window to window. Nothing fitted, there were chinks and cracks everywhere and pale light showing through them.
When I reached the men’s dormitory I felt along the beds carefully, terrified of lying down on one already occupied.
Underneath the water rushed. The noise covered everything; it even covered my thoughts, and wiped them out. I lay down, satisfied to be here, not caring what I did tomorrow.
I paid back the money to the warden in the morning. ‘Good at paying your debts, aren’t you,’ she said. ‘That’s one thing, but God I was annoyed when you got me up last night. It was two o’clock, you know. Two o’clock! You ought to be hung.’ She laughed, and I apologised again.
On the wall in her little private room she had pinned a map of the Pilgrim’s Way from Winchester to Canterbury.
‘That’s what I’ll do,’ I said, ‘I’ll walk along the Pilgrim’s Way to Canterbury. Wh
ere can I get one of these little maps?’
She opened a drawer and gave me one.
‘That’ll be sixpence, sir,’ she said, in a shopgirl’s voice.
I took the little map, which was rather smudgy, being reproduced by that jelly process which makes use of a tray of jelly. I remembered seeing the tray of jelly when I first went to St Michael’s. A master was printing songs for us to sing; and I watched, fascinated. The jelly, with the purplish stains of the writing on it, looked good to eat, but I knew it was poison.
The little map looked so simple; there was the Pilgrim’s Way, clearly marked, all the way from Winchester to Canterbury. I said goodbye to the warden and started at once.
By that afternoon I was in difficulties; I had quite lost my way, and for some time had been walking across fields where no shadow of a path could be seen. Climbing fences and pushing through hedges had so exhausted and annoyed me that, when I finally came out on the edge of a huge ploughed field, I was ready to cry with rage. I started to swear aloud and snarl, and I felt real tears in my eyes. I sat down on the ground, resting my head on my knees. Little pictures of my childhood and stories about God floated about in my mind, and I felt better.
I stood up again, and then stepped on to the ploughed field; the pink-brown churned-up earth stuck to my shoes, until I was carrying two heavy balls on my feet. I ploughed on down the steep dip and up the other side. I swore not to stop until I reached grass again.
To feel the hardness again was wonderful. To know that the road led somewhere was wonderful too. I walked until I came to Four Marks, one of those country slums, all beaverboard and corrugated iron, which people seem to find so bright and cosy.
I knew there was a hostel nearby. I found the right bungalow and walked up to the front door. As I waited, I was surrounded and hemmed in by the heaviness of flower-smell and the vibrating of the bees. Rose leaves fell on other flowers, smothering them in white and pink. Everything was heavy, full and weighed-down.
The woman who came to the door seemed meagre in comparison. She had no juice. She looked at me too inquiringly.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘I’ve come for the night,’ I answered, trying to make her smile.
She showed me to a room with beds in it and asked: ‘What will you take for supper?’
‘Oh, I’ll make my own, thank you,’ I said, ‘I have food with me.’ The woman went away and I heard her talking to her husband. I started to unpack the rye bread and honey and other nice things I had bought.
Both the man and the woman came back into the room and stood over me.
‘The other two gentlemen who’ve arrived are going to have our supper,’ the woman began.
‘But I’d rather have my own food which I’ve bought. I don’t want meat,’ I said.
‘This isn’t an ordinary hostel. We always make the meals,’ she went on stubbornly.
‘Oh, I didn’t know; you ought to put that in the little booklet. It says there that every hostel has a place for cooking. But it doesn’t matter at all. I don’t want to cook, I only want to eat my bread and cheese and honey and chocolate.’
She shifted about on her feet and said again, ‘This isn’t an ordinary hostel.’ But even as she said it, I knew that it was an ordinary hostel and that she was only trying to blackmail me into eating her offal so that she could make a little money out of my stay. ‘I think I’ll go on then,’ I said as calmly as I could, ‘I don’t think I’d really like to stay the night in an extraordinary hostel.’
‘What do you mean—nothing extraordinary goes on here!’
I was delighted. I had touched the woman. She was anxiously protecting the decency of her house. I could not have done more if I’d called it a bawdy house.
I said nothing, but packed up my honey and rye bread again. They both watched me; the anxious look was still in their eyes. How frightened they were of immorality! My silly words, said without thought, had been charged with threat and evil meaning for them.
‘Goodbye,’ I said, going out of the door. They did not answer, but stood staring after me, still looking dazed.
When I got into the road, I began to curse them. I had nowhere to go for the night. I was tired. I was hungry.
When the bus slowed down in front of me, I ran, caught hold of the chromium bar and pulled myself up.
‘I want to go as far as I can,’ I said to the conductor.
A man stopped and spoke to me as I sat in the field near Petersfield, eating my bread and honey and watching the sunset rage across the sky.
‘That’s a sight, ain’t it!’ he said, wrinkling the skin round his eyes and showing all his teeth in a wide grin.
‘Yes, it’s fine.’
‘Over in a minute though,’ he mused. He gave me another grin.
‘Where are you going to spend the night then—under a haystack?’ He seemed to find me very amusing; I had the impression that he was just able to keep back his chuckles.
‘I shall go to the Youth Hostel at Harting, if I can find the way,’ I said.
‘It’ll be dark before you get there,’ he told me, still with the grin on his face. The sunset had turned his skin orange, and against this, the row of large white teeth were startling. A yellow cow’s lick of hair curled round on his forehead. It was a nice fresh, clownish face.
‘Why are you smiling at me?’ I asked suddenly.
‘Oh, I dunno, you look as if you was enjoying yourself, eating all that bread and honey out in the open.’
‘I am,’ I said.
I turned and looked straight into his eyes; they seemed to be bubbling over with exuberance, sparkling all along the edges with the beginning of laughter tears.
I caught some of his crazy gaiety, and grinned back; then we both laughed out aloud and became thoroughly friendly.
‘I hope you’ll find your way,’ he said softly. He asked me more questions, still gazing at me. Even when he said goodnight, he kept looking over his shoulder and waving his hand.
To be wished so much good was lovely. I got up and walked to Harting. And as I walked I remembered my relations and all the people who made me feel uncomfortable.
It’s better to sleep in the ditch, I thought, than to thrust yourself on your relations.
Under the Downs are two ruined churches. They are ruined because in Victorian times the local grandee built a beautiful new church, large enough to serve the three parishes.
I climbed up to the ruins at Treyford, full of anger and rage. But perhaps they’re better ruined than restored, I thought.
The walls were still standing all round me, but huge weeds and little trees pushed up through the floor, and the roof was off. I read the names on the tombstones and saw the church restored and converted into a house for me. I can never look at a ruin without converting it into a house for me. From the nearby farm I heard voices and the rattle of milk cans. I brushed through the nettles again, stinging my knees, and walked on.
At a turn in the lane I came on a house with all the windows open. There was a board up to say that a special sort of dog was bred there. A complaining woman’s voice called out from upstairs, and I heard a man in the garden answering just not loud enough for her to hear. She called again, and I passed on down the lane.
Several years afterwards I was to meet some people who said, ‘We used to breed dogs near Treyford.’
‘Then I heard you calling to each other one summer afternoon,’ I said. And I shall always remember them like that, the woman calling from the upstairs window and the man answering so that she would not hear.
When I reached Cocking, I found that the hostel was a wooden hut in the grounds of the vicarage. The vicar was giving a children’s party in the large common-room, and I was immediately roped in to help. The vicar’s niece of fifteen seized on me, sized me up shrewdly and told me to organise the tug-of-war. The children took me for the most tremendous joke, quite the funniest part of the evening. My face turned to deep crimson. I was helpless. They refused to pl
ay tug-of-war but gripped my arms, my legs, my waist, saying the most insolent, humiliating things as they swung on me lovingly.
The little niece came bustling up. ‘Now children, leave Mr—Mr—leave Mister alone.’ She finished hurriedly and with a threat in her voice, as she felt she had been made to look silly by not knowing my name.
The children fell away from me, knowing that, party or no party, she was quite capable of slapping them if they did not obey.
The tug-of-war was properly organised. The children screamed. The vicar came up to speak to me. He had food marks on his waistcoat and scurf on his collar and his round little eyes looked watery behind his glasses. His pink lips looked wet too. He was laughing and smiling and chortling, watching everything as if he’d paid for his seat at the theatre. He didn’t seem to like or dislike anyone.
When the last child had left, and I was alone in the large wooden hut, I stood on a chair and looked at the books on a high shelf. They were old books. Perhaps some other parson had left them behind when he died. There was a squat line of Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. The gold medallions on their spines still shone very bright, but the leather was tough and furry with age.
I took one down and began to read the biographical note, as I ate puffed rice and milk.
Afterwards I wandered through the vicarage shrubbery and came out on the road. I walked till I came to a pub. People were standing about in groups whispering, and then guffawing loudly. The door of the urinal rattled. Men were whistling inside and striking matches; I could see the momentary glow above the cream-washed wall. More laughter, a little singing, broken off as suddenly as it was started, and then, ‘Goodnight, Ted, Goodnight, Bob;’ name after name was called out ceremoniously.
I turned back, listening to the voices of the group just in front of me. They clung close together, with their arms round one another. They were not drunk. They seemed to be telling very elaborate dirty jokes, but all I could distinguish were the swear words. These jumped out and hung in the air like certain insistent notes in some piece of music which is being played too far away to be properly heard.