by Nigel Dennis
NIGEL DENNIS
A House in Order
With love to
Joyce and Peter Ashley
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
‘Take me, take me! I am a prisoner too’
I didn’t get up feeling any happier
When the guard shut my greenhouse door
I counted seven whole days of this sunshine
Suddenly, all my changes
Next day, a corporal came to my door
I got some consolation that night
But I spent all the next week like a fool
The Colonel was the first to come down
They played their wretched music after supper
He arrived in the dark
The agronomist never came
So many cars lined up on the gravel road
He arrived as the other had
They kept me back in the hall
When morning came, the beaters had all gone
I am lucky in my village policeman
Copyright
‘Take me, take me! I am a prisoner too’ – I kept calling this out as I ran down the road, with other absurd words of the same kind and tears of terror. But it was one of those long, foreign roads that run forever up and down hills and valleys, and as fast as I panted to the top of each rise the long column of prisoners in front strung over the next rise: I would never catch them up, and their uniforms, so clear and recognizable, were beginning to blur as the light of the evening went. Not one of them looked back, nor a single one of their guards, though I cursed them and shouted until my lungs split: ‘Don’t leave me! I am a cartographer. I am an enemy. I am a prisoner’ – and so on, until I had lost so much breath that my legs gave up and left me choking and crying in a dusk that terrified me.
A soldier stepped out suddenly from the side of the road and held up one hand, to stop me: I was never more thankful to obey though certain he would shoot me on the spot. ‘I am a prisoner too – I am with those in front’ I called as he came closer; and keeping my arms raised above my head, I tried wildly to show where I should be. But he didn’t understand a word, and wasn’t interested in understanding: he just looked me up and down in such a hard way that my miserable legs gave in completely and dumped me in the middle of the dusty road, a heap of tears and fright.
He gave a snort that was contemptuous but sympathetic enough, and putting down a large, scarred hand, he pulled my glasses off, folded them carefully and put them in his shirt pocket. Then, he made me get up and walk in front of him, which I did, feeling stronger in the legs now that there was more hope of going to prison safely.
I could see nothing of the column now, without my glasses: even the trees that lined the verge passed me only one by one and the road surface turned into littered patches of dusty, broken metal. My escort trudged along behind me at a farm-hand’s pace and whistled as he went – an ordinary, stupid creature, as his whistling showed, but a comfort to me whose terror was of brutes who would beat me to death. But I left well alone and never looked round, so I never saw his face again.
It was soon dark and I could see nothing any more except an occasional tear in the road under my feet and the trunk of a poplar when I wandered too close to the verge. We walked for hours, my escort and I, with only his stupid whistling for company and the beat of his big boots. I was horribly tired, but fright kept me moving: I felt that so long as we plodded on I would be safe from shooting. What’s more, one can’t feel terrified every second; each time I felt safer, my nerves rested and my brain stopped imagining new ways of being murdered. What I pictured most now was my companions – or whatever you call people who were never your friends – reaching, and standing outside, some laager or wired camp: while they waited, I would catch up with them; a gate would open, and we would file in.
It happened differently. On coming over a rise, I saw a huge light suddenly, shining on a gate in a high wall. I had hardly seen it when the gate slowly swung to, the light was cut off in an instant and I was in total darkness again. I guessed at once – and I was quite right – that the whole column was now inside that wall and that nothing in the world would open that gate again tonight to admit me, or bring on that huge white light to see me in.
While I shook and trembled in the loneliness of being shut out from safety, my escort showed worry and puzzlement too. He shouted to one or two dim, passing figures, but got no helpful answer from them. Then, he held me firmly from behind by one shoulder, and shouted again; but getting no answer at all, he pushed me forward, making irritated gruntings, and we passed away from the wall and up what appeared to be a good gravel track. I could vaguely see a wide verandah ahead when he stopped me, and shouted again: but when there was still no answer, the poor booby began to mutter and swear, as if he had no idea what to do next. At last, putting his hand on my shoulder again, he pushed me onto my knees, shook me a few times with threatening noises – which I well understood were about what would happen if I moved one inch – and shuffled off and left me.
I stayed exactly where I was, as still and stiff as a piece of furniture. I heard a lot of men passing to and fro along the verandah, sometimes one person’s quick walk, sometimes a group, talking, laughing and humming. Doors opened and closed giving sudden flashes of light, but otherwise everything was completely dark and I couldn’t see more than a foot from my eyes.
It was like this for ages, except that soon no more steps sounded on the verandah and no lights flashed any more. The autumn night got cold (temp, approx. 40 deg. F.) and a light wind, coming in from the east, made sure of frost before dawn. I could not imagine anybody arriving to march me into prison at this hour, but as I could see no sign at all of any substitute for prison I felt miserably alone and frightened – particularly as I found it physically impossible to go on kneeling: I had to pump my legs and arms simply to keep my blood moving.
I got a bad fright when a light suddenly appeared: I thought it was the first light of morning, which frightened me with thoughts of what would happen when I was found. But it was only the half-moon, coming up as the frost came down, and though it was too weak to light up more than steps leading up to the verandah, it did show me that the gravel under me was a garden path and that just to one side of me there was an object which gave off reflections of the moonlight. I must have been in a semi-stupid state as well as half-blind, because it was a long time before I managed to make sense out of this object and recognize it for my favourite place – a greenhouse.
God knows, I was frightened to move from where I was, but the greenhouse was only a few feet away, and the more I thought the matter over the more I felt that I had better creep into it. It might keep me from half freezing to death and it would serve as a temporary prison at least. No man who wanted to hide would choose to do so in a greenhouse: when they saw me there in daylight it would be clear that far from trying to run away I was showing plainly every hope of being shut up.
I got up very cautiously and when the blood was back in my legs I got to the greenhouse door in a quick crawl. It was a job to open it, but I managed and found myself in a frightfully neglected place that had obviously not been used since the parent house was commandeered. There were huge spiders-webs in the faint moonlight, and there was cracked and broken glass lying everywhere with the east wind blowing in at the empty panes. There were some filthy old pots strewn over the floor, and on the staging nothing whatever except one wretched little pot full of mouldy earth and a Mediterranean house-leek sprouting out of the top of it, its rosettes just starting to shine in the mild frost. It was a very small greenhouse and a door at the far end opened into a little shed – the perfect attachment to a greenhouse, as I had been telling ignorant people for years, yet this w
as one of the few times I had come across it, which struck me even in my shivering state as surprising and strange.
I closed the door that led into the shed, so it would be clear that I had not the slightest intention of trying to hide, and then sat down on a dirty old wooden chair to wait for my arrest in the morning. I remember thinking two things: that it would be a shame to lose the house-leek when a sheet of newspaper would be enough to keep the frost off it (I found a piece under the staging and laid it on) and that I could never get a wink of sleep with the frost falling and the east wind blowing through the empty panes. Then I went fast asleep at once.
I was woken up in the morning by noise and sunshine. The sun was already pretty well up and beginning to warm the greenhouse: the noise came chiefly from the verandah, only five yards away, where the business of last night was starting up again. Officers, looking very trim indeed, passed up and down with the fast, gliding walk that all their soldiers had, and from time to time an NCO or private soldier swept by even faster, as if he had been ordered to deliver a message. When I looked the other way, I thought I could see very vaguely the prison-camp where I had hoped to pass the rest of the war, but without my glasses I could only suppose.
I was very hungry, very stiff and still very cold. I was also well frightened all over again because my position – an enemy soldier sitting unguarded in a glass house – was so unlike a correct military situation. At first, naturally, I noted every soldier who went down the verandah as one who might come and arrest me, and tortured myself, as I stared at him, with fancies as to what sort of brute he would turn out to be and how savagely he would pounce on me. But after a few hours of this, it came home to me that I was simply not being seen by anybody at all. Nobody could have been more obvious than I was, stuck up miserably on my wooden chair, and yet not a soul ever threw an eye in my direction, or, if he did, picked me out from my surroundings. One young officer jumped down the verandah steps and went off down the gravel path at speed, but he never so much as glanced into my greenhouse, nor did half a dozen others who came up or down the same path. By noon, I was feeling desperate, because it was clear that the next move ought to be mine: I had only to get up and shout when the next soldier passed and my arrest would come at once. But although I kept picking men who had friendly faces and looked decent sorts, and tried to wave an arm or shout to them, I was always too frightened to act, and my call or wave always began just as they were disappearing. One man did, indeed, hear me call and, turning round, not only looked from left to right with a frown but straight into my eyes: this terrified the life out of me, and when at last he went off like the rest, I felt weak with relief and gratitude.
What with fear, hunger, stiffness and despair, I was in a very miserable state as the afternoon came and went and the dark came down again just as it had done twenty-four hours ago, when I was marched down the long road. I longed for it to get dark, so that I could get off my chair without being seen, and I longed to be seen before it got too dark to be seen at all. When it did, at last, get pretty dark, I couldn’t decide if it was really dark enough to hide me, if I moved, because I still felt that I must be the most obvious thing in the world. At last, I plucked up enough courage to wave my arms when anybody passed, but I began doing so only when people had pretty well stopped passing and would not, in any case, have been able to see my arms.
The thought of spending another hungry night alone in the cold glass-house was bad enough, but what frightened me was how much angrier they would be with me if they found me on the second day having missed me on the first. First, they would think my story ridiculous and knock me about as a spy and a liar. Then, when they realized it must be true, their indignation at not having spotted me in broad daylight might be quite dreadful: far from taking me prisoner, they would shoot me to cover their shame.
When it was pitch-dark, I got up slowly from my wooden chair – and fell flat on the ground, so weak I was by now. Exactly the same cold east wind as last night’s was coming through the gaps in the panes and the same light frost was taking hold. I hardly knew what to do, because I couldn’t bear the thought of another night under glass but hardly dared go into the wooden shed, which would be much warmer but would convince anyone who found me there that I was hiding from arrest, not praying for it. But when I saw the first signs of the half-moon coming up again, I felt so much terror of being spotted by somebody that I got the shed door open and crawled in as quietly as I could. All of which must sound absurd – to crave to be arrested yet be too frightened to allow it to happen – but all behaviour is both quite natural and quite absurd when one is shivering with fear and confident that any act one does will turn out to be the last.
I was not able to get very far into the little shed while it was still dark because I could feel obstructions but see nothing. But when the moon got high it lit the shed up a good deal as well as the greenhouse and I could see where I was, and take stock. Sitting in the doorway, on the earth floor, I found everything exactly as I expected it to be and felt a sharp burst of a long-standing indignation.
Wretched, ungrateful, human beasts who call themselves lovers of plants and gardens but, once the summer has gone, treat their sheds and greenhouses as repositories for their cast-off muck and despicable rubbish! Map-making is my work, but the greenhouse has always been my passionate life, so I am well acquainted with those who claim a share in my passion. One in a hundred is interested in putting plants in his glass-house for winter rearing or protection, but to ninety-nine this precious and delicate building is only an outlet for their drifting laziness and stupidity. Deck-chairs with ripped canvas, muddy tennis-balls, warped racquets with snapped lengths of gut, collapsed sun umbrellas, rusting iron tea-tables, tennis shoes with no laces, mallets, magazines, chipped crockery, unspeakable cushions, odd scraps of lino, garden-string, plant labels – all are chucked and shoved recklessly under glass to be picked out and dusted off again when springtime brings the sun back. The wretched beasts who had lived here before the war had been no exception to this general, sordid rule: all the things I have listed were found crushed into the shed or thrown on the glass-house floor: all they had added as a personal touch of filthiness was one of papa’s old pipes, a Turkish fez, a church hassock and a well-chipped Madonna. An effort had been made even to force the small garden roller through the house and into the shed, but strength failing to get it over the lintel it had been driven with a shrug into one of the lower panes of glass and left there, a perfect solid object on which to heap further trash such as plastic toys and a bicycle wheel. In short, I found here the very shambles I most detested and despised in the human race, which is why, I suppose, although I was shivering and trembling with cold, fear, and hunger, I felt disgust and contempt for the wretched mass of people who abuse useful things and make the pleasures of summer the toxic filth of winter.
It was a little warmer in the shed and I was, frankly, grateful for some of the muck I found there and used to cover my legs and shoulders. But just how I spent the night there, I can’t describe, because I was becoming, I think, a little delirious, and at some point went to sleep again, my legs sticking out onto the greenhouse floor, covered with cheap magazines and the canvas of a deck-chair.
I was found in this position soon after dawn. An early soldier, coming up the path to the house, was my discoverer – and thank God I was spared the terror of seeing him spot me and the horror of watching him approach. He woke me up with a gun in my face – which was terrifying enough – and while holding it there let out bellows and roars that brought two guards and a junior officer running at top speed.
The young officer was spruce and brisk: he ordered me onto my feet with a flick of his thumb, but finding at once that I couldn’t walk or stand he ordered one of the guards to climb over me into the shed and pick me up by the shoulders, which the hefty animal did immediately, bashing the side of my face with his boot as he jumped over. The other guard took my legs, the young officer kicked cushions, fez and magazines out
of the way, and I was carried out and up onto the verandah. From there, I went through a door that was open to receive me, and was dumped on a bench in a small room. I fell off it at once, and was put back promptly and held upright against the wall by one of the guards.
The young officer shot out and came back very soon with one of his seniors, a heavy-faced thug whose appearance would have scared me out of my wits if I had not been almost too weak to feel terror any more. The two of them talked at a great rate for some moments, showing both astonishment and indignation at finding me there, and they listened in very cold silence when the soldier who had spotted me was brought in and told his story. By the time he had finished, they were really angry and stared at me as if I were one of the filthy bits of muck that the greenhouse was so full of. They both addressed me in very sharp, abrupt words, but I was too feeble and frightened to do anything but shake my head and say ‘Pardon’ repeatedly – the only word that is truly international.
The older officer, with a final disgusted grunt, left the room; the younger one, after looking me over carefully, gave an order to one of the guards, who went out and came back with some soup and bread. At first, this guard fed me himself, impatiently shoving the spoon into my cheek as if dosing a dog, but after a minute he snapped at me and pushed the spoon into my hand, so that I went on eating alone, chewing on the bread and slowly swallowing the soup, while my head swayed wretchedly from side to side. But after a few minutes I began to feel the benefit of the food, and I remember thinking to myself: ‘They are making me strong, so as to shoot me better,’ which set my teeth chattering.
The contempt on their faces as they watched me finish my food was at least encouraging: the more they thought of me as a strayed worm or caterpillar, the less seriously, it seemed to me, they would consider me worth shooting. But their contempt turned out to be nothing more than disgust for my cowardice, and I realized as soon as I had swallowed my last crumbs that they had no intention of dismissing the situation as an odd accident.