What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood.
“I’ve got the front of this book full of quotations and jokes,” he said, turning the pages. “Listen to this. What did the young rabbi say to the old rabbi in the French pastry shop as he passed the cakes? Have another Ghetto.” And he laughed infectiously.
It was raining when he drove out of St. Ives and in a matter of minutes we were on the moors. The sea was beside us on the right. The moor on the left. And the rain kept coming across like folds of a pale white curtain.
“It’s wet in England,” he said thoughtfully.
Our first stop was at a filling station. The man who ran it was an old-timer, one of the survivors of a mining disaster. Mister Grocer came in carrying his portable tape recorder in a green sling over his shoulder. And he began to flatter the man. But the old-timer stopped him. “I’ve been interviewed many times on radio and television. You just tell me what you want . . .”
Mister Grocer asked him questions. They rehearsed, twice. Mister Grocer checked his equipment. He locked the door. He stuffed paper into the doorbell. He put up a “closed” sign in the window. And just as everything was set to record, Mister Grocer had an attack of nerves. So he had another rehearsal. The old-timer was right-on with his replies, while Mister Grocer fluffed his.
“I must take a tranquillizer,” he said and swallowed a pill. He had worked himself up into such a state that I was ready to suggest that I interview the old-timer.
Then the interview started. And once he began, the voice that spoke into the microphone was authoritative, distinct, and without a trace of anxiety. It was the anonymous “interview voice” that radio and television have made familiar. As soon as he finished he relaxed. And you could see he was no longer interested in the old-timer, in mining, in this part of Cornwall. All he wanted to do was to get away from here.
“That’s the start,” he said, walking back to the car. He was full of nervous excitement and kept patting me on the shoulder. “The hard part is always the start.” I said it was the same in writing. As a parting shot he told the old-timer the only obvious lie I could detect—that he would let him know when it would be broadcast. But driving on to Land’s End he said that he came from a wealthy family just outside Warsaw. That his people were in wood. “My father had forests.” And when he made a bit more cash in Australia he would go back for a visit. “I would like to see what the place looks like. We had a magnificent white house—I was born there. We had an Alsatian on a long leash attached to an overhead wire—he patrolled the grounds . . .”
And I didn’t believe a word of it.
I could see St. Just come out of the mist. And in the town complete silence except for the squawks from the jackdaws and gulls. This is a part of Cornwall not touched by tourists. Instead of Bed and Breakfast, the signs here said House for Sale. Empty square, large Wesleyan chapel, squat church. And right beside them small fields with cows and horses, barns and dung. A gull flew low down a wide empty street and the mist lay on the surrounding hilltops with stooks of corn on the slopes. Around the perimeter: abandoned tin-mine chimneys and the Atlantic.
We went to the Western Hotel—I had once met the owner. Mister Grocer had me rehearse with him, before we came to St. Just, all the facts about St. Just that I thought he ought to know, until he had memorized them word-perfect—he might have been an actor learning a part. And, for a few minutes, he did talk intelligently about St. Just with the hotel owner. He rehearsed the interview. Then, again, went into a flap. I was posted outside to keep guard. Doors were locked. And just as soon as the interview was over he wanted to get away from here. It was as if he had done something he knew he shouldn’t and was afraid of being found out.
By the end of the second day I was beginning to have doubts whether this little holiday trip would last the week. I was convinced that Mister Grocer was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He turned up around ten that night at the door of the cottage with his bags and portable equipment, sweat on his face. “William, I’d like to move.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. But the place—it’s not for me.”
My wife gave me a knowing glance. She was brought up in a London suburb and doesn’t approve of the mild bohemian life that flickers here in the summer.
“Why don’t you take him to Mrs. Richards’?” she said.
I walked him over to Mrs. Richards’, helped carry his stuff. On the way down he suddenly stopped, put his bags on the road. I thought he was tired. “William, I forgot to pay at the last place. Could you, for me?” And he took out a couple of pounds.
“Sure,” I said.
“Tell them I had to go to London, unexpectedly. And didn’t have time to pay or say goodbye.”
I left him at Mrs. Richards’ and went to the other place and saw Leo—one of the owners.
“Leo. Al Grocer had to go to London. Here’s what he owes.”
“Grocer. That friend of yours is some character.”
“What’s up?”
“He came into my room last night, said he had angst. Said he wanted to tuck me in and kiss me goodnight.”
Next morning when I got to the car park he was putting away the Times and his notebook in the dashboard compartment.
“Is Mrs. Richards’ place OK?”
“Fine, William,” he said cheerfully. “It’s healthy the food here—I’ve broken out in pimples.”
We drove out. The rain had stopped, and there was a fresh morning smell to the air. He suddenly became concerned about my welfare. “You must get out of Cornwall—the place is too slow. You have been spoiled living here. You won’t be able to survive in a city. I’m not joking. And the longer you live here, the harder it will be. Come to Australia. With your education you could make money over there—like mud.”
He watched me smoke a cigarette, with disapproval. Finally, he said. “You smoke your cigarettes too much. You must throw more of a cigarette away. You sell yourself cheap . . .”
We headed for the south coast in sunshine. Over the car radio a crooner was singing.
Tear a star from out the sky
And the sky feels blue . . .
In Falmouth he interviewed three housewives and got their recipe for making a pasty. In Helston he got the mayor to talk about the Flora Dance. Then came cursing out of a public lavatory.
“England’s finished—there’s no reason for a civilized country to have such toilet paper.”
In Bodmin he saw, at a magazine stall, that Daphne du Maurier lived in Cornwall. He bought one of her books. Read about a dozen pages while we were having tea. “She’s a very good writer. I wish I had time to go to a library and get some background reading on Daphne du Maurier. She interests me very much.” And he went to the hotel’s phone and rang her up. But she wouldn’t see him. As we drove across Bodmin Moor, he tossed her book out of the window.
A couple of miles later the car broke down. The clutch burnt out. We left the car, on the side of the road, on the moor. Hitchhiked to the nearest phone, and rang up the garage. Then got a lift to St. Erth and walked over to the station. Al Grocer wanted to go in a first-class compartment. I told him on these one-track lines they were exactly the same. Anyway, we had bought a second-class ticket. But he wanted first. He had a stubborn streak in him.
And just when it seemed I had enough of him (he pocketed my change when I paid for lunch; he would never buy a round when we stopped off at a pub; and I began to think of the whole thing as a fiasco), I began to like him. I can’t explain why. But I found I was looking forward to seeing him again the next day, and being in his company. Perhaps it was no more than knowing he was going away. Or maybe because neither of us belonged here, and we had come a long way to be thrown together. Or maybe the explanation was even simpler: certain things had now happened to both of us—we had a past
in common. I told this to my wife. She thought I was crazy. She said she didn’t want Al Grocer around any more and wouldn’t care if she never saw him again.
He came to the door on his last night. A face made sad by the large bulging eyes. Neatly dressed in a grey suit, and very apologetic.” . . . you mind, William, if we have a few drinks?” He held up a bottle of whisky. And for my wife he brought a miniature cherry brandy. She relented.
As he entered he said excitedly. “I’ve taken a room for my last night here—bet you won’t guess—?”
“The Tregenna Castle?”
“No, not quite. The Porthminster.”
It wasn’t a bad evening. He was very good at telling a story, especially against himself. Near the end he began to get introspective. “I wonder why I feel insulted after a day interviewing people—I meet people all the time—but I’ve never got to know anyone—you know what I’m getting at?”
“It’s a job,” I said.
“There’s something about the business—it makes you lose something of yourself as a human being—something of your dignity.”
But he had drunk too much and went upstairs and was sick. It was past midnight when I suggested that we’d better call it a day. He said he enjoyed his stay in Cornwall and enjoyed meeting both of us very much.
“Now, could you get me a taxi?”
I told him it was only a three-minute walk to the Porthminster, and I would walk him back. He insisted on a taxi. I didn’t think anyone would bother to come at this time for such a short distance—and I was right. But he wouldn’t have it. “I’ll get a taxi,” he said defiantly, and walked unsteadily out of the room to the phone. I could hear him putting on his interview voice.
“You know who I am. I’m Al Grocer—Al Grocer—”
“He says Al Grocer,” my wife said, “the way other people say ‘happy Christmas.’”
“—AI Grocer will put Cornwall on the map—All Al Grocer wants is a taxi—to take him to your Porthminster Hotel—where he’s staying—” He must have tried a half-dozen places, going through the same routine. Finally a taxi agreed to come. And he came back to the front room. “I had to throw a bit of that personality stuff around,” he said deprecatingly, “it comes in useful,” and sank back into one of the chairs. I could see headlights sweeping the dark street. So I went and hailed the taxi. The taxi man had got out of bed and all he had on was a coat over his pyjamas and slippers. He apologized—with one hand by his mouth—for not having time to put in his false teeth.
But Al decided he didn’t want to go. I helped him up and steered him to the door. He kept on about “dignity.” Then, with great effort, he pulled himself together and said very precisely, “Come up tomorrow morning, William, and have breakfast with me at the Porthminster.”
I did go up next morning. He was back to the navy blue blazer, grey flannels, and those large black sunglasses.
“You know, William, I’ve put something of yours in my quotation book.” He turned some pages. “I got it from your novel. ‘I don’t want to get to know anyone too well,’“ he read slowly,” ‘When I do I don’t like them.’”
I was going to explain that it was just a character talking—but he didn’t give me a chance.
“It’s very true,” he said quietly. “Sad, isn’t it.”
Then he asked me if I would carry his bags down to the station while he carried the portable recording equipment. I didn’t mind, but as we walked down the slope I couldn’t help feeling that the reason I was asked up for breakfast was to carry his bags down for him. And immediately I was annoyed with myself for thinking this. To make up for it, at the station, I went over to the paper kiosk and bought him a copy of the morning’s Times.
“Business can wait,” he said with a laugh. And with a grand gesture flung the paper to the corner of the compartment. And shook my hand a long time. Large black sunglasses on a pale face, leaning out of the train, was the last I saw of him.
Ten weeks later I received a glossy picture postcard from Sydney. On the front was a coloured photograph of its most expensive hotel. On the back he had written:
I am resting up here after a very rough ocean voyage. I have a few ideas for 1968. How would you like to come over and do a journey through the outback? Will write again and send address.
Cordially, Al
A WRITER’S STORY
At the beginning of 1952 we were married. And in the spring we left London (two uncomfortable rooms in a cold house in a northern suburb) for the south of Cornwall, and rented a granite house on the lower slope of a hill. It had a high-walled garden with palms, bamboos, copper beech, and hydrangeas. Wild roses were on a frame bent over to form an arch. Blackberries grew on top of the wall. And between two trees was a hammock.
The house was once a schoolhouse. And in the front room, where we would eat and sit in the evenings, there was a long table with fixed benches on either side, and cut in the dark varnished wood were generations of children’s names.
I worked in a large building attached to the house. The only furniture was a small stove where I burned wood in winter, a chaise longue where I read the landlord’s little magazines (Blast, Tyro, Horizon) and the novels of Henry Green that were in a bookcase against the white wall, and a table where I wrote. The building must have been the gym or the assembly hall, for there was a raised platform at one end. And it had a high ceiling and large windows.
From a window overlooking the road I could hear the stream that went by outside and see, in the field opposite, a light pink house surrounded by trees with white blossoms, and, further away, the small green fields, separated by irregular hedges, sloping gently upwards. And in the distance a farmhouse.
From a window on the other wall I could see—over the garden and over the slate roofs and chimneys of the village—the water in the bay, the long sweep of the far shore. At dusk the land was often coloured purple. And we could hear the curlews as they flew back to the rocks at the sea’s edge, and hear them again the first thing in the morning when we were still in bed. That gentle melancholy sound of a curlew flying over the house on the way to the fields above.
Sam, our landlord, looked like a Tolstoyan farmer. He always wore baggy trousers, worn shirts, a wide leather belt, and large working-men’s shoes. He was tall and broad but he had a small head and a close-cropped ginger beard. For such a big man he had a gentle voice, and he spoke well and smiled easily.
He lived with his wife in a cottage on the moors. They believed in the simple life, in living off the land, in natural foods. They had these handsome blond children running around in bare feet. And because I had an MA and because he wanted something better for his kids than the local school, I signed a form that said I would look after their education. But it was my wife who taught them how to read and write.
By the time we knew him, he must have been in his middle forties. I had a feeling that he had lived quite a different kind of life before coming here. It was his voice which told it all. Years later someone told me that Sam was an Old Etonian. That’s part of Sam’s story that I don’t know.
I only know that he was kind to us. He would arrive, on a bicycle, in the morning, his lunch in a brown paper bag. He always brought something for my wife: endive, new potatoes, a cabbage, a cauliflower, duck eggs, or honey that he collected. We would all have coffee in the front room. Then he would go into the back of the gym, which was partitioned off and quite separate from where I worked. And here he would do his paintings. “My pot boilers,” he said with a smile. But he was still hopeful that he would make a breakthrough and become known. When he did show me twenty or thirty canvases, it looked like a class at an art school—every picture was painted in a different style.
If Sam, dressed like a peasant farmer, was getting away from his past, so was I. The navy blue blazer with nickel-plated buttons, the grey flannels, the pipe—they belonged to the last four years at
university and to three previous years, in uniform, in the war. But behind them were the streets of Lower Town, the houses with stables in the back. A working class community of French Canadians and immigrant Europeans that I was running away from. I just had a first novel accepted and thought of myself as a writer. I expected being a writer would be a continuation of the life I knew at university, where I edited the literary magazine, had poems and stories on the Montreal radio, and wrote the novel in my final year. Things appeared to follow one another, and fall naturally into place, without my having to try very hard. The war . . . university . . . novel accepted . . . getting married. And now coming here to write the next book.
But for the first few weeks we took it easy. The early spring days were warm and sunny. Few people were about. The place had an air of nothing happening, of people gently living out their lives. Rooks and gulls flew slowly by. It was so quiet. And full of colour. The sea. The sky. The yellow sand beaches. Things growing in the fields and in the hedgerows.
Around ten in the morning Charlie would come up the granite steps to bring me the Times. He thought I was a painter. And if the back pages of the Times had a photograph of some disaster (like the Lynmouth flood, an air crash, or a fire) he would open the door, grin, and say, “This make good picture.”
“Yes, Charlie.”
Later I found out that Charlie, though in his thirties, couldn’t read.
Or else Sam would come in to tell me some story he heard in the village. “You can write about that,” he said.
I tried to write.
I spent hours at the wooden table in the large high room. And I didn’t know what to write about. That’s the trouble with going to university, I thought. I didn’t have to try hard enough. The results for a little effort were too immediate and too great. You think you’re a writer because those at university say so and make a fuss. But now that I was on my own—?
“You must write,” I told myself. “It will come if you write.”
I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well, and Other Stories Page 11