Climbing the Stairs

by Margaret Powell

  The funny thing was when we eventually got to the Hook of Holland I felt as right as rain again. It amazed me that Albert wasn’t disturbed at all because he wasn’t any more used to it than I was. He said it was because he’s got a placid disposition that it didn’t upset him, that because I’m always so eager and excited and never keep calm it happened to me.

  Anyway when we arrived at the port there was a coach waiting to take us across to this place on the very other side of Holland where we were staying – Walkenberg.

  About halfway across we stopped at a place where our courier had an arrangement – where we could get coffee and cakes cheaper. So we all piled out of the coach like a flock of sheep with him at the head of us. We must have looked a very motley collection buffeted by the storm at sea. And most of us were elderly, what I call good elderly people. You could tell that never in their lives had they deviated from the straight and narrow. In we went and Albert and I had two cakes and a cup of coffee each – and we paid in francs.

  I couldn’t work it out there and then but when we got back in that coach I did and I said to Albert, ‘Do you know what that cost us for two cups of coffee and four cakes? It cost us twelve and six. Good God, if that’s the kind of place where he’s got an arrangement I shudder to think what it’s going to cost us anywhere where he hasn’t.’

  We got to Walkenberg and the hotel where we were going to stay at eleven o’clock that night. And the brochure had said that when we reached there a warm welcome would await us. Not only did no warm welcome await us – no kind of welcome at all awaited us. There was simply nobody there. Empty hotel.

  We were stuck down one end of the dining-room and the courier plonked forms in front of us which we had to fill in and sign. We never saw the proprietors. And Albert and I weren’t even in the hotel – we were in an annexe on the other side of the road. At the time we couldn’t have cared less. We were so excited about being abroad we didn’t mind where we slept.

  But it just shows what kind of party we were with – they all went to bed. They come abroad and on the very first night there they go to bed at eleven o’clock – just because they are used to doing it. Well, we didn’t.

  We went and found our room and put our things in and went off down the sort of main street and found a place where people were sitting outside and we sat there drinking beer until two o’clock in the morning. Although we were so tired we had to prop our eyes open, we were determined to be able to say that we were drinking beer there at two o’clock in the morning. Fancy the others going to bed. Aren’t the English people terrible? They’ve got no daring in them.

  All right the beer was horrible stuff like – well, it’s like water compared with English beer. I agree they’ve got wines that we haven’t got and it’s cheaper but their beer’s no good at all. And Albert’s a beer drinker. During the course of our holiday he got so fed up with not having a decent beer that he asked for a Guinness. He only did it once. They charged him eight and six for a glass of Guinness. They said they had to import it. No wonder nobody ever gets drunk over there because although the places are open all day you could drink that beer till you floated in it and it wouldn’t do anything for you.

  Still we made out we were living it up. We wrote back most glowing accounts of sitting outside this place drinking beer at two o’clock in the morning. We were frozen to death. It was cold and the beer was weak but we didn’t write about that.

  That was our first night there.

  The idea of course of staying at this place at the very tip of Holland was to make coach trips into Germany, Luxembourg, and Belgium. And that was another stupid thing in the brochure. You had to write and say just where you’d like to sit in the coach. I chose two numbers in the middle. Well, when the coach arrived at the hotel it was already half filled with people from another tour and they weren’t going to shift for us. We just had to sit where we could. And didn’t some of the others moan. Albert and I didn’t because we didn’t really care that much. It was only a small thing.

  This first day we went into Germany and the brochure said, ‘Germany with its lovely castles and a trip down the Rhine – a visit to the Drachenfels and Cologne with its wonderful cathedral.’ And we had a packed lunch. Oh, those packed lunches! Salami sausage, strong salami-sausage sandwiches and an orange – and we got the same every day. I couldn’t eat the salami and I couldn’t even eat the bread because it was so tainted with garlic.

  So off we set on our coach ride and the first stop was what they called the Drachenfels. It’s seven hills in a row supposed to look like a dragon. Well honestly you’d have to be as blind as a bat to ever think it looked anything like a dragon. It didn’t compare with our South Downs. Just seven little lumps. The top one was very high admittedly but I couldn’t see a dragon anywhere. When we got there there was a little railway that ran up to the top of this highest lump and the courier said we were all going to go up in it.

  So I said, ‘I’m not.’

  Now on these tours they can’t bear you to deviate. It worries the couriers. You’ve got to be the same as everybody else. By the look on his face I could see that I worried our courier.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t go up there – absolutely impossible – it’s too high,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t leave the ground.’

  ‘I hope not,’ I said, ‘for other people’s sakes.’

  He said, ‘The views up there are marvellous.’

  I said, ‘They wouldn’t be any good to me, I couldn’t look at them.’

  I simply refused to go. He didn’t like it but he had to put up with it in the end.

  So Albert and I wandered through the town on our own. And I think that was the best part of the holiday. We found a lovely little German beer garden where there was a man playing one of these xylophone things with hammers and we hadn’t been there above ten minutes when he started playing English tunes. And there was dancing. It was very lively.

  In the interval this man that was playing came over to us and said, ‘You’re English, aren’t you?’

  Of course we lapped this up. It gave us a feeling of prestige. So we ordered him a drink and he joined us.

  He said, ‘You know I can tell almost anybody’s nationality now. I’ve been playing in this beer garden for the last twenty years.’

  So I asked, ‘How is it you speak English so well?’

  And he said, ‘Oh, I was a prisoner of war in England.’

  This was in the 1914–18 War.

  He chatted with us a bit. When he left I said to Albert, ‘What a charming man.’

  ‘Yes, charming thirst, too,’ said Albert. ‘Do you know he ordered four beers while he was sitting here and all on us.’

  We were certainly paying for our experiences. Still I expect he felt we owed him something, he having been a prisoner of war.

  Eventually we went back and joined the coach. Then we drove to Cologne. By the time we got there, with what I’d drunk in the beer garden I was only thinking of one thing and that was the loo.

  There we were in Cologne. There was that lovely cathedral and there was the ladies’ lavatory not far from it. And there were dozens of coaches – all queuing for the loo. It took me twenty minutes to get in and out and we were only allowed half an hour in the city. Talk about see Naples and die. I tore into the cathedral, looked at some gold plate and tore out again. That was Cologne for me apart from the loo.

  Then we came to the Rhine. Well, the brochure had said a trip down the Rhine. We just went across in the ferry. That was our trip down the Rhine. As we went across we could see one or two castles – but what a swindle.

  A mortifying thing about going in and out of these various countries was that the customs men come in and collect your passport. Yon know what passport photos are like – mine was absolutely hideous. It made me look an ugly ninety. Yet they look at it, look at you and then hand it back, so you’re forced to the conclusion that it really looks like you. Very mortifying.

&nb
sp; Anyway we got back about ten o’clock, had a hot meal which was good and Albert and I went out on the town again.

  The next day was another one of these coach trips. You’ve got to be in the very best of health when you go on a holiday like ours because they’re absolute endurance tests. We went to Luxembourg which they had said was a charming little country. I admit it was very pretty. I enjoyed it there until the courier had the idea of taking us down into a grotto.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever been in one of these underground grottoes – shocking things they are. You go down to the bowels of the earth on an iron spiral staircase and the last bit of it is slippery and slimy. I fell the last four steps into the mud at the bottom. It’s dark down there and there’s an underground river. You get taken in a boat on this river but you can’t see a thing. And I was worried about my clothes, wondering how muddy I was, which I couldn’t see down there. I think grottoes are very much over-rated things and it stank to high heaven. Well, you can imagine it, can’t you? I mean it’s been there since time immemorial. Everybody says ‘Oo’ and ‘Ah’ – I’ve never seen anything so daft. I mean you might as well put the light out and sit in your own room. At least you could sit in comfort, couldn’t you?

  The next day we went into Belgium which wasn’t interesting at all because they took us to Brussels, and I didn’t think much of Brussels. It seemed such a dirty town to me. Apart from that there was nothing special about it at all.

  Then we had one day at leisure in Walkenberg – getting our strength up as it were for the trip to Paris. This we were both looking forward to. The very name Paris conjures up images and does things for you.

  The hotel we stayed in there was a good one. Mind you there was trouble from some of the party who didn’t like being on the top floor. I almost felt sorry for the courier when he said to me, ‘You know, it doesn’t matter what party you go with, you always get people who moan and groan the entire time. You’d think that they were on a luxury tour the way they go on.’ Though incidentally I noticed that at mealtimes the courier always sat at a separate table on his own and he never had the same kind of food as we did. He did far better. He was on a luxury tour by comparison.

  The next day we went out shopping in the morning. Albert was going to buy me some perfume – something he’d never bought me in his life – and he asked the courier whether he had an arrangement. He had – and he directed us. Albert bought me a little tiny bottle of scent. Two guineas it cost. And when we got back to England I found we could have bought it here for forty-five shillings. Three bob we saved – on the carriage I suppose. I don’t see where the arrangement came in. Let’s face it, the only thing was, never in this world would Albert ordinarily have spent two guineas on perfume for me. So at least I got it, and it was marvellous. I used to use it very sparingly, a spot at a time. I hadn’t used half the bottle before the scent went out of it. It doesn’t always pay to be too careful.

  Of course we wanted to go to a nightclub. Some people that I was doing for at home had said that we should go to the Folies Bergère.

  ‘Don’t pay for a seat,’ they said, ‘you can stand at the back for the equivalent of ten shillings and it’s just as good because not only are you near the bar but you can see everything that’s going on.’

  So I told this to the courier.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said ‘you’ll never get in the Folies Bergère, you have to book months ahead to get in there.’

  We should really have gone and found out for ourselves, but we didn’t. We thought, he must know doing these trips every year.

  Then this courier said, ‘I’ve got a better idea. I’ve got an arrangement with a nightclub called Eve’ (and the way he said Eve made it sound ever so salacious) ‘and for two pounds ten each you can sit at a proper table and share a bottle of champagne between four of you.’

  We hesitated. Five pounds for two of us seemed an awful lot of money. But then to go to Paris and not be able to say you’ve been to a nightclub? After all, to us they seemed the main feature of Paris life. So I said, ‘Oh let’s do it. That’ll be our last big expenditure. Let’s go.’

  Albert was keener than I was. Naturally it would be more interesting for a man than a woman. I couldn’t see what there was going to be in it for me. If there were any turns on I wouldn’t understand the language. But Albert wanted to go back and say that he’d seen a bit of nudity, so we decided to go and we gave the courier our money. When I look back and think of the money that man made I could pass out. I must admit we had taxis there – though we had to make our own way back. I’m certain he wanted to make sure we got there.

  When we got inside the place it was so small. There were only two rows of tables and a bar at the back, but by the time we’d paid two pounds ten each we couldn’t afford to buy any more drink anyway. Four of us sat at a table with a tepid bottle of champagne in the middle. I’d had champagne when I was in domestic service and I knew what it should taste like. This stuff was absolute rubbish. We sat there sipping it and then the first turn, if you could call it a turn, came on.

  It was twelve girls nude from the waist up with very fancy dresses below the waist. There were gasps from most of the men. One man belonging to our party went as red as a beetroot. Albert sat there all nonchalant looking as though he saw such things every day. He didn’t. You’ve never seen such a collection in all your life. Talk about twelve raving beauties – they must have gone out on the highways and byways and scoured the lot in. They were short and fat and tall and thin. And the shapes of them! Some had appendages that looked like deflated balloons – others had got them about the size of footballs which looked as though they’d blown them up before they came on the stage. Some had got such a little that you couldn’t tell what sex they were; they might have been men for all we knew. And they didn’t do a thing – they just kept walking round and round. There was a notice up saying ‘Do Not Touch The Girls’. Even Albert said, ‘Good God I’d have died before I would have touched one of them with a barge-pole.’ If I tell you that Albert was bored to tears in less than five minutes you can understand what they were like.

  Then came a sort of quick-patter act. Some people laughed – presumably they were French and understood what was being said. We didn’t understand a word.

  Then the girls came on again with different dresses from the waist down – paraded round again with their inane giggles. I said to Albert, ‘Have you ever seen the female sex looking like that?’ He said he hadn’t and I believed him. Of course it was nothing to me – it was like bread and bread. I spent the time studying those who had pimples and where they had them.

  We were there an hour. Just turns interspersed with these girls. It was dreadful. When we got up and went we left by the back stairs and as we passed a paybox I saw that we could have gone in and stood for the equivalent of twelve and six. When I told all the others they were furious and they ostracized the courier for the rest of the trip. We didn’t. We wrote it down to experience. We put ourselves in his position. If we were taking a pack of greenhorns around we’d have had to have had very good characters not to have made a bit out of them.

  Anyway apart from that we enjoyed Paris hugely. We saw the Louvre, the Palace of Versailles, all those kind of places – and Paris is a beautiful and interesting city. We’d wander around on our own then sit outside the cafés watching life go by.

  Twice at our hotel they served us with something like meatballs, tasty but mysterious. I was intrigued with them. And I’ve always been a bit pushing. I’d read in the papers about Lady So and So or the Duchess of Something or Other being abroad and coming back with the most marvellous recipes. They’d been down to the kitchen and the chef had given them these recipes which they printed.

  So I said to Albert, ‘I’ve a good mind to ask for the recipe of these meatballs.’

  He said, ‘I wouldn’t bother. I don’t want any of them when we get back home.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘neither do I but I just want to go back
with some sort of recipe.’

  So I said to the waiter – he spoke perfect English – ‘Will you please ask the chef for the recipe for me?’ in a nice sort of way. I thought that he might even invite me down in the kitchen.

  The next day I inquired of him, ‘Did you ask the chef how these meatballs are made?’

  He said, ‘Yes, I did, and the chef said, “God knows, I don’t.” ’

  I expect they were like those resurrection pies that the cook used to make us sometimes when I was in service. All the bits of meat that you thought had long departed this life would appear again with a pastry crust on and we used to call it resurrection pie. But did I feel deflated by that waiter. Talk about entente cordiale.

  On the way back home we were booked to have lunch at Antwerp at a luxury hotel. And it was a luxurious place, not a bit like the hotels we’d stayed in.

  We arrived at Antwerp an hour before lunch and we wandered around the town; we were then to meet in this hotel. As we went up the steps we felt like the poor relations, we’d hardly any money left by that time. It was a huge palatial entrance with a grand staircase all thickly carpeted. I was dying to go to the lavatory and I said to Albert, ‘I wonder where it is?’

  He said, ‘Ask somebody.’

  It was the sort of place where you imagined the people that went there didn’t go to the lavatory.

  And I said, ‘Oh, I haven’t got the nerve to.’

  Eventually I discovered it was downstairs. You’ve never seen such toilets. I suppose all posh hotels are like it. It was lovely there. You didn’t have to put money in and there was a whole row of basins, gold-plated taps and a separate towel at each basin. So I washed my hands. And then from nowhere sprang an old harridan holding a plate and I looked at this plate and there was nothing less than the equivalent of half a crown in it. Of course I hadn’t the nerve to give her less. I should have stuck it out but she looked so intimidating.

  The general run of toilets in France are something too terrible for words. They may be better now – since de Gaulle, I mean. But I’d never seen anything like the sanitary arrangements. Those awful ones they have in the street where the men’s legs show below and their head and shoulders above, and you can visualize what the middle’s doing. I think they’re revolting.