‘Oh, let’s give him up,’ said Rachel impatiently.
‘No, no,’ whispered Bisto. ‘We haven’t seen him for ages. Perhaps he’s hungry. He might even be too faint to walk.’
She was distressed. She loved Willy. There was a slight rustling in the corner. ‘There he is,’ she breathed.
A small brown creature scuttled across the floor, sniffed cautiously, inspected the food for a moment and then fell on it voraciously. It then picked up a huge lump of pudding and disappeared down its hole.
‘Poor darling, how hungry he is! But he thinks of his wife and dear ones at home, his quiverful,’ said Bisto, feelingly. ‘He’s much more unselfish than any human being.’
The rat reappeared and gnawed again for a few delicious moments, then half-dragged the remaining lump of suet towards its hole. It manoeuvred it to the entrance, propelling it with forefeet and snout, negotiated the hole successfully and disappeared with its booty. The girls rose and stretched. Bisto looked at her watch.
‘Oh, lord,’ she groaned. ‘It’s after three. We’re late for prep.’
The mistress on duty wrote down their names as they went into the cloakroom. Bisto was crestfallen.
‘Does that make me up to six points?’ she asked.
‘No, only five,’ replied Rachel with irritation. She knew well enough that most of Bisto’s bad points were gained in company with herself and too often through her fault, and she felt guilty. The climax came with the sixth point, which resulted in a spell of punishment drill. This to Rachel was no more than an hour’s deprivation of liberty, but to Bisto it was torture.
As she sat down at her desk, Rachel saw Margaret looking at her with a sardonic smile. She threw a glance back which was intended to convey alliance. ‘We’re in this together,’ she wanted to say. But Margaret ceased smiling and took up her pen. Obviously she had not been late for prep.
It was inevitable that Bisto should suffer. She attracted pain. Her unhappy, anxious face reflected the shadow of a harpy’s wing for ever hovering over her, a creature which saw her downsitting and her uprising and spied out all her ways, quick to mark what she did amiss.
‘It was the sixth point. I’ve got P.D.,’ she said ruefully to Rachel the following evening. ‘I shan’t be able to come out tomorrow. I’ll be on that awful block of concrete, being tortured. Will you go down and feed Willy? And then, after P.D., if there’s anything left of me, I could come down and join you.’
‘But I suppose I’ll have to go out “on bounds”,’ said Rachel.
‘You could easily put your name down with Margaret or one of the others, couldn’t you?’
Week-end walks outside the park – ‘on bounds’ – had to be taken in groups of not less than three, and passes had to be obtained from the housemistresses. Margaret and Rachel had both, on several occasions, persuaded others to include their names on a pass, and then gone off secretly upon their private occasions. It was an easy technique, though the consequences of such a deception, if found out, would have been serious. But both were delighted to take risks of this kind, Rachel even more than Margaret, for to Margaret it was largely a matter of indifference whether she were expelled, whereas to Rachel it was a deliberate risk, compatible with the physical risks she took to satisfy her physical strength. For Bisto to encourage such a thing showed the measure of her desperation. She could not face Saturday afternoon without Rachel. After P.D. was over, there was nothing for the victims to do but wander about the park or sit in their form-rooms. Others took this in their stride, but Bisto, broken by previous occasions, dreaded it almost as much as the P.D. which preceded it. She needed Rachel to restore her after an hour in the hands of Miss Christian Lucas, who took the punishment drill. Rachel agreed to fake a pass, and Bisto looked a little less tortured.
Although not a member of the triumvirate, Miss Lucas was bound to Chief by a personal tie. She was no mere employee. Her friendship with Delia Faulkner had been formed during the war, and it was in her house in Somerset that the school had been founded, and existed for three years before its growth necessitated the move to Bampfield. Miss Christian Lucas was tall and although only in her thirties had a shock of pure white hair. Her eyes, like Miss Gerrard’s, were of a hard, piercing blue, but with a difference. The eyes of Miss Gerrard were like the eyes of God. They pierced through one’s soul. They were moral eyes. However uncomfortable they made me feel, I never feared them as prying eyes, nor was there a hint of cruelty in them. They were terrible but just. I was afraid of her, as most of us were, but I believe that fear was the most wholesome emotion at Bampfield. Miss Christian Lucas’s eyes were the slightly bulging china-blue eyes of the sadist. They assumed a horrid magnitude and her face a hue of unhealthy purplish red when she was angry. But no one ever laughed at Miss Lucas. She was powerful not merely by virtue of her friendship in high places, but in her own right. She had the inner power of evil as I think I have never seen it in anyone else. She did me less harm personally than some others in authority at Bampfield, yet for her I feel a detestation untempered by pity.
I remember well my first meeting with her. It was the second day of my school career. The tall white-haired figure bore down upon me, an alarming figure – the blue eyes very prominent and glaring, the muscles taut and stringy, stretched over a frame of which flesh and skin seemed to have shrunk to a mere carapace.
‘I am Miss Christian Lucas. What is your name?’ asked the figure.
‘Rachel Curgenven.’
‘And where do you live, Rachel Curgenven?’
‘At Sandhurst, Miss Lucas.’
‘I see. At Sandhurst. Your father is in the army, no doubt?’
‘No, Miss Lucas. He is a doctor.’
‘Oh, a doctor.’ (Air slightly chillier, but not cold, for doctoring was, after all, a profession, even if not so honourable a one as soldiering.)
‘Have you brothers, Rachel?’
‘Yes, I have three.’
‘Ah, no doubt they will be at the Military College.’
‘I’m afraid not –’
The eyes glared fiercely at me. The sinews of the neck were drawn as tight as a military strap. For a moment she seemed at a loss for words, so enormous was my family’s crime in following peaceful professions. Then a gleam came into her eye and she said – quite seriously, I must emphasize, and without any jovial attempt to put me at my ease – ‘You will have to be the soldier of the family, Rachel Curgenven.’
For drill we assembled outside the house on the flat sweep of the drive, surfaced with flints which cut one’s gym-shoes to pieces. Unless it was actually pouring with rain, drill was always held there, or else on a piece of raised, bumpy concrete adjoining the school chapel. No matter whether the midday sun beat down upon our unprotected heads, or a westerly gale blew upon our shivering bodies, no matter whether frost sharpened the soft contours of the park, or (as was commoner) swathes of mist obscured the trees and the little round shrubberies, and marshy vapours filled our lungs as we Breathed … Deep! Breathed … Deep! drill must be held out of doors, for this was part of the toughening process of the system.
‘Arms … Swing! Arms … Swing! Knees … outward … Bend! Stretch! Bend! Stretch!’
The commands echo in my mind still.
Miss Lucas’s sadism found its fullest outlet in the punishment drill, which took place for one hour on Saturday afternoons on the grim slab of concrete immediately outside the chapel. This was roughly the size of a tennis court, and the concrete seemed to have been made by workmen infected with the same malignant humour as Miss Lucas, for it was rough and stony and full of unexpected holes and excrescences designed to trip the unwary or fatigued offender. It did not improve Miss Lucas’s temper that in having to conduct punishment drill she invariably missed every school match, and Miss Lucas was an ardent upholder of Bampfield’s honour on the games field. The exercises she chose, therefore, were designed to punish, and were pursued until the unfortunate victims were almost dropping.
Th
e drill was always preceded by an inquisition into the reasons for which the punishment was being given, for Miss Lucas liked to know what she was punishing. Suitably scathing comments then accompanied her orders, individuals being picked out by name, and the worst offenders sometimes given a harder and longer grilling. She always took care to provide herself with a dossier on each child’s origins and family connection, and this affected her treatment of individuals, her judgments being further reinforced by a retentive memory which fastened up each misdemeanour like a gobbet of meat in the thorny larder of the butcherbird. Bisto was especially the focus of Miss Lucas’s sadistic hate, for her father was only in the Marines, a service she regarded as most inferior; and Bisto possessed, also, a quiet, enduring temper which Miss Lucas interpreted as impertinence.
Saturday was cold with the peculiar cold of Somerset that is three parts damp, exhaled from the sodden earth and spreading over the ground a layer of frigidity, a sub-atmosphere which the soft, ineffectual winds of the district never dispersed.
Margaret had suggested to Rachel going over to Stoke, a village technically out of bounds, but dear to them both. Rachel remembered her promise to Bisto and hesitated.
Margaret’s temper was short these days. ‘All right, all right,’ she said, ‘I can take Rena. Go and smoke cigarettes in the shrubberies and feed your silly rat. God, Rachel Curgenven, you’ll never grow up.’
Wounded, Rachel retorted: ‘It’s not that. Bisto’s got P.D. I promised I’d wait for her. You know how that brute treats her.’
‘Don’t be so sentimental about her. Motherly Rachel Curgenven, you’re a fool. Kindness cuts no ice, and Bisto should be more careful, then she wouldn’t get P.D. I’m going to Stoke.’
Margaret stalked away. Rena? thought Rachel bitterly. Beastly, slimy little snake.
Angry with Bisto for being the cause of a wasted afternoon, and hurt with Margaret for her easy contempt, Rachel bullied three of her weaker contemporaries into including her name on their pass and went down to the stables, with a pocketful of food for Willy. But the afternoon was ruined. Willy refused to come out, and Rachel waited in the gloomy harness-room, reading Wuthering Heights, in the fading day-light, and feeling more like Heathcliff with every page. When she found that it was more than half an hour since P.D. was over, she turned suddenly savage. Even Bisto had failed her.
Forgetting her deception over the pass, she went back into school and looked for her. Two or three forlorn girls, victims of Miss Lucas’s recent persecution, hung about the empty, unwarmed classrooms. They stared at Rachel’s dark, angry face with delighted curiosity.
‘She’ll murder Christian when she finds out,’ whispered one, and Rachel, quick of hearing, turned on her.
‘Finds out what?’ she asked. ‘Where’s Bisto?’
‘She fainted at P.D.’
‘Fainted?’
‘Yes, Christian had her walking round and round the concrete for hours with her hands above her head.’
‘You little beast. Why didn’t you tell me straight away?’
Rachel hit the child savagely, and sent it retreating with a whimper to its desk. Anger compelled her overgrown strength to displays of bullying, and the others watched anxiously to see what she would do next. But the habit of self-control was also strong. Ashamed of her outburst, Rachel walked away without another word and went up to Bisto’s dormitory. Bisto was lying in bed, looking extremely pale.
‘I’ll go to Chief about this,’ said Rachel, looking sternly down into the pleading, doglike eyes of Bisto.
‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ said the victim miserably. ‘They might find out about the pass, and it’ll be too awful if they do. Go away, please, do.’
A melodious whistle was heard coming down the passage towards the dormitory. Rachel went over to the window and turned to face Chief who ignored her and walked swiftly over to Bisto.
‘Miss Lucas tells me you fainted,’ she said, and took up one of Bisto’s hands.
‘I’m all right,’ said the Bampfield stoic.
Chief was silent for a moment, mentally selecting the appropriate speech for the occasion. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed in an infinitely graceful attitude.
‘Punishment drill is not pleasant,’ she began. ‘It is not intended to be. You will find, as you go out into the world, that you often have to suffer what seems to you injustice and hardship. This world of ours, Bisto, this weary, wicked world, is a hard, uncompromising place. Why should Gud make it easy for us? He did not make it easy for His only Son. Here at Bampfield, we are trying to train you to take your place in Gud’s world, Gud’s just and terrible world. Miss Lucas is just. Very just. I have known her too long not to believe that she treated you with perfect justice.’
Hypnotized, Bisto heard these words without a tremor.
‘But we are all of us, you and I, all of us, too weak at times to bear even justice. You need not feel ashamed that you fainted. Out of your moment of weakness you have gained strength. I am sure of that. I hope you understand me, Bisto.’
‘Yes, Chief.’
‘I have asked Miss Lucas to keep an eye on you.’
‘Thank you, Chief.’
‘As for you, Rachel, I believe you should not be in someone else’s dormitory. You may stay with Bisto for another five minutes.’
Chief departed, her whistle retreating down the corridor, a melodious anthem after the sermon.
‘God almighty!’ said Rachel under her breath, swearing one of Margaret’s oaths in her disgust.
CHAPTER TEN
Meanwhile the mind, for pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that recess where each kind
Doth straight its own resemblance find.
Yet it creates, transcending these
Far other worlds and other seas.
ANDREW MARVELL
THE fragile coat of rime stiffened over the long grass. Ice appeared in the sluggish meanderings of the stream. The whole envelope of atmosphere in which Bampfield lay embalmed suddenly clarified, and contours of the hills sharpened at the edges. It could now be seen that Moses was several trees, not one. The smoke from the home farm chimneys drifted up against the sallow green of the hill, and sounds became crystalline, stones dropped into a well: the high-pitched creak of a cart, a dog barking in distant cottages, and the birdlike notes of the church clock were carried through the resonant, frosty air into the windows of the school.
Rachel’s perceptions became sharper, tauter, more distinct. The elements of the life she was living separated into recognizable patterns, like pictures of frost on glass. All that was distasteful to her at Bampfield assumed palpable outlines. She could no longer accept their once-soft, once-blurred contours. All that she loved and felt particular to herself, receded, diminished, behind a wall of glass, and she felt it beyond her reach. Bampfield, the real Bampfield, forced itself upon her senses – a place of dank, ill-smelling corridors, of fetid little corners where girls whispered, a place where cruelty dwelt under the guise of discipline, and corruption beneath a mask of beauty and moral tone. She felt herself trapped like a bird in its icy reality, involved inevitably in the decay, the corruption, the loathesomeness beneath the fine, glassy surface. It was no longer possible to extract from it the different essences, the pleasures, stupidities, horrors, humours, and turn upon each a separate personality. All were, with herself, embalmed in a frigid, transparent pattern.
No more parodies came from her pen. Life did not seem laughable any more and she was too immature for satire. She spent most of her time in the library, where the imposition of silence made it unnecessary to speak to others. Her creative urge was over, spent in the translation of Virgil. That inner world of pleasure was sealed off for her. Fortunately, work for University entrance gave Rachel a special time-table which often involved working at different hours from her fellows, and she was relieved to get away from the form-room, from the distraction of twenty other living minds, and to walk al
one through the building, past closed doors, behind which tired and reddened faces pored over exercise books. She was even able on occasions to miss games for coaching and get out for solitary walks in the park or gardens when others were still in class.
It was on one of these occasions, during bright and frosty weather, that she decided to discover for herself what it was that Margaret had found and never communicated. She might have done this before but for an enlarged sense of honour, which prevented her from intruding upon another’s secret world. And always she had hoped that Margaret herself would tell her but she had never done so. She purloined the pliers from one of the gardeners’ sheds and walked down the lime avenue towards the deserted stables till she was out of sight of the house. Then she turned across the stream by its lowest bridge and back to the shrubbery on the far side. There was no one about. The frosty rushes creaked under her shoes. She found the place where Margaret entered, and, to salve her conscience, selected another part of the palings, several yards away. It took her some time to get the wire cut and the palings out. She was not so practical as Margaret. At last it was done and she climbed through into dense undergrowth. She was in a thicket of overgrown shrubs, azalea and rhododendron mostly, their tough twisted trunks meshed in bramble and nettle. Through this she pushed her way with some difficulty, drawn towards the centre of the plantation only by her sense of direction. Shiny boughs of laurel brushed a green wound over her sleeve. For a moment she hesitated, pulled up by the world of school, in which stained or torn clothes must be explained, absences justified. Then an obstinate desire to force her way into the heart of the place gave her impetus, and thrusting aside the brown stringy creepers, she pushed on through the undergrowth.
She emerged into a strange, secret world, a clear blue sky above, willows, a lake, a coloured pagoda, and a tiny bridge – the world of a willow-pattern plate.
The park stream ran right through the centre of the large plantation, and in the heart of it had been created two pools big enough to sail a boat on, and indeed the poor relic of a punt still lay rotting in the boathouse. The pools lay close together and the stream that joined them had been divided into two courses, making a tiny, almost circular island between the lakes. Here stood a summerhouse, built like a Chinese pagoda, and reached by two bridges, one over each stream, highly ornamented in the oriental style so that the whole scene, viewed from the point where she stood, possessed the formal beauty of a Chinese plate, its rim the fringe of trees around the still, shallow pools.
The Chinese Garden Page 6