Growing Pains (12 page)

The ship’s little Irish doctor saw us comfortably tucked into our train. I heard Mrs. Downey say, “Then come on up, I’ll give you a time.”

The doctor waved his cap.

I could not lie back resting, as Mrs. Downey wanted me to. We were skimming across the Old World—a new world to me—entirely different, pretty, small. Every time I looked at Mrs. Downey she was looking at me. Suddenly she said, “You’re not a-goin’ to that Amelia person. You’re a-comin’ to me.”

“I’m promised to Miss Green, Mrs. Downey.”

“She’s no relative—bust the promise; I’ll fix ’er! ’Twon’t cost you nothin’ livin’ with me. You c’n go to your school, but nights and Sundays you’ll companion my little daughter.”

“Have you a daughter?”

“Same age as you—’flicted, but we’ll ’ave good times, you an’ me and my girl. That doctor chap is stuck on you. ’E tole me so. I was lookin’ for company for my Jenny … Only jest ’appened…’er ’fliction…” She choked … snuffled.

As we pulled into Euston’s sordid outskirts of grime and factories the station’s canopied congestion threw a shadow of horror over me.

“That white-pinched little woman has green in her button hole, Mrs. Downey.”

“She’s not gittin’ you.”

Her fingers gripped my arm as in a vice.

“Miss Green?”

The two women stared at each other belligerently.

“She’s comin’ to me—been sick—not fit to be among strangers, she isn’t. I’m ’er friend.”

“I’m promised, Mrs. Downey. My people expect it.”

The wiry claw of the lesser woman wrenched me away so that I almost fell. I was clutched fiercely back to the scratchy sun-burst, then released with a loud, smacking kiss.

“Any ’ow, come an’ see my little girl…she needs…,” the woman choked and handing me a card turned away.

“Frightful person! The entire platform must have heard that vulgar kiss,” gasped Miss Green.

“I was very ill on board; she was kind to me, Miss Green.”

“You must never see her again, one cannot be too careful in London.”

She glanced at the address on the card in my hand. “Brixton! Impossible!”

“I shall have to go just once to thank her, and to return her umbrella. She gave it to me to carry while she took my heavier things.”

“You can post the umbrella. I
forbid
you to associate with vulgar people while living in my house.”

“
I am going once
.”

Our eyes met. It was well to start as I meant to continue. I was only Miss Green’s PG. My way, my life were my own: it was well she should understand from the start.

LONDON WAS UNBEARABLE.
August was exceptionally hot. Aunt Amelia lived in West Kensington—one of those houses in a straight row all alike and smeared with smug gentility. I felt the shackles of propriety pinch me before the door was shut.

The six PG’s without one direct look amongst them disdainfully “took me in” at lunch. “Colonial!” I felt was their chilly, sniffy verdict. I hated them right away. Their hard, smooth voices cut like ice skates, “dearing” each other while they did not really like each other one bit. The moneyed snob who had the big front room swayed the establishment; next came the opulent Miss Oopsey, a portrait photographer who only “portrayed” titles. The PG’s dwindled in importance till at the tail came Miss Green’s niece, a nobody who was the snootiest of the lot and earned her keep by doing unnecessary things that were good form around the PG house.

London stewed, incorporating the hot murk into her bricks all day and spitting it out at you at night. The streets were unbearable. Everyone who could get out of London had got and were not missed. I used to wonder where any more population could have squeezed. Certainly if there were many more people in London they would have to ration air for the sake of fairness.

“Miss Green, is there any place one can go to breathe?”

“There are London’s lovely parks.”

“Just as crammed—just as hot as everywhere else!”

Miss Green clicked, “Dear me! You Canadians demand a world apiece. I have offered to take you to Hyde Park, show you our titled people riding and driving, but no, you Canadians have no veneration for titles—jealousy, I presume.”

“I’ll admit I do prefer cool air to hot celebrities, Miss Green. Now, about a breathing place?”

“Kew—if it is roots and bushes you want, go to Kew Gardens.”

To Kew I went.

The great gates of Kew Gardens were plastered with many notices—“Nobody is allowed in these gardens unless respectably attired.”—“No person may carry a bag, parcel, or basket into the gardens; all such impedimenta to be checked at the porter’s lodge.”—“No one may carry food into the gardens; tea may be procured in the tea-houses.”—“You must not walk upon the grass, or run or sing or shout.”

Striding past the lodge, clutching my bag, I walked down the main way and, turning into a woodsey path, began to sing. First hint of autumn was in the air, there were little piles of dead leaves and fallen twigs burning, shreds of blue smoke wandered among the trees deliciously.

Kew was a bouquet culled from the entire world. I found South America, and Asia, Africa, China, Australia—then I found Canada (even to a grove of pines and cedars from my own Province). I rubbed their greenery between my hands—it smelled homey. I stabbed my nose on our prickly blue-pine. I sat down on the grass beneath a great red cedar tree. From close by came the long-drawn cry of a peacock. Suddenly I was back in the old barn studio!
I threw up my chin and gave the answering screech which my peacock had taught me—my beauty on the old barn roof. I waited for an ejecting keeper, but my teacher had taught well, no keeper came. I went back to stuffy West Kensington refreshed, happy.

Again Miss Green in company with that swell who snobbed it over her PG’s offered to conduct me to see the Hyde Park Parade. The “swell” boarders, Miss Green told me, always sat on penny chairs.—“Much more refined than to sit on a free bench, my dear,” drawled Miss Green.

“I’d rather go to the Zoo,” I replied and went.

Resignation if not content was in the eye of the captive creatures. Having once acquired a taste for the admiration and companionship of man animals like it. Here and there you saw a rebellious or morose newcomer furiously pacing, but most of the creatures were merry and all were well tended. All here looked more satisfied with life than the weary “great” looked in Hyde Park. I loved Kew.

WESTMINSTER SCHOOL OF ART
did not open until September. When I was a little rested, a little steadier, I climbed the curving little iron stairways at the backs of omnibuses and, seated above the people, rode and rode, watching the writhe of humanity below me. I had never seen human beings massed like this, bumping, jostling, yet as indifferent to each other as trees in a forest.

I puzzled, wondering. What
was
the sameness with a difference between a crowd and a forest? Density, immensity, intensity, that was it—overwhelming vastness. One was roaring, the other still, but each made you feel that you were nothing, just plain nothing at all.

HISTORY ALWAYS HAD
bored me.
Little Arthur’s History of England
in its smug red cover—ugh, the memory of it! And now here before me was the smugness of it ossified, monumented, spotted with dates thick as an attack of measles. The English had heads twisted round onto their backs like drowsy ducks afloat, their eyes on what they had passed, not on what they were coming to.

Dickens had taught me far more about England than had
Little Arthur
. Dickens’ people still walked the streets, lived in the
houses of old London.
Little Arthur’s
Great were shut up in dull books, battered monuments.

Deep in the City I happened one day upon Paternoster Row, a dark narrow little way lined with book shops. All the Bibles, prayerbooks, hymnals in the world began life here. I saw them sprawled open at the fly-page. All the religious books that I remembered had had Paternoster Row printed inside them.

I DID NOT, AS MISS GREEN’S
other PG’s did, attend some fashionable church in the West End. Sunday was the day on which I crept into London’s empty heart. Everyone had gone from it, all business houses were closed. The lonely old churches were open but empty; all the light was pinched out of them by the grim huddle of business establishments. The old churches still had their bells, still rang them. Empty London threw back their clamour in echo. Often an entire congregation consisted of me, sitting under a very indifferent preacher, ushered in and out by a very pompous verger in a black robe almost as cleric as the clergy. My coin looked pitiful in the pompous collection-plate. Echo made the squeaky old parson’s whisper hit back at you from every corner of the bare church.

London’s national religion was conducted either in St. Paul’s Cathedral, the heart of London’s heart, or in Westminster Abbey in the West End. All immense events were solemnized in one or the other of these churches.

The business houses and shops of St. Paul’s Churchyard fell back from the cathedral allowing it breathing space and sunshine. The steps up to her great doors were very, very wide. Beginning from each side of the steps was a circle of space encompassing the cathedral. It was lightly railed but the gates were flung wide,
flowers and shrubs and benches were about and always there were people, sitting on the benches, eating things out of paper bags, feeding the pigeons and resting.

St. Paul’s is the kernel of London as London is the kernel of England.

Westminster Abbey is beautiful too but rather historical and it was made a little cheap by sightseers who whispered and creaked. It had not the unity of St. Paul’s; there were chapels here and chapels there—all sorts of pokes and juts, tablets, monuments and statues, “great ones” bouncing from niches and banners flapping. St. Paul’s was domed under one immense central round. High, pale light flooded down; roll of organ, voice of chorister, prayer trembled upward.

Always there were people in St. Paul’s, standing, sitting, praying, or doing nothing, not even thinking, wanting only to be let alone.

At five o’clock each afternoon the great organ played, flooding the cathedral with music. The prayer-soaked walls came alive. Great, small, rich and shabby Londoners crept into St. Paul’s to find sanctuary.

Sightseers climbed hundreds of steps to look down from a high gallery running round the inside of the dome. It was considered a thing to do, one of London’s sights. I did not want to “sight-see” St. Paul’s. The people moving up there in the high gallery were black spots in the mystery. I remained among the solid, silent company on the paved floor of the cathedral.

TURMOIL, CROWDING,
too many people, too little air, was hateful to me. I ached with homesickness for my West though I shook myself, called myself fool. Hadn’t I strained every nerve to get here? Why whimper?

Aunt Amelia’s mock-genteel PG’s galled me at every turn—high-bridged noses, hard, loud, clear voices, veneering the cold, selfish indifference they felt for each other with that mawkish, excessive “dearing.” My turbulent nature was restive to be at work; it made me irritable and intolerant. Miss Green suggested the British Museum as a sedative.

To the British Museum I went and loathed it—the world mummified … No matter which turn I took I arrived back in the mummy-room, disgusting human dust swaddled in rags, dust that should have been allowed centuries back to build itself renewingly into the earth. The great mummy halls stank of disinfectants. Visitors whispered and crept … Place of over-preservation, all the solemnity choked out of death, making curiosity out of it, prying, exposing, indecent.

Miss Green said, “The British Museum is marvellous, is it not, my dear?”

“It’s disgusting!—Good decent corpses for me, Miss Green, worms wriggling in and out, hurrying the disagreeables back to dust, renewing good mother earth.”

Aunt Amelia screeched, “My dear, you are revolting!”

Recoiling from mummies I turned to parsons. Our clergyman at home had given me two introductory letters to brother clergy—his own particular brand—in London’s suburbs. One had a fancy name, the other was Rev. John Brown who lived at and parished in Balham. Balham was two hours out of London by train. In the same suburb I had been commissioned by a Victoria widow to call on her well-to-do sister-in-law. The widow’s husband had just suicided and left his family in difficult financial circumstances. I was to furnish the well-to-do “in-law” with the distressing particulars and hint at the straitened circumstances facing the widow.

The sister-in-law received me in a hideous drawing-room. She rustled with silk from the skin out, and served tea, very strong, together with plum cake as black and rich as bog-earth. She said, “To suicide was very poor taste, especially if you had not first made comfortable provision for your family.”

Then at my request she directed me to the residence of the Rev. John Brown.

I meandered through paved suburban streets that called themselves “groves,” and along “terraces” sunk below ground level, and “crescents” that were as straight as knitting needles.

A slatternly maid, very frilly as to cap and apron, said, “Wite ’ere,” and took my letter into a room where tea cups clattered. After a pause the Reverend came out holding my opened letter. He snapped his reading glasses into their case and adjusted a dangling pince-nez to his nose and looked me over from hat to shoes.

“What is it you want me to do for you, young woman?”

I felt myself go scarlet.

“Nothing! Nothing at all, sir! I
had
to come because our home parson would have been mad if I hadn’t! They’d have fussed if I had not promised—my people I mean.”

I rushed towards the door.

“Stop!”

His roar was as if he were thundering “amen” over a huge congregation. Again he changed glasses, scrutinized me and re-read my letter.

“You’d better have a cup of tea and meet my wife.”

He said it ponderingly as if wondering if I would pour my tea into the saucer and blow it.