Out of India (6 page)

‘Yus, missus, you can smell it right enough,’ his battered old face beamed at her, ‘but you cain’t smell how many I’ve had!’

When my mother heard this exchange, she later said, she turned her head aside and laughed for the first time in weeks.

*

The jolly interlude did not last. Soon we were out in the flatlands, looking for somewhere more settled than a couple of rooms in a public house. It was unpleasant to discover just how dark was the world outside, away from the rough comfort and fellowship of the pub. Why was it that our life in the byways could not go on, pushing alphabet bricks into country words, singing ‘Jack and Jill’ with tremulous notes under a spinster’s furrowed brow, sneaking tuppenny bars of bitter chocolate from the dusty counter of the village shop, lying down to sleep to the squeak of the beer-pulls and the soft thud of darts into the dart-board?

A ramshackle car took us to a bleaker reality. Out in dreary landscape we were dumped onto the rutted yard of Copse Farm where Farmer Griffith and his wife were prepared to rent us rooms but drew the line at extending to us anything like a welcome. Only the compulsion of the war drove them to rent out lodgings, but that cataclysm was not large enough to force them into friendliness.

I began to learn how much of farming was squalor. The long midden-heap behind the barn; the urine stench from the straw in the milking parlour; the thick coat of the farmyard dog matted with burrs and dried mud; rusted old machinery strangled by the weeds; green scum on the cattle-trough; fallen and split branches rotting in the
orchard; broken gates stitched together with wire and baling-string; holes in the buckled tin roof of the tractor shed; the neglected farmhouse itself, blistered and blotched with weather marks. The ploughed fields shone dully, the colour of raw meat.

Mrs Griffith cooked turnips and swedes and beets in watery stews, with occasional hints of chicken or rabbit. A greyish bread was wrapped in plain paper. Meals were eaten in a general silence, with now and again a sharp word or two about the weather. It did not seem to be polite to mention the war. My brother and I scraped the plates, making as much noise as possible. We kicked each other under the table. After each meal Mr Griffith removed his false teeth and put them in a glass of water on the mantelpiece, and there they stayed in public view until the next meal. I had never seen detachable teeth before and went out of my way to give them a good inspection. They looked cruel and filthy, but I respected the farmer for his confidence in displaying them.

The farmhouse was cold, standing square in the way of the prevalent north-easterlies that swept down from Siberia. It was scarcely warmed by single-bar electric fires that could never be left on in a vacant room. The light bulbs were almost too dim for reading. Only a few fingers of hot water were allowed in the bottom of the bath. My brother and I grew morose, pushing and shoving to be first out of the house, lashing out at each other in sudden tempers. The vitality was draining out of us. Heads down, we kicked stones in the yard and poked sticks into the rabbit hutches. The animals learnt to avoid us. The dog warned us off with low growls, the muck-flecked hens flew apart clucking, and the geese, hissing with outstretched necks, got into a phalanx to repel us. The animals seemed as wretched as the farm.

One afternoon of bright winter sunshine Mr Griffith slaughtered a pig. It was a big sow with floppy ears and
what looked to me even then a worried expression. I was surprised by the two remarkable rows of its teats. The farmer and a labourer despatched it with brutal efficiency, not caring whether we children were watching or not. Executions of the farmyard were no mystery to the country child – chickens with necks wrung, rabbits stunned and killed, partridges shot for the pot. The pig, squealing and backing and sliding in the mud, often down on its knees, was jammed in a metal frame and its throat expertly cut with one long motion of the knife. A bloody bubble like a sigh burst from its mouth. Then the hind feet were secured by a rope to a block and tackle and the upended beast was hitched up to a beam over the barn door, and left there for the blood to drain. After the first rush, a thin frothy flow leaked into the bucket beneath.

At the end of the winter at Copse Farm I fell ill. Despite a warning from my brother I had been larking about on the rim of the cattle-trough and I had fallen into three feet of dirty, icy water. Though fished out quickly, and bathed, and sent to bed with red flannel and a hot-water bottle on my chest, I went down with pneumonia, which my mother attributed to congenital bronchial weakness. In my fever I saw nightmares, a naked rabbit wearing its own flayed skin like an ill-fitting overcoat, and a recurring vision of a pig thrashing and drowning in a pool of blood.

The doctor said, under the circumstances, bad dreams were not unexpected. I had a high fever, and besides it was wartime. Horrors were normal enough. With many patients to see, the doctor left in a hurry. I heard the farmyard gate groan on rusty hinges and clang behind him.

A
NOTHER DEPARTURE, ANOTHER cold destination. Money was the problem. While we were in Lincolnshire, two or three times my mother had found it necessary to go to London to see the bank manager.

A railway journey, in those days, with the trains flushed from their normal routes by bomb damage and troop movements, was like a prolix argument set down in broken grammar. Trains puzzled by their own tracery grumbled over a destabilized railbed, metal squealing even on the slowest of curves. In the carriages, smuts from the engine lay on the dirty rep of the seats. Weather streaks obscured the windows and a greyish grit coated most surfaces. Water in the lavatory, if it ran at all, came from the tap in brown driblets.

In an old photo I see my mother arriving under the hooting, echoing, dingy canopy of the London terminus, a pert little town-hat at a cockeyed angle on her head and a tentative smile on her pale face. The day had hardly begun and already she looked wan and pasty.

On all sides in London were mementoes of old wars. War is the one big game common to all complex societies at all times. The evolution of modern man is set out in the streets of our cities as a true
via dolorosa
, by way of fire and sword and bullet. How much public commemoration stinks of death! Implacable generals with a full book of killings sit proudly on frantic horses, all arched neck and
flaring nostrils and bulging eyes. Swords are uplifted, pikes aimed at bellies, gun-barrels levelled with terrified faces. Cannons thrust their heavy snouts skywards. Women carved in stone, with wild weeping hair, disrobe out of pity for the fallen.

At the bottom of Lower Regent Street, Florence Nightingale with her lamp, under the grim visages of three hairy guardsmen, pointed my mother towards the door of Cox & King’s, a bank once brought to its knees by the accumulated debts of all those sad young officers smashed in the trenches of the Great War. Now this old institution was subsumed under the bulk of a large national bank but still, as it were, acting as its military branch. Here Mr Reynolds, a lively gnome with a bony bald head and heavy glasses, awaited her.

My mother was not good with money. Prodigal with her left hand, she grew guilty at expense and became tightfisted with her right hand. Costs crept up on her and took her by surprise. She had been used to the cheap prices of India, and an airy way of living. In wartime England she could never quite determine what was a necessity and what was an indulgence – a bowl of soup in Lyons Corner House, a winter vest, shoes for growing boys, lipstick in a new colour, a Penguin paperback of Priestley or Compton Mackenzie. A packet of Benson & Hedges rather than the cheaper Woodbines? Her husband started the war as a captain in an Indian regiment where the rates of pay were not calculated to support a family life in England. He remitted what he could but payments were sometimes delayed and always not enough. Adrift with two young children in the wash of war, in a land that was not hers and where she could make very few claims, my mother found herself in the midst of preoccupied people, harried by dangers, fears and worries, kind enough in intention but without the time or energy to take on the woes of others. After a struggle against her finances she collapsed into debt
and appeared before Mr Reynolds in trepidation, feeling like a child caught with fingers in the sweetie-jar.

Mr Reynolds was an old-fashioned bank manager, formal in dress and speech, punctilious as to detail, calm and authoritative in decision. He was also, in my mother’s eyes, something of a saint. He took a lofty view. What was a small amount of debt, in the circumstances? There was security, in the form of my father’s regular salary, which was likely to grow with promotions, if he could avoid getting killed. A modest sum now would be enough to tide her over, even though she had the expensive responsibility of small children – food, clothes, lodgings, education, as well as little easements to compensate for sad times. Trust Mr Reynolds, he knew. In the meantime, he said, she might look for a little job, for extra income and for peace of mind. ‘Secure the home front, so to speak,’ he told her, glasses twinkling. ‘There are plenty of wartime tasks waiting to be done by smart young ladies.’

So we packed and went on. We turned our backs on the long slough of mud and misery that Lincolnshire had become for us and came to a new place of rest, standing on the up-platform of Oxford station, two scuffed leather suitcases in hand, and with a future as cloudy as March skies.

*

Then lengthening days and the change of season brought in stiff breezes and skies crinkly with driven cloud and a weak sunlight licking at the damp patches on the pavement. We wanted to take it as a promise of better days.

On a certain morning we found ourselves standing before a high iron gate. Once again I had a firm grip on my mother’s hand, edging around behind her skirts to place a barrier between me and whatever this fate might be. My bolder brother had put on the responsible front of seniority, though I could see he was frowning with his
underlip nipped between his teeth. The gate before us was heavy and black, embellished with blobs of metal which, beneath the thick coats of paint, might represent fruit or bombs – pineapples or grenades. On each side an interminable wall strode out of sight, rising powerfully above the narrow pavement. We boys were in some kind of uniform, shorts and jackets in a serge cloth, long woollen socks, ties fumbled around our necks. The coarse material of the clothes made us itch. We were self-conscious, wondering what new trial or game all this stiffness and formality heralded.

Our mother tugged on a bell-pull and we heard a muffled clang within. A long pause and then the gate swung slowly inward. A lady in a coif and a black robe and a severe starched wimple stood before us. I could not bring myself to look into her face, which was withdrawn and shaded by the strange headgear. So I concentrated about the level of her waist where a large bunch of keys dangled from a thin leather belt. She reached forward to shake my mother’s hand, offering her own hand that was big and callused, with swollen knuckles. A boxer’s hand. She turned and with very few words led us into a dark panelled hall shot through with a single shaft of brightness from a statue of a gaudy lady in pink and blue plaster. It was a shock to me to see that this lady had her heart exposed in her breast with golden rays emanating from this terrible wound. Only a day or two later, with my ear twisted for my ignorance, did I learn that this sorry apparition was the Blessed Virgin, a lady in some way connected (though I had as yet no idea of the details) with God. Doubtful to begin with, I started to sink under the painful puzzle of it all. The human figures, like the statue, were remote from my experience, the meaning was beyond me. Low mumbles passed between my mother and the nun, who finally essayed a brief, taut smile.

Then we were turned over to those boxer’s hands.

*

In this time of war various arms of the government, seeking some safety outside London, had colonized many of the towns within easy reach of the capital. An administrative branch of the Foreign Office had come to rest in Oxford, and here my mother found a position as a temporary filing clerk. The job was not demanding. A few ladies, mostly young wives bound by national solidarity and a genteel education, distributed pieces of paper and made cups of tea. My mother had the qualifications, which hardly went beyond the ability to read and write, and earned approval as an officer’s wife (the Foreign Office was notoriously snobbish). The job suited her well enough – some chatter and giddiness among the solemn civil servants of the FO persuaded a young woman inexperienced in official ways that she was part of national destiny. Her tasks filled the tedious hours of her arrested life, gave her a little extra income, and distracted her from the sense of her own unhappiness. But to take up this position she had had to get her children off her hands, and that had meant placing them in a boarding school, preferably a Catholic one.

My mother was Catholic by instinct, tradition and upbringing, but she did not care for doctrine or theology and devised her own rules of daily practice. She thought that a public acknowledgement of her Catholicism and a strong suspicion of all other sects and faiths would be enough for heaven. Here on earth she would do much as she pleased, relying on the simple morality of a peasant heart. Years later, she told me that the only time she had been to church during the long years of her marriage had been for the wedding Mass itself. Yet she had insisted, as a condition of marriage, that my father take instruction and be received into the Catholic Church. Seeing that her religion was a matter of culture and prejudice, not understanding, my father had simply given way. With some amusement and more impatience he had gone through the
childish rote of the catechism while sharing a few whiskys with a benevolent Irish priest, sitting on the verandah of the parish house as the Indian sunset burned into the distant plain. Then he forgot the whole business. He remained what he had always been, the sturdy agnostic who at a young age had chosen to pump the organ-bellows of the Methodist chapel from outside rather than listen to the preaching from within.