I Can't Stay Long Page 2

  Such was my background, and in some ways it still rules me. I am made uneasy by any form of writing which cannot readily be spoken aloud. From my earliest years, as soon as I could read, I was at home only with those particular classics which approached in style our country speech and the Bible. The three books that continue to stand out like megaliths in the empty reaches of my early reading are Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels. As I read them then, so I read them now – with instant recognition. There are old folk still living in the village today who continue to address each other with the austere formalities of Christian addressing the demons. Robinson Crusoe’s is the voice of a local bachelor-farmer boasting how he got through the year single-handed. The satirical fantasies and crudities of Gulliver are still much the mood of our village inn.

  I was at the village school when I read these books (having bought the three of them at a rummage sale for a penny). At the school itself there were few books, except things about Cats and Mats, or terse little pamphlets stating that Jill was Ill and Jack had Broken his Back. Those were innocent, crisp, monosyllabic days, of which I was the last to complain.

  Then at the age of twelve I was sent to the school in the town, and my reading changed abruptly. Here were dog-eared books for every pupil, mostly the works of Sir Walter Scott. After the fat-bacon language of my earlier reading I hated Scott’s dry, latinized prose, finding its false medievalism and over-wrought fretwork merely a grating for dust and boredom.

  I was made to read Scott for over two years – and have managed to avoid him since. But instead of being put off books forever I developed a passion for out-of-school reading. This marked the beginning of an indiscriminate gorging that was to continue throughout my teens. There was no one to tell me what to read; there was no one I knew who knew. As it is for most adolescents it was a matter of prodigious intake, mountains of chaff for a grain of wheat.

  On my way home from school I developed a special technique: at several pages a day, while loitering at the bookstall in Woolworth’s, I found I could read most of their stock in a year. Behind the manager’s back, in the town’s other bookshop, I slyly repeated the performance. Zane Grey, Jack London, Nat Gould, Edgar Wallace – such was the good, plain fare of that time, presenting a picture of both the Old World and the New which has never been equalled for innocent violence.

  Then suddenly, by chance, I stumbled on Dickens, finding his Collected Works on a bonfire. Some old neighbour had thrown them out, and the rain had saved them from burning. Though scorched and mildewed I stole them home, cleaned them up, and read through the lot. After tea, with a volume propped up on an oil-lamp, the damp pages steaming gently, I was borne straightway into the stews of old London, until I could no longer remember my own name.

  Reading at home, with a family of seven in the room, required a special brand of abstraction. But one had it then; it was no trouble at all, a concentration both intense and happy, which brothers or sisters, with all their fighting and singing, could never hope to break through. (True, in summertime I could go and read up a tree, or hide tiger-like out in the grass. But this was less through the fear of distracted attention than of being given odd jobs to do.)

  Up till now my reading had been in a large sense Victorian, and quite a lot of it even more dated. Then with a bang something happened that really shook my foundations – I discovered the public library. I think it had been in the town some years, but no one had thought to tell me. But late or soon, it was an explosive discovery, coming at my most inflammable time.

  As I gazed at its great shelves of books – none chained to the walls, all free – the world of J. Cole slowly folded up and died, wrapped in its sheets of old maid’s lavender. But reading by stealth had become a habit and a free library took a moment to get used to. I started by working straight through the poetry shelf, beginning with the books nearest the door. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot – I’d never heard of any of them before. My mother, of course, had introduced me to poetry, but she knew of no one later than Tennyson. Now vibrant new voices assailed and alarmed me, cracked in my ears like whips, so that for weeks I moved only to their urgent drivings and tossed at night to their echoes. This sharp, hard language, with its attractive bitterness, seemed to cut me to the very bone, purging my heart of its romantic dews and generally stiffening the blood.

  Amazed, to begin with, at finding such books in the town, I also fancied I was the first to discover them. They led me to a door marked ‘Heresy and Schism’, which till then I had sworn to fly from. I began to feel personally responsible for these authors’ views, as though I had originally thought of them myself, and when the poems of Joyce and Lawrence took me to their prose the fat was truly in the fire.

  From that moment I never glanced at another Western or thriller; my happy apprenticeship as a reader was over. Before, my books had been the playthings of the village; now they were my private and loaded bombs. Through the once-open fields of my Christian valley I wandered secretively, proud and alone.

  My decline was now rapid, and damnation near. It was finally completed at age fifteen. I had started work as an office boy in the town, and one day a travelling salesman came in and offered me my own library for a shilling a week. I ordered Lawrence, Shaw, Huxley’s Brave New World, Gogol, Engels and Marx. I knocked up a bookcase from a rabbit’s hutch and nailed the library to my bedroom wall.

  Things were never quite the same again; the snug days had gone for good. Then the vicar discovered me reading Brave New World and took it away and burnt it. It was the end, in a way, of my country childhood and of its carefree acquiescence.

  Whitsuntide Treat

  In the kitchen there is a fierce bubbling of flames and water, and rainbows of reflected sunlight on the ceiling. My brothers and I, washed and anointed with brilliantine, turn and run out into the yard.

  We are met by blades of heat and bursts of cuckoos, and the garden is a turmoil of bees and scratching hens.

  Tense with the enjoyment of the hour, we walk along the road. There is a smell of tar and lilac in our nostrils, the road looks rich like a new carpet, we strike sparks with our boots as we walk and look luxuriously about us.

  Girls are gathering flowers in the gardens, shoes are being blacked and ribbons tied, Joe Partridge practises his flute and a cart goes by with a pile of flags.

  Now, in the steep field, with ropes and several ladders, we survey the trees. Bullock, the builder, trumpeting his cigarette, looks up and frowns at the lofty limbs. Each year it is the same problem, and each year we make the same bold decisions. A ladder sweeps into the air, a searching spear into the remote no-man’s-land of the upper branches. The thick ropes, smelling of oakum and the sea, are trailed aloft and knotted into place. The seat is shaken to the ground and the whole thing hangs ready, a swaying, dangerous engine of delight.

  ‘That’ll do,’ says Bullock. ‘Like a go?’

  I grip the rope and pull myself into the broad and slippery cockpit. Bullock stands behind me and I shoot like a rocket from his hands, soaring out over the valley and up among the strange knots and powdery shadows of the creaking oak. Each sweep is a sickening ordeal of fear and death, but I am having the First Swing, and the bully, Walt Kerry, that unscrupulous pirate of every pleasure, is outmanoeuvred and confounded.

  At the Recreation Hut the flags are coming out. We go there and sit on the wall and watch. Here is a rich and splendid sight which never fails to ring the first gay bell of celebration. Across the green bank lie the flags in all their multitude; striped, squared and circled with traditional emblems; ensigns, Union Jacks, tricolours, crescent moons, and all the stars and suns of the orient.

  And the girls are there, crouching and chattering, their mouths full of flowers and string, intent on the decorations. Upon the grass are piles of staring moon-daisies, and branches of lilac and intoxicating elder-blossom. The girls are arguing and crying out to one another and tying the blooms to the top of each flagpole,
and the remainder will be bound with leaves into their hair. As they kneel on the ground among all the precious coloured rags we forget their tiresome tricks and schoolroom tempers; they flame in their dresses and are strange among the flowers.

  And there against the wall, with its stained but glowing picture of ‘The Good Shepherd’, stands the Banner, the vanguard of our splendour. It is already topped with flowers, and its tall yellow poles, its ropes and gilded tassels, are woven thick with ivy leaves. To hold a pole, or at least a string of this banner, is the summit of our pride, and we scheme for it, secretly, weeks in advance.

  But gazing at this emblem I am suddenly aware of Jenny King posturing beside it. She comes from a wild family of drunks and poachers, and she is my squaw, my secret. Elder-blossom hangs from her ears, and she holds a tall red flag in her hand and is smothering it with lilac. Thick swathes of scent curl up from the yard, and I forget the Banner and swear I will carry her flag or die.

  We gather round the Cross in sweating groups, dancing our flags and scrambling for position. Six boys hold up the Banner, and Walt Kerry is prominent among them. Scowling, he clutches a coveted pole, militant, forbidding, and covered with warts like a riveted battleship.

  The band arrives, spitting through pipes and flourishing silver valves, and we form up behind them. I look everywhere for Jenny’s scarlet flag and suddenly catch sight of it. It waves in the hands of a Painswick youth and her lilac is scattered on his coat. Cold with rage I trip him up, snatch the flag and hide it in my shirt. Then the band strikes up with a bumping burst of noise, the signal for a general armistice and the march to begin. The Banner lifts and leans into the sky, and pushing our flags forward we follow, exulting.

  How the drums shake, how the trumpets prance, how bright is the sun and how gay the assembly! We sweep down the road and into the village and the people come to their doors and gaze at us in awe. We stamp our feet, our music thunders, and Jenny’s flag is like a flame in the sky.

  We are a mighty army, a host of Midian, we are ten thousand strong, valiant and splendid every one, oh, there is no end to us. We march in ecstasies of drums and cymbals, we are all twelve feet high and terrible as Turks.

  When we reach the field the musicians sit round on forms and blow. The flags are hung in the trees, and with Joe’s flute flying like a pigeon overhead the girls dance in a circle, their flowers dropping on the ground and their feet treading the petals into a paste of honey.

  The boys watch, then break up into groups, nuzzling the grass, dividing the bushes, and throwing paper darts at the trumpets.

  And all the grown-ups arrive, fluttering babies and bottles of cider, settling themselves down in family herds upon the grass. The village spinster arrives with her trays of homemade toffee, the Squire scatters oranges among the girls, and the band plays and drinks beer and shakes out its spittle and plays again.

  And above the hoarse and drowsy dances, the stuttering cuckoos, the howling swings and the cries of tribal warfare, we strain our ears, waiting on tiptoe for the first stroke of the signal bell.

  When it rings we all pause, and across the valley a tower of white smoke rises from the Recreation Hut.

  Like a wave we charge down the steep banks, jumping molehills, scattering cowslips, and feeling the grass beat and tug against our shoes. Walt Kerry is flying on before, as usual, but we follow him closely, leaping like grasshoppers. Suddenly he disappears, and I pass him lying on his face in a patch of blue thistles, crying and beating the ground with rage.

  In the Hut the tables are spread and waiting. There are rows of cups and rows of teapots and plates piled high with buns and cake. A steaming urn stands in a corner and the air is exciting with smells of bread and currants. We break madly around the tables, we bellow grace and rattle cups, and the hot sweet tea passes up and down and the buns pass into the bottomless pit.

  But poor Walt Kerry doesn’t come at all. They say he fell flat into a cow pancake and had to go home to wash.

  Cakes are put aside for him, but it is not the same.

  Back in the field fresh ceremonies draw out the evening. Then, as the shadows strip the sun and the golden cock turns red above the church, a trumpet is blown and we line up for the races. We feel as heavy as elephants.

  Bill Bullock and the vicar call through their hands, the families cheer their young, the girls their champions, and we dash up and down among the nettles, gasping in the agony of competition.

  There is a three-legged race for fun, and I find Jenny, her hair loose and her face yellow with buttercups from rolling on the grass. We tie our legs together with a rag, we wind our arms about our waists and run together in a dream, bound as if we belonged to each other, a strange fleet animal which is both of us.

  After the races, and the diplomacies of the judges, the prizes are given; scarlet cricket balls, yellow bats, pistols and fascinating boxes, the final trailing feathers of the day. We are full and weary now, the swings are deserted, the flags have disappeared. Everything has been won and tasted and enjoyed. Blue twilight rolls like smoke down the valley, the musicians disperse, rubbing their sore lips, and we all start for home laden with trophies, and boasting.

  Only the lovers remain among the bushes, their time just beginning.

  Eight-Year-Old World

  My eight-year-old world has no language problems, no passports or barriers, no restraint and no money. It is as flat as a ribbon, about a million miles long, and scarcely wider than the garden path. It begins in the corner of the bedroom, among stuffed elephants and German helmets, and throws into space a gaudy coloured line – a line throbbing with circus freaks and horrors.

  In the perspectives of this world there are no distances or vistas, only details of animals and men, close at hand and awfully regarded.

  Conjured up by the tales of uncles, by black nights in bed, by facts half heard, half understood, its countries and continents, teeming with crazed inhabitants, lie as compact as railway stations along the path of my journey. And through this world I travel alone, armed with eyes for stretching, tongue for drying up, sticks for prodding, and legs for flying fast when things get out of hand.

  The world begins, as I said, in the bedroom corner, which is the harbour of all departures and returns. And the world itself lies open to exploration by all kinds of conveyances – by feet, by memory, by hope and speculation.

  First of course comes England, the home country, the limit of what is familiar. The entire realm lies immediately outside the house and stretches no further than the village edge. It consists of a few wild flowers, a mass of jungly grass, an anthill, an oak tree, a bees’ nest, and a flake-stone quarry clustered with Roman snails.

  This detailed landscape is all I know of England. It is home, the country we sing at school; and every event of history can be sited somewhere among its fields. King Charles once hid in that oak tree, King Rufus was murdered in that dusty wood, all battles were fought on that brambled bank, and every Queen was born here. I accept all these facts without question, for England, beyond the boundaries of the familiar parish, is unimaginable.

  It is past these frontiers, past the stream and the quarry and the end of the land, that the strange lands begin, the world of foreigners and abroad.

  It begins in a cloud of darkness, in a grove of evergreens a mile away, deep down in a neighbouring valley. For that is the home of the Druids, tall green-faced men in silver shirts who spend their days motionless among the pine cones plucking at tinny harps and sneezing. I avoid that grove as I would the dark of hell, for it is the first pit in the path of the world traveller. Once fall into the hands of these lank-limbed men and you are lost for ever. For they will choke you with larch dust, poison your eyes with berries, kill you to a slow music, and thread your head on a harp string like a bead. It is a terrible place, as my grandmother has made quite clear.

  Yet go beyond these evergreens and you are still not out of the wood. For here lies a country of still more mortal danger, where live the Welsh, th
e terrors of these valleys. They are short-legged men, cunning as Blackfoot Indians, and they run like foxes through the twilight grasses, their mouths stuffed full of chicken feathers and their hands with strangled rabbits. When they are not raiding the fields they run up and down hills singing. I am not a Welshman, and when I hear this singing I have been taught to fly. Otherwise I hide in bushes and watch them closely as they pass, feeling my scalp tingle at their strangeness and thanking my stars I am neither fowl nor rabbit.

  Outside the village walls these Welsh and Druids press upon one closely and are the first denizens of the foreign world. But beyond their territory and over the hill there lies a grey stone town where an aunt lives among the savages. The women of this town make strong wines by boiling such things as oak leaves, harebells, dandelions and mice. The men wear sacks and gaiters, talk with stones in their mouths, and kick dogs from their path as they walk. They shout a lot, too, and smell of horses, and spend their time either fighting each other with cabbage stalks or sleeping drunkenly in sunny graveyards. To me these men, with their capacity for noise, sparks and violence, are a species of giant gods, remarkable and hair-raising. They are primeval monsters of the outside world, bursting with whiskered muscle, but made slightly less terrifying by the fact that my aunt lives here amongst them.

  By the time one has skirted the Welsh and penetrated to the town of my aunt one has reached, as it were, the regions of Ultima Thule, the limits of the known lands. Beyond, the world is charted only by legends, an abyss of magic and mystery.