I Leap Over the Wall

by Monica Baldwin

  (3)

  We had breakfast at an early hour because they both had to be at their jobs by nine o’clock. Wendy then presented me with a latch-key; and they departed, leaving me alone for the day.

  Such trust was embarrassing. I might have devoured their provisions, ransacked their papers, burgled the flat. This idea, however, did not apparently occur to them.

  My interview was for eleven o’clock; so I spent the hour before it in exploring Shuffleborough.

  It struck me as rather a platitudinous kind of place. Everything—church, cinema, post office, town hall—was all exactly what one would have expected in a new, ugly, industrial and aggressively communist community. It was only remarkable for the numbers of curiously bulgy-looking women who thronged its streets. This last detail puzzled me. I remember remarking on it to Olwen in the evening. She explained, smiling, that Shuffleborough had been a refuge for prospective mothers since the beginning of the war.

  I felt a fool.

  The interview at the electrical works was interesting.

  ‘Jack’, kind, courteous, and obviously overworked, did all that he could to help me. During our conversation I got many sidelights upon the inner workings of a vast, impersonal company—such as that by which he was employed. His own job appeared to be that of a kind of liaison officer between capital and labour. Like Wendy and Olwen, the Acts of the Apostles was obviously his spiritual home.

  The post he offered me was that of supervisor in a part of the factory where the girls and women worked. I was taken over the buildings for whose inmates I should be responsible.

  The inside of a factory is too familiar to need description: to me, however, everything was new and astonishing. The great sheds with their avenues of machines running from end to end of the building … The girls, manipulating mysterious gadgets that buzzed or clicked or clanged with torturing monotony … The foul air, poisoned with the smell of oil and dust and stale humanity … The perpetual glare from the unshaded bulbs suspended from among the shadowy girders in the blacked-out roof-lights … Worst of all, the frightful, deafening whirr and roar of the machines. Here, with a vengeance, was Milton’s ‘horrible discord’ and ‘the dire noise of madding wheels….’ As I glanced at the pretty, painted, bored-looking girls in their oil-stained boiler-suits, I suddenly understood why they behaved so outrageously when they escaped from the factory in the evening. Nothing that I had been told surprised me. After a day like that, in such a place—no! I could not blame them for wanting to kick up their heels.

  I’m afraid I was not as sorry as I might have been that I failed to secure the job. An essential qualification appeared to be the possession of a certificate for having completed a course of Red Cross training. This, of course, I did not possess.

  So that was the end of that.

  On my way back, I plucked up courage and presented myself at the Labour Exchange. A bleak-looking woman in spectacles offered me a job in the Post Office. She pointed out that a pension was attached to it and seemed astonished when I murmured that I feared it wasn’t quite my cup of tea….

  That evening—I rather think it was by way of cheering me up—Olwen and Wendy escorted me to a Function. They said it was a Meeting of Professional and Business Women for a Discussion on Vansittartism. As I had never met any Business Women and had no idea what Vansittartism was, I set out in some trepidation. To my surprise, however, I enjoyed it. The Business Women, as might have been expected, talked sense, and I came away with much new subject-matter upon which to reflect.

  My recollections of the next day or two are a little hazy.

  I remember Wendy appearing at breakfast with a pencil and paper and reading aloud something which, she explained, she had received as Guidance during her Quiet Time. It was about my affairs—I forget exactly what—but it caused me to set aside for a while the wire saying, ‘Come home at once’, with which my uncle and aunt in London had replied to my account of Mr. Hambledon’s defection. It seemed to me that to go on trying my luck in Shuffleborough for a day or two could do no harm to anyone; and Wendy’s Guidance certainly seemed to point that way. Anyhow, another interview was arranged for me, this time with a doctor who wanted to start a crèche where working mothers could leave their babies for the day.

  Unfortunately, the doctor only had the scheme on paper and said it would be months before anything came of it.

  So that, too, fell through.

  Next day I had an inspiration.

  I called at the presbytery of the Catholic Church and asked the priest who admitted me whether he knew of any job in Shuffleborough for which I could apply.

  He was sorry, he said, when I told him my story; but he knew of absolutely nothing. Couldn’t the people I was staying with do something for me?

  I told him of all that Olwen and Wendy had already achieved; but it was only when I mentioned Guidance and Quiet Times that he showed any interest.

  He said, ‘Why, it sounds to me as though you had wandered into a nest of Buchmanites!’

  As I had never heard the word before, I looked blank. So he started explaining to me all about Buchmanism and something called the Oxford Group Movement.

  I found it most interesting.

  Walking back through the unlovely streets, I meditated upon what he had said to me. Buchmanism, according to him, was undoubtedly a heresy; even I could not help seeing, as a Catholic, where the danger-signals lay.

  And yet—and yet—!

  There simply was no denying that Wendy and Olwen had got hold of something. To me it seemed like an inner spirit that shone through all they said and did, making it potent for good. Whether this was due to Buchmanism or merely to their own impassioned efforts after the perfection of Honesty, Purity and Charity, I cannot say. All I know is that, as I let myself into the flat, I was uncomfortably aware that they were far better women than I was ever likely to be.

  (4)

  Shuffleborough and I having apparently no particular use for one another, it seemed advisable to return to London and hunt for another job of war-work there.

  There were a great many soldiers travelling.

  I wished I knew what their various pips and badges signified. That was another disadvantage of having been ‘out of things’ for so long. One was completely ignorant of a thousand details that other people knew instinctively.

  Some of the soldiers had wives and babies with them. Those babies fascinated me. I had not seen one of the fat pink things at close quarters for nearly thirty years. Their clothes filled me with admiration. How infinitely more practical were their brief and scanty garments—in most cases, simply one that pulled up and one down—than the system of mummification prevalent in my youth. Faint sensations of melancholy, however, began to possess me when I reflected that even if one of these intriguing creatures were given over to my charge, I shouldn’t have the remotest idea how to handle it. I had been shut away from all that side of life for too many years.

  I turned my eyes resolutely away from soldiers and babies and began to meditate.

  There was no doubt about it. I had certainly missed a good many of the best things in life. And among them were the joys of free intercourse with other minds. How I regretted it!

  Looking back even upon those few days at Shuffleborough, I was surprised at the richness of experience with which they had provided me.

  I believe it is Strindberg who says that personalities do not develop out of themselves. Instead, they absorb something from each soul with which they come in contact, as a bee collects honey from a million flowers. I myself was astonished at the way in which my vitality had been increased and quickened by this contact with other minds since I had left the convent. Doors and windows had been flung open through which new and undreamed-of ideas rushed in and stimulated me.

  In contemplative convents, this intercourse with other personalities is not encouraged. The idea is that you have come there to dwell alone with God: solus ad solum. If you have unnecessary dealings with other people, yo
u will find that, sooner or later, human passions begin to show their horns. And that, of course, is death to contemplation.

  Solitude of spirit being essential to union with God, it is safeguarded by the rule of silence.

  Nuns who keep this rule faithfully find they hardly ever have an opportunity to exchange a word with one another except at evening recreation, when the conversation is ‘general’. And even then, the ‘contacts’ are extremely limited. For a nun may never change her place in the community; for better or worse, her life must be lived out between the two who made their Vows before and after her. In choir, in the refectory, at recreation, at all the community gatherings, she can never escape from them or they from her.

  Besides the rule of silence, solitude of spirit is safeguarded by another, which—though unwritten—is rigorously instilled into the novices from the dawn of their religious life. This is the rule prohibiting what are known as ‘particular friendships’. Against these, most spiritual writers—especially if they are French—are inclined to fulminate.

  It is important to differentiate between ‘spiritual’ and ‘particular’ friendships. The first, rare as they are beneficent, run on the lines of those between St. Clare and St. Francis of Assisi, or St. Jeanne de Chantal and St. Francis de Sales. The others are when two nuns, possibly not quite as ‘fervent’ as they might be, get together because they find in one another’s company some solace for the extreme loneliness of religious life. This is definitely a slipping down from high perfection, and can become a great source of annoyance and irritation to the rest of the community.

  French ecclesiastics use alarming adjectives in describing ‘particular friendships’. Perhaps that is why some Superiors are so obsessed by the fear of such happenings in their communities that all conversations which are not ‘general’ are so strongly discouraged as to be practically banned.

  The result of all this is, of course, to throw one back more and more upon oneself. Everything that would normally be learnt from other people—new words, new ideas, new ways of looking at things—is ruled out. So that a large part of one’s being never really develops. One remains rather like a child, with the same outlook and vocabulary as when one first ‘went in’.

  (5)

  London was like an oven.

  Moreover, a pall of gloom hung over everything, for Tobruk had just fallen and was on everybody’s lips.

  At Portland Place the aunt and uncle were most kind and sympathetic. I believe that the uncle had even made quite a little rumpus at the drawing-office on the subject of Mr. Hambledon. My other uncle, too, was indignant, and helped me to compose a letter to the firm, complaining of my treatment and demanding the refund of my expenses. No answer was vouchsafed. A second letter was ignored in like manner. After that (rather feebly, I’m afraid) I let things drop. Actually, I was assured that if I went to law—as I longed to do—it would probably run me in for a good deal more money than I was likely to get from Mr. Hambledon.

  That evening I was rung up, to my great surprise, by a friend of my school-days called Gay. Though she declared, when I entered the convent, that she had no use for nuns, she still remembered me; and, having heard from a mutual friend about my exodus, asked me to come and have tea with her in a couple of days’ time. I accepted with delight.

  It now remained to find another war job as soon as possible. What should I attempt?

  Unfortunately, I was now rather handicapped by my eyesight. Already at the drawing-office it had given me a good deal of trouble. Now I was told that it would be most unwise to attempt a job that involved any kind of eye-strain.

  This was a blow. I hoped, however, that if I could manage some other kind of work till I recovered, I might go back later to the job for which I had been trained.

  So, next morning I set out for the nearest Labour Exchange. It was crowded, and the heat was quite overwhelming. I waited for over forty minutes in a queue composed chiefly of foreigners and immense, steaming Jewesses. Here, when eventually I reached the counter, I was told that I had come to the wrong Exchange. The one that dealt with the district named on my identity card was, it appeared, a considerable distance away….

  As I went out, my eye fell on a poster in the doorway, announcing that the Citizens’ Advice Bureau in Baker Street was at the service of anybody who had a problem to be solved.

  It was the first time I had heard of such a place, but I liked the sound of it. I was a Citizen; I needed Advice; and it seemed that the State ran a Bureau expressly to provide it. To Baker Street, then, I would go.

  Several worried-looking persons were waiting for their turns when I arrived, so I took my place on the last of a row of chairs. Presently, a dark, rather distinguished-looking woman beckoned me to one of the little tables. We sat down and she began to question me.

  I should like to put on record that, although since my exodus I have been interviewed by literally dozens of persons in Ministries, Public Institutions, Labour Exchanges and various other branches of the C.A.B., not one of them dealt with me so efficiently as did the Dark Lady in the bureau at 128 Baker Street. Her name was Miss Dunn. It deserves to be remembered. If ever these pages should meet her eye, I can only hope that they may prove to her how much her tact, wisdom, and kindness were appreciated by at least one harassed citizen.

  Miss Dunn was an education enthusiast. Her view was that no war job could be more important than that of training Youth to cope with the problems that peace would bring.

  ‘If you can teach,’ she insisted, ‘you ought to. School-teachers are badly needed. You shouldn’t have over-much difficulty in finding a post.’

  ‘But I’m so dreadfully tired of nothing but girls and women,’ I objected feebly.

  Miss Dunn looked at me as though she had no use for anyone who could be tired of anything while the war was on.

  She said, ‘I’ll give you some addresses.’ This made me feel a little ashamed of myself. I said no more.

  The well-known agency in Sackville Street to which Miss Dunn had directed me was one of the most devitalizing places I have ever been in. The hall and staircase were depressingly dark and stuffy, and by the time the two tight-lipped female clerks in the outer office had dealt with me, I felt as if my appearance and mentality must have become at least as bleak and desiccated as their own.

  The interview which followed was extremely ageing. The elderly lady who conducted it was the perfect school-marm. I sat there, quaking inwardly, while she bombarded me with questions concerning my qualifications as an instructor of Youth.

  To my surprise, she was rather encouraging. Quite a number of schools, it appeared, were in need of an English mistress. She gave me a list of addresses and a bundle of green forms (I eyed forms with suspicion since the affaire Hambledon), upon which my application must be made.

  ‘And I hope,’ said this formidable person, extending a clawlike hand to signify that the interview was ended, ‘that you may be successful in securing a suitable post. Good morning!’

  And, as I stumbled down the dark staircase into the heat-wave that was transforming Regent Street into an inferno, I tried to hope so too.

  During lunch, the telephone tinkled excitedly. My cousin Joyce had just received my letter, telling her about the Shuffleborough fiasco, and—with characteristic kindness—had been casting about to find me another job.

  She now told me that all sorts of good things were apparently to be had for the asking, chez the Americans. They were still pouring into London in fantastic numbers. A large Red Cross Club had been opened near the branch of the War Office where she was working, and Young America could be observed from her office windows, washing behind its ears every morning from 10 a.m. Most entertaining. Meanwhile, there was a certain Miss Mainwaring, ‘quite frrrrrightfully charming’, who was rather a potentate at the U.S.A. Headquarters in Grosvenor Square. Joyce knew her. If I cared to ring up—mentioning Joyce’s name—she was sure I should get an interview. And then—who knew that something marvellous might not
be the result?

  By now, I had quite ceased to feel shy about attacking unknown persons on the telephone. So I got on to Miss Mainwaring without more ado. Astonishingly, she suggested that I should ‘come round right away’. Her tone was encouraging. I therefore set out immediately for Grosvenor Square.

  As might have been expected, the U.S.A. Headquarters were large and luxurious. I felt slightly nervous of passing through the hall; such numbers of huge square-shouldered Yankee Apollos were standing about. Their smartly-cut, two-coloured khaki uniforms looked odd to me, but they held themselves nobly and were obviously sons of a taller race than ours.

  I walked twice round the hall in order to admire them. Some just stood around, looking important. Others swaggered about as if the earth were theirs. I had the impression that they were all terribly, terribly young and sure of themselves and were just longing to show old London the way things ought to be done.

  Miss Mainwaring sat in her office like a very attractive spider in an extremely complicated web. She appeared to be much interested in my story. But, though she was charming to me, it soon became evident that the very last place in which I ought to seek employment was an institution run by Americans. They were, it appeared, the most inveterate hustlers in the universe. Unless you possessed to-morrow’s knowledge about everything, had all the up-to-the-minute answers and a good hard-boiled outlook (whatever that might mean) on things in general, you simply hadn’t a chance.

  ‘With them, it’s Get On or Get off, every time,’ she explained, eyeing me nevertheless very kindly. ‘And I very much doubt whether you’d be able to cope with the situations that would inevitably arise.’