After tea, Maudie, who appeared to hold some undefinable position of authority, ordered me to help Lily—the squint-eyed girl—with the washing-up. We were still at it, aided by a good-looking girl called Iris, with soft eyes like a Jersey cow, when Lily squeaked suddenly:
‘Coo! If it isn’t the Commandant!’
A dim-looking young woman in khaki was standing in the doorway. She said:
‘Well, girls! Back sooner than you expected? Don’t ask me why!’ She giggled foolishly. Then, catching sight of me: ‘And is this the new hand?’
Assuming a suitable air of deference, I went forward to explain.
The Commandant didn’t seem particularly pleased to see me. Headquarters, she admitted, had mentioned something about sending somebody along, and she’d intended to phone them up and say not to because reelly this place was what you might call crowded out; but what with this and that she’d had so much to do it had slipped her memory. Anyway, they’d find plenty of jobs for me now I was here. Young Ireen had sprained her knee and wouldn’t mind a hand with the scrubbing and of course there was always the potatoes to peel. Though, come to think of it, where I was to be put to sleep with not a spare inch in the place since the hostel was bombed a fortnight ago, and this only tempery quarters where they was now, she reely hadn’t an idea. She’d have a word with Maudie on the subject and see what they could do.
‘Silly twerp,’ remarked Iris. ‘Forgets every darned thing since she got off with that ossifer. Bet he drove her home in his car. Makes me sick, the ways she goes on.’
The love-smitten condition of the Commandant, I was soon to discover, was the explanation of a good many minor hitches in the workings of the canteen.
Presently Maudie bustled in and explained that as there was nothing for me to sleep on, I should just have to make do with whatever could be obtained. A red-haired young private who appeared, like the Slave of the Lamp, whenever anyone shouted ‘Badger!’ long and loud enough to be heard outside the canteen, was then commanded by Maudie to ‘go out and requisition a bed’. It being his week on fatigue, explained Lily (I did not like to reveal my ignorance by inquiring what that expression meant), little jobs of that kind fell automatically to his lot.
Lily having been allowed an evening off the canteen service to initiate me, we waited together in one of the bedrooms till his return. The fire by which we sat was permitted, it appeared, since the bombing of the hostel, because the girls had nowhere else to sit when not at work. Here we were joined presently by a girl with the strangest eyes I’d ever seen. Blue as hyacinths, they were vacant as the eyes of a corpse. The effect was startling and rather sinister.
She stood before us, fumbling vaguely with the top of her stocking. From it she presently produced a greasy book of tickets. These she held out to me.
‘Lottery,’ she remarked. ‘Winner gets one of me brother’s rabbits. Want one? Price one shilling each.’
Not quite knowing how to refuse, I handed over the shilling and received a crumpled pink ticket in exchange; upon which she silently withdrew.
‘Rabbit my foot,’ said Lily, when she was out of earshot. ‘She ain’t got no brother, nor he ain’t got no rabbits. Most of us gives her a shilling, though, when she comes around like that. Sends it to her kids.’
‘Kids?’
I was incredulous. The girl had looked about fifteen.
‘Uh-huh. Two on ’em, she got. Twins. And black as the pots, if you believe me. Got off with one of them nigger chaps as was billeted down where she come from and that’s where he landed her. Bit gone in the ’ead, she is, too, pore kid, so you can’t blame ’er, not reelly. ’As fits, too, now and again: something crool to see when she reelly gets worked up. Doesn’t do to cross her.’
I digested these revelations.
Lily warned me that owing to shortage of cupboard space, each girl had to keep everything she possessed locked up in her suitcase under her bed. If you left anything about, young Ireen would be sure to nab it, pop it and send the proceeds to Auntie for her twins.
Presently Badger reappeared, staggering beneath a camp-bed, two doubtfully clean-looking sleeping-bags to serve as mattresses, some grey army blankets and an armful of cushions which smelt of cheese. With these, the three of us made up a kind of litter, in which it appeared that I was to spend the night.
The only bright spot I could discover in my surroundings was a bathroom. Hot water has always had a most stimulating effect on my morale. Unfortunately, however, my ablutions only helped to emphasize the contrast between my freshly washed self and the revoltingly frowsty malodorous bedding into which I was about to creep.
Three beds would have been too many in so small a room. And it contained seven. They were placed so close together that the occupants could only get in and out by climbing over the ends.
The windows had to be kept tightly closed because of the blackout; and if you opened so much as a chink of the door, the fire smoked.
It was not long before the atmosphere became asphyxiating.
I had never before slept in a room with other people. It embarrassed me. The girls made peculiar and unpleasing noises in their sleep. Most of them snored. One or two chattered and grunted. Another ground her teeth. Poor Lily, who seemed to be suffering from bronchitis, coughed incessantly and without restraint. It was like sleeping among a herd of pigs.
The occupant of the bed on my right seemed particularly restless. I had not seen who she was as she had only crept in after the lights were out. She gibbered frightfully, tossed, turned and finally began to moan as though in the throes of some horrible dream. Hoping to rouse her from her nightmare, I sat up and flashed my torch into her face.
To my horror, I discovered that it was young Ireen.
What on earth should I do if this vacant-eyed mother of twin negroes were to take it into her head to have a fit?
Desperately alarmed, I began—as is my custom when disaster threatens—to invoke the saints of paradise.
The reply vouchsafed, though certainly according to the letter, was hardly in sympathy with the spirit of my request. It helped, however, to confirm a certain suspicion which, during the last few years, had been rapidly developing into a certainty. This was that, on the whole, it is better not to send out an S.O.S. to heaven whenever a difficulty looms on the horizon. Better to square one’s shoulders, set one’s teeth and take what is coming to one. Endeavours to cajole Providence into smoothing one’s path through life are apt to end in the frying-pan being substituted for the fire.
What followed was a case in point.
Ireen—who, if left to herself, would probably just have had a clean tidy fit and no damage done—now sat up suddenly, uttered a short, sharp screech that awakened everybody in the room, and was noisily and abundantly sick….
When the agitation had subsided and we had finished clearing up the mess, the girls rolled back into bed and immediately went to sleep again. I, however, was less fortunate.
Lying there in the stuffy darkness, sickened and revolted by the frowst that rose like a disgusting miasma from my bedding, I tried to think up some idea that would help me not only to endure but to accept.
In the Noviceship one had been taught that the best thing to do when anything went against the grain was to ‘offer it up’ for the people or ‘intentions’ that were nearest to one’s heart.
‘The more to suffer, the more to offer’, was a favourite saying of an old nun who certainly knew what she was talking about and to whom I had often gone for counsel in my youth. ‘Suffering’, she once told me, ‘is sent to us to make use of in whatever way we choose. It can sour us; but it can also save and sanctify. Value suffering.’
Looking back, it now seems to me that the whole business of Religious Life—that is to say, whether one made a success or failure of it—depended upon one’s attitude towards suffering. From the outset, one was taught the immense value of ‘mortification’—the painful, monotonous job of putting to death one’s ‘natural inclinations�
�� so that the ‘supernatural’ life of grace might take complete possession of one’s soul.
There was no getting away from it, no royal road or easy way. You could only develop ‘supernaturally’ at the expense of what was ‘natural’; if you wanted to attain the summits of the spiritual life—to be what the saints and mystics call ‘transformed into Christ’—well, not only sin, self-indulgence, pleasure, comfort and ease, but even the smallest gratification of the ‘natural man’ had to go. That, of course, was why so few—so terribly few—persevered in absolute self-denial to the end.
The fact is that Religious Life, lived fully and generously, as it should be lived, is a life of heroism. That is because it is a call to sanctity; and no one can be a saint who does not live spiritually always at concert pitch. This is an arduous and exhausting business; anyone who has attempted it will tell you it is not surprising that so many begin to feel a little tired before the end of the race.
Just how much dogged courage is required by those who undertake the adventure of Religious Life may be gathered from the spiritual diary of a young Irish Jesuit who was killed while acting as chaplain to the Forces in the First World War.
This young priest, who, if heroism is one of the marks of sanctity, was surely as near to that enviable condition as most of us are likely to get, declared in this diary (it was published after his death, in spite of his explicit directions that all his papers should be burnt) that he felt God demanded of him the complete sacrifice always and in everything, of every human pleasure and comfort, and the embracing—so far as the Rule allowed and without injuring his health or work—of every possible discomfort or pain. His aim, said the diary, was: (a) never to avoid suffering; e.g. heat, cold, unpleasant people; (b) of two alternatives, always to choose the harder: e.g. ordinary or arm-chair; (c) to try and let pass absolutely no occasion of self-denial; (d) as far as possible not to omit his ordinary penances when he was not well.
Certainly this was ‘mortification’ with a vengeance; an ‘emptying of self’ that would create a capacity into which the grace of God could flow in an impetuous stream.
And, apparently, that was exactly what happened. When a soul really gives everything to God, the great transforming graces of the saints are not withheld.
I have quoted the above because it gives such an excellent bird’s-eye view of the lines on which, in an enclosed contemplative community, the idea of penance and mortification is ordinarily worked out. Without any extraordinary means, people are able to live lives of the most complete and utter self-denial—hardly observed, perhaps, by those around them unless they too happen to be working on similar lines. Not everyone, of course, aspires to the same degree of heroism; but total war against ‘natural desires and inclinations’ is, on the whole, what everybody is trying to achieve.
This is no place in which to set forth the motives which inspire the penitential practices of the religious orders. It is, however, interesting to note that the extraordinary penances of the saints were not so much the outcome of a desire for their own sanctification as a tremendous urge to help and save and if possible atone for the sins and sufferings of a world which has very largely lost the true idea of God. The life itself—hard, silent, rigorous, austere—is packed with opportunities for self-denial. And yet, for many souls, even that does not seem to be enough.
Therefore, in the old religious orders, besides silence, fasting and vigils, the use of the ‘discipline’ is also enjoined by Rule.
Most people, I suppose, would be horrified if they were shown the small scourge made of thin waxed cord to which five or six little knotted tails are attached and told that it was used by almost all religious to inflict upon themselves a considerable amount of pain.
The metal ‘discipline’ is an even more vicious-looking instrument. Its slender, snake-like tails can cut and sting quite cruelly.
For those who have a definite attrait for penitential practices, other ingenious torments have been devised. There are bracelets of steel, wide-linked and studded with points, which, although not sharp enough to draw blood, are none the less extremely painful when fastened tightly round an arm or leg. Chain girdles on the same lines are also worn occasionally; and a little flat wooden cross, set with short, slightly blunted nails, can cause—when worn, for example, on the shoulder under a heavily pressing choir mantle—almost excruciating pain.
Haircloths—the favourite garment of the Fathers of the Desert—were desperately uncomfortable things. There were two styles: one, a kind of sleeveless tunic like a herald’s tabard; the other, a wide belt, strapped about the loins. They were made of knotted horsehair with as many ends as possible left loose to prick the wearer. My recollections of the hours I spent inside them are best left undescribed.
With the exception of the discipline, nobody is obliged to use any of these instruments of torture. During Lent, however, on the vigils of the greater festivals and at other times when the spirit of penance is in the air, most religious, I imagine, go in for something of the kind.
And it is a positive fact that these penances, when wisely practised, produce remarkable results. Performed under obedience, they do a very great deal to bring about that subjection of the body to the spirit without which the highest adventures in the spiritual life can never be achieved.
We will now return to the canteen.
The last thing I mentioned, you may remember, was my lying awake in the stifling and densely populated room.
By now, the atmosphere had become positively fetid. Feeling that suffocation was imminent, I was just about to decamp to the bathroom for the remainder of the night when suddenly a long, screaming whistle followed by the familiar crump that to the initiated could only mean one thing, came hurtling through the air. A split second later, a deafening explosion made the house curtsy and sway before it staggered back into immobility. Then the sirens began.
‘O Gawd,’ said Maudie, crossly, sitting up in bed with her skinny arms clasping her bony knees. ‘Land-mine, I shouldn’t wonder. Blast that ’Itler! Can’t ’e let a pore girl sleep in peace?’
On the whole, alarm was less noticeable among the girls than irritation. Presently the Commandant, obviously nervous, looked in and suggested the shelter. The girls, however, declared that they couldn’t be bothered, and when, after about an hour, the bombardment from overseas stopped as suddenly as it had begun, they rolled back into bed again and automatically fell asleep.
I observed that Ireen, alone out of the whole roomful, had slept undisturbed throughout the din.
An hour passed … half an hour … and then, just as a faint sensation of drowsiness was at last beginning to steal over me, I was roused by a dreadful sensation of something hurrying along my spine. I ignored it. An instant later, there it was again, this time in the region of my shoulder.
Groaning inwardly, I reached out in the darkness and found my torch….
Investigations revealed that two large and exceedingly muscular fleas were careering about my person.
I was unable to catch either of them.
Three-quarters of an hour later, somebody’s alarm went off in the passage outside.
It was time to get up.
(8)
Life in the B.A.C.S. billets started at seven in the morning.
The girls rolled out of bed, smeared over their faces with a damp washing glove, shook out their hair and then went down to breakfast in the kitchen. As the excellent food was apparently unlimited, this took a certain amount of time. They then washed up and dispersed to get the housework done.
Their beds, which they never dreamed of stripping and seldom opened, were quickly finished. After that, the food for the canteen had to be prepared.
Just before ten o’clock, there was a frantic scurry to the bedroom. Here they removed the curlers from their hair, anointed their faces with skin-cream, rouge, powder, mascara, lipstick and what-not and came forth so resplendent as to be hardly recognizable.
I had consigned them to the kitche
n-maid stratum of society. But on comparing them with the down-at-heel untouchables who, in my early youth, had relieved my mother’s admirable cooks of such arduous tasks as potato-peeling and the scouring of the innumerable saucepans exacted by the luxurious cookery of that bygone age, I could only shake my head. The world, in the last thirty years or so, had done more than alter. It had become a completely different place.
Three times a day the canteen opened for a couple of hours. In consequence, three times daily, the kitchen and scullery floors had to be scoured on hands and knees. This job was allotted to me. And as my labour was unskilled, I came in for a good deal of contumely from Maudie, who had made up her mind that I considered myself superior to the other girls.
‘If you think them lah-di-dah airs you gives yourself is going to get you anywhere,’ she would declare venomously before the assembled staff, ‘you’re wrong. You’ve got to scrub them floors same as anybody else. Lady nor no lady, I won’t have no work shirked in my kitchen, so back you just go and scrub that bit over by the coal bucket: see?’
Had she but known how despairingly un-lah-di-dah my opinion of my own accomplishments was fast becoming, she might have been more merciful. As for being a ‘lady’—well, if there is anything in the Brains Trust definition of a lady as one who is invariably kind and thoughtful with regard to other people’s feelings—few of us, I suppose, could pass the test.
Washing-up was an occupation that I particularly detested. Iris and Badger were supposed to help me but as a rule were too much occupied in making love to attend to anything else.
A large proportion of the time was spent in peeling potatoes; a depressing job, as it had to be done in the scullery which was dark as hell and smelt of cheese. Or did it? Perhaps it was just the faint aroma of tired Camembert which hung tenaciously about those cushions (scrounged from heaven alone knows where for me by the kindly Badger) which followed me, no matter where I went, throughout the day….
I Leap Over the Wall Page 21
