Unfortunately, in almost every case, the snag was my lack of previous experience. Now and again, however, I myself declined a job simply because I felt so sure that I should never be able to hold it down. This was, of course, a despicable line to take. But the truth was that since my experiment at Wisthaven, a sort of diffidence had begun to sap my courage. Lately, too, all the spring and bounce seemed to have gone out of me. I began to lose the good I might have won by fearing the attempt; a state of mind which has always struck me as particularly deplorable. And since inner darkness had come down upon me in Holborn, I no longer had the power to find wonder and delight in common things. Even the vision of my Cornish Cottage had receded into the universal fog and refused to emerge as a source of consolation.
Things, in fact, were looking about as black as they could be.
To add to the general atmosphere of accidie, sleep also began to desert me. Even by day the neighbourhood was noisy; but after midnight, when the house opposite began to eject its inmates, there was a Comus-like din. Shouts, shrieks, shrill giggling and drunken laughter made sleep impossible. When I mentioned it to my landlady, she merely shook her flaxen head and explained in her funny clipped English that it was a Bad House and that one of these days undoubtedly Something Would Happen there.
Possibly my complaints may have had something to do with speeding up the crisis, for a few nights later I was roused by an energetic knocking at the door. I hopped out of bed to find my landlady with a huge and apologetic-looking policeman. Between them they bore a folding screen which they proceeded to hoist into my room.
Should I very much object, my landlady inquired, if the police officer were to come in and sit at my window for a little while? He wanted to keep an eye on the comings and goings in the house over the way and from my room he would be able to observe everything without being himself visible.
I did object, and said so. This, however, appeared to distress them both so much that in the end there seemed nothing for it but to give in. Accordingly, the screen was placed all round my bed to provide a semblance of privacy. The Law then marched in, switched off the light, drew back an inch or so of curtain and then sat down, like puss at a mousehole, to observe its prey.
It must have been shortly after midnight that he sprang to his feet, muttered an apology for having what he described as ‘incommodated’ me and darted out into the street.
I looked out of the window but it was too dark to see much of what happened. Two cars drew up; there was the sound of a police whistle—then voices, some angry, some laughing. Then some scuffling followed by the sound of running feet. Presently the cars drove off and there was silence. I waited a little but as nothing further happened, I went to bed.
Next morning, my landlady told me that there had been a police raid. After which, I am glad to say, sounds of revelry were heard no more across the street.
(7)
‘If you will allow me to say so,’ observed Mr. Home—he had already done so twice during the interview, so that I was getting used to it—‘you are quite the best-preserved lady for your years that I’ve ever seen!’
It did just flash through my mind that the compliment—if compliment you could call it—might have been more felicitously worded. But at forty-nine one is thankful for even the smallest mercies. I therefore said nothing. Thirty years back, I reflected, not without amusement, what a different story it would have been!
And here, if I may, before explaining who Mr. Home was and why I was sitting in that cosy armchair in his inner sanctuary, I will digress again.
From the age of about seventeen onwards, I had been, so I am told, what would now be described as ‘easy to look at’. There can be no vanity in saying this. To-day, Vogue patterns, permanent waves, make-up and film-star technique have put glamour pretty well within the reach of everybody. In my youth, it was otherwise. Good-looking girls were far rarer then than now. So that if nature had blessed you with blue eyes, curly hair, a good complexion and the attractiveness that is inseparable from youth, you were bound to draw admiring glances from the average male.
When I first left school, I was considerably thrilled by this eye-homage. After a time, however, I grew so accustomed to it that I accepted it simply as my due.
Most women, I suppose, lose their looks and physical attraction gradually. And because this fading-out is a slow-motion process, it hurts less than if it happened all at once.
With me it was different.
I Went In young and good-looking. I Came Out elderly and plain. And I disliked this. Very much indeed.
In my youth, when I entered a room, bus or railway carriage, eyes had a way of straying round in my direction and of returning there over and over again. Now nobody ever bothered to glance at me. Or if they did, they looked away again so swiftly that it was almost worse than not being scrutinized at all.
I found it humiliating. It gave me a feeling of being inexpressibly old and dull.
We will now return to the inner sanctum of the Head Librarian at the Royal Society of Medicine, where Mr. Home was interviewing me for the job of temporary assistant in the Library.
After all the unpleasant people I’d been up against during the past few weeks, I found something very soothing about the kindliness of Mr. Home. This elderly semi-invalid, who liked Spain and played the cello in his leisure moments, seemed curiously uninfluenced by the jagged rhythms of modern life. To my astonishment, he never even mentioned the Library Association and accepted what I told him of my previous experience without undue probing into pre-war activities. So that, although he warned me that I must wait for a final decision till after a committee meeting in a fortnight’s time, I went forth feeling not only full of courage but more cheerful than I’d done for weeks.
Just for safety, however, I thought it best to provide myself with at least one alternative job. Gay and Barbara had talked about the British Council: why shouldn’t I call there and find out whether any vacancy existed which I might fill? So away I sped to their headquarters in Hanover Street.
On the whole, I think the most important thing I learnt from my invasion of their premises was that one can sometimes get farther by a judicious use of bluff and blarney than by keeping to the more conventional methods of the chemin des vâches. Thanks to a technique I’d evolved in the light of previous failures, I successfully managed to worm my way into the presence of a very important personage indeed.
Mr. Hampden, was, if I remember rightly, something high up in the British Council’s Library Department. Though young, he gave the impression of being remarkably efficient. His manners, too, were charming. In fact, we should have got on very well had he not completely upset my poise by offering me a cigarette.
The moment I’d accepted it, I remembered how Gay had once declared that a man could find out Everything That Mattered about a woman by observing the way she dealt with a cigarette. This shook me rather badly. I reflected, however, that he probably wouldn’t discover much from my antics: since it was unlikely that he’d ever seen anything remotely resembling the way I dealt with mine.
To my astonishment, the interview concluded with Mr. Hampden offering me a three months’ trial in the library department of one of the British Council’s headquarters in the provinces.
I was so overcome that I blinked at him for several seconds before I could think of anything to say. A blind instinct suggested that I should do well to get out of the place before he had time to change his mind. So, trying to conceal the exultation that was beginning to overwhelm me, I rose from my chair and, with as much dignity and detachment as I could summon, held out my hand.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you so very much. If I may, I will think over your offer. And when I’ve made up my mind, I will Let You Know….’
The other job for which I tried was at the Admiralty.
This involved several visits to the Labour Exchange, a considerable amount of queueing and the filling up of yet another lengthy autobiographical form. About ten day
s later I was summoned to report at certain temporary offices in Whitehall. Here, in a cold, badly lighted room I found about twenty rather dingy-looking women and one man waiting, apparently, on the same business as myself.
Presently two bewilderingly bright and competent young women of the school-teacher type appeared and ushered us into a room packed with rows of small wooden desks. I slipped into one in the back row between an elderly woman in glasses and a frail little wisp of a girl whose squint had apparently preserved her from being press-ganged into the Forces; and the ordeal began.
Now, I take it that what the Admiralty wanted to find out was the degree of intelligence possessed by the various candidates for the job. And—in the majority of cases—the General Information Quiz which formed the subject matter of most of the questions was as good a method as any other of separating the sheep from the goats.
For me, however, it would have been hard to find a more unfortunate system. Apart from the arithmetical problems, which I was totally incapable of solving, they nearly all dealt with things about which I’d never even heard.
It looked rather as though I should have to spend the morning twiddling my thumbs.
Then an idea struck me.
I composed an introductory note in which I explained the situation. In it I stated that I’d had a rather peculiar career but that although I couldn’t answer just the questions that had been set, I hoped that what I was about to write below would serve as a proof that I possessed a certain amount of education.
I then wrote out in the form of questions and answers some fairly erudite facts about the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. I drew up several neat little tables of dates and a genealogy of the rather complicated family of the Emperor Constantine. And I ended with an essay entitled Points of Contrast Between London in 1913 and 1943. One and a half hours’ work in all; and though I say it who shouldn’t, quite a tidy little sampler of my own particular type of mind.
Unfortunately, I shall never know what the examiners thought of it. Some days later, however, I received an official communication which stated with reference to my recent interview, that the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty regretted to inform me that there was no suitable vacancy in which my services could be utilized.
On the whole, I was not very much surprised.
(8)
In the end, I decided to turn down the British Council for the Royal Society of Medicine.
For my final interview, I had to go before a committee consisting of kind Mr. Home; a rather ferocious-looking old gentleman, whose name I don’t remember, and a dynamic being in some kind of lavender uniform, who turned out to be Mr. Geoffrey Edwards, the secretary and moving spirit of the R.S.M.
I was extremely nervous. They were, however, so nice to me that I ended by feeling happier than I had done for weeks. And when at the end of the proceedings, kind Mr. Home invited me to celebrate my engagement as an employee of the Society by having tea in his book-lined lair in the back recesses of the important-looking building, I felt as though I had fallen among friends.
It may possibly be remembered that some weeks previously, while awaiting my turn for an interview at the Ministry of Supply in Adam Street, I had been struck by the appearance of a tall, pale young man who would have fitted better into the pages of the Morte d’Arthur than into the waiting-room of a twentieth-century War Ministry. Picture to yourself, then, my surprise, when I discovered him as my fellow-guest at tea. He looked more like Sir Alesaunder Le Orphelin than ever; very much a champion of the oppressed, despite the obvious fact that his physical strength was much inferior to the spirit within. He had not, I believe, been down very long from Cambridge and I felt at once that many of our values were the same. I liked him. His name, it seemed, was John. Mr. Home explained that he too had joined the staff of the Royal Society of Medicine that afternoon.
I mention the tea-party because it held for me a very mauvais quart d’heure which I still remember. Being the only female present, I was asked to preside over the teapot. And this was a thing which I hadn’t done for close on thirty years. I could hardly have felt more at sea if I’d been asked to take the wheel on the Queen Elizabeth. Manners and customs had changed so astonishingly during my absence that I felt sure all kinds of new rules about tea, sugar and milk must have come into being while I was away. A remark of Barbara’s, to the effect that there were two sorts of people in the world—those who poured out the milk first and those who poured out the tea first—floated disturbingly through my mind. Which ought I to do? And didn’t one have to do something about filling up the teapot with hot water? It was all very confusing. Another agitated S.O.S. sped heavenwards for guidance to the Saints of Paradise….
In the end, I got out of the difficulty by repeating Barbara’s statement and asking each of the two men to which school of thought they belonged. This, I felt, would at least relieve me of responsibility for the dreadful choice.
Meanwhile, my thoughts swung back instinctively to afternoon tea in the convent. This was a brief, austere and essentially unsociable affair. Nobody was obliged to have it. But, should you feel it necessary, you might, when the cloister bell rang for strict silence just before three in the afternoon, slip in for the cup of tea and slice of bread and margarine that were provided in the refectory. The food was set out on a strip of oil-cloth at the end of one of the long oak tables: beside it were ranged the big earthenware mugs with their basin-shaped saucers that the nuns used for breakfast and tea. You might sit where you liked—except, of course, at the Prioress’ table which was sacrosanct—but you must observe absolute silence and keep your eyes, as always, recollectedly cast down. As often as not I have sat there with no idea who happened to be sitting on either side of me.
When you had finished you polished up your place with the duster provided for the purpose, carried your cup along the cloister to the lavatorium where the nuns washed their hands, cleansed it scrupulously (everything had to be done as perfectly as possible) and put it away in a cupboard till breakfast next day.
(9)
About my work at the Royal Society of Medicine there isn’t really very much to say. I was put as a kind of assistant into the Library department, where my job consisted chiefly of taking in, checking and giving out the books and papers required by the Fellows. I also occasionally answered queries on the telephone.
Those queries were nightmares. As often as not, I could make no sense of what the person at the other end was talking about. It must, I know, sound pitifully feeble, but for some reason the habits of mind and body induced by the life I had always lived made it curiously hard for me to adapt myself to what was now required of me. I knew nothing of medical terms and, as often as not, was hardly ready with pencil and paper to take down the inquiry before the voice at the other end had rung off. In the end, I avoided the telephone and applied myself to humbler jobs in which there were next to no ‘personal contacts’. I thus earned for myself—in certain quarters—a reputation for shirking the more arduous part of the work.
During the months I spent there, a good deal was added to my Experience of Life. Some of it was due to such intercourse as my work gave me with the Fellows—who appeared to belong to every type and nationality under the sun; but most of it came to me from observing the behaviour of the other members of the staff.
The Great Ones—Mr. Home and the elusive secretary, Mr. Geoffrey Edwards—dwelt apart in Olympian sanctuaries of their own. In consequence they were very seldom seen. But there were lesser deities in charge of various sub-departments who fascinated me by their utter unlikeness to anyone I had ever met before.
It has been said that Librarians, as a class, tend to develop unusual personalities. I am sure that Mr. Kelson, who worked in a kind of eyrie at the top of a twisted iron staircase, will not mind my saying that I always looked on him as a case in point. You felt instinctively that his spirit roamed in regions unexplored by ordinary mortals. I loved asking him questions because his answers so often m
ade me jump. This stimulated thought. It also opened one’s eyes to the possibility of there being other points of view besides one’s own. Time and again I have marvelled at the agility with which his bony figure would dart up and down that iron stair in search of some query (we pronounced it to rhyme with ‘cherry’ at the R.S.M.)—or to give an opinion on some abstruse and learned subject to an enquirer on the telephone.
There was also Miss Jones, who presided over the large and luxurious Fellows’ Reading Room. Her culture and learning would have petrified me if it had not been for the delightful friendliness she always showed. Now and again we lunched together, which gave me the opportunity of studying at close quarters the phenomenon of a Girton M.A. who did not disdain to unbend until she could meet me on common ground.
As for the two girls who ran the section in which I worked, I learnt from listening while they chattered to one another—and they were seldom silent—quite a lot of which I had been unaware before. Young, highly efficient, the possessors of husbands, university degrees and an enviable supply of brains, is it to be wondered that their companionship produced in me a paralysing sense of my own inferiority? And when I assure you that however low was my own opinion of myself (and it grew daily lower), it was high compared with the opinion they obviously held of me….
All of which combined to keep my soul with its nose more or less in the dust.
It was John who, at this time, did most to advance my retarded education.
He was the kind of young man that I should have selected—had Providence permitted me the choice—for a nephew. He possessed just those qualities most calculated to rejoice the heart of an elderly spinster aunt. He was kind, tactful, sympathetic and full of the species of humour that I most appreciate. We met occasionally over lunch and tea; later, when summer came, we now and again spent what remained of the lunch-hour in the cool shade of the gardens in Cavendish Square.
I Leap Over the Wall Page 25
