(5)
Down in the country the hedgerows were bridal-white with hawthorn. The gardens blazed with lilac and laburnum flower. But the heat was overpowering. And the entire county gave one the impression of an armed camp.
Soldiers, tanks, lorries and the immense closed vehicles—large as houses—that had already begun to pour through London, blocked the roads. The heat-wave, joined to the appalling pre-invasion tension was at moments almost more than one could bear. At night, the enemy dropped bombs; the roar of incessant dog-fights overhead made sleep impossible and intensified the atmosphere of strain.
Almost immediately after my arrival in Sussex, such tremendous events started happening that one almost ceased to have any personal life of one’s own. One simply sat there panting, eyes excitedly scanning the headlines, ears glued firmly to the wireless, from which, in thrill-smitten, feverish voices, the announcers proclaimed the heroic happenings of the last weeks of the war.
About mid-June, another of my aunts invited me to stay with her. She lived in Hove—a place I have always particularly detested—and was the kind of invalid who could only endure the society of other people at stated times.
Now, my dislike of Hove is so intense as to amount almost to a mania. So much so indeed, than when obliged to go there, I try as far as possible to keep my eyes shut. In that way, I avoid a good deal that I had rather not see. And this, as may well be imagined, tends to induce a somewhat introverted state of mind.
Picture to yourself, then, my excitement when, on withdrawing myself in horror from my surroundings and slamming the door of my interior citadel, I discovered therein, bubbling and seething like a witches’ cauldron in the depths of what I believe is to-day known as the subconscious mind, something which obviously just couldn’t wait another minute for its release.
There was only one way of effecting this.
I sat down, took up my pen and began to write….
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the first chapters of this book were born.
(6)
I must say that to me it was like heaven to know that I could sit down there, uninterrupted, and write for as long as I chose.
In the convent, one of the things that had tried me most was the incessant change of occupation which became obligatory at the first sound of the bell. The discipline, too, of the thoughts which the Rule exacted was a severe trial to anyone blessed—or cursed—with an imagination like mine. The worst struggles always took place during (a) mental prayer, (b) the long hours spent in the recital of the Divine Office and (c) the time before sleep came to one at night. All of which were, of course, occasions when the Rule demanded that one’s thoughts should be wholly occupied with ‘spiritual’ things.
There were times when the urge to yield was almost irresistible. To kneel down and apply oneself to prayer seemed the signal for an army of attractive ideas to invade one’s mind. In my case they were generally in the form of plots for stories; notions for essays; chapter-openings and conclusions; exciting situations; scraps of entertaining dialogue; even verses and ideas for plays. The very air seemed charged with these amusing literary odds and ends. As Elgar once declared about music, it was there all round you; you had but to reach out your hand to grasp it and it became your own.
One day I complained about this to a wise old nun to whom the Mistress of Novices had sent me in accordance with an ancient custom of the house. This decreed that on vigils of the greater festivals the novices should be sent to certain of the more venerable members of the community with the request that they should tell them of their faults.
On the whole, I had rather a horror of these little interviews. Their extreme formality always made me shy and embarrassed; besides, one knew quite well that one’s reactions to what was said were being carefully noted and would help to tip the balance when the time came for one to be voted for by the persons concerned.
With this particular nun, however, it was different. Though I only knew her slightly, there were things about her that I could not but admire. She was afflicted with what in the convent was known as a ‘distracted memory’ and in consequence, was addicted to turning up late. As a result, the poor soul often found herself in awkward and humiliating situations. And my sharp young eyes had observed with admiration how eagerly she made the most of every humiliation that came her way.
When I plopped down on my knees at her side in the bare little cell where old paper, string and boxes were stored for the general use of the community, she drew her bushy grey eyebrows together with a little grimace of half-amused distaste.
I asked her, in the ancient formula which every postulant had to learn at her entrance into the noviceship, for God’s sake to tell me of my faults.
I have never forgotten her answer. It was given in a slightly gruff and half-embarrassed kind of voice. She said:
‘I was just thinking that it might be a better thing if instead you were to tell me about mine.’
Which, of course, did far more to attract me to the virtue of humility than any amount of exhortation could have done.
When I consulted her about the dragon-fly ideas whose winged attacks so often prevented me from praying, she smiled and said:
‘Innocent! That’s a temptation of the devil. Father So-and-so [she named a certain well-known Jesuit, long defunct, whose advice was rather too often, the younger members of the community considered, quoted by the older nuns whose spiritual director he had been] ‘always used to say that he made it a solemn rule never to act upon any “bright ideas” that came to him when he should have been in prayer.’
I would give a good deal to be able—honestly—to declare that from that day onwards I always imitated his excellent example. In this book, however, I have tried above all things to speak the truth. And the truth, I am sorry to say …
We had better leave it at that.
(7)
Somewhere about this time my hatred of Hove reached a point when I felt that it could no longer be endured.
That same feeling had visited me so often in the convent that I ought to have been inured to it. In a sense, I suppose, I was. But the difference between then and now was that to-day, if one felt that one’s surroundings had become intolerable, one could escape.
There was, of course, only one spot upon earth that I wanted to escape to. What was more, my bones assured me that the hour had struck when the summons which had sounded in my heart on the journey down from Scoreswick must be obeyed.
Once more the enchanted country on the other side of Tamar had begun to magnetize me. There was clearly nothing to be done about it except fall in with what felt like one of the most terrific Inward Urges of my life.
(8)
The bags and suitcases on the overhead luggage-rack joggled dangerously. There were too many of them. You felt that a sudden jolt would bring them crashing down on their owners’ heads. This, with the fact that the carriage contained more people than it had originally been built for, was all that from time to time reminded me that I was in a train.
You will perhaps be able to picture the state of mind in which I was journeying down to Cornwall when I tell you that, had I been hurtling through space in a chariot drawn by dragons, I could not have been more thrilled.
The very girders in the blitz-scarred roof at Paddington appeared transfigured: I saw them as fairy arches through which one passed out into the realm of gramarye.
‘Gramarye.’ Yes: that, undoubtedly, was the word for it. And on that particular morning, it was everywhere. Now and again I had a definite physical feeling that it was beginning to break through from the invisible territory which I was trying to invade.
I settled myself into my corner and looked out through the broad plate-glass window of the Cornish Riviera express. If ever a magic casement, I reflected, had opened over a perilous fairy sea, it was to-day….
Blue skies and flowers in sunshine on the cliff-tops, with spars from a shipwreck floating in the cove below … to me that spelt the do
uble personality of Cornwall. Half her charm lay in the number and unexpectedness of her contrasts. She communicated herself in a series of odd little shocks.
If I had to pick out the pair of contrasts which seemed to me the most characteristic of the double spirit which meets you at every turn in Cornwall, I should have no difficulty. I felt it long before I actually arrived. It was the subtle, almost sinister Tannhauser struggle between the two motifs of paganism and Christianity.
On the one side, you had the saints and hermits who, in the early centuries, had floated across from Ireland on a spread cloak or millstone of miraculous origin. From the little wave-side churches in the sand, from the holy wells beside which they had dwelt and to which they had given their names, rose their chant of prayer and praise strong and clear as a pilgrims’ chorus down the years. And on the other … well, you might say what you liked…. But there was no denying it; from among the trailing ivy and the gnarled tree-trunks in the wooded valleys, from the hillside boulders and the stone circles and the ancient burial-mounds, on a spring morning or when the moon was full at midsummer, the faint far-away fluting of the pipes of Pan could still be heard.
I kept my nose glued to my magic casement. But it was only after the train had rushed through Reading that the fun began.
It started with a sudden deepening of colour. The earth reddened. The fields grew lush and deep. The sky flamed to a more ardent blue. Streams and pools appeared and the woods and copses changed from burnt olive to emerald and gold.
At Exeter there was a long stop: long enough to let me hear for the first time the mellow, deep-voiced dialect of the West country. I liked it better than any speech I had ever heard.
After Exeter, a new rhythm crept into the melody. It was the rhythm of the sea. Along the miles of biscuit-coloured sand that stretch between Teignmouth and Dawlish, slow waves broke, in long ruled lines of silver. The milky, egg-shell blue of the water looked faint and feminine against the dark sorrel-red of the tunnelled rocks through which the train occasionally boomed. The sea was so close that now and again it seemed as though the waves would dash themselves across the line.
Plymouth—squalid beyond words, with its mean slums, war-wreckage and appalling devastation—was an unwelcome reminder of the civilization from which one was in flight.
‘Look,’ somebody in the carriage called out excitedly, ‘we’re just going over the viaduct at Saltash!’
And I knew that the gateway into the enchanted country had been reached.
A moment later and, with a rattle and a roar, the train was through it.
I was in Cornwall at last.
(9)
Now it is not the least use for prosaic people to insist that the ‘feeling’ which comes upon you as you pass over from Devon into Cornwall is ‘imagination’. Because it is nothing of the sort.
That first moment when you find yourself in ‘the land of the ancient kings and sorcerers and superstitions’ is quite different from any other moment that you may have known. If you are properly prepared—if you are in the mood of sensitiveness and receptivity—if you are ‘tuned in’ to accept what Cornwall has to give—then—well, as everybody knows, ‘anything may happen down in Cornwall’. Whether, in your case, it will or not, depends very largely upon you.
The journey from Paddington to Saltash is only the prelude to Adventure. It is on the other side of Saltash Bridge that the Adventure begins….
The first thing that impressed me about Cornwall was that the landscape had grown sterner. Instead of the rich red soil and moist pastures of Devon, there were steep hills with scurrying streamlets and valleys filled with rocks and undergrowth. Now and again the train rumbled across a viaduct and, looking down, one saw the tops of trees far down in the gorge below.
Here were the forest tracks along which Sir Tristram must have ridden up to Camelot: the very woods, perhaps, through which King Mark fled, chased by Sir Dagonet the Fool…. The whole country gave one a vague impression that it had lived through thrilling happenings. The very air was thick with story. It blew in through the open window like a breath of incense out of the forgotten past.
It was before Truro that a Cornish fellow-traveller started reciting the station names to his companion. After that, I knew for certain that I was in a foreign land. Menheniot; Double-bois; Lostwithiel; Carn Brea; Gulval…. Here was gramarye indeed. Only to utter such words of power should surely be enough to summon buccas, spriggans, piskies from their lairs.
I had chosen this particular region of Cornwall because all I had read of it suggested that it would be the perfect setting for my Cottage-in-the-Clouds.
It bulged with ancient British villages. It crawled with prehistoric odds and ends. It contained more holed-stones, fogous, cromlechs, monoliths and stone circles than any other part of Cornwall. Mysterious presences and apparitions haunted it. People said that it was the last stronghold of the Cornish fairies. And in bygone days, it had been the chosen dwelling place of giants.
Could one ask more?
My plan was to explore the countryside in the hopes of discovering a cottage. Failing this, I meant to buy a plot of land and build.
It was late afternoon when my dragon-drawn chariot at last pulled in to Penzance. And—it was raining.
But what rain! To me it seemed almost lovelier than sunshine. The sky was a misted opal and the breeze from the sea like wine. And just across from Marazion, shrouded in veils of faintest lavender, St. Michael’s Mount floated above the water, a dream palace on a fairy isle.
(10)
It was a pity that the state of my exchequer only allowed me to spend the inside of a week in Cornwall. However, the kind Vicar and his wife with whom I was staying drove me about quite a lot in their little blue Morris. This helped me to spy out more of the land than I could otherwise have done.
It was the first time I had ever stayed in anyone’s house as a P.G. This bothered me. I felt certain I should do and say peculiar things. So, to safeguard myself against being thought ‘queer’ I decided to give my host and hostess a brief outline of my career.
They had been charming to me from the outset. After that, however, their kindness deepened to solicitude. No one, in fact, had been nicer to me since I Came Out.
The Vicarage stood on the top of a hill with the sea at the bottom of it. When I woke on the morning of my arrival, warm, flower-scented air drifted in at the window. In the garden, fruit and palm trees made one think of the south of France. I floated downstairs in a kind of ecstasy.
At breakfast, the daughter of the house—a rather beautiful girl with the face and figure of an angelic Valkyrie—offered me a slice of ripe melon. After the sort of breakfast that I had grown accustomed to in London, I could hardly believe my eyes.
There was every sign that it was going to be a glorious day. For the first time since I left the convent, I dared to wear a light summer dress which a friend had sent me from America. It felt inexpressibly frivolous. All the same, I couldn’t help reflecting how much more sensible it seemed to be dressed according to the season instead of wearing the almost polar outfit which, summer or winter, had been obligatory while I was a nun.
Certain nightmarish memories still haunt me of the Fridays in June, July and August when the heat was very nearly unendurable in the choir. Friday, however, was the day on which the ‘choir sweep’ had to be done. So, at nine in the morning, when the Subprioress rang the cloister bell for ‘Common Work’, the head sacristan, followed by her two helps, would set out for the choir.
Even at that early hour, the heat was often tropical. Move an eyelash and a bath of perspiration would be the result. The heavy serge clothing and thick knitted stockings did not make things easier; and when one had girded on an all-enveloping apron there were at least six layers of various materials protecting—if that is the right word for it—one’s torso from the air.
When the entire choir and carved stalls had been meticulously swept, dusted and brushed, the first polishing began. Beeswax
and turpentine had to be rubbed in and then rubbed off again. Next came the final polishing. The wide parquet floor was the heaviest. You started on hands and knees, rubbing for all you were worth to get finished before the community arrived for their Visit to the Blessed Sacrament before Spiritual Reading at eleven o’clock. The ultimate mirror-like surface was not achieved without a struggle. One used a kind of long-handled broom with a heavily padded slab of concrete at the end; pushing it backwards and forwards until the desired perfection was obtained. It was really far too heavy for a woman to drag up the choir stairs from the distant cupboard in which it lived. Usually the two under-sacristans vied with one another for the distinction of hauling it to the choir without aid.
The whole business generally took about two hours of all-out effort. In the winter, it was an ideal way of restoring frozen circulation; but when the midsummer sun was overhead it was enough to fatigue an elephant. And if you happened to be fasting …
One day, early in my religious life when I was still full of Bright Ideas, I remember saying to the Reverend Mother:
I Leap Over the Wall Page 30
