A House in Order

by Nigel Dennis

  In one moment, all my terror of those ten piercing eyes disappeared in a wave, as if to allow the new horror to cover me, and where I had dreaded a second before abduction by one sergeant, I now saw myself pummelled to a jelly by a fancied one, whose ruthless inspection of my filthy condition couldn’t fail to revolt him. Anyone who has suffered the baleful idiotic farce of military inspection will know that even under the best conditions the inspected one is doomed, the inspector’s intention having nothing whatever to do with dirt or cleanliness and being directed only by a law that makes humiliation necessary at this moment. For a man born to cleanliness like myself, perhaps even too inclined to it, such inspections had always seemed the wickedest crime ever perpetrated by military power – and never more so than now, as I looked at the incorrigible filth all round me and knew that the coming inspection would make any earlier one seem too kind for words.

  Luckily, so long as cowardice doesn’t turn one to a jelly, it keeps one running for one’s life. I seized that brush and water-bucket so quickly that I was left gripping them and looking round and round me like a lunatic, because I couldn’t imagine where to start, and wherever I looked saw only hopeless impossibilities. And when I was feeling most desperate, it struck me that I, too, would be included in the inspection and must appear washed as fresh as the greenhouse: this blow made me drop the brush and bucket and collapse on my wooden chair.

  I put my head in my hands and sat there shaking, and as on the first day when I ran down that long road shouting nonsense into the air, I did the same now in whispers and mumbles. I wasted five or ten precious minutes in the darkness of my hands and would have wasted more if I hadn’t heard the sound of boots. It was the guard, doing his usual patrol, and as he approached the verandah steps and turned his eyes on me, I raised my head and looked back. He marched on the four remaining feet, did his customary stamping turn and started back, but as he passed my door this time, he gave me a wink.

  This encouragement – which slaves and oafs give to one another when their masters’ backs are turned – got me up again. I must have been white with shock and hopelessness, but I remember putting the brush in the water and starting stiffly to scrub the nearest pane – through which suddenly I saw the garden in its autumn colours for the first time, a glimpse of purple, gold, white and russet that I had never realized was there at all. This must have acted on me like a second wink, because I began to scrub steadily and methodically, slowly pulling away the black veil that lay on beds of astonishing colours.

  I scrubbed all that house, standing on my chair to do the roof, in the first hour of my three – and the water in the bucket already dense with black filth. When the guard came round again, I took the courage to step outside the door and do the outside, glancing at the guard for his approval. But he was a proper soldier and paid me no more attention.

  When I had brought my bucket in again and scrubbed the staging and its legs, I looked at the black remnant of water and remembered suddenly that I, too, must be washed and cleaned. Only then did it strike me that if I looked round the house I would probably find a tap – and sure enough there was an old brass one at my very elbow. So I rinsed my bucket in the rusty water that trickled in and gave myself a good disinfectant wash – yet still, I reckoned, had a good hour of my time to go. So I brought out the disinfectant again and, mixing it with a fresh lot of red water, I went over the staging a second time, until the whole house smelt positively healthy.

  Now, I had time for the details – the shining-up the brass tap with a mud paste, the pulling of slivers of glass out of the hard putty, the searching for grubby crannies, the raking of the earth floor with the stiff brush. Wherever a whole pane was out, I blocked the hole pretty neatly with sheets from the old magazines and even managed to line the warped ventilators with strips from the stuff of the deck-chair. Indeed, the house heated up so much that I began to sweat and got afraid that they would kick me because I stank. But before I stopped work, I cleaned up the pot that had the house-leek in it and turned out the slimy green soil at the base of its stem, so that it stood on the staging looking almost debonair in the disinfected sunshine. Let me be perfectly honest and admit frankly that on this first inspection of it, I noticed nothing special about it. The evidence was there, plain to see, but it was no more seen by me than I, open and upright on my chair, had been seen by the scores who passed me on my first day.

  All the time I was doing these things I was trying not to distract myself by letting my eyes roam. But the temptation was extraordinary because the whole world round me had become incredible to see. There was light and brilliance everywhere: it poured through the clear panes and so sparkled on everything that I ran about like a zany whenever a patch of humidity appeared and rubbed it back to shininess. But the garden outside was the most incredible thing of all: for two or three years the plants in it had seeded as they pleased, and the only discipline they had had was exactly what one would expect under military direction – shrubs hewed to the ground or made to stand at attention, hoed rows running like geometrical lines as if the aim were to create a griddle: it was plain to see that once a fortnight a squad of boobies was ordered into it and given three hours to reduce it to stupidity. But my eye saw through the clear glass all the things that had escaped the boors’ attention: everywhere, there were little seedlings just ripe to be potted and brought into protection – why, little self-sown shoots of geraniums were growing by the score on the verge of the gravel path and, having escaped the blundering hacks of military discipline, would now turn black and die in the first killing frost. Evidently, there wasn’t one man in the world behind the verandah who had the least idea of what extraordinary good luck had been at work in that garden during the last two years – though I, of course, could see at once that luck had really nothing to do with it. Total neglect of the stronger plants had let them grow into coverings and windbreaks for the weaker ones: this tendency has been hailed as ‘natural’ by a good number of obsessed idiot-gardeners, who have written whole books encouraging innocent fools to obtain beauty through squalor. I had not thought the day would come when I should be grateful, first, to the barbarous family that had filled this glasshouse with muck, and second, to a war that had allowed so-called nature to prove that absolute neglect is better than half-witted care.

  But I had scarcely had time to enjoy a moment’s contempt and indignation when I was back to my old condition, my heart banging away with the old alarm notes and the shivers coming out all over me. A party of three was coming down the verandah, and after stopping at the top of the steps to exchange a few words, they came on down to inspect me. It was a surprise, but a relief to me, to see that the three were the young officer, the interpreter, and the Colonel himself: true, it is the commissioned officer who orders one’s death, but he hardly ever condescends to break teeth and knock faces into pulp.

  Q: Well! The Colonel would like to know if you think you have obeyed orders. Have you?

  A: I am sure it is not good enough, but I promise I will make it better.

  Q: He asks: Is it absolutely necessary to show cowardice every single minute, and would it be possible for you to stand erect and stop trembling?

  A: Oh, pardon, I will try my very best.

  Q: He suggests that conversation is more agreeable when amiability is mutual?

  A: Pardon, of course.

  Q: He asks: Why that pot there with that plant in it?

  A: It is delicate: the frost will kill it.

  Q: He wonders if you are concealing information in it?

  A: Oh, no, no: it is quite innocent!

  Q: How do you know that frost will kill it?

  A: That is my experience.

  Q: What is your experience?

  A: In a greenhouse.

  Q: Are you not a cartographer at all?

  A: Only for my living. This is where I belong.

  Q: It is not where you belong at all. You have no business here. Don’t you know you should be in that camp with your
fellow-beasts?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Why aren’t you?

  A: I think you are protecting me here.

  Q: You realize that, do you?

  A: I think so, yes.

  Q: Why should we want to protect you?

  A: I can’t imagine.

  Q: Do you realize that keeping you here is a great deal of trouble?

  A: Oh, yes, I am deeply grateful.

  Q: Why are you grateful? Wouldn’t you rather be with your own countrymen?

  A: No.

  Q: Why?

  A: I like to be alone. Not in a crowd.

  A: Are you a married man?

  A: No.

  Q: No children?

  A: No.

  Q: Do you ask the Colonel to believe that living alone in a greenhouse is the only life you know?

  A: Oh, I exhibit my plants. Sometimes, I am a judge at shows.

  Q: The Colonel wonders if that can be the whole story. He asks: Wouldn’t it be an impossible coincidence to live perpetually in a greenhouse at peace and find yourself perpetually in another at war? What are you really up to?

  A: I saw the greenhouse when I was left in the garden. I went into it naturally.

  Q: Once more the Colonel pays you the doubtful compliment of believing you. He is a student of character and he cannot believe that you have enough courage to tell a lie.

  A: Oh, say thank you, please.

  Q: Can you stand a little straighter?

  A: Oh, certainly.

  Q: He asks if you realize that at any minute he may have to hand you over?

  A: I suppose so. I will do my best to be quiet and make no trouble. Please, beg him not to send me away.

  Q: He is not very hopeful, but will see how matters develop … He asks if you have everything you want here?

  A: Yes, yes. I can make flower-pots with those magazines.

  Q: You intend to spend the war growing flowers?

  A: If the Colonel will allow me out for an hour. There are many plants that should be brought in.

  Q: The Colonel is amazed, but he will consider the suggestion … He asks if he is right in thinking that you are fairly obstinate, in spite of your cowardice?

  A: Fairly – about plants – yes.

  Q: And arrogant, too – when you feel safe? Only humble when you are in danger?

  A: I don’t know.

  Q: He wishes that all your countrymen were like you, because it would make the war much shorter. However, he will keep a close eye on you – just in case your character undergoes a change. Do you understand?

  A: Yes, very well.

  And that was the end of their ‘inspection’ – a very embarrassing half-hour of a typically military nature. It left me shaken and with new problems to fear, but consolation came the same afternoon, when I was allowed to leave the house under the guard’s eye and provided with a huge spade.

  Consolation, but not at once. When I found myself outside the door in the sunshine gripping the enormous spade, my instinct was to run in again and shut myself up. Four walls, even made of glass, seem like armour plate, and it is paralysing to be stripped of them suddenly and expected to act sensibly in a void where anything may happen. Who would kill a man in a glasshouse – but who would not kill him the moment he stepped outside? Who can bend to dig with a rifle just behind him, let alone throw a cool eye over a ravaged garden and pick out the right shoots and seed-pods? That whole garden seemed enormous and filled to the brim with empty air: I stood leaning on my spade outside my door convinced that after I had taken a few steps and drawn clear of my glass shell, a shot would come from every window behind the verandah and I would be left wriggling on the ground like a lizard. I was sure, suddenly, that it was all a plot to get me out – that it could be nothing else, that they had decided it would be inefficient and a breach of regulations to destroy me in a glittering shower of glass.

  But I moved forward, because during the whole hour before they let me out my mind had been in a real frenzy, thinking of how I could dodge being sent to the camp by obeying them absolutely and working for them to the last degree of my strength. This need pushed me forward, just as terror of the open garden pushed me back, so I found myself tottering on but longing every second to be snug behind my glass again.

  But when I put my big spade into the ground for the first time, nothing yielded one millimetre, the spade just slid off: all was sun-baked stone that needed a pick-axe to get into it, not a trembling fool with a tool only fit for digging graves. This made my fright so much worse that I began to struggle more successfully, swearing that I would rather tear my nails off to the bone trying to get into the ground than give them an excuse to murder me where I stood or turn me over to the camp authorities. Stabbing down with a dull corner of that huge spade, I got my first seedlings up in a botched and mutilated way, suddenly telling myself recklessly that once they and I were safe in our glass hospital, skill and security would heal our wounds.

  So I hacked away, leaving my victims in small heaps and telling myself that the sooner I got the job done the sooner I should be safely back in my prison. In fact, I hacked up far too many things, as well as things that were not fit to bring inside at all: but it was only when I had half a dozen heaps that I began to sober up and look at the garden with discrimination. I was like troops who have been let loose to pillage a town: they stuff their pockets with rubbish from the very first house they raid, so, soon they must run like mad from house to house, throwing more and more of their earlier thefts into the gutter to make room for better ones. Like them, I ended up in a sweat with bulging shirt and bursting pockets and the conviction that if only I had been canny from the start I’d be rich now. However, when the guard saw me into my house again, I was so thankful that I never thought of handing back the spade, and took it in with me.

  What I heaped out onto the staging was a proper mess, but I pulled up my chair and started sorting it at once, so that by the time it was dark I had a fair idea of what I could use and the order in which it would need attention. When I had had my supper, I put paper over my sortings and went to bed, but I was hardly between my two blankets when the moon came up and I found myself saying in a real panic: ‘Are you crazy, crawling into bed as if you were safe at home? D’you want to risk half your plants and find yourself in a cage with that mob?’ So I got up again at once, with all the usual fears getting into me all over again, and began folding and shaping what was left of the magazines into pots. I had made a decent number by the time the guard was changed, and the new man, coming to the door, pointed angrily at the high moon and ordered me to bed with his thumb. I was glad to go, really, and got more sleep in the half-night that was left over than I had in all the nights before.

  I didn’t get up feeling any happier for my good sleep, because the more I thought of what I had saddled myself with the more alarmed I felt: it seemed crazy to have asked for a job that was sure to end up making matters worse. Not only had I been a fool not to pick and choose my plants, but I had been a lunatic not to use that big spade for its proper purpose, which was to dig up some fresh soil to put the plants in. I had known perfectly well when I was out there that good earth was more important than good plants, but the thought of staying on in the open to dig and carry had been more than I could face. Now, I would never be able to get out again, nor would I want to, so I was left looking hungrily through the glass at what I had left behind and comparing it with the sour, mildewed earth under my feet. All the sand and grit a man could want for enticing roots into growth were spread outside in hundredweights; inside was nothing but the dank muck that would excite decay and every imaginable disease. I suddenly had a wild picture of myself digging a triumphant tunnel under the base of the glass house and safely bringing in through it all the admirable stuff that lay so close outside – until it struck me that no matter how much the Colonel might trust my cowardice, he would not stretch it to include a tunnel. Still, thinking about this nonsense reminded me that I still had my spade and tha
t if I dug through the top layer of the sour leavings I might find a gravel subsoil underneath. Which is exactly what I did find, a spit and a half down, and the sight of that sandy grit appearing suddenly through the filth gave me the first moment of peace I had known for days. I even began to be calculating and sly, which is a sure sign of feeling back to normal, and dug down for my precious stones only when the guard was at the bottom of the path. And when I began the actual potting, the practice and habit of years came to my rescue too: there must have been whole minutes when my mind was so fixed on what I was doing that I stopped trembling and gave my stomach a rest from knuckles, boots and gun-butts. ‘It is all perfectly simple, really,’ I found myself thinking at one instant – and was at once so appalled that such an idiotic thought could have come into my head that I nearly shocked myself back into my old trembles.

  That grubby, sloppy, decadent family had left me a fine mixture. Everything in the greenhouse that had no business being in a greenhouse was of value – rags and tatters and novelettes for pots, smashed cups and saucers for crocks, filthy woollens and old socks with a lot of protective value. But needless to say, all the pests that have a natural right to enjoy filthy conditions had battened on all this valuable mess and multiplied themselves, and I saw ahead whole weeks of work turning over every ounce of soil in the house and the shed and going through it for maggots and cutworms and slugs’ eggs. This dream soon came to an end, because that evening one of the guards appeared suddenly at the door, reached inside and took my spade away. He made me jump and nearly started all my terrors off again, but when I looked at my rows of extraordinary pots, all full of good sandy stuff, I thought as I watched him walk away: ‘You are just too late, my friend.’