A House in Order

by Nigel Dennis

  ‘The Camp Commandant has reported your detention here to the Commissioner of Prisoners of War. A Deputy chosen by the Commissioner will arrive here shortly to take your deposition. The Colonel has told me to tell you that he has confidence in your ability to answer the Deputy’s questions.’

  As he opened the door, he added: ‘The Deputy may ask you whether anybody here had any conversation with you about his visit. If so, you may repeat what I have just said.’

  Half an hour later, a squad led by a corporal arrived at my door in a pompous military way, and with stamping, barking, and turning, took me up the verandah steps and into the usual room. The Deputy, who looked like a stout officer in the Salvation Army, and wore a black-checked band round his cap instead of a red one, looked up as soon as I came in and spoke immediately to his own interpreter, who asked, before I was even at attention:

  Q: Have you not been issued the regulation razor?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: How long have you had that beard?

  A: Since I came.

  There was a silence. My own interpreter, who was to have brought me such happy news, sat alone at one end of the table: the rest was taken up by the Deputy and three assistants. Not a sound came from any other part of the house, as if the whole lot of them had run away.

  After pushing certain papers forwards and backwards and glancing occasionally at me, the Deputy turned to his interpreter again:

  Q: Do you know why you are here for questioning?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: Did any officer, prior to the Deputy’s arrival, forewarn you that this would occur?

  A: The interpreter told me this morning.

  Q: That officer, do you mean? What did he tell you?

  A: That the Deputy Commissioner was coming and that the Colonel trusted me to answer all questions honestly.

  Q: Anything else?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: Give me your full attention. I am going to read the Commissioner’s authority under the Protection and Privileges of Prisoners Ordinance:

  ‘It shall be authorized to the Commissioner or his Deputy to take physical possession of, and carry wheresoever he will, any prisoner whom he deems to have been threatened, subdued to silence, unduly cajoled or improperly affected in speech and deposition by those in immediate physical possession of said prisoner.’

  Do you understand these words?

  A: Some of them, sir.

  Q: They mean that if your answers make the Deputy suspect that you feel threatened by your present captors, or in any sort of danger, he has the authority to order your immediate removal. Do you understand?

  A: I do.

  Q: Now, will you kindly give the Deputy your answer once more to his question: what forewarnings were you given of the Deputy’s arrival?

  A: That the Deputy was coming soon and the Colonel knew I would answer properly.

  Q: ‘Properly’? What did you understand by this word?

  A: Pardon, I have said it wrong, sir. ‘Answer honestly’, I should have said.

  Q: The Deputy takes note of the discrepancy. Have you more to say or to correct?

  A: No, sir.

  The Deputy then turned back to his papers and began to question me, beginning with who I was, what my work had been, and all the things I had answered a hundred times already. His questions got very slow and careful when he got to where I had run down the road and been stopped by the dead soldier.

  Q: Did you notice anything about this soldier’s uniform that was different …?

  Q: You say he asked advice in the dark of other soldiers. Did you notice their uniforms – if they were similar to his …?

  Q: It was your impression that he received no assistance from anyone …?

  Q: Are you prepared to repeat that you sat in full view on your chair for a full day and were observed by nobody …?

  Q: One guard, you say, had a bruised eye, and the face of the other was inflamed. It was your conclusion that they had been beaten …?

  Q: … Marched away by a squad of riflemen. How soon after did you hear the shots …?

  Q: Have you seen this so-called ‘young officer’ since the day he returned your glasses …?

  On what occasions, please …?

  Q: The Deputy asks me to remind you that your life is in no danger and your safety assured. Will you bear that in mind when answering his questions? …

  Q: It was your conclusion, then, that the Prison Commandant had asked the Colonel for you to be handed over …?

  Q: You are a competent person where such matters are concerned. To what temperature, approximately, did your prison fall during the winter …?

  Q: Two blankets, yes. Any form of greatcoat …?

  My own interpreter never said one word through all this and though he looked at me from time to time his eyes were perfectly round and empty. At one o’clock sharp, the Deputy laid down his pencil and rose from his chair, and I was marched out and given food in the ante-room. Sharp at two, my questioning started again:

  Q: Your sole work, then, has been in this greenhouse, apart from one hour a day recently in the garden?

  A: Yes, sir.

  Q: Under whose direction have you worked?

  A: None, sir.

  Q: No officer has spoken to you about what you should do, what you should grow, and so on?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: So what have you grown?

  A: A large variety of plants, sir.

  Q: Edible plants?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: I see. And nobody has made any suggestions to you or participated in your efforts in any way?

  A: Only the agronomist, sir.

  Q: Oh. Who is the agronomist?

  Here, my own interpreter uncrossed his legs and spoke for the first time in a quiet voice. The Deputy listened to him as shortly as possible and turned back to me.

  Q: This agronomist – did he talk to you?

  A: Only to ask if I would take a cutting for him.

  Q: A cutting of what?

  A: My Malta house-leek. He saw it was unique.

  Q: This leek is edible?

  A: Oh, no, sir.

  Q: Oh. And are you now engaged in making him such a cutting?

  A: I have four leaf-cuttings, sir, that I hope will do well.

  Q: I see. Now, will you tell me something quite simply and frankly – has it not struck you as very extraordinary that you, a prisoner of war, should be passing your days in such a manner?

  A: I hoped, sir, it might lead to more useful work.

  Q: What has occurred to make you think that?

  A: Oh, nothing has occurred, sir.

  Q: Nothing?

  A: No, sir.

  My interpreter now uncrossed his legs for the second time and, putting both hands behind his head, stared up at the ceiling. The Deputy, noticing the movement, turned his eyes to look, but there was nothing to see but what he saw. A mouse crossed the room at this moment, but my heart started beating so fast that I have no idea where it came from or where it went, and all the others were looking elsewhere.

  The Deputy, not looking satisfied but still like someone who has got a lot of what he wants, now pushed his papers forward and rose to his feet. He spoke quietly to his interpreter, who said to me:

  ‘The Deputy will now proceed to an inspection of your greenhouse.’

  But at this, my interpreter sat up straight and, with the faintest shake of his head, spoke respectfully to the Deputy, who got stiffer and stiffer as he listened. He answered my interpreter in just the same quiet voice, as if each recognized the other’s dignity in front of a prisoner, and my interpreter responded in the same way, though his face got paler.

  The mouse came into the room and re-crossed it on exactly the same track as before. Everybody saw it this time, but nobody chose to do anything.

  At last, the Deputy’s interpreter received his instructions and said to me:

  ‘The Deputy thanks you for your information. Owing to the absence of a se
nior officer, he will not proceed immediately to inspection of your premises, but will take the earliest opportunity to see that this is done.’

  My interpreter then gave the Deputy a very polite bow and left the room, on which the other interpreter said to me:

  Q: Have you any complaints? Because now is the time.

  A: No, sir.

  Q: No complaints?

  A: None, sir.

  When they had put away their papers they all went out, and my squad took me back to the greenhouse. I saw the Deputy and his assistants driven down to the camp, where the big gate was opened for them.

  Before dark, all the officers were back in the house, the Colonel first, the others soon after him, in twos and threes. Last in was my young friend, cheerful as ever, with a wink as he ran past. But he was hardly in the house when he ran out again and called up my guards, who took me out and up the verandah to the usual room. Here I found the Colonel alone with my interpreter; but the Colonel spoke directly to me now, as if there was no point in pretending any more that he couldn’t. He said:

  ‘Well, my friend, you are growing braver every day. I hear that you were a model of honesty with the Deputy in all matters concerning me, but used your wits nicely in matters concerning you. This is not the sort of courage I admire, but I mustn’t say anything sharp to you, because you are now under the protection of the Prison Commissioner, who is eager to pick a bone with me for having sport with his Commandant. ‘You were brave enough to lie to the Deputy and say you had no reason to suppose that my horticultural friend hoped to take you off my hands. You lied because you knew that if you told the Deputy the truth, he would interfere. So, there is still a fair chance that in a few days you will find your ungrateful self carried off to the Garden of Eden: it is simply a matter of whether the Horticultural arm can grab you quicker than the Commissioner.

  ‘Kindly listen now to what I have to tell you. My horticultural friend has no need of you. He wants to help me. The Commissioner has no interest in you. He wants to punish me for playing jokes on the Commandant. So bear in mind, my friend, that you are only an accident in this tug-of-war – someone who began as a personal joke and has grown into a general nuisance. All the power that remains to me is to shoot you out of hand in an emergency. After what you have done today, I would be glad to use that power – and it will be I who will decide, please remember, whether there is an emergency. That is all. Thank you and good evening.’

  Next morning when the young officer passed, he gave not one look in my direction, nor was there a sign of a grin on his face. Later, I saw my interpreter come down the path with another officer, and he, too, seemed so grave that I felt sure the whole lot of them had heard by now what I had betrayed to the Deputy and were discussing what excuse they could find for wiping me out. The oafish guard, my brainless admirer, never sneaked one glance through my glass walls today and just returned his face to the brutality it had had in the days when he was ready to cut my throat. All the motions I saw, as my dreams disappeared and my panic grew, led to a new dream that I didn’t doubt at all – of six riflemen assembling behind the house, the young officer handing out an issue of ammunition, the coming to fetch me and the taking off of my glasses, even some uniformed carpenter planing a coffin. I stood picturing this without having the nerve so much as to move, the sun pouring through the glass and the sweat running down me like streams down the side of a bath, until I got so weak with my sweating that I couldn’t stand and got first into my chair and then onto my blankets in the cooler shed. Some would choose to be murdered, I suppose, with their head covered and eyes closed, but I had to see whatever horror was going to come and I lay staring out along the greenhouse path, seeing the guard’s legs pass slowly up and down. He put an end to this by coming suddenly to my door and getting me onto my feet with one growl and a wave: pointing at all my plants, he gave me to understand that I was not expected to spend the war stretched at my ease in the shade. The mumblings and growlings that came from his throat needed no interpreter: I knew they were the imbecile phrases that all blockheads learn from their dads and spout out whenever they can – that life is a struggle and toil a duty, that though the sun be hot only the lazy sleep, that we should all do nothing if we could, that it is not by dreams we grow the prize marrow. These were the only words this stupid ploughman ever spoke to me – and made me hate him because they showed he had lost all his respect for me. Not that I minded that much now, because I was beginning to realize something much more dreadful – that unless the agronomist came and took me away, I must escape to MACKENZIE before MACKENZIE managed to get to me.

  They played their wretched music after supper that evening, their band in the middle of the compound, the rest of them in rows round the walls. The music was only a tinkle and a clatter to me, but their cheering and clapping and snatches of laughter came over clearly enough – my friends who loved me and were 800 strong behind me. Having reminded me for half an hour that however much I dreaded them I had somehow to get to them, they stopped their noise suddenly, as if preparing for something special, and then began to sing:

  Open the door, Confucius,

  And let old Harry in.

  He’s an unemployed contractor

  With a hairy length of skin.

  He’s travelling to Norfolk

  Where he keeps his gutty shag

  And expecting to provide her

  From his offer – tory bag.

  Chorus:

  With you tonight, Confucius,

  Just shake him up a doss,

  A stand for his umbrella

  Is home to Harry Ross.

  After they had sung all the verses of this ‘Harry Ross’, which I had heard them bawling like cretins all through my time in barracks, they switched, as such types always do, to slow songs about cottages and roses. Then they had a short silence, after which they put the best bugler up on the stand alone and all stood at attention while he blew. When he stopped, they cheered him like madmen, laughing and yelling, and marched off at last out of the compound, orderly as ever, but singing: ‘With you tonight, Confucius’ at the tops of their voices. A few minutes after they were all inside, a party crossed the empty compound and the big gate opened to let out the Deputy, whose black car went off in the dusk just as all the prison lights came on. My food came at the same moment and my guards were changed, and it was only then I understood that I had been given MACKENZIE’S ORDERS.

  He arrived in the dark about two hours later – such a clever, quiet man that I never heard a sound until he was through the opening at the back of my shed, and then I only heard his breathing. He never said one word, never showed himself, never tried to attract my attention. Twice that night I heard him move – the first time against a side-wall of the shed, to give me room to come in, the second time when the first glimmer of morning light came and I could hear him pulling his shirt over his head and covering himself as he tucked against the wall again. I sat in my chair as far from him as possible for hours after he came, pretending to fiddle with my wretched pots and mixing and stirring my shavings of soap and disinfectant as well as I could with fingers that had no feeling left. When I didn’t dare sit up any longer, for fear of the guard coming to see why, I laid my blankets at the entrance to the shed and lay down in them there, because I would rather die than get any closer to the man inside and hoped that the stuffy night would make my behaviour look natural to the guard. The only thought going through my head was that I must close the shed door and shut myself off from the prisoner, but I hadn’t the courage even to try, because it would mean getting closer to him and I dreaded the thought that he would speak to me. In fact, I waited for his voice all night and every time the wind made the ventilators rustle or there was a stirring from outside as the guard came near, I heard it as my name being whispered from inside. Then, I told myself: ‘You’ve only to wait till morning – you can close the door safely then’, but at some point when I had told myself this, it struck me that it was only until morning
that I would have to hold out, because he wouldn’t dare to crawl out in full daylight and so must go at any minute. So I lay all the rest of the night straining to hear him move and praying that he’d choose a moment when the guard was furthest off, and not be shot so close that they would guess where he had laid up, or put a dog to trace him back to me.

  But when daylight began, I could still hear his breathing, and the very sound of it drove me to panic. I thought first: ‘He will be with you all day. What will you do?’. and then second, and much worse: ‘But they’ll know at the prison any minute now, and trace him here.’ But I had hardly had time to picture this – hearing the alarm bells ring out, watching squads running from the prison, the church bells taking up the alarm, and so on – when their reveille blew as it did every day, the flag rose on the water tower, and the prisoners marched out as they always did and were taken into the fields.

  I never worked harder in the greenhouse than I did all through that day, because I knew that if I didn’t work my guard would suspect that something was wrong. And by going on and on in a desperate way I managed not to think too much – and thank God for that, because I had more thoughts going round in my head than I could bear to face and every one of them was enough to make me turn white. I inspected every plant in the house from its top leaves to its roots, and I picked off every single little leaf and shoot that was yellowing or sick, until I had almost a little pile on the path. I don’t think that for days now I had done anything to my plants that wasn’t automatic, because with all my pride gone and only fear inside me and dreams in my head, they might all have been sticks and stones for all I was able to notice them. I wouldn’t have been ashamed if they had all died on account of my having no feeling for them, but this was the last thing they meant to do and there was not one in all those scores that wasn’t thriving and so bursting with life that they put to shame any plants I had grown in peacetime. All I wanted to do myself was lie down on the path and die, but all I saw round me everywhere were signs of my skill and care, which seemed awful to me, because what was the use of it all and what good was it going to do me or anyone? If I touched anything clumsily, I wanted to scream and whenever I made a noise, even a little scrape, it seemed like a gun going off or a hand reaching for my collar. The worst part of the day was my hour outside, because no matter how I tried to control myself, I couldn’t work my hoe and fork properly and they went so stiff in my hands that I hardly knew which way up I was trying to use them, or even what use I was putting them to. Everything seemed to tell me that while I was out the guard would go in and inspect my quarters, though he had never done so before, and what with watching him each time he drew close and imagining what he would do next, and all the consequences, I turned every minute into terror, and everything made worse by my knowing that the less naturally and easily I behaved, the more attention I would attract. But all the time I was thinking that everything in the world was bound to be in the same state as I was myself, it was all the other way around, just as it was with my plants in the greenhouse; everything was going on as naturally as ever and the guards so used to my harmlessness by now that they hardly noticed me – ‘Which will be all the worse for you when they find him’ was all I could conclude. When I felt my old cement path under my feet again and saw all my green pots in rows like a wall beside me, it relieved me unspeakably – as if nobody would pass me in order to search for him, as if I was safer standing between him and them, and nonsense of that sort – though in a few minutes all the relief was gone through dread of having him at all.