The Pritchett Century

by V. S. Pritchett

  I hear Newford is larger now; people commute from there to London. Only a few used to take a train from Fordhampton, with its main street running down the hill to the small river, where we would lean from the bridge hoping to see the private trout in the pool where rich Londoners, one of them a Cabinet Minister, used to fish at weekends. On Monday mornings, when I was waiting at our station for the train to take me to school, the Cabinet Minister would be dressed in bowler hat, black coat, and striped trousers, and carrying his official case. Unlike the rest of the passengers, he would be trotting up to the end of the platform and back, often fifteen times: I counted. If my father drove me to the station he would give his big laugh and say loudly for anyone to hear, “Bloody politician. Up to no good.” I was a weekly boarder at the school in Newford, and at first my mother drove me all the way and then would pick me up on Saturday mornings and drive me home to Upper Marsh, a different country, almost an island between the Downs, where the village people had a more drawling way of talking than the people in the towns. I had picked up the habit before my school days, from the children I played with on the farm near our house.

  Marsh Hole really was like a deep hole, where four lanes met at a big farm. Our house was a mile up the road to Upper Marsh, a red mock-Tudor villa that I used to boast was Elizabethan. It was built between the wars. I also thought it was immense, but it was small. It looked out onto a large field of kale. At the back of our house (which my school friend Augusta called “the eyesore”) lay a two-mile stretch of water meadow that went to the foot of the bald Downs themselves. Rarely did one see anyone walking across it and not often any cattle grazing, either. The endless pampas (as I used to call it—one of my favourite words) was alive with insects in the spring and summer, and, from my bedroom, I used to feel I had only to stretch my finger to touch the prehistoric barrow at the top of the far-off hill and the curious chalk track that went in a zigzag scratch almost to the top. The water meadow began at a hedge at the bottom of our steep garden. I remember when I was thirteen gazing at it and feeling it all belonged to our family. This was because the people at Lower Marsh, half a mile farther down our lane, had exactly the same view, although we could not see their house even in the winter. A mound or tongue of coppice kept us from the sight of our nearest neighbours. Lower Marsh had a short avenue of elms leading to a farm where I used to play with the village boys. Lower Marsh House itself was large and grey, with big windows. The village boys said it was haunted. A strange tall man with a long black beard sometimes came out of it, and once I saw him in the road piddling into the hedge near our house. Another time, a funeral hearse went by and after that the black-bearded man did not appear again. But my mother told me I could not have seen all this, because I wasn’t even born. Yet it is very vivid to me, and now I think I must have heard my parents talking of some such event much later.

  But I know for a fact that years later Lower Marsh House was occupied by Major Short and his wife and a young boy, because I saw them hitting a shuttlecock in the air once or twice as we drove past. Often at weekends if we were walking by we could see two or three cars parked in the avenue of elms.

  “Guests!” my mother would say.

  “Weekend riffraff,” my father said. “Gang of traitors. Pacifists, longhaired pansies, atheists, bathing stark naked in that swimming-pool. Friends of Hitler and Stalin. Calls himself a major.”

  “Well, he was,” my mother would say.

  “First World War,” said my father, who was a brigadier.

  “But, Buzzer,” my mother said—Buzzer was my father’s army nickname: they used to say he buzzed like a wasp—“didn’t Major Short do rather well in that war, got a medal and was badly wounded?”

  “Got himself blown up, some fool dug him out.”

  I always thought of the Major as a kind of fair-haired elephant, with a huge chest, lying under tons of French mud. My father had also been wounded. His left arm creaked and he wore a black glove on his artificial hand. He was a slight man with red hair and scalded patches on his face and a high, sandy kind of voice with grit in it, and when he talked of the Major he would get into a temper. Then he’d laugh in the middle of it, and more than once he added, “Sends his boy to a god-awful boarding school in Dorset run by pansies and refugees wearing sandals, where the boys live in trees. Girls, too. No wonder the little bastard runs away.”

  “Surely not in trees, Buzzer,” my mother would say in her high, thrilled, happy voice. I think that my mother and father were thrilled by each other.

  “Ruined by that nanny they had, too,” Father went on. “Not a lad I’d care to have in my command.”

  These outbursts cheered my father. He was often up and down to the War Office in London or away fishing. At home he would either be ordering Mother’s plants about in the garden or sitting for hours playing patience with his one hand. “Crash, crash, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,” he would call out as he put a winning deal down. He was thinking of glass flying about in French villages when shells burst during that war.

  Another thing that annoyed my father was that the Shorts did not go to church. We were forbidden to know them. Mother said it was nothing to do with that old war. The real trouble was that our land almost joined theirs and that the Major had cut down several fir trees at the edge of it. My father, Mother said in her heavenly voice, liked cover.

  As for myself, I often thought about “the little bastard” Benedict, who not only lived in trees but was a “run-away” as well: that worried Mother, too. In spite of the quarrel between the two men, I believed Mother and Mrs Short sometimes met in Newford. They belonged to a musical group, a quartet. More than once I saw the boy shopping with his father and mother in Fordhampton, jumping up and down with excitement as he called to them to look at the posters of a gangster film at the cinema and talking with a spluttering lisp. He had black hair like his mother’s and her same sunburned toasted skin—because he lived in trees, perhaps—and he was handsome in his mother’s way. I used to wonder if he had run away that very day. He was two years younger than I.

  At fourteen, I was a studious girl. I longed to be a monitor at my school and I thought, as my father did, that Benedict was spoiled and that he ought to be “taken in hand.” Often when I was out in our garden and looking at the Downs rising straight out of the marsh I was fascinated by the chalky track rising to the top and I would think of Benedict “running” forty miles, at least, across country, and coming down that track as he came at last in sight of his home. I soon found out that in fact he did not run far. He had the nerve to telephone his father once he had escaped from that school of his and his father drove out at night, to pick him up outside some pub on the road. I was awed by this crime.

  This and the thought of all those guests “bathing naked” in the “traitors’ ” house at Lower Marsh gripped me. In the holidays I would sometimes get through the hedge at the bottom of our garden and follow the rough ground until their house came into view and I would see the lawn of the Shorts’ garden and keep an eye open for a sight of the runaway. Once, I thought I saw him with his mother walking across the water meadow picking wild flowers. Another time, he was coming in our direction and then drifted away. I used to think if he came near our garden I would shout out to him, “What are you doing here? This is private property!” At last I decided to be illegal myself one weekend and to climb through our hedge and then walk cautiously all along the meadow till I could get a full view of the Shorts and their friends. Getting through the hedge always excited me. The air seemed freer on the other side, the smells different. I did this many times just for something to do, and at first went no nearer. I always took an apple with me, throwing it up and down as I walked, for I thought this would make the Shorts think I was passing by accident. Sometimes there was no one there, sometimes only Mrs Short digging in her garden. If it was a weekend there would be several men and women sitting in basket chairs on the long veranda or on the lawn. The lawn looked rough, but sometimes they played a mixt
ure of bowls and croquet. In time I got bolder, passing within twenty yards of their garden. No sign of naked atheists or a swimming pool and only once a sight of Benedict, running from player to player. I heard the Major booming at him.

  I gave up bothering about the Shorts. One hot and heavy afternoon at the end of that summer when the clouds hardly moved and the water meadow was as still as a photograph I got through our hedge again and walked across the water meadow, soon eating my apple, because I was thirsty. I looked at the St John’s-wort, a yellow flower that swarms with disgusting caterpillars. The insects were biting and I kept brushing off the flies that were swirling round my head. I remember the swallows and crows were flying low. I was making for the wood at the bottom of the Downs and when I got there the wood pigeons had stopped cooing. Even the flies had gone. The wood had that cankered, damp smell—the smell of toadstools. It came into my head to see if there were any Red Blushers, which excited me, because there might be also what my fungus book called Poisonous or False Red Blushers—not that I would touch them but I liked to give myself a fright by staring at poisonous things and congratulating myself on knowing the difference. I didn’t go too deeply into the wood but just shuffled through the dead leaves. The wood was darker, and presently I felt a big warm spit of rain on my face. Suddenly a shot went off, and I nearly jumped out of my skin and the silent wood pigeons came clattering out of the trees and went circling over the marsh. Then there was a long silence. I hurried out of the wood, and crackling sticks seemed to be coming after me. Suddenly the runaway came running out, carrying a gun. There were tears on his white face as he rushed at me.

  “Quick! Quick!” he screeched. “I’ve shot a bird. It’s streaming with blood. It’s frightful. It’s still alive. It’s flapping about.” And he grabbed hold of my arm.

  I brushed back my hair. I heard myself saying in my father’s voice, “Stop waving that gun about. You can’t leave a wounded bird.” I shook off his arm. “Show me where it is,” I said.

  “Up here! Up here!” he shouted out.

  The bird was lying on the ground flapping one wing. There was blood on it and its white lids were closing upward. Benedict was afraid to touch it.

  “It’s got diphtheria,” he said. “That’s why I shot it.”

  I knelt to pick it up.

  “Birds don’t get diphtheria,” I said.

  “They do,” he screeched.

  In a moment it was dead and horribly warm.

  “We must bury it,” I said.

  “No,” he said and stepped away. He was white and frantic.

  “Come back,” I said. “We can’t leave it here. It’s cruel.” When I was small we always buried a bird if we found one dead.

  “You must bury it,” I ordered. “Dig a hole.” He had no knife. Nor had I. I told him to get a stick. He obeyed and we started digging a hole in the soft ground.

  “Make it deep,” he said. He was excited now. At last the hole was deep enough and I put the poor bird in and raked the earth back. “More leaves, more leaves,” he said. “In case a stoat digs it up.”

  “Did you get permission to have that gun?” I said. We were very hot about “getting permission” for things at school.

  “It’s Glan’s,” he said. Glanville was his father. “Is this your half-term?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m a weekly boarder.”

  “The Devil lives here,” he said. He had decided to frighten me.

  “That’s stupid,” I said. “He doesn’t exist.”

  “It’s a she-devil,” he said and he started jumping about in a jeering way.

  “You’re dotty,” I said.

  I now felt several drops of rain, then it was pattering down. This stopped us talking and we looked up. There was a strange change of light and then a rumbling noise. The air was hot and heavy. Thunder! We hurried out of the wood, which was filled with a new sour smell, and just as we got out of the trees there was a long yellow flash of lightning. The peal of thunder came at once.

  Benedict gave one of his shrill laughs. “We’ll be struck dead,” he screeched.

  “We must get away from the trees,” I said. And then the rain came drenching down so that we could hardly see his distant house through it.

  We started to run. My blue-and-white cotton dress was soaked at once, and we were nearly blinded by the rain. There was another flash as we stumbled through the humps of the meadow and then mud splashed our legs. We were running towards the Shorts’ house; thank goodness my father was away fishing. We got across the ditch onto Benedict’s forbidden lawn and ran up to the veranda of the house. I looked around as we ran: no swimming-pool in sight. The Major’s wife was standing there calmly, and then the Major came out.

  “Ah,” he said in a calm, insinuating, conspiratorial voice. “The frightful Benedict and who has he brought with him? Is it the apple girl? I wonder. Yes, it is the apple girl.”

  I realised I had been watched from the house every time I walked past. I was afraid of him.

  “Oh, Benedict, you’re drowned,” his mother said. “What a bore you are. What on earth got into your head, when you know the Crowthers and the others are coming any minute. And look at poor dear Sarah. Get inside.” How did she know my name?

  “Shall I take the firearm?” said Glanville Short to Benedict. “I wonder how it came into your possession?”

  All houses have their smell. The Shorts’ house was larger than ours and smelled of thyme and oil paint and old wood fires.

  We were taken up the plain polished stairs of the house—the stairs of our house were carpeted—passing paintings of geometric faces which looked new. I remember two fat pink naked nymphs dancing on a big seashell and two naked young men standing looking at them. We passed a large room upstairs with bookcases going up to the ceiling and a picture of that tall man with the long black beard sitting in a basket chair and stroking a cat. I was pushed into a bathroom.

  “Get it all off, I think, don’t you, Sarah, my dear?” said Mrs Short, who had a book in her hand. “While I see to Benedict.”

  What a bathroom! There was a blown-up painting or photograph of an ancient ruin, which continued on three walls of the room from floor to ceiling. I rubbed myself with a towel. When Mrs Short came back I was staring at the painting.

  “Is that the Roman Forum?” I said, showing off.

  “No, that is Persepolis, my dear. In Persia.” She pointed to a figure on a grand but broken stairway. “They say it is Darius—you remember?—but it doesn’t seem possible. Now, I don’t know what we’re going to fit you out with.” She had brought a bundle of shorts and jerseys with her.

  “We were burying a dead bird,” I said.

  “We could turn the legs up. Do you mind shorts?”

  People coming, I thought, as I dried my hair. How awful.

  “Please don’t bother,” I said as I pulled on the shorts. “May I ring my mother?”

  “Now you’re a boy—what do you make of that? Rather fun? How is your mother? I missed her at the chamber music last week.”

  So that rumour was true! I had always suspected that although we were ordered by my father not to know the Shorts, she and my mother still met at Newford.

  “Rather chic, I think,” she said, looking at me. “You must come down and get warm.”

  We went along the corridor and round corners to a second flight of stairs, down to a kitchen and through a cloakroom with a telephone in it, and then across the hall into a large morning room, where there was a music stand with a sheet of music on it near a large window, and a violin propped against one wall. A radio was on a big table with books and newspapers and also on the same table there was a large, unfinished jigsaw puzzle spread out.

  And that is how I remember Emma Short always: a small woman with small, brown brilliant eyes, as dark as Benedict was, wearing a plain but pretty dress, chattering and eagerly questioning herself as she stands before the large puzzle of some famous picture—a cathedral or a castle perhaps, with a rive
r in the foreground. This one also had the figure of a man with a boat on the river. She is standing there picking up a piece and saying, “How beastly they are to put so much water in these things. It’s cheating. What a bore. Ah, now—here, do you think? No. No. Ah, perhaps here? You must look at the little wiggles.” And she put a curly piece of the puzzle into its place.

  “You must know Mrs Figg,” she said.

  “She teaches us French,” I said, surprised.

  “I know!” said Mrs Short with a laugh. “Too extraordinary. What do you make of her? Odd, do you find? Her hats! Is Augusta a friend of yours? She’s coming.”

  Augusta Chambers, head girl of my school! Augusta—to see me dressed up like this!

  I said again I must telephone to my mother to fetch me.

  “Glan will do that,” she said. “You must have some tea to warm you up.”

  Through the window I saw two or three cars arrive. People and their children were soon jabbering in the hall. I heard Benedict screeching at them. As they came into the room Benedict was pulling Augusta’s father by the wrist and saying, “Foxey, Foxey, you’re a murderer, a murderer. I’m going to report it to the police.”

  “The number is 3052,” said Augusta’s father. “Shall I get it for you?”

  There was a crowd of people taking off their coats in the hall. Benedict let Foxey’s hand go, and Augusta came to me and said, “What fun.” She whispered, “Benedict is mad, as usual.”