by Jane Gardam
A hole in the air.
I read and re-read the letters, on and on. At the end of each one he had always said ‘love’. I clung to this wonderful fact: that he had always said love.
And I began to feel sorry for him—that he had been burdened with letters like mine. All the things I had said were the things that he so prudently would have felt were best unsaid. I had based my great trust that we felt and thought and saw alike on the fact that when I was twelve years old he had said that he would leave me a footprint, and that when he went away the last time he had said that he loved me.
Such a correct and truthful man. Such a nice man. Everyone said so. Would he tell lies? Oh, of course he would not.
So I thought on my island.
There was one night—I had been translating Crusoe for hours, colouring in the chapter-headings, underlining with very exquisite care, letting the fire die, the lamp go down, my feet grow cold. All sound in the house and outside it had ceased. Only the clocks.
I said, ‘It is time. It is time, Polly Flint. It’s time this stopped. He is nothing. You are sick. No woman need suffer like this. It is wicked and mad. Forget him.’ And telling myself this with great authority, some of the burden did fall away, as did Robinson Crusoe’s on awaking from his fever to a spell of God’s peace.
The next morning, since I had gone to bed at almost dawn, Alice brought me up my post and there was a letter from Rebecca Zeit to say that she was coming to The New House to arrange for the sale of it, or of what the soldiers had left of it, and might she come and see me.
Her writing was huge and black and spluttery and she arrived a day or two later, exactly as she wrote. I heard her voice right up in the drawing-room calling out to the taxi outside to come back in an hour. ‘In one hour,’ the voice called like a bell, ‘now exactly, Mr Boagey, not more, not less. Yes.’ The door-bell jangled loudly and I heard her laughter as the wind took all the mats in the hall and wafted them about. Alice showed her up and she swooped forward in a great flurry, still talking, though whether to Alice or me or to herself wasn’t clear.
She had turned into a still rather alarming but rather merry woman in tight-fitting clothes, with fur at the neck and cuffs, very fashionable: an ugly, long-draped jacket, short skirt, and her hair short as a man’s but still curly crammed under a beautiful helmet hat. She talked and she talked, seeming unable to keep still. Bright green eyes searching about.
‘You’re exactly the same! Exactly. Oh, Polly, I don’t believe it! You’ve been here all this time. Nothing has changed!’
‘I couldn’t leave.’
‘The old woman—the aunt-person. Did she die?’
‘In the end.’
‘But couldn’t someone—? Wasn’t there anybody? She wasn’t even a relation.’
‘No. But—’
‘Yes, of course. I remember—you were terribly Christian at the yellow house. But you’re not all alone here, Polly?’
‘Well, we’ve had some officers billetted—’
‘You must have noticed the war?’
‘They bombarded Hartlepool. At the very beginning. But I was staying away on a farm.’
We had tea.
‘And no romances? With the officers?’
‘I hardly saw them. Alice looked after them. I’m not very romantic.’
‘Yes, I remember. Factual downright Pol. Robinson Crusoe. You were always the plain woman.’ She realised what she’d said and tried to set it right, ‘I mean the straight woman—salt of the earth. Dependable. You’d have been wonderful in France you know. But perhaps you’re lucky.’
‘It is over without me. It is over and we’ve won.’
‘It’s over,’ said Beccy, ‘that’s all.’
‘What will you do, Beccy?’
‘I’m stuck nursing in a private nursing home—but I’ll stop now. Get back to Cambridge and finish.’
‘Yes, I see. Is Mrs Zeit—?’
‘Oh, Mamma has survived. But it won’t be long now—’
‘She’s ill?’
‘No, no—Mamma’s never ill. No, the war. We’ve made a decision. We’re going back to Germany—all of us. It’s mother’s idea. We all agree though. It won’t be easy here—everything of ours in England’s sold up—it was mismanaged, neglected. Mamma was interned you know. Theo in the Army. She’s suddenly feeling very continental—very German-Jewish. She wants to work for post-war Germany.’
‘But can you? Live there after it all? After all you’ve seen of Germans?’
‘Yes. What makes you think they’re so different? Somebody must start somewhere showing that all countries are the same. Just people. If we bleed Germany dry now there’ll be another war in a generation. You’ll see.’
‘Do you tell people this?’
‘No, no. I must say we don’t. It would not be the moment.’
‘Why d’you tell me, Beccy?’
‘Well, you’re not just anybody are you? It’s funny, I’ve always felt you were a sort of part of our family. Yet when it comes down to dates and times I suppose it’s almost nothing. That day on the sands—you know—I felt we’d known you always.’
‘Yes I know. It was the same for me.’
‘And I think you were even closer to Theo. You and Theo—I think you knew him better than I did.’
‘Knew?’ I was standing and held on to the back of the chair. ‘How is Theo?’
‘Oh Theo’s perfectly all right. He was wounded pretty early on you know. Bit of shellshock, but he never quite broke up. Had a good long sick-leave. Very brave, our old Theo—could have got right out of it if he’d tried. Of course, you never quite know what Theo wants. He’s survived—playing it fairly carefully. D’you remember that queer Treece person? He lasted no time at all. It wasn’t just that Theo was careful, though. He’s lucky. He’s the sort who’ll never get cancer or TB or be run-over or have accidents. D’you know, Mamma and I never really worried for him. Isn’t that weird? He’s amazingly his old sweet silent self as a matter of fact—oh, look here, ducky. Here’s the taxi, I must go. It’s been lovely to see you, Polly. Mamma often talks of you. I think she feels the least bit guilty you know. She had such schemes for you—to push you into a university. D’you remember? She still makes these wild decisions.’
She was firmly pulling on gloves.
‘There wouldn’t have been the money for it, Beccy.’
‘Oh, she’d have seen to that. And she’d have seen that you had the right qualifications—she’d have got you coached. She had a pull with Somerville. Modern Languages—that’s what it was to be, wasn’t it?’
‘I’ve no idea. And I couldn’t have gone. As things were.’
‘Mamma would have seen to the old woman. It was the war. It swamped her. All of us. She had a worse time than me in the internment camp you see—ostracism and so on. Two years. And it was so ridiculous. She can’t bear to be ridiculous. But I do know she feels guilty about you—just a teeny bit mis’.’
‘There’s no need. I would not have been helped.’
‘Oh, Theo’s getting married. Maybe you knew? Delphi Vipont of course. Never been quite my sort—or Mamma’s and we’ve told him for years she’s not his. Besotted with her. As ever. Well—it’s been a life-long thing. D’you know she never wrote to him once when he was in France. She was pretty wild. The Viponts lost everything in the war, you know—so he’s a haven for her now.’
We were at the taxi. She looked me quickly up and down and gave me the sharp, assessing bird-look I remembered. She said, ‘It’s been lovely. Look—we’ll see each other again, Polly, won’t we?’
It is considered usual that anyone in great solitude of mind for many years will run mad. Alexander Selkirk, after only four years upon his island ran mad as a hare, as did most of the other historical characters who may or may not have been Daniel Defoe’s inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. Indeed, it is a sign of a human being’s sanity, perhaps, that he should run mad in such circumstances, and perhaps Crusoe himself was i
nsane when he arrived on the island, for his twenty-eight years in residence show only the growth of a most extraordinary and unnatural steadiness.
This growing, rather frightening sanity proceeded from a very affectionate analysis of himself, his ability to stand apart, to watch and to muse upon his shaggy and unlovely figure walking the great beaches, perched upon the ferocious cliff-tops, treading the forest and saying: ‘Well, I don’t know. Look at me. I have God and myself to talk to. How much better to have God and oneself to hand than almost any other of one’s acquaintance. “That man can never want conversation who is company for himself, and he that cannot converse profitably with himself is not fit for any conversation at all.”’
Oh, the stability of this great Yorkshireman! After the two years—two years—of digging the trench for the sea to introduce itself to his great beached boat he finds that the sea will never reach it. He stands sagely and calmly by and says: ‘How great is the human condition. A man may learn from his mistakes.’
Occasionally the passions flower. Occasionally they even threaten to take charge. Yet they never do take charge—not wholly. For as they manifest themselves they are monitored, dissected, pondered—and dispersed.
There are some secret, moving springs in the affections which, when they are set going by some object in view, or even not in view . . . that motion carries out the soul in such violent, eager embracings of the object that the absence of it is insupportable.
When that happens, the hands of Robinson Crusoe clench, and Robinson Crusoe watched them clench, so hard into the palm that anything in them (he reflects) would be crushed.
Crusoe feels Crusoe’s teeth involuntarily clamp together so that he can hardly part them again. ‘Doubtless,’ says Crusoe, ‘these are the effects of ardent wishes and of strong ideas formed in the mind.’
‘How very interesting,’ says Robin Crusoe, and tick-tock, in time, Crusoe’s body, Crusoe observes, begins to behave itself again.
Monumental, godlike Crusoe. Monumentally and deistically taking control of his emotions. And I, Polly Flint, after the knowledge of my loss, set out to be the same. Theo’s face and being and presence at her shoulder, Polly Flint blots out, and lets the noble and unfailing face and being and presence of Crusoe become her devotion and her joy.
Crusoe is her idol and her king.
Crusoe’s mastery of circumstances.
Crusoe, Polly Flint’s father and her mother.
Crusoe, the unchanging, the faithful.
Crusoe, first met at the cracking of Polly Flint’s egg.
Crusoe, the imprint.
Crusoe, her King Charles’s head.
Will Polly Flint ever attain Crusoe’s magnificent simplicity?
Will Polly Flint ever attain his wonderful exploration of emotion as a means to morality and truth?
Will Polly Flint ever attain his wonderful endeavour to bring things to a divine balance? ‘Bringing the years to an end as a tale that is told?’
All these became, after the vanishing of Theo, Polly Flint’s whole cry.
Sitting in the yellow house with nothing in the world to do. Polly Flint. Twenty years old. Might there be time?
I became very odd. Oh, really quite odd then.
The officers who had begun to be billetted at the yellow house in 1917, I had, as I told Rebecca, left entirely to Alice, who had had charge of the money we were paid for their keep. Only when they were gone did I realise that without them we should be on the way to starvation.
‘There’s nothing for it now but lodgers,’ said Alice.
‘Would we ever get them? Right out here?’
‘Yes. If we advertise the ozone. We’d get fifteen shillings a week full board. Each.’
‘Perhaps we should try just one.’
‘We should try more. We should try three.’
‘Could you manage, Alice? You know I couldn’t spare time from my book?’
‘I could manage if we go shares.’
‘Shares? Of course. Oh Alice, don’t I pay you enough?’
‘Twelve shilling a week is all you can afford to give me. But we’ve possibility here of a decent living, Miss Polly.’
‘Lodgers. It does seem extreme.’
‘It’s the only hope for us. We’ll start getting Miss Frances’s room up, then the spare room and then I’ll make a clearance of Mrs Woods’s.’
‘Haven’t we done that yet?’
‘I never quite cared.’
‘Yes, I see. Could I—?’
‘No. I’ll see to it. We’ll sell everything since nobody’s emerged to take interest in it and there’s no will.’
‘Precious little,’ she said a week or so later. ‘Rags, tatters, bibles. Her cross could go to the nuns and her clothes I’ve taken as charity down to Fishermen’s Square though they didn’t look overjoyed at the sight. You can’t seem to get rid of bibles. It seems a sin to burn them—’
‘Oh, burn them. It’s only superstition.’
‘The knick-knackery I did sell—a picture or two and a sewing-box. I got two pounds so I bought some whisky. It’s wise to have a bit of whisky in a house. For emergencies.’
She put bottles down on my desk. ‘These,’ she said, ‘were fastened into her prayer-book with a band,’ and she propped against the bottles twelve fat letters unopened and addressed to me. They were Aunt Frances’s adventures after her wedding which Mrs Woods, in her dark queerness, had kept between herself and God—long loving letters which had been seen by no one and each one saying how she was looking forward to my going to India.
‘I always thought she’d flitted down into the hall and round about sometimes at the beginning and nobody knew it. Right down to the hall-stand. It’s why she had the second stroke I wouldn’t wonder,’ said Alice, ‘And never to open them as well as never to say! That’s horrible cruel and unforgiving. That’s very bad.’
Perhaps it was unfortunate that the happiness the letters gave me would always be associated with the simultaneous arrival of the medicinal whisky. Or perhaps this was just part of the pattern, too.
‘Her room’s real bonny now,’ said Alice, ‘and there’s a Miss Gowe come to see it, or rather her sister did. Miss Gowe’s arriving tonight.’ (It was a month later.) ‘She works in the post office. To live here,’ she added. ‘You understand?’
‘We’ll have a drink to celebrate,’ I said.
‘Another three are arriving next week,’ said Alice, pouring. ‘My dad says a bottle holds seven drinks. That looks rather a lot. We’ll say nine about. My, it’s strong!’
‘It’s splendid. Who are the three?’
‘Two commercial gents and a schoolmaster from The New House School. Insignificant little feller so I’ve put him above you.’
‘But that’s your room—Charlotte’s old room.’
‘I’ve moved down into Miss Younghusband’s.’
‘Yes I see. Well, thank you for doing so much, Alice.’.
‘We’ll be rich by next year. Rich enough to see to the window-sashes on the sea side anyway. And in time to the roof.’
‘Is the roof bad?’
‘You should see the ceiling in Charlotte’s bedroom. I’m only taking six shillings from the schoolmaster.’
And Alice from this moment turned into the White Queen, flying here, flying there about the house from dawn until long after dark with bundles of washing (laundry extra) and bedclothes and trays of food. They were easy lodgers—or Alice saw to it that they were—the commercial travellers turning out to be pale washes of men, something to do with office equipment in the Stockton and Darlington railway where they spent long days. Miss Gowe was a fat, grinning creature, all cardigans and said to be in charge of postal telegrams at Middlesborough, though it seemed rather unlikely, her powers of communication being scarcely developed.
The schoolmaster was called Selwyn Benson, a near transparent silver-fish of a man, but Alice said that all the masters at the new school—bought from the Zeits—were either flotsam from the tr
enches or too frail to have gone into them in the first place. Mr Benson was in the first category presumably, for he shook and flipped past us in terror, up the stairs and down, and froze if we spoke. At night I sometimes heard him crying in Charlotte’s old bed and Alice said that when she took up his breakfast tray he often hid behind his wardrobe door, poor little lad.
There were odd folk everywhere after 1918, for many years.
‘You’d not think we’d won this bloody war,’ said Alice, ‘My dad says after Mafeking you knew who was the heroes.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Bloody,’ said Alice. ‘Sorry, Miss. It’s all over the buildings. I can’t help it. The marsh is all buildings now. It’s to be an amusement park and that next—and a public rose-garden. It’s to make employment. There’s to be a hurdy-gurdy and penny-on-the-mat. We’ll hear it all right even out here. Between us and the town. Well—it’s the only good thing mebbe the Germans has done to give employment.’
‘Daniel Defoe,’ I said, ‘that’s to say Robinson Crusoe, spoke well of the Spanish even though the War with Spain was scarcely over.’
‘I don’t want to hear, Miss. You know my views in that direction. It’s time you finished with that romance. You can’t get another squeeze out of it, I’d think. Can I go now? There’s shopping and the orders. And we need another bottle.’
Often I watched from the study window as Alice set off to the town on these housekeeping expeditions in the following months, prancing on her high heels with her imitation fox-fur around her neck and a fondant pink toque upon her head and wondered where Alice, the tired young mouse, had gone—but blessed both of them.
