A House in Order (4 page)

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.

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 that 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.'

That night it began to blow harder from the east (temp. approx. 28 deg.) and reminded me that I, not the guard, was the one who was too late. One good gust alone took all my paper panes out of the east wall and sent a dozen of my clumsy pots rolling over the staging. A running ceiling of clouds shut off the moon, and I had to lie between my blankets doing nothing, for fear of alarming the guard when he poked in his torch. I put things right next morning, but that wind gave me a reminder that everything I had done so far was nothing. Any fool can make a pot and stick a plant into it, but only a much bigger fool could imagine nursing a couple of hundred such through screaming winds. I know that in the back of my mind I was imagining the arrival of things that would pull me through – a hefty slab of creamy putty, some glass and a cutter; some proper pots found lying in a shed somewhere and dumped outside my door; odd bits of felt and another pair of blankets; a change of clothes; an overcoat; even a dirty old oil-heater, which I saw myself shining up and putting into working order. I suppose I imagined these things coming simply because they went with my rising hopes of staying alive, or perhaps because I took for granted that though I was not in the same prison as the others I could expect much the same helps. At my next inspection, I told myself, I would have something to show in the way of work and absolute obedience, and would probably be asked if I had enough to keep me going. I also expected
some admiration, for having made a lot out of practically nothing, and in admiration, however restrained, I would find grounds for feeling safer.

Within a week I began to pray that the inspection would come soon, because the weather turned completely in my favour and got my work off to a wonderful start. Those first cold blasts of winter are nearly always followed by warm days, and I got such a succession of these (approx. 70 deg.) that only a handful of my more delicate pottings had to be thrown away. I had time to sort out seeds, wash my foul uniform, clean up the shed and strengthen my pots and makeshift panes: I even started mixing some of my precious disinfectant and yellow soap and making a rudimentary sand out of them for killing pests. I took care to be busy whenever I saw officers passing down the garden path, but they were a serious lot, with plenty to do, and I never got a glance from one of them. I was not discouraged by this, because every day I could look down the sunny slope to the camp and thank my stars that I was not being marched in column to the fields to get up swedes and beet, or tramping in and out of the big gate shouldering perfectly aligned dustbins to the absurd bellowings of NCOs.

But when no inspection came after a week, and then ten days, and then a fortnight, I began to feel worried and bewildered. The days were so short now, and it was absurd to think that an Indian summer could last longer. It was no consolation to pick up a pot and know that the roots inside it were taking hold: the very thought of having made such an advance made me worry more about how I could keep it up. One day I looked out and they were putting up wooden shutters all round the verandah, so as not to be caught napping when the
weather turned; and the very next morning I woke up with a dreadful surprise, to find the greenhouse under snow.

As I ran about, sorting out the plants that must come into the shed with me every night and making coverings for the ones that must stay out, I cooked up the wonderful notion that inspections took place, probably, at monthly intervals, and that all would be well if I kept my end up until the month was out. When I saw my guards in their tough winter coats for the first time, and even mittens on their hands, I told myself that it would naturally be troops first and prisoners last, but every dog would have his day. I couldn't bear to look at the plants that had given in already and were drooping down their paper holders: they made my sunny hopes of pleasing the enemy with flowers too ridiculous and childish.

I suppose it was what you would call a kind winter, in that it stayed away from its deadly forms until the month was out. Even in the garden, a lot of plants threw off the snow and stood up again in washy colours. Then four soldiers were marched in with bagging hooks and brooms and by evening there was only the smouldering end of a bonfire and the surviving shrubs in chopped forms of attention along the rows. One glance at them was enough to make my hopes disappear – their white wounds, all in the wrong places and dealt out in total ignorance of their needs – told me just what I might expect myself. My last burst of optimism came when I looked down and saw the prisoners below turn out in old, faded coats: I reasoned that there was an official date for winter issue and that it would soon apply to me. I was still telling myself this when the water stopped running from my brass tap and every drop of condensed water in the greenhouse turned into a solid
bead. The guard no longer opened my door when he flashed his torch at me in the night, because it was too much effort to budge it from the frost, and my meals reached me as cold as ice-cream – once, with a free donation of more disinfectant and yellow soap. Now, when officers passed down the path, I stared hungrily at them, longing to attract their attention; but as on that very first day when I had been too frightened to announce myself by waving or calling, I got no further than the beginnings of a croak and the trembling of a cold finger. I spent most of every day banging backwards and forwards between the house door and the back of the shed, always carrying a pot to make my behaviour look sensible, but doing it really because my boots felt like ice bricks, and my whole body, up to my scalp, would never stop shivering: in fact, my whole uniform stood out as stiff as frozen armour, with me chattering inside it like a rattling stick. I went silly over the odd patches of felt and matting, winding them into belly-bands, shawls and incredible vests, only to get terrified of using them on myself instead of my plants, and putting them all off again, to wrap round the stiff pots and wilting shoots: when my own misery became unspeakable, I ran round doing the very opposite. A greenhouse catches every ray of sun and multiplies its power unbelievably much, so there were many mornings when I stood under my glass and felt myself and all my stuffings going through such a piercing thaw that I seemed to be covered in ice-water and stinking like a pond. Than I used to try and dry out my thawing stuffings by laying them on the staging; but by four in the afternoon the sun would be gone and all my coverings, still half-wet, would go onto me again and harden back into stiff ice within the half hour. In my earlier optimism, I had made
bundles for a good many plants and hung them under the roof of the shed to wait for potting in the spring; but now, the sight of so much old paper and canvas just hanging in the frozen air was more than I could face and I took down these bundles every night and slept hugging them between my blankets. What I heaped on my feet, which never warmed day or night, was beyond description; it was a mound of junk that matched the bundles but never was enough to get the frozen iron out of my boots.

I no longer felt the slightest fear, either for my life or of being beaten, because it was obvious that nobody had any designs on me at all: I simply didn't exist. I survived on orders given two months before: these were carried out exactly as decreed, not forgetting the ration of yellow soap, the disinfectant, and taking away my bucket once a week. I got, in fact, exactly what I had asked for, not a scrap more or less – a perfect independence and solitude. Clearly, it was up to me to decide whether I wanted to live or die: so far as anyone else was concerned, the difference was neither here nor there. But why bother, then, to keep me at all? How did they forget me and still want me?

I no longer wanted them. All my hopes now went where the weather sent them, which was back to where they had been when I ran down the road on the very first day, screaming to be locked up with the others. I no longer cared a scrap how many idiots and buffoons might surround me just so long as I could feel a moment's warmth. Every day I looked through the glass across the snow to the prison camp and drove myself mad with imagining the heat that must be there – the huge piles of blankets, the warm steam of eight hundred bodies, the soups that would seem boiling by comparison
with mine. When I watched them on the march, I could imagine the coldness of their hands and faces as they shovelled snow and carried food to the cattle, but the very thought of the mildness of their discomfort compared with my own misery made me both hate them and long to be with them. And what of the prison authorities? Had they totally forgotten a prisoner who was properly theirs? I thought of the terrifying face of the sergeant who had brought his four men for me before – and every day I imagined this monster tramping again up the frozen path with his men and the tears of relief that would pour down into my frozen beard as I tried to walk away with them. I even tortured myself thinking that I should not be able to walk so far and would be left to die on a frozen road only a few hundred yards from that wonderful heaven of stores and blankets. Then, I told myself that I would rather be left to the crows like that than freeze to death here like a ghost that everybody had forgotten.

But like all my fancies so far, these latest ones turned out to be nonsense. I hadn't been forgotten by anyone, and I found this out pretty soon on the worst night I had had so far, when there was a most horrible north wind that I hoped would be the end of me. At first, I didn't hear the commotion that blew up outside, it just joined with the wind as part of the howling in my freezing ears. Then, a great blast of that wind burst in on me and I saw the monster sergeant at the greenhouse door, and flashes of light behind him. He was into my shed in a second and had me on my feet by the shoulder: whether I could walk or not was of no consequence because he pulled me after him as if I were a sack of bones. Then, abruptly, at the open door, he shouted something, dropped me, and was off into the darkness with incredible
speed, while two of my guards ran up and lights came on on the verandah. One of the guards ran towards me, and picking me up by the neck just as the sergeant had done, dragged me into my hut again and dumped me: he then stationed himself at the door and was joined there later by the other. The two of them paced to and fro there until the morning, when they were relieved, and taken up the verandah steps by a corporal.

At about three o'clock on the same afternoon, the young officer appeared on the verandah steps and nodded to my two guards. Then he went off again with his quick, lively step, and my guards followed, with me between them.

We went into a big room that I had not seen before, but with the officers sitting in their usual row at the back, and the ‘student of character' in the middle place. They were all laughing so much, but trying to control it, that they just sat quivering, and one gruff word from one of them sent them all shaking, like schoolboys. But what astonished me was that they could sit there laughing without their overcoats on: I stared at their collars and ties and thought they must all be mad to feel so happy in such a freeze. Then a whole pool of water began to form round my boots and drops of water ran down me as if I was a gutter, and still I stared in amazement at the officers and felt that the chattering of my teeth and the shaking of my body came from seeing them so lightly dressed in such a freezing room.