Running to Paradise (11 page)

‘
Don’t sulk, dear,’ she said, raising her face for a kiss. I bent down and she patted my arm. ‘Silly boy to fall in love with a ghost.’

‘
It’s not that,’ I said and could hear my own voice rising in anger. ‘It’s not that at all. I just feel she had a raw deal out of life and no one seemed to care.’ There was no answer; Aunty Phyll had fallen asleep.

8

The Vicarage, Durzebridge, Devon — 10th January 1918

I
have decided to write my diary every day for an hour before tea. I must not shirk this small duty and I must not waste time merely cataloguing a series of routine trivia. I shall simply try and put down my thoughts on all aspects of life as clearly and concisely as I can. It will be difficult, surrounded as I am by such IDIOTS, but I shall try. (Peewhit has just knocked over my bottle of ink — see what I am up against).

*

Char had grown up a bit since the birthday picnic in Richmond Park in the summer of 1914. Young Edward Everett and Hubert Stokes were both dead, along with the greater part of their generation: only a few more months to go and the War would be over.

‘
I suppose, when one comes to think of it, my own education was rather unusual,’ I remember Char herself telling me. We were having one of our perennial arguments about public school, and I had said her insistence on their paramount importance for boys was absurd and what’s more made a nonsense of her Socialist views. ‘Don’t be a bore, darling’ — invariably her reaction when cornered in an argument — ‘Now, do you want to hear about my education or not?’

‘
Roedean?’ I said. ‘I’m sure you were the “terror of the Fourth” and finished up as Head Girl.’

Char
snorted. ‘Not at all,’ she said rather smugly. ‘I went to a crammer’s on Dartmoor.’

‘
Really? I thought dim young men wanting to go up to university or get into the Indian Civil Service went to crammers, not girls.’

‘
Ma knew the man who ran it, you see. So when the zeppelin raids on London got bad, she panicked, as usual; took me away from my lovely school and sent me to “Old Bats”.’

‘
From what you’ve told me about your mother, it sounds as though she were running true to form.’

Char
extracted a lipstick from her handbag and, squinting into a tiny, cracked mirror, proceeded to paint her mouth a deep scarlet. ‘There was me,’ she said, ‘aged fifteen, Old Bats and half a dozen seventeen-year-old boys.’ She smiled into the mirror while I digested this. ‘But to give Ma her due, Old Bats was a superb teacher and I learned a great deal there.’ She paused again. ‘Not all of it academic.’

Sophia
and Aunty Phyllis between them had been able to fill in most of the gaps. Char had stayed on at Garden Court and continued at St Winifred’s, where apparently she did extremely well, until 1917. Then with the zeppelin raids becoming more and more frequent it was decided London was too dangerous and that autumn she was packed off to live and study at what was known in those days as a crammer. The crammer in this case was the Rev Bertrand Skinner, who held a living at a small village called Durzebridge, near Okehampton. Skinner, an aged bachelor, apparently specialised in coaching young men for the Oxbridge entrance exam and normally had around six pupils living in at any one time. Taking Char was a special concession to Con, for whom, rather improbably, it was said he once held a torch. Sophia said her mother’s main comment on her life at the Vicarage had been that it had caused her (temporarily) to become an agnostic; this state of mind apparently triggered off by having to cut up the bread and pour out the Communion wine on Sunday mornings.

Doubly
lucky, therefore, I had her 1918 journal. This is extremely revealing, although scrappy in places, and like so many enterprises of Char’s, peters out altogether halfway through. It is written in a stout, shiny red exercise book — still bearing the name of the stationer in Okehampton where it was purchased at the price of 6d — in Char’s bold, strong handwriting, which appears to have altered little over the years. I have letters of hers dating from the sixties in which the writing is instantly recognisable as that of the author of the journal.

Pushed
into the back of the notebook is a packet of photographs: small, blurred and yellow with age. They’re mostly incomprehensible views of what must presumably be Dartmoor, but there are also about half a dozen of people. All except one of the latter are of young men posing theatrically against some sort of painted backcloth, including one in a turban, holding what looks like a scimitar raised menacingly above his head. I assumed at first he must be wearing fancy dress, but from perusal of the journal I discovered one of the pupils was, in fact, the son of an Indian rajah. The exception to these was a photo of Char herself. She is standing in a garden, draped in what looks like a lace table cloth, a rose in her hand. By now her hair is short and curly with a fringe, the face plump and vulnerable, but the eyes under the thick, arched brows staring aggressively at the camera are recognisably Char’s. The photographer was, I think, trying to get her to simper; inevitably he failed. Char was quite incapable of simpering.

And
so,
nous
verrons
, as Aunt Beth would say...

*

The Vicarage, Durzebridge, Devon — 10th January 1918

I
have decided to write my diary every day...

Christmas
at Holly Villas was hell. More and more I feel the whole religious business is rot. Twice to church on Christmas Day; everyone singing ‘Peace and Goodwill to all Men’ and look what’s happening in France. There was a poor young man on leave from the Front in church. His face grey and twitching and his left eye all pulled to one side. It reminded me of when Aunt Beth used to tell me not to make a face in case ‘the wind changed’ and I was stuck with it. The young man’s mother had to take him out before the end of the service because he’d wet himself. Ma is such a hypocrite: forever talking about God and how he’s watching us. Was he watching her when she sent poor old Pa away, I wonder? She said to me on Christmas morning: ‘We must brave it out, dear, on our own, now your father no longer wishes to help us.’ This is a downright lie: Pa was crying when he said goodbye to me at Waterloo: it was awful, and all the way in the taxi he held my hand. I’ve decided I will never marry. It only brings unhappiness. Old Bat says if I work really hard I could get into Oxford and become a historian — much more fun than being some ass’s wife!

There
’s a new boy here this term, Tom Riley. Rather absurd really, but funny. He travelled in the train from London with me, but of course we didn’t know we were both bound for Old Bat’s until we reached Okehampton: it was raining and pitch dark when we arrived and no sign of Potkin or the dog cart. We waited and waited, sitting on my trunk under the only lamp left alight. We were just going to start walking, when Potkin and the dog cart galloped into the station yard. His excuse, Mollie had gone lame on the way in, but Tom said afterwards he was pretty sure the real reason was he’d managed to get drunk. If not, how had Mollie suddenly stopped being lame? We sang songs from
Chu
Chin
Chow
all the way to Durzebridge: Tom’s people had taken him to see it too in the Christmas hols. Potkin said we ‘zounded loike they ould caa’ts howling.’ He is a rude old man.

Rashi,
Edward and little Bob are still here. Rashi said he spent Christmas with his aunt at the Ritz. He would. I said my Pa dines there practically every night, so Rashi, just to be clever, said, ‘Isn’t that rather boring for him?’

My
little bedroom looks so pretty. Aunt Beth gave me a lovely drawing of a girl’s head, by an artist she knows called Walter Sickert, for Christmas and I’ve hung it on the wall opposite my bed. Mrs Oates said, ‘Better not let the Reverend see that. He don’t like modern things.’ Rashi and Bob are sharing this term and I’ve given them ‘The Death of Nelson’: Rashi loves awful pictures like that. He says they show the English at their best. What cheek! Old Bats’s starting me on Horace this term — hooray!

The
Vicarage, Durzebridge, Devon — 20th January 1918

I
am not going to be confirmed. I decided finally in church on Sunday. I was cutting up the bread ready for early service, and all of a sudden I thought I would eat a piece, just to see...I chewed and chewed — it was pretty stale — but it was just plain, ordinary bread, nothing more. The idea of eating stale bread and pretending it’s someone’s body is totally abhorrent to me. Even worse, to drink wine and pretend it’s someone’s blood. Incidentally, Tom and I are now pretty sure it’s Potkin who pinches the Communion wine and that’s why he’s so often squiffy. Mrs Oates says, no, but we’re certain we’re right. Someone is, and if not Potkin — who?

We
’re reading Shakespeare’s sonnets in the evenings now after supper. We all sit round the fire in Old Bats’ study and take it in turns to read one out loud. It’s rather splendid, really. Rashi has a marvellous voice, even though he is an Indian.

Letters
from Ma and Pa yesterday. Pa’s had to join the Army! He says they are taking old men now, having run out of young ones. He says he’s no good at drill and cleaning a rifle is quite beyond him. Uncle Bobby at the War Office is going to try and get him out. Ma says she’s taking a cottage at St Ives in Cornwall for the summer holidays, and Cousin Milly Phillips is to come with us. Aunt Agnes is having an operation, so we’re stuck with Milly. Actually, she’s not a bad kid, a bit weepy, that’s all.

Yesterday,
Tom and I rode for miles over the moors. It was such fun. It rained and rained, but we didn’t mind a bit. I said let’s pretend we’re Cathy and Heathcliffe, but Tom said, no, he didn’t like Heathcliffe, and Cathy was a pretty rotten sort of girl anyway, so we sang songs instead.

The
Vicarage, Durzebridge, Devon — 1st March 1918

Ma
writes I don’t have to be confirmed if I don’t want to — hooray! She says we’ll ‘talk it over together at Easter’. Oh dear! Oh Lor! Pa still in the Army. Uncle Bobby’s been no help at all so far. Pa’s letters are frightfully funny. He’s stationed near Trowbridge with ‘some infernal young pipsqueak of eighteen in charge of us’. He says it’s nice country, though, and he’s managed to get some hunting in.

I
’m going to learn to drive a motor! A boy in the village has promised to teach me. I met him while I was having Mollie shod last week. His name’s Peter Durrant and his father keeps the butcher’s at Down Cross. He says soon there won’t be any horses, they won’t be needed, everyone will have motors.

‘
Learn to drive, Miss Osborn,’ he said, ‘then you’ll be one jump ahead of the rest.’

‘
Alright,’ I said, ‘if you’ll teach me,’ and so he is. Tom and Rashi say I’m an idiot, and what does a butcher’s son know about motors; they’re such snobs. I think they’re jealous really.

‘
Don’t be such an ass, my child,’ Rashi said. ‘My father has six gold-plated Daimlers in his stables at Borepore, why on earth should I be jealous?’ He is, though, all the same.

Lovely
snowdrops out under the laurels along the drive; so frail and pretty. One day no sign of them and then suddenly there they are.

Horrid
old Holly Villas for Easter. How I wish I didn’t have to go home.

Holly
Villas — Easter Day, 1918

Church,
church and church again. Ma seems to be going through a religious phase. Is it guilt, I wonder? No room in this ghastly little house for anything. My bedroom is like a box, and the only staff we have is a Cook General called Mrs Churnside. She’s the most hopeless cook. Yesterday, when Mr and Mrs McWhirter came to lunch (dreadful bores who live next door), she left most of the insides in the chicken. I was nearly sick. Ma didn’t notice, of course, but Mr McW looked a bit odd and I saw him surreptitiously put something in his handkerchief. Ma says we’ll be able to have a better house ‘when the money comes through’. Will it ever, I wonder? Anyway, there’ll never be another house like darling Renton. How I hate, hate to think of other people living there.

Uncle
Bobby’s managed to get Pa out of the Army — hurrah! Ma said all that drilling would have done him good — I can’t see how. I wonder if the War will ever end, or will it just grind on and on until there are no more men left to fight? Next year I shall train to be an ambulance driver and go out to France. Better than being a VAD and spending all day emptying chamber pots. Ma says, certainly not, I’m much too young and the War will be over by next year — how does she know, pray? The poor young man we saw in church at Christmas is dead. Ma has made friends with his mother, and she told her.

How
I long to be back at Durzebridge. Rashi is spending Easter in Paris with some uncle who he claims is a general — can Indians be generals?

The
Vicarage, Durzebridge, Devon — 23rd April 1918

Shakespeare
’s birthday. I’m sitting on my bed in a patch of sun. Mrs Oates sent me up to rest with a hot water bottle on my tummy. I had such awful curse pains this morning. Why do women have to suffer like this? Just another proof that there’s no God: if there was, why should he have made people so badly? Peewhit’s lying beside me. He is truly a beautiful cat. He’s looking straight at me, his great greenery yallery eyes unblinking and now and again he pats my face with a paw. I can’t write anymore I feel so strange...

The
Vicarage, Durzebridge, Devon — 2nd May 1918

Peter
Durrant kissed me today. I’m not sure whether or not I liked it. I wanted him to, of course, but when he did? His breath smelt of Woodbine cigarettes and something else, rather nasty. He put his tongue right in my mouth and suddenly I felt cross and pushed him away. He went red and said it wasn’t fair ‘to tease’. Damned cheek. I can drive now anyway, so I don’t need him any more. It’s absolutely ripping driving a motor, such a feeling of power. Peter says I’m a born motorist.