The House by the Sea (12 page)

And you have laid an emphasis upon these gestures which is fanatic.

At the heart of life is the flaw without which there would be

No motion and no growth. I have spoken honestly of these things:

The lack of homage, the deliberate destruction of intrinsic differences,

The lack of form in simple daily living. Now I must try to

Ask a question for which I do not at all know the answer

For it is a question of your faith and it is fundamental.

I would like to ask what it is that binds you together, and me to you,

And in what you believe, and why you and I are putting forth

So much imagination, so much spirit and mind to build

An invisible and an actual building. Somewhere at some time

We must be united in awe before an Absolute Form and

an Absolute Freedom of which, like the circles of teachers

And students, you can meet a part but never the whole, and

I would like to see you bound together in awe of this secret

Part of the Absolute Form and the Absolute Freedom without which

There would be no flaw to be perfected, no perfection to attain,

No community bound together in time, no sound and no silence,

No life and no death. And it does not matter by what name

You call Absolute Freedom within Absolute Form as long as you

Recognize its existence and allow yourselves to be united in awe before it.

May Sarton

October 1940

I became convinced at Black Mountain that without the physical work of building together the place would fall apart, and I feel this about my own life here. The hours I spend weeding are the perfect way to balance the hours at my desk. More than mere exercise, working at something so tangible rests and clears the mind.

Today I can't see the ocean … it is somewhere there beyond the mist. But, not seeing it, I am more aware than usual of the low continuous roar of the waves as the tide rises—lovely soothing sound. The first huge pink poppies are opening … they were here when I came and seed themselves all over the annual beds. I think they are opium poppies! They are beautiful with strong blue-green serrated leaves, far less fragile than the Shirley poppies. The flowers are double like pink swansdown powder puffs. A few are single with a blue circle round the pistil, very handsome indeed.

Raymond has agreed to stay, cut my grass and garden for me. He helped me weed the other day and it was such a happy time, working together. It's a great lift to have someone at my side. Otherwise the garden becomes a kind of purgatory because I feel I shall never get out from under the jungle into a neat weedless paradise.

Monday, July 21st

W
HERE HAS
the time gone like sand pouring too fast through an hourglass? I haven't had a clear day at the desk for what seems like weeks. Partly taking Tamas four early mornings to the vet's (the wound has healed but he developed a horrid sore on one leg, an allergy to the anesthetic, apparently, and of course he too suffers from the heat), partly the long drought has meant hours of dragging hoses. It's not an easy garden to water, as there are many single small borders scattered around, as well as bushes such as azaleas that have to be watered separately. But at last we had a deluge all night and into the morning. And that constant anxiety, as I held a million thirsty roots in my consciousness, has lifted.

Most of the last week went in making my semiannual pilgrimage to see Marynia Farnham in her nursing home in Brattleboro—no one has been there to see her since I went before Christmas! The trip entails visits to the Nelson neighbors, and a night away, and this time I brought a friend back with me for two nights; so altogether it ate up most of the week. Nelson is still unspoiled. I was moved as I drove past the cemetery (where I shall be buried) and down into the center, very still and leafy on that hot afternoon, moved to hear how beautifully Nancy and Mark Stretch (who bought my house there) are fitting into the village. They have done what I dreamed of doing—they have had the rocks bulldozed out of the big field and now have a huge vegetable garden started. I feel blest that the right people have come to live in the house. I shall not own a house again, so it is still “home” in some ways. But I have no regrets. More than ever I realize that it was time to leave. The tide of my Nelson was ebbing even three years ago. The Stretches bring youth and strength and their own spirit of adventure to the village, sorely needed … and they are such hard workers! Win French told me that Mark has helped with the haying and worked well; he also helps deliver mail now and then.

I reached Marynia only to find that she had, that very morning, fallen and broken her hip. I stayed by her side for a half hour, holding her hand, while they sent for an ambulance … and, when I called later that night from here, was told that it was a fractured hip and she will be in the hospital for some weeks. She was marble white, her face entirely unwrinkled, very serene, though she was obviously in pain, rocking her knees back and forth to try to find a comfortable position and talking to herself in a low voice. I believe she recognized me, but am not sure.

Tuesday, July 22nd

A
T LAST
I woke to clear air this morning and a serene pale blue satin sea, luminous after the hazy days. There is a disaster in the garden that kept me awake last night, trying to decide whether to make a heroic effort to rectify it or not … the phlox has reverted to that awful magenta color. When I knew I was coming here, I ordered phlox that Raymond put in the autumn before I came—pale pinks and white and deep purple. I had not taken in that there were large ragged groups that had reverted already, and when I found out, I told R. that we should take them out, but he persuaded me that that was nonsense. Now all that he planted for me is reverting! It is really sad because that narrow border below the terrace wall is the
only
“garden” in the usual sense that I have, except for annuals, and various small shady “borders” I have dug out here and there. I guess I'll have to tear all the phlox out and start fresh—a waste of two years.

It
is
a curiously nil time these days—the deerflies are awful. I took Tamas for a walk in the woods for the first time since he came home yesterday, but it was a nerve-racking battle to keep the flies off his ears, head, and nose. About every ten steps he stood still and waited for me to drive them off with a bunch of bracken—a slow enervating process. After that episode I went to town to try to get a fan for up here … the small fan broke and fell yesterday when I stupidly ran into the cord. Lesswing was sold out of fans, so I came home. The mosquitoes are unbelievable multitudes … it was then five and I gave up on gardening. Why be compulsive about it?

I looked forward to getting into bed and reading the end of Wain's
Samuel Johnson
. A saving grace at the end of a maddening day.

Sunday, July 27th

I
HAD TO LAUGH
when, after being cross with D.D., who had stopped by, unaware of course that Saturday was my glorious day alone, I came on this in Rosten's
People I Have Loved, Known or Admired
. He is speaking of Babbage, a crotchety Cambridge professor who invented computers: “The moment he heard an organ-grinder or a street singer, he would run out of his house and give chase, with homicidal intent.
He just went wild if anyone disturbed his inner, furious peace
” (underlining mine). The phrase is so exact!

Perhaps the disaster of the phlox that has reverted forced me out of my doldrums. I decided on Friday that I was going to get rid of that horrible magenta, willy-nilly. So on a hot, humid day I attacked with a pitchfork and after an hour of struggle (the roots are matted under rocks, and intertwined with the ivy that creeps up the wall behind them), I got out two big clumps that have not been touched for years. The ones Raymond planted will be far easier, and already I am enjoying that breathing space in the border, and planning what to do with it! Next morning I was able to get started again on the portrait of Rosalind, so the block appears to be broken. Writer's block is a familiar professional ailment; I experience it very rarely, but when I do I am in a panic of nerves.

Yesterday and today have been cool, perfect summer days … how few we have had lately! … days when the sea is dark, sparkling, and in the evening gradually pales to an angelic satiny blue, then slowly turns pink with the sky reflecting the sunset, hyacinthine, behind it. I drank the day like wine, intoxicated by the change after humidity and heat.

Tamas is a little better but I think I must take him to the vet tomorrow. Last night he woke me at midnight to ask to go out. He does it by licking my hands very gently till I wake up, and almost never does it; so I felt sure it was a real need. The cat came in at three; Tamas wanted to go out again at half past four, and barked to come in again at six, so I really had a poor night's sleep.

I must copy out two paragraphs from a piece in
The Listener
(June 26th) that came yesterday.

“Crime in the American schools begins at about the age of eight. Last year, there were over 8,000 rapes: young women teachers are often the targets; nearly 12,000 armed robberies; a quarter-of-a-million burglaries and 200,000 major assaults on teachers and pupils. Drugs, alcohol, extortion rackets, prostitution are all found in today's American classroom. And knives, clubs, pistols and sawn-off shotguns are more often taken to school these days, either for attack or self-defense, than an apple for the teacher.

“The official Congressional report reads like a lurid paperback. In New York, a 17-year-old boy was clubbed on the head with a pistol butt and stabbed in the spine; 16 shootings in Kansas City schools; in Chicago, a headmaster killed and a school official wounded, and a 16-year-old shot dead over a gambling debt of five cents. In North Carolina, two children forced two others on pain of death to hand over $1,000; their ages: nine. And in Los Angeles where there are 150 recognized school gangs, the biggest call themselves the Cripps because they are dedicated to crippling their victims. There are also girl Crippettes and the junior Cripps for eight- to eleven-year-olds.”

As far as I know, the Ford administration has no plans to salvage the inner cities, and of course the trouble is worst there. We are breeding monsters and one has to conclude that we are monsters to permit such things to happen. The indifference on the part of suburbia, the indifference of the Government, staggers the imagination.

Sunday, August 3rd

(on Greenings Island)

M
Y MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY
. Even two years ago it would have been celebrated here, but now dear Anne is beyond that kind of focus and when I mentioned it there was little or no response. Anne is one of the very few people I ever see now who knew and loved my mother and it felt like a second death at breakfast this morning—one so loved no longer alive in the consciousness of Anne. Judy is far more aware. I knew she felt it when she said, “Your dear mother. I'll never forget her.”

It is not an easy time. We arrived in a heat wave and yesterday was, I think, the hottest day I have ever experienced here. We had two swims. The last one, late in the afternoon, was refreshing, but in the late morning the lovely walk down through the heather and the woods and the big field, now brilliant with massed black-eyed Susans, had become an agony because of the relentless sun. And in the afternoon Judy went on a kind of fugue of near madness, babbling on but making no sense. Finally, in despair, I suggested a tepid bath and that did calm her down.

Today is cooler, thank goodness, cool and foggy.

Because of the heat wave I have become more aware than ever of the effort it takes, as one grows older, simply to keep life going. The garden, the need to water every day, looms as an ordeal rather than a pleasure. And I see myself doing exactly what my mother did—ordering in a rush of excitement what I shall hardly have the strength to plant, beginning new borders which will have to be maintained. The spirit spurts on, but the machinery is running down.

I think of my mother, late in her life having to take on the housework and cooking, the immense daily effort, and the determination not to be “downed.” Yet she was in the last years like a wild bird caught in a net, struggling, struggling, and at times only a kind of fury kept her going. I think of Céline, who also had been used to servants, working so hard to cook the midday meal, insisting on keeping up the vegetable garden and on canning fruit in the summers well into her seventies. I think of Rosalind, crippled with arthritis, making a supreme effort to get dressed each day. Growing old is, of all things we experience, that which takes the most courage, and at a time when we have the least resources, especially with which to meet frustration. I had a letter from Pauline yesterday in Brussels. She is dismayed because her daily routine of walking in the park and sitting on a certain bench to read for an hour or two is frustrated by a talkative woman who will not leave her in peace! I understand so very well how this small frustration may become real distress.

But at least Anne, here on the island, is surrounded by so much love and kindness that for her the struggle is not harsh or bitter. I am thankful for that. She is ending a life spent all in giving, spent for others, as the beloved queen of a tiny kingdom.

Monday, August 11th

W
E DROVE
back on Friday, all the way in one sweep on a blessedly cool day, pouring rain for the last hour. It was a deluge, so of course the garden is beaten down. But the rain was so sorely needed I cannot complain. It is only that this summer is rather a listless and unilluminated one for me. Much as I love being with Judy, the fact that all holidays are spent with someone no longer quite there, that there can be no real conversations, no exchange about books, politics, the garden, whatever is close to the surface in my mind, ends by making me feel empty.