Something to think about

Quotes: I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. (Maya Angelou)..The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when confronted by what goes on outside his skull. (Eric Berne).. Work while you work, play while you play - this is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline. (Theodor W. Adorno)

Sunday 7 June 2015

16 All things bright and beautiful

It is the middle of the night and I am sleeping in the witch-dragon’s snowy-white bed in her room full of bric-a-brac and club books bought by the yard. She has gone on a bus-tour of France with the landlady of my Uncle Sam who is really his girlfriend, but he doesn’t sleep in her bed because the bank might take some of her pension away if they find out she’s cohabiting. In fact, he hasn’t got a bed of his own. He sleeps on a put-you-up at the foot of her bed. That’s what Mama always says, being anxious to maintain a high moral tone even in the family of in-laws she privately considers questionable and a bit incestuous. 
Mama is a specialist for innuendoes, so some of what I remember is more my interpretation and less based on fact, like Mama’s speculations. I never asked questions about her pet theories. I just listened and remembered them for recycling later, like when writing autobiographical sketches.
The witch-dragon won’t be back for two whole weeks. 50 weeks of the year she does the washing up and cultivates the garden at her sister’s farmhouse in return for living there. She’s a sort of aged au pair and indispensable. But for two weeks every summer her room is vacant and I move in for one of them.
It is the best arrangement imaginable, for this old farmhouse with its thick, crooked walls and nooks and crannies is my spiritual home. No instant marching orders, no rebukes, no extra duties, no piano-grinding, no washing behind ears, and no being quiet except in the afternoons to aid the digestion.
There are exceptions to the quiet at night. In the wee small hours I awaken to a funny noise in the pitch blackness of a bedroom unlit by street lamps. It’s the stairs creaking as someone tries to go down them quietly. The staircase is wooden and I am sure that a ghost wanders around sometimes, but it’s a friendly one. I am never afraid here.
Being wide awake, I decide to investigate. Ghosts hover rather than tread, so it must be a human wandering around.
In an instant I am up and at my bedroom door. I stick my head around the door just in time to see Uncle Arthur disappear below round the corner into the dining-room that is also a parlour. He is fully dressed in his working clothes. The moonshine through the window over the front door sheds a narrow shaft of glistening silvery light onto the steep stairs and all is silent. An owl hoots, making me jump.
I rush to pull on the clothes I have thrown off only a few hours ago and tiptoe down the stairs in my uncle’s wake. Perhaps he has forgotten something in the cowshed, or there is a calf about to be born, or the sheepdogs haven’t been fed.
The inner door is open, and Uncle Arthur’s bottle-green wellies have gone from the row of footwear lined up in the porch. I pull on my own yellow wellies and my waterproof jacket. The night air is cool and fresh and it would be pitch black everywhere except for the moonlight skimming the tops of the trees and outbuildings.
I wade cautiously through the pools of mud on the uneven farmyard. There is no sign of Uncle Arthur. His mission must be urgent, for he has moved extremely fast. Where can he be? I look around me and squeeze through a gap between the wall and the wide, heavy gate leading to the hay barn. I can hear the scuttling of small animals and there is a flutter of startled wings overhead.
I hum a little tune. I am now a tiny bit scared here in the eerie moonshine and starting to wish I had stayed in bed. But it is too late. I can’t turn back. I must accomplish my mission. I reach the edge of the wood. There is a loud bang and instinctively I throw myself down to the ground into a pool of muddy water. After a few more bangs there is silence. After a while I pluck up courage and pick myself up. Muddy and wet, I run faster than the wind back through the hay barn and back across the muddy farmyard. I fly, wellies and all, into the house and up the stairs into the sanctuary of the witch-dragon’s boudoir, where I remove my wet things and stuff them behind the little flower-covered sewing chair.
I get back into bed and listen to my heart thumping. Sleep overtakes me.
At about seven there is a knock on my door.
"Good morning, dear," Aunt Jane calls as she bustles in and goes to the window. She doesn’t usually call me by my name because she doesn’t like it, either. “Sleep well, did we?"
"Oh, yes thanks," I reply, pretending I am just waking up out of a deep and dreamless sleep.
"The house-ghost walked last night," she remarks as she pulls the curtain back with a swishing noise.
"Hmmm?" I murmur, still feigning drowsiness. "What house-ghost?”
“That would be the one with the yellow wellies that leave mud all over the stairs.”
I risk a peep at my aunt’s back. She has opened the window and is looking up at the heavy clouds hanging suspiciously over the corn.
"It’s going to rain. That’ll delay the harvest again.”
Aunt Jane is a farmer’s wife by profession. She knows all the theory but she only ever goes into the milking parlour to get milk for breakfast or when a photographer comes to take her photo, such as the year she became Farmer’s Wife of the Year.
Her weather predictions are seldom wrong.
“Come down to breakfast," she says a shade bossily. “Fresh mushrooms this morning."
I wait until I can’t hear the stair treads then I swing out of bed. I’m quite hungry.
For a moment I wonder if she heard me last night. But no. If she had, she would have said something. Grownups always do. So the mushrooms must have been the reason Uncle Arthur went out during the night. No one had even noticed my absence. I think of ghosts wearing wellies and bringing mud into the house, but I would rather not connect that with my nightly adventure.
I dash into the bathroom for a lick and a promise, pull on some fairly clean clothes, and bound down the stairs into "the bruce" for breakfast. That’s where we always eat when there aren’t any visitors and sometimes when there are.
The bruce is one of those few corners of the world apart from a warm bed where you can really feel snug in the old house. Since it is wedged between the real dining-room and the tiny back yard where the black puddings are made and has an oversized grate with ovens down the right side for cooking, it is the warmest room in the house. Overhead there is a pulley arrangement for airing the clothes, and this is usually festooned with shirts, vests and bed-linen and towels. Auntie Ada’s other chore is the ironing. She’s a crack ironer when she isn’t on a bus going to Spain.
The table under the window is out of all proportion to the size of the room, because it has to be big enough for everyone to sit round it. And you always know what time of day it is, because the table is always laid for the next meal straight after the one you’ve just had. It takes fifteen minutes to eat dinner, so it’s a quarter past one when the plates are whipped into the kitchen across the hall and given a scrub. That takes about ten minutes. Then the table is laid for tea, so then it’s one thirty. There isn’t a clock in the bruce. You don’t need one. After handicrafts and woman’s hour, which is listened to regularly, it’s three o’clock and time to take a nap if the programme hasn’t already sent you to sleep. Forty winks take sixty minutes. Then it’s teatime. It’s the same every day.
As usual, the fire is crackling away in the open hearth and the heat really hits you when you come in, even in the summer. Uncle Arthur gets breakfast going every morning by toasting bread on a long fork. He is already recovering from doing the milking at the crack of dawn, and he is describing the awkwardness of a cow called Betsy who hates being tied up, even for a few minutes, and being an ill-mannered creature likes to take a pot shot at your legs if you get within kicking distance. Being kicked by Betsy is a bit like being knocked down by a car.
Mushrooms as big as half golf-balls are simmering gently in a pan of butter in the little side oven. Their aroma is heavenly. I sit down at the table and gulp down a glass of fresh, warm milk straight from Betsy.
I can’t resist asking about the house-ghost again.
"Funny you should mention that," replies Uncle Arthur, looking at me quizzically. "Our ghost has one very unusual habit. In fact, we are going to get the ghost-hunters out here one night to see if we can solve the mystery of how a ghost can get its boots muddy."
Suddenly I don’t feel like eating the steaming mushrooms on my plate. I hadn’t thought of that at the time and had ignored Auntie Jane’s comment. What am I to do? If I own up, I will be in serious trouble for going out at the dead of night and Mama will say I am sinful and not worthy of my beautiful name. And what is worse, these lovely people won’t let me stay there again.
Troubled, I remain silent. My mushrooms taste of cardboard and I can hardly see my plate for the tears welling up in my eyes.
I make my escape at the earliest opportunity.
Back in the witch-dragon’s room, I do the only thing I can think of to get me off the hook. I dispose of the evidence by opening the window and dropping the guilty wellies out onto the flower-bed beneath. The witch-dragon’s room is above the back parlour, so nobody will see or hear them fall. Then I make a small parcel of the jacket and stuff it into the back corner of the laundry cupboard, behind the lagged cylinder. If I take a bath this evening, I can wash the mud off and hang it back on the workers’ coat-hook. Aunt Jane will be glad I have used my initiative. She’s all for being independent and self-sufficient.
Being a house-ghost is rather an uncomfortable experience, I reflect.
After a while, I decide to put in an appearance. I try to act normally, bounding down the stairs and appearing to be very intent on some activity or other which will take me out of the house and into the bluebell woods behind the barn.
Uncle Arthur has spread out the morning paper on the big table in the proper dining-room which I have to go through it to get outside, because the front door is locked and the key hidden high up on the window ledge above it, where it can only be reached by stretching across from the second stair, and that is not allowed even standing on a chair except when posh visitors are expected.
"Ah, so there you are, young lady," he exclaims, as I try to tiptoe past him. "Join me for a minute, will you?"
I wriggle onto one of the pompous carved dining-chairs and try to look innocent. I think he has been waiting for me. My mouth is suddenly dry as the awfulness of my predicament looms up again.
"You could have been killed last night," he remarks in a dry, caustic tone.
He turns the page of his newspaper, apparently looking for some news-item or other, but I know Uncle Arthur isn’t really interested in the paper. He’s waiting for an explanation.
I can’t reply straight away because there is suddenly a large frog in my throat.
There is a pregnant pause.
"See that gun over there?" he asks suddenly, looking over his newspaper and pointing with his head.
The gun is propped up against the fire-place. Empty pellets, the cleaning rag and polish next to it. The gun is kept in a locked cupboard when it isn’t needed on the farm.
"Oh, it’s not your fault, Ann," he is saying, using my nice name to show that he is not really angry with me, but with himself.
"I should have realised that a clever little girl like you has to be kept informed about my nocturnal activities."
"Noc....?"
"Nocturnal is at night, and that’s when I use that gun. You see, rats and foxes can damage crops and be real nuisance to hens and baby farm animals. The only way to control them is to shoot them."
"Oh," I exclaim. "So those bangs really happened?"
Ooops. The question has slipped out inadvertently.
Uncle Arthur continues, seemingly unperturbed by my reaction.
"They certainly did. Count the pellets over there. I usually pick them up and put them in my pocket so that no farm animal can swallow them. When I’ve finished reading the paper, we’ll go and look at the rats I shot. You can help me make a bonfire to burn them and then I’ll show you how I skin the fox. If its tail is really pretty, we can make it into a collar for your winter coat."
I am shocked and horrified. How can grownups love some animals and shoot others, and even wear bits of them? I remember the fur collar on Mama’s best jacket, the whole fur coat hanging in the best wardrobe, and the cuddly wrap my aunt wears to sit in the draughty family pew in chapel on winter Sundays. Tears of remorse rolling down my cheeks, I escape to the stairs, where I sit half way up in the shadows and ask myself what kind of a monster can be so cruel and heartless.
But Uncle Arthur hasn’t finished yet. He follows me to the corner of the staircase and adds, "So you see, in the darkness, it could have been you I was shooting at, couldn’t it? You wouldn’t like to be the collar on someone’s coat, would you? So you’d better not follow me again. You might not have such a lucky escape next time."
Leaving me to ponder on my near folly, he goes away and a short time later I see him marching down the drive towards the bottom field with Moss, the sheepdog, bounding ahead.

I climb the stairs thoughtfully to the witch-dragon’s room, fling myself onto her bed and stare at the ceiling, pondering on things in general, and the brutality of the human race in particular. How many calves have gone without milk so that I can have some on my cornflakes? How many have lost their mothers or fathers to the Sunday joint and leather sofa? And those baby lambs that frolic in the meadows among the daisies in spring? Their lives are cut short by the slaughter, too. I’m not quite so sympathetic about the pigs, because they do smell pretty awful, but on the whole, I am devastated by what has been made crystal clear to me on this bright morning and I don’t think I shall look at the meat on my plate with the same eyes ever again.

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