3
I awoke at three, wondering for a moment where I was. Outside the sun was shining, pale but warm, the colour of Demerara rum. There was a blackbird perched on the cherry tree, sleek and glistening as if it had been bathed in oil, its beak the same clear primary yellow as the cup I'd drunk my coffee from that morning. It started singing as I looked out of the window, ending each phrase abruptly as if out of breath, a curiously amateur effect.
Mrs. Thompson was rolling out some pastry when I went downstairs. The kitchen was large and clean and bright with an electric oven which had a control panel like a bomber's. All the canisters, one felt certain, contained exactly what their labels stated, all the knives would be sharp, all the implements, from egg whisk to orange squeezer, in perfect working order. And yet the room was as gay as Mrs. Thompson's flowered apron; it would, just as it was, have served as a film set for any middle-class comedy. It didn't make one feel an intruder, there were no squalid little secrets like stopped-up sinks and dirty dishcloths.
"I'm off to do some shopping, Joan," I said. "Is there anything I can bring back for you?"
"Nothing, thanks," she said. "You'll find most of the best shops round the market place. The Modley bus will take you there - the stop's at the bottom of the road. Going back, it's on the half hour from the bus station. The Food Office is at the Town Hall, by the way. Aren't I a mine of information?" She unwrapped a piece of cheese and began to grate it.
"What's that going to be?" I asked.
"You'll find out at six o'clock," she said. "I hope it's going to be perfectly delicious, but I won't promise anything, mind." She looked at me with a cool tenderness. "It's nice to have two men to look after again."
I went out into Eagle Road. The Thompsons' house, wasn't, I perceived on further inspection, quite at the top either of Eagle Road or Warley; the topmost building of the road was a block of flats in ferroconcrete and glass with the glass predominating, and St. Clair Road, from which Eagle Road branched off, continued upward for at least a quarter of a mile.
The houses were a mixed bag, in every style from mullion and hall-timber to what, from its white walls and dark green roof and profusion of ironwork, I took to be Spanish. No doubt it would all have been a nightmare to anyone with any understanding of architecture; but I didn't look at it aesthetically. I saw it against the background of Dufton, the back-to-back houses, the outside privies, the smoke which caught the throat and dirtied clean linen in a couple of hours, the sense of being always involved in a charade upon Hard Times. What pleased me about Eagle Road was the clean paintwork and stonework, the garage for each house, the taste of prosperity as smooth and nourishing as eggnog. Anyone who lives on a private income in Bath will consider me a crass brute; but anyone who lives in a place like Dufton will understand the sensation of release and lightness, of having more than one's fair share of oxygen, which I experienced that September afternoon.
The Town Hall was a queer mixture of Gothic and Palladian, with battlements and turrets and pillars and two stone lions. It was rather like Dufton's - like a hundred others, for that matter. As soon as I passed the front door I recognised the municipal smell of radiators, disinfectant, and floor polish; having been away from it for two days I'd forgotten how depressing it could be - the smell of security and servitude, Charles used to call it.
The Food Office was like Dufton's too - the long counter, the trestle tables, the rows of filing boxes, the bright posters appealing for blood, for safety on the roads, for volunteers for the Army. And though it was part of the Town Hall it had its own smell, the unmistakable Government smell halfway between a teashop and a stationer's.
It was empty except for two girls behind the counter. The elder, a plump girl with black eyes, attended to me. "You're coming to work at the Treasurer's, aren't you?" she asked. "I saw your picture in the Courier . It doesn't do you justice, though. Does it, Beryl?"
"He's smashing," said Beryl. She stared at me impudently. She had unformed babyish features and no perceptible breasts but there was about her a disturbingly raw provocativeness as if, along with her school certificate, she'd passed some examination on the subject of the opposite sex.
"I'm even more smashing when you get to know me better," I said. "I've hidden charms ..." They giggled.
"You're very naughty - " Beryl was beginning when a middle-aged man carrying a sheaf of cards like the Holy Grail walked into the room, and the atmosphere of flirtatiousness and self-aware femininity as young and silly and pretty as kittens was instantly dispelled. There was enough left over, though, to linger with me pleasantly for the rest of the day; I carried the traces out with me like face powder on the lapel.
After I'd finished my shopping I went into Snow Park. It wasn't as one expects a municipal park to be, an open space set aside from the pattern of ordinary living, existing in a kind of quarantine; it seemed to mingle with the town. The River Merton loops the southern half of Warley; the park stood between the river and Warley Forest, narrowing at Market Square as if to let the forest come nearer, so that the narrow cobbled streets round the market all seemed to end in running water and trees.
I sat on a bench by the river and took out the Warley Courier . Looking at the Merton - so clear that I could distinguish the colours of the stones on its bed - I thought of the dirty harlequin of a river which ran, if that's the word to apply to a body of water as sluggish as pus, through the black streets of Dufton. The Merton was full from the day's rain and running strongly but in a backwater about a hundred yards from where I was sitting I noticed something even more important than clarity; that pale green film of algae which means that water's clean enough for fish to live in. I felt a bitter envy towards the two small boys walking along the path with their mother at that moment: they would grow up beside a river where they could swim and boat and fish. The Langdon at Dufton could and frequently did drown people; and that was the only characteristic of a river which it possessed.
The bench was on a little rise sloping down to the river; from that vantage point the park broadened out again past Market Square, so that it was in two halves, roughly the shape of a letter B turned away from the town. It was a satisfying shape, wild and natural and yet cultivated. There weren't many people in the park that afternoon. I could hear the faint hum of traffic from Market Street; apart from that, I might have been deep in the countryside. It was even more secluded on the other side of the river; there were places in the forest scarcely five minutes' walk away where you couldn't see as much as a house chimney. But I didn't know this till much later.
I didn't bother to read my paper; and I stopped myself at the point of lighting a cigarette. There wasn't any need to fill the moment with trivialities - it was already filled to capacity. It was sufficient to sit there, to breathe, to look at the river and the trees, simply to exist.
I'd been sitting there for at least an hour when the wind turned cold and I began to shiver. I left the park and crossed into the Market Square for a cup of tea. I'd been sitting too long in the same position; as I put my hand to the door of Sylvia's Café I had a mild attack of pins-and-needles and one leg gave way under me. I swayed forward and put my other hand against the wall to steady myself. It was the most minor of mishaps and I recovered within a second; but the incident seemed, for the duration of that second, to jar my perceptions into a different focus. It was as if some barrier had been removed: everything seemed intensely real, as if I were watching myself take part in a documentary film - a really well-produced one, accurate, sharp, with none of the more obvious camera tricks. The black cobbles splashed green and yellow and red with squashed fruit and vegetables, the purple satin quilt held up in a bullfighter's sweep by a fat man in his shirt sleeves, a giggle of schoolgirls round a pile of brightly coloured rayon underwear, the bells of the parish church striking the hour sad as Sunday, a small girl wearing an apron dress with one strap fastened by a murderously big safety pin - everything was immensely significant, yet neither more nor less than itself. There were no tricks with the lens or the microphone, the buildings steadily obeyed the laws of perspective, the colours registered without smudging, the sounds were neither a symphony nor a discordance. Not one inch, one shade, one decibel was false; I felt as if I were using all my senses for the first time and then, turning into the café, I returned to normality as smoothly as a ski jumper landing.