"Our Spoons Came from Woolworths"
Feb. 17th, 2026 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiefoeBarbara Comyns
It never rained, yet everything remained fresh and green, even in London. The summers used to be like that when I was a child, and in the winters there was always deep snow or hard frost. The weather has grown all half-hearted now; soon we won’t be able to tell the change in the seasons except by the fall of the leaf, like it says in the Holy Bible
* we went there to ask the priest to put the banns up. We dared not ring the bell at first, we felt too shy. Charles said they would ask us in and give us a glass of sherry and some funeral biscuits.
how we would spend the ten pounds Charles had just received for painting a screen with Victorian women creeping about. He painted it for one of his Aunt Emma’s friends, and he was offended afterwards because it was put in the maid’s bedroom
We thought she was dying, but her sister explained she was a medium and governed by a Chinese spirit called Mr Hi Wu. Then Mr Hi Wu spoke to us in very broken English and told us we were so lucky to be offered such a beautiful flat for only twenty-five shillings a week
Because the room was rather dark we painted the walls a kind of stippled yellow; lots of black hairs from the brush got mixed with the paint, but they looked as if they were meant to be there almost... I had hoped they would give us a set of real silver teaspoons when we bought the wedding-ring, but the jeweller we went to wouldn’t, so our spoons came from Woolworths, too.
* She even liked my newts, and sometimes when we went to dinner there I took Great Warty in my pocket; he didn’t mind being carried about, and while I had dinner I gave him a swim in the water jug. On this visit I had no newts in my pocket and had the feeling I was going to be most unpopular,
* Her name was Eva. She was like a hard, shiny, rather pretty but horrid beetle, a spoilt, nagging kind of beetle... I felt if only we could wait until the morning, but Eva was the kind of woman who would never wait till the morning.
Great Warty looked at me from his glass house, so I took him out and let him walk up my arm until he fell in the bed, then I made tunnels out of the bedclothes for him to walk slowly through and he looked extra prehistoric.
* The church was next door to my house, so I ran in and perched a beret on my head, because there is another law about that; I put Great Warty in my pocket as a kind of page and ran out of the house... Paul said he would give me away. We had arranged for rather a handsome actor we knew to do this, but as he seemed to be enjoying himself so much we let him do the giving away
There was the man who owned the studio where I worked, and some women I sometimes did typing for, also the place was quite stiff with old landladies; some had big hats all covered in feathers. Charles owed rent to quite a lot of them.
* Then I forgot all about the people in the church because lovely little noises came, kind of singing, chirping noises. I saw all up in the roof there were masses of little birds, all singing and chirping in the most delightful manner. I felt so glad we hadn’t paid extra for the beastly organ and hoped so much we would make a success of our marriage after the birds being so nice about it.
It was quite a lot of money they wanted — about seventeen-and-six, I believe, but we borrowed it from James. Of course, we need not have paid, because they couldn’t unmarry us if we hadn’t. I expect people do that sometimes, but it would be rather unpleasant.
I was so thrilled by my wedding-ring I didn’t notice the guests much. I found a quiet corner where I could look at my left hand in all sorts of positions.
* In the middle of washing the supper things, Charles would say ‘Don’t move’, and I would have to keep quite still, with my hands in the water, until he finished drawing me, or I might be preparing the supper and everything would get all held up. He painted me in the bath once and I have never been so clean before or since.
also she had heard poor people ate heaps of sheep’s heads and she went on to ask if I ever cooked them. I said I would rather be dead than cook or eat a sheep’s head; I’d seen them in butchers’ shops with awful eyes and bits of wool sticking to their skulls. After that helpful hints for the poor were forgotten, because Charles told her about our visit to Paul.
I had a kind of idea if you controlled your mind and said ‘I won’t have any babies’ very hard, they most likely wouldn’t come. I thought that was what was meant by birth-control, but by this time I knew that idea was quite wrong.
I was fortunate and managed to escape being examined by the students, but on later visits I had quite a lot of this. I noticed the women students were not so gentle as the men and usually hurt rather, but perhaps this is not general.
Charles hated the idea of moving and suggested we kept the baby in the cupboard, but after reading all those magazines I knew it wasn’t a good idea, and made the reluctant Charles go flat-hunting.
the other the landlady had said, ‘I never allow pets. Take the creature away at once.’ He did get Great Warty in by pretending he was a goldfish, but she insisted on him taking Ambassador away at once
* James was teaching me how to knit baby clothes, but I didn’t get on very well when he wasn’t there, but I did manage two vests that resembled badly made porridge.
She was quite a generous woman really, and kept wanting to give me things for the baby, nice things, but Charles said I wasn’t to accept them, because Eva would not approve. He had always been brought up to hate his father’s second wife
This book does not seem to be growing very large although I have got to Chapter Nine. I think this is partly because there isn’t any conversation. I could just fill pages like this:
‘I am sure it is true,’ said Phyllida.
‘I cannot agree with you,’ answered Norman...
I know this will never be a real book that business men in trains will read, the kind of business men that wear stiff hats with curly brims and little breathing holes let in the side.
* As soon as Charles started to paint he forgot about the cold and money worries. That is how artists should be, but I was only a commercial artist, so I went on worrying. In any case, there was no time for me to paint, because there was all the work of the flat, and shopping and cooking to do when I returned home in the evening.
By this time I was growing rather large, not only in the tummy, but behind as well. This made me extremely sad when I saw myself in shop windows — luckily we had not got any long mirrors at home.
She had always had so much herself, she just couldn’t understand how difficult it is to be poor and how the merest necessity becomes a luxury. She thought the lack of essentials in the flat was due to the fact that I was a bad housekeeper and did not know how civilised people lived.
I quickly washed and dressed before another pain could get me, but my clothes became all messy and I had to dress all over again because I didn’t want to be disgraced at the hospital. In spite of several attacks of pain I managed to dress, do my hair and even make up my face, but it was rather smudged because my hands shook so much.
* Charles said he had borrowed some money to send telegrams to his relations saying we had a boy of six ounces. I told him it was six pounds not ounces, but he said a few pounds either way wouldn’t make any difference. But Charles’s telegrams caused a huge sensation, and his family was most disappointed when in due course they discovered we had had quite a normal baby.
The day started at five, when they used to bring the babies in for their first feed, and ended at eleven, for their last meal. Although that sounds a long day, it really passed very quickly.
I noticed when he opened the food cupboard there was a pink blancmange I had made before I went away, but it had gone green now. I tried not to notice any of these things, because I didn’t want Charles to think I was all womanly and fussy and how peaceful it was without me. <> During the next few days people kept calling to see the baby. I think they must have thought I had had a mermaid instead of a baby — the smell of fish was so strong.
Charles still disliked him, but in spite of this made some drawings of us together, so I hoped eventually he would get used to him. At the moment I felt I had most unreasonably brought some awful animal home, and that I was in disgrace for not taking it back to the shop where it came from.
All the same I did not apply for the free milk, because I was afraid they would take the baby away and put it in a home on the grounds of its parents having no visible means of support.
John was one of these nervy people who hate knowing the truth. Sometimes when he returned in the evening he would say to his wife, ‘Has anything awful happened while I’ve been away? If it has, please don’t tell me about it.’
* The aunt wrote me a long letter saying she would gladly see to all the arrangements and I must give up my baby for Charles’s sake. I could earn much more if I was not tied to a baby and I must not get lazy. It was not fair to expect Charles at his age to support a wife and child. The letter was such a shock. I’d saved it up till I’d finished breakfast, because I so seldom received a letter and thought it might be something nice.
Then the autumn came and I got quite a lot of employment in Art Schools and Sandro had grown so pretty some advertising studios photographed him for advertisements for patent foods which he had never had.
* He was eating something, and when I looked closer it was the birthday cake; it was all cut and spoilt and Sandro had never seen it. The painting was of the beautiful church in Church Row, Old Hampstead. I’d always loved that church, but now I felt I hated it, and for months every time I passed that way, I wouldn’t look at it. <> After the birthday disappointment I became more and more discontented with our way of living.
Charles had got in such a rut he hardly knew he was alive. He never sold any paintings, because no one ever saw them. A few weeks after they were painted he reversed the canvas and painted on the other side, then if there was no money to buy a new canvas, he would scrape the last painting off and start a new one. All this seemed to have no beginning or end.
For poor people the most difficult thing to provide is floor covering. Everything is so expensive, even lino. I have often wished people could put rushes or sand on their floor in these days.
* But the room Charles was using for a studio seemed wonderful after the pokey little attics we had been living in, and having a large room to paint in seemed to improve his pictures, and they did improve almost straight away. Perhaps it was because he had never been able to walk back from his work and see it from a distance before.
This sculptor (he was called Bumble Blunderbore) was an enormous man, rather like Chesterton to look at,
We went back to Abbey Road to pick up Sandro and a few clothes, and headed for Maidenhead.
His wife was away and he was the kind of man who thinks he can cook. Men are often like that. They say they can cook and it turns out to be an omelette, scrambled egg or sausages. They never can cook jam or Christmas pudding and proper things like that (I don’t, of course, include chefs when I say this, I mean real men).
Kuanyin, I believe they are called. That is how he lived — selling Chinese works of art to art dealers. They were most impressive, all those calm figures, but one couldn’t breathe very well, there were so many.
but now I know from experience a lot of men listen like that, and it doesn’t mean a thing; they are most likely thinking up a new way of getting out of paying their income-tax.
* I went home and told Charles all she had said, and he looked quite terrified and said he wouldn’t give up his painting for beastly babies and ran out of the house. I felt all frightened, as if I’d done something wicked. I did wish it was the men sometimes that had babies. I would be awfully kind to Charles if he had one, although I would hate to see him looking all fat.
I forgot about being shy and kissed him back. Then I knew I had never loved Charles. I felt I was being carried away in a great, fierce, misty flood. <> Some time later, when I realised I had been unfaithful, I didn’t feel guilty or sad; I just felt awfully happy I had had this experience, which if I had remained a ‘good wife’ I would have missed, although, of course, I wouldn’t have known what I was missing.
I gathered Charles had mentioned how frightful Sandro’s hair was, all tattered and torn like that, and his uncle had said, ‘There are enough long-haired people in your family,’ and had given him a shilling to get his hair cut.
a Great-Aunt Nelly had died and left the little money she had to her nieces. It was years since I’d been in touch with her; in fact, I had forgotten she existed. Now she didn’t exist any more.
I could tell he was a little annoyed. Just coming on him unexpectedly, I couldn’t help noticing how old he looked and rather yellow, too. I suddenly thought perhaps it was just as well we hadn’t gone to Jamaica; he would have got older and more yellow there, maybe.
I was feeling scared to death, because I was going to have another baby and it was Peregrine’s. It had been inside me for about two months now. At first, in all the excitement of the money and everything, I hadn’t noticed anything wrong. I’d forgotten all about periods, but when another month passed I realised what had happened. Why should all these babies pick on me, and always at the most inconvenient times?
We had had some unhappy times together in our present flat and thought it would be best to start again somewhere. I couldn’t help feeling, ‘If I’m going to leave Charles in about seven months, it’s hardly worth moving now,’ but I was getting rather cowardly and kept hoping something would happen, some miracle, and Charles and I wouldn’t have to part at all.
who really was a great woman. She was quite six feet tall and very beautiful in a totem-pole kind of way, with huge staring eyes, like head-lamps.
* When he noticed me he jumped off the dustbin and picked up a large pole, and before I could stop him, he said, ‘See stars, Mummy,’ and gave me a great crack on the head with it. I almost fainted with the shock, and when he saw how much he had hurt me, he was most distressed. When I had recovered a little he pointed, with a dirty, trembling finger, to a picture in his comic paper of a monkey hitting a man on the head and large stars shooting out.
After all, I did not tell Charles that I’d a feeling the baby was coming that night, because he never seemed to believe babies were coming until they were practically there
Sandro was most interested in the new baby. He used to ask if she was a princess. He was rather jealous of Charles drawing her, but when he painted her he stood sadly by and eventually said, ‘I tell you what’s wrong with this house, no one paints me.’
I told Peregrine all my money had gone, but he said ‘What a pity!’ and nothing else. Perhaps he hadn’t got any himself. I began to feel frightened and depressed, and thought, ‘This is my punishment for being an adulteress.’ Then I remembered I was even poorer before I was one, so perhaps it was a punishment for something I had forgotten.
I don’t feel like a father and have never wanted to be one. I may be inhuman and selfish, but I must be, life is so short, and the young part of our lives is going so quickly. I must be free to enjoy it and not be weighted down by all these responsibilities.’ <> I said, ‘Did you often go to Peter Pan when you were a child?’
so I said, ‘All right, Charles. I see how you feel. I’m not the waddy, suffocating kind of woman you think me, and, of course, we will part. I’ll make my plans.
God must have heard, because two days later I had a relapse and was put in a kind of cage, which they put in my bed and filled with electric light bulbs all burning away. It was so hot. I lay all burning and waiting to die. I took no notice of the kind nurse, or Charles when he came. I couldn’t bear to see him, because he belonged to the frightening life I couldn’t face any more.
Then I thought, ‘Now I’m getting dead and I’ll have to meet God and see Him every day for ever, ever more.’ I could imagine Him a slightly dense, angry old man, with woolly hair, wearing a striped blanket, and I seemed to remember reading in the Bible He had feet made of brass, and I thought of heaven as a comfortless kind of place, where you had no bed or fire, no sun, books, or food; you’d never see the leaves blowing about on the trees, everything would be still
* I dreaded going to the farm, but when I arrived there it was very much better than I expected. Things one dreads usually are: it’s only the things we look forward to that go all wrong.
I longed to be queen of my own home with all my treasures around me. I would look out of the window at all the beauty, but it wasn’t what I wanted.
* Her husband, who was in the Air Force, was being sent there. Sometimes he would fly low over the house and make a dreadful din, and when we ran outside to see what was happening, he would drop a message tied to a stone for Rose. People in the village complained a lot about this, and eventually Mr Redhead put a stop to it because the noise made one of the cows slip a calf before her time.
Rose had retired to her room, but soon she caused great consternation by coming downstairs wearing a ski-ing suit and a large sun hat covered by a thick veil. She said she was going to inspect the bees to see if they had survived the winter, and if they had, tell them about her wedding. Everyone followed her and tried to make her leave the bees alone, but she took no notice and went down the garden to the hives.
I never thought I could learn to do a thing like that, and I loved it so much. I think the afternoons skating must have been the happiest I had ever had. The feel of the cold air on my face as I glided round and the exciting sound of our skates cutting the ice — suddenly a startled blackbird would fly in a great hurry from a bush, scattering hoar-frost and giving little cries. In the distance there was always someone chopping wood, which made us feel warmer somehow.
* This morning it was so friendly and pleased to see me and ran after a ball of paper I threw for it. When I went outside to feed the baby chickens that lived on the lawn I found one dead, so I gave it to Foxy to eat and he crunched it up in a minute. I was usually most distressed when the chickens died, but now I was quite glad and hoped some more would die soon. <> We kept the secret of our fox for about a week,
That evening as I was cooking a rabbit-pie, Mr Redhead came into the kitchen. I pushed it back into the oven with great damage to the pastry and slammed the oven door, which is a thing good cooks never do even when they are just about to get the sack.
He painted me lying on the grass in the sun, which suited me very well, because I loved to be in the sun and hoped the village people couldn’t see me unless they came and peered right over the hedge, but forgot they could see Rollo standing in front of his easel, and after a time there was quite a row of heads wearing various frightful hats bobbing over the hedge.
May bought some baby wool and tried to interest her in knitting small garments, but she said as she had all the bother of making the baby someone else could make the clothes. <> There was one thing that cast rather a blight on my marriage. Rollo didn’t want Foxy to live with us for some reason.
When we came to the place where they reared pheasants I put him down, and I put a large piece of the Redheads’ joint beside him, but he wasn’t interested; he kept skipping about and sniffing the birds and quite forgot me, so I went away and felt too sad to cry. I felt guilty like the father in Hansel and Gretel.
I said it would be nice to have a goldfish pond, and Rollo went into the house quite suddenly, and I felt lonely and worried in case I’d said something to distress him. Perhaps his mother had been drowned in a goldfish pond at some time. When he returned he told me he had been telephoning a landscape gardener, and when we came home there would be a goldfish pond complete with fish,
It was the first time we had been parted and I missed him so much. The house and all my treasures seemed nothing without him, and in our bedroom in the wardrobe all his suits were waiting for him. Everything seemed to be still and waiting for his return; even the bathwater seemed to come out of the taps all hushed.
It never rained, yet everything remained fresh and green, even in London. The summers used to be like that when I was a child, and in the winters there was always deep snow or hard frost. The weather has grown all half-hearted now; soon we won’t be able to tell the change in the seasons except by the fall of the leaf, like it says in the Holy Bible
* we went there to ask the priest to put the banns up. We dared not ring the bell at first, we felt too shy. Charles said they would ask us in and give us a glass of sherry and some funeral biscuits.
how we would spend the ten pounds Charles had just received for painting a screen with Victorian women creeping about. He painted it for one of his Aunt Emma’s friends, and he was offended afterwards because it was put in the maid’s bedroom
We thought she was dying, but her sister explained she was a medium and governed by a Chinese spirit called Mr Hi Wu. Then Mr Hi Wu spoke to us in very broken English and told us we were so lucky to be offered such a beautiful flat for only twenty-five shillings a week
Because the room was rather dark we painted the walls a kind of stippled yellow; lots of black hairs from the brush got mixed with the paint, but they looked as if they were meant to be there almost... I had hoped they would give us a set of real silver teaspoons when we bought the wedding-ring, but the jeweller we went to wouldn’t, so our spoons came from Woolworths, too.
* She even liked my newts, and sometimes when we went to dinner there I took Great Warty in my pocket; he didn’t mind being carried about, and while I had dinner I gave him a swim in the water jug. On this visit I had no newts in my pocket and had the feeling I was going to be most unpopular,
* Her name was Eva. She was like a hard, shiny, rather pretty but horrid beetle, a spoilt, nagging kind of beetle... I felt if only we could wait until the morning, but Eva was the kind of woman who would never wait till the morning.
Great Warty looked at me from his glass house, so I took him out and let him walk up my arm until he fell in the bed, then I made tunnels out of the bedclothes for him to walk slowly through and he looked extra prehistoric.
* The church was next door to my house, so I ran in and perched a beret on my head, because there is another law about that; I put Great Warty in my pocket as a kind of page and ran out of the house... Paul said he would give me away. We had arranged for rather a handsome actor we knew to do this, but as he seemed to be enjoying himself so much we let him do the giving away
There was the man who owned the studio where I worked, and some women I sometimes did typing for, also the place was quite stiff with old landladies; some had big hats all covered in feathers. Charles owed rent to quite a lot of them.
* Then I forgot all about the people in the church because lovely little noises came, kind of singing, chirping noises. I saw all up in the roof there were masses of little birds, all singing and chirping in the most delightful manner. I felt so glad we hadn’t paid extra for the beastly organ and hoped so much we would make a success of our marriage after the birds being so nice about it.
It was quite a lot of money they wanted — about seventeen-and-six, I believe, but we borrowed it from James. Of course, we need not have paid, because they couldn’t unmarry us if we hadn’t. I expect people do that sometimes, but it would be rather unpleasant.
I was so thrilled by my wedding-ring I didn’t notice the guests much. I found a quiet corner where I could look at my left hand in all sorts of positions.
* In the middle of washing the supper things, Charles would say ‘Don’t move’, and I would have to keep quite still, with my hands in the water, until he finished drawing me, or I might be preparing the supper and everything would get all held up. He painted me in the bath once and I have never been so clean before or since.
also she had heard poor people ate heaps of sheep’s heads and she went on to ask if I ever cooked them. I said I would rather be dead than cook or eat a sheep’s head; I’d seen them in butchers’ shops with awful eyes and bits of wool sticking to their skulls. After that helpful hints for the poor were forgotten, because Charles told her about our visit to Paul.
I had a kind of idea if you controlled your mind and said ‘I won’t have any babies’ very hard, they most likely wouldn’t come. I thought that was what was meant by birth-control, but by this time I knew that idea was quite wrong.
I was fortunate and managed to escape being examined by the students, but on later visits I had quite a lot of this. I noticed the women students were not so gentle as the men and usually hurt rather, but perhaps this is not general.
Charles hated the idea of moving and suggested we kept the baby in the cupboard, but after reading all those magazines I knew it wasn’t a good idea, and made the reluctant Charles go flat-hunting.
the other the landlady had said, ‘I never allow pets. Take the creature away at once.’ He did get Great Warty in by pretending he was a goldfish, but she insisted on him taking Ambassador away at once
* James was teaching me how to knit baby clothes, but I didn’t get on very well when he wasn’t there, but I did manage two vests that resembled badly made porridge.
She was quite a generous woman really, and kept wanting to give me things for the baby, nice things, but Charles said I wasn’t to accept them, because Eva would not approve. He had always been brought up to hate his father’s second wife
This book does not seem to be growing very large although I have got to Chapter Nine. I think this is partly because there isn’t any conversation. I could just fill pages like this:
‘I am sure it is true,’ said Phyllida.
‘I cannot agree with you,’ answered Norman...
I know this will never be a real book that business men in trains will read, the kind of business men that wear stiff hats with curly brims and little breathing holes let in the side.
* As soon as Charles started to paint he forgot about the cold and money worries. That is how artists should be, but I was only a commercial artist, so I went on worrying. In any case, there was no time for me to paint, because there was all the work of the flat, and shopping and cooking to do when I returned home in the evening.
By this time I was growing rather large, not only in the tummy, but behind as well. This made me extremely sad when I saw myself in shop windows — luckily we had not got any long mirrors at home.
She had always had so much herself, she just couldn’t understand how difficult it is to be poor and how the merest necessity becomes a luxury. She thought the lack of essentials in the flat was due to the fact that I was a bad housekeeper and did not know how civilised people lived.
I quickly washed and dressed before another pain could get me, but my clothes became all messy and I had to dress all over again because I didn’t want to be disgraced at the hospital. In spite of several attacks of pain I managed to dress, do my hair and even make up my face, but it was rather smudged because my hands shook so much.
* Charles said he had borrowed some money to send telegrams to his relations saying we had a boy of six ounces. I told him it was six pounds not ounces, but he said a few pounds either way wouldn’t make any difference. But Charles’s telegrams caused a huge sensation, and his family was most disappointed when in due course they discovered we had had quite a normal baby.
The day started at five, when they used to bring the babies in for their first feed, and ended at eleven, for their last meal. Although that sounds a long day, it really passed very quickly.
I noticed when he opened the food cupboard there was a pink blancmange I had made before I went away, but it had gone green now. I tried not to notice any of these things, because I didn’t want Charles to think I was all womanly and fussy and how peaceful it was without me. <> During the next few days people kept calling to see the baby. I think they must have thought I had had a mermaid instead of a baby — the smell of fish was so strong.
Charles still disliked him, but in spite of this made some drawings of us together, so I hoped eventually he would get used to him. At the moment I felt I had most unreasonably brought some awful animal home, and that I was in disgrace for not taking it back to the shop where it came from.
All the same I did not apply for the free milk, because I was afraid they would take the baby away and put it in a home on the grounds of its parents having no visible means of support.
John was one of these nervy people who hate knowing the truth. Sometimes when he returned in the evening he would say to his wife, ‘Has anything awful happened while I’ve been away? If it has, please don’t tell me about it.’
* The aunt wrote me a long letter saying she would gladly see to all the arrangements and I must give up my baby for Charles’s sake. I could earn much more if I was not tied to a baby and I must not get lazy. It was not fair to expect Charles at his age to support a wife and child. The letter was such a shock. I’d saved it up till I’d finished breakfast, because I so seldom received a letter and thought it might be something nice.
Then the autumn came and I got quite a lot of employment in Art Schools and Sandro had grown so pretty some advertising studios photographed him for advertisements for patent foods which he had never had.
* He was eating something, and when I looked closer it was the birthday cake; it was all cut and spoilt and Sandro had never seen it. The painting was of the beautiful church in Church Row, Old Hampstead. I’d always loved that church, but now I felt I hated it, and for months every time I passed that way, I wouldn’t look at it. <> After the birthday disappointment I became more and more discontented with our way of living.
Charles had got in such a rut he hardly knew he was alive. He never sold any paintings, because no one ever saw them. A few weeks after they were painted he reversed the canvas and painted on the other side, then if there was no money to buy a new canvas, he would scrape the last painting off and start a new one. All this seemed to have no beginning or end.
For poor people the most difficult thing to provide is floor covering. Everything is so expensive, even lino. I have often wished people could put rushes or sand on their floor in these days.
* But the room Charles was using for a studio seemed wonderful after the pokey little attics we had been living in, and having a large room to paint in seemed to improve his pictures, and they did improve almost straight away. Perhaps it was because he had never been able to walk back from his work and see it from a distance before.
This sculptor (he was called Bumble Blunderbore) was an enormous man, rather like Chesterton to look at,
We went back to Abbey Road to pick up Sandro and a few clothes, and headed for Maidenhead.
His wife was away and he was the kind of man who thinks he can cook. Men are often like that. They say they can cook and it turns out to be an omelette, scrambled egg or sausages. They never can cook jam or Christmas pudding and proper things like that (I don’t, of course, include chefs when I say this, I mean real men).
Kuanyin, I believe they are called. That is how he lived — selling Chinese works of art to art dealers. They were most impressive, all those calm figures, but one couldn’t breathe very well, there were so many.
but now I know from experience a lot of men listen like that, and it doesn’t mean a thing; they are most likely thinking up a new way of getting out of paying their income-tax.
* I went home and told Charles all she had said, and he looked quite terrified and said he wouldn’t give up his painting for beastly babies and ran out of the house. I felt all frightened, as if I’d done something wicked. I did wish it was the men sometimes that had babies. I would be awfully kind to Charles if he had one, although I would hate to see him looking all fat.
I forgot about being shy and kissed him back. Then I knew I had never loved Charles. I felt I was being carried away in a great, fierce, misty flood. <> Some time later, when I realised I had been unfaithful, I didn’t feel guilty or sad; I just felt awfully happy I had had this experience, which if I had remained a ‘good wife’ I would have missed, although, of course, I wouldn’t have known what I was missing.
I gathered Charles had mentioned how frightful Sandro’s hair was, all tattered and torn like that, and his uncle had said, ‘There are enough long-haired people in your family,’ and had given him a shilling to get his hair cut.
a Great-Aunt Nelly had died and left the little money she had to her nieces. It was years since I’d been in touch with her; in fact, I had forgotten she existed. Now she didn’t exist any more.
I could tell he was a little annoyed. Just coming on him unexpectedly, I couldn’t help noticing how old he looked and rather yellow, too. I suddenly thought perhaps it was just as well we hadn’t gone to Jamaica; he would have got older and more yellow there, maybe.
I was feeling scared to death, because I was going to have another baby and it was Peregrine’s. It had been inside me for about two months now. At first, in all the excitement of the money and everything, I hadn’t noticed anything wrong. I’d forgotten all about periods, but when another month passed I realised what had happened. Why should all these babies pick on me, and always at the most inconvenient times?
We had had some unhappy times together in our present flat and thought it would be best to start again somewhere. I couldn’t help feeling, ‘If I’m going to leave Charles in about seven months, it’s hardly worth moving now,’ but I was getting rather cowardly and kept hoping something would happen, some miracle, and Charles and I wouldn’t have to part at all.
who really was a great woman. She was quite six feet tall and very beautiful in a totem-pole kind of way, with huge staring eyes, like head-lamps.
* When he noticed me he jumped off the dustbin and picked up a large pole, and before I could stop him, he said, ‘See stars, Mummy,’ and gave me a great crack on the head with it. I almost fainted with the shock, and when he saw how much he had hurt me, he was most distressed. When I had recovered a little he pointed, with a dirty, trembling finger, to a picture in his comic paper of a monkey hitting a man on the head and large stars shooting out.
After all, I did not tell Charles that I’d a feeling the baby was coming that night, because he never seemed to believe babies were coming until they were practically there
Sandro was most interested in the new baby. He used to ask if she was a princess. He was rather jealous of Charles drawing her, but when he painted her he stood sadly by and eventually said, ‘I tell you what’s wrong with this house, no one paints me.’
I told Peregrine all my money had gone, but he said ‘What a pity!’ and nothing else. Perhaps he hadn’t got any himself. I began to feel frightened and depressed, and thought, ‘This is my punishment for being an adulteress.’ Then I remembered I was even poorer before I was one, so perhaps it was a punishment for something I had forgotten.
I don’t feel like a father and have never wanted to be one. I may be inhuman and selfish, but I must be, life is so short, and the young part of our lives is going so quickly. I must be free to enjoy it and not be weighted down by all these responsibilities.’ <> I said, ‘Did you often go to Peter Pan when you were a child?’
so I said, ‘All right, Charles. I see how you feel. I’m not the waddy, suffocating kind of woman you think me, and, of course, we will part. I’ll make my plans.
God must have heard, because two days later I had a relapse and was put in a kind of cage, which they put in my bed and filled with electric light bulbs all burning away. It was so hot. I lay all burning and waiting to die. I took no notice of the kind nurse, or Charles when he came. I couldn’t bear to see him, because he belonged to the frightening life I couldn’t face any more.
Then I thought, ‘Now I’m getting dead and I’ll have to meet God and see Him every day for ever, ever more.’ I could imagine Him a slightly dense, angry old man, with woolly hair, wearing a striped blanket, and I seemed to remember reading in the Bible He had feet made of brass, and I thought of heaven as a comfortless kind of place, where you had no bed or fire, no sun, books, or food; you’d never see the leaves blowing about on the trees, everything would be still
* I dreaded going to the farm, but when I arrived there it was very much better than I expected. Things one dreads usually are: it’s only the things we look forward to that go all wrong.
I longed to be queen of my own home with all my treasures around me. I would look out of the window at all the beauty, but it wasn’t what I wanted.
* Her husband, who was in the Air Force, was being sent there. Sometimes he would fly low over the house and make a dreadful din, and when we ran outside to see what was happening, he would drop a message tied to a stone for Rose. People in the village complained a lot about this, and eventually Mr Redhead put a stop to it because the noise made one of the cows slip a calf before her time.
Rose had retired to her room, but soon she caused great consternation by coming downstairs wearing a ski-ing suit and a large sun hat covered by a thick veil. She said she was going to inspect the bees to see if they had survived the winter, and if they had, tell them about her wedding. Everyone followed her and tried to make her leave the bees alone, but she took no notice and went down the garden to the hives.
I never thought I could learn to do a thing like that, and I loved it so much. I think the afternoons skating must have been the happiest I had ever had. The feel of the cold air on my face as I glided round and the exciting sound of our skates cutting the ice — suddenly a startled blackbird would fly in a great hurry from a bush, scattering hoar-frost and giving little cries. In the distance there was always someone chopping wood, which made us feel warmer somehow.
* This morning it was so friendly and pleased to see me and ran after a ball of paper I threw for it. When I went outside to feed the baby chickens that lived on the lawn I found one dead, so I gave it to Foxy to eat and he crunched it up in a minute. I was usually most distressed when the chickens died, but now I was quite glad and hoped some more would die soon. <> We kept the secret of our fox for about a week,
That evening as I was cooking a rabbit-pie, Mr Redhead came into the kitchen. I pushed it back into the oven with great damage to the pastry and slammed the oven door, which is a thing good cooks never do even when they are just about to get the sack.
He painted me lying on the grass in the sun, which suited me very well, because I loved to be in the sun and hoped the village people couldn’t see me unless they came and peered right over the hedge, but forgot they could see Rollo standing in front of his easel, and after a time there was quite a row of heads wearing various frightful hats bobbing over the hedge.
May bought some baby wool and tried to interest her in knitting small garments, but she said as she had all the bother of making the baby someone else could make the clothes. <> There was one thing that cast rather a blight on my marriage. Rollo didn’t want Foxy to live with us for some reason.
When we came to the place where they reared pheasants I put him down, and I put a large piece of the Redheads’ joint beside him, but he wasn’t interested; he kept skipping about and sniffing the birds and quite forgot me, so I went away and felt too sad to cry. I felt guilty like the father in Hansel and Gretel.
I said it would be nice to have a goldfish pond, and Rollo went into the house quite suddenly, and I felt lonely and worried in case I’d said something to distress him. Perhaps his mother had been drowned in a goldfish pond at some time. When he returned he told me he had been telephoning a landscape gardener, and when we came home there would be a goldfish pond complete with fish,
It was the first time we had been parted and I missed him so much. The house and all my treasures seemed nothing without him, and in our bedroom in the wardrobe all his suits were waiting for him. Everything seemed to be still and waiting for his return; even the bathwater seemed to come out of the taps all hushed.
