Appetite for Life : The Education of a Young Diarist, 1924-1927 (9781551996776) Read online

  Eric and Mr. B. went on talking and drinking for hours. I tried to sleep but it was so bloody hot from the stove that I could not get to sleep. Then I woke up about four in the morning and it dawned on me that I was getting bored with Eric’s talk and his changing schemes and I thought bitterly how quickly one loses one’s illusions about people. I shall always go on liking Eric, but I thought him so exceptional, such a man of the world, but he is only like a grown-up schoolboy. It is not his fault. He is the same but my view of him has changed.

  15 August 1925.

  It seemed interminable taking down the tent and stowing our stuff in our bags. It was very hot and flyey and we were all quite silent, in contrast to our high spirits yesterday. Then we caught the train and got back to Black Duck. I am not really so keen on camping.

  16 August 1925.

  A letter from Mother today. Life goes on much the same at home. William drunk again. Also, Roley has fallen completely under Katherine’s spell. I am sorry for him if he has. I have hardly thought of her since I have been here.

  Singling turnips all morning and in the afternoon Cynthia and I started off to go blueberry-picking. We had hardly set out when Mary issued out of the house and said that she would join us. So we set off for the blueberry barrens, which are on top of a cliff. There were no blueberries, so we had tea there and Mary never stopped talking for an instant. She is a good sort but is certainly somewhat thick-skinned and optimistic about her company being always welcome. Eventually she went home and Cynthia and I went trout-fishing. My casting is slowly improving and each day there are fewer blackflies. I don’t think I have made much, if any, impression on Cynthia, but it is hard to tell as she is so extremely reserved. Today she was, for her, really forthcoming. Although no beauty, she looks delightfully fresh and fair and young. She is just one year older than me almost to the day, but she despises so many things and people too. She has no use for laziness or showing-off or new-rich people, and today she said how cowardly it was for people to commit suicide. What she despises may be despicable but I am not much good at despising.

  Captain G. came to dinner. He is an ADC at Government House in St. John’s, a charming but very deaf young retired Guardsman with a monocle. He brought a friend called Captain N. who has a place near here. He had a mane of tawny hair and looked like a photograph of Rupert Brooke, but he is far from poetical as he is mainly interested in racing, at which he lost most of his money, so he decided to start afresh here. He says he can always pop over to his club in London if he gets too bored. There is quite a colony of retired army and navy officers scattered about here. They all come under the inspiration of Captain Campbell, the explorer, who is their idol, and I don’t wonder. He is an exceptional man, the finest of a fine breed, so modest and yet with some quality about him so that you would follow him anywhere. He brought his wife here to join him but she could not stand the flies and went home. His son is here with him, a young man with a determined jaw.

  17 August 1925.

  Cynthia and I went stump-clearing in the morning but it was so hot that after a time we sat down in a clearing, made some cocoa, and discussed missionaries, and marriage, what we would do if we had four thousand pounds a year, and a few other things. Then we decided not to go back for lunch but to go fishing instead. There was a fresh breeze and we lay at anchor in the trout brook fishing from the boat. The breeze stirred the foliage on the banks and there were no flies (no fish either). It was delightful to have a hot sun on one’s face and feel the even swing of the boat under one, and finally we both fell asleep.

  18 August 1925.

  A day of departures. Eric suddenly announced that he was leaving tomorrow. I have thought for some days that he was getting bored here. I was just reflecting while doing some land-clearing how much I would miss him when Mary came out and joined me and said would I go for a walk with her as she had something to tell me. So we started out down by Trout Brook. She seemed somewhat embarrassed and finally came out with it that the du Plat Taylors really only wanted me for this one month. They had originally said two. I must say I was quite upset but I tried to treat it casually. I don’t know why they couldn’t tell me themselves instead of sending Mary as their emissary. I know I have no knack for manual work but I have certainly tried hard. However, I see the du Plat Taylors’ point of view. Why should they give me board and lodging if I am not worth it? They have been extremely kind, making me feel quite one of the family. I wonder if Cynthia has known these last few days that we have been together about my coming departure.

  Mary then said that she was going back with me, so perhaps she has had a strong hint too that she has, as Jane Austen puts it, “delighted them long enough.”

  19 August 1925.

  Eric left today. I walked with him along the track to the Black Duck station. We discussed when to wear dinner jackets and when white ties. He said when I came to England I must be sure to look him up and took my arm affectionately. I felt suddenly very sad to see him go and could hardly face him to say goodbye.

  When I got back Mrs. du Plat Taylor announced that we were all going to take the afternoon off and go on a picnic to Fawsley Plain, which is a rocky point in the river. So we paddled upstream and then walked. Colonel du Plat Taylor walked ahead with me and was very nice, thanking me for all I had done. He said they would have been happy to keep me longer but had other visitors arriving from England and needed the tent.

  We took a long time to decide where it was best to have the picnic and our choice was unfortunate, as no sooner had we sat down on our coats in the sun and Mrs. du Plat Taylor was making cocoa than we were surrounded by a swarm of wasps. They seemed to concentrate on the ladies of the party. Then Mary gave a scream and said, “There are wasps in my long boots.” They had got into the rubber boots she was wearing to wade in and were biting her feet. So Cynthia and I hauled off her boots and she sat back on the rocks quite frustrated. Mrs. du Plat Taylor calmly said, “I think there are some in my long boots too,” and when her boots were pulled off her feet and legs had been bitten worse than Mary’s, but she had never said a word about it, much less screamed. What a woman! Then Mary said she had always been peculiarly sensitive to insect bites, at which Mrs. du Plat Taylor looked quite pitying.

  At supper in the evening we had cider as a special treat and I wore a bow tie of Eric’s which he had given me.

  27 August 1925.

  These last days at Black Duck have merged into each other, days of hard manual labour, singling and transplanting in the mornings, land-clearing in the afternoons, trout-fishing in the early evenings, three meals a day plus tea, such an appetite and thirst that I could eat hunks of bread and drink gallons of water, and would fall into bed in my tent at night and by the time I had read a page by the light of my gas lantern I was asleep.

  In these last days I have seen a lot of Cynthia, but if there was a tremor of attraction between us it seems to have settled down into a kind of common-sensical friendship. Mrs. du Plat Taylor has become increasingly gracious as our departure draws near. In fact, she and I have had a number of tête-à-tête chats while I was hoeing and she stood beside me composedly in her sweeping serge skirts and in boots, with her hair in a bun. She is far from being a fool, but blinkered by prejudice. I realize now that her old-fashioned style of dress makes her look timeless, but she must be considerably younger than Colonel du Plat Taylor, who remains polite and unapproachable behind the barrier of out-of-date copies of The Morning Post, or measuring the land limits draped in his overhead mosquito net. The day Mary and I left, the whole family came to Black Duck to see us off.

  Slowly the train jostled on to Port-aux-Basques and I saw the last of the countryside. The green forests and flashing rivers and prehistoric stretches of marsh and barren lands, and the blue mountains in the distance. I have developed a feeling for this country and the Newfoundlanders themselves. They live as they did in the eighteenth century and have not met with democracy, compulsory education, or the motor-car. This gi
ves the people in the fishing villages a character of their own.

  We embarked on the boat at Port-aux-Basques. The crossing was very rough and I was so sick that although I saw plenty of bedbugs and was stung by them too I didn’t give a damn but finally got to sleep exhausted.

  I was awakened by Mary’s voice making loud and voluble enquiries after my welfare and the next thing I knew she had barged into the cabin, surprising my cabin mate, who was in the middle of dressing and just had time to pull on his pants. Mary, nothing daunted, began a long conversation with him and discovered that he was an ex-NCO in the Black Watch. I can quite see how Mary has always been so popular with the Navy in Halifax all these years. They all know her, from admiral to midshipman, and the name Mary Binney is familiar in Malta and Mauritius. Last night she had slept in her clothes and her black matted hair looked, as Eric used to say, “as if it had been worried by a rabbit.” She is a cheery old girl and I have got extremely fond of her. We have been through a lot together at Black Duck.

  Altogether I would not have missed my time in Newfoundland for anything. I feel it has changed me and in spite of my failure as a farm worker it has given me new confidence and I am really grateful to the du Plat Taylors for putting up with me.

  1 September 1925.

  Geraldine has arrived from Boston to stay with us and Roley and I went down to the station to meet her. I haven’t seen her since she was thirteen, and I certainly got a surprise when this glamorous apparition came mincing along the platform with quite the air of an actress condescending to arrive in a hick town. She had on a big black hat “framing,” as they say in novels, “her aureole of red-gold hair.” In the afternoon we all went to a tea-party at the Almons’. There was a thunderstorm and Colonel Almon was rather cross and slammed the windows to keep out the pouring rain so that it was as hot as hell in the drawing-room. Geraldine was making quite an impression, talking most entertainingly in a sophisticated way and smoking endless cigarettes from a long holder. Katherine, who was there, seemed quite like a child in comparison to her. In the evening Eileen, Roley, Geraldine, and I went to the Mitchells’ dance. It was in their house for a change instead of a club, and went swimmingly, especially as the Mitchell brothers are very kind and polite about looking after any of the girls who might feel left out from not having enough partners, especially Miss Ferguson. I braced myself to ask her for a dance. It was sheer hell. She hops about like a flea when she is dancing. Geraldine certainly did not have any problem for lack of partners. She was the sensation of the party in a clinging white dress covered with sequins. Katherine was there dancing with Tommy. She was swaying in and out of his arms as they danced as if she was drunk but I know she never drinks anything. Her face was flushed and she looked under an enchantment, as if the other people in the room were not there at all. When I spoke to her between one of the dances she clasped my hand in her hot hand and rubbed her face against my face, saying, “Hello, dear. I haven’t seen you for ages.” It was as if she was talking in her sleep. When we came home and the others had gone to bed Geraldine and I were standing about in the hall talking about the party and I, unexpectedly to myself, kissed her. I had had no intention of doing so an instant before and it was not what they call an uncontrollable impulse. It was more the way she moved restlessly about in the hall, picking up a gramophone record and putting it down again, lowering her lids and giving me a kind of indifferent glance and not replying to my chatter. It made me feel as though we were on stage and that I had a part to play and was missing my cue. The moment I kissed her I felt that I’d made a blunder. She went quite rigid, pushed past me, and ran upstairs.

  7 September 1925.

  I woke up this morning feeling that I had made a fool of myself last night and wondering how Geraldine would behave. When I came down to breakfast she was at the table talking to Mother and Roley. She did not answer when I said good morning and while I was eating my eggs and bacon she went on talking to Mother. As we were going out of the dining-room into the hall I mumbled some incoherent excuse for my conduct but she didn’t answer and only gave me a kind of insolent stare. I went up to my room and tried to settle to reading Bryce’s Holy Roman Empire but I was too keyed up to care about the mediaeval kings and their remote trials and triumphs. I was asking myself what my strategy should be; after all Geraldine is staying here for a whole week and I cannot go on trying to pretend that nothing has happened and be natural if she continues to behave like this. Then I asked myself what my Uncle Charlie would have done and so when Mother had gone out and the coast was clear I went down to the library where Geraldine was sitting on the sofa turning over the pages of an old magazine. I sat down beside her and told her that the moment she had come into the house I had been carried away by her beauty and was now madly in love with her. Then she took the floor and, crying faintly into her handkerchief, told me that she forgave me and that she had always since she was a young girl been secretly fond of me but that pride had prevented her showing it. We then fell into each other’s arms and remained thus until the others came back for lunch. How much either believes the other is a difficult point; even more difficult is how much what we said we are now beginning to believe.

  In the evening a lot of people came out here: the Robertsons, the Almons, Tony, etc., etc. We played clock golf in the drawing-room.

  In the morning my bedroom was housecleaned and I found that this diary had been moved from its usual place and that the pages were all mixed up, so I have a horrible suspicion that someone has been reading it, but who? Perhaps my mother, but would she be bothered? I could never face anyone who had read my diary. All afternoon Geraldine and I sat smoking and petting on the sofa. Certainly any experience of sex I ever had before was quite milk and water compared to this. She confided a complication in her life which perhaps explains a great deal, and that is that she is engaged to be married to a man in Boston named Ed and that the marriage is supposed to take place next year. She says that she only got engaged to him in a fit of pique though not in the least in love with him. She says that if she was free she would marry me. I remember that when we were both children we used to have a passion for acting charades and forced the other children to play bit parts in the performance while she and I were the hero and heroine. Are we acting a charade now with the library sofa as a prop?

  This afternoon I felt I had to get away from Geraldine for a time and went for a walk by myself. As I was passing the Ritchies’ house I saw Cousin Eliza sitting in the garden with her eyes closed, looking very calm like a corpse. I thought I’d take a chance and ask her to explain Spinoza to me. I have been reading Spinoza for the last two weeks for my political science course. I am absolutely fascinated by him. He is such a relief after the horrors of Hegel and Kant and the Germans, with his limpid style and complicated reasoning. When Cousin Eliza was younger she wrote a book about Spinoza. I jumped over the stone wall into their garden and joined her and began very cautiously to mention the subject, not wanting to say anything silly, and she puckered up her eyes and stared in front of her and then said in a dry voice, “You are asking the right questions in the wrong way,” and that was all. It was very discouraging.

  11 September 1925.

  I decided not to wear my glasses all day in the hope of changing my appearance and my personality. Mother asked me if I had lost them but I said airily, “No, only misplaced them.” She just raised her eyebrows.

  Geraldine is out for the day. I walked into town to buy a hat as I have lost my old one. Walking along Inglis Street I met Katherine, who had just got off the tram. She looked so changed, her face pale and puffy. As I walked along she told me that Tommy had gone abroad for a year to stay in France. She looked miserable as she said this. I thought she was going to cry. I felt sorry for her. I did not think the day would ever come when I would feel sorry for Katherine. When I got home I went to my room and read Saint-Simon’s Memoirs. It is just like having a courtier of the reign of Louis XIV in the room talking to you.

 
Then I began reflecting about Geraldine and myself. There have been moments when I thought I loved her but the feeling always fades. My real feeling about her is mainly vanity; I am proud of being seen with her because the other boys envy me and it puts up my stocks. When we are together I pretend to be a lover in a movie and imagine how he would behave, and by acting I become passionate and put on a performance. I think she is doing the same – acting a heroine. Sometimes we forget our lines or run out of them and as there is no prompter behind the scenes we just have nothing natural to say to each other, and there are awful pauses when I feel like saying, “Oh, do go away and let me read a book in peace,” but of course I can’t say that, so I burst into forced speech and end up telling her some long story about William and the stables or saying how much I love her, so then we begin making love again to fill in time. Sometimes I glance at my wristwatch, hoping she doesn’t notice, and I am always surprised to find that we have been together such a short time when it seemed a century.

  15 September 1925.

  I got my exam reports today for all the subjects (except maths, in which I had to take supps.). They are: firsts in classics, firsts in political science, firsts in government, only seconds in English and French. This is very peculiar because I am much more interested in English than I am in classics or government, and expected to do better in it.

  In the morning Roley and I went for a ride. We had a really good gallop, which you can hardly ever get out of these livery-stable horses. It was gloriously exhilarating but when I got home my bottom was sore from riding in flannel trousers.