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

  4 May 1925.

  The play was in the village hall. We had a disappointing house, which was a pity as for once we acted rather well. Most of the morning was spent patching up the scenery, which is getting very torn and tattered. We brought it all out to a meadow by the village hall and worked in the sun. I felt intensely happy, I don’t know why. It just came over me. Souris consists of one long, straggling street close to the sea, which here forms a bay enclosed by red mud cliffs. Max and Alice and I went to the local café in the evening and had sundaes and started singing and keeping accompaniment by beating spoons on the table until the toothy old lady who runs the place asked us to desist. I found after the show that I had to share a bedroom with Malcolm Dymock. Actually, he wasn’t too bad, almost human, except that he sleeps in his socks.

  6 May 1925. Liverpool.

  All the men of the company are staying in this spacious house presided over by two exceedingly comfortable maiden ladies, one fat and rosy-cheeked, the other thin and spectacled. Liverpool is unchanged since I was here as a child ten years ago. The tree-shaded streets, the lawn-bordered houses, and the leisurely people. The place is full of corners and glimpses that bring back memories, trivial mostly, but why do these few moments survive in one’s mind when the rest of that summer of 1916 has been forgotten? Why do I remember the fallen crab-apples in Tish Agnew’s orchard, or watching the chickens’ heads being cut off in the back yard of the rooming-house, or lying in bed staring at the pattern on the wallpaper one sunny morning when I woke early with Roley in the bed beside me? I can still see that wallpaper pattern of big red roses with the sunlight shifting over them as the curtain moved in the breeze, yet I have forgotten the people and happenings of that summer almost completely. Apart from the Wainwright children with whom we played, the only person whom I remember from that time is the beautiful Mrs. Purdy. Very tall, she was in her widow’s weeds. Her husband had been killed that year in the War. She used to sing in church and I watched her with adoration. The landlady at the rooming-house said once, “Mrs. Purdy has the biggest feet I have ever seen on a woman,” and I hated her for the sacrilege.

  7 May 1925.

  The tour is over. I don’t know how much money we have made for King’s. Damn little, I should say. But it has been great fun. I shall miss going everywhere with the company. It gives me a feeling of reassurance and I will miss them all, even Dymock. Of course, I will see them at King’s, but that will be different. After sharing so many laughs and mishaps and intimacies it will seem strange to meet them as separate people. The strangeness began today when Max and some of the girls came out here to tea. It was not a success. When I came up the drive with Max that Burgess girl was sitting on the porch steps reading a book. I introduced Max. She lifted her eyes from her book, gave him a glance, muttered “Hello,” and went right on reading. I suppose she had jumped to the conclusion that he was not what Mrs. Macrae used to call “Socially okay.” Who does she think she is? – vacant, empty-headed nonentity. We had tea in the library and Mother came in and was splendid, but somehow the whole thing was forced and I did not feel that they would come back. It is nobody’s fault, but it is depressing.

  10 May 1925.

  Katherine had said that she would go to early Communion with me, so I set my alarm clock at six so as to be sure not to be late. It was a grey, overcast day. I walked through the silent woods and over the fields to the Almons’. We had arranged that I would throw a handful of gravel from the Almons’ driveway up to Katherine’s bedroom window as a signal to come down in order not to wake the household by ringing the doorbell. The moment I had thrown the gravel I realized I had thrown it at Colonel Almon’s window by mistake. Thank heaven he did not wake up or I should never have heard the end of it. Katherine heard the noise and put her head out, looking pretty, pink, and sleepy like a child. I thought she would never come down and that we should be late. But at last she did, wearing her broad-brimmed straw hat and carrying a pair of gloves, which I have never seen her do before. I thought we looked quite the respectable married couple going sedately to church. There were quite a lot of people we knew at the service and as I walked up the cathedral aisle with Katherine I thought, “This might be our wedding and these the wedding guests.” As we knelt together at the Communion rail in the flower-scented cathedral I felt a wave of happiness come over me.

  The rest of the day was anticlimactic. Gerald came to lunch as he always does on Sundays. He is mother’s nephew, the son of her sister who died when he was born. His father is a retired colonel who lives in Cheltenham. Gerald must be about thirty but he seems no particular age. He never can keep any job for more than a few months and the only thing he cares about is the theatre. He acts often in amateur theatricals here. He is stout, red-faced, always seems to be sweating, and his clothes are always too big for him. I don’t know why but it is so. Mother tries to look after him and to help him in any way but she gets very exasperated by him. I suppose he is a pathetic person but he is extraordinarily boring as he never stops talking about himself and the rows he has with actors and actresses in the Amateur Dramatic Society.

  There was a tea party here in the afternoon, none too successful I thought, though when it was over Mother and Aunt Millie both agreed that it had been a great success, but then they always say that about our tea parties. The two Appleton-MacTavish girls were at last asked to the house, something they have been angling after for months. They are tall, angular, and flat-chested and will pretend to know people they don’t know, which is silly in a small place like Halifax. They are bent on social advancement, egged on by their old mother, who got me in a corner and moaned at me till I nearly went mad. Still, there is something pathetic about them – they try so desperately hard. Really the girls at the party could have entered a competition for unattractiveness. The winner would have been the Wilmots’ niece, Miss Ferguson, in her pie-crust glasses and a dress covered with buttons. However, she met her match in Cyril, who has now announced that he is going to become a clergyman. They had a lovely time together talking about the horrors of evangelism as they are both equally high church.

  Went to bed early and read some of my favourite Horace Walpole letters which I keep by my bed in their limp red leather cover, and went to sleep thinking of Katherine.

  20 May 1925.

  Tony Fox has newly arrived from England to a job in some kind of an export firm here. I was curious to meet him. People have been talking about him and they don’t know what to think of him. They say he is very sophisticated. He appeared at tea today. He was clad in the palest fawn flannels and he walked in a sauntering way into the drawing-room with his head a little on one side. He is small and slight with a pointed face, large grey eyes, and hair already receding, although he can’t be more than twenty-three. He speaks in a low, soft voice. He talked to me about books and poetry. When I mentioned Rupert Brooke he said, “He has a mind like an overripe peach, don’t you think?” This shocked and amused me. He has promised to lend me some novels by Aldous Huxley. He says everyone in London is reading them but that they have not penetrated here. When he left he said, “We must meet again. It is so nice to find someone civilized in this town.” Of course this flattered me.

  23 May 1925.

  At last I am beginning to make some progress with Katherine. She came out here this evening and for once all the family were out and we were alone in this house. We rolled up the rug in the hall and danced to some of our favourite tunes on the gramophone: “Tea for Two,” “No, No, Nanette,” etc. Then we went into the library and I lit the fire, although it is spring now and quite warm. We talked a bit and she was more natural than usual, not being flirtatious. She told me about her family and how hard up they are and said she dreaded the idea of being really poor, that every time she walked down a street in the slums near the Citadel she thought, “Imagine if I ended up here.” Then she said, “Does your mother approve of me?” and I stupidly said, “Of course she does but she does not think about you very much.” She
said, “I mean would she approve of our getting married or would she think that I was not good enough for you?” I said, “You don’t know my mother. She is not like that at all,” and she said, “I wonder.” Then she said, “Well, she doesn’t need to worry. I don’t want to get married to you or anyone else that I have met yet. I’ll probably end up an old maid.” This made me laugh, as anyone less like an old maid than Katherine would be hard to imagine. After a time we stopped talking and lay side by side on the library sofa. I felt her body against mine and began kissing her. At first she kissed me back but when I began trying to undo the top of her dress she said, “No. It is nice like this. Don’t spoil everything,” so I stopped and we lay together, her arms around me, watching the flickering reflections of the fire. I was happy.

  27 May 1925.

  Tony Fox asked me to go to the movies with him. After the film there was a song-and-dance act – a chorus of girls prancing up and down, not very good, but I was quite enjoying it when I noticed that Tony was stooped over in his seat with his head in his hands and his eyes closed. I asked him if he was ill and he said no, but that the noise of the band had given him a headache, so we left. When we got out into the street I said, “The dance act was not too bad,” and he said quite crossly, “How could you enjoy it? It was atrocious, blaring and vulgar.” I felt I had sunk in his estimation. Then he began to talk about his impressions of Halifax and the people he had met since he came here. He was very amusing about their pretensions. He sees this place from the outside – from the London point of view – and says it reminds him of the provincial town of O in a Russian novel. On the way back we went into the Greek’s in Barrington Street. It is really a small grocery store kept by a bald, ancient man with a puckered face who looks, as Tony said, like a troll in a fairy tale. There are two or three tables where you can have coffee. We sat there talking and smoking. (Tony never has a cigarette out of his mouth.) He said how much he admired my mother and that she made him think of some great actress. I said, “She is the least actressy person in the world.” He said, “Yes. Perhaps it is those magnificent dark eyes with their changing expressions. You feel she understands everything and yet she could be alarming.” Then he said, “I have met your inseparable friend, Peter.” “What do you think of him?” I asked. “He is a charming creature, so nice to look at, but very superficial. You are much more interesting.” I thought this a pretty sound verdict.

  28 May 1925.

  The night of Tommy Masters’ twenty-first birthday party. There has never been anything to equal this in Halifax before, I mean for the younger set. In the first place the invitations said dinner jackets for the boys, which some did not have. Fortunately I had one as Mother had bought me one for the Government House ball. Some had to hire theirs. When we arrived a real butler was at the door to take our coats. He was so dignified-looking that Roddy McLaren shook hands with him thinking he was Mr. Masters. There was a silver salver in the hall with pink carnations tied with wire for the boys to put in their buttonholes. Then we all assembled, thirty-two guests in the drawing-room. The Masters have changed the room entirely from what it used to be before they bought the house from the Chamberlins. I remember it as a kid. It was a gloomy room with a round table in the middle with albums on it and old Mrs. Chamberlin, sitting by the fire, huddled up in a woollen shawl. Now it is furnished in the latest style with huge sofas and velvet “poufs” scattered about and quantities of silver-framed photographs on the top of the piano, mostly photographs of Mr. Masters receiving celebrities, including members of the Royal Family. He is away in Ottawa attending some important meeting. Mrs. Masters welcomed us in a kind of trailing purple velvet tea-gown. She said to the butler, “Have Alfred pass the cocktails,” so a spotty youth appeared, only about our age, and I recognized him as he works around the gym at college. He must have been hired especially for the occasion. This was only the second time that I had had cocktails and these were very strong but they didn’t make us very merry. The girls talked in lowered voices to each other. They all had new dresses for the occasion, except Katherine, who was wearing the only evening dress she has, but she looked lovelier than any of them. Tommy, although he was the host, only came in when we were all there already. He is a handsome fellow. I don’t know him at all well as he is three years older than me and went to college in Ontario. He is quite jovial and I like him. Anyway, he tried to cheer the party up and downed two cocktails in quick succession. He went straight for Katherine. He has only met her twice before but he seemed to know her quite well already. I thought she seemed different from her usual self with him … not exactly shy but more uncertain. Finally, we all trooped in to dinner, and what a dinner: lobster and duck, and champagne flowing, finger bowls with rose petals floating in them. I sat next to a girl from Ottawa who is staying at the Masters’. She told me about the ceremony of being presented to the Governor General, which she says is just like being presented at Court in London, and the girls wear plumes and trains. At first I thought her attractive, but then I thought she was rather boring as she hardly listened to anything I said but kept looking round the table and trying to join in other conversations.

  After dinner the carpet in the drawing-room had been taken up and we danced. They had hired an orchestra. It should all have been great fun but somehow it wasn’t – a sort of pall of dullness seemed to hang over the house and everyone was on their best behaviour, except Tommy, and I felt sorry for him as I could see that he knew that the party was not a real success. Towards the end he gave up all attempts at playing the host and danced only with Katherine. The Ottawa girl who had been my neighbour at dinner said to me, “Who is that girl? I hear she is some kind of a nursemaid.” I said, “She comes of an old English county family.” However, I can see that the other girls resent Katherine as an intruder and she has no friends among them. Silly snobs. It’s because of her job. Also Fran Horsely said to me, talking of Katherine, “She is boy crazy.”

  29 May 1925.

  Tony has lent me Those Barren Leaves by Aldous Huxley and I have read it through at one sitting and I am beginning to re-read it. It is different from any book I have ever read, so brilliant and witty and so modern. It makes other novels seem dated or silly. Tony came out this evening for bridge. He turns out to be a first-class bridge player and must have found family bridge with us hellish, but he was very patient. He was very attentive to Mother and made her laugh by some of his descriptions of people, and I think she is beginning to like him better. At first she was far from enthusiastic. Now she thinks he is lonely in Halifax and that appeals to her sympathy. When he left, I walked down the drive with him and we continued over the railway bridge and into the park. It was a fine moonlight night and we sat on the bench overlooking the harbour mouth. The sea was perfectly calm. We talked on and on but what did we talk about? It is hard to remember, although it was only last night and we seemed at the time to be saying profound and revealing things. He has a deeply pessimistic view of the world and of himself. At the same time he is a most amusing companion with a sharp eye for all absurdities in situations and people. He is much more experienced than I am. Of course he is four years older. He has seen a lot more of the world. Some of the things that he told me about sexual practices between men and women and also between men and men were a complete revelation to me. I never could have imagined them. Tony is not happy, but he says that it is a mistake to imagine that one would be happier in another place, that if life fails it doesn’t matter where you are, whereas I always think that in a new place I would be a different person and lead a new life. For instance, I imagine myself at Oxford, surrounded by troops of friends and drinking in new knowledge and new impressions. I think Peter is becoming jealous of my friendship with Tony and he takes it out by trying to make fun of him, saying he is old-maidish about his health and his eternal headaches. At the same time he is making every effort to know Tony better, and Tony, although he talks about Peter’s “prattle,” obviously likes him and finds him attractive.
/>   30 May 1925.

  Katherine and the children came out in the morning. It was a lovely hot day so I decided to scrap lectures and go down to the Arm with Katherine for a bathe. In the end she and I did not go in swimming. We sat on an overturned log by the wharf watching the children splashing about in the shallow water. Katherine never stopped chattering about the Masters’ dinner party and about how glamorous Tommy was. She was tactless enough to say that a man of the world like Tommy was very different from boys, by whom she obviously meant Peter and myself. As she went on like this I began to feel a real hatred for her, mixed with a crashing boredom. I thought, if only I could just roll this log with you on it deep into the Arm. She didn’t seem in the least aware of my feelings and for all I counted she might have been talking to the log itself. However, when we were walking home she at last noticed my stony silence and said, “Don’t sulk, because I do care for you, you know.” So I said, “I am not sulking; I am sad,” and I turned off the road and scrambled down the side of the railway cutting, leaving her with the children.

  31 May 1925.

  In the evening Peter called for me in his new car and we motored down to Water Street and the harbour front. Silent stony streets, darkened shops full of ropes and nautical gear. The lights from the ships riding anchor in the harbour; drunks lurching about with eyes like dead fish; prostitutes with white powdered faces; long-limbed sailors on their way to the brothels, and also some respectable citizens heading in the same direction. I wondered if I would catch a glimpse of my cousin George with his tobacco-stained white beard on his way there. They say that when he is playing bridge at the club he suddenly jumps up in the middle of playing a hand, gets on his bicycle, and pedals down to his favourite brothel.