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

  Peter and I saw a sign saying “fortune teller” and went in. There was a gypsy-like woman there with flashing dark eyes and her head done up in a coloured scarf. The room was stinkingly dirty and two stinkingly dirty children were playing under a table. The woman led first Peter and then me behind a beaded curtain to tell us our fortunes. She told Peter he would have a life of adventure and travel over many seas. When I got in she asked me for fifty cents more than the dollar she said she charged. When I said I hadn’t got it she said I was no gentleman and she could see nothing in my hand, but that I could come back later with the fifty cents.

  1 June 1925.

  This afternoon Grant came out in his car. He was at school with me. He is tall and red-headed and very adventurous. He has just come back from two months with a bootlegging crew out of Lunenburg and earned a lot of money. He said why didn’t I go with him the next time. I should love to do this but I expect there would be opposition at home. We picked up Peter and his sister Joan and Sue Murphy and started off down the St. Margaret’s Bay Road in high spirits, but while Grant was lighting Sue’s cigarette the car overturned in the ditch and we were all thrown out on top of each other in a heap. We were only bruised and it was rather fun. We pushed the car back on the road and somehow it got back to Halifax, but Grant says it is damaged internally. Anyway it was only a third-hand car. When I got home I did not mention the accident to my mother as older people get into such a fuss.

  2 June 1925.

  The blow has fallen. I got the exam results today and I have failed again, this time not in algebra but in geometry by only two marks short of the pass mark. Better than last year when I only got fourteen out of a hundred, but I’ll have to take the supplementary exams as a last hope. Mother says it is a scandal that my whole academic career and future should be held up by some pedantic nincompoop failing me by two marks, and that she is going to speak to the Minister of Education, which she is quite capable of doing. Ironically enough, the same day I got word that I had won the Welsford Prize for classics. I don’t know how I did unless there were very few other competitors, as my Latin is not all that good.

  Tony says that it is nonsense, my not being able to do maths, that if one has intelligence one can apply it to anything. But he does not understand that after my repeated failures maths has become to me like the porridge that I could not eat as a kid.

  3 June 1925.

  I have taken up fencing at the suggestion of Rodney, the Wilmots’ son, who is a very nice chap studying theology at King’s. The fencing takes place in the Dalhousie Gymnasium. I am improving but I shall never be a great swordsman. Fabian Rockingham was there. He is wonderfully graceful and when I watched him fencing I realized how far I was from the ideal. I wish I knew him and his friends better. They are in a set of their own at college and all have cars.

  In the afternoon I went to tea with Prof. and Mrs. MacMechan. He is the Professor of English. He has a beard and pince-nez on a ribbon. He is very Victorian intellectually but he is the most inspiring lecturer. If it had not been for his lectures I would never have read Milton, that marvellous poet, and his lectures on Shakespeare have opened up a whole world to me. Somehow you would never think it of him when he is sitting there at the tea-table eating buttered muffins and complaining about modern youth while Mrs. MacMechan purrs over the teacups.

  4 June 1925.

  There was a lecture this morning from Prof. Munroe about communism and intellectual élites. I should certainly be a communist if I was poor and down and out, but I cannot understand rich communists. As for intellectual élites, they sound hell.

  Tony subjects all motives to analysis, including his own motives, and the results are sometimes devastating. After listening to him I often feel that all sorts of things I have said and done spontaneously would look very differently under his microscope. Also, my ideas about life and conduct, my taste in life and people seem crude compared with his subtlety. For instance, when I talk to him of Katherine, which I cannot resist doing, he says that my love for her is not love at all but a mixture of vanity and romanticism. That I have read somewhere about a beautiful young girl and a lovelorn suitor and that I want to feel more than I do. Also about my friendship with Peter, he says that it is not real friendship but competition, and that Peter is always trying to get ahead of me and that I resent this. As he went on I said, “Then I have no true feelings at all?” He quoted Bernard Shaw to the effect that when you learn something new it always feels at first as though you had lost something. All the same I do know that I love Katherine and that Peter is my friend, or do I?

  5 June 1925.

  Roley has arrived back from boarding-school for the holidays. He has grown quite a lot and is in tearing spirits and full of jokes. It is nice having him here. We can say anything to each other and he catches on to everything even when it is not said. We went for an early morning ride in the park. On the way back we met the Dwyer and Elliott girls on their bicycles. They are Roley’s age. They were laughing and flirting with Roley and Roley says the Elliott girl has “it.” I suppose it is all right for these kids of fifteen to be so advanced but it is a bit funny at their age.

  We got back to the stables and sat on the stable floor watching William talking to two Irish-Americans from Boston who were hiring horses. William was putting on the Irish charm and playing them up like anything, saying that he could see from the beginning they were real horsemen and that there were so few about now, not like the old days, and they swallowed it all and rode off feeling like squires in old Ireland.

  In the evening I went into the Greek’s and bought two red apples to take to Tony who is ill in bed with flu. I thought he would associate them with the evenings that we have spent talking together at the Greek’s and be pleased with them and he was. Tony has the first grown-up mind that I have ever met and being with him has stimulated my mind, but I realize that he has one obsession, and that is homosexuality. He goes on and on about it, and although it is a fascinating subject one gets tired of hearing it talked about interminably.

  7 June 1925.

  I took Sue Murphy to the cableship dance. I went without my glasses and in my new dinner jacket and I didn’t look as bad as usual. When we got there the dance was well underway. The cableship young set were whooping it up. There were coloured balloons strung up, and they turned out the lights and we had to jump up to catch the balloons. Drinks were flowing and I had a lot of rum punch – four glasses. I went on deck with the Murphy girl and we stood clasped together beside a funnel, and then climbed into a lifeboat and pulled down a tarpaulin cover and stayed there sometime until Grant came on deck with the Pringle girl and by ill fortune headed for the same lifeboat and pulled back the tarpaulin and there we were. So they backed away hastily. It could have been embarrassing but Sue said, “What does it matter as we love each other.” I do wish she would leave love out of it. The minute she said that I felt like having a drink, so we went back to the dance and I had two strong whiskies and who should descend on me but Mrs. Hickman. I was surprised to see her there as she is so much older. She wore a dress covered with flowers and a long train, and her red hair was piled up but seemed to be coming down. She kept on calling me “darling.” She used to be an actress in New York, or she tried to be one and then came home. We danced together but not very successfully as she, like me, had had a lot to drink. She kept on dancing right through “God Save the King” and I couldn’t get her to stop. The cableship officers looked as though they thought we were almost disloyal. When Sue and I went down the gangplank we were both in high spirits, but when we got to the late-night tram and it began swaying along and jolting over the rails, I felt sweat coming on my forehead and Sue said, “How pale you look. Is there anything wrong?” I said, “Of course not,” but when I got home I lay down on my bed and squinted up my eyes at the picture over the fireplace and instead of two girls and a collie dog in the picture I saw four girls and two collie dogs. Then the whole room welled up over me and I was sick in suc
h a hurry that I didn’t have time to get to the bathroom but was sick in the wastepaper basket.

  I am writing this account the next day when I am still feeling very queasy. I had to tell Mother about the wastepaper basket and being sick, as otherwise Georgina would have seen and smelt it when she came to do the room. Mother was very sporting and only said, “Accidents will happen. I hope you enjoyed yourself. Take the wastepaper basket and empty it into the railway cutting.” I did. Unfortunately, I met Aunt Millie while I was carrying the wastepaper basket through the hall, but she didn’t notice, or pretended not to.

  In the afternoon I raised the question with Mother of my going with Grant to take a job on the bootlegger. Perhaps it was not the most tactful occasion to have chosen. She said, “If you are so keen to get away, Cousin Reg would get you a job in a construction camp.” As she well knows that this would not appeal to me, the whole subject was dropped.

  8 June 1925.

  I intend from now on to be a different person, much more vigorous and enthusiastic. Instead of skulking away if I meet someone in the street who makes me feel self-conscious I shall go right up to them and start a conversation or at least say something pleasant and pass jauntily on.

  Mr. Cady is staying here – Aunt Millie and Aunt Lucy’s brother. He is a nice man of fifty, pleasant and unaffected, and has a business out west. He is fat, placid, good-natured, and contented with his lot. Aunt Lucy looked beautiful today in a lilac dress and I can see how anyone could be in love with her although she’s over forty. In the evening quite a lot of people came out here including Susan Carpenter on a visit from England. We used to play croquet together when we were children and I was staying with her family in Dorset and she always cheated. She now wears glasses, has a stye in her eye, and a face like a tightly drawn hospital window-blind. We sat about in the library, smoking cigarettes and discussing various things, including rattlesnakes and modern drama.

  11 June 1925.

  The Almons have a relation called David Martineau from England staying with them. Colonel Almon says that he is a rolling stone and has had all sorts of jobs all over the world but can never settle down to any of them. Now he has bought a fruit farm in British Columbia and is going out there to live. (Why do all these Englishmen, like Katherine’s father and so many others, think that they can make a success of fruit farms, which almost always seem to fail?) He is quite old – at least forty but looks much younger, quite like a young man until you get right up to him. He has fair hair and a fair moustache. He seems nice and modest but I think he has his eye on Katherine. She seems rather to like him. I don’t mean that she is in love with him but I think she confides in him. Colonel Almon says that they sit up together until all hours talking. I don’t quite know what to make of him. He has some strange ideas; for instance, he told me the other day that he was convinced that our Lord would come back to earth on a certain date next year and that this would be Judgment Day and the end of the world. I can’t see why if he believes this he bothers to start a fruit farm.

  Aunt Millie says that everyone in town is talking about Katherine and Tommy Masters as they are inseparable, and that she is being very silly and that Katherine has lost her head about him.

  I was very depressed about this. Aunt Lucy saw it and she was very sweet. We danced to the gramophone in the hall and had quite an intimate chat. She was most understanding but can you trust older people? They draw you out and then talk you over among themselves. I don’t really think Aunt Lucy is like that. She told me tonight that Mr. Cady is an atheist. I was astounded – I didn’t think he had it in him.

  I went to my bedroom early in a mood of defiance and read Henry Fox’s Diary instead of working at mathematics for the supplementary exam next month. I like a diary better than memoirs; it is less made up afterwards to favour the writer. I was pleased that Sidney Smith, the clergyman wit of the Holland House circle, said, “I prefer breakfast to any other meal: people do not boast at breakfast.”

  13 June 1925.

  I played golf with Mr. Cady in the morning. I cannot afford a proper set of golf clubs, which makes my golf very erratic as my driver is no good and I usually have to drive with an iron. The Gorsebrook course is not really professional as boys are playing football on it.

  15 June 1925.

  Tony Fox has written Peter what amounts to a love letter. Peter showed it to me today and treats it as a great joke. I feel sorry for Tony if he is in love with Peter and think him very silly to have written this letter which Peter will show to everybody.

  Peter took me for a drive to Waverley today. He is in the highest of spirits as he is off to England this month to spend the summer before going to Cambridge in the autumn and is full of fantastic plans for the future. He makes nothing seem impossible or impractical. That is one reason why I am so fond of him. To so many people everything seems impossible except to go on in the same old way from day to day. In some ways Peter is quite like a schoolboy still, I mean we begin laughing and singing and fooling about and it is fun. I know that Tony is far cleverer and more sophisticated than we are, but then he is older and subjects everything to analysis, whereas Peter does not know what analysis means and enjoys adventure and misadventure; in fact he prefers the latter. He positively enjoys it when his car breaks down, which it does almost every day. I shall miss him when he goes.

  28 June 1925.

  Woke up early and read some of Plato Book II. What a revelation it is. What a pity the classics professor Murray is such a whiskered old lobster and so pedantic.

  Went to an evening party at the Murphys’, Sue’s parents. They seem nice enough people, but Mrs. Murphy is an Upper Canadian and is always referring to high society in Toronto. Also there is a brother called Michael with a long nose, and very nosy too, as the moment Sue and I got alone together and were petting on the sofa, he had to come in on the pretence that he was looking for some gramophone needles. After that we went back to the drawing-room and did some table-turning, which was excessively boring as no spirits came and I don’t wonder – I would not have gone to that party if I had been a spirit. Then Peter, who was there, told some ghost stories, the same old ones, but they fell flat.

  29 June 1925.

  Got up in a very bad temper and felt like throwing my bacon and eggs at someone’s head. Instead, I set out along the railway cutting to fence with Rodney Wilmot.

  In the evening Tony came out and Mary Binney and Captain Shaw, who is here in the Army, and we did table-turning and then blindfolded Mary Binney and willed her to touch some object in the room on which we were all concentrating, in this case the clock on the mantelpiece. She did identify it, but it does not prove anything as Mother would give hints. Later in the evening Professor Walker telephoned with great news: If I can pass my math supplementary I can qualify for “Junior Colonial Status,” which means entrance to Oxford. He thinks that Pembroke College will accept me. It is said to be a small but attractive college. Its great attraction for me is that it has no college entrance exam.

  1 July 1925.

  Tony and I went to the movies tonight – The Dancer of Paris with Dorothy MacCail. She is beautiful, but the picture had been so much censored that it was difficult to follow. Afterwards we came back to his rooms and he gave me two whisky and sodas which made me feel rather sick but I didn’t show it.

  Mrs. Bright, our old cook, died today in hospital. She was with us when I was a child. Her husband used to be the coachman. I remember once when there was a thunderstorm and lightning flashed, Mother saw Mrs. Bright walking up and down in the kitchen in her flannel nightgown looking, she said, like “Noah’s wife.” Mother asked why she did not go back to bed. She said, “I can’t sleep for knowing that Bright is burning in hell.” Mother said, “How can you say that, Mrs. Bright? He was such a good man.” “No,” she said, “Bright is burning. He took the Lord’s name in vain every day of his life.”

  3 July 1925.

  An unlucky day. There was no water. Some nonsense about the rat
es not being paid. Mrs. Eccles, a great friend of Mother’s, who is staying here, had a sort of fit at breakfast, so the rest of us withdrew to the kitchen and had breakfast there, not to embarrass her. William is drunk again. I walked up through the railway cutting for fencing and did so badly that even Rodney is thoroughly discouraged.

  In the afternoon I went for a ride. A very stupid horse constantly trying to crop grass by the roadside, a struggle to keep her moving at all. What strong necks horses have. It was very hot and the horse and I were sweating profusely, so that all in all the ride was more a duty than a pleasure.

  I have not seen Katherine for nearly two weeks but I met her walking up from the tram today. She now treats me as though I were a schoolboy and, worse still, she has taken to confiding in me her passion for Tommy, who is a resplendent figure in her eyes, rich and grown-up and a man of the world. The strange thing is that I am not as jealous of Tommy as I was of Peter and Bill and the other boys. I realize that I could not possibly compete with him.

  4 July 1925.

  Mary Binney came to tea. In conversation she always tends to agree with the strongest. It is partly because she is so very hard up. She has to wear clothes given her by other people, but she is never dispirited. Some people say she is a “hunger marcher,” always out for a free meal. She and her mother, old Mrs. Binney, only have $500 a year to live on. Mary is not young but she seems ageless. Today she brought with her some English friends, Colonel and Mrs. du Plat Taylor. He is a retired colonel, with the most ill-fitting set of false teeth. He is quite overshadowed by Mrs. du Plat Taylor, an imposing lady of aristocratic antecedents, with smooth chestnut hair parted in the middle and protuberant blue eyes. She looks like a face in a portrait by a Victorian painter. Their daughter, Cynthia, is an out-of-door girl, quite hard to talk to but sincere. The du Plat Taylors have bought a farm in Newfoundland and are going to settle there and begin a new life. Mrs. du Plat Taylor’s cousin, Captain Campbell, whom I met last year, was an explorer and went with Captain Scott to the Pole.