The Day Gone By (38 page)

My friends took to her immediately, and she to them. Mike Seale in particular, a handsome boy somewhat resembling the young James Stewart, was very much taken not only with her vivacity but in particular with her beautiful voice, and would question her again and again simply for the pleasure of hearing her speak. She was entirely at her ease with Alasdair, William and the others, for she was a girl who was used to being admired and, like Yum-Yum's moon, there was not a trace upon her face of diffidence or shyness. The great thing about Jennifer was that she never put on any sort of act. She had come by magic and magic she remained.

All through those bright summer weeks, while the Germans smashed their way towards Paris, the two of us were about as happy together as it is possible to be. I remember a garden party one evening out at Garsington, where some acquaintance said to me ‘Richard, what's happened to you? You've changed in some way.' I dallied with my golden chain and, smiling, put the question by. Hilda Brown, the Walton Street landlady at The Jolly Farmers, also took a great liking to Jennifer, who made her laugh. One day the two of us hitch-hiked to Newbury - hitch-hiking was easy with Jennifer - but my father didn't warm to her. I don't know; with hindsight, could he have been jealous? I know now that parents often are. But for once I didn't care what my father thought. This was perhaps the happiest quality of my relationship with Jennifer; my own unwavering certainty. There were no second thoughts, no unwelcome discoveries. I knew what I wanted and this was it. She clearly felt the same.

What did she do for me? For in love there must be mutual conferral and a feeling that the other has qualities not your own. Quite simply, Jennifer was a totally different kind of person from me. She did not go in for passing exams. (or want to do so). She had no particular ambitions. She was certainly not a stupid girl - anything but - yet she was not academic, not particularly well-informed and did not try to be. I was a striver, but Jennifer, for all her bright energy and eager reciprocity, was lazy and self-content. Nor was she given to deliberation. There was an immediacy about her - about her reactions and her whole style - which suited her very well. Indeed, she enjoyed a youthful lightness of heart verging on the irresponsible. Yet God knows that one thing those times needed was lightness of heart, and the ability to put by the terrible things that were happening; for our time to take part in them had not yet come. It would be a fair criticism for any serious-minded person to say that we were nothing but playmates - Peter and Wendy — and that the relationship was childish. So it was, to the extent that we had no notion of marriage and that physical love - apart from kisses and caresses — didn't enter into the picture. Desire did, certainly, but in the manner of those days, fifty years ago, Jennifer was apprehensive of so serious a step.

It must be remembered that, while today a young couple who are continually together and obviously fond of each other are not only condoned for making love but virtually expected to do so and even thought rather odd if they don't (hostesses put them in the same bedroom, etc.), in those days all social pressure was very heavily the other way - heavily enough to give any girl second thoughts. Girls were brought up to think it cheap and contemptible. To be known to sleep with a lover most certainly didn't do
any
unmarried girl, however independent, any good (see, e.g., Dorothy L. Sayers's
Strong Poison).
An eighteen-year-old virgin, living at home with her mother, was more than fully entitled to have qualms and to feel that it was a risk simply not worth taking. Risk? Of what? Of possible pregnancy, but, apart from that, of the most almighty row imaginable if the truth were to come out. I had, of course, met Jennifer's mother - a delightful person with a warm sense of humour and fun - and I knew that she felt in no doubt that we would stop short of physical love. That was why she allowed Jennifer so much freedom and why she was always so nice to me,

If Jennifer herself was in two minds - as she was - I was quite ready to accept the situation. This surprised me. I had thought I was ruthlessly, single-mindedly carnal, and it was rather pleasing to discover that I valued Jennifer's inclinations more than my own selfish will. Besides, I could see that if she was only going to be full of regret and guilt afterwards, it would be ruinous to all our pleasure together to set out to overcome her reluctance. She was very good for me as things were: for she was the very Antipodes of Hiscocks (who would not, I sensed, have liked her much). There was a wholeness, a feminine roundness (as opposed to a male sharpness), a completeness, about Jennifer. She didn't compete or toil in the spirit: she simply existed. There was an admirable humility about her, for despite being if anything too conscious of her limitations, she was the best-tempered girl in the world. In fact, now that I come to think of it, though I once or twice saw her reproachful, I never once saw her angry. It wasn't her style. I hadn't heard about Jung in those days, but if I had, I might have mused on one of his cracks: ‘Man seeks perfection, but perfection is incomplete. Woman seeks completion, but completion is imperfect.'

Our happy summer went on, while the world ran ruinward. The Germans, advancing at the rate of thirty miles a day, reached the channel at Abbeville. Older people - including Bill Money - shook their heads and said that this was worse than anything they could remember. The exact succession of the days and disasters escapes me now, but of course I remember Dunkirk. Quite a few of our evacuated soldiers were brought back to Oxford. They were to be seen around, and you could tell them by their air of battered exhaustion, even though they had been fed and rested. Among them came a Worcester friend of mine, J. D. Evans, a man a year senior to me, who had joined up at the outbreak of war the previous year. J. D. told me that the Germans had to be seen to be believed. He said he had personally seen what looked like a solid wall of tanks appear over the crest of a slope. ‘And we'd got no effective weapons to oppose them.' He also said that being dive-bombed by Stukas was most demoralizing. Again, we were not equipped to hit back. It sounded bad. I was, of course, ignorant in these matters and still a mere child - young for my age, I think - yet I shared the feelings and faith of everyone throughout the country. Somehow or other, it would all come right in the end. Later, George Orwell derisively summarized the British attitude: ‘Anyway, England is always right and England always wins, so why worry?' I won't say we weren't worried, but I never met anyone who thought we should sue for peace. Apparently Hitler thought we were going to: the very idea shows his limited comprehension. My mother used to say ‘You mark my words, dear. That Hitler - he'll come to a bad end.' It's easy enough, now, to say ‘Yes, of course,' but it didn't seem like that at the time, I can assure you.

The term ended. The University authorities had arranged what they called ‘special examinations', on the results of which they awarded ‘war-time degrees'; although, as I've said, we all doubted how much use they would be later. However, this was no time to be thinking of such things. The storm was up and all was on the hazard. At least I got a distinction in the special examination, for which the College gave me a prize - a handsome copy of the letters of Keats, stamped in gold with the College crest.

Memories are vague. I remember, having come home, driving to Newbury station, about mid-day, to meet a train, though I don't remember which of the family was on it. I was standing on the platform when I heard behind me two soldiers talking. One said something to which the other replied ‘What, 'ave the French packed it in, then?' ‘Yeah.' ‘Bloody ‘ell, that's a go, ain't it?' My feelings were exactly those expressed by Louis MacNeice in his poem on the debacle: ‘Something twangs and breaks at the end of the street.' France's capitulation was a dying fall; it made a small, contemptible, paltry sound. Nevertheless, it left us all with the feeling that now we were in real trouble.

My calling-up papers arrived in the post. The thirteenth of July was my date to report to Aldershot. At the outbreak of war I, like the majority of undergraduates, had been interviewed at Oxford and asked to state my preferences. I had had one firm idea, based on what I knew of the First World War: anything rather than the infantry. If they were giving me a choice I would darned well exercise it.

My first option had been for the Navy. However, the Commissions Board (or whatever they called themselves) at Oxford wouldn't grant this. They said that I was ‘a potential cadet' and that the Navy was already over-subscribed with such. My next choice was the Fleet Air Arm, but this also was denied for the same reason. I could feel the infantry lapping about my ankles. In desperation I asked what about the Royal Army Service Corps? (Here I must give my sister due credit: it had been her shrewd suggestion.) Yes, into that I could be mobilized as a potential cadet, at the end of the summer term of 1940. I would receive instructions ‘through the usual channels' in due course.

As the day drew nearer, my personal world seemed to disintegrate piece by piece, in a mundane and undramatic way, until I was left, in effect, stripped and bare. Our little Worcester set dispersed to the four corners of the British Isles, well knowing that within a matter of weeks we would be setting out again for barracks, aircraft stations and shore training establishments: for Catterick, Portsmouth, Down Ampney, Tidworth and the like. Any possible return to Oxford certainly did not lie in the foreseeable future. Books were taken to Blackwell's or Thornton's and sold for whatever they would fetch. Sheets, pillow-cases, towels, dinner services, glasses, pictures - all the things that normally stayed put during the vac. - had to be packed up to go home.

Alasdair's tea service was Northallerton china; nice, capacious cups and saucers decorated in bold red and deep blue. I'd drunk tea from them many a time. ‘I can't see any point in carting those all the way back to Newcastle,' said Alasdair. ‘Take them to Newbury with you; they can stay there till we all get back.'

A last pint in the College buttery, farewells and tips to our scouts, another last pint in The Jolly Farmers and Oxford was left behind indefinitely; except for Jennifer, for there were still three weeks or so to run and she and I were determined to meet a few more times before I disappeared into the khaki belly of the whale.

Arrived back at home, I felt foolish doing nothing all day, even though it was my last chance for a long time. Everyone was doing something. So I went and joined myself unto a citizen of that country, and he sent me into his fields to feed swine. In point of fact, I went to work on Captain Cornwallis's farm for two or three weeks (and that was the first money I ever earned). Swine were certainly involved, for on my first day one of the regular labourers, a fellow named Tucker, gave me a sacking apron and told me to hold a piglet upside-down by the back legs, gripping its head between my knees while he castrated it with his pocket knife. I set my teeth and fettled myself, but when I actually had the piglet in position, its back against my stomach, squealing blue murder, and Tucker opened the blade of his pocket knife with his front teeth, I said I couldn't go through with it. (I doubt I could now.) Tucker closed his knife without a word and we started doing something else, but a little later he remarked ‘You're not the first one to turn that job in, Richard.'

Most of the time, though, it was haymaking. I never learned to use a scythe, which I would have liked, partly because the hay was cut by revolving blades and horsepower, and partly because no one had the time to teach me. I raked the hay into field-long windrows by means of a horse-drawn, automatic rake. The tines bumped behind you, picking up the cut hay and pulling it along. As you came up to the end of each windrow you had to judge the right moment to pull a lever which lifted the tines and released the hay to lie in the row. Bennett, another of the men, let me carry on for a couple of hours and then suggested politely that perhaps I'd like to hand over to him. During the lunch break he asked ‘D'you know what the old mare said to me, Richard?' I had no idea. ‘She asked if you could go back on the rake s'afternoon.' There was a general laugh. I learned, that day, that a horse soon weighs up whoever is behind it (or on it, for that matter) and if it's allowed to, will take advantage of the inexperienced to idle. On my second spell I took care that the mare became brisker.

It was at this time that the L.D.V. (Local Defence Volunteers) were formed, which later became the Home Guard. Every able-bodied man who, for one cause or another, wasn't in the armed forces joined up, and there was no reason why I shouldn't. (No one ever thought of women volunteering, although the A.R.P. was full of them.) We certainly were a scratch lot - no uniforms, of course, and no military weapons. All we could really do was keep a night-long watch at points all round the local countryside, in case Hitler's parachute troops turned up. They were confidently expected (‘Reckon ‘e's bound t'ave a go somewheres or other') and anyone who had a shotgun was determined to make good use of it. It was a great time for rumours and for ‘My brother knows a man in Whitehall who was saying -'. Everyone believed for certain sure that in Holland the Germans had dropped parachutists disguised as nuns; so they probably would here. I imagine real nuns must have had quite a difficult time getting about on their lawful occasions.