The Chinese Garden (10 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

                
All my stars forsake me,

                
And the night winds shake me,

                
Where shall I betake me?

A
LICE
M
EYNELL

I
WOULD
have called myself happy at Bampfield, yet looking back on it over the span of many years, I can only regret that I was not miserable during my time there. It would have been more creditable in me, for my happiness came from tainted sources. Bampfield gave me things which I thought I wanted and imagined to be valuable. It enveloped me in an atmosphere which I believed to be the purest ether. It so conditioned most of us who were there that we thrived on it, as plants and animals will thrive in quite unnatural surroundings if they are habituated to them early enough. Indeed, I found it difficult to breathe the air of the common world when I emerged, and it took me years to adapt my spiritual lungs to it.

Yet Bampfield was not one of those schools (often pilloried in the national press and in novels) which endeavour to turn out their pupils to a set mould. We were not, despite the military nature of some of the discipline, ‘Mädchen in Uniform'. Nor did we emerge as recognizable types, as is certainly the case in some well-known girls' boarding schools. The curious mixture of freedom and restraint, the iron discipline combined with startling breaches of rule in the interests of individuals, the almost
adult responsibility we were given as prefects, together with the ripe eccentricity of so many of those in authority over us – all this might have been a good preparation for life, in fact, in some ways it was. But the regime acted upon at least some of us like one of those powerful, selective weed-killers – certain facets of the personality were destroyed or driven under, while others were allowed to swell to monstrous almost grotesque proportions. In my own character, Bampfield encouraged just those elements which were to prove least valuable when I grew older, and it checked, diverted and all but destroyed the elements which I later discerned as best in me.

What I learned was detrimental – to trust without discrimination, to expect too much both of people and life, to surrender my personality, my inmost thoughts and feelings, too readily to the demand of others. Not until years afterwards did I learn that such a surrender leaves one no retreat. And even while I was, as I imagined, happy, the precariousness of my content was becoming evident. I look back on a Rachel Curgenven obstinately proclaiming to herself a happiness which was belied in every direction.

As the cold, rain-driven term went on, the surface security afforded by the rigid routine satisfied only a part, and that a diminishing one, of Rachel's personality. Her own nature, her deepening perceptions, would have brought dissatisfaction in the end, but the process was intensified by her preoccupation with the adult problems of love and marriage with which she was attempting to grapple in her play of Clytemnestra. Ignorant, inexperienced and prejudiced by home circumstances, this might have been no more than an adolescent malaise, but Margaret, with her cryptic remarks, forced the whole problem on to a more immediate plane.
What had been part theorizing, part fortuitous circumstance, took on the intensity of a near personal experience.

Conversation with Margaret usually had a disturbing effect upon Rachel, and the more so now when such conversations were rare. Phrases, undercurrents of meaning in Margaret's casual words, returned to trouble her mind again and again, and ruffled the smooth surface of her precarious Bampfield contentment. Her chance meeting with Margaret that night, after she had failed to keep the appointment at the music cell, and the general lack of rapport between the two of them, nagged at the back of her mind. She found her creative urge deserting her, was certain she would never write poetry again, felt out of love with herself and with her play. Her mind remained full of questionings but she could not have discussed them with anyone. She found a certain peace in Georgie Murrill's room, talking about house affairs, playing Beethoven duets, and discussing history. But she was wary, unable to surrender herself readily to the offered warmth; prickly, given to sudden moods, and displays of temper, which provoked the schoolmistress in Georgie, and ended in prim reprimands or curt dismissals. Rachel would then sulk. The
rapprochement
with Margaret was short-lived. There was no quarrel. Margaret simply did not seek her company, and Rachel was too proud to ask for it. At brief moments, Margaret would speak a few words to her, and the old note of intimacy was there, reinforced by an undercurrent of urgency to which Rachel would have responded had she known what response to make. But Margaret, always enigmatic, was doubly so now. She treated Rachel to a kind of intermittent confederacy, but in what she was a confederate, Rachel did not as yet know. It was
an incomprehensible and unsatisfying alliance, the terms of which were completely beyond her.

It was then, almost as an experiment, that Rachel turned to religion. In the spring term candidates were prepared for confirmation and instruction had already begun. For two years Rachel had stubbornly refused to have anything to do with this, and had paraded her scepticism. Now she went to Chief and asked if it was too late to start the classes. Chief, delighted at this volte-face, allowed her to join them. Bampfield was a school centralized on God. We were made aware of this and derived from it, probably, a part of our security. The prospectus paid lip-service to ‘Christian principles', ‘A strong sense of religion', and few parents had the acumen to probe deeply into what was really meant by a phrase like ‘The Principal believes that a Christian foundation in education is essential.'

When the school moved to this large Somersetshire house, the Head's first act was to build a school chapel. It was a long, low asbestos erection, jutting out from the side of the house, in close proximity to the school lavatories and kitchen premises. No more than the sanctuary itself was consecrated. The rest of the building was only dedicated. We were told that this had been done in order that we need not wear hats and our voices be lost in the brims, but I see now that it was only one of the many indirect attacks upon our femininity. It was usual for girls to wear hats in chapel but we were not girls. We were public school boys and therefore did not wear hats.

Schools of Bampfield's size could hardly have supported a permanent chaplain, but only one visiting clergyman was permitted to take services. He was the uncle of one of the staff, Miss Naylor, and he was rarely allowed to officiate
except at Holy Communion. Morning and evening services on Sunday were taken by Chief, but even she did not dare arrogate to herself the right to administer the sacrament. She was very human in her desire to preach. She went just that much further than most clergymen manqués – she built herself a pulpit and a chapel to put round it. Nor do I blame her. What would I not give to preach – a long, meaty doctrinal sermon, or a fiery polemic against the wickedness of the world, and the certainty of hell for those upon whom I cast my glaring, impassioned, prejudiced eye; or a closely-knit piece of sophistry, as neatly fitted as a mosaic, on some obscure text, such as, ‘And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers.'

In the school chapel, Sunday after Sunday, Chief played her favourite role. Her early years as an actress were a sound qualification for her assumption of clerical dignity. She had evolved her own ritual for our service, which, as the prospectus proclaimed, was undenominational. It was certainly this. Chief's ritual was as elaborate as the genuflecting and biretta-doffing of the Romans, and consisted of a great deal of play with her mortar-board, donning it here, doffing it there; and of gestures appropriate to certain points in the service, such as the taking of the offertory, when, at a moment nicely timed to coincide with the end of the collection, she rose from her seat (she usually sat through the hymns), took her mortar-board from the child behind her, hitched her royal blue hood round her shoulders, and walked towards the altar rails. When she reached them, she put on her mortar-board with an infinitely graceful gesture, and stood for a moment in front of the altar, greeting the Almighty. She then fetched the plate, and even the taking of the brass dish from its little table was done with such grace of outstretched
arms and hands, that you might have expected her to dance back with it like Isadora Duncan. She would glance down the chapel to see what row the collectors were at and would time her movements so well with theirs that she would always arrive at the top of the altar steps just as they were embarking on their perambulation up the aisle. This gave her long enough, but not too long, to stand there waiting for them. I can see her very clearly, every detail of her face and clothes, as I saw her for six years on Sundays, while she waited for the collectors to reach her, and, the hymn finished, the harmonium droned its way rather inexpertly through a variety of keys in which, from time to time, the original tune of the collection hymn emerged gasping and half-drowned in the welter of harmony.

Chief's sermons revolved round the theme of the world, the flesh and the devil, and the paramount importance of self-control in combating these adversaries. The New Testament was taken as a convenient handbook of simple stories illustrative of the virtues of self-discipline. Jesus was treated as a glorified Head Prefect of our school. He was presented to us as more human than ourselves, but, we were given to understand, His extraordinary powers of self-control (of which one of the highlights was the forty days in the wilderness, and the crowning achievement His three hours on the Cross) gave Him the capacity to perform wonders which appeared to His contemporaries of supernatural origin. Thus were the miracles disposed of. Perhaps there is some truth in all this, but not, I think, sufficient truth. Small wonder that old Canon Naylor was only permitted to take the Communion service. These mysteries were fool-proof, required no verbal interpretation. The priest was a mere medium, his function limited to the purveyance of bread and wine. Chief always
attended the Communion services, and when she spoke to us about them, shortly before we were confirmed, she gave us to understand that the main virtue of the mystic bread and wine was to give us the strength and reinforcement of our will in our fight against the world, the flesh and the devil.

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In nomine
…

It is Sunday evening, about six o'clock. Outside, in the deserted park, the swathes of fine rain-mist roll up towards the house, trailing between naked trees and erasing the fine-drawn line of the little stream, which emerges to sight only near the house, like a black ribbon in soft grey hair. In the harsh light of unshaded electric bulbs, we get out our hymn-books, for the chapel bell is ringing. We are stiff with cold. The fires are dying down and the vast rooms with their torn tapestry wall-papers are raw and chilly. The gilt mirrors are glazed with children's breath. In silence we walk down stone passages, past the kitchens with their warm, sickly odours and the raucous sound of servants' voices. For them, perhaps, a hot supper amid a smell of dish-cloths, but for us, plates of bread and butter and bowls of jelly, the Sunday evening treat. As we go into chapel, the harmonium is wheezing out the slow movement from Beethoven's ‘Pathétique' sonata. The candles are lit on the altar, the chapel half-full of children, some sitting with their blue serge coats drawn closely over their shoulders, others at their conventional, pre-service prayers. I, a member of the choir, await service in the vestry behind heavy baize curtains, smelling of dust and tallow. The harmonium pants on its way, like the hart in the psalm. The organist has started the
movement again, for, as always, Chief is late. We stand in silence, shifting from one cold foot to the other. We never talk or whisper or play about. We have been made to feel that it is our chapel, that our God inhabits it, only waiting to be released from His habitual silence and reserve by the prayers the Head will pray on our behalf. Then a pad, pad in the passage outside, the click of the latch on the chapel door, a hand swings back the vestry curtain with infinite grace, and Chief is before us, resplendent in mortar-board, gown and royal blue hood. We bow our heads.

‘Lord, let the words of our mouths and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in Thy sight.'

Chief speaks in a low voice for our ears alone. We are the elect. For us the especial prayer, the private moment with God. Then we start our procession up the chapel and the chairs scrape as the children rise to their feet at our passing and watch us as we stalk, stiff and majestic, to our places in the chancel. We pray. We rise. Chief takes the paper from her prayer-desk and reads out the number of the opening hymn. On the asbestos roof of the chapel the rain beats incessantly a monotonous and dismal accompaniment to our childish orisons.