Читать книгу The Oaken Heart - Margery Allingham - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Town people often find the natural tenour of life in Auburn quite astoundingly slow, and so it is if one is not involved in getting something to grow, be it vegetable, animal, or a piece of private creative work. To be precise the pace of life here is exactly the same as the progress of the year, and is, like all questions of speed, purely relative, for it is difficult not to believe, if you watch her, that Nature herself is not under the impression that she is working at a breakneck lick. At any rate there never seems to be a hope of getting anything done in Auburn save at its proper season, so that in a way it was fortunate that the Munich crisis came when it did just after the harvest.

Late autumn is the time for change and preparations and beginnings, so it was natural that we should have settled down at once to get ready in our own way for whatever might be coming.

The attendance at the A.R.P. Officer's introductory lecture was good and serious. I have never forgotten that lecture myself because it was only then that I personally suddenly saw how war in Europe could ever possibly happen again. I knew how it could happen, of course; that is to say I knew what ingredients, if put together, would produce the explosion; but until that evening I could not see what on earth we in Auburn could ever be doing while the world was going up like a fire-balloon. Because of this inability the whole question had appeared unreal to me and about as difficult and profitless to consider as, say, the inside details of a fit of mania I might get at some future date.

The A.R.P.O. came over from Fishling to give the general lecture which had been so abruptly postponed by the gas-mask distribution. He turned out to be a retired Colonel with all the neatness and severity we expect in Colonels and we grew to like him. It was his proving to be a familiar and comprehendable figure in spite of his fantastic job (and teaching people how best to minimise the risk of being burned, maimed or clubbed in their own homes did seem a fairly fantastic sort of occupation to us in Auburn then) which began to put the whole thing on a credible basis. The entire proceedings that night were conducted in Auburn's most formal and normal manner and it dawned on me that this war to end civilisation, this annihilating stroke, or whatever it was that was coming to us, would probably be received, at the outset at any rate, in exactly the same way. It was the first time I ever saw the real virtue of formality. One can even lose one's head for a minute or two behind it and no harm done.

The Colonel came to dinner with us and we all walked down to the hall together afterwards in the dark, carrying his somewhat surrealist paraphernalia. The audience was waiting in its usual formation, which is to say that the front row is always left practically empty and the room gets steadily more crowded towards the back. Even as late as twenty years ago that front row was reserved, even in church, for "the gentry," and now it always seems to be avoided by nearly everybody. This is not because there are no gentlefolk left but because very few of them want to associate themselves with any society which ever took it for granted that it should get the best view without paying more at the door. It is a long time since "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?" was first sung in the lanes, but I don't think that as a countryside we have ever entirely forgotten its biting humour, and so, whenever there is a whiff of the old tune in the air, I rather think that front row gets quietly empty again. It must have happened several times in the long centuries since John Ball.

Everything was very solemn and very usual on this occasion. Even the little clatter as P.Y.C. fell up the shaky stairs on to the stage (with the forest glade still in position) and handed the A.R.P.O. his singular "props" was accepted without a smile, since it was a serious meeting and everyone knew the steps of old.

The Colonel earned general approval in a way which I suspect never occurred to him for his audience sat and listened to him in inscrutable silence.

This condition of blank receptiveness is common in Auburn and has been mistaken by the stranger for suspicion or even pride. In fact it is nothing so active, but is an outward expression of a complete reservation of judgment. I don't think any true East Coast man ever assumes a newcomer is either friendly or against him, or indeed that he is anything save an object of interest, until he has absolutely finished presenting himself and has been thinking of something else for some considerable time, say a day or so.

On this occasion the A.R.P.O., standing on the stage with the glade behind him, a bright new dustbin full of imaginary sand in front of him and a glistening zinc shovel on a pole in his hand, satisfied 99 per cent of the room at once by explaining that although this outfit was advised by the Government for those about to deal with incendiary bombs it was none of it necessary, and that any old pail of sand and any long-handled fork, rake or spade would do equally well. Afterwards he went over the official methods of gas-proofing a room and advocated among other things a truss of hay up the chimney and thick wet curtains over the doors. It was all so alarmingly practical and simple, so obviously meant for use. The audience was still with interest, if as expressionless as so many Chinese.

Half-way through, when P.Y.C. (who was acting as a sort of lecturer's stooge) was being shown exactly how to make an air-lock entrance, and my mind was running over the suitability of various old curtains on the top shelf of the linen cupboard, I suddenly saw the abyss at our feet as vividly as if I had looked over the side of a house. To realise is one thing but to see is another and I saw that they were talking about a corrosive poison to be sprayed over one civilised people by what was presumed to be another. I wondered if we were all insane and so nearly squeaked aloud, as one does in nightmares sometimes, that I felt the blood rushing into my face with embarrassment. This put me out and I looked around me furtively to see if I had been noticed and saw all the well-known faces turned gravely towards the stage. There was Bill, who had been through the last war and knew something about it, and Charlotte, Albert's wife, with her fine shrewd face and wildish yellow hair, and everyone else, all intensely serious, as they certainly would not have been had they not seen the horror of the situation quite as vividly as I had. They had accepted the danger and were busy finding out what was best to be done about it and it seemed to me that the sooner I wrenched my mind out of its present super-sensitive gear and got it back on to curtains like a reasonable being the better. Clearly whatever was going to happen to Auburn would only be strange in fact. The lighting wasn't going to change much.

One interesting sidelight on that lecture came from Norry's brother Jack. I was in the forge the next day getting some staples and I asked him what he thought of it. He said that the Colonel had been wonderfully reasonable and not a bit sarcastic. I was surprised by the final word and I remarked that surely he would hardly be that at such a time. But Jack said that you never knew when that sort of man was going to be sarcastic and tell you to buy all sorts of material which he knew perfectly well that you couldn't afford, yet this fellow had been straightforward and reasonable and had mentioned a truss of hay up the chimney, which was fair enough because anyone could get a-hold of that.

The dreadful insinuation contained in this argument made me sit up and I went back across the road reflecting that Jack was giving some of the people who come to address us from time to time credit for far more brains, if much less human decency, than I did, and I wondered then if the fine old country gentry who are nearly all dead and gone with their horses, their guinea tips, their grooms and their leather hat-boxes, were not a deal more ingenious than I had imagined if they bred a countryside always to expect intelligence from them if nothing else whatever, for it sometimes seems that it is only a respect for superior brains and the secret knowledge their possession entails which really makes men and masters. The Church, for instance, never showed any sign of losing her grip whatever abominable muddles she got herself into while the parsons were still the only people in the parishes who could read.