This was back when nice people said pluck, the sleevelink and green eyeshade epoch. Faced, though, like Bill Tuckett with a man needing surgery right on the spot, a lot would have done their dashes. It looked hopeless (dot dot dot) Lift him up on the table, said Tuckett, running the key hot till Head Office turned up a doctor who coolly instructed up a thousand miles of wire, as Tuckett advanced slit by slit with a safety razor blade, pioneering on into the wet, copper-wiring the rivers off, in the first operation conducted along dotted lines, with rum drinkers gripping the patient: d-d-dash it, take care, Tuck!
And the vital spark stayed unshorted. Yallah! Breathed the camelmen. Tuckett, you did it, you did it! cried the spattered la-de-dah jodhpur-wearing Inspector of Stock. We i
...magine, some weeks later, a properly laconic convalescent averring Without you, I’d have kicked the bucket ... From Chungking to Burrenjuck, morse keys have mostly gone silent and only old men meet now to chit-chat in their electric bygone dialect. The last letter many will forget is dit-dit-dit-dah, V for Victory. The coders’ hero had speed, resource and a touch.
While I am lying on the grass, I hear thy restless shout: From hill to hill it seems to pass, About, and all about! To me, no Babbler with a tale Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou tellest, Cuckoo! in the vale Of visionary hours. Thrice welcome, Darling of the Spring! Even yet thou art to me No Bird; but an invisible Thing, A voice, a mystery. The same whom in my School-boy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me loo
a thousand ways; In bush, and tree, and sky. To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen!
It didn’t happen too often, though. But it always made me want to become a sorceress that could say ‘Die! ’ to my father and he would die as in the folk-tale. And then, when he had learnt his lesson, I would bring him back to life and he would never touch his whip again. And then one day as my mother came out wiping her eyes I rushed to her and hugged her legs but instead of pressing me to herself as I had expected she pushed me away so violently that I hit my head against the wooden mortar. After that I didn’t feel any more like telling my father to die.
I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight at the time but I know I had this strong feeling then – extraordinary, powerful and adult – that my father and my mother had their own world, my three sisters had theirs and I was alone in mine. And it didn’t bother me at all then, my aloneness, nor has it done so since. I didn’t realize until much later that my mother bore me a huge grudge because I was a girl – her fifth in a row though one had died – and that when I was born she had so desperately prayed for a boy to give my father. This knowledge came to me by slow stages which I won’t go into now.
But I must
mention that in addition to Beatrice they had given me another name at my baptism, Nwanyibuife – A female is also something. Can you beat that? Even as a child I disliked the name most intensely without being aware of its real meaning. It merely struck me at that point that I knew of nobody else with the name; it seemed fudged! Somehow I disliked it considerably less in its abridged form, Buife. Perhaps it was the nwanyi, the female half of it that I particularly resented. My father was so insistent on it. ‘Sit like a female! or ‘Female soldier’ which he called me as he lifted me off the ground with his left hand and gave me three stinging smacks on the bottom with his right the day I fell off the cashew tree. But I didn’t set out to write my autobiography and I don’t want to do so. Who am I that I should inflict my story on the world? All I’m trying to say really is that as far as I can remember I have always been on my own and never asked to be noticed by anybody. Never! And I don’t recall embarking ever on anything that would require me to call on others. Which meant that I never embarked on anything beyond my own puny powers.
Which meant finally that I couldn’t be ambitious. I am very, very sensitive about this – I don’t mind admitting it. That I got involved in the lives of the high and mighty was purely accidental and was not due to any scheming on my part. In the first place, they all became
high and mighty after I met them; not before. Chris was not a Commissioner when I met him but a mere editor of the National Gazette. That was way back in civilian days. And if I say that Chris did all the chasing I am not boasting or anything. That was simply how it was. And I wasn’t being coy either.
It was a matter of experience having taught me in my little lonely world that © UCLES 2009 9695/31/O/N/09 Or 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 7 I had to be wary. Some people even say I am suspicious by nature. Perhaps I am. Being a girl of maybe somewhat above average looks, a good education, a good job you learn quickly enough that you can’t open up to every sweet tongue that comes singing at your doorstep. Nothing very original really. Every girl knows that from her mother’s breast although thereafter some may choose to be dazzled into forgetfulness for one reason or another.
The dog came bounding back, and seeing his master in a predicament, and hearing the horse groan, barked till the evening hills echoed the sound, which was deep in proportion to his magnitude. He sniffed round the prostrate group, and then he ran up to me; it was all he could do – there was no other help at hand to summon. I obeyed him, and walked down to the traveller, by this time struggling himself free of his steed. His efforts were so vigorous, I thought he could not be much hurt; but I asked him the question – ‘Are you injured, sir? I think he was swearing,
but I am not certain; however, he was pronouncing some formula which prevented him from replying to me directly. ‘Can I do anything? ’ I asked again. ‘You must just stand on one side,’ he answered as he rose, first to his knees, and then to his feet. I did; whereupon began a heaving, stamping, clattering process, accompanied by a barking and baying which removed me effectually some yards distance; but I would not be driven quite away till I saw the event. This was finally fortunate; the horse was re-established, and the dog was silenced with a ‘Down Pilot! The traveller now, stooping, felt his foot and leg, as if trying whether they were sound; apparently something ailed them, for he halted to the stile whence I had just risen, and sat down.
I was in the mood for being useful, or at least officious, I think, for I now drew near him again. ‘If you are hurt, and want help, sir, I can fetch some one either from Thornfield Hall or from Hay. ’ ‘Thank you; I shall do: I have no broken bones – only a sprain’; and again he stood up and tried his foot, but the result extorted an involuntary ‘Ugh! Something of daylight still lingered, and the moon was waxing bright; I could see him plainly. His figure was enveloped in a riding cloak, fur collared and steel clasped; its details were not apparent, but I traced the general points of middle height, and considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just
now; he was past youth, but had not reached middle age; perhaps he might be thirty-five. I felt no fear of him, and but little shyness.
Had he been a handsome, heroic-looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioning him against his will, and offering my services unasked. I had hardly ever seen a handsome youth; never in my life spoken to one. I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic.
I am sitting at my writing-table which is placed across a corner so that I am behind it, as it were, and facing the room. The lamp with the green shade is alight; I have before me two large books of reference, both open, a pile of papers … All the paraphernalia, in fact, of an extremely occupied man. My wife, with her little boy on her lap, is in a low chair before the fire. She is about to put him to bed before she clears away the dishes and piles them up in the kitchen for the servant girl tomorrow morning. But the warmth, the quiet, and the sleepy baby, have made her dreamy.
One of his red woollen boots is off, one is on. She sits, bent forward, clasping the little bare foot, staring into the glow, and as the fire quickens, falls, flares again, her shadow – an immense Mother
and Child – is here and gone again upon the wall … Outside it is raining. I like to think of that cold drenched window behind the blind, and beyond, the dark bushes in the garden, their broad leaves bright with rain, and beyond the fence, the gleaming road with the two hoarse little gutters singing against each other, and the wavering reflections of the lamps, like fishes’ tails.
While I am here, I am there, lifting my face to the dim sky, and it seems to me it must be raining all over the world – that the whole earth is drenched, is sounding with a soft, quick patter or hard, steady drumming, or gurgling and something that is like sobbing and laughing mingled together, and that light, playful splashing that is of water falling into still lakes and flowing rivers. And all at once and the same moment I am arriving in a strange city, slipping under the hood of the cab while the driver whips the cover off the breathing horse, running from shelter to shelter, dodging someone, swerving by someone else.
I am conscious of tall houses, their doors and shutters sealed against the night, of dripping balconies and sodden flower-pots. I am brushing through deserted gardens and falling into moist smelling summer-houses (you know how soft and almost crumbling the wood of a summer-house is in the rain); I am standing on the dark quayside giving my ticket into the wet, red hand of the old sailor in an oilskin. How strong the sea smells! How loudly the tied-up boats knock against one another! I am crossing the wet stackyard, hooded in
an old sack, carrying a lantern, while the house-dog, like a soaking doormat, springs, shakes himself over me.
And now I am walking along a deserted road – it is impossible to miss the puddles, and the trees are stirring – stirring. But one could go on with such a catalogue for ever – on and on – until one lifted the single arum lily leaf and discovered the tiny snails clinging, until one counted … and what then? Aren’t those just the signs, the traces of my feeling? The bright green streaks made by someone who walks over the dewy grass? Not the feeling itself. And as I think that a mournful, glorious voice begins to sing in my bosom. Yes, perhaps that is nearer what I mean.
