The longing to write my autobiography assailed me suddenly at my ‘house’ at Nimrud, Beit Agatha.
I have looked back to what I wrote then and I am satisfied. I have done what I wanted to do. I have been on a journey. Not so much a journey back through the past, as a journey forward–starting again at the beginning of it all–going back to the Me who was to embark on that journey forward through time. I have not been bounded by time or space. I have been able to linger where I wanted, jump backwards and forwards as I wished.
I have remembered, I suppose, what I wanted to remember; many ridiculous things for no reason that makes sense. That is the way we human creatures are made.
And now that I have reached the age of seventy-five, it seems the right moment to stop. Because, as far as life is concerned, that is all there is to say.
I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the ante-room for the summons that will inevitably come. And then–I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. One doesn’t luckily have to bother about that.
I am ready now to accept death. I have been singularly fortunate. I have with me my husband, my daughter, my grandson, my kind son-in-law–the people who make up my world. I have not yet quite reached the time when I am a complete nuisance to them all.
I have always admired the Esquimaux. One fine day a delicious meal is cooked for dear old mother, and then she goes walking away over the ice–and doesn’t come back…
One should be proud of leaving life like that–with dignity and resolution.
It is, of course, all very well to write these grand words. What will really happen is that I shall probably live to be ninety-three, drive everyone mad by being unable to hear what they say to me, complain bitterly of the latest scientific hearing aids, ask innumerable questions, immediately forget the answers and ask the same questions again. I shall quarrel violently with some patient nurse-attendant and accuse her of poisoning me, or walk out of the latest establishment for genteel old ladies, causing endless trouble to my suffering family. And when I finally succumb to bronchitis, a murmur will go around of ‘One can’t help feeling that it really is a merciful relief.
And it will be a merciful relief (to them) and much the best thing to happen.
Until then, while I’m still comfortably waiting in Death’s ante-chamber, I am enjoying myself. Though with every year that passes, something has to be crossed off the list of pleasures.
Long walks are off, and, alas, bathing in the sea; fillet steaks and apples and raw blackberries (teeth difficulties) and reading fine print. But there is a great deal left. Operas and concerts, and reading, and the enormous pleasure of dropping into bed and going to sleep, and dreams of every variety, and quite often young people coming to see you and being surprisingly nice to you. Almost best of all, sitting in the sun–gently drowsy…And there you are again–remembering. ‘I remember, I remember, the house where I was born.
I go back to that always in my mind. Ashfield.
O ma chère maison, mon nid, mon gîte
Le passé l’habite…O! ma chère maison…
How much that means. When I dream, I hardly ever dream of Greenway or Winterbrook. It is always Ashfield, the old familiar setting where one’s life first functioned, even though the people in the dream are the people of today. How well I know every detail there: the frayed red curtain leading to the kitchen, the sunflower brass fender in the hall grate, the Turkey carpet on the stairs, the big, shabby schoolroom with its dark blue and gold embossed wallpaper.
I went to see–not Ashfield, but where Ashfield had been, a year or two ago. I knew I would have to go sooner or later. Even if it caused me pain, I had to go.
Three years ago now someone wrote to me, asking if I knew that the house was to be pulled down, and a new estate developed on the site. They wondered if I couldn’t do something to save it–such a lovely house–as they had heard I had lived there once.
I went to see my lawyer. I asked if it would be possible for me to buy the house and make a gift of it to an old people’s home, perhaps? But that was not possible. Four or five big villas and gardens had been sold en bloc–all to be demolished, and the new ‘estate’ put up. So there could be no respite for dear Ashfield.
It was a year and a half before I summoned up the resolution to drive up Barton Road…
There was nothing that could even stir a memory. They were the meanest, shoddiest little houses I had ever seen. None of the great trees remained. The ash-trees in the wood had gone, the remains of the big beech-tree, the Wellingtonia, the pines, the elms that bordered the kitchen garden, the dark ilex–I could not even determine in my mind where the house had stood. And then I saw the only clue–the defiant remains of what had once been a monkey puzzle, struggling to exist in a cluttered back yard. There was no scrap of garden anywhere. All was asphalt. No blade of grass showed green.
I said ‘Brave monkey puzzle’ to it, and turned away.
But I minded less after I had seen what had happened. Ashfield had existed once but its day was over. And because whatever has existed still does exist in eternity, Ashfield is still Ashfield. To think of it causes me no more pain.
Perhaps some child sucking a plastic toy and banging on a dustbin lid, may one day stare at another child, with pale yellow sausage curls and a solemn face. The solemn child will be standing in a green grass fairy ring by a monkey puzzle holding a hoop. She will stare at the plastic space ship that the first child is sucking, and the first child will stare at the hoop. She doesn’t know what a hoop is. And she won’t know that she’s seen a ghost…
Goodbye, dear Ashfield.
So many other things to remember: walking up through a carpet of flowers to the Yezidis shrine at Sheikh Adi…the beauty of the great tiled mosques of Isfahan–a fairy-story city…a red sunset outside the house at Nimrud…getting out of the train at the Cilician gates in the hush of evening…the trees of the New Forest in autumn…swimming in the sea in Torbay with Rosalind…Mathew playing in the Eton and Harrow match…Max arriving home from the war and eating kippers with me…So many things–some silly, some funny, some beautiful. Two summits of ambition fulfilled: dining with the Queen of England (how pleased Nursie would have been. ‘Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?’); and the proud ownership of a bottle-nosed Morris–a car of my own! Most poignant of experiences: Goldie the canary hopping down from the curtain pole after a day of hopeless despair.
A child says ‘Thank God for my good dinner’.
What can I say at seventy-five? ‘Thank God for my good life, and for all the love that has been given to me.’
Wallingford. October IIth 1965
Epilogue