possible. Mais il est trop jeune.’
I replied that he was about the same age as Madge, but Marie assured me that that was ‘beaucoup trop jeune’.
‘Me,’ said Marie, ‘I think the Sir Ambrose.’
I protested, ‘He’s years and years older than she is, Marie.’ She said, perhaps, but it made for stability if a husband was older than his wife. She also added that Sir Ambrose would be a very good ‘parti’, one of which any family would approve.
‘Yesterday,’ I said, ‘she put a flower as a buttonhole in Bernard’s coat.’ But Marie did not think much of the young Bernard. She said he was not a ‘garçon sérieux’.
I learnt a lot about Marie’s family. I knew the habits of their cat and how it was able to walk about among the glasses in the cafe and curl down asleep in the middle of them without ever breaking one. I knew that her sister, Berthe, was older than her and a very serious girl, that her little sister Angele was the darling of the whole family. I knew all the tricks the two boys played and how they got into trouble. Marie also confided to me the proud secret of the family, that once their name had been Shije instead of Sije. Though unable to see whence this pride came in–and indeed I do not even now–I fully concurred with Marie and congratulated her on having this satisfactory ancestry.
Marie occasionally read me French books, as did my mother. But the happy day arrived when I picked up Mémoires d’un Âne myself and found, on turning the pages, that I was able to read it alone just as well as anyone could have read it to me. Great congratulations followed, not least from my mother. At last, after many tribulations, I knew French. I could read it. Occasionally I needed explanations of the more difficult passages, but on the whole I had arrived.
At the end of August we left Cauterets for Paris. I remember it always as one of the happiest summers I have ever known. For a child of my age it had everything. The excitement of novelty. Trees–a recurring factor of enjoyment all through my life. (Is it possibly symbolic that one of my first imaginary companions was called Tree?) A new and delightful companion, my dear snub-nosed Marie. Expeditions on mules. Exploring steep paths. Fun with the family. My American friend Marguerite. The exotic excitement of a foreign place. ‘Something rare and strange…’ How well Shakespeare knows. But it is not the items, grouped together and added up, that linger in my memory. It is Cauterets–the place, the long valley, with its little railway and its wooded slopes, and the high hills.
I have never been back there. I am glad of that. A year or two ago, we contemplated taking a summer holiday there. I said, unthinkingly: I should like to go back.’ It was true. But then it came to me that I could not go back. One cannot, ever, go back to the place which exists in memory. You would not see it with the same eyes–even supposing that it should improbably have remained much the same. What you have had you have had. ‘The happy highways where I went, And shall not come again…’
Never go back to a place where you have been happy. Until you do it remains alive for you. If you go back it will be destroyed.
There are other places I have resisted going back to. One is the shrine of Sheikh Adi in Northern Iraq. We went there on my first visit to Mosul. There was a certain difficulty of access then; you had to get a permit, and to stop at the police post at Ain Sifni under the rocks of the Jebl Maclub.
From there, accompanied by a policeman, we walked up a winding path. It was spring, fresh and green, with wild flowers all the way. There was a mountain stream. We passed occasional goats and children. Then we reached the Yezidi shrine. The peacefulness of it comes back–the flagged courtyard, the black snake carved on the wall of the shrine. Then the step carefully over, not on the threshold, into the small dark sanctuary. There we sat in the courtyard under a gently rustling tree. One of the Yezidees brought us coffee, first carefully spreading a dirty table-cloth. (This, proudly, as showing that European needs were understood.) We sat there a long time. Nobody forced information on us. I knew, vaguely, that the Yezidees were devil worshippers, and the Peacock Angel, Lucifer, is the object of their worship. It always seems strange that the worshippers of Satan should be the most peaceful of all the varying religious sects in that part of the world. When the sun began to get low, we left. It had been utter peace.
Now I believe, they run tours to it. The ‘Spring Festival’ is quite a tourist attraction. But I knew it in its day of innocence. I shall not forget it.
III
From the Pyrenees we went to Paris and then to Dinard. It is irritating to find that all I remember of Paris is my bedroom in the hotel, which had richly painted chocolate-coloured walls on which it was quite impossible to see mosquitoes.
There were myriads of mosquitoes. They pinged and whined all night, and our faces and arms were covered with bites. (Extremely humiliating to my sister Madge, who minded a good deal about her complexion at this period of her life.) We were only in Paris a week, and we seemed to spend all our time attempting to kill mosquitoes, anointing ourselves with various kinds of peculiar smelling oils, lighting incense cones by the bed, scratching bites, dropping hot candle grease on them. Finally, after vehement representations to the hotel management (who persisted in saying there were not really any mosquitoes), the novelty of sleeping under a mosquito net remains an event of the first importance. It was August and boiling hot weather, and under a net it must have been hotter still.
I suppose I must have been shown some of the sights of Paris, but they have left no mark on my mind. I do remember that I was taken to the Tour Eiffel as a treat, but I imagine that, like my first view of mountains, it did not come up to expectation. In fact the only souvenir of our stay there seemed to be a new nickname for me. ‘Moustique.’ No doubt justified.
No, I am wrong. It was on that visit to Paris that I first became acquainted with the forerunners of the great mechanical age. The streets of Paris were full of those new vehicles called ‘Automobiles.’ They rushed madly along (by present-day standards probably quite slowly, but then they only had to compete with the horse), smelling, hooting, driven by men with caps and goggles and full of motoring equipment. They were bewildering. My father said they would be everywhere soon. We did not believe him. I surveyed them without interest, my own allegiance firmly given to all kinds of trains.
My mother exclaimed sadly, ‘What a pity Monty is not here. He would love them.’
It seems odd to me looking back now at this stage of my life. My brother seems to disappear from it completely. He was there, presumably, coming home for the holidays from Harrow, but he does not exist as a figure any longer. The answer is, probably, that he took very little notice of me at this point. I learnt only later that my father was worried about him. He was superannuated from Harrow, being quite unable to pass his exams. I think he went first to a ship-building yard on the Dart, and afterwards up north, to Lincolnshire. Reports of his progress were disappointing. My father received blunt advice. ‘He’ll never get anywhere. You see, he can’t do mathematics. You show him anything practical and it’s all right; he’s a good practical workman. But that’s all he’ll ever be in the engineering line.’
In every family there is usually one member who is a source of trouble and worry. My brother Monty was ours. Until the day of his death he was always causing someone a headache. I have often wondered, looking back, whether there is any niche in life where Monty would have fitted in. He would certainly have been all right if he had been born Ludwig II of Bavaria. I can see him sitting in his empty theatre, enjoying opera sung only for him. He was intensely musical, with a good bass voice, and played various instruments by ear, from penny whistles to piccolo and flute. He would never have had the application, though, to become a professional of any kind, nor, I think, did the idea ever enter his head. He had good manners, great charm, and throughout his life was surrounded by people anxious to save him worry or bother. There was always someone ready to lend him money and to do any chores for him. As a child of six, when he and my sister received their pocket money, the same thing invariably happened. Monty spent his on the first day. Later in the week he would suddenly push my sister into a shop, quickly order three pennyworth of a favourite sweet and then look at my sister, daring her not to pay. Madge, who had a great respect for public opinion, always did. Naturally