Bethany (5 page)

‘You work very hard,' said Simon to me on numerous occasions. I smiled. After a while I began to hear the question in his voice when he said it.

Why did I work so hard? ‘Because there are a hundred and one things crying out to be done,' I said. My voice was a little high.

‘Crying out?' repeated Simon gently. The fields shimmered in the sun, asking nothing.

I knew, and fought the knowledge. My work was an evasion, an excuse. It enabled me to avoid the moment of quietness when I must ask myself who I really was and what I should really be doing. In vain did Simon tell me, over and over again, that I did not have to give up any of my activities, that all I had to do was
see
what I was doing, after which I could freely decide whether I wanted to go on doing it. I was afraid I might find that I didn't, and then where would I be? Or, more precisely, who would I be? What was I, shorn of my occupations?

The question pressed more and more heavily upon me until one summer's day when, tormented by Simon's insistence that I confront this problem which I did not know how to confront, I walked out into the blazing sun and climbed to the top of the haystack to sit and think. The heat, the light, the sweet smell
of hay, the clamour of birds and insects, overwhelmed me and the knot in my head loosened. In a cool, limpid dream, the self I had been avoiding for so long appeared before me. I noticed that, while unique, it was at the same time exactly like everyone else's. I also noticed that it was quite transparent and had no innate qualities. That meant, obviously, that it could choose to be or do whatever it liked, and whatever it did would have no more connection with it than clothes have with the body they conceal. The unimportance of all my preoccupations was thus graphically revealed to me, and I never took them very seriously again.

My moment of vision on the haystack had been a year ago. I had lapsed a little, of course, back into my neurotic need to be doing things, but something once understood is never quite lost again. So at least I was saying to myself one evening during the early days of the group, when Simon suddenly raised his eyes to mine and asked, ‘Why do you have a job?'

I felt my eyes widen as if at a blow. Three or four days out of seven I went to work and came home, the only member of the group to leave it.

‘I have to earn my living,' I said.

‘There are other ways of earning a living,' said Simon. ‘We have been discussing today, while you weren't here, ways in which the whole group could earn a living. Growing herbs was one. Moving furniture was another.'

Simon had bought the Thames truck from Alex because we couldn't afford to repair it for its M.O.T. test. Now apparently there were plans for using it for furniture moving. I wondered if Simon knew that this would involve changing the tax and insurance. He was curiously unworldly at times.

‘I think they're both very good ideas,' I said. ‘But they'll take time to set up, particularly the herbs. And meanwhile I have to earn a living.'

‘Ah,' said Simon, smiling. ‘Kay will not give up her job until there is another one waiting for her. What a pity.'

How unfair, I thought; and then, how true. I liked to think
of myself as adventurous, but it was a fantasy. I would never do anything without a safety-net. The sole exception had been my decision to come and live with Alex: and I had been trying to curb Alex's taste for adventure ever since.

But wasn't it unfair, all the same? Alex had a very small income from the rents of some jewellers' workshops in London: it just covered the mortgage payments on Bethany. For the rest we were dependent on my earnings, since Alex flatly refused to make any more jewellery for the commercial market. It was soul-destroying, she said, and as I did not feel that my soul was destroyed by working for the local paper (which was not of the scandal-rag variety but more like a cross between the
Farmer's Weekly
and a Women's Institute news sheet), I thought it reasonable that I should earn the money. It was not a bad job, and there were times when it was almost stimulating. It was, moreover, harmless. The
Cornish Gazette
might not publish very much of importance, but at least it published no lies.

The job was harmless and it was necessary: why should I feel so defensive about it? Partly, I supposed, because I still clung to the middle-class idea that to work was moral and not to work when one could work was somehow immoral. I mocked this idea in others; now Simon was making me aware that I subscribed to it myself. I was aware, too, of a slight tension in the air over the very question of earning one's living, for what did they – Simon, Dao, Pete and Coral – live on? Pete, when Alex and I met him, had been working in a draughtsman's office; I assumed he was now on the dole. What about Simon? Did he have a private income? Or did this strange, powerful, gifted man line up with the unemployed dockyard workers every week and sign on? If so, what did they make of him? And was it right?

And underneath all this confusion lurked something much more important. I glimpsed it for a moment, then it flicked away and out of sight. I would have to come back and look for it.

Dao said, ‘Kay will give up her job when it is the day for her
to give it up,' and on that note of acceptance the matter was left.

Fortunately, with so many things left pending, there were a great many issues on which action could be taken at once. Food, for instance. Here, ‘doing nothing' resolved itself in the principle that Dao did all the cooking. This was at her request. She said she was so accustomed to doing the cooking for four adults and three children that doing it for six adults and three children would make no difference. She was also afraid that the children would not eat food cooked by anyone else, and in that she was probably right. Dao's cooking defied imitation. Supper consisted usually of a rich bean and vegetable stew, aromatic with coriander and garlic, served with brown rice and Dao's freshly-baked wholemeal bread. Lunch was usually salad. For breakfast there was muesli, porridge and fruit. It was a very simple diet and completely satisfying.

We washed up our own plates, cups and cutlery – even the children did. There was no exemption. Often, two hours after a meal had finished, I would come across Lily, the dreamy three-year-old, standing on a chair at the kitchen sink, gazing raptly at a trickle of water descending on to a long-washed plate. This small act of washing up was an application of the principle that one never asked someone to do something that one could do oneself. It was also efficient, and efficiency was important because it reduced work.

In the interests of efficiency we decided to pay a visit to a nearby town where it was possible to buy wholefood in bulk. We squeezed into the Humber, arriving breathless and full of a childish excitement. It was the first time we had all been out into the world together – how would the world regard us? It appeared to be nonplussed. The people we spoke to were taken aback and a little unnerved by the degree to which we functioned as a unit, and by the way we found quite ordinary things irresistibly amusing. Dao, trying to explain to the man behind the counter what kind of beans she wanted, was laughing until the tears streamed down her face.

We, on the other hand, were greatly struck by the world's drabness in contrast to the light we felt within us and saw emanating from each other. How the eyes of these people shifted away from ours, how their voices spoke anger, disappointment, fear and loneliness, behind the parade of words. How thin their lives were, how tragically small their aspirations. They had shut up their souls in an airless room, the better to make their way in a world of illusion.

We ordered several hundredweight of assorted beans, lentils, flour and dried fruit, and went into the park and ate ice cream. I discovered, incredulously, an animal's drinking trough bearing an inscribed dedication to a Thai princess who had visited the town. It seemed a clear omen.

The following day I did some arithmetic and found that Alex's and my share of the food we had ordered came to a sum greater than I was likely to possess when it was delivered. Simon noticed my preoccupation and asked me what was the matter. I had not discussed our financial affairs with him because I had considered them to be a personal problem between Alex and myself. I decided, now, that they could not be kept private. Something so fundamental to the running of the house, and holding such power over my state of mind, affected the group and was the group's business.

I explained to Simon that the running costs of the house together with the payment of various long-standing bills stretched our financial resources to the limit, and involved me in budgeting so stringent that it was a perpetual tightrope act. I explained that this week, for instance, out of my £24 wages I had to pay a £12 instalment on a £60 bill for builders' materials; next week I would have to pay something off the rates; the week after that there was the H.P. instalment on the car; the week after that I had to toss up between the electricity and the telephone, both of which would be cut off if the bill was not paid. Meanwhile we owed £90 to a local builder for work on the roof, we had owed £25 to the coal merchant for so long he had started charging us interest, and in a few weeks
we would need more oil for the Rayburn, which would mean another bill of £70. Both Alex and I owed money to the Inland Revenue, and next month the Mini Traveller had to be taxed. I added that Alex did not seem to understand these things and left them to me. I said that in view of this I hoped he would understand why I was rather concerned about my ability to pay for the food we had ordered.

Simon was silent for a while after I had finished. Then he said, ‘The running expenses of the house will be shared. The rates, the telephone, the electricity and so on – we will divide up the cost between us.'

‘That will help,' I said. ‘It means the problem won't arise in future. But I'm afraid it doesn't solve my immediate problem, which is how to pay the costs we've already incurred.'

‘We will share them,' said Simon. ‘Since we have come to share this house, we will also share its debts.'

I stared at him. He was offering to pay for telephone calls he had never made, electricity he had never used, coal which had never warmed him. I couldn't accept, of course: yet I saw that I could reasonably ask them to share the rates, which were paid in advance, and also to share the rental part of the telephone bill which was payable in advance. In that case, and with the money saved on food and the little extravagances with which Alex and I were wont to distract ourselves from our penury, I would be able to start paying off the builder and perhaps even …

Simon was watching me. ‘In some communities,' he said, ‘a certain person is chosen to be responsible for a particular aspect of life in the community. It is efficient. Everyone knows who is responsible for that particular thing, and can go to that person for information or for a decision.'

‘It sounds a bit like school,' I said.

‘Didn't you like your school?'

‘I didn't like that part of it.'

‘It is a question of whether one prefers chaos or order,' he said.

I grinned. ‘I don't much like chaos, but I'm used to it,' I said. ‘Perfect order repels me. I have a temperamental bias against it.'

‘You'll enjoy it,' said Simon. While I digested this he added, ‘I consider that the group needs a Bursar. I nominate you.'

Thus I, who could never add up a column of figures twice and get the same answer, became responsible for the group's finances. And thus the group became an organised entity. For Simon, having embarked on an idea, would always pursue it to its logical conclusion, and the logical conclusion of my becoming Bursar was that we should all become something.

I returned from work the following day to find that Alex had become the Farmer, Coral had become the Housekeeper, and Pete, who in the space of a week had already repaired the plumbing, the truck, and installed a new sink in the kitchen, had become the Maintenance Man. Dao of course was already Cook. Simon, at the centre of these activities, co-ordinating, advising, smoothing over difficulties, exposing and eliminating problems, chose for himself the title of Organiser.

The possession of a title did not mean that one had to do all the work the title implied, but merely that one was responsible for seeing that the work was done. For instance, we all helped with the housework, each taking a certain part of the house to clean every morning before breakfast, but Coral as Housekeeper was responsible for seeing that no corners were neglected, that there were always enough dusters, and so on. Alex, as Farmer, was responsible for overall farming strategy and for checking that fences, gates and tools were in good repair.

My job as Bursar involved, initially, calculating the weekly running costs of the house and then, at meetings to be held every Thursday evening, collecting this amount from the group and ensuring that the week's expenditure was evenly borne. From the money collected for running expenses I paid bills as they became due. Proposals for major items of group expenditure were put to me for my approval, and I was supposed to see that we did not overspend. I was puzzled as to how I could
perform this last duty without knowing what the group's combined income was, but while I was quite prepared to reveal my own income I met only an uncomprehending smile from Simon when I eventually put the matter to him, so I dropped the subject and assumed that I had somehow misunderstood him.

I had expected that we would split the costs three ways, taking Simon and Dao as one unit, Pete and Coral as another, and Alex and myself as the third. I was surprised to hear Simon say at the end of the first Thursday meeting that he thought there should be four paying units, myself and Alex being considered separately. Dao was surprised, too. She shook her head vigorously, without ceasing to smile.

‘What I see,' she said, pointing round the room where we happened to be sitting in pairs, ‘is there are two eating, and two eating and two eating.'