Hundreds and Thousands (51 page)

As I cannot sleep, I may as well write. The house begins to be a home. The unfamiliar places are beginning to fold the familiar objects into their keeping and to cosy them down. Objects that swore at each other when the movers heaved them into the new
rooms have subsided into corners and sit to lick their feet and wash their faces like cats accepting a new home. The garden is undeniably mine already, with its neat fence and the griffon dogs. The great brooding maple is thinking of spring and with half-waked stir is drawing the juice from my little patch of earth. The big fuchsia and the young japonica, blushing with its first year’s blooming, are set orderly against the newly painted walls, with thongs of moose hide from the north softly restraining their young branches. Spring won’t be long now. We two old winter birds will welcome her. Alice says pitifully, “What is there?” as she stoops and feels some tender young thing springing from the earth. It must be terrible knowing that she cannot expect to see them with those eyes any more, and having to rely on other people telling her. It is like learning a new world, comprehending by touch, smell and sound. Thwarted sight cries out to sort things for itself in the accustomed way.

My bedroom is large and has a great deal in it, not only furniture but millions of memories, memories of when it was the school dining-room and I took noon dinner at my sister’s. Alice carved at one end of the big table and Lizzie slapped vegetables on plates at the other, making cheerful or fretful conversation. Many, many children have sat in this room, nice ones and nasty. Suddenly they all come trooping hungrily in again from the schoolroom, clambering into high chairs or mounting upon the big dictionary or a cushion to allow their fat elbows and round faces to appear above the table edge, nice, funny little tykes or rude, home-spoiled horrors. Alice patiently pecks at them, “Other hand, Billie. Don’t chew out loud, Sally. No talking. Eat a little of the fat too.” Then there is the scraping of chairs after being
excused and a row of children standing by the kitchen sink to have the maid untie their bibs and sponge their lips and fingers. Lizzie would streak like a stone from a catapult back to her own house, to her dusting and her charities, and I would have a little chat with Alice as she dribbled water on the flowers in the glass alcove of the schoolroom, one eye and ear on the children playing in the yard, running to the door every five minutes to say, “Stop yelling! I won’t have it, children!” Then I would go around the corner to my own house and the job of landlady, which I detested, or would scurry off to paint in some woods, which I loved. Time dragged on, pulling us with it regardless of everything, drawing us through the successive seasons indifferent to our grunts or grins. Life’s interesting. There is so much to see, so much to bite off and store and chew on — chew, chew — like cows converting our croppings into the milk and meat of life.

I am unutterably weary but happy in the satisfaction that we are on the high road to being established permanently. It is nicer and cosier all the time. I had visitors today and the carpenters came to finish up odds and ends. I feel very content with it all. I think Alice is too but she would not admit for worlds that it was improved. The builders tell me that the house was practically tumbling down and was waterlogged and rotted at the corners from broken gutters. Every door was out of whack. Blinds, oh! Floors, oh! Paintwork, oh! Now it is beginning to look loved and cared for. The poor old lilac tree has had the trash cleaned from between its branches and the suckers pruned out. The brambles and trash outside my windows are gone. The bird houses are
neat and will be attractive when painted. Alice mourns over these innovations. It seems as if she wanted these things to age and grow dilapidated to keep pace with our own ageing.

Big things bump into you, bruising. Little things chafe and nag and have no finality. The thousands of little chores pertaining to cleaning up and to the decencies of living squeak, “Me, me, me!” all clamouring to be done first. Big things have taken all my energy and bounce; the squeaking of the little ones irritates me now.

The sun is determined to show up every blemish in the window fixings. I promise myself a day of recovery in bed but I cannot hoist myself high enough above minor details to rest. The birds are liberated into the new aviary and the chipmunks are there too. All are delighted after a week in small, crowded cages. The budgies stretch and preen. Reunited lovers kiss and beak each other’s whiskers. The chipmunks creep with little jerky darts, scampering in and out of their cage which serves as a mossy run so that they can go in and hide when they feel exclusive. The birds do not notice their comings and goings. The aviary is a weave of beautiful colour and swift movement. It is delightful. I called to Alice, “Come and see.” She came crossly. “I can’t see them, so what’s the good of my coming?” She began grumbling about the cage’s location, able to see the scattered lumber and missing the lovely bird part. Good old Willie has tried so hard to please us and has done everything so kindly and well that I feel ashamed of her nastiness to him. “Give us time,” I said, “and we will get everything cleared up soon.” But she slammed off with a growl.

The world is horrid right straight through and so am I. I lay awake for three hours in the night and today as a result I am tired and ratty even though the sun is as nice as can be. I want to whack everyone on earth. I’ve a cough and a temper and every bit of me is tired. I’m old and ugly, stupid and ungracious. I don’t even want to be nice. I want to grouch and sulk and rip and snort. I am a pail of milk that has gone sour. Now, perhaps, having written it all down, the hatefulness will melt off to where the mist goes when the sun gets up. Perhaps the nastiness in me has scooted down my right arm and through my fingers into the pencil and lies spilled openly on the paper to shame me. Writing is a splendid sorter of your good and bad feelings, better even than paint. The whole thing of life is trying to crack the nut and get at the bittersweetness of the kernel.

Some copper wire, a spot or so of electricity and a curly-headed youth have hitched me to the round world and, marvel of marvels, voices, travelling unaccompanied by their vocal cords and all the other fleshly impedimenta, are visiting in my studio. Silly gigglers, ghastly crooners, politicians, parsons, advertisers of every known commodity, holy music, horrid music, noise with no music, the impartial air carries them all, distributing to any who have a mind to tune in. The ghastly breath of war roars and bellows. Someone has collected the dregs of terror, stirred them into a fearful potion, and poured them on to the air.

The wind is tearing and roaring. The heavy cedars on the boulevard of St. Andrew’s Street writhe their heavy, drooping boughs. Shivery and flexible, they never break; they only toss in agonized swirls. It has been a brutally bullying day.

Today I received a compliment which pleased me. I was just through with giving a grocery order when the grocer’s rather gruff voice said, “Say, are you the Miss Carr whose stories were on the radio recently?” “Yes.” “Well, I want to tell you how much my wife and I enjoyed them. We were sorry there were not more. Say, won’t there be more? We liked them. They were humorous, they was.” And Una wrote how thoroughly she’s enjoyed them. That was most
warming,
from one of the family.

The house is now curtained. Curtains are foolish. Why leave “see-outs” in walls and then blind the vision with cataracts of curtaining? I have only done what is necessary to quell the fierceness of the sun for painting, to comply with the law about the world seeing one’s raw flesh, and to satisfy Alice that her house looks decent. All are on quickly pushed-back rings so that except when absolute modesty or painting necessitates I can face the outside. I can see the beautiful cedars on the boulevard and the decorous well-blinded windows of St. Andrew’s Street on which, unlike Beckley Street, every soul is respectable, every garden trim, and down which the street sweeper and boulevard attendants make periodic visits. I like decency. Wild places are totally decent but tame places that are slovenly and neglected are disgusting beyond words.

We have supper at Alice’s and then bed. The dog boxes are one each side of me, two boxes of calm snore to my bed full of toss. Alice kisses me goodnight and says it is nice to be under the same roof.

Morning brings cold and wet. The house is very cold this morning and it caused great indignation when I said so. I must
go carefully. Alice cannot bear one criticism of her house. Her answer is always, “It suited
me.
”

We had tea round the studio fire — on top of it, grilling like steaks. It is comfortable enough but the great maple tree over the house is the real heat sucker and benefiter by the studio fire. When we pile logs into the huge cavern the old tree yowls, “That’s my relative,” and claims the heat, permitting us to have the ash. The chimney is big enough to have the boy sweeps of old go up with a hand broom. Necessary and unnecessary articles are heaped one on top of the other in the studio. The great blank windows stare. In bed with two hot bottles is the only comfort I’ve found yet. In time I’ll get used to it. The layout is nice if only there was heat in my bedroom cupboard. The water has soaked down the walls for epochs of time; it is sodden. What a freeze-up would be like I cannot imagine. This winter is mild, though yesterday there was sleet and penetrating cold that chilled one to the heart, and the doors and windows leak draughts. I feel like an alligator who has swapped places with a polar bear. Life is harsh, as though it had turned its deaf ear towards you.

I USED TO WONDER
what it would be like to be sixty-eight. I have seen four sisters reach sixty-eight and pass, but only by a few years. My father set three score years and ten as his limit, reached it and died. I, too, said that after the age of seventy a painter probably becomes poor and had better quit, but I wanted to work till I was seventy. At sixty-four my heart gave out but I was able to paint still and I learned to write. At sixty-eight I had a
stroke. Three months later I am thinking that I may work on perhaps to seventy after all. I do not feel dead, and already I am writing again a little.

I used to wonder how it would feel to be old. As a child I was very devoted to old ladies. They seemed to me to have faded like flowers. I am not half as patient with old women now that I am one. I am impatient of their stupidity and their selfishness. They want still to occupy the centre of the picture. They have had their day but they won’t give place. They grudge giving up. They won’t face up to old age and accept its slowing down of energy and strength. Some people call this sporty and think it wonderful for Grannie to be as bobbish as a girl. There are plenty of girls to act the part. Why can’t the old lady pass grandly and not grudgingly on, an example, not a rival? Old age without religion must be ghastly, looking forward to only dust and extinction. I do not call myself religious. I do not picture after-life in detail. I am content with “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.” Perhaps it is faith, perhaps indolence, but I cannot imagine anything more hideous than feeling life decay, hurrying into a dark shut-off).

The days fill out. They are happy, contented days. I am nearer sixty-nine than sixty-eight now, and a long way recovered from my stroke. There is a lot of life in me yet. Maybe I shall go out into the woods sketching again, who knows? I have got the sketches out that I did on the trip just before my stroke. They are very full of spring joy, high in key, with lots of light and tenderness of spring. How did I do these joyous things when I was so torn up over the war? They were done in Dunkirk days when we were holding our breath wondering if those trapped men were going to get out. We did not know the full awareness of it then; we were guessing. Yet when I went into the woods I could rise
and skip with the spring and forget my bad heart. Doesn’t it show that the good and beautiful and lovely and inspiring will of nature is stronger than evil and cruelty? Life is bigger than war and the tremendousness of spring can wash out the dirt of war. The terrific thing that is working over the nations is quite beyond the human. It is no good being dismayed. It is as inevitable as night. Tomorrow can’t come till the night has finished today. Nature finishes off one season’s growth and begins all over again. Her worn-out cast-offs contentedly flutter down to the honourable joy of fertilizing the soil so that the new growth may better thrive from their richness. It is not dismayed when it turns yellow and sere, when it shrivels and falls.

Lawren and Bess Harris came to Victoria from Mexico and paid me a three-and-a-half-hour visit, rooting well through my picture racks and expressing pleasure in them. I said to Lawren. “You have not told me of the bad ones,” and he said, “There are none.” But I expect he found them tame after abstraction. He said that I was after the same thing as he was but had not gone so far. He thought my work had gone on. He seemed, I thought, to hanker back somewhat to the more advanced Indian material. He spoke little. I felt that they were both taken aback to see me aged and feeble. For days on end I have had a steady headache and feel very, very tired and old.

I am sixty-nine years old today. It has been a nice birthday — cold, bright and frosty. Such lots of people remembered my date. Lollie Wilson and Hattie Newbery came to tea; Ruth Humphrey
and Margaret Clay looked in, one with cigarettes and one with flowers. Alice asked Flora Burns to supper and we had a nice evening round the fire chattering. A
very
satisfactory birthday. Only one more year of man’s allotted time to go.

I do not mourn at old age. Life has been good and I have got a lot out of it, lots to remember and relive. I have liked life, perhaps the end more than the beginning. I was a happy-natured little girl but with a tragic streak, very vulnerable to hurt. I developed very late. Looking back is interesting. I can remember the exact spot and the exact time that so many things dawned on me. Particularly is this so in regard to my work. I know just when and where and how I first saw or comprehended certain steps in my painting development. Of late years my writing has shown me very many reasons for things. I do not resent old age and the slowing-down process. As a child I used to say to myself, “I shall go everywhere I can and see and do all I can so that I will have plenty to think about when I am old.” I kept all the chinks between acts filled up by being interested in lots of odd things. I’ve had handy, active fingers and have made them work. I suppose the main force behind all this was my painting. That was the principal reason why I went to places, the reason why I drove ahead through the more interesting parts of life, to get time and money to push further into art, not the art of making pictures and becoming a great artist, but art to use as a means of expressing myself, putting into visibility what gripped me in nature.