Essay: Low Door in the Wall
Low Door in the Wall,
London 1941
by MaryAnn Brooks
In the book, Brideshead revisited, Charles Ryder found and eventually went through his mythical low door in the wall.
I went through it without even knowing it was there.
It was the summer of 1941. The war in Europe was escalating, the great Depression in the United states was coming to an end, and clothes rationing had just been introduced to the already hard pressed British public.
Important as these events were to the world in general, they meant little to me as I trudged along a country lane looking for a particular name on a particular gate.
This was to be my third address, not unusual in these stressful times; the best of intentions weakened as folks realized the extra ration card wasn’t worth the extra work, and worry, involved in caring for a displaced Londoner.
In a way the government was to blame. This town in the country might be safe but it was also less than forty miles from London and being the true city dwellers we were, we took every opportunity to slip away for a family weekend.
Night raids, day raids, leaky shelters, we didn’t care; we hadn’t wanted to leave home in the first place.
It’s more than likely we lost a classmate or two to the bombing but with all the coming and going, how would we know? If someone didn’t return after a weekend, it was simply stated by the powers that be that she’d decided to stay home.
But that’s another story; on this bright August afternoon, I was checking names on gates and wishing these folks used numbers like everyone else.
I soon realized these folks weren’t like everyone else. The houses were large and took up so much road that by the time I reached the place I was looking for – thank goodness it was only four in from where I started – I must have walked the length of our street back home. Twice.
By now I was in a not sure if this is what I want frame of mind. What if I don’t like them, I asked myself as I stared at the doorbell. What if they don’t like you, I surprised myself with the answer.
Anyway, it was too late to beat a retreat; I’d rung the bell, and already I could hear the sound of someone inside. Any second now, that door would open; then what?
My worries were groundless.
From the moment I crossed that threshold, I was as one of the family. The lady of the house greeted me with gracious familiarity and no indication was ever made, by word or action, that I was anything other than a welcome visitor.
Daughter was out, she explained as she closed the door, but I’d meet her soon. Husband was still in the city, she glanced at her watch, but I’d meet him at dinner; was seven alright? She smiled the question and I smiled a silent answer. What else could I do?
While she was showing me my room, a naked baby boy toddled into view..
Not at all put out by his startling appearance, she looked at me and shrugged, muttered something about Houdini, then scooped him up and vanished with him into the back of the house.
She explained junior over dinner. Essential work – a wartime requirement for all non military adults – had taken both her housekeeper and the children’s live-in nanny, so now she had to do everything herself. She was coping well enough but still couldn’t manage a diaper pin.
She never did learn. For the rest of the summer and well into the cold weather, junior ran about naked; he was a true escape artist.
For almost a year I lived, and thoroughly enjoyed, a way of life I’d only been able to imagine while looking at pictures in the Sunday newspaper.
My table manners were good, my mother had seen to that, but here I learned to dine in the grand manner; to eat off fine matched china, using, in the correct order, the fine array of – again matched – silverware. To drink – water for me but I didn’t mind – from glassware that may or may not be crystal
I developed the art of polite conversation during dinner that would continue afterwards when we’d transfer to the sitting room, and the comfort of deep armchairs. These conversations fine tuned my voice to where I might even, had the occasion ever arisen, pass muster at one of the queen’s tea parties.
Soon I was walking across polished floors without worrying about the effect on the surface. Ditto with the priceless rugs scattered everywhere that I once used to walk around.
I even learned to take the equally priceless furniture for granted; if no one fussed when junior of the absent diaper climbed on, and in, the various pieces of Chippendale, why should I?
They had everything, including a cement state of the art bunker in the back garden. She’d laugh about that bunker; not how and when it might be needed but how and when to get rid of it. Their gardener had declared his own war; he refused to return until it was gone.
When I left, by choice rather than request, it was with mixed feelings. I was going back to live in a war zone; within the month the first V2 rocket would land. I was now going to have to think about clothes; school uniform was out, real life was in. And soon I’d be, like other women, painting a fashionable stripe down the back of my legs rather than spend coupons on stockings.
I didn’t look back and wonder what I’d left when I closed that painted gate for the last time.
I didn’t mourn the closing of any low door in the wall.
I didn’t even know I’d spent nearly a year in Charles Ryder’s enchanted garden.