The Tall Girl from Somerset 17

ANNE        Sunny side up and dark side down

facilis descensus Averno:
noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,
hoc opus, hic labor est.

“The way to Hell is easy.  Night and day the gates to Hell’s black kingdom lie open.  But to retrace your steps, to find your way back up to the daylight, that is the hard work, that is the real job.” (Virgil “Aeneid  VI”  126-9)

“The readiness of mind is all” (“Henry V”)

Icebergs

The tip of the iceberg

Is our social self.

“Good afternoon and how are you?”

How little of others we ever see,

In the interests of normality!

The fears and hopes we dare not show,

When arranging self for public view,

“Good evening now and how are you?”

Stay in the ice that lies below.

  

Ibsen's Peer Gynt and Ratty from "The Wind in the Willows" make strange bedfellows, but they start this part of Anne's story together. 'Strange bedfellows'. Never mind about these bedfellows being strange, the whole expression is strange enough.  At least, it sounds odd to us today but some time ago it was normal at inns and in hotels to have to share a bed with someone you did not know. Take 'Three Men in a Boat', for instance.  That was published in 1889.  The three friends are looking for a hotel room one night in Datchet and having been turned away from two full hotels they go to a beershop. The owner says ' There are only three beds in the whole house and they have seven single gentlemen and two married couples sleeping here already.'   We have three men to a bed already.'  Then take 'Moby Dick' published earlier.  Before starting the voyage Ishmael ("Call me Ishmael") has to share a room and a bed with a strange harpooner, Queequeg. In those days you took pot luck as to who was your bedfellow. But back to the point. Here Peer Gynt and Ratty make strange bedfellows.

Peer Gynt sat peeling an onion. “When shall I get to the heart?” he asked, as he took off the pieces.  Here we peel off one layer; we go behind Anne’s happy smile, but there are many more layers, and we never reach the heart of Anne or of Harvey or of anyone else. But we shall try to go under the smiling surface that we see in the photographs.  Say, “Cheese” and everyone is happy.  But we shall go under the surface.

On Sundays at school many years ago Henry went caving in the Mendip Hills. These were not the show caves of Cheddar with their lights and handrails, but real caves. These were caves that began as a smallish hole in the rocks with mud and grass around the entrance. Henry lit his carbide lamp and then went in and left the light of day and squeezed through the wet rocks. In these caves there are dark tunnels, narrow and hard to follow, there are many unknown passages and then comes the turning back.  That was the work, that was the job, finding the way out, going up and out again into the sun, up and out into the blue sky of a summer afternoon.

As for Ratty, we follow him up and down his river and into the wild wood, but few of us follow him in his quest in “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”.  What was it? A vision of the truth? A glimpse of what is behind everything? That part of his story is harder going than the daily life of River Bank, the whims of Toad and Ratty's boating expeditions.  So will this part of Anne’s story be.  We see her, in part, it is always in part.  We do not even see ourselves fully. It’s darkish, but it’s not all dark.  How did she tackle things?  Well, she tackled them.  We all have to tackle them!

‘If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.’ That’s Portia for you, and of course she is right.

But the best advice in the world, even Portia’s, would not have helped Anne.  Her own advice to herself was good, but how could she follow it when every hour threw up a new worry? 

It’s strange how we remember our first Shakespeare play, how we know it better than all the other plays however often we read them afterwards.  ‘The Merchant of Venice’ was what I cut my teeth on and I am grateful for it.  Very grateful.   

The day did not come easily to her.  After waking up she sat on the bed, looked in front of her and feared the day ahead. There had been a time when she had woken up feeling good, looking forward to the day, feeling ready. But that was a long time ago. How old was she then?  Seven?  Eight?  That exuberance had long gone; it was just a part of childhood. Strangely, just once, about a month ago she had woken up and she had felt just like that again, happy at a new day, ready to start, as if her body had been too quick for the worries of her mind.  But the enthusiasm soon went, disappearing under the weight of the hours ahead.  Totally inadequate.  How to manage the day?  How to manage the next hour?

 “OK, Anne. First dress, then have breakfast, go through the humdrum mechanics of the morning, then face things. You’ll sort it out. It’ll be OK.  It’ll be OK.”

Life, she thought, must be so simple for other people.  They get up, throw on a few clothes, enjoy a good breakfast, plenty of Kelloggs and perhaps some bacon and  couple of eggs, off to work, radio on in the car, don’t take work too seriously, get through the morning easily, a pleasant lunch with a beer or two, then back to the office, more work, a cup of tea, then back home.  Or did they have to fight, as she did, to get into the right frame of mind before they could start?  Did they too have to force themselves to concentrate their thoughts, to feel right before they could tackle things?

Ah yes, the poem is right though I say it myself.  An awful lot stays in the ice below.