Anna Kavan - Guilty

So my experiments were mostly confined to the holidays, when I had all the solitude necessary and more. Taking a sandwich for my lunch, I would walk all day over our wild windy hills, without meeting anyone but a farmer, perhaps, out with his gun. Hill behind hill, the smooth curved downs were like the backs of a concourse of whales, swimming steadily past me on every side; for I seemed so close to the high white clouds, driven ceaselessly across the blue emptiness above, that everything around me appeared to be moving. I was alone, out of all creation, treading the turning globe, while the wind sang in the shells of my ears and thundered intermittently through the treetops of some wooded chine as I passed, constantly flattening the combed short green hair-like grass for my feet. I experienced such exhilaration then that the familiar world seemed magically extended; I felt the corridors of the universe about to open before me. And in this exalted state it was easy to accept my difference and to glory in it. Even after the authentic elation had passed, I could still acknowledge my peculiarity, not in bravado but as an essential factor, always to be taken into consideration.

The fantasy of the moving landscape and the expanding dimensions of the everyday world encouraged me to believe I was close to being accepted as a naturalized citizen of that other place, which would admit me as a refugee in flight from reality, in case of emergency.

My timeless walks, reaching out to the boundaries of infinity, may not have been the most normal of holiday occupations. But I had few alternatives. The children I’d known had all gone on to other schools, none of the boys attended the same exclusive, costly, remote one as I did, so that I’d lost touch with them all. My mother took little part, these days, in the social life of the neighbourhood and made no attempt to provide me with companions.

I didn’t realize then that there was a special reason for her isolation, neither worldly enough, nor, I’m afraid, interested enough, to wonder why she rarely went anywhere or entertained anybody. Always inclined to solitude, she had taken little notice of the local people at any time. I was scarcely aware of her growing seclusion, which was obscured by the attentions of Mr Spector. His visits were now much more frequent: when I was home for the holidays he often took us to cinemas, restaurants, theatres in the nearby towns, so that on the whole our existence seemed livelier than before.

It was my life at school that absorbed me. The people with whom I spent three-quarters of my time were so much more real that the others seemed shadowy by comparison, and even he retired into the background. I still had a great admiration for him and discussed with him all my doings, but my impression was that he purposely refrained from influencing me during this period. While we were apart I would almost forget him; and, even when we came together again, he took care not to exert that extraordinarily powerful charm which had formerly held me spellbound.

If he was a shadowy figure to me, how much less real my mother appeared. Occasionally I had a revival of the tender feelings which preceded my first term; but the drifting process, begun long before, continued steadily, and she seemed to make no effort to stop it. If I’d had a close friend, I might have discussed his attitude to his family. As it was, I could only wonder how parents who sent their young children away at the most impressionable age, for ten years or so, and for nine months out of twelve, could possibly have a satisfactory relationship with them. The rejoicings at the end of term always struck me as a little false. Personally, I was much more relieved when the holidays were over and I could return from what was merely an interruption of the main stream of my life — and, to judge from the noisy ragging which was traditional on the opening day and to which the staff turned a blind eye, my sentiments must have been general and officially approved.

Though far from studious, I always managed to scrape through my examinations by last-minute cramming and in due course attained the dignity of the sixth form. Now I had only about another year of school life before me, terminating in the final and most important exam of all, on which much of my future depended, for directly afterwards I would be leaving.

It was, I remember, on the morning of the day I was made a prefect that I received a letter in a handwriting I didn’t recognize; but, preoccupied by my new honour and its attendant privileges and duties, I found no time to read it till late afternoon, when I was sitting in solitary state in the study which from now on would be mine alone. Then it was as though I’d been innocently going about all day with a bomb in my pocket; for the letter was from my father, who had just returned, having discovered at last, on the other side of the world, the peaceful place for which he’d been searching so long and to which he proposed to transfer his family forthwith. The ship which had brought him would remain in port for ten to fourteen days, preparing for the return trip, and during this time he would wind up his affairs and make all arrangements to leave the country for ever.

The letter contained some obscure reference to the need for haste, which I took as signs of his aberration — that peace-bee which had suddenly started to buzz so disastrously in his bonnet — for this was a disaster to me, pure and simple. He ended by saying he hadn’t yet had time to write to the Headmaster but would be doing so very shortly, and in the meanwhile I could show him this letter.

So the Head didn’t know so far; that, to me, was the one spark of hope. I still had a few more hours in which to think, to extricate myself from what could only be regarded as a catastrophe. I’d almost forgotten my father after so long. Hearing nothing from him, even his name never spoken, I’d long since ceased to think about his return. As for the crazy notion of starting life over again in some distant land, I never had taken it seriously; yet here it was, not a dream-like possibility in the dim future but an immediate present crisis. More than anything, I think, I resented the abrupt arbitrary fashion in which I was to be uprooted, without being consulted, without even a chance to say what I thought of the uprooting. I wasn’t a child now, to be swayed by the thrill of adventure and travel. Only too clearly I saw what I’d lose by this upheaval, which would make nonsense of the years I’d spent here and turn my hard-won certificates into so much waste paper.

I’d been looking forward to a foreseeable future, among the sort of people I knew, where my school background would give me — over and above my own achievements — a definite and accepted standing, the main object of the expensive education I’d received being to bestow on the recipient an inalienable reputation that would be his for life. Now all this was to be sacrificed to the whim of an eccentric, who, in the eyes of my associates, was a traitor as well. I might have been more tolerant had my father written affectionately; but the letter was quite impersonal, ending by telling me that, since I could do nothing to expedite our departure, I might as well stay where I was for the present.

I was still half stunned by the news when the small boy lately assigned to me as a fag in my new glory came in with another letter, which had come by a later post. The sight of this youngster inflamed my resentment still further. The coming year was to have been my reward for all that had been difficult in the past. During this last year of my school life, I should have enjoyed most of the privileges of an adult without the responsibilities; members of the sixth were near-fabulous beings to the junior school, respected, almost worshipped; from henceforth I had only to speak and people would fight to fulfil my wishes, my words would be listened to like those of an oracle, for my will was law. Whenever things had been hard during the long years, I’d comforted myself with the prospect of this idyllic period now opening before me. To have it snatched away at the very moment of attainment was bitter indeed.