“It’s a bad, mad, crazily brambled snarly place riddled with rabbit holes; it’s a bedlam of bird song. Nobody goes there; I just came upon it by chance. Here! I picked this posy for you there—all wild.”
“I must see this place, Scrap, is it far?”
“Too far for you.”
“Tell me the way.”
Scrap drew a plan on my bed-quilt. Just in from her morning walk she had dropped in to tell me about this rabbit warren she had discovered, and to bring me the bunch of wild flowers.
“There’s the Rest Hour bell!” Scrap put the flowers into my tooth-mug and went to her own room.
My walks were not set by the Doctors like those of the T.B. patients. I was free to walk where I would, providing it was not too far, and I did not overtire.
Immediately after our noon dinner I slipped out the side door without anyone seeing, past my birds’ cage, skirted the San’s big field, crossed the highway, found the lane that dwindled into a narrow foot-path and ended in the Warren. It was indeed a wilderness! Tired I flung my body down upon the hot earth and shut my eyes, leaving free my other senses—feeling, smelling, hearing.
Brambles clutched and wove themselves about everything. Under the tangle of gorse and broom bushes gaped the cool mouths of rabbit holes; deep in them rabbits were sleeping, waiting for the cool of evening to release the kick in their long hind legs. Like the rabbits I, too, was soon fast, fast asleep.
Little feet scuttering across my body woke me! Rabbits bobbed everywhere. The sunny buzz of insects had stopped. Shadows were long, scents and bird song evening-sweet.
The five o’clock rest-bell would have gone long ago; deliberately I rolled over. The Doctors had told me it was better I should be late than hurry. I did not want more sleep. I wanted just to take all this in a little longer. I had not known you could find such wildness in England. This place seemed so beautifully mine—mine, and the birds’ and rabbits’.
I walked very slowly back to the San. The supper-bell rang as I was going up the drive. I met Doctor McNair in the hall; she looked reproach. “We were beginning to wonder, Mammy.”
“Sorry, Doctor, I fell asleep in the Rabbit Warren.”
She shook her head. “At least you were resting. I will see you after supper.”
Rabbits
She came after the meal, helped herself to a cigarette. “Mammy, how far is this Rabbit Warren?”
Was she going to forbid my going again? I dawdled through my telling of how delicious it was, postponing the evil moment. Instead of forbidding me as I expected, Doctor said, “Take me there, Mammy.” If once Doctor saw it she would surely understand. That week we went to the Warren, Doctor and I. It was just as fine a day as before. We crossed the field, the highway, the lane, and were in the little path.
“I don’t like this narrow way, the brambles tear me,” complained the Doctor.
“We are just at the Warren; look, there is a dove nesting in that tree. The gorse and broom bushes are full of linnet and bullfinch nests, and, oh, Doctor, you should see the rabbits bobbing about when the cool comes! Just now they are down in their burrows sleeping.” “A dangerous place, this Warren, Mammy. The ground is riddled; one could easily stumble, break a leg!”
We sat down to rest. Silence fell between us. I could feel the Doctor and the Warren were not in sympathy. The Warren would not do any of the things that it did for me the other day. It went stupid, made me feel a liar. The birds were quiet; no rabbits scuttled; not even a cricket gritted his wings.
“Come, Mammy. We shall be late for Rest Hour.” We went through the path and the lane. On the highway Doctor said, “You must not come to this place again. The walk is too far. The place is morbid.”
Thrush’s Nest
March 30-31
Found several nests, mostly thrushes’, and built largely in furze and brambles.
“Morbid!”
“Solitary walking in woods is always morbid. Keep with the rest of the patients, Mammy. Go the shorter walks with them.”
“That is morbid if you like!” I cried. “Disease, disease, always disease.”
“They are forbidden to talk of their ailments.”
“There are those who talk of nothing else, once they are out of the San’s earshot.”
I was suddenly dreadfully tired. I sat down on the roadside, my feet dangling over the edge of a dry ditch.
“That’s right, Mammy, take it easy. I will hurry along.”
As I sat on the edge of the ditch I was angry with pieces of me. I talked to my legs. I said, “You silly old legs, why must you tremble?” And to my heart, “You spluttering, silly heart. Why must you act up?” I smacked the leg that did not feel with my stick, then I got up and followed Doctor, Doctor who had gone back happily to her bottles and patients and stethoscope; to the inexorable law, the forced cheer of the San.
From that day Doctor McNair supervised my walks; she did not insist that I go with the others, but I must not walk far. I went into the little wood close behind the San. I discovered, too, an old orchard a short piece down the road. The trees were twisted and moss-grown. The orchard was now used as a piggery. I was hunting bullfinch nests, and followed a lane that ran at the back of the piggery-orchard. I entered squeezing through a hole. I therefore did not see the notice up in front of the pig-farm: VICIOUS BOAR BEWARE! I heard a terrible roaring. The heavy beast was making straight for me. He had immense white tusks. I did not know any of the pig family could make such speed, could look so terrible! I could not run. I took a backward lucky step. It landed me in a deep hidden dry ditch.
The bushes closed over and the boar lost me. He leapt the ditch and tore past roaring. I lay there till the pig’s dinner-time, then I crept back to the San late again. I was ill. I told them about my boar fright. They kept me in bed. Doctor McNair stood beside my bed. “Mammy, Mammy, why must you? Bed is the only place to keep you safe. Other patients don’t go to these extraordinary places, do these queer things.”
Hens
“I was only hunting a bullfinch’s nest, Doctor McNair.” There seemed nothing queer or extraordinary to me about pig-farms and rabbit warrens.
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