Home life
At the crossroads
Alice Thomas Ellis
As I go down for the third time under a tidal wave of books, clothes, papers, letters, bills, teenagers, cats and all manner of things I've never used and don't know the purpose of (where did that lidless double saucepan come from? I've never seen it before and if anybody thinks I'm going to start mincing around making hollandaise and delicate little uncurdled custards they can — to put it at its mildest — start thinking again) I reflect yet further on order and simplicity. Why is everything such a mess?
Leicester for a start. It's been mucked about like almost every other British town I can remember and I wonder why. And the motorways. What a shambles. And our system of signposting. I like signposts when they appear at the appropriate junction and tell the truth, but this happens too seldom. In Scotland, for example, the erectors of signposts seem reluctant to reveal to the motorist the precise whereab- outs of Dumfries. It is not that one is eager to visit this town — which is doubtless no less mucked about than anywhere else but one needs to know where it is in order to circumvent it. Then, on the other hand, Hinckley and Nebo are the two best- signposted places I've ever come across. I've never been to Hinckley and I don't want to go there, but as you travel north its existence is advertised every few miles. We did visit Nebo once, out of curiosity, and as far as I remember the main street compris- ed a cottage, a chapel and a chicken coop: not a place, one would have thought, sufficiently significant to justify the plethora of signposts, although I believe the original Nebo was one of the Cities of the Plain. I wonder what its signposting situation was like. Surely no honest Israelite would have wished to call there.
We rattled to Leicester the other day, driving along the M1, negotiating our way through the cones and listening with care- ful apprehension to the noises the old banger was making. I've never yet had to spend the night on the hard shoulder and I kept telling myself it would be a new, if disorderly, experience. However, we ar- rived in one piece, whereupon I found I'd forgotten my cheque-book, so our guest, whom we'd invited along for a treat, had to foot the bill for tea and supper.
The occasion was a performance of Strindberg's Easter, starring our Jemma. As we took our seats I reflected that if I was in lemma's shoes they would now be scrambling on to the next bus out of town, but I needn't have worried. She was magnificent. And what was even better from my point of view — for I am one who suffers agonies of vicarious suffering and it is this that usually keeps me away from the theatre — she didn't forget her lines or fall over the furniture. In fact, the entire cast sailed triumphantly to a splendid conclusion and I clapped till I was hoarse — as it were.
What was surprising was that the play had a happy ending, which is not a thing I usually associate with Strindberg. I expect him to conclude in a disorderly fashion with everyone being dragged off in strait- jackets, clutching their throats and shriek- ing indignantly about quite minor matters. I was relieved when Eleonore was not sent back to the asylum and the family was permitted to retain its household effects.
As we rattled back along the M1 I though about signposts again — the ones along Life's Highway — and how one keeps missing them. If I'd had the brains of a rat, I thought to myself, I would have stayed in the convent where one has no possessions apart from one's bed and one's teeth. If I had been, not a nun, but an actress, I would have been able to rely on cues to guide me. I would have had a structure, a set and a director. I would have had a dressing-room (very like a cell in its minimal and temporary quality), a greenroom (very like the nuns' room — or indeed the prisoners' association room) and be instructed where to be and at what time to be at it. I would not have been my own person with all the attendant responsi- bilities. Also, I would have been con- strained to behave — or perform — well; and there isn't all that much difference between the two.
True freedom, I have decided gloomily, is a concomitant of virtue, of humility and obedience — not to our political leaders, but to certain rules of which we are all cognisant, but which we choose to ignore. If I could define precisely what they are I could advise the rest of you where to turn off and where to persevere and I would have felt like a useful signpost. As it is, I can only grovel at the crossroads, peering at the map and roaring at my fellow travellers who insist on carrying round as much useless luggage as I do myself and then storing it in their attics.
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