Coming Up for Air

Bowling’s memories focus next on the cacophony of market days, when farmers would bring livestock from the countryside into Lower Binfield and his father would sell them animal feed. The chaos of the markets causes Bowling to reflect on the political landscape of his youth. Generally, the people of Lower Binfield supported the Liberal Party; in Bowling’s memory, they were patriotic in name but not in action. Bowling describes a political debate between his father and uncle about the Boer War, a conflict between British forces and the descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa.

Bowling recalls that his father and mother held very traditional roles within their family: his father controlled the business and was head of the family, while his mother did all the domestic work and raised the children. He describes his father affectionately as an honest and hardworking man who lacked the ambition or insight necessary to improve his family’s circumstances. Bowling describes his mother as a fat woman entirely uninterested in affairs beyond her home, although he does acknowledge that she held an unmistakable grace and power in her realm of the kitchen. He compares the insects that flew around his mother’s kitchen to the bugs that infested the homes of people like Katie and thinks that he prefers both to the sound of bombs falling.

School does not figure prominently in Bowling’s childhood memories. Describing the head of his first school, Mrs. Howlett, as old and incapable of controlling the children in her care, his thoughts move to his older brother, Joe, who at age eight joined a gang of neighborhood boys calling themselves the Black Hand. The gang included both shopkeepers’ sons and farm workers, crossing social lines that would be less easy to overcome as the boys grew older.

Bowling next remembers the first time he joined Joe and his gang on a fishing trip. At the age of eight, Bowling had never been fishing (his mother forbade it as a dangerous activity) but was desperate to go. Ignoring his brother’s warnings, he skipped school and followed the gang out to pond on the edge of a farmer’s land. Although Joe and the boys initially tried to beat Bowling up, the eventually let him stay, and Bowling caught a fish. Chased off the pond by a farmer, the boys spent the rest of the day wandering around the countryside unsupervised. Bowling was punished severely for his actions, but was thrilled to have gone fishing for the first time.

As Bowling continues to recall his life up to the age of 15, school continues to have a secondary role. Although he was a good student, holidays were much more appealing, especially when he took an odd job killing rats, or when he and his classmates killed birds and frogs.

As often as possible, Bowling remembers, he would leave school to go fishing, graduating from small ponds to the Thames River, which provided larger fish and more challenging fishing. Although Bowling hasn’t fished in nearly 30 years, he remains enthusiastic about it and feels confident he could write a book on the subject. He describes the wide variety of lures he used at the time, from worms he begged from a butcher to paste made from old bread, and the techniques he used for fishing in different locations. The chapter ends with a story about a time when Bowling was invited to fish on the property of Binfield House, the large manor on the outskirts of his town. While exploring, Bowling found a hidden pool full of giant, ancient fish.

Bowling confesses that nothing in his life has ever given him as much pleasure as fishing. He considers that, if given the choice between a woman and a record-breaking fish, he’d choose the fish. He also notes that he hasn’t fished since he was 16, at which point he had other obligations. Bowling challenges the reader to add up the number of hours they’ve spent doing something they truly love and compare it to the time they waste doing useless or unpleasant tasks. Bowling recalls that the last time he came close to fishing as an adult was during World War I, shortly before he was wounded. Bowling’s company had left the trenches along the front line and were temporarily staying in a small village. Wandering beyond the village one day, Bowling encountered another solider, nicknamed Nobby, who led him to a small pond full of fat perch. Together, Nobby and Bowling put together a hook, rod, line, and float from supplies stolen and bartered. Before they could use their equipment and enjoy the pond, however, the company was moved to another location. Since then, Bowling explains, he’s never had another opportunity to fish. He once suggested fishing to his wife, Hilda, while on a family holiday to the beach, but she dismissed it as an expensive lark.

In Chapter 6 Bowling interjects to assure the reader that fishing was not his only interest. From the age of 10 or 11, Bowling recalls, he was an avid reader; as an adult, he still reads a couple of novels a week. He explains that he mostly reads bestsellers available in drug stores, but that he also belongs to the Left Book Club, a left-leaning political publishing group. Bowling hints that he did a lot of reading in 1918, but does not elaborate.

Bowling describes what he read in his youth in more detail. At first, he consumed weekly magazines filled with adventure stories aimed at young boys and then he turned to mystery and adventure novels. His parents and teachers tried to get him to read better books, but no one really knew what to suggest. Bowling reflects that he’s happy he read the bad books first and says that he learned more from them than from anything he read in school. He notes that his brother never read. Bowling remembers that, as a boy, his favorite series was called Donovan the Dauntless, which tells the story of an explorer working for an American millionaire. He describes reading in the attic of his childhood home, powerfully transported by the series.

Bowling suggests that his efforts to describe the world before the war may be in vain: Readers who were there don’t need to be reminded and readers who weren’t can’t truly understand. He recalls that unpleasantness didn’t enter his life until he was 16, when his father pulled him from school so that he could work and help support the family. Although Bowling didn’t understand it at the time, the family shop was overtaken by a retail chain called “Sarazins’,” which had recently opened a colorful, modern store. Bowling suggests that his father couldn’t compete with the corporation and didn’t want to, and, as a result, the family-run business ultimately failed. He speculates that there were many men like his father swallowed up by larger businesses.

Despite his father’s slow descent into poverty, Bowling remembers his years working for a local grocer called Grimmett as happy and productive. Although he gave large portions of his wages to his parents, he felt richer in those years than he has since. He took correspondence classes and worked to remove his Cockney accent, believing that one day he’d go on to set up his own grocery store in a larger town. Bowling suggests that this belief in a better future for everyone is a relic of the world before the war. He recalls that his parents’ hopes for the future were crushed when his brother Joe stole eight pounds from their family shop and disappeared forever. Bowling speculates that his brother may have gotten a local girl pregnant and stolen the money to escape to America. He claims that his parents were more embarrassed by the theft than the abandoned pregnancy.

Bowling recalls his first romantic relationship, when he was about 18 years old, with a girl named Elsie Wells. Bowling says that they lived together, even though at that time, he was still living with his parents. He then describes the first time they had sex, which was almost interrupted by Bowling’s compulsive desire to fish in the pond at Binfield House. He suggests that Elsie was the first person to teach him how to care for a woman.

Bowling speculates that people before the war were happier than they are in 1939, despite their relative poverty, because before the war they had no idea how fragile the world order truly was. He describes the tension of the weeks leading up to England joining the war as a kind of national silence. Bowling recalls that he joined the army just two months after England declared war on Germany.

Bowling now turns to the war and to his injury: In 1916, shortly after his company left trenches in the French countryside, a shell exploded near Bowling, causing him to break a rib; subsequently he was sent taken to recover in a hospital on the southeastern coast of England. Bowling explains that the army was desperate for officers, and that he received a commission shortly after leaving the front. Bowling cannot explain why he joined the army or why he stayed after being injured. He describes the war as an enormous machine that picked people up and removed their ability to make decisions for years.

Bowling suggests that his life ended the day he joined the army. He admits that he only returned to Lower Binfield once afterward, in order to attend his mother’s funeral. He recalls that his father died during the war, while Bowling was overseas, and that the thought of his father’s death was more upsetting to him as an adult than when it happened. He explains that although his mother was left in a very difficult financial position, the horrors of the war dwarfed her problems. When she died a few years later, Bowling returned for the funeral and enjoyed the attention he received as an army officer. He admits that he thought about himself and his new uniform throughout the funeral service. He describes the many changes in Lower Binfield since he left, including deaths and store closings.

Bowling explains that, following his injury, he spent the war as the commanding officer of a tiny army base called Twelve Mile Dump, which was designed to hold rations in case of invasion. In reality, Bowling explains, there were only 12 cans of beef in storage. Bowling’s job consisted of filling out paperwork, which he suspects was ignored. He explains that the job felt meaningless while soldiers were dying, but he was grateful to be safe and away from the front. Bowling recalls that he spent most of his time at Twelve Mile Dump reading. He lists the names of authors he read during this time: H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence, Rudyard Kipling, Arnold Bennett, Oscar Wilde, and many others. He explains that these books opened his mind, but not nearly as much as the experience of feeling useless during the war.

Bowling explains that after the war, he, like many other returning soldiers, struggled to make sense of what he had seen on the battlefield. While he recalls the difficulties of the war years, he also notes that being in the army made him feel like a gentleman and that when he left, he had over £300, which was a significant sum at the time. The money, he says, was a false sense of security, as well as an ambition to do something more prestigious than open a grocery store. Unable to find such a job, Bowling speculates that all the jobs were taken by men who had been either too old or too young to join the military when the war began.

Eventually, Bowling explains, he decided that most suitable job would be a travelling salesman. Although all the jobs were on commission, rather than salaried, he believed that he had the temperament necessary to make the difficult job profitable. Bowling recalls that after a year of work without much success at a number of different companies, a chance encounter with Sir Joseph Cheam, one of his former commanding officers, led to Cheam’s writing him a recommendation to an insurance firm in which he had a financial interest. Bowling remembers the strangeness of this act of generosity, given the fact that Cheam probably fired multiple employees on the same day. He has been a traveling insurance salesman with that company since then. He reflects that, from that day, nothing exciting happened to him except for his marriage.

Bowling ends his remembrances by describing his marriage to Hilda. By age 30, Bowling was living in Ealing, a few miles west of London, and had a successful middle-class career as an insurance salesman. He lists the social status markers that defined his life at that time, including local sponsored dances and tennis clubs. Hilda was 24 when they met, and Bowling recalls that she reminded him of a hare and that she had a childish air about her.

Bowling speculates that everyone who has been married has wondered why they chose their spouse. He explains that he doesn’t know why he married Hilda, but that the difference in their social classes may explain his attraction: Hilda’s family belonged to the British officer class, and although they were always struggling for money, they were proud of their military service in Imperial India. Bowling describes their home as a colorful, claustrophobic relic of the British Empire. He recalls that he believed her family to be his superiors, but speculates that they saw him as a way out of relative poverty.

Bowling admits that he fantasized about killing Hilda in the early years of their marriage. He says that he would never act on these impulses, because husbands always get caught, but that he enjoyed the fantasy. Bowling recalls that, over the years, this desire faded, and he began to regard Hilda as an object of curiosity. He explains that he couldn’t understand why Hilda seemed suddenly unhappy after their marriage, after fighting so hard to get married. He speculates that Hilda lacks any kind of joy in life and suggests that her family history has made her constantly anxious about money. He says that despite Hilda’s saving and worrying, the family remains about average for their street. He admits that he was unfaithful early in their marriage and that Hilda caught him several times, though he hasn’t had the opportunity to cheat in recent years. Bowling describes Hilda’s two best friends, Mrs. Wheeler and Miss Minns, as bad influences on his wife and as equally joyless. He dismisses their interest in spiritualism, wine-making, plays, and other activities because he believes they don’t truly understand what they’re consuming.

Reflecting on his marriage, Bowling remarks on how quickly time has passed. He recalls that he got fat and stopped being unfaithful in 1930. Now, eight years later, war is starting again.