Clara goes on holiday to Austria without her husband; being alone has a bad effect on her. She becomes demoralised and mismanages everything including her money, which helps to make the return journey one long endurance test.
Clara’s travel nightmare
The long journey home involves taking a train to Linz, a train from Linz to Ostend, a steamboat from Ostend to Dover followed by a train to London and finally a taxi to her house.
On the long train ride to Ostend, it seems to Clara as though her journey will never end and she will never find herself safely back home.
By the time she gets to Ostend she is in a trance of weariness. She has had a sleepless night in a horrible third-class compartment, which was all that she could afford. She has not slept for thirty-six hours and as she has very little money left has eaten almost nothing during the journey. She would happily exchange the beautiful and expensive new handbag that she had unwisely bought in Vienna for just a cup of tea and a couple of aspirins. Half blinded by a bad headache, she has to carry her heavy luggage onto the ferry herself as she cannot afford to pay a porter.
White magic on the ferry
Clara is horrified to see how awful she looks and how dirty and creased her clothes are when she catches sight of herself in the washroom mirror, but she is too ill and exhausted to do anything about it until after she has rested for a while.
She manages to repair some of the damage to her makeup, and she puts on a smart white mackintosh that not only conceals the deplorable state of her clothes but transforms her appearance.
Millions of travellers must have felt just as appalled after seeing themselves in the mirror while on a long journey and tried to do something about their haggard and dishevelled appearance; I have experienced this myself. What is unusual is the way Antonia White describes the problem and its remedy:
“It was as if the white raincoat were one of those magic garments which restore their human form to people who have been transformed into animals.”
She mentions having been under an evil spell and being replaced by an alien personality; now she is feeling more like herself again.
However, the ordeal isn’t over yet.
Two people from the past
As Douglas Adams says in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Funny, how just when you think life can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”
While tidying herself in the washroom, Clara notices in the mirror two rather common young women staring at and discussing her. They seem vaguely familiar, and not in a good way.
She decides that she must have some tea; she can’t afford the first-class facilities so goes to the cramped and crowded second-class restaurant. To her horror, the only vacant seat that she can see is ‘by chance’ at the table where the two women are sitting. She searches vainly for another place but all avenues have been closed and she has no choice but to sit with these women.
Then she remembers who they are; they come from a time in her life that she would rather forget.
Just like Clara, they are returning to England from a two-week holiday in continental Europe. Unlike Clara, they were making their first ever trip abroad, and only to Ostend. What a coincidence that they should have arranged the timing of their return to coincide with Clara’s! However, if she had not bought that handbag and other luxuries she might have travelled first class and missed them completely.
While making herself presentable in the washroom, Clara had been thinking of herself returning to her waiting husband in terms of a strayed cat returning to her master; he would have her basket and a saucer of milk ready for her!
The unpleasant woman says this about Clara to her colleague:
“She’s fallen on her feet like a cat. And I bet she’s got a good home to go back to and a big saucer of cream waiting after being out on the tiles...”
Even though the other woman is quite kind, Clara can’t wait to get away from the pair. She makes excuses not to join them while disembarking. She is relieved to see no sign of them in the horrible third-class section of the train to London, which once again is all that she can afford. Even though she is in a very crowded compartment full of men smoking foul-smelling pipes, she refuses an offer by the porter to move her to a non-smoker occupied mostly by ladies in case the two women are there. She feels safer where she is.
At long last her ordeal is almost over.
Fact or fiction?
Clara IV was first published after Antonia White’s death as a piece in As Once in May, a compilation of miscellaneous writings.
Her daughter Susan Chitty edited and commented on the various pieces. While she says that Antonia White wrote very little pure fiction, she suggests that this episode, or at least part of it, is fictional.
I believe that although Antonia White may have compiled incidents from more than one journey - and perhaps embellished them slightly to make a good story - she gave a mostly factual account of her own travel experiences. I believe this because Clara’s story has some very familiar elements and convincing details, so much so that it is painful to read because of the memories that it stirs up.
I know from experience that the description of the effects of travelling for a long time on very little food and sleep is spot on.
I have written about the uncanny timing of some of my own unwelcome encounters with people from the past at times when my inner state wasn’t good, how things I was thinking about have come back to me from outside and how all avenues except the one ‘they’ want us to take are sometimes closed.
Clara experiences immense feelings of relief and thankfulness when the worst is behind her and the end of the journey is in sight. I have had these overwhelming feelings myself, and for the same reason.
She decides to never go anywhere without her husband ever again. I decided to never go anywhere with a certain group of people ever again!
A vintage poster showing a typical cross-channel ferry:
