Parade's End (106 page)

Actually she said:

‘I suppose it is proper to celebrate together to-day!’

Her mother had made their union. For they looked at each other for a long time. What had happened to their eyes? It was as if they had been bathed in soothing fluid: they could look the one at the other. It was no longer the one looking and the other averting the eyes, in alternation. Her mother had spoken between them. They might never have spoken of themselves! In one heart-beat a-piece whilst she had been speaking they had been made certain that their union had already lasted many years… . It was warm; their hearts beat quietly. They had already lived side by side for many years. They were quiet in a cavern. The Pompeian red bowed over them; the stairways whispered up and up. They would be alone together now. For ever!

She knew that he desired to say ‘I hold you in my arms. My lips are on your forehead. Your breasts are being hurt by my chest!’

He said:

‘Who have you got in the dining-room? It used to be the dining-room!’

Dreadful fear went through her. She said:

‘A man called McKechnie. Don’t go in!’

He went toward danger, mooning along. She would have caught at his sleeve, but Cæsar’s wife must be as brave as Cæsar. Nevertheless she slipped in first. She had slipped past him before at a hanging-stile. A Kentish kissing gate. She said:

‘Captain Tietjens is here!’ She did not know whether he was a Captain or a Major. Some called him one, some another.

McKechnie looked merely grumbling: not homicidal. He grumbled:

‘Look here, my bloody swine of an uncle, your pal, has had me dismissed from the army!’

Tietjens said:

‘Chuck it. You know you’ve been demobilised to go to Asia Minor for the Government. Come and celebrate.’ McKechnie had a dirty envelope. Tietjens said: ‘Oh, yes. The sonnet. You can translate it under Valentine’s inspection. She’s the best Latinist in England!’ He said: ‘Captain McKechnie: Miss Wannop!’

McKechnie took her hand:

‘It isn’t fair. If you’re such a damn good Latinist as that …’ he grumbled.

‘You’ll have to have a shave before you come with us!’ Tietjens said.

They three went up the stairs together, but they two were alone. They were going on their honeymoon journey… . The bride’s going away! … She ought not to think such things. It was perhaps blasphemy. You go away in a neatly shining coupé with cockaded footmen!

He had rearranged the room. He had positively rearranged the room. He had removed the toilet-furnishings in green canvas: the camp-bed – three officers on it – was against the wall. That was his thoughtfulness. He did not want these people to have it suggested that she slept with him there… . Why not? Aranjuez and the hostile thin lady sat on green canvas pillows on the dais. Bottles leaned against each other on the green canvas table. They all held glasses. There were in all five of H.M. Officers. Where had they come from? There were also three mahogany chairs with green rep, sprung seats. Fat seats. Glasses were on the mantelshelf. The thin, hostile lady held a glass of dark red in an unaccustomed manner.

They all stood up and shouted:

‘McKechnie! Good old McKechnie!’ ‘Hurray McKechnie!’ ‘McKechnie!’ opening their mouths to the full extent and shouting with all their lungs. You could see that!

A swift pang of jealousy went through her.

McKechnie turned his face away. He said:

‘The Pals! The old pals!’ He had tears in his eyes.

A shouting officer sprang from the camp-bed – her nuptial couch! Did she
like
to see three officers bouncing about on her nuptial couch? What an Alcestis! She sipped sweet port! It had been put into her hand by the soft, dark, armless major! – The shouting officer slapped Tietjens violently on the back. The officer shouted:

‘I’ve picked up a skirt… . A proper little bit of fluff, sir!’

Her jealousy was assuaged. Her lids felt cold. They had been wet for an instant or so: the moisture had cooled! It’s salt of course! … She belonged to this unit! She was attached to him … for rations and discipline. So she was attached to it. Oh, happy day! Happy, happy day! … There was a song with words like that. She had never expected to see it. She had never expected …

Little Aranjuez came up to her. His eyes were soft, like a deer’s, his voice and little hands caressing… . No he had only one eye! Oh dreadful! He said:

‘You are the Major’s dear friend … He made a sonnet in two and a half minutes!’ He meant to say that Tietjens had saved his life.

She said:

‘Isn’t he wonderful!’ Why?

He said:

‘He can do anything! Anything! … He ought to have been …’

A gentlemanly officer with an eye-glass wandered in… . Of course they had left the front door open. He said with an exquisite’s voice:

‘Hullo, Major! Hullo, Monty! … Hullo, the Pals!’ and strolled to the mantelpiece to take a glass. They all yelled, ‘Hullo, Duck-foot… . Hullo, Brassface!’ He took his glass delicately and said: ‘Here’s to hoping! … The mess!’

Aranjuez said:

‘Our only V.C… .’ Swift jealousy went through her.

Aranjuez said:

‘
I
say … that
he
…’ Good boy! Dear boy! Dear little brother! … Where was her own brother? Perhaps they were not going to be on terms any more! All around them the world was roaring. They were doing their best to make a little roaring unit there, the tide creeping into silent places!

The thin woman in black on the dais was looking at them. She drew her skirts together. Aranjuez had his little hands up as if he were going to lay them pleadingly on her breast. Why pleadingly? … Begging her to forget his hideous eye-socket. He said:

‘Wasn’t it splendid … wasn’t it ripping of Nancy to marry me like this? … We shall all be such friends.’

The thin woman caught her eye. She seemed more than ever to draw her skirts away though she never moved… . That was because she, Valentine, was Tietjens’ mistress… . There’s a picture in the National Gallery called
Titian’s Mistress
… . She passed perhaps with them all for having … The woman smiled at her, a painfully forced smile. For Armistice… . She, Valentine, was outside the pale. Except for holidays and days of National rejoicing… .

She felt… nakedish, at her left side. Sure enough Tietjens was gone. He had taken McKechnie to shave. The man with the eye-glass looked critically round the shouting room. He fixed her and bore towards her. He stood over, his legs wide apart. He said:

‘Hey! Hullo! Who’d have thought of seeing
you
here? Met you at the Prinseps’. Friend of friend Hun’s, aren’t you?’ He said:

‘Hullo, Aranjuez! Better?’

It was like a whale speaking to a shrimp: but still more like an uncle speaking to a favourite nephew! Aranjuez blushed with sheer pleasure. He faded away as if in awe before tremendous eminences. For him she too was an eminence. His life-hero’s … woman!

The V.C. was in the mood to argue about politics. He always was. She had met him twice during evenings at friends’ called Prinsep. She had not known him because of his eye-glass; he must have put that up along with his ribbon. It took your breath away: like a drop of blood illuminated by a light that never was.

He said:

‘They say you’re receiving for Tietjens! Who’d have thought it? You’re a pro-German – he’s such a sound Tory. Squire of Groby and all, eh what?’

He said:

‘Know Groby?’ He squinted through his glass round the room. ‘Looks like a mess this … Only needs the
Vie Parisienne
and the
Pink ’Un
… Suppose he has moved his
stuff
to Groby. He’ll be going to live at Groby, now. The war’s over!’

He said:

‘But you and old Tory Tietjens in the same room … By Jove the war’s over… . The lion lying down with the lamb’s nothing …’ He exclaimed ‘Oh damn! Oh, damn, damn, damn… . I say … I didn’t mean it… . Don’t cry. My dear little girl. My dear Miss Wannop. One of the best I always thought you. You don’t suppose …’

She said:

‘I’m crying because of Groby really… . It’s a day to cry on anyhow… . You’re quite a good sort, really!’

He said:

‘Thank you! Thank you! Drink some more port! He’s a good fat old beggar, old Tietjens. A good officer!’ He added: ‘Drink a
lot
more port!’

He had been the most asinine, creaking, ‘what about your king and country’, shocked, outraged and speechless creature of all the many who for years had objected to her objecting to men being unable to stand up… . Now he was a rather kind brother!

They were all yelling.

‘Good old Tietjens! Good old Fat Man! Pre-war hooch! He’d be the one to get it!’ No one like Fat Man Tietjens. He lounged at the door; easy; benevolent. In uniform now. That was better. An officer, yelling like an enraged Redskin, dealt him an immense blow behind the shoulder blades. He staggered, smiling, into the centre of the room. An officer gently pushed her into the centre of the room. She was against him. Khaki encircled them. They began to yell and to prance, most joining hands. Others waved the bottles and smashed underfoot the glasses. Gipsies break glasses at their weddings. The bed was against the wall. She did not like the bed to be against the wall. It had been brushed by …

They were going round them: yelling in unison:

‘Over here! Pom Pom! Over here! Pom Pom!

That’s the word, that’s the word. Over here… .’

At least they weren’t over there! They were prancing. The whole world round them was yelling and prancing round. They were the centre of unending roaring circles. The man with the eye-glass had stuck a half-crown in his
other
eye. He was well-meaning. A brother. She had a brother with the V.C. All in the family.

Tietjens was stretching out his two hands from the waist. It was incomprehensible. His right hand was behind her back, his left in her right hand. She was frightened. She was amazed. Did you ever! He was swaying slowly. The elephant! They were dancing! Aranjuez was hanging on to the tall woman like a kid on a telegraph pole. The officer who had said he had picked up a little bit of fluff … well, he had! He had run out and fetched it. It wore white cotton gloves and a flowered hat. It said: ‘Ow! Now!’ … There was a fellow with a most beautiful voice. He led: better than a gramophone. Better… .

Les petites marionettes, font! font! font!
…

On an elephant. A dear, meal-sack elephant. She was setting out on …

THE LAST POST

Oh Rokehope is a pleasant place

If the fause thieves would let it be

PART ONE

HE LAY STARING
at the withy binders of his thatch shelter; the grass was infinitely green; his view embraced four counties; the roof was supported by six small oak sapling-trunks, roughly trimmed and brushed from above by apple boughs. French crab-apple! The hut had no sides.

The Italian proverb says: He who allows the boughs of trees to spread above his roof invites the doctor daily. Words to that effect! He would have grinned, but that might have been seen.

For a man who never moved, his face was singularly walnut-coloured; his head, indenting the skim-milk white of the pillows, should have been a gipsy’s, the dark, silvered hair cut extremely close, the whole face very carefully shaven and completely immobile. The eyes moved, however, with unusual vivacity, all the life of the man being concentrated in them and their lids.

Down the path that had been cut in swathes from the knee-high grass and led from the stable to the hut, a heavy elderly peasant rolled in his gait. His over-long, hairy arms swung as if he needed an axe or a log or a full sack to make him a complete man. He was broad-beamed, in cord breeches very tight in the buttocks; he wore black leggings, an unbuttoned blue waistcoat, a striped flannel shirt, open at the perspiring neck and a square, high hat of black felt.

He said:

‘Want to be shifted?’

The man in the bed closed his eyelids slowly.

‘’Ave a droper cider?’

The other again similarly closed his eyes. The standing man supported himself with an immense hand, gorilla-like, by one of the oaken posts.

‘Best droper cider ever I tasted,’ he said, ‘’Is Lordship give me. ’Is Lordship sester me: “Gunning,” ’e ses… . The day the vixen got into keeper’s coop enclosure …’

He began and slowly completed a very long story going to prove that English noble landlords preferred foxes to pheasants. Or should! English landowners of the right kidney.

’Is Lordship would no more ’ave that vixen killed or so much as flurried, she being gravid like than … Dreadful work a gravid vixen can do among ’encoops with pheasant poults… . Have to eat fer six or seven, she have! All a-growing… . So ’is Lordship sester Gunning… .

And then the description of the cider… . ’Ard! Thet cider was ’arder than a miser’s ’art or ’n ole maid’s tongue. Body it ’ad. Strength it ’ad. Stans to reason. Ten-year cider. Not a drop was drunk in Lordship’s ’ouse under ten years in cask. Killed three sheep a week fer his indoor and outdoor servants. An’ three hundred pigeons. The pigeon-cotes is a hundred feet high an’ the pigeons nesteses in ’oles in the inside walls. Clapnests a ’ole wall at a go an’ takes the squabs. Times is not what they was but ’is Lordship keeps on. An’ always will!

The man in the bed – Mark Tietjens – continued his own thoughts:

Old Gunning lumbered slowly up the path towards the stable, his hands swinging. The stable was a tile-healed, thatched affair, no real stable in the North Country sense – a place where the old mare sheltered among chickens and ducks. There was no tidiness amongst South Country folk. They hadn’t it in them, though Gunning could bind a tidy thatch and trim a hedge properly. All-round man. Really an all-round man; he could do a great many things. He knew all about fox-hunting, pheasant-rearing, wood-craft, hedging, dyking, pig-rearing and the habits of King Edward when shooting. Smoking endless great cigars! One finished, light another, throw away the stub …

Fox-hunting, the sport of kings with only twenty per cent of the danger of war! He, Mark Tietjens, had never cared for hunting; now he would never do any more; he had never cared for pheasant-shooting. He would never do any more. Not couldn’t; wouldn’t from henceforth… .
It
annoyed him that he had not taken the trouble to ascertain what it was Iago said, before he had taken Iago’s resolution… .
From henceforth he never would speak word
… . Something to that effect: but you could not get that into a blank-verse line.