Parade's End (120 page)

Did
he commit suicide? If so then Valentine Wannop was his daughter. There could not be much getting away from that, not that it mattered much. In that case Christopher would be living with his half-sister… . Not that it mattered much. It did not matter much, to him, Mark … but his father was the sort of man that it might drive to suicide.

A luckless sort of beggar, Christopher! … If you took the whole conglobulation at its worst – the father suiciding, the son living with his sister in open sin, the son’s son not his son and Groby going over to Papist hands… . That was the sort of thing that would happen to a Tietjens of the Christopher variety: to any Tietjens who would not get out or get under as he, Mark, had done. Tietjenses took what they damn well got for doing what they damn well wanted to. Well, it landed them in that sort of post… . A last post, for, if that boy was not Christopher’s, Groby went out of Tietjens’ hands. There would be no more Tietjenses. Spelden might well be justified.

The grandfather of Father scalped by Indians in Canada in the war of 1810; the father dying in a place where he should not have been – taking what he got for it and causing quite a scandal for the Court of Victoria; the elder brother of Father killed drunk whilst fox-hunting; Father suicided; Christopher a pauper by his own act with a by-blow in his shoes. If then there were to be any more Tietjenses by both name and blood… . Poor little devils! They would be their own cousins. Something like that… .

And possibly none the worse off for that… . Either Spelden or Groby Great Tree had perhaps done for the others. Groby Great Tree had been planted to commemorate the birth of Great-grandfather who had died in a whoreshop – and it had always been whispered in Groby, amongst the children and servants that Groby Great Tree
did
not like the house. It roots tore chunks out of the foundations and two or three times the trunk had had to be bricked into the front wall of the house. They always quoted too the Italian saying about trees over the house. Obviously Christopher had told it to his son and the young man had told it to Mrs. de Bray Pape. That was why the saying had been referred to three times that day… . Anyway it was an Italian tree! It had been brought as a sapling from Sardinia at a time when gentlemen still thought about landscape gardening. A gentleman in those days consulted his heirs about tree planting. Should you plant a group of copper beeches against a group of white maples over against the haha a quarter of a mile from the house so that the contrast seen from the ballroom windows should be agreeable – in thirty years’ time. In those days thought, in families, went in periods of thirty years, owner gravely consulting the heirs who should see that development of light and shade that the owner never would.

Nowadays the heir apparently consulted the owner as to whether the tenant who was taking the ancestral home furnished might not cut down trees in order to suit the sanitary ideas of the day… . An American day! Well, why not. Those people could not be expected to know how picturesque a contrast the tree would make against the roofs of Groby Great House when seen from Peel’s Moor-side. They would never hear of Peel’s Moorside, or John Peel, or the coat so grey… .

Apparently that was the meaning of the visit of that young colt and Mrs. de Bray Pape. They had come to ask his, Mark’s sanction as owner, to cut down Groby Great Tree. And then they had funked it and bolted. At any rate the boy was still talking earnestly to the woman in white over the hedge. As to where Mrs. de Bray Pape had got to he had no means of knowing; she might be among the potato rows studying the potatoes of the poor for all he knew. He hoped she would not come upon Marie Léonie because Marie Léonie would make short work of Mrs. de Bray Pape and be annoyed on top of it.

But they were wrong to funk talking to
him
about cutting down Groby Great Tree. He cared nothing about it. Mrs. de Bray Pape might just as well have come and said cheerfully: ‘Hullo old cock, we’re going to cut down your
bally
old tree and let some light into the house …’ if that was the way Americans talked when they were cheerful; he had no means of knowing. He never remembered to have talked to an American… . Oh, yes, to Cammie Fittleworth. She had certainly been a dreadfully slangy young woman before her husband came into the title. But then Fittleworth was confoundedly slangy too. They said he had to give up in the middle of a speech he tried to make in the House of Lords because he could not do without the word ‘toppin’ which upset the Lord Chancellor… . So there was no knowing what Mrs. de Bray Pape might not have said if she had not thought she was addressing a syphilitic member of an effete aristocracy mad about an old cedar tree. But she might just as well have cheerfully announced it. He did not care. Groby Great Tree had never seemed to like him. It never seemed to like anybody. They say it never forgave the Tietjenses for transplanting it from nice warm Sardinia to that lugubrious climate… . That was what the servants said to the children and the children whispered to each other in the dark corridors.

But poor old Christopher! He was going to go mad if the suggestion were made to him. The barest hint! Poor old Christopher who was now probably at that very minute in one of those beastly machines overhead, coming back from Groby… . If Christopher
had
to buy a beastly South Country show-cottage Mark wished he would not have bought it so near a confounded air-station. However, he had expected probably, that beastly Americans would come flying in the beastly machines to buy the beastly old junk. They did indeed do so – sent by Mr. Schatzweiler who was certainly efficient enough in the sending of cheques.

Christopher had nearly jumped out of his skin – that is to say he had sat as still as a lump of white marble – when he had gathered that Sylvia and, still more his own heir, wanted to let Groby furnished. He had said to Mark, over Sylvia’s first letter: ‘You won’t let ’em?’ and Mark knew the agony that was behind his tallowy mask and goggle eyes… . Perfectly white around the nostrils he went – that was the sign!

And it had been as near an appeal as he had ever come – unless the request for a loan on Armistice Day could be
regarded
as an appeal. But Mark did not think that that could be regarded as a score. In their game neither of them had yet made a real score. Probably neither of them ever would: they were a stout pair of North Countrymen whatever else could be said against them.

No, it hadn’t been a score when Christopher had said: ‘You won’t let ’em let Groby,’ the day before yesterday: Christopher had been in an agony, but he was not
asking
Mark not to let Groby be let; he was only seeking information as to how far Mark would let the degradation of the old place go. Mark had let him pretty well know that Groby might be pulled down and replaced by a terra-cotta hotel before he would stir a finger. On the other hand Christopher had only to stir a finger and not a blade of grass between the cobbles in the Stillroom Yard could be grubbed up… . But by the rules of the game neither of them could give an order. Neither. Mark said to Christopher: ‘Groby’s yours!’ Christopher said to Mark: ‘Groby’s yours!’ With perfect good-humour and coldness. So probably the place would fall to pieces or Sylvia would turn it into a bawdy house… . It was a good joke! A good, grim Yorkshire joke!

It was impossible to know which of them suffered more. Christopher, it is true, was having his heart broken because the house suffered – but, damn it, wasn’t Mark himself pretty well heart-broken because Christopher refused to accept the house from him? … It was impossible to know which!

Yes, his confounded heart had been broken on Armistice Day in the morning – between the morning and the morning after… . Yes: after Christopher had been reading Boswell aloud, night after night for three weeks… . Was that playing the game? Was it playing the game to get no sleep if you had not forgiven your brother? … Oh, no doubt it was playing the game. You don’t forgive your brother if he lets you down in a damn beastly way… . And of course it
is
letting a fellow down in a beastly – a beastly! – way to let him know that you believe he lives on the immoral earnings of his wife… . Mark had done that to Christopher. It was unforgivable all right. And equally, of course, you do not hurt your brother back except on the lines circumscribed by the nature of the offence: you are the best friend he has – except on the lines circumscribed
by
the offence; and you will nurse him like a blasted soft worm – except in so far as the lines circumscribed by the offence do not preclude your ministrations.

For, obviously the best thing Christopher could have done for his brother’s health would have been to have accepted the stewardship of Groby – but his brother could die and he himself could die before he would do that. It was nevertheless a pretty cruel affair… . Over Boswell the two brothers had got as thick as thieves with an astonishing intimacy – and with an astonishing similarity. If one of them made a comment on Bennett Langton it would be precisely the comment that the other had on his lips. It was what asses call telepathy, nowadays … a warm, comfortable feeling, late at night with the light shaded from your eyes, the voice going on through the deep silence of London that awaited the crash of falling bombs… . Well, Mark accepted Christopher’s dictum that he himself was an eighteenth-century bloke and was only forestalled when he had wanted to tell Christopher that he was more old-fashioned still – a sort of seventeenth-century Anglican who ought to be strolling in a grove with Greek Testament beneath the arm and all… .

And, hang it all, there was room for him! The land had not changed… . There were still the deep beech-woods making groves beside the ploughlands and the rooks rising lazily as the plough came towards them. The land had not changed… . Well, the breed had not changed… . There was Christopher… . Only, the times … they had changed. The rooks and the ploughlands and the beeches and Christopher were there still… . But not the frame of mind in the day… . The sun might rise and go above the plough till it set behind the hedge and the ploughman went off to the inn settle; and the moon could do the same. But they would – neither sun nor moon – look on the spit of Christopher in all their journeys. Never. They might as well expect to see a mastodon… . And he, Mark, himself was an old-fashioned buffer. That was all right. Judas Iscariot himself was an old-fashioned ass, once upon a time!

But it was almost on the edge of
not
playing the game for Christopher to let that intimacy establish itself and all the time to cherish that unforgivingness… . Not quite not playing the game, but almost. For hadn’t Mark held out feelers? Hadn’t he made concessions? Hadn’t his very marrying of Marie Léonie been by way of a concession to Christopher? Didn’t Christopher, if the truth was to be known, want Mark to marry Marie Léonie because he, Christopher, wanted to marry Valentine Wannop and hadn’t a hope? If the truth were known … Well, he had made that concession to Christopher, who was a sort of a person anyhow. But ought Christopher to have exacted – to have telepathically willed – that concession if he wasn’t himself going to concede something? Ought he to have forced him, Mark, to accept his mooning, womanly services when the poor devil was already worn out with his military duties of seeing old tins cleaned out day after day, and when he meant to become a beastly old-furniture dealer and refuse Groby? For, upon his soul, till the morning of Armistice Day Mark had accepted Christopher’s story of Mr. Schatzweiler as merely a good-humoured, grim threat … A sort of a feint at a threat… .

Well, probably it was playing the game all right: if Christopher thought it was jonnock, jonnock it was!

But … a damn beastly shock… . Why he had been practically convalescent, he had been out of bed in a dressing-gown and had told Lord Wolstonemark that he could pile in as many papers as he liked from the office… . And then Christopher, without a hat and in a beastly civilian suit of light mulberry-coloured Harris tweed, had burst into the room with a beastly piece of old furniture under his arm… . A sort of inlaid toy writing-desk. A model. For cabinet-makers! A fine thing to bring into a convalescent bedroom, to a man quietly reading Form T.O. LOUWR 1962. E17 of the 10/11/18 in front of a clean fire… . And chalk-white about the gills the fellow was – with an awful lot of silver in his hair… . What age was he? Forty? Forty-three? God knew!

Forty … He wanted to borrow forty quid on that beastly piece of furniture. To have an Armistice Day Beanfeast and set up house with his gal! Forty quid! My God! Mark felt his bowels turning over within him with disgust… . The gal – that fellow’s half-sister as like as not – was waiting in an empty house for him to go and seduce her. In order to celebrate the salvation of the world by seven million deaths!

If you seduce a girl you don’t do it on forty pounds: you accept Groby and three, seven, ten thousand a year. So he had told Christopher.

And then he had got it. Full in the face. Christopher was not going to accept a penny from him. Never. Not ever! … No doubt about that, either. That fact had gone into Mark as a knife goes into a stag’s throat. It had hurt as much, but it hadn’t killed! Damn it, it might as well have! It might as well have… . Does a fellow do that to his own brother just because his own brother has called him … what is the word?
Maquereau!
… Probably a maquereau is worse than a pimp… . The difference between a flea and a louse, as Dr. Johnson said.

Eh, but Christopher was bitter! … Apparently he had gone round first to Sir John Robertson’s with that jigamaree. Sir John had promised to buy it for a hundred pounds. It was a special sort of model signed by some duke of a Bath cabinet-maker in 1762… . Wasn’t that the year of the American Rebellion? Well, Christopher had bought it in a junk-shop of sorts for a fiver and Sir John had promised him a hundred quid. He collected cabinetmaker’s models; extraordinarily valuable they were. Christopher had spat out that this was worth a thousand dollars… . Thinking of his old-furniture customers!

When Christopher had used that word – with the blue pebbles sticking out of his white lard head – Mark had felt the sweat break out all over him. He had known it was all up… . Christopher had gone on: you expected him to spit electric sparks, but his voice was wooden. Sir John had said to him: