Parade's End (36 page)

He heard in his ear, perfectly distinctly, the lines:

The voice that never yet …

Made answer to my word …

He said to himself:

‘That was what Sylvia wanted! I’ve got that much!’

The dark man had said something. Tietjens repeated: ‘I’d take it very unkindly if you stopped my going … I want to go.’

The dark man said:

‘Some do. Some do not. I’ll make a note of your name in case you come back … You won’t mind going on with your cinder-sifting, if you do? … Get on with your story as quick as you can. And get what fun you can before you go. They say it’s rotten out there. Damn awful! There’s a hell of a strafe on. That’s why they want all of you.’

For a moment Tietjens saw the grey dawn at rail-head with the distant sound of a ceaselessly boiling pot, from miles away! The army feeling redescended upon him. He began to talk about Command Depots, at great length and with enthusiasm. He snorted with rage at the way men
were
treated in these gloomy places. With ingenious stupidity!

Every now and then the dark man interrupted him with:

‘Don’t forget that a Command Depot is a place where sick and wounded go to get made fit. We’ve got to get ’em back as soon as we can.’

‘And do you?’ Tietjens would ask.

‘No, we don’t,’ the other would answer. ‘That’s what this enquiry is about.’

‘You’ve got,’ Tietjens would continue, ‘on the north side of a beastly clay hill nine miles from Southampton three thousand men from the Highlands, North Wales, Cumberland… . God knows where, as long as it’s three hundred miles from home to make them rather mad with nostalgia… . You allow ’em out for an hour a day during the pub’s closing time. You shave their heads to prevent ’em appealing to local young women who don’t exist, and you don’t let ’em carry the swagger-canes! God knows why! To prevent their poking their eyes out, if they fall down, I suppose. Nine miles from anywhere, with chalk down roads to walk on and not a bush for shelter or shade … And, damn it, if you get two men, chums, from the Seaforths or the Argylls you don’t let them sleep in the same hut, but shove ’em in with a lot of fat Buffs or Welshmen, who stink of leeks and can’t speak English… .’

‘That’s the infernal medicals’ orders to stop ’em talking all night.’

‘To make ’em conspire all night not to turn out for parade,’ Tietjens said. ‘And there’s beastly mutiny begun… . And, damn it, they’re fine men. They’re first-class fellows. Why don’t you – as this is a Christian land – let ’em go home to convalesce with their girls and pubs and friends and a little bit of swank, for heroes? Why in God’s name don’t you? Isn’t there suffering enough?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t say “you”,’ the dark man said. ‘It isn’t me. The only A.C.I. I’ve drafted was to give every Command Depot a cinema and a theatre. But the beastly medicals got it stopped … for fear of infection. And, of course, the parsons and Nonconformist magistrates …’

‘Well, you’ll have to change it all,’ Tietjens said, ‘or you’ll just have to say: thank God we’ve got a navy. You
won’t
have an army. The other day three fellows – Warwicks – asked me at question time, after a lecture, why they were shut up there in Wiltshire whilst Belgian refugees were getting bastards on their wives in Birmingham. And when I asked how many men made that complaint over fifty stood up. All from Birmingham… .’

The dark man said:

‘I’ll make a note of that… . Go on.’

Tietjens went on; for as long as he stayed there he felt himself a man, doing work that befitted a man, with the bitter contempt for fools that a man should have and express. It was a letting up, a real last leave.

IV

MARK TIETJENS, HIS
umbrella swinging sheepishly, his bowler hat pushed firmly down on to his ears to give him a sense of stability, walked beside the weeping girl in the quadrangle.

‘I say,’ he said, ‘don’t give it to old Christopher too beastly hard about his militarist opinions… . Remember, he’s going out tomorrow and he’s one of the best.’

She looked at him quickly, tears remaining upon her cheeks, and then away.

‘One of the best,’ Mark said. ‘A fellow who never told a lie or did a dishonourable thing in his life. Let him down easy, there’s a good girl. You ought to, you know.’

The girl, her face turned away, said:

‘I’d lay down my life for him!’

Mark said:

‘I know you would. I know a good woman when I see one. And think! He probably considers that he
is
… offering his life, you know, for you. And me, too, of course! It’s a different way of looking at things.’ He gripped her awkwardly but irresistibly by the upper arm. It was very thin under her blue cloth coat. He said to himself:

‘By Jove! Christopher likes them skinny. It’s the athletic sort that attracts him. This girl is as clean run as …’ He couldn’t think of anything as clean run as Miss Wannop, but he felt a warm satisfaction at having achieved an intimacy with her and his brother. He said:

‘You aren’t going away? Not without a kinder word to him. You think! He might be killed… . Besides, probably he’s never killed a German. He was a liaison officer. Since then he’s been in charge of a dump where they sift army dustbins. To see how they can give the men less to eat. That means that the civilians get more. You don’t object to his giving civilians more meat? … It isn’t even helping to kill Germans… .’

He felt her arm press his hand against her warm side.

‘What’s he going to do now?’ she asked. Her voice wavered.

‘That’s what I’m here about,’ Mark said. ‘I’m going in to see old Hogarth. You don’t know Hogarth? Old General Hogarth? I think I can get him to give Christopher a job with the transport. A safe job. Safeish! No beastly glory business about it. No killing beastly Germans either… . I beg your pardon, if you like Germans.’

She drew her arm from his hand in order to look him in the face.

‘Oh!’ she said, ‘
you
don’t want him to have any beastly military glory!’ The colour came back into her face: she looked at him open-eyed.

He said:

‘No! Why the devil should he?’ He said to himself: ‘She’s got enormous eyes; a good neck; good shoulders; good breasts; clean hips; small hands. She isn’t knock-kneed; neat ankles. She stands well on her feet. Feet not too large! Five foot four, say! A real good filly!’ He went on aloud: ‘Why in the world should he want to be a beastly soldier? He’s the heir to Groby. That ought to be enough for one man.’

Having stood still sufficiently long for what she knew to be his critical inspection, she put her hand in turn, precipitately, under his arm and moved him towards the entrance steps.

‘Let’s be quick then,’ she said. ‘Let’s get him into your transport at once. Before he goes to-morrow. Then we’ll know he’s safe.’

He was puzzled by her dress. It was very business-like, dark blue and very short. A white blouse with a black silk, man’s tie. A wide-awake, with, on the front of the band, a cipher.

‘You’re in uniform yourself,’ he said. ‘Does your conscience let you do war work?’

She said:

‘No. We’re hard up. I’m taking the gym classes in a great big school to turn an honest penny… .
Do
be quick!’

Her pressure on his elbow flattered him. He resisted it a little, hanging back, to make her more insistent. He liked being pleaded with by a pretty woman; Christopher’s girl at that.

He said:

‘Oh, it’s not a matter of minutes. They keep ’em weeks at the base before they send ’em up… . We’ll fix him up all right, I’ve no doubt. We’ll wait in the hall till he comes down.’

He told the benevolent commissionaire, one of two in a pulpit in the crowded grim hall, that he was going up to see General Hogarth in a minute or two. But not to send a bell-boy. He might be some time yet.

He sat himself beside Miss Wannop, clumsily on a wooden bench, humanity surging over their toes as if they had been on a beach. She moved a little to make room for him and that, too, made him feel good. He said:

‘You said just now: “we” are hard up. Does “we” mean you and Christopher?’

She said:

‘I and Mr. Tietjens. Oh, no! I and mother! The paper she used to write for stopped. When your father died, I believe. He found money for it, I think. And mother isn’t suited to free-lancing. She’s worked too hard in her life.’

He looked at her, his round eyes protruding.

‘I don’t know what that is, free-lancing,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got to be comfortable. How much do you and your mother need to keep you comfortable? And put in a bit more so that Christopher could have a mutton-chop now and then!’

She hadn’t really been listening. He said with some insistence: ‘Look here! I’m here on business. Not like an elderly admirer forcing himself on you. Though, by God, I do admire you too… . But my father wanted your mother to be comfortable… .’

Her face, turned to him, became rigid.

‘You don’t mean …’ she began. He said:

‘You won’t get it any quicker by interrupting. I have to tell my stories in my own way. My father wanted your mother to be comfortable. He said so that she could write books, not papers. I don’t know what the difference is: that’s what he said. He wants you to be comfortable too… . You’ve not got any encumbrances? Not … oh, say a business! a hat shop that doesn’t pay? Some girls have… .’

She said: ‘No. I just teach … oh,
do
be quick… .’

For the first time in his life he dislocated the course of his thoughts to satisfy a longing in someone else.

‘You may take it to go on with,’ he said, ‘as if my father had left your mother a nice little plum.’ He cast about to find his scattered thoughts.

‘He has! He
has
! After all!’ the girl said. ‘Oh, thank God!’

‘There’ll be a bit for you, if you like,’ Mark said, ‘or perhaps Christopher won’t let you. He’s ratty with me. And something for your brother to buy a doctor’s business with.’ He asked: ‘You haven’t fainted, have you?’ She said:

‘No. I don’t faint. I cry.’

‘That’ll be all right,’ he answered. He went on: ‘That’s your side of it. Now for mine. I want Christopher to have a place where he’ll be sure of a mutton-chop and an arm-chair by the fire. And someone to be good for him.
You’re
good for him. I can see that. I know women!’

The girl was crying, softly and continuously. It was the first moment of the lifting of strain that she had known since the day before the Germans crossed the Belgian frontier, near a place called Gemmenich.

It had begun with the return of Mrs. Duchemin from Scotland. She had sent at once for Miss Wannop to the rectory, late at night. By the light of candles in tall silver sticks, against oak panelling she had seemed like a mad block of marble, with staring, dark eyes and mad hair. She had exclaimed in a voice as hard as a machine’s:

‘How do you get rid of a baby? You’ve been a servant. You ought to know!’

That had been the great shock, the turning-point, of Valentine Wannop’s life. Her last years before that had been of great tranquillity, tinged, of course, with melancholy because she loved Christopher Tietjens. But she
had
early learned to do without, and the world as she saw it was a place of renunciations, of high endeavour and sacrifice. Tietjens had to be a man who came to see her mother and talked wonderfully. She had been happy when he had been in the house – she in the housemaid’s pantry, getting the tea-things. She had, besides, been very hard-worked for her mother; the weather had been, on the whole, good, the corner of the country in which they lived had continued to seem fresh and agreeable. She had had excellent health, got an occasional ride on the
quitamer
with which Tietjens had replaced Joel’s rig; and her brother had done admirably at Eton, taking such a number of exhibitions and things that, once at Magdalen, he had been nearly off his mother’s hands. An admirable, gay boy, not unlikely to run for, as well as being a credit to, his university, if he didn’t get sent down for his political extravagances. He was a Communist!

And at the rectory there had been the Duchemins, or rather Mrs. Duchemin and, during most week-ends, Macmaster somewhere about.

The passion of Macmaster for Edith Ethel and of Edith Ethel for Macmaster had seemed to her one of the beautiful things of life. They seemed to swim in a sea of renunciations, of beautiful quotations, and of steadfast waiting. Macmaster did not interest her personally much, but she took him on trust because of Edith Ethel’s romantic passion and because he was Christopher Tietjens’ friend. She had never heard him say anything original; when he used quotations they would be apt rather than striking. But she took it for granted that he was the right man – much as you take it for granted the engine of an express train in which you are is reliable. The right people have chosen it for you… .

With Mrs. Duchemin, mad before her, she had the first intimation that her idolised friend, in whom she had believed as she had believed in the firmness of the great, sunny earth, had been the mistress of her lover – almost since the first day she had seen him… . And that Mrs. Duchemin had, stored somewhere, a character of an extreme harshness and great vulgarity of language. She raged up and down in the candlelight, before the dark oak panelling, screaming coarse phrases of the deepest hatred for her lover. Didn’t the oaf know his business
better
than to …? The dirty little Port of Leith fish-handler… .

What, then, were tall candles in silver sticks for? And polished panelling in galleries?

Valentine Wannop couldn’t have been a little ashcat in worn cotton dresses, sleeping under the stairs, in an Ealing household with a drunken cook, an invalid mistress and three over-fed men, without acquiring a considerable knowledge of the sexual necessities and excesses of humanity. But, as all the poorer helots of great cities hearten their lives by dreaming of material beauties, elegance, and suave wealth, she had always considered that, far from the world of Ealing and its county councillors who over-ate and neighed like stallions, there were bright colonies of beings, chaste, beautiful in thought, altruist and circumspect.