Parade's End (40 page)

Rightly or wrongly, Valentine regarded Mrs. Wannop as a great, an august figure: a great brain, a high and generous intelligence. She had written, at least, one great book, and if the rest of her time had been frittered away in the desperate struggle to live that had taken both their lives, that could not detract from that one achievement that should last and for ever take her mother’s name down time. That this greatness should not weigh with the Macmasters had hitherto neither astonished nor irritated Valentine. The Macmasters had their game to play and, for the matter of that, they had their predilections. Their game kept them amongst the officially influential, the semi-official and the officially accredited. They moved with such C.B.s, knights, presidents, and the rest as dabbled in writing or the arts: they went upwards with such reviewers, art critics, musical writers and archaeologists as had posts in, if possible, first-class public offices or permanent positions on the more august periodicals. If an imaginative author seemed assured of position and lasting popularity Macmaster would send out feelers towards him, would make himself humbly useful, and sooner or later either Mrs. Duchemin would be carrying on with him one of her high-souled correspondences – or she wouldn’t.

Mrs. Wannop they had formerly accepted as permanent leader writer and chief critic of a great organ, but the great organ having dwindled and now disappeared the Macmasters no longer wanted her at their parties. That was the game – and Valentine accepted it. But that it should have been done with such insolence, so obviously meant to be noted – for in twice breaking up Mrs. Wannop’s little circle Mrs. Duchemin had not even once so much as said: ‘How d’ye do?’ to the elder lady! – that
was
almost more than Valentine could, for the moment, bear, and she would have taken her mother away at once and would never have re-entered the house, but for the compensations.

Her mother had lately written and even found a publisher for a book – and the book had showed no signs of failing powers. On the contrary, having been perforce stopped off the perpetual journalism that had dissipated her energies, Mrs. Wannop had turned out something that Valentine knew was sound, sane, and well done. Abstractions caused by failing attention to the outside world are not necessarily in a writer signs of failing, as a writer. It may mean merely that she is giving so much thought to her work that her other contacts suffer. If that is the case her work will gain. That this might be the case with her mother was Valentine’s great and secret hope. Her mother was barely sixty: many great works have been written by writers aged between sixty and seventy… .

And the crowding of youngish men round the old lady had given Valentine a little confirmation of that hope. The book naturally, in the maelstrom flux and reflux of the time, had attracted little attention, and poor Mrs. Wannop had not succeeded in extracting a penny for it from her adamantine publisher; she hadn’t, indeed, made a penny for several months, and they existed almost at starvation point in their little den of a villa – on Valentine’s earnings as athletic teacher… . But that little bit of attention in that semi-public place had seemed, at least, as a confirmation to Valentine: there probably was something sound, sane, and well done in her mother’s work. That was almost all she asked of life.

And, indeed, whilst she stood by her mother’s chair, thinking with a little bitter pathos that if Edith Ethel had left the three or four young men to her mother the three or four might have done her poor mother a little good, with innocent puffs and the like – and heaven knew they needed that little good badly enough! – a very thin and untidy young man
did
drift back to Mrs. Wannop and asked, precisely, if he might make a note or two for publication as to what Mrs. Wannop was doing. ‘Her book,’ he said, ‘had attracted so much attention. They hadn’t known that they had still writers among them… .’

A singular, triangular drive had begun through the chairs from the fireplace. That was how it had seemed to Valentine! Mrs. Tietjens had looked at them, had asked Christopher a question and, immediately, as if she were coming through waist-high surf, had borne down Macmaster and Mrs. Duchemin, flanking her obsequiously, setting aside chairs and their occupants, Tietjens and the two, rather bashfully following staff officers, broadening out the wedge.

Sylvia, her long arm held out from a yard or so away, was giving her hand to Valentine’s mother. With her clear, high, unembarrassed voice she exclaimed, also from a yard or so away, so as to be heard by everyone in the room:

‘You’re Mrs. Wannop. The great writer! I’m Christopher Tietjens’ wife.’

The old lady, with her dim eyes, looked up at the younger woman towering above her.

‘You’re Christopher’s wife!’ she said. ‘I must kiss you for all the kindness he has shown me.’

Valentine felt her eyes filling with tears. She saw her mother stand up, place both her hands on the other woman’s shoulders. She heard her mother say:

‘You’re a most beautiful creature. I’m sure you’re good!’

Sylvia stood, smiling faintly, bending a little to accept the embrace. Behind the Macmasters, Tietjens, and the staff officers, a little crowd of goggle eyes had ranged itself.

Valentine was crying. She slipped back behind the tea-urns, though she could hardly feel the way. Beautiful! The most beautiful woman she had ever seen! And good! Kind! You could see it in the lovely way she had given her cheek to that poor old woman’s lips… . And to live all day, for ever, beside him … she, Valentine, ought to be ready to lay down her life for Sylvia Tietjens… .

The voice of Tietjens said, just above her head:

‘Your mother seems to be having a regular triumph,’ and, with his good-natured cynicism, he added, ‘it seems to have upset some apple-carts!’ They were confronted with the spectacle of Macmaster conducting the young celebrity from her deserted arm-chair across the room to be lost in the horseshoe of crowd that surrounded Mrs. Wannop.

Valentine said:

‘You’re quite gay to-day. Your voice is different. I suppose you’re better?’ She did not look at him. His voice came:

‘Yes! I’m relatively gay!’ It went on: ‘I thought you might like to know. A little of my mathematical brain seems to have come to life again. I’ve worked out two or three silly problems… .’

She said:

‘Mrs. Tietjens will be pleased.’

‘Oh!’ the answer came. ‘Mathematics don’t interest her any more than cock-fighting.’ With immense swiftness, between word and word, Valentine read into that a hope! This splendid creature did not sympathise with her husband’s activities. But he crushed it heavily by saying: ‘Why should she? She’s so many occupations of her own that she’s unrivalled at!’

He began to tell her, rather minutely, of a calculation he had made only that day at lunch. He had gone into the Department of Statistics and had had rather a row with Lord Ingleby of Lincoln. A pretty title the fellow had taken! They had wanted him to ask to be seconded to his old department for a certain job. But he had said he’d be damned if he would. He detested and despised the work they were doing.

Valentine, for the first time in her life, hardly listened to what he said. Did the fact that Sylvia Tietjens had so many occupations of her own mean that Tietjens found her unsympathetic? Of their relationships she knew nothing. Sylvia had been so much of a mystery as hardly to exist as a problem hitherto. Macmaster, Valentine knew, hated her. She knew that through Mrs. Duchemin; she had heard it ages ago, but she didn’t know why. Sylvia had never come to the Macmaster afternoons; but that was natural. Macmaster passed for a bachelor, and it was excusable for a young woman of the highest fashion not to come to bachelor teas of literary and artistic people. On the other hand, Macmaster dined at the Tietjenses’ quite often enough to make it public that he was a friend of that family. Sylvia, too, had never come down to see Mrs. Wannop. But then it would, in the old days, have been a long way to come for a lady of fashion with no especial literary interests. And no one, in mercy, could
have
been expected to call on poor them in their dog kennel in an outer suburb. They had had to sell almost all their pretty things.

Tietjens was saying that after his tempestuous interview with Lord Ingleby of Lincoln – she wished he would not be so rude to powerful people! – he had dropped in on Macmaster in his private room, and finding him puzzled over a lot of figures had, in the merest spirit of bravado, taken Macmaster and his papers out to lunch. And, he said, chancing to look, without any hope at all, at the figures, he had suddenly worked out an ingenious mystification. It had just come!

His voice had been so gay and triumphant that she hadn’t been able to resist looking up at him. His cheeks were fresh coloured, his hair shining; his blue eyes had a little of their old arrogance – and tenderness! Her heart seemed to sing with joy! He was, she felt, her man. She imagined the arms of his mind stretching out to enfold her.

He went on explaining. He had rather, in his recovered self-confidence, gibed at Macmaster. Between themselves, wasn’t it easy to do what the Department, under orders, wanted done? They had wanted to rub into our allies that their losses by devastation had been nothing to write home about – so as to avoid sending reinforcements to their lines! Well, if you took just the bricks and mortar of the devastated districts, you could prove that the loss in bricks, tiles, woodwork and the rest didn’t – and the figures with a little manipulation would prove it! – amount to more than a normal year’s dilapidations spread over the whole country in peace time… . House repairs in a normal year had cost several million sterling. The enemy had only destroyed just about so many million sterling in bricks and mortar. And what was a mere year’s dilapidations in house property! You just neglected to do them and did them next year.

So, if you ignored the lost harvests of three years, the lost industrial output of the richest industrial region of the country, the smashed machinery, the barked fruit trees, the three years’ loss of four and a half-tenths of the coal output for three years – and the loss of life! – we could go to our allies and say:

‘All your yappings about losses are the merest bulls. You can perfectly well afford to reinforce the weak places of your own lines. We intend to send our new troops to the Near East, where lies our true interest!’ And, though they might sooner or later point out the fallacy, you would by so much have put off the abhorrent expedient of a single command.

Valentine, though it took her away from her own thoughts, couldn’t help saying:

‘But weren’t you arguing against your own convictions?’

He said:

‘Yes, of course I was. In the lightness of my heart! It’s always a good thing to formulate the other fellow’s objections.’

She had turned half round in her chair. They were gazing into each other’s eyes, he from above, she from below. She had no doubt of his love: he, she knew, could have no doubt of hers. She said:

‘But isn’t it dangerous? To show these people how to do it?’

He said:

‘Oh, no, no. No! You don’t know what a good soul little Vinnie is. I don’t think you’ve ever been quite just to Vincent Macmaster! He’d as soon think of picking my pocket as of picking my brains. The soul of honour!’

Valentine had felt a queer, queer sensation. She was not sure afterwards whether she had felt it before she had realised that Sylvia Tietjens was looking at them. She stood there, very erect, a queer smile on her face. Valentine could not be sure whether it was kind, cruel, or merely distantly ironic; but she was perfectly sure it showed, whatever was behind it, that its wearer knew all that there was to know of her, Valentine’s feelings for Tietjens and for Tietjens’ feelings for her… . It was like being a woman and man in adultery in Trafalgar Square.

Behind Sylvia’s back, their mouths agape, were the two staff officers. Their dark hairs were too untidy for them to amount to much, but, such as they were, they were the two most presentable males of the assembly – and Sylvia had snaffled them.

Mrs. Tietjens said:

‘Oh, Christopher! I’m going on to the Basils’.’

Tietjens said:

‘All right. I’ll pop Mrs. Wannop into the tube as soon as she’s had enough of it, and come along and pick you up!’

Sylvia had just drooped her long eyelashes, in sign of salutation, to Valentine Wannop, and had drifted through the door, followed by her rather unmilitary military escort in khaki and scarlet.

From that moment Valentine Wannop never had any doubt. She knew that Sylvia Tietjens knew that her husband loved her, Valentine Wannop, and that she, Valentine Wannop, loved her husband – with a passion absolute and ineffable. The one thing she, Valentine, didn’t know, the one mystery that remained impenetrable, was whether Sylvia Tietjens was good to her husband!

A long time afterwards Edith Ethel had come to her beside the tea-cups and had apologised for not having known, earlier than Sylvia’s demonstration, that Mrs. Wannop was in the room. She hoped that they might see Mrs. Wannop much more often. She added after a moment that she hoped Mrs. Wannop wouldn’t, in future, find it necessary to come under the escort of Mr. Tietjens. They were too old friends for that, surely.

Valentine said:

‘Look here, Ethel, if you think that you can keep friends with mother and turn on Mr. Tietjens after all he’s done for you, you’re mistaken. You are really. And mother’s a great deal of influence. I don’t want to see you making any mistakes, just at this juncture. It’s a mistake to make nasty rows. And you’d make a very nasty one if you said anything against Mr. Tietjens to mother. She knows a great deal. Remember. She lived next door to the rectory for a number of years. And she’s got a dreadfully incisive tongue… .’

Edith Ethel coiled back on her feet as if her whole body were threaded by a steel spring. Her mouth opened, but she bit her lower lip and then wiped it with a very white handkerchief. She said:

‘I hate that man! I detest that man! I shudder when he comes near me.’

‘I know you do!’ Valentine Wannop answered. ‘But I wouldn’t let other people know it if I were you. It doesn’t do you any real credit. He’s a good man.’