Parade's End (46 page)

Even when he, Tietjens, had slipped away from the party – to go to his good fortune! – Macmaster had come
panting
down the stairs, running after him, through guests coming up. He had said:

‘Wait … You’re not going… . I want to …’ With a miserable and appalled glance he had looked up the stairs; Lady Macmaster might have come out too. His black, short beard quivering and his wretched eyes turned down, he had said:

‘I wanted to explain… . This miserable knighthood… .’

Tietjens patted him on the shoulder, Macmaster being on the stairs above him.

‘It’s all right, old man,’ he had said – and with real affection: ‘We’ve powlered up and down enough for a little thing like that not to … I’m very glad… .’

Macmaster had whispered:

‘And Valentine… . She’s not here to-night… .’

He had exclaimed:

‘By God! … If I thought …’ Tietjens had said: ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. She’s at another party… . I’m going on …’

Macmaster had looked at him doubtingly and with misery, leaning over and clutching the clammy banisters.

‘Tell her …’ he said … ‘Good God! You may be killed… . I beg you … I beg you to believe … I will … Like the apple of my eye… .’ In the swift glance that Tietjens took of his face he could see that Macmaster’s eyes were full of tears.

They both stood looking down at the stone stairs for a long time.

Then Macmaster had said: ‘Well …’

Tietjens had said: ‘Well …’ But he hadn’t been able to look at Macmaster’s eyes, though he had felt his friend’s eyes pitiably exploring his own face… . ‘A backstairs way out of it,’ he had thought; a queer thing that you couldn’t look in the face a man you were never going to see again!

‘But by God,’ he said to himself fiercely, when his mind came back again to the girl in front of him, ‘this isn’t going to be another backstairs exit… . I must tell her… . I’m damned if I don’t make an effort… .’

She had her handkerchief to her face.

‘I’m always crying,’ she said… . ‘A little bubbling spring that can be trusted to keep on… .’

He looked to the right and to the left. Ruggles or General Someone with false teeth that didn’t fit
must
be coming along. The street with its sooty boskage was clean, empty and silent. She was looking at him. He didn’t know how long he had been silent, he didn’t know where he had been; intolerable waves urged him towards her.

After a long time he said:

‘Well …’

She moved back. She said:

‘I won’t watch you out of sight… . It is unlucky to watch anyone out of sight… . But I will never … I will never cut what you said then out of my memory …’ She was gone; the door shut. He had wondered what she would never cut out of her memory. That he had asked her that afternoon to be his mistress?

He had caught, outside the gates of his old office, a transport lorry that had given him a lift to Holborn.

NO MORE PARADES

For two things my heart is grieved:

A man of war that suffereth from poverty

and men of intelligence

that are counted as refuse
.

PROVERBS

PART ONE

WHEN YOU CAME
in the space was desultory, rectangular, warm after the drip of the winter night, and transfused with a brown-orange dust that was light. It was shaped like the house a child draws. Three groups of brown limbs spotted with brass took dim high-lights from shafts that came from a bucket pierced with holes, filled with incandescent coke and covered in with a sheet of iron in the shape of a funnel. Two men, as if hierarchically smaller, crouched on the floor beside the brazier; four, two at each end of the hut, drooped over tables in attitudes of extreme indifference. From the eaves above the parallelogram of black that was the doorway fell intermittent drippings of collected moisture, persistent, with glass-like intervals of musical sound. The two men squatting on their heels over the brazier – they had been miners – began to talk in a low sing-song of dialect, hardly audible. It went on and on, monotonously, without animation. It was as if one told the other long, long stories to which his companion manifested his comprehension or sympathy with animal grunts… .

An immense tea-tray, august, its voice filling the black circle of the horizon, thundered to the ground. Numerous pieces of sheet-iron said, ‘Pack. Pack. Pack.’ In a minute the clay floor of the hut shook, the drums of ears were pressed inwards, solid noise showered about the universe, enormous echoes pushed these men – to the right, to the left, or down towards the tables, and crackling like that of flames among vast underwood became the settled condition of the night. Catching the light from the brazier as the head leaned over, the lips of one of the two men on the floor were incredibly red and full and went on talking and talking… .

The two men on the floor were Welsh miners, of whom the one came from the Rhondda Valley and was unmarried; the other, from Pontardulais, had a wife who kept a laundry, he having given up going underground just before the war. The two men at the table to the right of the door were sergeants-major; the one came from Suffolk and was a time-serving man of sixteen years’ seniority as a sergeant in a line regiment. The other was Canadian of English origin. The two officers at the other end of the hut were captains, the one a young regular officer born in Scotland but educated at Oxford; the other, nearly middle-aged and heavy, came from Yorkshire, and was in a militia battalion. The one runner on the floor was filled with a passionate rage because the elder officer had refused him leave to go home and see why his wife, who had sold their laundry, had not yet received the purchase money from the buyer; the other was thinking about a cow. His girl, who worked on a mountainy farm above Caerphilly, had written to him about a queer cow: a black-and-white Holstein – surely to goodness a queer cow. The English sergeant-major was almost tearfully worried about the enforced lateness of the draft. It would be twelve midnight before they could march them off. It was not right to keep men hanging about like that. The men did not like to be kept waiting, hanging about. It made them discontented. They did not like it. He could not see why the depot quartermaster could not keep up his stock of candles for the hooded lamps. The men had no call to be kept waiting, hanging about. Soon they would have to be having some supper. Quarter would not like that. He would grumble fair. Having to indent for suppers. Put his accounts out, fair, it would. Two thousand nine hundred and thirty-four suppers at a penny half-penny. But it was not right to keep the men hanging about till midnight and no suppers. It made them discontented and them going up the line for the first time, poor devils.

The Canadian sergeant-major was worried about a pig-skin leather pocket-book. He had bought it at the ordnance depot in the town. He imagined himself bringing it out on parade, to read out some return or other to the adjutant. Very smart it would look on parade, himself standing up straight and tall. But he could not
remember
whether he had put it in his kit-bag. On himself it was not. He felt in his right and left breast pockets, his right and left skirt pockets, in all the pockets of his overcoat that hung from a nail within reach of his chair. He did not feel at all certain that the man who acted as his batman had packed that pocket-book with his kit, though he declared he had. It was very annoying. His present wallet, bought in Ontario, was bulging and split. He did not like to bring it out when Imperial officers asked for something out of a return. It gave them a false idea of Canadian troops. Very annoying. He was an auctioneer. He agreed that at this rate it would be half-past one before they had the draft down to the station and entrained. But it was very annoying to be uncertain whether that pocket-book was packed or not. He had imagined himself making a good impression on parade, standing up straight and tall, taking out that pocket-book when the adjutant asked for a figure from one return or the other. He understood their adjutants were to be Imperial officers now they were in France. It was very annoying.

An enormous crashing sound said things of an intolerable intimacy to each of those men, and to all of them as a body. After its mortal vomiting all the other sounds appeared a rushing silence, painful to ears in which the blood audibly coursed. The young officer stood violently up on his feet and caught at the complications of his belt hung from a nail. The elder, across the table, lounging sideways, stretched out one hand with a downwards movement. He was aware that the younger man, who was the senior officer, was just upon out of his mind. The younger man, intolerably fatigued, spoke sharp, injurious, inaudible words to his companion. The elder spoke sharp, short words, inaudible too, and continued to motion downwards with his hand over the table. The old English sergeant-major said to his junior that Captain Mackenzie had one of his mad fits again, but what he said was inaudible and he knew it. He felt arising in his motherly heart that yearned at the moment over his two thousand nine hundred and thirty-four nurslings a necessity, like a fatigue, to extend the motherliness of his functions to the orfcer. He said to the Canadian that Captain Mackenzie there going temporary off his nut was the best orfcer in
His
Majesty’s army. And going to make a bleedin’ fool of hisself. The best orfcer in His Majesty’s army. Not a better. Careful, smart, brave as an ’ero. And considerate of his men in the line. You wouldn’t believe … He felt vaguely that it was a fatigue to have to mother an officer. To a lance-corporal, or a young sergeant, beginning to go wrong you could mutter wheezy suggestions through your moustache. But to an officer you had to say things slant-ways. Difficult it was. Thank God they had a trustworthy, cool hand in the other captain. Old and good, the proverb said.

Dead silence fell.

‘Lost the —, they ’ave,’ the runner from the Rhondda made his voice startlingly heard. Brilliant illuminations flickered on hut-gables visible through the doorway.

‘No reason,’ his mate from Pontardulais rather whined in his native sing-song, ‘why the bleedin’ searchlights, surely to goodness, should light us up for all the – ’Un planes to see. I want to see my bleedin’ little ’ut on the bleedin’ Mumbles again, if they don’t.’

‘Not so much swear words, O Nine Morgan,’ the sergeant-major said.

‘Now, Dai Morgan, I’m telling you,’ O Nine Morgan’s mate continued. ‘A queer cow it must have been whatever. Black-and-white Holstein it wass …’

It was as if the younger captain gave up listening to the conversation. He leant both hands on the blanket that covered the table. He exclaimed:

‘Who the hell are you to give me orders? I’m your senior. Who the hell … Oh, by God, who the hell … Nobody gives me orders …’ His voice collapsed weakly in his chest. He felt his nostrils to be inordinately dilated so that the air pouring into them was cold. He felt that there was an entangled conspiracy against him, and all round him. He exclaimed: ‘You and your — pimp of a general! …’ He desired to cut certain throats with a sharp trench-knife that he had. That would take the weight off his chest. The ‘Sit
down
’ of the heavy figure lumping opposite him paralysed his limbs. He felt an unbelievable hatred. If he could move his hand to get at his trench-knife …

O Nine Morgan said: ‘The – ’s name who’s bought my bleedin’ laundry is Williams… . If I thought it was Evans Williams of Castell Goch, I’d desert.’

‘Took a hatred for its cawve,’ the Rhondda man said. ‘And look you, before you could say …’ The conversation of orfcers was a thing to which they neither listened. Officers talked of things that had no interest. Whatever could possess a cow to take a hatred of its calf? Up behind Caerphilly on the mountains? On an autumny morning the whole hillside was covered with spider-webs. They shone down the sun like spun glass. Overlooked the cow must be.

The young captain leaning over the table began a long argument as to relative seniority. He argued with himself, taking both sides in an extraordinarily rapid gabble. He himself had been gazetted after Gheluvelt. The other not till a year later. It was true the other was in permanent command of that depot, and he himself attached to the unit only for rations and discipline. But that did not include orders to sit down. What the hell, he wanted to know, did the other mean by it? He began to talk, faster than ever, about a circle. When its circumference came whole by the disintegration of the atom the world would come to an end. In the millennium there would be no giving or taking orders. Of course he obeyed orders till then.

To the elder officer, burdened with the command of a unit of unreasonable size, with a scratch headquarters of useless subalterns who were continually being changed, with N.C.O.s all unwilling to work, with rank and file nearly all colonials and unused to doing without things, and with a depot to draw on that, being old established, felt that it belonged exclusively to a regular British unit and resented his drawing anything at all, the practical difficulties of his everyday life were already sufficient, and he had troublesome private affairs. He was lately out of hospital; the sackcloth hut in which he lived, borrowed from the Depot medical officer who had gone to England on leave, was suffocatingly hot with the paraffin-heater going, and intolerably cold and damp without it; the batman whom the M.O. had left in charge of the hut appeared to be half-witted. These German air-raids had lately become continuous. The Base was packed with men, tighter than sardines. Down in the town you could not move in the streets. Draft-finding units were commanded to keep their men out of sight as much as
possible.
Drafts were to be sent off only at night. But how could you send off a draft at night when every ten minutes you had two hours of lights out for an air-raid? Every man had nine sets of papers and tags that had to be signed by an officer. It was quite proper that the poor devils should be properly documented. But how was it to be done? He had two thousand nine hundred and ninety-four men to send off that night and nine times two thousand nine hundred and ninety-four is twenty-six thousand nine hundred and forty-six. They would not or could not let him have a disc-punching machine of his own, but how was the Depot armourer to be expected to punch five thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight extra identitity discs in addition to his regular jobs?