Parade's End (7 page)

Father Consett said:

‘This immorality you talk about in your husband… . I’ve never noticed it. I saw a good deal of him when I stayed with you for the week before your child was born. I talked with him a great deal. Except in matters of the two communions – and even in these I don’t know that we differed so much – I found him perfectly sound.’

‘Sound!’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said with sudden emphasis; ‘of course he’s sound. It isn’t even the word. He’s the best ever. There was your father, for a good man … and him. That’s an end of it.’

‘Ah,’ Sylvia said, ‘you don’t know. Look here. Try and be just. Suppose I’m looking at
The Times
at breakfast and say, not having spoken to him for a week: “It’s wonderful what the doctors are doing. Have you seen the latest?” And at once he’ll be on his high-horse – he knows everything! – and he’ll prove,
prove
that all unhealthy children must be lethal-chambered or the world will go to pieces. And it’s like being hypnotised; you can’t think of what to answer him. Or he’ll reduce you to speechless rage by proving that murderers ought not to be executed. And then I’ll ask, casually, if children ought to be lethal-chambered for being constipated. Because Marchant – that’s the nurse – is always whining that the child’s bowels aren’t regular and the dreadful diseases that leads to. Of course
that
hurts him. For he’s perfectly soppy about that child, though he half knows it isn’t his own… . But that’s what I mean by immorality. He’ll profess that murderers ought to be preserved in order to breed from because they’re bold fellows, and innocent little children executed because they’re sick. And he’ll almost make you believe it, though you’re on the point of retching at the ideas.’

‘You wouldn’t now,’ Father Consett began, and almost coaxingly, ‘think of going into retreat for a month or two.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Sylvia said. ‘How could I?’

‘There’s a convent of female Premonstratensians near Birkenhead, many ladies go there,’ the Father went on. ‘They cook very well, and you can have your own furniture and your own maid if ye don’t like nuns to wait on you.’

‘It can’t be done,’ Sylvia said, ‘you can see for yourself. It would make people smell a rat at once. Christopher wouldn’t hear of it… .’

‘No, I’m afraid it can’t be done, Father,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite interrupted finally. ‘I’ve hidden here for four months to cover Sylvia’s tracks. I’ve got Wateman’s to look after. My new land steward’s coming in next week.’

‘Still,’ the Father urged, with a sort of tremulous eagerness, ‘if only for a month… . If only for a fortnight… . So many Catholic ladies do it… . Ye might think of it.’

‘I see what you’re aiming at,’ Sylvia said with sudden anger; ‘you’re revolted at the idea of my going straight from one man’s arms to another.’

‘I’d be better pleased if there could be an interval,’ the Father said. ‘It’s what’s called bad form.’

Sylvia became electrically rigid on her sofa.

‘Bad form!’ she exclaimed. ‘You accuse me of bad form.’

The Father slightly bowed his head like a man facing a wind.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘It’s disgraceful. It’s unnatural. I’d travel a bit at least.’

She placed her hand on her long throat.

‘I know what you mean,’ she said, ‘you want to spare Christopher … the humiliation. The … the nausea. No doubt he’ll feel nauseated. I’ve reckoned on that. It will give me a little of my own back.’

The Father said:

‘That’s enough, woman. I’ll hear no more.’

Sylvia said:

‘You will then. Listen here… . I’ve always got this to look forward to: I’ll settle down by that man’s side. I’ll be as virtuous as any woman. I’ve made up my mind to it and I’ll be it. And I’ll be bored stiff for the rest of my life. Except for one thing. I can torment that man. And I’ll do it. Do you understand how I’ll do it? There are many ways. But if the worst comes to the worst, I can always drive him
silly
… by corrupting the child!’ She was panting a little, and round her brown eyes the whites showed. ‘I’ll get even with him. I can. I know how, you see. And with you, through him, for tormenting me. I’ve come all the way from Brittany without stopping. I haven’t slept… . But I can …’

Father Consett put his hand beneath the tail of his coat.

‘Sylvia Tietjens,’ he said, ‘in my pistol pocket I’ve a little bottle of holy water which I carry for such occasions. What if I was to throw two drops of it over you and cry:
Exorciso te Ashtaroth in nomine
? …’

She erected her body above her skirts on the sofa, stiffened like a snake’s neck above its coils. Her face was quite pallid, her eyes staring out.

‘You … you
daren’t
,’ she said. ‘To me … an outrage!’ Her feet slid slowly to the floor; she measured the distance to the doorway with her eyes. ‘You
daren’t
,’ she said again; ‘I’d denounce you to the Bishop… .’

‘It’s little the Bishop would help you with them burning into your skin,’ the priest said. ‘Go away, I bid you, and say a Hail Mary or two. Ye need them. Ye’ll not talk of corrupting a little child before me again.’

‘I won’t,’ Sylvia said. ‘I shouldn’t have …’

Her black figure showed in silhouette against the open doorway.

When the door was closed upon them, Mrs. Satterthwaite said:

‘Was it necessary to threaten her with that? You know best, of course. It seems rather strong to me.’

‘It’s a hair from the dog that’s bit her,’ the priest said. ‘She’s a silly girl. She’s been playing at black masses, along with that Mrs. Profumo and the fellow whose name I can’t remember. You could tell that. They cut the throat of a white kid and splash its blood about. That was at the back of her mind… . It’s not very serious. A parcel of silly, idle girls. It’s not much more than palmistry or fortune-telling to them if one has to weigh it, for all its ugliness, as a sin. As far as their volition goes, and it’s volition that’s the essence of prayer, black or white… . But it was at the back of her mind, and she won’t forget to-night.’

‘Of course, that’s your affair, Father,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said lazily. ‘You hit her pretty hard. I don’t suppose she’s ever been hit so hard. What was it you wouldn’t tell her?’

‘Only,’ the priest said, ‘I wouldn’t tell her because the thought’s best not put in her head… . But her hell on earth will come when her husband goes running, blind, head down, mad after another woman.’

Mrs. Satterthwaite looked at nothing; then she nodded.

‘Yes,’ she said; ‘I hadn’t thought of it… . But will he? He
is
a very sound fellow, isn’t he?’

‘What’s to stop it?’ the priest asked. ‘
What
in the world but the grace of our blessed Lord, which he hasn’t got and doesn’t ask for? And then … he’s a young man, full-blooded, and they won’t be living …
maritalement
. Not if I know him. And then… .
Then
she’ll tear the house down. The world will echo with her wrongs.’

‘Do you mean to say,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said, ‘that Sylvia would do anything vulgar?’

‘Doesn’t every woman who’s had a man to torture for years when she loses him?’ the priest asked. ‘The more she’s made an occupation of torturing him the less right she thinks she has to lose him.’

Mrs. Satterthwaite looked gloomily into the dusk.

‘That poor devil …’ she said. ‘Will he get any peace anywhere? … What’s the matter, Father?’

The Father said:

‘I’ve just remembered she gave me tea and cream and I drank it. Now I can’t take mass for Father Reinhardt. I’ll have to go and knock up his curate, who lives away in the forest.’

At the door, holding the candle, he said:

‘I’d have you not get up to-day nor yet to-morrow, if ye can stand it. Have a headache and let Sylvia nurse you… . You’ll have to tell how she nursed you when you get back to London. And I’d rather ye didn’t lie more out and out than ye need, if it’s to please me… . Besides, if ye watch Sylvia nursing you, you might hit on a characteristic touch to make it seem more truthful… . How her sleeves brushed the medicine bottles and irritated you, maybe … or –
you’ll
know! If we can save scandal to the congregation, we may as well.’

He ran downstairs.

III

AT THE SLIGHT
creaking made by Macmaster in pushing open his door, Tietjens started violently. He was sitting in a smoking-jacket, playing patience engrossedly in a sort of garret bedroom. It had a sloping roof outlined by black oak beams, which cut into squares the cream-coloured patent distemper of the walls. The room contained also a four-post bedstead, a corner cupboard in black oak, and many rush mats on a polished oak floor of very irregular planking. Tietjens, who hated these disinterred and waxed relics of the past, sat in the centre of the room at a flimsy card-table beneath a white-shaded electric light of a brillance that, in those surroundings, appeared unreasonable. This was one of those restored old groups of cottages that it was at that date the fashion to convert into hostelries. To it Macmaster, who was in search of the inspiration of the past, had preferred to come. Tietjens, not desiring to interfere with his friend’s culture, had accepted the quarters, though he would have preferred to go to a comfortable modern hotel as being less affected and cheaper. Accustomed to what he called the grown oldnesses of a morose, rambling Yorkshire manor house, he disliked being among collected and rather pitiful bits which, he said, made him feel ridiculous, as if he were trying to behave seriously at a fancy-dress ball. Macmaster, on the other hand, with gratification and a serious air, would run his finger tips along the bevellings of a darkened piece of furniture, and would declare it genuine ‘Chippendale’ or ‘Jacobean oak’, as the case might be. And he seemed to gain an added seriousness and weight of manner with each piece of ancient furniture that down the years he thus touched. But Tietjens would declare that you could tell the beastly thing was a fake by just cocking an eye at it and, if the matter happened to fall under the test of professional dealers in old furniture, Tietjens was the more often in the right of it, and Macmaster, sighing slightly, would prepare to proceed still further along the difficult road to connoisseurship. Eventually, by conscientious study, he got so far as at times to be called in by Somerset House to value great properties for probate
–
an occupation at once distinguished and highly profitable.

Tietjens swore with the extreme vehemence of a man who has been made, but who much dislikes being seen, to start.

Macmaster – in evening dress he looked extremely miniature! – said:

‘I’m sorry, old man, I know how much you dislike being interrupted. But the General is in a terrible temper.’

Tietjens rose stiffly, lurched over to an eighteenth-century rosewood folding washstand, took from its top a glass of flat whisky and soda, and gulped down a large quantity. He looked about uncertainly, perceived a notebook on a ‘Chippendale’ bureau, made a short calculation in pencil and looked at his friend momentarily.

Macmaster said again:

‘I’m sorry old man. I must have interrupted one of your immense calculations.’

Tietjens said:

‘You haven’t. I was only thinking. I’m just as glad you’ve come. What did you say?’

Macmaster repeated:

‘I said the General is in a terrible temper. It’s just as well you didn’t come up to dinner.’

Tietjens said:

‘He isn’t … He isn’t in a temper. He’s as pleased as punch at not having to have these women up before him.’

Macmaster said:

‘He says he’s got the police scouring the whole county for them, and that you’d better leave by the first train to-morrow.’

Tietjens said:

‘I won’t. I can’t. I’ve got to wait here for a wire from Sylvia.’

Macmaster groaned:

‘Oh dear! Oh dear!’ Then he said hopefully: ‘But we could have it forwarded to Hythe.’

Tietjens said with some vehemence:

‘I tell you I won’t leave here. I tell you I’ve settled it with the police and that swine of a Cabinet Minister. I’ve mended the leg of the canary of the wife of the police-constable. Sit down and be reasonable. The police don’t touch people like us.’

Macmaster said:

‘I don’t believe you realise the public feeling there is …’

‘Of course I do, amongst people like Sandbach,’ Tietjens said. ‘Sit down I tell you… . Have some whisky… .’ He filled himself out another long tumbler and, holding it, dropped into a too low-seated, reddish wicker armchair that had cretonne fixings. Beneath his weight the chair sagged a good deal and his dress-shirt front bulged up to his chin.

Macmaster said:

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Tietjens’ eyes were bloodshot.

‘I tell you,’ Tietjens said, ‘I’m waiting for a wire from Sylvia.’

Macmaster said:

‘Oh!’ And then: ‘It can’t come to-night, it’s getting on for one.’

‘It can,’ Tietjens said, ‘I’ve fixed it up with the postmaster – all the way up to Town! It probably won’t come because Sylvia won’t send it until the last moment, to bother me. None the less I’m waiting for a wire from Sylvia, and this is what I look like.’

Macmaster said:

‘That woman’s the cruellest beast… .’

‘You might,’ Tietjens interrupted, ‘remember that you’re talking about my wife.’

‘I don’t see,’ Macmaster said, ‘how one can talk about Sylvia without …’

‘The line is a perfectly simple one to draw,’ Tietjens said. ‘You can relate a lady’s actions if you know them and are asked to. You mustn’t comment. In this case you don’t know the lady’s actions even, so you may as well hold your tongue.’ He sat looking straight in front of him.

Macmaster sighed from deep in his chest. He asked himself if this was what sixteen hours’ waiting had done for his friend, what were all the remaining hours going to do?

Tietjens said:

‘I shall be fit to talk about Sylvia after two more whiskies. Let’s settle your other perturbations first… . The fair girl is called Wannop: Valentine Wannop.’

‘That’s the Professor’s name,’ Macmaster said.

‘She’s the late Professor Wannop’s daughter,’ Tietjens said. ‘She’s also the daughter of the novelist.’