Parade's End (72 page)

Levin said:

‘Yes, that’s all right. He’ll be immensely pleased. He’s going to speak to you about
that
!’ Tietjens gave an immense sigh of relief.

‘I remembered that my orders were conflicting just before… . It was a terrible shock to remember… . If I sent them up in the lorries, the repairs to the railways might be delayed… . If I didn’t, you might get strafed to hell… . It was an intolerable worry… .’

Levin said:

‘You remember it just as you saw the handle of your door moving… .’

Tietjens said from a sort of a mist:

‘Yes. You know how beastly it is when you suddenly remember you have forgotten something in orders. As if the pit of your stomach had… .’

Levin said:

‘All I ever thought about if I’d forgotten anything was what would be a good excuse to put up to the adjutant… . When I was a regimental officer …’

Suddenly Tietjens said insistently:

‘How did you know that? … About the door handle? Sylvia could not have seen it… .’ He added: ‘And she could not have known what I was thinking… . She had her back to the door… . And to me … Looking at me in the glass… . She was not even aware of what had happened… . So she could not have seen the handle move!’

Levin hesitated:

‘I …’ he said. ‘Perhaps I ought not to have said that… . You’ve told us… . That is to say, you’ve told …’ He was pale in the sunlight. He said: ‘Old man … Perhaps you don’t know… . Didn’t you perhaps ever, in your childhood? …’

Tietjens said:

‘Well … what is it?’

‘That you talk … when you’re sleeping!’ Levin said.

Astonishingly, Tietjens said:

‘What of that? … It’s nothing to write home about! With the overwork I’ve had and the sleeplessness …’

Levin said, with a pathetic appeal to Tietjens’ omniscience:

‘But doesn’t it mean … We used to say when we were boys … that if you talk in your sleep … you’re … in fact a bit dotty?’

Tietjens said without passion:

‘Not necessarily. It means that one has been under mental pressure, but all mental pressure does not drive you over the edge. Not by any means… . Besides, what does it matter?’

Levin said:

‘You mean you don’t care… . Good God!’ He remained looking at the view, drooping, in intense dejection. He said: ‘This
beastly
war! This
beastly
war! … Look at all that view… .’

Tietjens said:

‘It’s an encouraging spectacle, really. The beastliness of human nature is always pretty normal. We lie and betray and are wanting in imagination and deceive ourselves, always, at about the same rate. In peace and in war! But, somewhere in that view there are enormous bodies of men… . If you got a still more extended range of view over this whole front you’d have still more enormous bodies of men. Seven to ten million… . All moving towards places towards which they desperately don’t want to go. Desperately! Every one of them is desperately afraid. But they go on. An immense blind will forces them in the effort to consummate the one decent action that humanity has to its credit in the whole of recorded history; the one we are engaged in. That effort is the one certain creditable fact in all their lives… . But the
other
lives of all those men are dirty, potty and discreditable little affairs… . Like yours … Like mine… .’

Levin exclaimed:

‘Just heavens!
What
a pessimist you are!’

Tietjens said: ‘Can’t you see that that is optimism?’

‘But,’ Levin said, ‘we’re being beaten out of the field… . You don’t know how desperate things are.’

Tietjens said:

‘Oh, I know pretty well. As soon as this weather really breaks we’re probably done.’

‘We can’t,’ Levin said, ‘possibly hold them. Not possibly.’

‘But success or failure,’ Tietjens said, ‘have nothing to do with the credit of a story. And a consideration of the
virtues
of humanity does not omit the other side. If we lose, they win. If success is necessary to your idea of virtue –
virtus
– they then provide the success instead of ourselves. But the thing is to be able to stick to the integrity of your character, whatever earthquake sets the house tumbling over your head… . That, thank God, we’re doing… .’

Levin said:

‘I don’t know… . If you knew what is going on at home …’

Tietjens said:

‘Oh, I know… . I know that ground as I know the palm of my hand. I could invent that life if I knew nothing at all about the facts.’

Levin said:

‘I believe you could.’ He added: ‘Of course you could… . And yet the only use we can make of you is to martyrise you because two drunken brutes break into your wife’s bedroom… .’

Tietjens said:

‘You betray your non-Anglo-Saxon origin by being so vocal… . And by your illuminative exaggerations!’

Levin suddenly exclaimed:

‘What the devil were we talking about?’

Tietjens said grimly:

‘I am here at the disposal of the competent military authority – you! – that is inquiring into my antecedents. I am ready to go on belching platitudes till you stop me.’

Levin answered:

‘For goodness’ sake help me. This is horribly painful.
He
– the general – has given me the job of finding out what happened last night. He won’t face it himself. He’s attached to you both.’

Tietjens said:

‘It’s asking too much to ask me to help you… . What did I say in my sleep? What has Mrs. Tietjens told the general?’

‘The general,’ Levin said, ‘has not seen Mrs. Tietjens. He could not trust himself. He knew she would twist him round her little finger.’

Tietjens said:

‘He’s beginning to learn. He was sixty last July, but he’s beginning.’

‘So that,’ Levin said, ‘what we do know we learnt in the way I have told you. And from O’Hara of course. The general would not let Pe …, the other fellow, speak a word, while he was shaving. He just said: “I won’t hear you. I won’t hear you. You can take your choice of going up the line as soon as there are trains running or being broke on my personal application to the King in Council.”’

‘I didn’t know,’ Tietjens said, ‘that he could talk as straight as that.’

‘He’s dreadfully hard hit,’ Levin answered; ‘if you and Mrs. Tietjens separate – and still more if there’s anything real against either of you – it’s going to shatter all his illusions. And …’ He paused: ‘Do you know Major Thurston? A gunner? Attached to our anti-aircraft crowd? … The general is very thick with him… .’

Tietjens said:

‘He’s one of the Thurstons of Lobden Moorside… . I don’t know him personally… .’

Levin said:

‘He’s upset the general a good deal… . With something he told him… .’

Tietjens said:

‘Good God!’ And then: ‘He can’t have told the general anything against me… . Then it must be against…’

Levin said:

‘Do you want the general always to be told things against you in contradistinction to things about… another person?’

Tietjens said:

‘We shall be keeping the fellows in my cook-house a confoundedly long time waiting for inspections… . I’m in your hands as regards the general… .’

Levin said:

‘The general’s in your hut, thankful to goodness to be alone. He never is. He said he was going to write a private memorandum for the Secretary of State, and I could keep you any time I liked as long as I got everything out of you… .’

Tietjens said:

‘Did what Major Thurston allege take place … Thurston has lived most of his life in France… . But you had better not tell me… .’

Levin said:

‘He’s our anti-aircraft liaison officer with the French civilian authorities. Those sort of fellows generally have lived in France a good deal. A very decentish, quiet man. He plays chess with the general and they talk over the chess… . But the general is going to talk about what he said to you himself… .’

Tietjens said:

‘Good God! … He going to talk as well as you… . You’d say the coils were closing in… .’

Levin said:

‘We can’t go on like this… . It’s my own fault for not being more direct. But this can’t last all day. We could neither of us stand it… . I’m pretty nearly done… .’

Tietjens said:

‘Where
did
your father come from, really? Not from Frankfurt? …’

Levin said:

‘Constantinople… . His father was financial agent to the Sultan; my father was his son by an Armenian presented to him by the Selamlik along with the Order of the Medjidje, first class.’

‘It accounts for your very decent manner, and for your common sense. If you had been English I should have broken your neck before now.’

Levin said:

‘Thank you! I hope I always behave like an English gentleman. But I am going to be brutally direct now… .’ He went on: ‘The really queer thing is that you should always address Miss Wannop in the language of the Victorian
Correct Letter-Writer
. You must excuse my mentioning the name: it shortens things. You said “Miss Wannop” every two or three half-minutes. It convinced the general more than any possible assertions that your relations were perfectly …’

Tietjens, his eyes shut, said:

‘I talked to Miss Wannop in my sleep… .’

Levin, who was shaking a little, said:

‘It was very queer… . Almost ghostlike… . There you sat, your arms on the table. Talking away. You appeared to be writing a letter to her. And the sunlight streaming in at the hut. I was going to wake you, but he stopped me. He took the view that he was on detective work, and that
he
might as well detect. He had got it into his mind that you were a Socialist.’

‘He would,’ Tietjens commented. ‘Didn’t I tell you he was beginning to learn things? …’

Levin exclaimed:

‘But you aren’t a So …’

Tietjens said:

‘Of course, if your father came from Constantinople and his mother was a Georgian, it accounts for your attractiveness. You
are
a most handsome fellow. And intelligent… . If the general has put you on to inquire whether I am a Socialist I will answer your questions.’

Levin said:

‘No… . That’s one of the questions he’s reserving for himself to ask. It appears that if you answer that you are a Socialist he intends to cut you out of his will… .’

Tietjens said:

‘His will! … Oh, yes, of course, he might very well leave me something. But doesn’t that supply rather a motive for me to say that I
am
? I don’t want his money.’

Levin positively jumped a step backwards. Money, and particularly money that came by way of inheritance, being one of the sacred things of life for him, he exclaimed:

‘I don’t see that you
can
joke about such a subject!’

Tietjens answered good-humouredly:

‘Well, you don’t expect me to play up to the old gentleman in order to get his poor old shekels.’ He added ‘Hadn’t we better get it over?’

Levin said:

‘You’ve got hold of yourself?’

Tietjens answered:

‘Pretty well… . You’ll excuse my having been emotional so far. You aren’t English, so it won’t have embarrassed you.’

Levin exclaimed in an outraged manner:

‘Hang it, I’m English to the backbone! What’s the matter with me?’

Tietjens said:

‘Nothing… . Nothing in the world. That’s just what makes you un-English. We’re all … well, it doesn’t matter what’s wrong with
us
… . What did you gather about my relations with Miss Wannop?’

The question was so unemotionally put and Levin was still so concerned as to his origins that he did not at first grasp what Tietjens had said. He began to protest that he had been educated at Winchester and Magdalen. Then he exclaimed, ‘
Oh!
’ And took time for reflection.

‘If,’ he said finally, ‘the general had not let out that she was young and attractive … at least, I suppose attractive … I should have thought that you regarded her as an old maid… . You know, of course, that it came to me as a shock, the thought that there was anyone… . That you had allowed yourself … Anyhow … I suppose I’m simple… .’

Tietjens said:

‘What did the general gather?’

‘He …’ Levin said, ‘he stood over you with his head held to one side, looking rather cunning … like a magpie listening at a hole it’s dropped a nut into… . First he looked disappointed, then quite glad. A simple kind of gladness. Just glad, you know… . When we got outside the hut he said “I suppose in
vino veritas
”, and then he asked me the Latin for “sleep”… . But I had forgotten it too… .’

Tietjens said:

‘What did I say?’

‘It’s …’ Levin hesitated, ‘extraordinarily difficult to say what you
did
say… . I don’t profess to remember long speeches to the letter… . Naturally it was a good deal broken up… . I tell you, you were talking to a young lady about matters you don’t generally talk to young ladies about… . And obviously you were trying to let your … Mrs. Tietjens, down easily… . You were trying to explain also why you had definitely decided to separate from Mrs. Tietjens… . And you took it that the young lady might be troubled … at the separation… .’

Tietjens said carelessly:

‘This is rather painful. Perhaps you would let me tell you exactly what
did
happen last night… .’

Levin said:

‘If you only would!’ He added rather diffidently: ‘If you would not mind remembering that I am a military court of inquiry. It makes it easier for me to report to the general if you say things dully and in the order they happened.’

Tietjens said:

‘Thank you …’ and after a short interval, ‘I retired to rest with my wife last night at… . I cannot say the hour exactly. Say half-past one. I reached this camp at half-past four, taking rather over half an hour to walk. What happened, as I am about to relate, took place therefore before four.’

‘The hour,’ Levin said, ‘is not material. We know the incident occurred in the small hours. General O’Hara made his complaint to me at three thirty-five. He probably took five minutes to reach my quarters.’

Tietjens asked:

‘The exact charge was …’

‘The complaints,’ Levin answered, ‘were very numerous indeed… . I could not catch them all. The succinct charge was at first being drunk and striking a superior officer, then merely that of conduct prejudicial in that you struck … There is also a subsidiary charge of conduct prejudicial in that you improperly marked a charge-sheet in your orderly room… . I did not catch what all that was about… . You appear to have had a quarrel with him about his red-caps… .’