Parade's End (77 page)

Tietjens said to himself:

‘Great heavens! I’ve been talking to him. What in the world about?’ It was as if his mind were falling off a hillside. He said:

‘Yes, sir … Schomburg. But as that’s a German prisoner, captured on the Marne, it is not on our strength. It is the private property of the colonel. I ride it myself… .’

The general exclaimed drily:

‘You
would
… .’ He added more drily still: ‘Are you aware that there is a hell of a strafe put in against you by an R.A.S.C. second-lieutenant called Hotchkiss? …’

Tietjens said quickly;

‘If it’s over Schomburg, sir … it’s a washout. Lieutenant Hotchkiss has no more right to give orders about him than as to where I shall sleep… . And I would rather die than subject any horse for which I am responsible to the damnable torture Hotchkiss and that swine Lord Beichan want to inflict on service horses… .’

The general said maleficently:

‘It looks as if you damn well will die on that account!’

He added: ‘You’re perfectly right to object to wrong treatment of horses. But in this case your objection blocks the only other job open to you.’ He quietened himself a little. ‘You are probably not aware,’ he went on, ‘that your brother Mark …’

Tietjens said:

‘Yes, I am aware …’

The general said: ‘Do you know that the 19th Division to which your brother wants you sent is attached to Fourth Army now – and it’s Fourth Army horses that Hotchkiss is to play with? … How could I send you there to be under his orders?’

Tietjens said:

‘That’s perfectly correct, sir. There is nothing else that you can do… .’ He was finished. There was now nothing left but to find out how his mind was going to take it. He wished they could go to his cook-houses!

The general said:

‘What was I saying? … I’m dreadfully tired… . No one could stand this… .’ He drew from inside his tunic a lapis-lazuli coloured, small be-coroneted note-case and selected from it a folded paper that he first looked at and then slipped between his belt and his tunic. He said: ‘On top of all the responsibility I have to bear!’ He asked: ‘Has it occurred to you that, if I’m of any service to the country, your taking up my energy –
sapping
my energy over your affairs! – is aiding your country’s enemies? … I can only afford four hours’ sleep as it is… . I’ve got some questions to ask you… .’ He referred to the slip of paper from his belt, folded it again and again slipped it into his belt.

Tietjens’ mind missed a notch again… . It
was
the fear of the mud that was going to obsess him. Yet, curiously, he had never been under heavy fire in mud… . You would think that that would not have obsessed him. But
in
his ear he had just heard uttered in a whisper of intense weariness, the words:
Es ist nicht zu ertragen; es ist das dasz uns verloren hat
… words in German, of utter despair, meaning: It is unbearable: it is that that has ruined us… . The mud! … He had heard those words, standing amidst volcano craters of mud, amongst ravines, monstrosities of slime, cliffs and distances, all of slime… . He had been going, for curiosity or instruction, from Verdun where he had been attached to the French – on a holiday afternoon when nothing was doing, with a guide, to visit one of the outlying forts… . Deamont? No, Douaumont… . Taken from the enemy about a week before… . When would that be? He had lost all sense of chronology… . In November… . A beginning of some November… . With a miracle of sunshine; not a cloud, the mud towering up shut you in intimately with a sky that ached for limpidity… . And the slime had moved … following a French bombardier who was strolling along eating nuts, disreputably, his shoulders rolling… .
Déserteurs
… . The moving slime was German deserters… . You could not see them: the leader of them – an officer! – had his glasses so thick with mud that you could not see the colour of his eyes, and his half-dozen decorations were like the beginnings of swallows’ nests, his beard like stalactites… . Of the other men you could only see the eyes – extraordinarily vivid: mostly blue like the sky! … Deserters! Led by an officer! Of the Hamburg Regiment! As if an officer of the Buffs had gone over! It was incredible… . And that was what the officer had said as he passed, not shamefacedly, but without any humanity left in him… .
Done!
… Those moving saurians compacted of slime kept on passing him afterwards, all the afternoon… . And he could not help picturing their immediate antecedents for two months… . In advanced pill-boxes… . No, they didn’t have pill-boxes then. In advanced pockets of mud, in dreadful solitude amongst those ravines … suspended in eternity, at the last day of the world. And it had horribly shocked him to hear again the German language a rather soft voice, a little suety, like an obscene whisper… . The voice obviously of the damned; hell could hold nothing curious for those poor beasts… . His French guide had said sardonically:
On dirait l’Inferno de Dante!
… Well, those Germans were getting back on him. They were now to
become
an obsession! A complex, they said nowadays… . The general said coolly:

‘I presume you refuse to answer?’

That shook him cruelly.

He said desperately:

‘I had to end what I took to be an unbearable position for both parties. In the interests of my son!’ Why in the world had he said that? … He was going to be sick. It came back to him that the general had been talking of his separation from Sylvia. Last night that had happened. He said: ‘I may have been right: I may have been wrong… .’

The general said icily:

‘If you don’t choose to go into it… .’

Tietjens said:

‘I would prefer not to… .’

The general said:

‘There is no end to this… . But there are questions it’s my duty to ask… . If you do not wish to go into your marital relations, I cannot force you… . But, damn it, are you sane? Are you responsible? Do you intend to get Miss Wannop to live with you before the war is over? Is she, perhaps, here, in this town, now? Is that your reason for separating from Sylvia? Now, of all times in the world!’

Tietjens said:

‘No, sir. I ask you to believe that I have absolutely no relations with that young lady. None! I have no intention of having any. None! …’

The general said:

‘I believe that!’

‘Circumstances last night,’ Tietjens said, ‘convinced me suddenly, there, on the spot, that I had been wronging my wife… . I had been putting a strain on the lady that was unwarrantable. It humiliates me to have to say it! I had taken a certain course for the sake of the future of our child. But it was an atrociously wrong course. We ought to have separated years ago. It has led to the lady’s pulling the strings of all these shower-baths… .’

The general said:

‘Pulling the …’

Tietjens said:

‘It expresses it, sir… . Last night was nothing but pulling the string of a shower-bath. Perfectly justifiable. I maintain that it was perfectly justifiable.’

The general said:

‘Then why have you given her Groby? … You’re not a little soft, are you? … You don’t imagine you’ve … say, got a mission? Or that you’re another person? … That you have to … to forgive… .’ He took off his pretty hat and wiped his forehead with a tiny cambric handkerchief. He said: ‘Your poor mother was a little …’

He said suddenly:

‘To-night when you are coming to my dinner … I hope you’ll be decent. Why do you so neglect your personal appearance? Your tunic is a disgusting spectacle… .’

Tietjens said:

‘I had a better tunic, sir … but it has been ruined by the blood of the man who was killed here last night… .’

The general said:

‘You don’t say you have only two tunics? … Have you no mess clothes?’

Tietjens said:

‘Yes, sir, I’ve my blue things. I shall be all right for to-night… . But almost everything else I possessed was stolen from my kit when I was in hospital… . Even Sylvia’s two pair of sheets… .’

‘But hang it all,’ the general exclaimed, ‘you don’t mean to say you’ve spaffled all your father left you?’

Tietjens said:

‘I thought fit to refuse what my father left me, owing to the way it was left… .’

The general said:

‘But, good God! … Read that!’ He tossed the small sheet of paper at which he had been looking across the table. It fell face downwards. Tietjens read, in the minute handwriting of the general’s:

‘Colonel’s horse: Sheets: Jesus Christ: Wannop girl: Socialism?’

The general said irritably:

‘The other side … the other side… .’

The other side of the paper displayed the words in large capitals: WORKERS OF THE WORLD, a wood-cut of a sickle and some other objects. Then high treason for a page.

The general said:

‘Have you ever seen anything like that before? Do you know what it is?’

Tietjens answered:

‘Yes, sir. I sent that to you. To your Intelligence… .’

The general thumped both his fists violently on the army blanket:

‘You …’ he said. ‘It’s incomprehensible… . It’s incredible… .’

Tietjens said:

‘No, sir… . You sent out an order asking commanders of units to ascertain what attempts were being made by Socialists to undermine the discipline of their other ranks… . I naturally asked my sergeant-major, and he produced this sheet, which one of the men had given to him as a curiosity. It had been handed to the man in the street in London. You can see my initials on the top of the sheet!’

The general said:

‘You … you’ll excuse me, but you’re not a Socialist yourself? …’

Tietjens said:

‘I knew you were working round to that, sir. But I’ve no politics that did not disappear in the eighteenth century. You, sir, prefer the seventeenth!’

‘Another shower-bath, I suppose,’ the general said.

‘Of course,’ Tietjens said, ‘if it’s Sylvia that called me a Socialist, it’s not astonishing. I’m a Tory of such an extinct type that she might take me for anything. The last megatherium. She’s absolutely to be excused… .’

The general was not listening. He said:

‘What was wrong with the way your father left his money to you? …’

‘My father,’ Tietjens said – the general saw his jaw stiffen – ‘committed suicide because a fellow called Ruggles told him that I was … what the French called
maquereau
… I can’t think of the English word. My father’s suicide was not an act that can be condoned. A gentleman does not commit suicide when he has descendants. It might influence my boy’s life very disastrously… .’

The general said:

‘I can’t … I
can’t
get to the bottom of all this… . What in the world did Ruggles want to go and tell your father that for? … What are you going to do for a living after the war? They won’t take you back into your office, will they?’

Tietjens said:

‘No, sir. The Department will not take me back. Everyone who has served in this war will be a marked man for a long time after it is over. That’s proper enough.
We’re
having our fun now.’

The general said:

‘You say the wildest things.’

Tietjens answered:

‘You generally find the things I say come true, sir. Could we get this over? Ruggles told my father what he did because it is not a good thing to belong to the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries in the twentieth. Or really, because it is not good to have taken one’s public school’s ethical system seriously. I am really, sir, the English public schoolboy. That’s an eighteenth-century product. What with the love of truth that – God help me! – they rammed into me at Clifton and the belief Arnold forced upon Rugby that the vilest of sins – the vilest of all sins – is to peach to the head master! That’s me, sir. Other men get over their schooling. I never have. I remain adolescent. These things are obsessions with me. Complexes, sir!’

The general said:

‘All this seems to be very wild… . What’s this about peaching to a head master?’

Tietjens said:

‘For a swan-song, it’s not wild, sir. You’re asking for a swan-song. I am to go up into the line so that the morals of the troops in your command may not be contaminated by the contemplation of my marital infelicities.’

The general said:

‘You don’t want to go back to England, do you?’

Tietjens exclaimed:

‘Certainly not! Very certainly not! I can never go home. I have to go underground somewhere. If I went back to England there would be nothing for me but going underground by suicide.’

The general said:

‘You see all that? I can give you testimonials… .’

Tietjens asked:

‘Who couldn’t see that it’s impossible?’

The general said:

‘But … suicide! You won’t do that. As you said: think of your son.’

Tietjens said:

‘No, sir. I shan’t do that. But you see how bad for one’s descendants suicide is. That is why I do not forgive my father. Before he did it I should never have contemplated the idea. Now I have contemplated it. That’s a weakening of the moral fibre. It’s contemplating a fallacy as a possibility. For suicide is no remedy for a twisted situation of a psychological kind. It is for bankruptcy. Or for military disaster. For the man of action, not for the thinker. Creditors’ meetings wipe the one out. Military operations sweep on. But my problem will remain the same whether I’m here or not. For it’s insoluble. It’s the whole problem of the relations of the sexes.’

The general said:

‘Good God! …’

Tietjens said:

‘No, sir, I’ve not gone off my chump. That’s my problem! … But I’m a fool to talk so much… . It’s because I don’t know what to say.’

The general sat staring at the tablecloth; his face was suffused with blood. He had the appearance of a man in monstrous ill-humour. He said:

‘You had better say what you want to say. What the devil do you mean? … What’s this all about? …’

Tietjens said:

‘I’m enormously sorry, sir. It’s difficult to make myself plain.’

The general said:

‘Neither of us do. What is language for? What the
hell
is language for? We go round and round. I suppose I’m an old fool who cannot understand your modern ways … But you’re not modern. I’ll do you
that
justice… . That beastly little McKechnie is modern… . I shall ram him into your divisional-transport job, so that he won’t incommode you in your battalion… . Do you understand what the little beast did? He got leave to go and get a divorce. And then did not get a divorce.
That’s
modernism. He said he had scruples. I understand that he and his wife and … some dirty other fellow … slept three in a bed. That’s modern scruples… .’