Parade's End (79 page)

He looked down at the blanket on the table. He intended again to look up at Tietjens’ eyes with ostentatious care. That was his technique with men. He was a successful general because he knew men. He knew that all men
will
go to hell over three things: alcohol, money … and sex. This fellow apparently hadn’t. Better for him if he had! He thought:

‘It’s all gone … mother! Father! Groby! This fellow’s down and out. It’s a bit thick.’

He thought:

‘But he’s right to do as he is doing.’

He prepared to look at Tietjens… . He stretched out a sudden, ineffectual hand. Sitting on his beef-case, his hands on his knees, Tietjens had lurched. A sudden lurch – as an old house lurches when it is hit by an H.E. shell. It stopped at that. Then he righted himself. He continued to stare direct at the general. The general looked carefully back. He said – very carefully too:

‘In case I decide to contest West Cleveland, it is your wish that I should make Groby my headquarters?’

Tietjens said:

‘I beg, sir, that you will!’

It was as if they both heaved an enormous sigh of relief. The general said:

‘Then I need not keep you… .’

Tietjens stood on his feet, wanly, but with his heels together.

The general also rose, settling his belt. He said:

‘… You can fall out.’

Tietjens said:

‘My cook-houses, sir… . Sergeant-Cook Case will be very disappointed… . He told me that you couldn’t find anything wrong if I gave him ten minutes to prepare… .’

The general said:

‘Case… . Case… . Case was in the drums when we were at Delhi. He ought to be at least Quartermaster by now… . But he had a woman he called his sister …’

Tietjens said:

‘He still sends money to his sister.’

The general said:

‘He went absent over her when he was colour-sergeant and was reduced to the ranks… . Twenty years ago that must be! … Yes, I’ll see your dinners!’

In the cook-houses, brilliantly accompanied by Colonel Levin, the cook-houses spotless with limed walls and
mirrors
that were the tops of camp-cookers, the general, Tietjens at his side, walked between goggle-eyed men in white who stood to attention holding ladles. Their eyes bulged, but the corners of their lips curved because they liked the general and his beautifully unconcerned companions. The cook-house was like a cathedral’s nave, aisles being divided off by the pipes of stoves. The floor was of coke-brise shining under french polish and turpentine.

The building paused, as when a godhead descends. In breathless focusing of eyes the godhead, frail and shining, walked with short steps up to a high priest who had a walrus moustache and, with seven medals on his Sunday tunic, gazed away into eternity. The general tapped the sergeant’s Good Conduct ribbon with the heel of his crop. All stretched ears heard him say:

‘How’s your sister, Case? …’

Gazing away, the sergeant said:

‘I’m thinking of making her Mrs. Case …’

Slightly leaving him, in the direction of high, varnished, pitch-pine panels, the general said:

‘I’ll recommend you for a Quartermaster’s commission any day you wish… . Do you remember Sir Garnet inspecting field kitchens at Quetta?’

All the white tubular beings with global eyes resembled the pierrots of a child’s Christmas nightmare. The general said: ‘Stand at ease, men… . Stand easy!’ They moved as white objects move in a childish dream. It was all childish. Their eyes rolled.

Sergeant Case gazed away into infinite distance.

‘My sister would not like it, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m better off as a first-class warrant officer!’

With his light step the shining general went swiftly to the varnished panels in the eastern aisle of the cathedral. The white figure beside them became instantly tubular, motionless, and global-eyed. On the panels were painted:

TEA! SUGAR! SALT! CURRY PDR! FLOUR! PEPPER!

The general tapped with the heel of his crop on the locker-panel labelled
PEPPER
: the top, right-hand locker-panel. He said to the tubular, global-eyed white figure beside it: ‘Open that, will you, my man? …’

To Tietjens this was like the sudden bursting out of the regimental quick-step, as after a funeral with military honours the band and drums march away, back to barracks.

A MAN COULD STAND UP –

PART ONE

SLOWLY, AMIDST INTOLERABLE
noises from, on the one hand the street and, on the other, from the large and voluminously echoing playground, the depths of the telephone began, for Valentine, to assume an aspect that, years ago it had used to have – of being a part of the supernatural paraphernalia of inscrutable Destiny.

The telephone, for some ingeniously torturing reason, was in a corner of the great schoolroom without any protection and, called imperatively, at a moment of considerable suspense, out of the asphalt playground where, under her command ranks of girls had stood electrically only just within the margin of control, Valentine with the receiver at her ear was plunged immediately into incomprehensible news uttered by a voice that she seemed half to remember. Right in the middle of a sentence it hit her:

‘… that he ought presumably to be under control, which you mightn’t like!’; after that the noise burst out again and rendered the voice inaudible.

It occurred to her that probably at that minute the whole population of the world needed to be under control; she knew she herself did. But she had no male relative that the verdict could apply to in especial. Her brother? But he was on a mine-sweeper. In dock at the moment. And now … safe for good! There was also an aged great-uncle that she had never seen. Dean of somewhere… . Hereford? Exeter? … Somewhere … Had she just said
safe
?
She
was shaken with joy!

She said into the mouthpiece:

‘Valentine Wannop speaking… . Physical Instructress at this school, you know!’

She had to present an appearance of sanity … a sane voice at the very least!

The tantalisingly half-remembered voice in the telephone now got in some more incomprehensibilities. It came as if from caverns and as if with exasperated rapidity it exaggerated its ‘s’s with an effect of spitting vehemence.

‘His brothers.s.s got pneumonia, so his mistress.ss.ss even is unavailable to look after …’

The voice disappeared; then it emerged again with:

‘They’re said to be friends now!’

It was drowned then, for a long period in a sea of shrill girls’ voices from the playground, in an ocean of factory-hooter’s ululations, amongst innumerable explosions that trod upon one another’s heels. From where on earth did they get explosives, the population of squalid suburban streets amidst which the school lay? For the matter of that where did they get the spirits to make such an appalling row? Pretty drab people! Inhabiting liver-coloured boxes. Not on the face of it an imperial race.

The sibillating voice in the telephone went on spitting out spitefully that the porter said he had no furniture at all; that he did not appear to recognise the porter… . Improbable-sounding pieces of information half-extinguished by the external sounds, but uttered in a voice that seemed to mean to give pain by what it said.

Nevertheless it was impossible not to take it gaily. The thing, out there, miles and miles away must have been signed – a few minutes ago. She imagined along an immense line sullen and disgruntled cannon sounding for a last time.

‘I haven’t,’ Valentine Wannop shouted into the mouthpiece, ‘the least idea of what you want or who you are.’

She got back a title… . Lady someone or other… . It might have been Blastus. She imagined that one of the lady governoresses of the school must be wanting to order something in the way of school sports organised to celebrate the auspicious day. A lady governoress or other was always wanting something done by the School to celebrate something. No doubt the Head who was not wanting in a sense of humour – not
absolutely
wanting! – had turned this lady of title onto Valentine Wannop after having listened with patience to her for half an hour. The Head had certainly sent out to where in the playground they all had stood breathless, to tell Valentine Wannop that there was someone on the telephone that she – Miss
Wanostrocht,
the said Head – thought that she, Miss Wannop, ought to listen to… . Then: Miss Wanostrocht must have been able to distinguish what had been said by the now indistinguishable lady of title. But of course that had been ten minutes ago… . Before the maroons or the sirens, whichever it had been, had sounded… . ‘The porter said he had no furniture at all… . He did not appear to recognise the porter… . Ought presumably to be under control!’ Valentine’s mind thus recapitulated the information that she had from Lady (provisionally) Blastus. She imagined now that the Lady must be concerned for the superannuated drill-sergeant the school had had before it had acquired her, Valentine, as physical instructor. She figured to herself the venerable, mumbling gentleman, with several ribbons on a black commissionaire’s tunic. In an almshouse, probably. Placed there by the Governors of the school. Had pawned his furniture no doubt… .

Intense heat possessed Valentine Wannop. She imagined indeed her eyes flashing. Was this the moment?

She didn’t even know whether what they had let off had been maroons or aircraft guns or sirens. It had happened – the noise, whatever it was – whilst she had been coming through the underground passage from the playground to the schoolroom to answer this wicked telephone. So she had not heard the sound. She had missed the sound for which the ears of a world had waited for years, for a generation. For an eternity. No sound. When she had left the playground there had been dead silence. All waiting: girls rubbing one ankle with the other rubber sole… .

Then… . For the rest of her life she was never to be able to remember the greatest stab of joy that had ever been known by waiting millions. There would be no one but she who would not be able to remember that… . Probably a stirring of the heart that was like a stab; probably a catching of the breath that was like the inhalation of flame! It was over now; they were by now in a situation; a condition, something that would affect certain things in certain ways… .

She remembered that the putative ex-drill sergeant had a brother who had pneumonia and thus an unavailable mistress… .

She was about to say to herself:

‘That’s just my luck!’ when she remembered good-humouredly that her luck was not like that at all. On the whole she had had good luck – ups and downs. A good deal of anxiety at one time – but who hadn’t had! But good health; a mother with good health; a brother safe … Anxieties, yes! But nothing that had gone so very wrong… .

This then was an exceptional stroke of bad luck! Might it be an omen – to the effect that things in future
would
go wrong: to the effect that she would miss other universal experiences. Never marry, say; or never know the joy of childbearing, if it was a joy! Perhaps it was; perhaps it wasn’t. One said one thing, one another. At any rate might it not be an omen that she would miss some universal and necessary experience! … Never see Carcassonne, the French said… . Perhaps she would never see the Mediterranean. You could not be a proper man if you had never seen the Mediterranean; the sea of Tibullus, of the Anthologists, of Sappho, even … Blue: incredibly blue!

People would be able to travel now. It was incredible! Incredible! Incredible! But you
could
. Next week you would be able to! You could call a taxi! And go to Charing Cross! And have a porter! A whole porter! … The wings, the wings of a dove; then would I flee away, flee away and eat pomegranates beside an infinite washtub of Reckitt’s blue. Incredible, but you
could
!

She felt eighteen again. Cocky! She said, using the good, metallic, Cockney bottoms of her lungs that she had used for shouting back at interrupters at Suffrage meetings before … before this … she shouted blatantly into the telephone:

‘I say, whoever you are! I suppose they have
done
it; did they announce it in your parts by maroons or sirens?’ She repeated it three times, she did not care for Lady Blastus or Lady Blast Anybody else. She was going to leave that old school and eat pomegranates in the shadow of the rock where Penelope, wife of Ulysses, did her washing. With lashings of blue in the water! Was all your underlinen bluish in those parts owing to the colour of the sea? She could! She could! She
could
! Go with her mother and brother and all to where you could eat … Oh, new potatoes! In December, the sea being blue… .
What songs the sirens sang and whether
…

She was not going to show respect for any Lady anything ever again. She had had to hitherto, independent young woman of means though she were, so as not to damage the school and Miss Wanostrocht with the Governoresses. Now … She was never going to show respect for anyone ever again. She had been through the mill: the whole world had been through the mill! No more respect!

As she might have expected she got it in the neck immediately afterwards – for overcockiness!

The hissing, bitter voice from the telephone enunciated the one address she did not want to hear:

‘Lincolnss.s.s … Inn!’

Sin! … Like the Devil!

It hurt.

The cruel voice said:

‘I’m s.s.peaking from there!’

Valentine said courageously:

‘Well; it’s a great day. I suppose you’re bothered by the cheering like me. I can’t hear what you want. I don’t care. Let ’em cheer!’

She felt like that. She should not have.

The voice said:

‘You remember your Carlyle… .’

It was exactly what she did not want to hear. With the receiver hard at her ear she looked round at the great schoolroom – the Hall, made to let a thousand girls sit silent while the Head made the speeches that were the note of the school. Repressive! … The place was like a nonconformist chapel, high, bare walls with Gothic windows running up to a pitch-pine varnished roof. Repression, the note of the place; the place, the very place not to be in to-day … You
ought
to be in the streets, hitting policemen’s helmets with bladders. This was Cockney London: that was how Cockney London expressed itself. Hit policeman innocuously because policemen were stiff, embarrassed at these tributes of affection, swayed in rejoicing mobs over whose heads they looked remotely, like poplar trees jostled by vulgarer vegetables!