Parade's End (6 page)

Sylvia brought her gaze down from the ceiling and fixed her brown eyes for a moment on the priest, speculatively.

‘It’s a great handicap we suffer from,’ he said.

‘I don’t know why I selected that word,’ Sylvia said, ‘it’s one word, so it costs only fifty pfennigs. I couldn’t hope really to give a jerk to his pompous self-sufficiency.’

‘It’s great handicaps we priests suffer from,’ the Father repeated. ‘However much a priest may be a man of the world – and he has to be to fight the world… .’

Mrs. Satterthwaite said:

‘Have a cup of tea, Father, while it’s just right. I believe Sylvia is the only person in Germany who knows how to make tea.’

‘There’s always behind him the Roman collar and the silk bib, and you don’t believe in him,’ Father Consett went on, ‘yet he knows ten – a thousand times! – more of human nature than ever you can.’

‘I don’t see,’ Sylvia said placably, ‘how you can learn in your slums anything about the nature of Eunice Vanderdecken, or Elizabeth B., or Queenie James, or any of my set.’ She was on her feet pouring cream into the Father’s tea. ‘I’ll admit for the moment that you aren’t giving me pi-jaw.’

‘I’m glad,’ the priest said, ‘that ye remember enough of yer schooldays to use the old term.’

Sylvia wavered backwards to her sofa and sank down again.

‘There you are,’ she said, ‘you can’t really get away from preachments. Me for the pyore young girl is always at the back of it.’

‘It isn’t,’ the Father said. ‘I’m not one to cry for the moon.’

‘You don’t want me to be a pure young girl,’ Sylvia asked with lazy incredulity.

‘I do not!’ the Father said, ‘but I’d wish that at times ye’d remember you once were.’

‘I don’t believe I ever was,’ Sylvia said, ‘if the nuns had known I’d have been expelled from the Holy Child.’

‘You would not,’ the Father said. ‘Do stop your boasting. The nuns have too much sense… . Anyhow, it isn’t a pure young girl I’d have you or behaving like a Protestant deaconess for the craven fear of hell. I’d have ye be a physically healthy, decently honest-with-yourself young devil of a married woman. It’s them that are the plague and the salvation of the world.’

‘You admire mother?’ Mrs. Tietjens asked suddenly. She added in parenthesis: ‘You see you can’t get away from salvation.’

‘I mean keeping bread and butter in their husbands’ stomachs,’ the priest said. ‘Of course I admire your mother.’

Mrs. Satterthwaite moved a hand slightly.

‘You’re at any rate in league with her against me,’ Sylvia said. She asked with more interest: ‘Then would you have me model myself on her and do good works to escape hell fire? She wears a hair shirt in Lent.’

Mrs. Satterthwaite started from her doze on the edge of her chair. She had been trusting the Father’s wit to give her daughter’s insolence a run for its money, and she imagined that if the priest hit hard enough he might, at least, make Sylvia think a little about some of her ways.

‘Hang it, no, Sylvia,’ she exclaimed more suddenly. ‘I may not be much, but I’m a sportsman. I’m afraid of hell fire; horribly, I’ll admit. But I don’t bargain with the Almighty. I hope He’ll let me through; but I’d go on trying to pick men out of the dirt – I suppose that’s what you and Father Consett mean – if I were as certain of going to hell as I am of going to bed to-night. So that’s that!’

‘“And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!”’ Sylvia jeered softly. ‘All the same I bet you wouldn’t bother to reclaim men if you could not find the young, good-looking, interestingly vicious sort.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said. ‘If they didn’t interest me, why should I?’

Sylvia looked at Father Consett.

‘If you’re going to trounce me any more,’ she said, ‘get a move on. It’s late, I’ve been travelling for thirty-six hours.’

‘I will,’ Father Consett said. ‘It’s a good maxim that if you swat flies enough some of them stick to the wall. I’m only trying to make a little mark on your common sense. Don’t you see what you’re going to?’

‘What?’ Sylvia said indifferently. ‘Hell?’

‘No,’ the Father said, ‘I’m talking of this life. Your confessor must talk to you about the next. But I’ll not tell you what you’re going to. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll tell your mother after you’re gone.’

‘Tell me,’ Sylvia said.

‘I’ll not,’ Father Consett answered. ‘Go to the fortunetellers at the Earl’s Court exhibition; they’ll tell ye all about the fair woman you’re to beware of.’

‘There’s some of them said to be rather good,’ Sylvia said. ‘Di Wilson’s told me about one. She said she was going to have a baby… . You don’t mean that, Father? For I swear I never will… .’

‘I daresay not,’ the priest said. ‘But let’s talk about men.’

‘There’s nothing you can tell me I don’t know,’ Sylvia said.

‘I daresay not,’ the priest answered. ‘But let’s rehearse what you do know. Now suppose you could elope with a new man every week and no questions asked? Or how often would you want to?’

Sylvia said:

‘Just a moment, Father,’ and she addressed Mrs. Satterthwaite: ‘I suppose I shall have to put myself to bed.’

‘You will,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said. ‘I’ll not have any maid kept up after ten in a holiday resort. What’s she to do in a place like this? Except listen for the bogies it’s full of?’

‘Always considerate!’ Mrs. Tietjens gibed. ‘And perhaps it’s just as well. I’d probably beat that Marie of your’s arms to pieces with a hair-brush if she came near me.’ She added: ‘You were talking about men, Father… .’ And then began with sudden animation to her mother:

‘I’ve changed my mind about that telegram. The first thing to-morrow I shall wire: “
Agreed entirely but arrange bring Hullo Central with you
.”’

She addressed the priest again:

‘I call my maid Hullo Central because she’s got a tinny voice like a telephone. I say: “Hullo Central” – when she answers “Yes, modd’m”, you’d swear it was the Exchange speaking… . But you were telling me about men.’

‘I was reminding you!’ the Father said. ‘But I needn’t go on. You’ve caught the drift of my remarks. That is why you are pretending not to listen.’

‘I assure you, no,’ Mrs. Tietjens said. ‘It is simply that if a thing comes into my head I have to say it. You were saying that if one went away with a different man for every week-end… .’

‘You’ve shortened the period already,’ the priest said. ‘I gave a full week to every man.’

‘But, of course, one would have to have a home,’ Sylvia said, ‘an address. One would have to fill one’s mid-week engagements. Really it comes to it that one has to have a husband and a place to store one’s maid in. Hullo Central’s been on board-wages all the time. But I don’t believe she likes it… . Let’s agree that if I had a different man every week I’d be bored with the arrangement. That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?’

‘You’d find,’ the priest said, ‘that it whittled down until the only divvy moment was when you stood waiting in the booking-office for the young man to take the tickets. And then gradually that wouldn’t be divvy any more… . And you’d yawn and long to go back to your husband.’

‘Look here,’ Mrs. Tietjens said, ‘you’re abusing the secrets of the confessional. That’s exactly what Tottie Charles said. She tried it for three months while Freddie Charles was in Madeira. It’s
exactly
what she said down to the yawn and the booking-office.
And
the “divvy”. It’s only Tottie Charles who uses it every two words. Most of us prefer “ripping”! It
is
more sensible.’

‘Of course I haven’t been abusing the secrets of the confessional,’ Father Consett said mildly.

‘Of course you haven’t,’ Sylvia said with affection. ‘You’re a good old stick and no end of a mimic, and you know us all to the bottom of our hearts.’

‘Not all that much,’ the priest said, ‘there’s probably a good deal of good at the bottom of your hearts.’

Sylvia said:

‘Thanks.’ She asked suddenly: ‘Look here.
Was
it what you saw of us – the future mothers of England, you know, and all – at Miss Lampeter’s – that made you take to the slums? Out of disgust and despair?’

‘Oh, let’s not make melodrama out of it,’ the priest answered. ‘Let’s say I wanted a change. I couldn’t see that I was doing any good.’

‘You did us all the good there was done,’ Sylvia said. ‘What with Miss Lampeter always drugged to the world, and all the French mistresses as wicked as hell.’

‘I’ve heard you say all this before,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said. ‘But it was supposed to be the best finishing school in England. I know it cost enough!’

‘Well, say it was we who were a rotten lot,’ Sylvia concluded; and then to the Father: ‘We
were
a lot of rotters, weren’t we?’

The priest answered:

‘I don’t know. I don’t suppose you were – or are – any worse than your mother or grandmother, or the patricianesses of Rome or the worshippers of Ashtaroth. It seems we have to have a governing class and governing classes are subject to special temptations.’

‘Who’s Ashtaroth?’ Sylvia asked. ‘Astarte?’ and then: ‘Now, Father, after your experiences would you say the factory girls of Liverpool, or any other slum, are any better women than us that you used to look after?’

‘Astarte Syriaca,’ the Father said, ‘was a very powerful devil. There’s some that hold she’s not dead yet. I don’t know that I do myself.’

‘Well, I’ve done with her,’ Sylvia said.

The Father nodded:

‘You’ve had dealings with Mrs. Profumo?’ he asked. ‘And that loathsome fellow… . What’s his name?’

‘Does it shock you?’ Sylvia asked. ‘I’ll admit it was a bit thick… . But I’ve done with it. I prefer to pin my faith to Mrs. Vanderdecken. And, of course, Freud.’

The priest nodded his head and said:

‘Of course! Of course… .’

But Mrs. Satterthwaite exclaimed, with sudden energy:

‘Sylvia Tietjens, I don’t care what you do or what you read, but if you ever speak another word to that woman, you never do to me!’

Sylvia stretched herself on her sofa. She opened her brown eyes wide and let the lids slowly drop again.

‘I’ve said once,’ she said, ‘that I don’t like to hear my friends miscalled. Eunice Vanderdecken is a bitterly misjudged woman. She’s a real good pal.’

‘She’s a Russian spy,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said.

‘Russian grandmother,’ Sylvia answered. ‘And if she is, who cares? She’s welcome for me… . Listen now, you two. I said to myself when I came in: “I daresay I’ve given them both a rotten time.” I know you’re both more nuts on me than I deserve. And I said I’d sit and listen to all the pi-jaw you wanted to give me if I sat till dawn. And I will. As a return. But I’d rather you let my friends alone.’

Both the elder people were silent. There came from the shuttered windows of the dark room a low, scratching rustle.

‘You hear!’ the priest said to Mrs. Satterthwaite.

‘It’s the branches,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite answered.

The Father answered: ‘There’s no tree within ten yards! Try bats as an explanation.’

‘I’ve said I wish you wouldn’t, once,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite shivered. Sylvia said:

‘I don’t know what you two are talking about. It sounds like superstition. Mother’s rotten with it.’

‘I don’t say that it’s devils trying to get in,’ the Father said. ‘But it’s just as well to remember that devils
are
always trying to get in. And there are especial spots. These deep forests are noted among others.’ He suddenly turned his back and pointed at the shadowy wall. ‘Who,’ he asked, ‘but a savage possessed by a devil could have conceived of
that
as a decoration?’ He was pointing at a life-sized, coarsely daubed picture of a wild boar dying, its throat cut, and gouts of scarlet blood. Other agonies of animals went away into all the shadows.

‘
Sport!
’ he hissed. ‘It’s devilry!’

‘That’s perhaps true,’ Sylvia said. Mrs. Satterthwaite was crossing herself with great rapidity. The silence remained.

Sylvia said:

‘Then if you’re both done talking I’ll say what I have to say. To begin with …’ She stopped and sat rather erect, listening to the rustling from the shutters.

‘To begin with,’ she began again with impetus, ‘you spared me the catalogue of the defects of age; I know them. One grows skinny – my sort – the complexion fades, the teeth stick out. And then there is the boredom. I know it; one is bored … bored … bored! You can’t tell me anything I don’t know about that. I’m thirty. I know what to expect. You’d like to have told me, Father, only you were afraid of taking away from your famous man of the world effect – you’d like to have told me that one can insure against the boredom and the long, skinny teeth by love of husband and child. The home stunt! I believe it! I do quite believe it. Only I hate my husband … and I hate … I hate my child.’

She paused, waiting for exclamations of dismay or disapprobation from the priest. These did not come.

‘Think,’ she said, ‘of all the ruin that child has meant for me; the pain in bearing him and the fear of death.’

‘Of course,’ the priest said, ‘child-bearing is for women a very terrible thing.’

‘I can’t say,’ Mrs. Tietjens went on, ‘that this has been a very decent conversation. You get a girl … fresh from open sin, and make her talk about it. Of course you’re a priest and mother’s mother; we’re
en famille
. But Sister Mary of the Cross at the convent had a maxim: “Wear velvet gloves in family life.” We seem to be going at it with the gloves off.’

Father Consett still didn’t say anything.

‘You’re trying, of course, to draw me,’ Sylvia said. ‘I can see that with half an eye… . Very well then, you shall.’

She drew a breath.

‘You want to know why I hate my husband. I’ll tell you; it’s because of his simple, sheer immorality. I don’t mean his actions; his views! Every speech he utters about everything makes me – I swear it makes me – in spite of myself, want to stick a knife into him, and I can’t prove he’s wrong, not ever, about the simplest thing. But I can pain him. And I will… . He sits about in chairs that fit his back, clumsy, like a rock, not moving for hours… . And I can make him wince. Oh, without showing it… . He’s what
you
call … oh, loyal. There’s an absurd little chit of a fellow … oh, Macmaster … and his mother whom he persists in a silly, mystical way in calling a saint … a Protestant saint! And his old nurse, who looks after the child … and the child itself… . I tell you I’ve only got to raise an eyelid … yes, cock an eyelid up a little when any one of them is mentioned, and it hurts him dreadfully. His eyes roll in a sort of mute anguish… . Of course he doesn’t say anything. He’s an English country gentleman.’