Company Parade

by Storm Jameson

  She turned the past out, as if it were a bottomless untidy cupboard, in search of facts. They were rods to her back. She would be in some place with Penn and ask him in a quiet detached voice whether he had brought the girl there, and which day. She cleaned his mind out of all he remembered. Then she would go back in her own mind and try to discover where she had been on that day.

  Penn thought she was possessed. She would be in her room laughing with him, and suddenly, with barely a change of look, she would start her questions.

  ‘Did you any time feel unhappy?’

  ‘Certainly I did.’ After a moment he added selfconsciously : ‘Do you really think it would have been any more decent if I had refrained? He that looketh upon a woman. Eh?’

  There was too much simplicity and grossness in Hervey to leave her accept this. ‘No one can control thoughts,’ she said. ‘They come in, they go out. You can control your body.’

  ‘But why should you, my dear girl? Why should you?’

  ‘There are times when I can’t bear it,’ Hervey said. She spoke quickly and roughly, not raising her voice. He could see how her face would be when she was old, the bones of the cheeks jutting, and the flesh sunk. ‘I think of you going to her when I was with you. Of your seeing me off and going away to her. And I can’t put it right. I wish I could tear out my brain that goes on thinking of it.’

  Penn was seized with exasperation and weariness. He stood up. ‘I can’t bear it either,’ he exclaimed. ‘I must get out, out of this house.’

  Hervey hung on his arm to keep him. ‘Only tell me one more thing. I’ll never ask you anything again.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘That first leave, when you came here to stay with me. Two years since. You didn’t come to me at once. You brought her up with you. No, don’t say anything—it’s in one of her letters.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘It’s true, then.’

  ‘I suppose it’s true, if you read it. Why do you go on thinking and thinking, Hervey? You can’t put it right. You’ve just said so.’

  ‘Do you think I’m old? Am I too clumsy, plain?’

  ‘Good God, how old are you? Twenty-six? You’re acting like a schoolgirl in this. You’re not plain, you look fine—when you’re not crying, or punishing me.’

  ‘Then why did you go to her before me? Can’t you explain it to me so that I understand it? I can bear what I understand?’

  ‘I don’t know why. For pity’s sake, let it rest now, Hervey.’

  ‘I will, I will. Only answer me one question.’

  Penn propped himself on the door, waiting. He was sorry for her, and a little unhappy; and sorry for himself. She was more to him, and needed, than anyone. He hoped earnestly she would soon forget what had happened, so that they could live in peace. It’s always something with her, he thought, half amused. Before this she wanted a better sort of life; when we were in Liverpool it was Richard—Richard must have the best, he must have this, and have this, he must have everything; as soon as this is over it will be something else: she has no sense of proportion, and no patience—believe me, she hasn’t got used to being alive, he thought.

  ‘Did she travel to London with you, when you were demobilised?’

  ‘No. Certainly not.’

  ‘When did she come?’

  ‘She came as soon as I had found work for her. I’d promised her to do what I could in that line. She isn’t happy at home. I was sorry for her, I wanted to help her.’

  ‘Did you go to meet her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suppose you were awfully pleased to see each other again,’ Hervey said.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Did you stay with her at once?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Think.’

  ‘I can’t think. Wait. No, I didn’t stay with her until the week after. You were in Danesacre.’ Hervey put her hand over her mouth. ‘There, you see,’ Penn said, not unkindly: ‘you drive me until I wish I was dead, or deaf, and all you do by it is hurt yourself. Why can’t you let it end?’

  ‘Where did you take her that time?’

  He told her.

  The next evening she took the train to Henley, found out the hotel, and walked in front of it for an hour. Each time the door opened she caught a sight of the hall. There were chairs and palms: the staircase went out of it to the left. She became conscious of glances. She turned and went back. As soon as she was at home she fastened the door of her room and went to bed. She meant to think calmly, to smile, to fall quickly asleep. She saw them drive up to the hotel. The door opened outwards. They crossed the hall, passing the chairs and the ridiculous palms. A servant had their luggage. Now they were writing their names—Mr and Mrs Vane Did they look sidelong at each other, and smile? She went with them up the stairs; there was a corridor; a door opened, and closed. No, I can’t bear it, she thought. She turned, pressing her face into the pillow. Scalding tears ran over her cheeks. ‘I must stop, I must stop,’ she said. Why have I no pride? Her tears were endless. They ceased and began again. The skin of her cheeks was made sore with them. She sat up. In the darkness she leaned against the wall. She struck her head on it, again and again.

  3. Hervey forms a grave decision

  She had not the hardness of mind to leave Penn. Her heart failed when she thought of living for the rest of her life without him, without anyone. She was much afraid of loneliness.

  There were, too, the practical difficulties, the dividing out of their books, the scheming. These seemed to her to need at least as desperate an effort and a hardness as the other.

  Towards the end of September—that was five weeks after the first time—she saw the lawyer again. This time there was no clerk listening. With a little anxiety she explained that she did not want to go on. ‘It takes too long. There are too many expedients.’

  ‘Perhaps it is so,’ said the lawyer.

  ‘I am sorry to disappoint you,’ Hervey said. He looked at her with his blank quietness. ‘I’ll have a parcel made of the letters.’

  ‘Would you destroy them for me?’ Hervey said. ‘It would be very obliging. You understand that if I have them I might not destroy them. I might do something mean with them.’ She glared at him.

  ‘I can’t destroy them. I’ll keep them in my safe if you like.’ He was smiling and unemphatic. He may have thought she was as eccentric as she was shabby. (The bill he sent her was a good balance between legality and mercy.)

  When that was done she felt that she had wasted time and money. She was sore in mind. Half of her was relieved that she had not to scheme and visit lawyers, the other half was in a mood to punish anyone. She insulted Penn. He had kissed her, stroking her face, and said : ‘I’ll do anything you want, my darling.’ He was deeply moved and happy: ‘I promise you.’

  ‘You promise!’ Hervey said. The thought that was always on the watch, to nip her—that he had shared his leaves between her and the girl—squeezed her sharply. With it she lost control of her tongue. She stripped from herself the last rags of decency and human sense. At the end of this spectacle—it had not lasted more than a few minutes—Penn left her and went sadly, and with a certain dignity, to bed. After a time she went to him and apologised humbly. He forgave her. She hurried to her own room, wrote out as much of what she had said as she could remember, and slept.

  When she was eight years old, her mother went with her husband to Buenos Aires—going out to the Plate, as they say in Danesacre. She left Hervey at a woman’s small school. During the days Hervey did not think of her mother. She was a stubborn child, thinking her own thoughts, not easy to manage. The woman left her much alone. At night, as soon as she was in bed, she began to cry, hard and quietly, and cried herself to sleep. This happened every night of the five months Mrs Russell was away from her children. She was not thinking as she took her clothes off and got into bed, but in a few minutes the image of her mother, as clear and sharp as a ghost, entered the room, and the chi
ld began her persistent helpless crying. After the first week the woman gave up trying to silence her. ‘She’s as stubborn as a pig. I doubt if she’s right,’ she said. She had tried to punish her by shutting her in her room without food : after eight hours she went in, with milk and a plate of bread; Hervey took them from her and sent them crashing to the floor against the wall.

  What violence—of spirit or flesh—worked on the child worked again in the young woman. It was almost a year before Hervey slept without crying. In the day stolid and careless, David Renn’s faithful sergeant or servant, whom he overworked. At night as soon as she was in bed the memory of this scene or of that—with what she knew and could invent—leapt at her mind. Its claws worked in. She tried not to think. She thought of sharp phrases, wrote them, without waiting to light the gas, on a page she would in the morning add to the small pile of them on her shelf. None of it helped.

  Yet she formed the opinion that mental agony is easier to bear than physical. This was when David Renn sat with the sweat running off him, speechless. He was so thin you could think it was his skeleton aching and sweating.

  4. She begins to come to her wits

  Hervey knew that if she were to go away for a time, and not to see Penn, she would be cured both of him and of sorrow. It was the seeing him every day, with the thoughts and memories this bred, made time and her thoughts turn back in her. She even knew that she had been growing out of him, when this happened and put her back eight years, to the first year of their marriage. (Even in those days she had had more passion and intelligence, and less sense, than younger girls.) If she could go away now she would be cured certainly. But she could find the courage to go away only if she had ceased to care what he did, and then she would not need to go.

  She would be walking in a street, and some common thing—perhaps a girl hanging on a man’s arm and smiling into his face—would drive a thought through her as if certain thoughts are no easier than a twitch of the nerves. Each time this happened she thought: I shall never become used to it.

  This month—it was October—Penn’s father died suddenly, and he slept a week in his mother’s house. Now alone, Hervey took the unfinished novel from its cupboard. She was a little embarrassed by it, as if it were a friend lost sight of before the War and discovered years afterwards talking about his cabbages. The young woman whose husband was unfaithful to her had not changed a muscle. Hervey scowled at her. Now you shall suffer, she said. But first I must read my notes.

  This brought on a fever. She clapped her hat on and went out to cool her cheeks in the air. It was turning to mist in the dusk, so that a street of houses only a short distance away changed body and colour and appeared as a range of blue hills on the near sky. Hervey looked at it and (such is the devious and wilful character of the mind) thought, There is a contemptible sight of vanity mixed in my feeling for Penn. If there were not, I should instantly have forgiven him. There is no such thing as forgiveness. I should have put it away and forgotten it. Perhaps there is no cure for jealousy—but time. Nothing lasts. Not even a great sorrow. I could have sent him away, she thought, looking at a scarlet bus rushing away out of sight. The truth is—(she was for ever beginning a thought or a remark with the words ‘the truth is,’ but her mind, restless and inquisitive as a cat, contradicted itself sometimes at once; Penn said that she was dishonest)—Penn is my young days, he is my weakness.

  The word brought her to a sudden stop. She blushed hotly.

  I am a detestable monster, she exclaimed.

  She would never hear of the American again : he had not kissed her a dozen times; yet, there, but for the grace of——. It should have made me forgive Penn, she cried. Her shoelace had come undone and she had to stoop to fasten it. There was a way of tying them so that they stayed tied—Philip had shown her, but she had forgotten. It was nothing, but she felt horribly guilty. Forgive me, she said to Philip.

  She knotted it up somehow and went on. What I do is always right and explicable, she thought. If Jess Gage was a sin, I sinned against myself. Her mind flooded with light suddenly. It was my very sin, she exclaimed: I took it under my protection. I repented and I forgave myself. Ugh! I don’t like the look of Penn’s sins; they have a sly look, tawdry, greasy. I am vindictive, I keep grudges, she thought; I have an unforgiving mind. I know well that I ought to forgive Penn. Damme, I can’t feel it. Philip, my darling, how you would laugh at me.

  Say what you like, she cried, it is more humiliating to have been deceived for a year than for an hour, for three years than for one.

  She turned and ran home. The thought of the smooth empty pages in her notebook had become irresistible.

  The morning after Penn came home he came into her room in his shirt. He had his trousers over his arm. He asked her to mend the pocket. While she sewed, he walked up and down, talking. His long thin legs made her smile. Naked, they had a foolish air. She saw him approach Miss Hammond in just this state. Her lips tingled. Tears started to her eyes as she began to laugh. She laughed, and bent herself forward over her sewing, laughing, and wiping her eyes. At this moment she heard in her laughter an exact echo of her mother’s, harsh, jeering, loud.

  Something changed in her in this wild fit of laughter. She scarcely marked the change. It began in her too far under the surface, among the gross clownish impulses that survive in us like old roots. If she had respected him she would not have laughed. But her respect for him had died years before, and its place had been taken for a time by pity. Pity, a creeping root, is all but impossible to dig up. But it can wither. It can dry and cease. It can fail.

  There were already days when she thought she had come to an end of caring. She was then as pleased as with a clear morning. Her body felt light and quick, and she talked much nonsense. The day after she would be in a restaurant with Penn and he would begin to say: ‘Last time I was here——’ and pause, it was almost imperceptible, glancing at her to see whether she had heard; she would know then he had come here with the girl. She would wait quietly for him to cover it with his talk—he liked talking dog French to the waiters; he made puns. She was ashamed to let him know that she knew. She would sit and listen. She wanted him to think that he had been too quick for her. Afterwards she would lock her door and lie staring into the darkness, smiling. ‘I am better. You see? I thought it funny, I am better’ ; and in a moment she was crying and shaking, nearly mad.

  All this time, too, she knew that she would one day come to an end of Penn. As yet she did not feel it. But she half knew that it was the young Hervey who cried tears as bitter as the aloes they smear on children’s nails, and struck her head on the wall. She caught glimpses of another, waiting to return, to whom all this would be a dry tale, without sense or colour, a little dust at the side of her mind.

  Chapter XXV

  Armistice Day I92I

  1. In Danes acre

  The church they climbed to—the sea at their left hand—was eight hundred years old. They trod one hundred and ninety-nine shallow steps from the street by the harbour to the top of the cliff. For more than half the way the crouched old houses accompanied them, one above the other clinging to the side of the cliff. The topmost step, worn deepest because here many turned, flowed frozen in a flagged path between the graves to the church porch. They turned and looked downwards to the harbour, to the hills standing round it, to the line of the coast running north in iron cliffs, to the pale sea. The time was twenty-four minutes past ten. They walked towards the church, passing to one side to enter by the outside staircase. The narrow door swung open on a passage that ran towards the gallery. They trod softly this narrow passage between the wall and the high walls of pews. A little light came through low windows. The boards creaked. They passed the memorial tablet for Jake—‘To the memory of 2nd Lt. Jacob Russell, Medaille Militaire, D.C.M., M.C., Royal Flying Corps’—on the wall of the gallery at the height of the eyes of passers-by. They came out between the high wooden sides of pews to the carved one Mrs Russell had chosen; near to the ol
d Garton pew, that now stood empty, like a square roofless room, a cushioned bench running along its walls, the latch of the door set high above the reach of a child’s hand.

  Hervey looked down into the well of the church. In the three-decker pulpit an old man made the gesture she had seen him make when she was a child. He flung his white surplice over his head and bowed his face in it. This stiff and believing old man stood to her for all those priests who accept, no, who excuse war. Their words, with the words used at the unveiling of war memorials, are the pus oozing over a wound. I could never forgive you, she thought.

  She turned from him; but the church she sat in was part of her life; she could not deny it. It spoke to her skeleton, as if this remembered the worn places in stairs, the grain of old wood, the moment—each time as sharp as if it were the first—when a man crossing the moors sees the cliff lying against the sky and the church there waiting. But how could it forget, since all those who lived in her, Gartons, Hansykes, Russells, had so looked at it, from the land, and from the sea, from the beginning when it was first built? She had read the logs of old ships, long since gone, and the writing, withered to brown like a dead leaf, almost gone: ‘at eight in the morning Danesacre church bore W.N.W. distant three miles.’ Here is nothing but what is mine, she thought.

  The winter sunlight lay by the wall. It touched a corner of Jake’s tablet. Hervey wondered how much longer it was to the silence. Leaning a little over the gallery she could see the soldiers drawn up facing the altar. She watched their officer : he made a shut, restless movement of his body when he stood up; he had a thin red face, fair hair, quick hot eyes. He does not care who looks at him, she thought. The sergeant-major standing at his elbow was less exposed—thin, his face thin and hollow, eyes sunken, gleaming, and yet as if they were dead. He had an air not so much cynical as experienced, but he was very quiet with it. He knows the officers thoroughly, Hervey thought; their vanities, their ways, what each can do, their lusts. She imagined an imperceptible mockery under his assurance. He would have known when Penn had his young woman, she thought. She was vexed with herself for thinking it here. She pressed her hands together and looked at the old plain windows. It might be sea or sky she looked at, or it might be sky one minute and sea the next, as if this were a ship. The repeated failures of her will—so that at every turn she came face to face with the same useless thought—made her bitterly ashamed. I behave as if I were only a female, she thought in her shame. This female is a burden to me; why can’t she leave me alone? I am weary of her. Life is very confusing. She thought of Jess Gage. It confuses me. If someone had told me five years since that I should be involved to my discredit with an American and crying for Penn’s unfaithfulness I should have laughed at him. But I shall use this.