by Dennis Parry
What is the betting on this identification? Varvara might easily have anglicized her name, and also married a Frenchman. If she did the second, I should be willing to stake a great deal against the success of the union. Amidst a French family circle she would have been like a lioness in a formal garden. The physique and the claim to Eastern experience are suggestive but hardly more. I say nothing about the husband’s briefly hinted fate.
Personally I hope Varvara never became Mme Peigneret nor ruled over her self-devouring flock on Sao Onofrio. Even allowing for a high percentage of malicious exaggeration in the presentment of the story, one has to admit that it is not only comic but also brutal and sordid. To my mind the features which point most strongly to Varvara are not the atmosphere of nymphomania and homicide—for neither of which have I any substantial grounds to indict her—but the way in which the heroine, even when seen through the eye of a debunking journalist, contrived to invest her adventures with a kind of grotesque dignity.
The second of these oblique and doubtful glimpses I owe to my own experience. In the summer of 1943 I was returning from a leave spent in the West of England. The train was ambling gently along a branch line not far from Weymouth. It happened to be unusually empty, and I and another Army officer had a first-class carriage to ourselves. He was a small, brisk man who opened a conversation in a fashion difficult to repel—by producing half a bottle of Scotch and two paper cups.
For a while we talked casually. Somehow we came on to the subject of the large houses which could be seen at intervals along the track, standing out preternaturally white against the scarves of woodland. I ventured on the usual speculation about what would happen to them after the war.
‘Don’t know,’ said my companion. ‘Some’ll go for schools and hotels, I suppose. They may knock others down for the materials.’ He began to laugh to himself. ‘If you’ll wait another five minutes I’ll show you one that’s bloody lucky to be still standing.’
‘You know the neighbourhood?’
‘I was stationed here for a bit in 1940.’
‘Was this some place where you were billeted?’
I suppose the suggestion connected unfortunately with his earlier remark. At any rate he looked at me rather coldly before replying:
‘Not in the house itself. In the grounds.’
Evidently, I thought, the story of some stray bomb. But the memory seemed to give him a surprising pleasure, for he had glued himself against the window, scanning the landscape and uttering short chuckles.
‘There,’ he said suddenly, ‘there, between those two copses, with the hill behind.’
It looked a very decent Georgian mansion with a double bay front and a flat roof, large and handsome but not remarkable for sheer size or beauty.
‘Yes?’ I said, knowing that, even if I wished to, I could not stop so cherished an anecdote.
‘That’s where I saw my only active service so far in this war! Serbright Manor. I shan’t forget that night in a hurry. We’d been in camp at the village just over the hill. Then, about the end of June 1940, after France had packed up, there was a flood of refugee soldiery and two of our companies were told to move out to tents in the Manor grounds. Some of our officers were a bit fed up and thought the authorities ought to have taken over the house for them. But there wasn’t really anything to complain about, particularly as the weather that summer was so good. At least it was until the day of the move. But that morning the hell of a thunderstorm blew up, and by the time it was over the temperature had dropped nearly fifteen degrees.’
He paused, poured another drink, glancing at me anxiously to see if he was doing his story justice.
‘There’s a point there, old boy. I’m not just nattering. If it hadn’t turned quite cold, Clara would never have put on her leopard-skin coat. Clara was my C.O.’s wife—not bad but rather a bitch, really. Frankly I never thought she was quite worthy of old Colin. He was a magnificent chap. I suppose she caught him.
‘Anyway Clara had some keen ideas about etiquette and doing things properly. So she’d made up her mind to call on the lady of Serbright Manor. We’d heard one or two things about her and frankly she sounded pretty peculiar. The villagers never mentioned her without sniggering in a scared sort of way. But none of us knew anything positive about her except that she was a widow and as rich as hell.
‘I don’t think Clara was really paying the call in a very friendly spirit. She was the leader of the school of thought which held that the Manor ought to have been requisitioned for the battalion. But she had every chance to get into a charitable state of mind because, outside the gates of the lodge, she met a couple of nuns from the convent at Ossington who were going up to the house to visit a sick R.C. servant. Clara was a R.C. herself and she knew these two good women, so naturally she got off her bicycle and they all proceeded together.
‘Well, they’d just rounded a bend in the drive when something went whee-ee over their heads. You can’t expect nuns to know much about bullets, and the first time Clara probably thought it was some kind of flying beetle. But beetles don’t bust bicycles—and that’s what happened. Whilst she was still wheeling it the hub-cap was knocked out of the front wheel. That made them look at the house and what they saw so staggered them that they could hardly run away. There on the roof, dancing about and waving a rifle, was a ruddy great woman. She was shouting and making signs at them, but they were too far off to make out what she was saying. They’d ducked into the woods at the side of the drive and were lying low when an awful suspicion came over Clara; she was practically sure that the words had been German.
‘I don’t need to tell you, old boy, what a state everybody was in at that time: or how many stories of Jerry tricks were going round—including the one about using Hitler Youth Maidens as parachutists in Holland and Belgium. So naturally Clara who was never backward in jumping to conclusions thought that she’d discovered at least a raid and probably the first wave of invasion. She and the nuns bashed their way out through the undergrowth, then she leapt on to her bicycle and shot straight down to our lines. Colin was out when she arrived, and I happened to be in charge, God help me! Clara was soon in a towering rage. She went straight through the roof when I suggested that before doing anything drastic we should ring up the Manor and see whether they could explain the incident. I stuck to my point, but unfortunately when I tried to ’phone I couldn’t get through. The exchange said the wires must have been damaged in the storm, but of course for Clara that simply meant they’d been cut.
‘It was beginning to look as if I should have to do something on my own when, thank God, Colin turned up. He ticked Clara off for being in the camp, but he couldn’t shake her story or put it down to imagination. He tried to get through to Brigade H.Q. to see if they had any information about raids or subversive activity by fifth columnists; but that bloody line was down too. So he told me to take Sergeant Dewes with half a platoon and carry out an armed reconnaissance. Then, at the last moment, he decided that as the situation was so peculiar, he’d come along as well. He could never bear to be left out of any uproar.’
‘What did you say?’
‘—any uproar. Well, we set off and when I got to the Manor grounds I fanned the men out in battle order—still feeling a bit of a fool. But, sure enough, we hadn’t been in sight of the house for more than a minute before we heard “ping”, “ping”, “ping”. It was fire all right from some kind of light rifle and it came out of an upper window. I thought, hell, the balloon really has gone up! By this time we were all flat on our faces. Colin crawled up to me and said that he was going to take half the men round to the back and try to break in that way. My orders were to stay put with the other half and keep up a slow rate of answering fire. “Don’t try to hit anyone,” he said. “If this lot are what they seem, they’re worth more in the bag than dead.”
‘It was just as well he said that and I got the word round; because, when he’d been gone a few minutes, we saw the woman strolling about on t
he roof. She was a dead target, particularly when she stood still fixing something to one of the chimney-pots. I nearly collapsed when I saw what it was—a bloody Union Jack! It seemed a bit optimistic to think they were going to fox us that way after trying to blow our heads off. But you can’t tell with Jerries.
‘We must have remained under cover for about half an hour. Then there was another outbreak of shooting, but this time no bullets came our way. The reports sounded as if they were actually inside the house. I was just wondering whether to give the order to rush the place from the front, when the front door burst open and Colin came staggering out. Even at that distance I could see that he had blood on his forehead, and he was walking bent forward with one hand pressed to his middle. I said to Sergeant Dewes, “My God, he’s hit in the stomach.” Old Dewes didn’t answer for a moment, then he muttered, “Ask me, sir, I should say the Captain was laughing.” I could have bashed him at that moment: but when I looked again, Colin was near enough for me to see the expression on his face. He was practically doubled up with mirth. In another few yards he began to make signs and shout to us—“O.K., you can all come out now. There’s been a slight misunderstanding.” Then he went off into another fit of laughing.
‘I ran across the lawn feeling sure that it was all a dream. Nothing Colin said at first made me change my mind. He kept on repeating the words, “leopard skin”, and “nuns” and “bicycle” and then going off into another paroxysm. I had to tell him quite sharply to pull himself together in front of the men.
‘Finally I got the story out of him. He and his detachment had worked round to the back of the house where everything was quiet. They forced up a window and climbed into the pantry where they found an old butler-chap soundly stewed and sleeping in front of an empty bottle of port. To cut a long story short, they went up through the various floors without meeting a soul until they came out by a trapdoor onto the roof. There behind one of the chimney-stacks was an outsize bit of crumpet, in the act of drawing another bead on me and my wretched chaps. Colin crept up behind her, but just when he was a couple of paces away she heard him and whipped round and bashed him over the face with the butt of her gun. There was a terrific battle and it took practically every man to immobilize her. In the process Colin gathered something rather peculiar. He naturally thought she was a German, but it took him back when he found that the idea was mutual. You see, she told him that he would be captured and shot for wearing British uniform.
‘At last they got it straight. This girl had been reading the usual newspaper stories about Jerry ruses. I don’t know if you remember but some of the Dutch towns were supposed to have been attacked by parachutists who were dressed as women either in leopard-skin coats or nuns’ habits. They carried folding bicycles too. Quite a coincidence, eh? Anyhow, when the girl saw Clara and the two holy women proceeding up the drive she drew her own deductions. After that, of course, everybody who came along must be in disguise. Rather gallant of her to engage the enemy single-handed! She was bloody tough and as brave as a lion.’
‘Did you actually meet her?’ I asked.
‘Most certainly. She gave us a terrific party. The old butler chap was woken up and swayed round with lashings of drink. The men were hitting it up in the kitchen. It was just as well a real invasion scare didn’t blow up that evening. Still it was very enjoyable. She was a damned odd woman and frightfully disconcerting at times, but I liked her. She was bloody pretty, too, if you could take the size.’
For the first time in his narrative my friend showed a certain hesitation; but finally he went on:
‘I don’t know whether I ought to tell you this . . . but what I found embarrassing was the way she went for Colin; though I must say he came halfway to meet her. They suited each other, both being big and full of the same kind of energy. She spoke quite normally, but I think she must have been a bit foreign. I mean, you wouldn’t find a real English girl telling you how hard it was for her to be a widow because of her instincts and how she prayed to overcome them.’
He tipped the remains of the whisky briskly into our cups. ‘Somehow, I don’t think her prayers were answered that night. I could see they wanted to be alone, so I decanted the men and poured them back into camp. I’m not sure whether Colin came back at all that night. Certainly he was up at the Manor at all hours for the next two weeks. Nosey Clara soon got wind of it and was she furious! Does these managing women a lot of good to be wronged occasionally.’
‘What happened in the end?’
‘Oh, nothing dramatic. We were shunted up to Warwickshire. I never saw the place again till this evening.’
The train began to slow as we pulled into the junction at which our local line joined the main one. My companion got up and gathered his cane and respirator from the rack.
I interrupted his goodbyes, rather rudely, I am afraid:
‘Can you remember her name?’
‘That’s funny! Now you mention it, I can’t.’
‘Not either sur—or Christian?’
He tried for a moment.
‘Sorry, but they’ve both clean gone.’ He looked at me, amused. ‘Were you thinking of trying your luck in that quarter? If so, I’m afraid you’re too late. Fellow I met in a pub who knew the district told me some different people had the Manor now.’
I like that one better. In fact, it is my favourite of the three, perhaps because it seems to point up a factor which was always strong in my affection for Varvara; I mean the admiration which I bore towards her father. If she it was upon the roof-top, he was certainly there beside her, blazing away in spirit at the supposed Nazis, grumbling about the damned uproar but secretly glorying in it.
The sequel with Colin, however morally deplorable, gives me a cosy sense of still moving within the family. I am sure that he was rather like Fulk. But perhaps this is a line better left unpursued. At any rate I am not jealous.
And then that ancient and boozy butler. . . . Turpin would not have been much more than seventy in 1940. How nice to think that he had survived, defying the moralists, to follow his Blasting Bud through her efflorescence! Box on, Bud!
I return to the Press for my third and most transient glimpse, seen as from an express train through an arrow-slit. This time the material comes from a well-known American magazine.
‘Tangling again this week with Californian State Police was blonde, six-foot high priestess of T.I.N.D. sect, Mrs. Varvara Calderon. T.I.N.D.’s, claiming membership of two hundred thousand, take title from initials of the succinct phrase embodying their basic belief—There Is No Death—a proposition they support by appeal to authorities ranging from Isaiah to time-theorist J. W. Dunne. Of the two, Dunne is more important as supplying, allegedly, the mechanics of the creed. Idea is that every living “observer” is geared to an infinite number of viewpoints. Death is merely a shift from one to the next and is never felt or observed by the sufferer. For him life appears to go on without a break, though so-called decease of other people is noted. Reading her views described in Catholic Los Angeles Harvester as a “collection of poisonous drivel, propagated by cowards who cannot face our mortal destiny”, eloquent, uninhibited Mrs. Calderon reacted strongly. Form of reaction was to hire Aspiration Stadium for mass-meeting of T.I.N.D.’s critics and sympathizers. At end of meeting Mrs. Calderon undertook to refute accusations of cowardice and give practical testimony to faith in T.I.N.D. doctrine by shooting herself through the head.
‘Intervention of Floyd C. Deil, Los Angeles’ chunky, lantern-jawed top cop, scotched her disinterested project. Cracked he: “If there ain’t no death, she’s wasting time. If there is, she’s violating the law against suicide . . .’
When I knew her Varvara was a most fervent devotee of the Orthodox Church, a religion which does not lack colour. In it she would no doubt find her ultimate spiritual refuge. All the same, I would bet that there was some period in her life when she craved for still brighter hues. Given fertile environment, she was capable of plunging into the extremes of mys
tic crankery, and probably of inventing her own material.
T.I.N.D.-ism is not an impossible faith to have gained her allegiance. She spoke much and familiarly of death, which she must often have seen at close quarters. Yet, despite her Christianity, I never had the impression that she could reconcile herself to it, either then or in later years. All her references to mortality were impliedly identified in her mind with some loss of power or failure of vigilance; in fact with the triumph of an enemy who had been allowed to prove himself the stronger. Against him, in middle age, I can imagine her hardening her heart; and when he proved intractable, not trying to placate him or beg him off, but deciding to abolish his existence. She was not a woman who would ever willingly lie down without her faculties.
There is no reason to accept any of these conjectures. My belief in them is purely collective and undistributed; it rests on a conviction that a person of Varvara’s force could not disappear, even in a world as big as that of today, without leaving some ripples by which an alert mind could trace her. That does not mean that I expect to see her again. I do not; when the interval is too long the wheels of chance grow stiff and rusty. A belated reunion might bring only disappointment. Her oddity might have become a mere commonplace pretentiousness. If so, she would destroy more than a personal image; a whole panorama would be wiped out, and with it part of the permanent furniture of my mind. Railed off in a corner, where it has survived many years of conscientious pettifogging, is a small zone in which Doljuk blends with Aynho Terrace. The Swiss clocks are chiming over enormous empty spaces, wicked Cedric marshals his forces and storms and bullies and plots, and the nomad horsemen come charging down with cups of tea.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dennis Arthur Parry was born in 1912 and was educated at Rugby School. He read Classics at King’s College, Cambridge and obtained a first class degree. He then read Law and qualified as a Chancery Barrister. In 1937, he married Kathleen Arona Forbes, with whom he had two children, Susan and Jonathan. He was rejected for service in the Second World War owing to very poor eyesight and instead joined the civil service, eventually rising to the post of Permanent Under-Secretary to the Minister for Coal Production. After the war, his marriage collapsed, and after a divorce, married his second wife, Audrey Dockerill, with whom he had one son, Mark.