A Stranger with a Bag

by Sylvia Townsend Warner

  As though her moderate intention of churchgoing had encouraged the church clock, it now chimed a quarter. Looking at her watch, she found it was too dark to read its face. Car lights were stabbing through the laurel hedge. Gently, she got up; gently, she laid her lips to the rough bark of the tree, and kissed it a gentle farewell. It had put out its cluster of blossom—a pure statement of spring, since nothing would come of it. It had given her an hour of happiness.

  A LOVE MATCH

  IT was Mr. Pilkington who brought the Tizards to Hallowby. He met them, a quiet couple, at Carnac, where he had gone for a schoolmasterly Easter holiday to look at the monoliths. After two or three meetings at a café, they invited him to their rented chalet. It was a cold, wet afternoon and a fire of pine cones crackled on the hearth. ‘We collect them on our walks,’ said Miss Tizard. ‘It’s an economy. And it gives us an object.’ The words, and the formal composure of her manner, made her seem like a Frenchwoman. Afterwards, he learned that the Tizards were a Channel Island family and had spent their childhood in Jersey. The ancestry that surfaced in Miss Tizard’s brisk gait and erect carriage, brown skin and compact sentences, did not show in her brother. His fair hair, his red face, his indecisive remarks, his diffident movements—as though with the rest of his body he were apologizing for his stiff leg—were entirely English. He ought not, thought Mr. Pilkington, to be hanging about in France. He’d done more than enough for France already. For this was in 1923 and Mr. Pilkington, with every intention of preserving a historian’s impartiality, was nevertheless infected by the current mood of disliking the French.

  The weather continued cold and wet; there was a sameness about the granite avenues. Mr. Pilkington’s mind became increasingly engaged with the possibility, the desirability, the positive duty of saving that nice fellow Tizard from wasting his days in exile. He plied him with hints, with suggestions, with tactful inquiries. Beyond discovering that money was not the obstacle to return, he got no further. Tizard, poor fellow, must be under his sister’s thumb. Yet it was from the sister that he got his first plain answer. ‘Justin would mope if he had nothing to do.’ Mr. Pilkington stopped himself from commenting on the collection of pine cones as an adequate lifework. As though she had read his thought, she went on, ‘There is a difference between idling in a foreign country and being an idler in your own.’ At that moment Tizard limped into the room with crayfish bristling from his shopping basket. ‘It’s begun,’ he said ruefully. ‘La Jeune France has arrived. I’ve just seen two young men in pink trousers with daisy chains round their necks, riding through the town on donkeys.’ Mr. Pilkington asked if this was a circus. Miss Tizard explained that it was the new generation, and would make Carnac a bedlam till the summer’s end. ‘Of course, there’s a certain amount of that sort of thing in England, too,’ observed Mr. Pilkington. ‘But only in the South. It doesn’t trouble us at Hallowby.’ As he spoke, he was conscious of playing a good card; then the immensity of the trump he held broke upon him. He was too excited to speak. Inviting them to dine at his hotel on the following night, he went away.

  By next evening, more of La Jeune France had arrived, and was mustered outside the hotel extemporizing a bullfight ballet in honour of St. Cornély, patron saint of cattle and of the parish church. Watching Tizard’s look of stoically endured embarrassment Mr. Pilkington announced that he had had a blow; the man who had almost promised to become curator of the Beelby Military Museum had written to say he couldn’t take up the post. ‘He didn’t say why. But I know why. Hallowby is too quiet for him.’

  ‘But I thought Hallowby had blast furnaces and strikes and all that sort of thing,’ said Tizard.

  ‘That is Hallowby juxta Mare,’ replied Mr. Pilkington. ‘We are Old Hallowby. Very quiet; quite old, too. The school was founded in 1623. We shall be having our modest tercentenary this summer. That is why I am so put out by Dalsover’s not taking up the curatorship. I hoped to have the museum all in order. It would have been something to visit, if it rains during the Celebrations.’ He allowed a pause.

  Tizard, staring at the toothpicks, inquired, ‘Is it a wet climate?’

  But Mr. Pilkington was the headmaster of a minor public school, a position of command. As if the pause had not taken place, raising his voice above the bullfight he told how fifty years earlier Davenport Beelby, a rich man’s sickly son, during a lesson on the Battle of Minden awoke to military glory and began to collect regimental buttons. Buttons, badges, pikes, muskets and bayonets, shakos and helmets, despatches, newspaper cuttings, stones from European battlefields, sand from desert campaigns—his foolish collection grew into the lifework of a devoted eccentric and, as such collections sometimes do, became valuable and authoritative, though never properly catalogued. Two years ago he had died, bequeathing the collection to his old school, with a fund sufficient for upkeep and the salary of a curator.

  ‘I wish you’d consider coming as our curator,’ said Mr. Pilkington. ‘I’m sure you would find it congenial. Beelby wanted an Army man. Three mornings a week would be quite enough.’

  Tizard shifted his gaze from the toothpicks to the mustard jar. ‘I am not an Army man,’ he said. ‘I just fought. Not the same thing, you know.’

  Miss Tizard exclaimed, ‘No! Not at all,’ and changed the subject.

  But later that evening she said to her brother, ‘Once we were there, we shouldn’t see much of him. It’s a possibility.’

  ‘Do you want to go home, Celia?’

  ‘I think it’s time we did. We were both of us born for a sober, conventional, taxpaying life, and if——’

  ‘Voici Noël!’ sang the passing voices. ‘Voici Noël! Voici Noël‚ petits enfants!’

  She composed her twitching hands and folded them on her lap. ‘We were young rowdies once,’ he said placatingly.

  A fortnight later, they were Mr. Pilkington’s guests at Hallowby. A list of empty houses had been compiled by Miss Robson, the secretary. All were variously suitable; each in turn was inspected by Miss Tizard and rejected. Mr. Pilkington felt piqued that his offer of a post should dance attendance on the aspect of a larder or the presence of decorative tiles. Miss Tizard was a disappointment to him; he had relied on her support. Now it was the half-hearted Tizard who seemed inclined to root, while she flitted from one eligible residence to another, appearing, as he remarked to the secretary, to expect impossibilities. Yet when she settled as categorically as a queen bee the house she chose had really nothing to be said for it. A square, squat mid-Victorian box, Newton Lodge was one of the ugliest houses in Hallowby; though a high surrounding wall with a green door in it hid the totality of its ugliness from passers-by, its hulking chimneys proclaimed what was below. It was not even well situated. It stood in a deteriorating part of the town, and was at some distance from the school buildings and the former gymnasium—Victorian also—which had been assigned to the Beelby Collection. But the house having been chosen, the curatorship was bestowed and the move made. Justin Tizard, rescued from wasting his days in exile—though too late for the tercentenary celebrations—began his duties as curator by destroying a quantity of cobwebs and sending for a window-cleaner.

  All through the summer holidays he worked on, sorting things into heaps, subdividing the heaps into lesser heaps. Beelby’s executors must have given carte-blanche to the packers, who had acted on the principle of rilling up with anything that came handy, and the unpackers had done little more than tumble things out and scatter them with notices saying ‘DO NOT DISTURB’. The largest heap consisted of objects he could not account for, but unaccountably it lessened, till the day came when he could look round on tidiness. Ambition seized him. Tidiness is not enough; no one looks twice at tidiness. There must also be parade and ostentation. He bought stands, display cases, dummies for the best uniforms. Noticing a decayed wooden horse in the saddler’s shop, he bought that, too; trapped, with its worser side to the wall and with a cavalry dummy astride, it made a splendid appearance. He combed plumes, shook out bearskins
, polished holsters and gunstocks, oiled the demi-culverin, sieved the desert sand. At this stage, his sister came and polished with him, mended, refurbished, sewed on loose buttons. Of the two, she had more feeling for the exhibits themselves, for the discolouring glory and bloodshed they represented. It was the housewife’s side that appealed to him. Sometimes, hearing him break into the whistle of a contented mind, she would look up from her work and stare at him with the unbelief of thankfulness.

  Early in the autumn term, Mr. Pilkington made time to visit the museum. He did not expect much and came prepared with speeches of congratulation and encouragement. They died on his lips when he saw the transformation. Instead, he asked how much the display cases had cost, and the dummies, and the horse, and how much of the upkeep fund remained after all this expenditure. He could not find fault; there was no reason to do so. He was pleased to see Tizard so well established as master in his own house. Perhaps he was also pleased that there was no reason to find fault. Though outwardly unchanged, the Tizard of Carnac appeared to have been charged with new contents—with something obstinately reckless beneath the easy-going manner, with watchfulness beneath the diffidence. But this, reflected Mr. Pilkington, might well be accounted for by the startling innovations in the museum. He stayed longer than he meant, and only after leaving remembered that he had omitted to say how glad he was that Tizard had accepted the curatorship. This must be put right; he did not want to discourage the young man who had worked so hard and so efficiently, and also he must get into the way of remembering that Tizard was in fact a young man—under thirty. Somehow, one did not think of him as a young man.

  *

  Justin Tizard, newly a captain in an infantry regiment, came on leave after the battle of the Somme. His sister met the train at Victoria. There were some pigeons strutting on the platform and he was watching them when a strange woman in black came up to him, touched his shoulder, and said, ‘Justin!’ It was as though Celia were claiming a piece of lost luggage, he thought. She had a taxi waiting, and they drove to her flat. She asked about his health, about his journey; then she congratulated him on his captaincy. ‘Practical reasons,’ he said. ‘My habit of not getting killed. They were bound to notice it sooner or later.’ After this, they fell silent. He looked out of the window at the streets so clean and the people so busy with their own affairs. ‘That’s a new Bovril poster, isn’t it?’ he inquired. Her answer was so slow in coming that he didn’t really take in whether it was yes or no.

  Her flat was new, anyway. She had only been in it since their mother’s remarriage. It was up a great many flights of stairs, and she spoke of moving to somewhere with a lift, now that Tim’s legacy had made a rich woman of her. The room smelled of polish and flowers. There was a light-coloured rug on the floor and above this was the blackness of Celia’s skirts. She was wearing black for her fiancé. The news of his death had come to her in this same room, while she was still sorting books and hanging pictures. Looking round the room, still not looking at Celia, he saw Tim’s photograph on her desk. She saw his glance, and hers followed it. ‘Poor Tim!’ they said, both speaking at once, the timbre of their voices relating them. ‘They say he was killed instantaneously,’ she went on. ‘I hope it’s true—though I suppose they always say that.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ he replied. He knew that Tim had been blown to pieces. Compassion made it possible to look at her. Dressed in black, possessing these new surroundings, she seemed mature and dignified beyond her actual three years’ seniority. For the first time in his life he saw her not as a sister but as an individual. But he could not see her steadily for long. There was a blur on his sight, a broth of mud and flame and frantic unknown faces and writhing entrails. When she showed him to his bedroom she stepped over mud that heaved with the bodies of men submerged in it. She had drawn the curtains. There was a bed with sheets turned back, and a bedside lamp shed a serene, unblinking light on the pillows. ‘Bed!’ he exclaimed, and heard the spontaneity die in his voice. ‘Wonderful to see a bed!’

  ‘And this is the bathroom. I’ve got everything planned. First of all, you must have a bath, lie and soak in it. And then put on these pyjamas and the dressing gown, and we will have supper.’

  Left to himself, he was violently sick. Shaking with fatigue, he sat in a hot scented bath and cleaned his knees with scrupulous care, like a child. Outside was the noise of London.

  The pyjamas were silk, the dressing gown was quilted and wrapped him round like a caress. In the sitting room was Celia, still a stranger, though now a stranger without a hat. There was a table sparkling with silver and crystal, smoked salmon, a bottle of champagne, It was all as she had planned it for Tim—Oh, poor Celia!

  They discussed their mother’s remarriage. It had been decided on with great suddenness, and appeared inexplicable. Though they refrained from saying much, their comments implied that her only reason for marrying a meat king from the Argentine was to get away from England and the war. ‘There he was, at eleven in the morning, with a carnation—a foot shorter than she‚’ said Celia, describing the return from the registry office.

  ‘In that case, he must be four foot three.’

  ‘He is exactly four foot three. I stole up and measured him.’

  Spoken in her imperturbable voice, this declaration struck him as immensely funny, as funny as a nursery joke. They laughed hilariously, and after this their evening went almost naturally.

  Turning back after his unadorned, brotherly ‘Good night, Celia,’ he exclaimed, ‘But where are you sleeping?’

  ‘In here.’ Before he could demur she went on, ‘The sofa fits me. It would be far too short for you.’

  He told her how balmily he had slept, one night behind the lines, with his head on a bag of nails.

  ‘Exactly! That is why tonight you are going to sleep properly. In a bed.’

  She heard him get into bed, heard the lamp switched off. Almost immediately she heard his breathing lengthen into slumber. Then, a few minutes later, he began to talk in his sleep.

  Perhaps a scruple—the dishonourableness of being an eavesdropper, a Peeping Tom—perhaps mere craven terror, made her try not to listen. She began to read, and when she found that impossible she repeated poems she had learned at school, and when that failed she polished the silver cigarette box. But Justin’s voice was raised, and the partition wall was thin, and the ghastly confidences went on and on. She could not escape them. She was dragged‚ a raw recruit. into battle.

  In the morning she thought she would not be able to look him in the face. But he was cheerful, and so was she. She had got off from the canteen, she explained, while he was on leave; they had nothing to do but enjoy themselves. They decided to have some new experiences, so they went up the Monument. If he wants to throw himself off, she thought, I won’t stop him. They looked down on London; on the curve of the Thames, the shipping, the busy lighters. They essayed how many City churches they could identify by their spires. They talked about Pepys. She would be surprised, Justin said, how many chaps carried a copy of the Diary‚ and she asked if bullets also glanced off Pepys carried in a breast pocket. So they made conversation quite successfully. And afterwards, when they had decided to go for a walk down Whitechapel High Street and lunch off winkles at a stall, many people glanced at them with kindness and sentimentality, and an old woman patted Celia’s back, saying, ‘God bless you, dearie! Isn’t it lovely to have him home?’

  Whitechapel was a good idea. The throng of people carried some of the weight of self-consciousness for them; the wind blowing up-river and the hooting of ships’ sirens made them feel they were in some foreign port of call, taking a stroll till it was time to re-embark. He was less aware that she had grown strange to him, and she was momentarily able to forget the appalling stranger who had raved in her bed all night.

  They dined at a restaurant, and went on to a music hall. That night he took longer to fall asleep. She had allowed herself a thread of hope, when he began to talk again. Three Just
ins competed, thrusting each other aside: a cold, attentive observer, a debased child, a devil bragging in hell. At intervals they were banished by a recognizable Justin interminably muttering to himself, ‘Here’s a sword for Toad, here’s a sword for Rat, here’s a sword for Mole, here’s a sword for Badger.’ The reiteration from that bible of their childhood would stick on the word, ‘Rat’. ‘Got you!’ And he was off again.