Parson's Nine

by Noel Streatfeild

  “Just at present he’s got no coal, and I must say I would hate that. Here we’ve heaps of wood.”

  “Yes, and you’ve no idea how lucky you are; this is the first warm room I’ve been in for weeks; we mostly burn what Susanna can pick up. I’ve almost forgotten what a hot bath feels like, so if you’ll have me I’ll come and stay with you a little later on, and I’ll send Crossy and Susanna—a holiday will do them both good. Goodbye, darling, go and see your grandfather whenever you can. He’s alone there now, you know; both the uncles have gone to the front—really wonderful of them, for they’re over age, of course. You’ll find your grandfather is very proud of them.”

  Tobit was wounded. He was some time in a hospital, and then was sent home. The war didn’t seem to have changed him at all. He spent his days contentedly pottering about the garden, assisted by Susanna.

  “Funny,” he said to her one day as he happily sniffed at the wallflowers. “With me having such a nose for smells you’d think I’d be knocked over in France, but I’m not, you know; got used to them right away, and now I never notice them. Funny life living in a trench. I’ve got so used to it that often I’m just pottering about looking for plants as if I were at home.” He sucked at his pipe. “Wonderful stubborn little fellows, plants; no matter how often you blow them to bits, give them a little breather and some rain and sun, and they all crop up again.”

  Susanna gasped.

  “Flowers! Near the trenches?”

  “Bless you, yes. There’ll be primroses out in the woods now; at least there were where I was last year.”

  There was a long silence, both of them busy with the weeds; then Susanna straightened her back and examined a dandelion she had uprooted.

  “Fancy,” she said, “primroses in a war.”

  “Funny things, wars,” Tobit grunted.

  The Easter holidays that year were very cheerful, only marred by the fact that Esdras wasn’t there. Finding Tobit at home was sufficient excuse to send the children into the wildest spirits. With both their brothers in France they felt sometimes, if they were at all hilarious, that the grown-ups were thinking them callous. They knew they were not; they knew that they might hear any day that one or the other brother had been killed, but this prospect wasn’t one to brood on. Grown-ups had to be given in to, and if they liked thinking of depressing things, there it was. So it was grand in these holidays at least to have an excuse to be cheery. Aware, as they said goodbye to Tobit on their return to school, that his sick leave was nearly over, they were at pains to be especially casual.

  “Cheerio, Tobit.”

  “So long, old thing.”

  David was shocked.

  “Do you think,” he said to Catherine, “they can realise how little leave Tobit has left?”

  “I expect they do, but children are so sensible, they never deliberately flagellate their feelings like we do.”

  Tobit went back to France in June. Most regretfully he dragged himself away from the garden.

  “Seems a pity to leave all this,” he said to Catherine, waving his arm round the lawn. “Still, I’ve been lucky in having the pink may out before I left.”

  Seeing that Susanna would be sixteen in August, Catherine gave up the unequal struggle with her lessons. It was farcical to go on trying to fix in three hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. So she had her taught cooking, and attached her in a minor way to the hospital kitchen staff.

  “And you go and have a talk to Mrs. Bell,” she said to Miss Crosby. “She’s in charge of the kitchen, and between you, you can allot Susanna’s day, half to the pots and pans and half to arithmetic.”

  Baruch, arriving home for the summer holidays, was most upset by this new arrangement. Susanna’s time was no longer his to command.

  “There’s things you could do in the hospital if you liked,” suggested Susanna doubtfully. “Orderly, you know, but I don’t think you’d like it.”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t,” Baruch agreed. “I shall go and help Mr. Pullen again, like we did last year.”

  On their birthday they had a picnic.

  “Down there,” said Susanna wistfully, as they unpacked the basket, “we gave a tramp scones, fat buttery scones.”

  “And buns,” added Sirach.

  “And we had cake with icing,” Maccabeus almost whispered.

  “Oh, lord,” said Sirach, “if we only had them now.” An aeroplane murmured in the distance; he got to his feet, and shading his eyes, strained after the little speck till it vanished. “Oh, how I hope the war lasts long enough for me to fly. Come on, we’ve eaten enough of this muck; let’s go and look at the cairn.”

  The cairn was a heap of stones he had erected on the hillside to the memory of Samson’s fight. He wandered down to it, followed by Manasses and Maccabeus. Susanna looked after them.

  “Sirach said the other day about wanting the war to go on till he was old enough to join the Flying Corps, and mummy said he must never say it again; it was awful to want the war to go on one second longer than it must.”

  “All women talk like that,” Baruch retorted. “Lot of silliness.”

  “Why, you don’t want to fly, do you?”

  “Of course I do, who wouldn’t?” He rolled over on his back. “It must be fine up there dashing about, and when the Boche comes over strafing him good and proper.”

  “Or him strafing you.”

  “Yes, or him strafing me—exciting, anyway; but as a matter of fact I couldn’t fly; I wouldn’t pass.” He tapped his glasses. “They told me so at school, so if there’s still a war on I’ll just go into the ordinary army, I suppose.”

  “Don’t be silly. There won’t be a war when we’re grown-up.”

  Baruch twisted over on to his chest and rolled a stone down the hillside.

  “Might be. I say, look at that, Sukey. What a long way it’s rolled.”

  Susanna didn’t answer, but looked at him in bewilderment. He, of all people, to speak so casually of going to the war. Of course he didn’t really expect it would last so long, but that he could speak calmly of the bare possibility amazed her. Of course, fear of ordinary things was outside his understanding, but when one thought how people came back from the war, it took no imagination to grasp the awful things there would be to see.

  “You might go into the Navy,” she said tentatively.

  “What did you say? I say, Sukey, find a large stone, and see if it will roll far enough to hit the others.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  In November Judith’s daughter was born, and on the same day David’s eldest brother was killed. Catherine, having seen Judith’s baby safely into the world, hurried to her father-in-law. She found him in his study with a glass of whisky beside him.

  “How do, Catherine, m’dear? If you’ve come to sympathise you needn’t trouble; I’m proud of the boy. Glad he died as he did. Dyin’ like a gentleman was more than I ever hoped for. If it hadn’t been for this war he’d have died of drink with one of his whores to watch him do it. That’s what I keep sayin’ to Sims, but the damn fellow won’t listen to me; keeps snivellin’ round the place. ‘Don’t you come snivellin’ in here,’ I told him. 'For once in m’life I’ve got somethin’ I’m willin’ to thank God for. If you want to snivel go upstairs an’ do it with old nurse.’ ”

  Catherine told him about his great-granddaughter. He was disgusted.

  “They’re no good, this generation,” he grumbled. “Don’t know how to breed boys. Judith ought to have taken after you, m’dear, two strappin’ boys before you ever thought of havin’ a girl. What’s the news of young Esdras and Tobit?”

  “Oh, I hear. Sometimes letters, sometimes postcards. You know.”

  The old man took a gulp of his whisky.

  “It’s a bad business,” he said.

  Judith called her daughter Perdita.

 
; “It’s got a rustic sound, mummy, and the poor little beast’s having such a rustic background. I think it’s fitting.”

  Just before Christmas the baby was christened, with Miss Crosby and Esther as godmothers, and a cousin of Harry’s and Esdras as godfathers. Both the men were at the front, so Sirach and Baruch stood for them. David managed to get away for the day to christen his first grandchild, and Lord Bristone, accompanied by Sims, drove over behind the one decrepit horse he had left. Esdras sent Judith a postcard in time for the event. It read:

  “Dear J.

  See Proverbs 31, verse 29. Silver mug follows at the earliest opportunity.

  Love, Esdras.”

  To Catherine he sent a letter:

  “Dear Mother.

  This baby of Judith’s ought to turn out well, seeing the Lord has both given and taken on the same day, for I feel if He has used half the discretion in ‘giving’ Perdita that He has used in ‘taking’ Uncle Dan, she cannot fail to be a success. There is still a war here and the weather is foul. Love, Esdras.”

  The winter months dragged themselves out. Thankfully Catherine watched the crocuses and snowdrops give way to the daffodils, and the dead hedges star with tiny leaves, and the banks glimmer with primroses; at least cold was spared her sons in France. Then Sirach came home for Easter, having finished with school, and could talk of nothing but joining the Flying Corps in June.

  “Oh, Crossy,” said Catherine, “if only I hadn’t so many boys I could have been glad for each month that passed, one month more which the boys have managed to survive. But as it is, each month that passes brings me nearer to the moment when another of them has got to go. Sirach! It seems only yesterday that he was a baby. Will this war go on and on till I’ve parted with even Maccabeus?”

  Miss Crosby licked her lips, then said awkwardly:

  “All the same, I would gladly be you.”

  “What! With all this agonising anxiety?” Miss Crosby nodded. Catherine paused, then threw back her head. “I’m an ungrateful pig; I’m a lucky woman and you’re quite right to remind me of it. Thank you, Crossy dear, I don’t know what I should do without you; you are always so salutary.”

  The Easter holidays were one long discussion on aircraft, for though they knew nothing about the subject, Baruch, Manasses, and Maccabeus were fired by Sirach’s enthusiasm, and pictures of and books on aeroplanes littered the house. Susanna listened to their chatter with a clammy feeling over her heart as though somebody were laying a cold hand on it. “Sirach is going to the war,” she told herself. “Sirach is going to the war, Sirach who was a child when it started. If it can go on long enough for Sirach to grow up, mightn’t it be going on when Baruch is a man? He’ll be seventeen next August, and eighteen the one after, less than a year and a half away. Oh, what will Baruch do?” She tried to make him face the prospect.

  “Fancy, Baruch, if the war goes on much longer you’ll be old enough to go.”

  “M’m.”

  “Do you think it’s likely it will go on?”

  “How should I know?”

  “But, Baruch, if it does, you’ll have to join the Army.”

  “Of course I shall, you fool.”

  “But, Baruch—”

  “Oh, shut up—”

  Sirach was as gloriously happy in the Flying Corps as he had expected to be. He got his Wings with remarkable speed. He learned to cram every second of his free time with noise and drink and girls, to chatter unceasingly in a patter made of Flying Corps technicalities and jokes, and to treat death with disregard and disdain. On arriving in France he reached the hallmark of his happiness, for he acquired a mongrel puppy which became his mascot. From then onwards his letters were full of nothing but the little fellow’s gifts and brilliance.

  “I have an idea I shall smuggle him home in my bus after the war.”

  But long before this could happen he was killed.

  Not only his family, but all the village, mourned for Sirach. It seemed no time since Easter when, still as a schoolboy, he had given a hand to half the farmers in the neighbourhood. Catherine and David accepted his death with scarcely a word about it to each other. David as consoler-in-chief to two parishes had little time for private griefs, and Catherine forced hers out of sight and was grateful for her night work. Spending the nights in bed it was impossible not to be haunted until almost demented by pictures of Sirach as he must have been, he who had been burned to death. Her daylight hauntings were kinder; often in the garden she thought she heard him whistle, and call in his rough affectionate way: “Come on, Samson old man; come on, good boy.”

  In the spring Esther gave her family something new to think about, she got engaged. She fell thoroughly and sloppily in love with a young doctor from her hospital. He had been badly injured in the first months of the war and was still something of a crock, so Esther was able to lavish on him all her maternal instincts in a passion of service. He was a little common, and David, though fighting his snobbish instincts as unworthy of a churchman, was in favour of putting off the wedding till after the war. He explained this to Catherine.

  “Darling, apart from the fact that he is not quite the type of man Esther would have met in the ordinary way, I do feel young people are rushing things too much these days. I’m afraid it’s going to lead to much unhappiness later on.”

  But Catherine was nervous. Esther and her doctor were about a great deal by themselves, walking in the woods, and in his small car, and really they hardly seemed to be able to leave each other alone even in public, and morals were getting looser every day.

  “I should marry them,” she said. “I think hanging about like this is a great strain on them both.”

  “A strain! Surely, darling, an engagement should be a wonderfully happy time of preparation for the sacrament of marriage.”

  “Marriage isn’t the sacrament it was.”

  David looked worried.

  “Catherine dear, even if you feel a thing like that, which I’m sure you don’t in your heart, you should never say it.”

  Catherine patted his hand.

  “Whether I feel such things or not is beside the point; you take my advice and marry them.”

  Esther was married in May, with a wedding-cake with most of its icing made of cardboard, and her husband and almost all the guests in uniform, and drove off, radiantly happy, in a borrowed car to start her married life in a workman’s cottage at the hospital gates.

  After she had gone, Catherine, Susanna, and Miss Crosby sat on the lawn.

  “She’s had a lovely day for it,” Catherine sighed. “The lilacs and laburnums might have come out on purpose.”

  “She should be very happy,” said Miss Crosby. “She has a definite gift for domestic duties, and yet if her husband should become a great surgeon, she will maintain her position with dignity.”

  Catherine and Susanna laughed.

  “Oh, bless you, Crossy.” Catherine blew her a kiss. “I shall never be able to be sentimental or indulge in self-pity with you in the house. I do hope God appreciates how grateful I am to Him for giving you to me.”

  “Dear Mrs. Churston, it’s kind of you to say things like that, but it’s undeserved on this occasion, for indeed I didn’t mean to be funny—”

  Susanna laughed again.

  “George will never be a great surgeon, Crossy. He and Esther will just spend their lives in a little house in the country, having rows of babies.”

  “And I’ve come to the conclusion that nobody could ask for more,” said Catherine softly.

  Maud, looking scared, came out from the house with a telegram lying on the silver salver.

  “I can’t find the Vicar, mum.” She laid her thumb heavily on the orange form as Catherine stretched out her hand to take it. “The boy said it were bad news.”

  Catherine ripped the envelope open, read it, and turned to Sus
anna.

  “Tobit’s badly wounded. Go and try and find daddy. Crossy, come and help me pack some things; perhaps they’ll let me go to him.”

  In spite of days of weary endless wire-pulling, Catherine couldn’t get to Tobit. He was, they told her, in a place where she couldn’t go. At last, seeing her quest was hopeless, she returned home. There, from the moment she arrived at the station, she was met by smiles. She hadn’t announced she was coming, so no one was there to greet her, but old George, the porter, as he opened the carriage door, grinned and said:

  “We do be glad to hear there be better news of Master Tobit.”

  “News!” Catherine stared at him, unable to believe her ears. “News? I haven’t heard of any.”

  “They be saying Vicar has had a letter from Master Esdras, and that he’s seen Master Tobit, and I say I weren’t surprised; ‘twouldn’t be natural for Master Esdras to be nearby and not have a look at his brother who’s been mortal ill seemingly, and when t’other lads from the village hears of it, they’ll be along to see him too, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Catherine’s walk to the Vicarage became a triumphal progress.

  “Well, I do be glad you’ve had good news, mum.”

  “I said to Vicar, we couldn’t be more thankful if it were one of our own.”

  David was out when she reached home; he had sent her a telegram, Maud told her, and had left Esdras’s letter out for her in case she should arrive. She read it standing in the hall.

  “Dear Family,

  I have managed to see Tobit, who is not being taken to his Fathers, but should live to a ripe old age, for he is out of the war for good. As you may have heard he has lost his right leg; it was all smashed to bits and, anyway, went bad. He does not know he has lost a prop; they had not told him when I saw him. He thinks it’s his right foot that is hurt, and all he was worrying about was whether his wound was a blighty one all right, as he says he wants to get home to see how the roses are doing he pruned with Susanna last year. Without telling him about his leg I managed to convince him he was safe for a trip to England. It’s grand to think he is out of this business, as I looked at him, even minus his leg, I said to myself, ‘Esdras, my boy, go thou and do likewise.’