Company Parade

by Storm Jameson

  A poignant and suffocating emotion filled him. He felt that every breath he drew of it made him more sensitive and more mature. What could be so exquisite as the little shocks of tenderness he felt in himself, each swelling gently the tide of his well-being? He felt that he was becoming a new creature. Even on his eyes the light struck with an early-morning vigour. Unconsciously he renewed his caresses of the body lying beside his. Dear little girl. He drew her closer to him, in a spasm of gratitude.

  Chapter VI

  On a Fine May Morning

  At dawn in summer the country enters London by all roads. Country carts whip up behind lorries and vans carrying in the food the city needs to keep alive during the day. On the main roads the incoming stream meets another which has been flowing all night from the railway depots and the north, and a Hertfordshire farmer halted by the roadside on his way into town is hailed in a foreign dialect by a driver to whom these roads and gently swelling fields seem too smooth to be real. Ships moving with the first tide stand away from wharves emptier than those where the work of loading has gone on noisily through the night: on other wharves the business of feeding London has scarcely ceased and the light only draws another piercing design on the canvas. In the city, in streets which were the first to fall silent the evening before, and in squares which are the last stand of the seventeenth century in a more disorderly age, a sluggish subterranean life of cleaners and caretakers begins, four hours before the first trainload of clerks and typists empties itself into the street, to be followed instantly by another and another like the waves of a sea in which each tiny drop is part of a human body, its eyes, legs, arms, thoughts, and hopes.

  These are the late-comers. At the Dug-out Frank has been boiling coffee and cutting slices of bread since three o’clock: now and then he looks across the field, in which the grass shines so fiercely that it is the colour of light without green, at the caravan, anxious not to miss the first flutter of a rag from the doorway, sign that the captain is waiting to drink his coffee. The river, the markets, are crackling with life, before the sleepers in their beds have wakened for the first time, at that zero hour when the life which left their bodies as they slept has scarcely turned to flow back—so that if by some evil chance they fail to drop asleep again at once a strange experience awaits them. All their actions, ambitions and intentions pass through their minds in a light so denuded of all colour that, now, if never before, they see these without the enchantments they secrete during the day.

  It happened to Hervey Russell to wake up at this hour—which must coincide with some change in the earth’s movement. At once, as though it were the continuation of her dreams, she found herself thinking of Richard, sleeping in his bed in Miss Holland’s house in Danesacre. Her mind presented her with the sharpest possible outline of his head on the pillow, cheeks flushed in sleep on which the long dark lashes appeared drawn with a fine brush, tiny beads of damp where his hair clung thickly round his neck.

  She realised, with a dreadful clearness, that nothing she had gained for herself by coming to London compensated what she had given up. She saw her work in the office as a mean, mind-destroying ritual, the refinement of trickery, by which she earned what just kept her alive and hired Richard a place in another woman’s life. Beside that she was not even a success at her work. Some knot in her own mind kept it from flowing freely in the channels Shaw-Thomas engineered for it. She did some things well, but more baffled her so utterly that more than once she had retired to the lavatory to weep tears of despair and rage. I have deserted my baby, and I am a failure, she said to herself. She opened her eyes. The room, on which after five months she had not left the faintest impression, confirmed the sentence.

  But already a subtle change (like the change which takes place in a chemical compound when another element is added) was at work in her thoughts. She recalled praise David Renn had given her. A notion—that it was time to ask Shaw-Thomas for more money—came for the first time close, and the excitement it started brought her upright in bed. She began to rehearse what she would say. Her spirits rocketed, and an air, that her mother would have recognised, altered her face. From being dull it became shrewd and lively, with something unyouthful, a prudent politic smile, in the eyes. She wants me to give her something, the mother would have said.

  She fell asleep again, woke, looked at her watch. Six o’clock. The bedclothes, except for the sheet, had spent the night on the floor. She got up, lifted them on to a chair, and walked to the window. A street opened away to the left, going south-west. The near house was awash with light, clear, dazzling; the others were in shadow, they were like cliffs, and the shadows were blue and soft. Directly below her a tree sprang like a fountain, its quivering upper leaves bright. Water in sunlight, they poured this way and that in currents of air. Then, from far above her, a brown feather dropped slowly, straight, turning as it fell, like one of the darts children make. She watched it until it touched the ground, when instantly its turning ceased, it keeled over and lay still.

  Now I must go out, Hervey thought. She remembered that her mother, when she and they were young, would run out in the early morning in that bright air, happy, as if she were the only creature in a new world. Her mother, Danesacre, and Richard were her roots, from which her life thrust away. The thrusting away was pain, and a part of her was never done longing to return, as if a tree should try to send its sap downwards, into the earth. She even knew that the growth was not straight—there were too many things hindering her. Yet here she was—she had got so far, to this room—and not even the agony of her love for Richard could turn her back.

  There was the light sound of a letter being pushed under her door. She ran, and stooped quickly. It was from France, from the American, Jess Gage. The bold left-handed writing sent a shock from her eyes to the centre of her body.

  She did not open the letter. She put it in her handbag, dressed quickly, and went downstairs. Not willing to face her landlady (silly Hervey, she was never easy with strangers), she had written on an envelope ‘No breakfast, please. Hervey Russell,’ and left this in the hall.

  In the street she felt free, and skipped off gaily. There was nothing in sight but an early hunting cat. You could think you were in a foreign city, except that no housewife had hung her bed over the window sill. Soon she was in a main road, with the early traffic prancing down it. She pranced beside it, pleased with London and with herself for being abroad in it. When she looked at her handbag the leather became transparent and she could see the letter lying inside.

  Suddenly she was seized with the pangs of hunger. She walked a long way down the Edgware Road seeking a café. None were yet open. At last when she was dejected and very empty she saw a coffee stall, with a glittering brass urn, and ran across to it. The man in charge was better than obliging. He cut fresh bread to her order, and both bread and coffee tasted so fine that she felt herself in heaven. It seemed now as though her handbag opened of its own accord. She drew out the letter.

  Like earlier ones, it was long, written in an idiom as sharp, lively, and common as Elizabethan English. She did not read it so much as hear Gage’s voice, soft and peremptory. Its very difference from English voices lent it some of the effect of music on her nerves. She had to listen to it more than with her ears. She was trembling when she turned the last page. ‘I’ll give you two three months, darling child. You’ll see me in England in August. If you can’t bring yourself to leave that thing your husband, all right, have it your own way. I’m not going to coax you. But if you decide to have me I’m yours, and I never told you lies—except about other people to amuse you. You know I love you. Don’t you want to marry me and go live in a real country? Jess.’

  She swallowed the last drops of coffee, thanked the man smiling, and went on. The letter glowed in her hand like a hot coal. Its heat made even the sun less bright to her. She walked slowly, trying to harden herself to the notion that she would see her American again. As she thought of him, of the way he walked, of his eyes,
narrowed and lively, her body was roused and tense. Her hands shook. She would have to decide: but already the decision was made. It had been made for her, by her terrible will.

  She reached the office before time and found David Renn at work. She had built up what was nearly a friendship with him. She was very silent with him, and tried to create in his mind the notion that she was a lower kind of batman. In that way she hoped to use him to seeing her about his room. In time he might even trust her.

  She saw at once that it was a bad day for him. Pain made him short-tempered, and she sat nervously at her desk, at the work she had left unfinished the day before. It would never be finished by her, being what she could not, by any means not, do—that was to find a trade name for a jam. In the year 1868, a poor widow, Mrs Susan Martin, of Norwich, began to supply herself by making jams for her neighbours. She prospered, and her sons built themselves a factory, by which it was necessary to change the character of the jam when it was no longer bought and carried fresh from its pantry. The factory was now, in 1919, sold for a good sum to a syndicate.

  An evil crow an evil egg, as they say. Having got this sound family business into its hand, the syndicate proposed to swell it out. They changed the jam again (to a hygienic mess Widow Martin’s neighbours would have poured to their pigs), voted money to blare it about the country, and called in Mr Shaw-Thomas to help them. A pot of jam costing twopence to make, now cost—with sales-psychology and what-not, pressure advertising, and the labours of poor Hervey—eightpence to get it sold. An artist was preparing the sketches—English cottage interior, 1870; the young widow admiring her jam; at the window honeysuckle.

  ‘Martin’s Cottage Jams,’ Hervey wrote. ‘The subtle delicacy and flavour of a home-made jam, as pure as science can make it… .’

  ‘For pity’s sake, young Russell, don’t mutter,’ Renn said curtly.

  She blushed, and looked at him with an ashamed smile. The door opened; Mr Shaw-Thomas came in, followed by an American.

  This American’s face was so expressive of decision that it might have been made of papier-mâché. Hervey was delighted with him. You could make a door-knocker of this face, she said to herself. What was very strange, when he opened his mouth an odd whirring noise came out before the words.

  ‘This is Mr Harriman,’ said Mr Shaw-Thomas.

  ‘Hr-r-r-r-r, very glad to meet you,’ Mr Harriman said, smiling and nodding.

  It was soon out that Mr Harriman was the agent of a firm of chemists. This firm had been cleaning up America with a disinfectant called Saloxide, containing (but he forgot to mention this) 75 per cent, of a violent corrosive poison. They had done it by the use of what he called War copy. He was very proud of this copy. He had conceived it himself, and he was so fecund a father that you would hardly find any corner in America where the disinfectant was not in use, whether for pigs or babies.

  ‘Now, in England,’ said he, whirring, smiling, nodding, ‘you boys didn’t have exactly the War ours had. We’re going to sell Britain, but the copy has got to be adapted. Not written over. Oh no, no, no, no, no.’ Mr Harriman laughed with all his teeth. ‘Hr-r-r-r. You couldn’t write over this copy. Why it’s Hamlet Prince of Denmark. It would sell elephant meat. All I want is for you to go over it very carefully, like you were laying out your grandmother for her deathbed, and make it one hundred per cent. British. Yes? At home we had an Army doctor check up on every line and we didn’t let a one go out without he passed it. Maybe somewhere I wrote “ top sergeant” and maybe you people didn’t call them top sergeants. I didn’t partake in the War myself.’

  ‘One moment,’ Renn said, ‘was the stuff used in your army hospitals?’

  ‘It was not.’

  ‘Oh. Then where does the War come in?’

  Before answering this Mr Harriman whirred for so long that Hervey became alarmed. It must be his works, she thought. Fancy if he went on like this for ever. He’d go whirring along Piccadilly, frightening people. They’d have to arrest him for a breach of the peace. A spasm of laughter seized her. She controlled it, but it came at her again and again. Little gusts of laughter went on rising inside her until her body felt bruised and sore. Her face was crimson. At last a choked sound escaped her. Renn looked at her in contemptuous reproof. She was ready to die of shame.

  Mr Harriman turned to look at her: his mouth was still open but the whirring had ceased. It was too much. Jumping up, she went quickly out of the room.

  She walked upstairs to the half-landing and leaned against the wall, feeling weak and disgraced. She no longer wanted to laugh. After a time she heard the door open and Mr Harriman going away. She slunk into the room. Renn did not speak to her. He was looking through the heap of papers Mr Harriman had left with him. At last he looked across at her and said :

  ‘Why did you behave like that?’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Hervey said anxiously. She was relieved that he no longer looked angry. He looked tired to his death, and his mouth was drawn into a nervous smile. She walked over to his desk.

  ‘My God, what brutes,’ Renn said quietly. ‘This is an account of a battalion going over the top, wounded coming back, clearing station, stretchers, field hospital, “ Am I for it, nurse? ” operating room … what saved thousands of lives in the Great War? peroxide and saline… . What will save millions in the Peace? Saloxide… . These pictures will have to be redrawn.’ He held up a full-page drawing of an American soldier, smiling and insolently handsome. ‘This one reminds me of——’

  Without warning, he was sick over his hands and the drawing.

  He refused to let Hervey touch him or his desk. When he had finished washing the desk he sat down and laughed at her face.

  ‘My poor Russell,’ he said unamiably. ‘I’m as sorry as death, but I had no time to help myself. Would you like to go home?’

  Hervey looked at him and scowled. ‘You wouldn’t say that if I were a man,’ she said.

  ‘Neither I would,’ he answered calmly.

  Twelve o’clock. Mr Shaw-Thomas called a conference of copywriters in his room. Hervey sat at the back of the men, conscious of her hands. Lunch time returned her to herself, with an almost physical sensation of ease and lightness. Going on the way to the office she saw a fair tall girl, clad from head to ankle in pale blue, striding along like a man; a poor woman’s little merry baby, in a frock of red velvet, and gold rings in its pierced ears; a soldier without legs or hands; and a woman and a child begging. They were figures in the front of a vast frieze, a faceless anonymous multitude, which flowed past her without stopping. The afternoon exasperated her, pressing on the nerves at the back of her head. At three the ferret-faced manager from the Charel Soap Company came in to complain about her copy. He said it lacked passion and the poetic note. His smile was stretched out on his face like a filthy rag. Four o’clock. A page which had gone safely to press was ordered to be changed and Hervey ran with it to the printers.

  She then should have gone back to the office but went home instead. Her landlady came out to her, with a sly jeering smile on her face.

  ‘Miss Russell. A man who said he was your husband came. He asked if there was a room he could have.’ She watched Hervey closely.

  Hervey jumped round. ‘Where is he now?’ she said in a sharp voice. A shock of hatred for the woman went over her.

  ‘He said he’d come back.’ The woman stepped closer.

  ‘I suppose you are married, Miss Russell?’ She knew that Hervey was Mrs Vane, but she wanted to see her embarrassed and vexed. It was less malice than curiosity—she had been a countrywoman and she could scarcely use herself to closed doors, to not knowing what your neighbour does and is.

  ‘I explained it to you when I came,’ Hervey said. She felt that she was losing self-control. ‘I use my own name at work. My husband’s name is Vane.’ Her eyes started at the woman.

  The landlady turned away, now a little afraid of her. She was lame, and as she went she made the most of her age and lameness.

 
; Though she was trembling with anger, Hervey felt conscience-stricken. ‘The photograph in my room,’ she called, ‘is my son.’

  The woman did not answer. But when Penn came she gave him the small room next Hervey’s at a low charge. Hervey felt more remorseful than ever. But she hated the woman, and would not have been sorry to hear her fall down the stairs with her lame leg.