Company Parade

by Storm Jameson

  ‘You’ve been asleep for ten and a half hours,’ Hervey said.

  He was much offended and said coldly: ‘That’s not a great deal for a boy.’

  Hervey made him comfortable and went downstairs. She brought him milk, honey, and white grapes. To watch him drink sent a thrill of joy through her. She held the cup and it seemed that her own strength was feeding him.

  He had not been ill at all. He lay in bed and drank milk, ate eggs, fish, fruit, honey, and grew rosier daily. There was a bottle of Valentine’s meat juice on the washstand. Hervey had bought it because it was costly, but he liked it and she fondly thought it the better for what it cost. She had been told that he must lie still and to keep him lying on his back she read to him hour after hour, until her penny whistle of a voice cracked. Richard was without mercy. As she read she thought of herself walking in London with Philip and T.S.; of lighted rooms filled with famous writers and she was famous, her witty talk made her accepted of the accepted; of Vienna which she had not yet seen, of yellow houses near the quay in Antwerp where when she was a child she walked and came into a narrow street into the Place Verte in sunshine with the flower women the shop where they ate the cakes the rue de la Mair the Place de la Mair the trees the tall schoolboys in socks and blouses the open trams the music at night the people walking under the trees in the darkness the few lights what are they playing her mother’s clear voice like a sudden fountain Un Rêve Printanier in memory of early days.

  The day when her second novel came out was five days after Richard fell ill, and she forgot that was the day. The next morning she remembered it. Perhaps there will be a letter about it, she thought. She waited for the postman. There were no letters for her. The next day and the next there was no letter. A complete silence had fallen on the world, as if Danesacre were the only place that had survived a new flood.

  On Sunday morning she was reading to Richard as usual. Suddenly she heard her mother speaking outside. ‘Hervey! Are you there? I want you.’

  Startled, she closed the book and ran over to the window. Mrs Russell was standing under the window showing her a newspaper and smiling.

  ‘It says here your book is fine and exquisite. A masterpiece. Wait, I’ll read it to you.’

  She was full of excitement and elation. Her eyes shone, as blue and living as a girl’s. She was quite joyous, quite gay.

  Hervey’s heart slid under her ribs. Well, it’s certainly not a masterpiece, she thought. But she was pleased the book had been praised. A warm feeling of confidence and satisfaction spread through her. She listened, gripping the window sill. Now I have done something, she thought, now she is pleased with me. It was the same feeling, hardly changed at all by time, that had seized her when the scholarship came to her and again when she got her First. It was half excitement, half relief, as if she had felt that she could now rest a little before she made a further effort to please her mother. Those first triumphs had led to nothing, they must have come to seem like failures to her, like a poor end, she thought. This is different. Something begins. Now, here begin the life and works of Mary Hervey Russell. A strange exciting sense of power came to her; she laughed, looking at her mother, who had finished the review and was waiting for her to speak.

  ‘Thank you for bringing it,’ she said.

  ‘I always knew you would do well,’ Mrs Russell said. ‘I didn’t expect anything so good as this, though.’

  The words filled Hervey with love and sudden fear. Don’t expect too much of me. She could scarcely endure to see her mother so pleased with this tiny success. You have had so little, and you should have had everything, she bought, hurt and angry.

  ‘It’s only one review,’ she muttered.

  ‘There’ll be others,’ Mrs Russell said.

  Will there be any money? Hervey wondered. ‘If the book sells I’ll buy you something you want and can’t afford,’ she boasted.

  A short time after she had an affectionate letter from Penn, enclosing several reviews, all long and praising. She was pleased by them. The letter ended with the words, ‘I hope you are happier, my love. I have been a bad husband but I do love and admire you, and I will not if I can help it do anything to wound you again.’ Strangely enough she felt, as she read it, a certainty that she was cured of Penn. I don’t love you but I am used to you and I am bound to you, she thought. Am I a coward? Am I afraid to be alone?

  Later she came by chance on a review which said her book was the silliest ever written. This impressed her more than any. She did not wholly believe it but she went to school with it for her good.

  After waiting a month or so she wrote in great fear to Charles Frome, and asked him whether the book had earned any money. He sent her by return a cheque for a hundred and seventy pounds. This kindness she should have been more obliged for, if she had not been too astonished by her own merit to notice his.

  Chapter XXIX

  February 8, 1923

  1. Two of Class 1913

  Hervey was in Danesacre six months before she left it again. She had written a third novel. An uncontrollable impatience with her quiet life possessed her. She must have eaten knives, as they say.

  Leaving Richard with Miss Holland for three days, she went up to London. This journey was a score of journeys, one sliding into another in her mind as the train left Danesacre, the water in the harbour grey, the sky the colour of grey water, the iron-bound moors, coming then into the sodden Midlands and the air growing flat and heavy as they came south. She was travelling during the War and the corridors were crammed with men in clumsy khaki, talking, smoking, lying asleep; she had heavy Richard in her arms; she was alone, going eagerly to London to make her fortune; she was alone still, with no fortune but with unmanageable desires and unabateable ambitions, with a new dress and an old coat, with twenty-eight years gone and with nothing done and all to do. To look at her as she sat with a forbidding air in her corner of the carriage you would not think she had so many journeys in her.

  She reached London after dusk and spent the evening walking with herself, in an indescribable excitement squeezed from the crowded irregular streets, the lights and darkened doorways, the gaiety, the furtive faces, the misery, the colours running pell-mell over restaurants and theatres, the smells, all that whirl of stone and cataract of bodies caught in the forms they assumed for one moment one evening in February 1923, once and once only, then and only then.

  In the morning she was with T.S. He did not look pleased at her, and she felt embarrassed. But when they were going along he looked at her and said: ‘Upon my word, Hervey, you’re the only person I want to see. Why don’t we live together? I think I could stand you four days out of five.’

  Hervey laughed and felt easy again. He asked why she had let Penn run away to Oxford. An impulse to abase Penn made her say: ‘He arranged it without asking me.’

  ‘Did he ask you how you were going to live?’

  ‘I can look after myself,’ Hervey said. She felt ashamed of her evil impulse and said quickly: ‘I advised him to go.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She frowned, trying to tell the narrow truth. ‘I wanted something to happen. I wanted Penn to leave me by myself so that perhaps something would happen.’

  ‘What did you imagine would happen?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you satisfied?’

  ‘No. Yes.’

  In a moment T.S. said : ‘I wish my wife’ud leave me.’

  ‘Can’t you leave?’ Hervey said. She looked at him.

  ‘No, I ha’ant the energy, Hervey. If she kicked me out I’d go happily—but I don’t think she wants to be left with her William. Can you imagine a woman bringing herself to embrace William Ridley? That face and gross body. Inconceivable. Most women are damnably unfastidious, if you don’t mind my saying it.’

  ‘Do you mind much?’ Hervey said swiftly.

  ‘Did you like it when Penn—?’

  ‘No. Leave me out.’

 
‘I agree. There isn’t a comparison. I haven’t your curiously physical imagination. Also I’m sorry for Evelyn, and I’m tired. Her mind is no help to her j she should have married a tower of strength.’ He burst out laughing. ‘When I came back in 1918 I wanted a mother, not a wife.’

  ‘It was a bad war.’

  ‘Bad for you, Jake, Philip, David Renn. Good for Thomas Harben.’

  ‘Can’t we save ourselves from the Harbens?’

  ‘Not in this world.’

  ‘I forgot. You’re working for them.’

  ‘Forget it again.’ He put his head down and smiled. ‘You can’t quarrel with me, our Hervey. I know you better than if I was in love with you. Funny, ain’t it? I suppose I’m the only man who knows how anxious you are to please people. You’d agree with the devil, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Only to his face,’ Hervey said. ‘Not if I were quietly in my room writing about him.’

  ‘Why to his face?’

  ‘People confuse me. When I’m with people they confuse me. My mind is not suited to go much into company.’

  ‘You can’t bear to be laughed at, can you?’

  ‘No,’ Hervey said. She knew that she shrank from ridicule with a nearly insane fear.

  ‘I used to think you had a masculine mind. Nowadays I realise that the only male virtues your mind has are thoroughness and slowness. In every other way it’s a woman’s mind—clear, logical, bitter, ironical, and nasty. But, my poor Hervey, you have a masculine heart. It becomes possessive and domineering with your equals, and as soft as water with the young and weak. It is the cause why you are shocked by cruelty. Not only is your heart a polite heart, but it has imagination. You’re lost. By the way, have you enough money or do you want me to lend you some?’

  ‘I have enough for three more months.’

  ‘Cross your heart?’

  ‘Cross my heart.’

  ‘Talking to me doesn’t confuse you, does it?’

  ‘You’re my only friend,’ Hervey said in a serious voice. ‘There were three of us with Philip.’ There was a glass behind the next table: two men got up from it and went out, and she could see herself and T.S. in the glass. A curious emotion seized her, as if she were seeing their younger selves seated there before the War. In that reflected room Philip could come.

  ‘Class 1913,’ T.S. said.

  ‘We ought to keep together.’

  ‘What is left of the company will advance in loose formation. Or not advance.’

  ‘I shall advance,’ Hervey said.

  ‘You can count on me in any personal way. You can’t count on me to turn Socialist with you. That’s all moonshine, my dear. It used to be a religion. It is an establishment. It used to have martyrs. Now it has respectable leaders of Trades Unions. I saw your friend David Renn yesterday. He talked like a Communist. Don’t deceive yourself, I said. Communism is no go in this middle-class country, and even if it were, even if it were, they don’t want you to help them. Or you. Or me. Don’t think you can belong to a new age by going to meetings in shabby rooms, sitting round deal tables, and addressing the others as “ comrade.” You’re not their comrade. You’re mine but you’re not theirs.’ His face twitched. ‘A new age is no damned good to me. I shan’t understand it and I shan’t like it. Class 1913. It was a fine class and it lived in a damned fine world. Hear me. I’m bragging. I know what England was like in 1913. You can keep the change. Maybe you don’t know yet where you belong, you and David Renn. Comrades? I’ve s—seen comrades! I’ll tell you both something. The world you’re part of, bone of, is finished. You’re a Socialist. Very well—you believe in reason. You believe you can reason people into tolerance and good will. I tell you that’s a dead dream which stinketh. The new age is being prepared by unreason, to be brought in with violence, to maintain itself by violence. In that day reasonable people will be swept aside. This is something you don’t know yet; you will know it, and you won’t like it. This isn’t the world I was born into, you’ll say. Nor is it. Your world’s finished, I tell you.’

  He pushed his cup aside and put both hands on the table. He had been sending his nails into the flesh. She could see the marks there.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘As you like. You will, though.’

  ‘Your world may be finished. Mine isn’t. Not yet.’

  ‘Comrade Hervey Russell.’

  Hervey laughed. ‘If it weren’t for Richard, I don’t mind what happens.’

  ‘There’s always Richard. Do you think you love anyone else?’

  ‘My mother. You.’

  ‘Brass before and brass behind, Never cared a—for any other kind! Hervey loves me. When are you going home, Hervey?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Hervey said. She hesitated and said : ‘I have a letter from your wife in my pocket.’

  ‘I don’t want to see it.’

  ‘She and I had a quarrel of a kind. Now she asks me to go and see her.’

  ‘Go. Why don’t you?’

  ‘I shall say the things I don’t mean.’

  T.S. laughed at her. ‘You’ll take them all back afterwards.’

  2. Reconciliation of opposites

  She sat in Evelyn’s room and listened, with surprise and growing unease. She felt embarrassed and vexed. What you are saying is not true, she thought; and even if it were you ought not to say it. She kept her head down, avoiding Evelyn’s eye.

  ‘You know, Hervey, I was very fond of you,’ Evelyn said. ‘I can’t think how I let you quarrel with me.’

  Hervey looked at her without speaking. She could not believe that Evelyn had an affection for her. Nor could she believe that Evelyn would give herself the trouble of lying about it. Hervey’s pride and her sense of decency were outraged. This woman must be going off her head, she thought gloomily. It is very trying. She was repelled, uneasy. Do I look as foolish as I feel?

  ‘Actually I’m a very lonely creature; there is only one other woman I love,’ Evelyn said.

  ‘You’re very kind,’ Hervey mumbled. I must look at her with a candid gaze. It isn’t true; she is pretending to feel this nonsense. Can she be telling the truth? She did not attempt to understand Evelyn. The more intense the older woman became, the less warmth Hervey felt for her. A sullen resistance sprang in her. Beside Evelyn’s elegant airs she felt uncouth, shabby, an awkward schoolgirl. At the same time she felt a contempt. These emotional words disgusted her.

  ‘I hope we shall always be friends,’ Evelyn said.

  ‘I hope so, too,’ Hervey answered, with a clear look. Her quick warm childish smile contrasted with the gloom in her voice. She was ashamed of herself for taking part in this pretence. She felt that it was a pretence. Yet in part of her mind she knew that Evelyn was actually moved—she knew this, but she could not feel it and she did not for a moment understand or enjoy it. Outwardly, she was pleased, underneath she felt cold and stupid, a block of wood.

  ‘Now tell me about yourself,’ Evelyn said. ‘I’m told your new novel is good.’

  ‘No. There are one or two true pages ‘—she was thinking of pages about herself and Penn—‘the rest is false.’

  ‘It is selling, isn’t it? You’ll make plenty of money.’

  Hervey did not think that two hundred pounds would seem to Evelyn ‘plenty of money.’ She was about to say so, when an unpleasant Yorkshire instinct pulled her up sharply: don’t let her think you poor, it said.

  ‘It has sold very well,’ she said, with an air of reserve.

  Evelyn glanced at her. She may have felt the lack of warmth in Hervey. A flicker of malice came into her gaze, and yet she wanted Hervey to like her—she had been telling part of the truth. ‘When your husband was here the other day he told me that the book was in its tenth thousand.’

  Hervey felt a pang of alarm. She had not known, Penn had kept it from her, that he was seeing Evelyn. She wiped all surprise out of her face and voice. ‘That was during his vacation.’

  ‘Yes of course,’ Evelyn answered. ‘We we
re dining at the same house, and after dinner he talked to me for a few minutes and I asked him to come here. He would tell you about it, of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hervey said.

  ‘I liked him much better, Hervey. In fact I think he’s very charming and intelligent. I’m sending him some books to review for me.’

  ‘How kind of you,’ Hervey said. She felt that there was something else to come. Her hands trembled.

  ‘He’s in the greatest trouble about you, Hervey. He feels that you’ll never wholly forgive him for making love to that dancer. And he loves you so deeply. Everything he said to me about you proved that. He has the deepest admiration for you. For your talents. I said I was sure you were much too wise to allow an incident with an actress, however young and charming, to weigh on your mind.’

  An actress? Hervey thought. Dancer? Surprise and bewilderment had almost made her lose hold of her mind. She felt it becoming blank. Evelyn’s voice went on gently : ‘You know, my dear, so many men had these affairs during the War. Hysterical women. I rather agree with you that he should have dropped her when he was living with you again—yet, after all, is it important? He didn’t care for her in any deep way. I am sure you are the one woman he loves.’

  A cynical amusement filled Hervey. So for Evelyn’s benefit the buxom young V.A.D. had become a dancer, an actress. How like Penn that was. She began to laugh inside herself. She laughed, and yet it humiliated her. She felt tired, as if she could not go on. Why has he confided in Evelyn whom he scarcely knows? And he knew that she was not my friend, she said to herself coldly. She felt that something in her had been damaged by it.

  ‘You’re not going to turn him off, Hervey?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Hervey said. She smiled, looking at the other woman with an indifferent stare. She would rather die than let Evelyn see that she had been taken by surprise. Or that anything Penn had done hurt her.

  ‘I feel sure he never meant to betray you. I suppose it happened to him. He’s a boy, for all his twenty-eight years.’