Company Parade

by Storm Jameson

  ‘He is thirty-one, he will be thirty-two in June,’ Hervey said. Her contempt for Evelyn grew stronger every moment. But she felt hopeless, and bitter against both of them, against the woman, and against the man who had not the common decency to hold his tongue about himself. He is soft and loose, he has no dignity, she thought, bitterly. She sat with a fixed smile.

  ‘He showed me the letter he was sending you about your book. You don’t mind it, do you?’

  ‘Not in the least. Why should I?’ Hervey said. Now I am too tired, now I am done with him, she said to herself. She felt that she disliked every living human being. Her mind shrank from people, from speech and contact with them. She wanted to hide, to run back to Danesacre. I can stand my own people : I can’t stand these spineless literary blokes, she thought. A smile, the reflection outwards of the bitter-tasting Yorkshire humour, crossed her eyes. Her face held its stolid expression, stolid and at the same time evasive, as if she were only half attending to what she heard.

  Evelyn looked at her with quiet satisfaction, in which there was also a little pity. Though there was nothing to be seen, she had felt Hervey flinch under her words. This gratified and made her feel tender towards the young woman. She wanted to do her some kindness. With real delicacy she began trying to discover whether Hervey needed money, or work. She herself needed a literary secretary: she thought that perhaps she could use Hervey and help her with the one coin.

  But here she was bested by Hervey. The girl’s shrewdness came up at once: she would not say that she wanted work. She had the quickness to know that if she said that, Evelyn would make her an offer and it would be a poor one.

  She sat and listened with a reserved smile, and shortly rose. ‘I must go,’ she said, in her light voice. Her voice had scarcely altered since she was a child. Either you liked it or it annoyed you; it vexed Evelyn now, to have failed to manage Hervey as she wished and then to hear her speak in this thin pure voice. She slides out of one’s hand like water, she thought, at a loss and vexed. Her self-importance was roused. To punish Hervey she said good-bye to her with a snubbing dignity. It had no visible effect. Evelyn was left standing with her dignity in her arms.

  Not for the first time, and against her will, she recognised a massive quality in the young woman, enforcing respect. It was not true, she thought, that Hervey slid out of your hands. You came up roughly against a blank wall in her, and found that she had gone. It disconcerted. With sudden certainty Evelyn thought, That young woman is indifferent because she mistrusts everyone: she has raised her bridges, she is cut off from the rest of us by her own act.

  4. The Romantic

  Penn was waiting for Hervey in the brasserie of the Café Royal. He had come up from Oxford only to spend an hour or so with her, and while he waited he watched eagerly the people at the other tables. He loved to come to these places, to feel about him the threads of lives supporting a web round his own. It gave him substance. His mind sucked in sounds and colours like taking a stain, and only to contemplate this stain gave him pleasure, as if he had put it there by his efforts.

  He knew why Hervey was late—she wanted to be sure that he would be waiting, not to have to walk shyly to a table and to sit at it for a few moments alone. Queer creature. He hoped uneasily that she was not going to reproach him for not writing to her oftener. She wants this, she expects that, he thought, but all the time what she is wanting is to punish me for that business. He felt a sharp pity for Hervey because he had made her cry. At the same time the thought of the other young woman stirred him. The two impulses did not interfere with one another. They flowed warmly and naturally in him side by side. Now one now the other drew his senses.

  He did not like to think of Hervey in tears. When a painful thought entered his mind he got rid of it as swiftly as possible. Poor love, my poor love, he thought: deeply moved, he thought, After all it has brought us closer together. And this soothed and softened him.

  He had a copy of Hervey’s novel on the seat beside him. It had been entrusted to him by an undergraduate who wanted Hervey to sign it. Penn had talked a great deal in Oxford about his wife. He was unconscious of lying when he described incidents and triumphs that had never happened. They happened in his mind at the moment he was describing them. The more he could praise Hervey to these young men and make her seem fine and marvellous, the easier he felt. It fed his love and his resentment. He loved her; he was never free of her in his mind. And he deeply resented her. He did not know how deeply, nor from what source he drew his impulses of hate and anger. When he praised her writing he belittled it by adding that she could not have done it without his help.

  Despite himself he knew that he had disappointed her in some way more profoundly and irremediably than by his unfaithfulness. Her life with him had disappointed. But for this she would have forgotten the other. He did not admit it. He said that she was discontented and restless by nature: no human being could have pleased her: and in this way he refused his responsibility, as he had always refused responsibility for their two lives. Her unhappiness, her certainty that she had been cheated, were (said he) her fault. This was true. That on another level of being the fault was his he did not admit. He could not admit it. It remained, a heavy and unrecorded item in the sum of their lives, falsifying the balance.

  He had a letter from Len Hammond in his pocket. It was the first she had written him since, half to please Hervey and half glad to be saved from what was becoming nearly a responsibility, he had ceased going to her. It was a sad letter. She missed him, she was lonely living at home; she missed his talk as much as the other things: ‘dear Penn, you were the only clever intelligent man I have ever known, and you have spoiled me by this for other men. After knowing you, they seem dull and usual.’ Poor Len, poor loving unhappy Len. A deep tenderness was freed in him, like a spring. It soothed and refreshed him. She will believe that I have forgotten her if I don’t write, he thought. Or that I am callous. He could not endure the thought that he would be diminished in the girl’s sight. Already the phrases of his reply to her letter were alive in him. If he had not momently expected Hervey he would have scribbled them down, so eager was he to comfort and be comforted. And if she wanted it, he would see her. Not as before, not to have her, but only to comfort her and to prove, to himself and her, that he could withstand the temptation.

  On the seat beside Hervey’s were two books Evelyn had sent him that morning. They came as he was leaving his rooms and he had not wished to leave them behind. In the train he looked at them and thought of the moment when he would lay one carelessly on the table before Hervey with the words:

  ‘I’m reviewing this for the London.’

  Already he saw himself become indispensable to Evelyn. She would rely on him more and more, until the day when she would suggest his joining the staff as her assistant. Assistant literary editor to the London Review. Literary editor, Mr Penn Vane, the well-known critic, essayist, and bon viveur. He smiled, then checked himself quickly. Thank God I don’t need success, he thought solemnly: I can be happy without it.

  Hervey came into the room. She came a few steps and hesitated, looking for him. Well he knew that air of stiff self-possession: it meant that she was ready to sink into the ground, in an agony of doubt at finding herself alone here. He stood up in his place and waved. He could see the sudden relief in her face.

  She seemed small coming towards him. For a moment the fumes of his self-destroying egotism cleared and he saw her as, when she was most nearly free, she was—eager, mistrusting herself, shy, clumsy, too sensitive, too proud, buying liking with affection and services. He saw that neither her pride nor her kindness saved her. She is as awkward as a child, he said to himself; and he saw her learning and forgetting not to expose her greenness to every wind. But now she had seated herself at the table. She dragged her hat off and laid it between them, in the careless way that vexed him. That intractable forehead showed all too plainly since she had taken to brushing back her hair. Childlike? He glanced at i
t and at her long stubborn jaw with a revulsion of feeling.

  Hervey folded her hands and looked at him with her sudden intimate smile. Had he, she asked anxiously, been long here waiting for her?

  ‘Of course,’ Penn said. He spoke with selfconscious humour at the waiter. ‘Luckily I realise that women have no sense of time.’ The man returned a civil grin, which pleased him and he was again softened to Hervey. He squeezed her arm.

  Hervey disliked this clowning so much that she could not look at it. She kept her head down. When the man went away she asked hurriedly whether he was happy at Oxford. At once he began to describe the intrigues surrounding his election to a certain literary society. One man had sworn to keep him out. ‘And I know why the swine is doing it,’ he said, in an arrogant voice. ‘I fairly showed him up at dinner the other night, when he was talking of piloting an aeroplane. You don’t know the rudiments of flying, I said to him. And I proved it.’

  Hervey listened to him with a feeling of ironical wonder. Would he never realise that he created the hostility he met? People liked him at first sight, for his easy amiable manners, his flow of talk (even though his stories were not true). To buy only a moment’s triumph he turned their liking to enmity, but then he did not know what had happened. He is insensible, she thought. Even that was not true.

  He now looked at her with a complacent smile. She felt that she no longer admired him. To have lived through so much, the timidities of first love, the delight, the shame, poverty, ecstasy, the birth of a son, to have had so much, and after so much to sit here, to look, to feel, to think that this man’s nostrils are gross and impudent, that he is too familiar with strangers (the grinning waiter), or offensive without cause, that he is not known or too cruelly known—I know the hands the face the tongue the voice the words, she thought. From to-day I should like to think, I don’t know them. Or I have not known them.

  But she was ashamed, and thought, I am denying the person I know best in the world.

  Looking for something to say, she saw the books. ‘I have just seen Evelyn. She said you were going to review for her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Penn said. ‘As a matter of fact, these two books are review copies.’ He gave her her own book to sign. ‘Not a bad start, I think. I’m glad now I didn’t write any hack articles for other papers. If you don’t mind my saying so, pup, that thing you had in the Daily Post last week fairly dripped sentiment. I blushed. You won’t do your reputation any good by it.’

  ‘I know,’ Hervey said. ‘But it was ten guineas.’

  ‘Not to be sneezed at,’ Penn smiled. ‘Never mind, my dear. The day I finish with Oxford we’ll settle down somewhere and you shall write only masterpieces.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Hervey said.

  ‘By the time I leave I shall have a reputation as one of the few real critics. Though I say it myself, I know how to write really subtle criticism. It may not be as impressive as writing novels but in a modest way it’s useful, it’s useful.’

  ‘Good critics are infinitely rarer than novelists,’ Hervey said. He had made her, as he could, feel sorry for him. She hoped with sharpened anxiety that Evelyn would like what he wrote and would praise him. She had only a little faith in Evelyn.

  To give him pleasure now, and so that he would not lose it if things turned out badly for him, she began to say, Why not write an entire book of criticism? ‘You could do that at the same time as your reviews, and it would be a more solid achievement.’ He was very willing to do this, and she began to plan it, using for her notes the wrapper of one of Evelyn’s books. In these few moments they were good friends and she thought, How foolish I was to marry; we went on very well before, and we could now, if it were not for the burden of intimacy.

  He had to hurry back to Oxford at six o’clock. And she went off to see David Renn. She walked quickly along the lighted streets. At night London is diminished by the weight of darkness about it, and the people against whom one brushes are smaller and spectral. To walk then alone is to fancy oneself a ghost. This ghost of Hervey went on, thinking of her husband. Suddenly she thought, A woman is living whose knowledge of him is as intimate as mine; for three years she knew better than I, since she knew that they were deceiving me and made plans to see each other; was taking her to himself; she knows many of my secrets (why should he hold his tongue?) and she will know this of me as long as she lives.

  She felt herself growing hot, her heart thudding. An indescribable bitterness and anguish filled her and the nerves of her chest ached. It was Penn did this to me; it seems to be impossible. It is unbearable. I want now to forget. I can’t believe it. I can’t forget it. That it should be me. There were plans, secrets, thoughts in their minds of me. I am mad with bitterness. Why, tell me why Penn did this to me. Tell me now. To have an excuse for clapping her hand to her chest she drew her coat over it. Now she passed a spectre who made the same gesture. Now she was crossing Trafalgar Square, where the fountains were still. At once words springing in her mind falling returning echoing comforted her. The fountains are still. Are not my fountains still?

  5. Husband and wife

  T.S. found his wife’s room empty. He waited for her in the window, where he could see the river, the lights along the river, and on the south side a line of buildings that for all he could see were walls leaning on darkness. God be thanked for ships, he thought. If we had always had aeroplanes we should have had less need of rivers, and London Paris Vienna and all their sisters might have hung dry tongues out of their mouths. At night the Thames is the second loveliest river, running as dark under its reflected lights as when the Romans first laid eyes on it. These died in any case. Before the Romans there were savages living not too comfortably down there. Civilisation advances some thousand years ; and there are still shivering half-starved men trying to live through a February night on the bank of the river. God be thanked for picric acid. Some February evening the aeroplanes will come and the whole thing will go up in dust and flame.

  He heard his wife come into the room, and turned round. A curious impatience seized him. He wanted to punish her for having made him a fool and at the same time he did not care to see her again, he was indifferent and tired. These contradictory impulses fought in him while another, which he did not recognise, stood and watched. He saw that she was slightly disconcerted to find him in her room.

  ‘Are you expecting a visitor?’ he grinned. ‘One of your devoted young writers?’

  To his surprise she looked taken aback and frightened. ‘Surely you are not afraid of me?’ he said gently. ‘Come, this won’t do, Evelyn.’ He found a difficulty in speaking, as though he were short of breath. He had never seen her look like this. He was sorry for her, but behind this pity, as it might be a quiet anteroom, his mind was in tumult with bitterness and resentment. His head felt hot. He controlled with effort a strong impulse to hurt her. Shall I tell her that she is being used by Ridley? He knew precisely how to humiliate her, with what words.

  Looking at her, he said: ‘You’re less intelligent than I thought, my dear. No—believe this. I looked up to you, you know. Your self-assurance and all that. Now I realise that was a fake. Actually, you’re on the defensive; bored; very very clever without being especially intelligent.’

  ‘You’ve changed too,’ Evelyn said.

  ‘I know. Poor Evelyn.’

  ‘Was it only the War?’

  ‘I daresay.’ He felt that he would lose control.

  ‘You lost interest in me. I might not have had a husband.’

  ‘So you had to fill my place,’ T.S. said. He bit on a shocking epithet for Ridley. ‘Sorry,’ he said, smiling and looking into her face. ‘Forgive an old soldier. But your own want of taste shocks me. I at least never wanted to make use of you to better myself.’

  ‘You’re intolerable.’

  ‘I know, I know. But there you are. You can’t tell what effect these human joinings and disjoinings are going to have until they’ve had it. Indeterminacy of emotions. Mark y
ou, I don’t pretend to understand it. Why should I, because I know the precise shape and texture of let’s say your thigh, and I know that you breathe with a sort of bubble when you’re falling’ asleep, and I know certain gestures you make in the act, why should I mind Ridley knowing? We’re still not civilised. But of course marriage is uncivilised —only fitted to animals or saints. Could you conceive any worse form of relationship for two intelligent beings than one that forces each of them to know whether the other takes cascara, coughs, spits, scratches? Upon my word, I can’t.’

  ‘Please go away,’ Evelyn said.

  He felt as though he had talked himself empty. There’s a fine dish of tripes for you, he thought, looking at his words. Has she the right to be offended? Of course. One should preserve appearances.

  He went away.

  Evelyn sat still, and heard him go out of the house. She had come in the last moment to feel angry; but it was a double anger, with the feeling that she had been spared. He should have said nothing. He should have said more. She was left at a loss. It was as if he had judged her only as a woman and contemned her—as cruelly as if he had pitied her for being deformed or old. For such scorn, and such pity, she had no defence.

  The door opened and William Ridley came in. He was wearing a new thick coat, in which he looked fat. He stumped across the room to his chair, sat down, thrust his legs forward apart, and smiled at her.

  ‘You look rare and glum,’ he said, smiling. ‘Anything wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said gently. ‘Let me see, was I expecting you? Is there anything I wanted to ask you?’

  ‘Never you mind about asking me anything,’ Ridley grinned. His mood of excitement and exaltation lifted him above snubs. At these moments he obeyed easily the rule he had made for himself on coming to London—to remember that since all but a few people accept you at your valuation the higher you put it the better. He was actually deeply impressed by himself, but at the same time he had to deal with an unseen traitor—the lonely miserable squirmings of a Ridley no one except himself had seen. And just because this squirming creature existed, William Ridley was ready to despise a woman who had surrendered to him, even when he was overflowing with gratitude to her. Already he had begun to feel that Evelyn was scarcely worth devotion—and this feeling was far from being soothed by the suspicion in his mind that as a critic of literature she rated him a great deal lower than she had yet allowed herself to say.