Birthday Party

by C. H. B. Kitchin

  Christmas came—a quiet Christmas with Aunt Isabel as our only visitor. I went home feeling I should be made a fuss of, and I was. Even Joan embarrassed me by being strangely considerate, asking me what I should like to do, seeing that I wore my thick coat, and hardly ever contradicting me. It was as if I had had a narrow escape myself—— They were pleasant holidays—but all holidays were pleasant.

  Then, less than a week before I was due to go back to school, the real news came to me, in an issue of our local paper published ten days after my father’s death. It arrived by the afternoon post. I saw the postman coming up the drive and went to meet him. It was dusk, and I didn’t realise that the paper was for me, till I had turned the light on in the hall and read the address:

  Master Ronald Carlice,

  Carlice Abbey.

  Local.

  The paper was done up clumsily with string.

  Auntie Dora had taken Joan to her dancing-class, and I had the house to myself. Even so, I didn’t open the paper till I had gone to my bedroom and locked the door; for I recognised the illiterate writing of the address at once. It was Solly who had sent it—a groom who was dismissed at the end of the summer holidays, for (as I now see it) having a bad influence on me. It was my own fault really; for I used to ask him awkward questions about the horses and encourage him to teach me things I ought not to have known. Still, he was a bad hat. Stephens our bailiff got wind of it, and reported Solly to my father. It was typical of my father that so far from giving me a lecture, he merely said, when I asked nervously why Solly had gone, that he was an unsatisfactory character and neglected his work.

  On the front page Solly had scrawled:

  See page 12.

  It didn’t occur to me that the paper was an old one, till I obeyed the instructions and read the heading:

  Inquest on owner of Carlice Abbey.

  Verdict of Suicide.

  The whole thing was set out in detail, the expostulations of our lawyer, Auntie Dora’s “ordeal in box,” the medical evidence, both as to the “accident” and the depressing effects of influenza. So that was it. Suicide. I knew the secret now.

  When Auntie Dora and Joan came back, I said nothing to them about my discovery, and the next day I found it still more difficult to speak. What most deterred me was the thought of their finding out that Solly had been communicating with me again. There seemed to be something guilty in this last communication of his, just as there had been in those other communications which had corrupted my good manners. Yet this very feeling of guilt had with it, like my previous feelings of guilt, the spice of exhilaration. I remember many a night, after I had gone back to school again, lying awake and listening to the dark blue blind flapping against the dormitory window and thinking to myself, “I am the son of a man who committed suicide.” And in the mornings, I used to awake very early, while all the other boys were still sleeping, and think the same thought as I watched a lozenge-shaped piece of light, let in by a rent in the same blind, move slowly along the wall opposite my bed.

  I told Bunny and for once he didn’t know what to say. At first he pretended to think I had invented the story. I couldn’t show him the paper, as I had locked it up in my treasure-box at home. Then I guessed that he had really known the truth for some time. Probably his parents had talked in the Christmas holidays. After all, the local paper wasn’t the only one to report our trouble. I found out later that there had been a paragraph in The Times.

  “Well,” he said, “even if it is true, I should say nothing.” And he added characteristically, “You’d only upset other people by telling them.”

  This justification for saying nothing at home pleased me very much. In the Easter holidays I felt a secret amusement whenever I imagined Auntie Dora was steering clear of the forbidden subject. Once I even asked her the meaning of the words felo de se. The phrase had come out in a history lesson towards the end of term. She blushed, and dropped some flowers she was arranging, and said, with what indifference she could, “I haven’t the least idea.” I was a little ashamed of having embarrassed her by disregarding Bunny’s words of wisdom. But I should never have dared to put my question to Aunt Isabel. She would very quickly have forced everything out of me and perhaps even (so I then thought) had Solly punished. Oddly enough, my chief feeling towards Solly was one of gratitude for enlightening me. It did not occur to me for a long time that his motive had been mere spite at losing a good situation. He was still in the district, and no doubt had heard of the precautions which our staff used to keep the truth from me.

  It did not occur to me, either, at that age, to wonder why my father had committed suicide. Later, when halfway up my next school, I began to puzzle over it a good deal. I had started to read rather highly coloured novels, in which suicides were not infrequent, and my psychological curiosity had developed. People killed themselves for love, or to avoid indelible disgrace. Very rarely they did so because they were suffering from incurable disease. Sometimes the wrong man would do it, to leave the right girl with the right man. Mere melancholia (unaided by remorse) was not sufficient. I applied these motives to my father, one by one, but none of them seemed to meet the case. The doctor at the inquest had made no mention of disease, except for influenza, and that was not incurable. My father was not heavily in debt. He hadn’t committed forgery, embezzlement or bigamy or brought any other irretrievable disgrace upon his family. He was happily married, and therefore (I assumed from my reading) not in love. Could it have been boredom—boredom with Auntie Dora? I divined that one could be happily married and yet a little bored with one’s spouse. Suicide from boredom with Auntie Dora, aided perhaps by a secret unrequited passion for another woman, seemed the most likely line, though I could find no convincing precedent for it. Again, I consulted Bunny, who had moved on to the same Public School as I had. And again Bunny was indefinite, and unhelpful. I concluded that he thought it morbid of me to give my mind to the subject, and he fell a little in my esteem for being so conventional. This secret of mine gave me a silly importance to myself. I had the feeling that I was different from other people, and enjoyed it. Perhaps Bunny was jealous because there was no veiled tragedy in his own family.

  I had two other close friends at that time, mentally less mature than Bunny, and as a supreme pledge of friendship confided my secret to them. They were thrilled and made suggestions so fantastic that I recoiled. My father was being blackmailed. What for? Rape, murder, anything. Then why hadn’t we heard any more of it? Why should you, they asked. A blackmailer would have no object in making trouble if he couldn’t get money for it. And after my father’s death they would have lost their victim. Or again, had my father been in the secret service? Was he a victim of the Ogpu’s vengeance? He lived at home and did nothing special? That was a blind. Assuredly he was a government agent—or agent of a foreign power. Had I seen any suspicious-looking characters in the neighbourhood? Only, of course, they wouldn’t look suspicious. There were moments when our discussions became farcical. I told Bunny what they said, and he scolded me for having “given myself away.” Perhaps he was jealous that I had taken the other two into my confidence.

  At home, I still pretended—as I pretend now—to suspect nothing. Joan knows, I am almost sure, though I don’t know when she was told. Aunt Isabel probably assumes that I have learnt by this time, though she would prefer not to know how I learnt it, and thinks that, in any event, the subject should not be mentioned. Auntie Dora no doubt thinks that I cannot possibly know, and never will know. At times I almost think she doesn’t know anything herself. Since my question to her about the meaning of felo de se I have been careful never to put her to the test. And I still have a shrinking from saying anything to Joan—a kind of prudishness.

  Besides, there is the possibility that she knows nothing, after all. Despite what one might imagine, there is little strain, after a while, in treating a subject as forbidden.<
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  2

  Now I have altered Carlise into Carlice and my father could survey our name with satisfaction. But would he? St. Peter’s College Labour Club, affiliated to the Oxford University Labour Club. 14th May: Mr. R. Carlice will read a paper on “Labour and Art.” Host: Mr. D. L. Cruttley.

  “I’m rather surprised you’ve joined that,” he would say. “Or are you a visitor?”

  “No. I’m a member. In fact, I’m the secretary. Read the small print on the back page.”

  He would bring out his spectacles and change the subject.

  I must get busy with this paper of mine. I shan’t have time to do any work on it while I’m with the reading-party in the Cotswolds. (Ough! The cold of those draughty rectories and their tin baths at the end of March. I was rather a fool to say I’d go.) Then Easter at Carlice. Too many visitors, Aunt Isabel and probably her friend Gwen Rashdall, that nosey bore Sir Thomas Hill, Lady Calliton and her slick son, who might “do for Joan.” Then Dora will have some of her friends, that Maud Criswell, I suppose, and Maud’s sister and brother-in-law. Perhaps even Dora’s ne’er-do-well half-brother will turn up again like a bad penny. (Could he have had anything to do with my father’s death? Rubbish!)

  I needn’t be with that crowd much really, though I probably shall. After all, Dora hasn’t much longer to go as she is. Exactly six months yesterday. I can’t let her think that she bores me with her friends—or without them, for that matter. Besides, I like Dora—as one says one likes the bus better than the underground.

  Then my friends, to finish the vac. Cruttley, Brench and Gievely. I could write then, but I shan’t. We shall talk all day, and all night, till Brench finishes the whisky decanter. It was silly to have asked him, and I don’t think Cruttley’s right in thinking that he’s got a great future before him, even though his father was in the Cabinet. It’s odd how the sons of Tory Cabinet Ministers go Labour, and the sons of Labour ministers give up politics. Mem.: don’t give Aunt Isabel this handle.

  Labour and Art.

  A bad title, because there’s so much to say. Too many methods of approach. Too many possible theses.

  But, obviously, a paper of this kind at Oxford should have a tilt at the æsthetes—those dreary devotees of art for art’s sake. I must destroy their little hobbyhorse, even if I haven’t time to build up my own. If art is to survive it must be functional. And its function, as the social consciousness develops, is not to show the individual to himself, or set him a pretty pattern on which to develop his personal whimsies, but to display the force and omnipresence of creative evolution and the collective will.

  Now I might consider art that is manifestly wrong, the art that we must do down. A few tags from modern French poetry will come in here. I can start with Bunny’s favourite poem. (A pity he won’t be there to hear me.)

  Je suis comme le roi d’un pays pluvieux,

  Riche mais impuissant, jeune pourtant très vieux . . .

  You could hardly have a better example of overindividualisation.

  Or, even more striking, this:

  Mon âme est une infante en robe de parade . . .

  I imagine that in the proletarian mouth! It’s certainly much easier to find examples of what must go than what might stay.

  Dans le vieux parc, solitaire et glacé,

  Deux formes sont tout à l’heure passées . . .

  Perhaps that’s relatively harmless. But the nonsense I could extract from Mallarmé . . .

  Le blond torrent de mes cheveux immaculés,

  Quand il baigne mon corps solitaire, le glace

  D’horreur, et mes cheveux que la lumière enlace,

  Sont immortels . . .

  Surely that’s worthy of the Index, or a pathological museum? And I needn’t only keep to French poetry. There’s a good deal in English verse, even in classical stuff. Let’s open the Golden Treasury at random.

  Not greatly moved with awe am I

  To learn that we may spy

  Five thousand firmaments beyond our own . . .

  That’s retrograde. He ought to have been moved by awe. At least, it would be better than the egotistical little cult of beauty he cherishes. Let’s try another.

  Deep on the convent-roof, the snows

  Are sparkling to the moon:

  My breath to heaven like vapour goes:

  May my soul follow soon!

  Apart from the inadmissible word soul, it’s the first personal pronoun that damns the poet. That’s a point. Art, especially modern art, is always in the first person. I, me, my. It emphasises our differences rather than our homogeneity. It panders to the cell, rather than the whole body of the state. It differentiates and divides, harps on personal interests, personal importance, even personal property—everything we’re out to smash.

  “Come in!”

  Cruttley is tall, thin and dark,

  The lean and swarthy poet of despair,

  and he looks a bit unhealthy.

  “Hello!” He wants to borrow a book.

  “Yes, I think I can. Hobbes’ Leviathan. It should be by the Rousseau and the Locke and the Spinoza in this shelf. Here you are, Dan. I’m struggling with my paper on Labour and Art. It’s going to make the æsthetes wriggle.”

  “It’s a big subject,” he says judicially, taking the book, “and not too easy.”

  “Well, you must agree with this, Dan. Labour hasn’t any use for art that isn’t social in its purpose. And nearly all modern art is chock-full of personalities.”

  “I suppose you’re taking that line to torment yourself.”

  “Of course not. But even if I am . . .”

  “Well, I only said it wasn’t too easy.”

  “It’s a problem we’ve got to deal with.”

  “I suspect you’re a Communist, Carlice, and don’t really belong to the Labour Party at all. We ought to expel you.”

  “We all must be Communists in theory. I happen to believe in gradualness, that’s all. Labour paves the way.”

  “Why do you believe in gradualness?”

  “Partly because I’m frightened of an upheaval, and partly because I think Communism has more chance if we go slow. If we had a real upheaval, I’m not at all sure Communism would come out on top. But I’m forgetting you’re a Tory.”

  “Thank you! Well, I suppose there’s no enthusiasm like the convert’s. You’ve only been a member of the Labour Club a year.”

  “A year’s a long time, at our age.”

  “I suppose so. Like ten when you’re over forty.”

  “God! Shall we ever be that?”

  “Probably not. Well, I must stick a bit of Hobbes into my essay. What are you doing this afternoon?”

  “Taking Dicky Brench for a walk to Boar’s Hill. It’ll do him good. Why don’t you come?”

  “I’m having tea with the Ryders. Don’t let me forget your book. Come and collect it any time. What marvellous flowers! Where did they come from? South of France?”

  “No. From home. They’re forced, of course. My stepmother sent them. I wish she wouldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it puts me under an obligation to her. Besides, I don’t want them.”

  “Tell her to send them to me next time.”

  “You can ask her yourself when you come and stay at the end of the vac.”

  “I shall, if I dare. Well . . .”

  “Well . . .”

  And he’s left the door open. Why can’t one work with the door open? Perhaps it’s that gentle, irritating swing. I’m crotchety for my age. What shall I be at forty? Damn those flowers! Why didn’t I give them to Cruttley? They’re all wrong. Forced hyacinths and daffodils in an undergraduate’s room. It’s out of date. Goes back to the ’nineties almost. Bunny wou
ld have them. But he’s left us for a handful of silver—a pretty big handful, by the way—or was never with us.

  How he let himself go as the typical undergraduate, bursting out into every expensive caprice—jumping over walls to escape the progs, breaking rules for fun and yet getting a first in Mods, getting drunk and paying for that insane magazine over there to be printed! Europe in tears. What a cover! Purple, green and yellow stripes, and that absurd hermaphrodite under an umbrella.