Birthday Party

by C. H. B. Kitchin

  When I revived, I was in my bedroom, on my bed. I stirred my eyelids cautiously and saw the headmaster, the matron and the games-master standing by. The games-master was a hefty brute. No doubt they had brought him there in case I was violent. I nearly laughed. Instead, I simulated a decorous return to consciousness. The games-master took my arm and said, “Steady on, old man.” The headmaster, with a querulous dignity, said, “Sir, you’ve been drinking. You smell vilely of drink.” The games-master said, “Sir!” (to the headmaster, not me); the matron said, also to the headmaster, “Don’t you think, Mr. Elder——” and I interrupted them both by saying, “Mr. Elder, I wish to give immediate notice to leave your Academy.” Then I did laugh, with big rolling hysterical laughter. The games-master said, “Steady on, old man. We’ve telephoned for Dr. Rusper and he’ll be here any minute now.” I replied, “I don’t want a doctor,” but the matron said, “Oh, yes, you do, Mr. Payne,” and I thought I had better leave it at that. For some minutes there was a silence. Then the headmaster coughed and said to the games-master, “Keep an eye on him, will you?” and walked out of the room. I told the games-master that his presence was unnecessary, but he didn’t move. Then I asked the matron why, if I must have a doctor, they had sent for Rusper instead of the school doctor. “Well, he’s a relation of yours, isn’t he?” she said. I protested that he wasn’t, though I couldn’t deny, to the games-master, that Rusper had taken over my father’s practice. There was another silence. I got up, with the games-master’s eye very closely upon me, took a book from a table by the window, settled down on the bed and began to read. This seemed to relieve them. The matron murmured that she had something to do, and went out. The games-master sat down on a flimsy cane chair. The seat creaked a little under his weight and he got up. “You’d be safer in the armchair,” I said. Those were the last words I ever spoke to him.

  Rusper arrived about an hour later. I judged at once that he was afraid of a scandal—almost as if he had married a Payne and not a Bain. For this reason, he was on his best behaviour, even with me. When we were left alone together, he said how frightfully sorry he was to hear of my breakdown. He realised how painful the associations of the school must be for me. Wouldn’t I like to get away at once? He knew of a home managed by a medical friend of his, a Dr. Duparc, where I could have the rest and change of which I was in need. It was not far from Worthing. Would I consent to let him motor me there that very night? I said I should be delighted, and thereafter resolved only to speak to Rusper in words of one syllable.

  The matron came to pack my things. I gave her a picture of a ship, which she had once admired, and she shed a quick tear. I felt very happy but tired. During the journey to Worthing I slept or pretended to sleep most of the time. Rusper asked me no questions, and on arrival at the home a nurse took me in charge, gave me some hot milk, and sent me straight to bed. It was a dilapidated house in big grounds, and reminded me of private asylums in detective-stories in which the heroine is nearly ravished by a maniac doctor. I wondered if Dr. Duparc would be a maniac. I was quite sure I was not.

  I met Dr. Duparc the next morning, and found him most agreeable. He was half French, and a pleasant change from the people I’d been meeting. He asked me several questions and I answered them truthfully and intelligently. “I take it,” I said, “that I’m under observation here?” He spread out his hands in an absurd gesture and said, “But of course!” and laughed loudly. I laughed too, rather nervously. “How long will the observation take?” I asked him. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I cannot say yet. A month. Six weeks . . .” “And how much does it cost?” I continued. “Ten guineas a week,” he said. “Our usual fees are of course much higher, but I am only too willing to make a concession to Dr. Rusper, and to you.” “All right,” I replied, “I’ll stay here for six weeks.”

  I did, and really the time passed very pleasantly, in spite of the oddness of some of my fellow-patients. Duparc was an interesting man, and won my esteem by admitting that he found Rusper unsympathetic. I had long talks with him in French, a language which I was glad to brush up. He listened to me with close attention, and I began to feel that I was enlarging his mental outlook—almost as if I were a senior partner in his establishment. In fact, the interlude was so agreeable that I was sorry to leave. If only Duparc were still alive, and Rusper wanted to send me back to him for a few weeks I might almost give way. But Ebermann, the psychoanalyst, is a very different person. I’ve read some of his articles in the papers, and loathed the tone of them. His mission is to root out man’s “illusion-complex”—which is his name for my scheme of realities. I well see what a pitiably drab creature I should turn into, if I went to his clinic. Besides, there is no possible ground for my being sent there. I will not go just to gratify Rusper’s vanity.

  I must admit that when I left Barling House School, Rusper behaved fairly well. But he wasn’t pleased that I got on so well with Duparc, nor at the glowing testimonial Duparc gave me. He was less pleased when I refused to submit myself to periodical observation by him, and declared that I was going to live my own life and form my own contact with the core of life, in my own way, wherever I chose. And I don’t suppose he was pleased when I walked out of his consulting-room in the middle of one of his sentences.

  Perhaps that’s why my second lapse—an accident, really, and not a lapse at all—goaded him into declaring war on me. Yes, it was a most unlucky accident that Catherine should come to Boschurch in March to give her influenzal children some sea air. It might have been better if she had come to my hotel—though it would have been too small and cheap for her. Then I should have met her in the ordinary way, said a hurried how-do-you-do and moved on somewhere else the next day. But finding her in the lounge of the Grand, among all those people, wearing a shoddy suburban evening dress, was too much of a shock.

  The bar had just closed and instead of going out by the proper door—bad luck again—I had got into a long shame-faced passage which led deviously to the hotel. I had been treating myself to a night-out, and perhaps I was a little elated. I was far from drunk. If I did misbehave, it was through shock, not drunkenness. But really, I don’t think I did. I came out of the twisting passage straight into the lounge. I was in shabby flannel trousers and a blue jersey. The people in the lounge were in evening dress, reading the paper, playing bridge and talking in whispers. Catherine was bang opposite me, making some sort of woollen garment, I suppose for one of her children. When she saw me lurch in—though I didn’t lurch much—she shrank back as if I were a snake. I held a palm tree gently in my left hand and said, “My God! It’s Catherine.” I admit I spoke too loudly, but that again was the contrast between the bar and the lounge. In the bar you had to shout to make yourself heard. The lounge was as quiet as a Sunday school.

  I repeated, “My God! It’s Catherine.” Then she made her mistake, and pretended not to know me. In a flash I pictured Rusper saying to her, “You will realise that further contact with that person is undesirable,” and the thought made me determined that she should know me. I advanced two paces from the door, unfortunately still holding the palm which balanced dangerously in its brass pot, and said, “I’m not going to allow you not to know me, Mrs. Rusper.” By this time two old ladies had edged away, and a stout bald youngish man had constituted himself Catherine’s protector. “I think you’ve come to the wrong door,” he said. “I advise you to clear out quickly, or I shall have to call the porter.” Then he turned and shouted to someone further down the room, “Call the porter, will you? There’s going to be trouble here.” “There is going to be trouble,” I said, “if you are going to interrupt my conversation with this lady. Catherine, will you ask your friend to go away?” I spoke in my educated schoolmaster’s voice, and the champion of beauty in distress was rather taken aback. Catherine could have saved the whole situation if she had said, “Why, yes, this is an old friend of mine,” or something of the sort. But she didn’t. She turned
away from me and said, “I think, Mr. Dudeney, you had better call the porter. I don’t want to speak to this gentleman.” Then I made a mistake and tried to justify myself. “You see,” I said to Mr. Dudeney, “she doesn’t deny she knows me. I can tell you her name and all about her. She used to be a Miss Bain, and lived at ——.” Then the porter arrived, an undersized oily-haired youth. He too lost his head. (We were like the great powers on the outbreak of a war.) Making himself as truculent as he could, he said, “Look ’ere, you ’op out of this quick!” and advanced till his brass buttons were almost touching my jersey. I drew back with an attempt at dignity, and pulled the palm, which I was still holding, sideways so that it overbalanced and fell on the floor, with its brass pot rolling to Catherine’s horrified feet. This was too much for the porter and Mr. Dudeney, the knight-errant, and each seized one of my arms and marched me through the assembled visitors to the door. It was too much also for me, and I let myself be led away quietly. “This matter will, of course, be reported to the management,” Mr. Dudeney said, “and no doubt they’ll take action.” “They’d better not,” I replied. “I can afford a solicitor, and I warn you we shall all look pretty silly. I did know the lady very well. She ought to have spoken to me.” “That’s her affair,” Dudeney said. “Where do you live?” I told him I was staying at the Brigantine at the cheap end of the town. The porter sniffed with contempt on hearing the name of my inn and, turning to Dudeney, he said: “I can see him there, sir. He’s not going to give any more trouble to-night.” “I shall walk home alone,” I said, and began to do so before they could protest. I didn’t turn round to see if the porter was following me, but there was no sign of him when I reached my lodging.

  There the silly little episode should have ended. But it didn’t. I was having a cup of tea in bed the next morning about nine o’clock when the maid came up and said there was a Dr. Rusper to see me. I said that I was sorry I couldn’t see him. She came up again almost immediately and said that Dr. Rusper insisted on seeing me. He had to catch a train back to London at twenty to ten and couldn’t wait. “Tell Dr. Rusper,” I said, “that I don’t want to see him. Tell him I refuse to see him.” When she had gone I nipped out of bed and bolted the door. In a minute or two I heard Rusper’s heavy footsteps on the stairs and an imperious knock on the door. I whistled loudly. It was the most irritating thing I could think of doing. Then, after another bang on the door, he said, “I strongly advise you to see me, Payne.” I whistled as loudly as I could. He went on, “I’m not here to waste my time, or yours either. If you don’t open the door within two minutes I shall have to take other steps.” “Take them,” I thought, and continued to whistle breathlessly till I heard him go away. I dressed and came downstairs about an hour later, and the landlord, who had been waiting for me, took me aside and said apologetically that he must ask me to leave that day. I told him I should be glad to go, and should have gone in any case when my week was up. And so I left Boschurch two months ago, under a cloud, and came to the King Stephen Hotel, Thurlow-on-Sea, which I like much better than Boschurch. But I felt something would happen as soon as I gave Dora my new address, and sure enough Rusper’s ultimatum came within four days of my writing to her—poisoning the whole future and making the present seem so incredibly sweet that I cannot bear to think of its ending. It shan’t end. I’ll blackmail Dora at Carlice Abbey, if necessary.

  6

  “The afternoon passed like a beautiful bird flying across a blue and white streaked sky.” A phrase from my novel, of which I was thinking earlier in the day, during the motor-drive. Yes, it did pass like that. A house in the remote country with long drive guarded by a lodge, as the house-agents say. Mrs. Temperley and Mrs. Adams were greatly impressed. So was I. And I was glad that only the old lady and two children were at home. I could sit without talking and watch while she poured out tea—flash of sunlight on the silver tea-pot and rings glittering delicately on her lithe tapered fingers. Smell of pot-pourri from the carved wooden mantelpiece. Thick, white panelled walls, with the windows so deeply recessed that the world seemed utterly shut out.

  A happy image this, to fall asleep on. The glittering of those rings upon those fingers, now raised, now dropped, but each time with appropriateness, fascinated me. I was reminded of Dora’s sister-in-law, Miss Isabel Carlice, whom I met twice at Carlice Abbey. She had the same fingers, and the same leisure in her voice. Younger, of course, than the lady who entertained us to-day. And more alarming, I suppose. At least Dora seemed frightened of her. But full of an assurance of peace and effortless perfection. (How foolishly we have exalted effort into an ideal, forgetting it can never be more than a means to an end.)

  I shall write and ask for one of the photographs the child with the new camera took to-day and send it to Dora. “You see where I go visiting,” I shall say—leading up to it carefully. “A house which reminded me of yours, though less venerable. If you come and see me here, I’m sure Lady Evans would let me take you over to tea.” Surely that will make Dora understand that I’m respectable and responsible and whatever else she and Rusper want me to be. The photograph was a very happy thought. And, as I stood behind that little balustrade, my shabby shoes were hidden. “Mrs. Temperley, Mrs. Adams and Mr. Stephen Payne visiting the home of Lady Evans.” It’s really worth passing it on to Rusper. “Stephen is at last making good,” Dora will be able to say to him. “He’s mixing with nice people. Perhaps some day he’ll write another novel which won’t be such a flop. Hadn’t we better give him time?”

  No use. She won’t move Rusper like that. I’ve insulted his wife and, worse, insulted him. And he has the whip-hand over my allowance, and knows that I can’t get work because secretly I don’t want what they would call work. I suppose if I was actually starving I should want it—but not if there was any easier way out—petty theft, blackmail, cadging. People who don’t know me would think worse of me for this than they need. And who does know me, really?

  The full moon now is opposite my window, looking at me as it looked at Faust, at the beginning of Goethe’s play. The moon which they can’t yet think of spoiling, as they can spoil the earth, making it into an ant-hill with ant-inhabitants—the moon which will be increasingly unimportant for them, just as it will become increasingly important for me. The unproductive moon. I size them up in that adjective. But reality is not productive, and my grip on it is surer than theirs.

  There will be moonlight over the little harbour now, and moonlight over it again in October, when I have got over the crisis. They can’t stop moonlight, even if there are bombing aeroplanes fluttering in its indifferent rays—even if, like the man in Dowson’s poem, I am beating delicate mad hands against the bars of Dr. Ebermann’s clinic. If it doesn’t matter what happens to me, then nothing matters. A lifetime of philosophy has taught me this. But I have a strength which can let a good many things happen to me without my being shattered. I can be sick with fear, and yet happy in a remote and sidelong way. I must cling to that remoteness, and look at life—by which they mean life’s biological and mechanical appearance—in my own peculiar sidelong fashion. A curse on the head of the man who invented the word “escapist”—a word as dangerously misleading as the schoolboy words “swot” and “pi,” coinage of the herd endeavouring to do down its betters. I was called both—“swot” when I was working for a scholarship, and “pi” when I refused to—but that’s no image on which to fall asleep.

  I will fall asleep enchanted by the glitter of rings on tapered fingers—Miss Carlice’s, Lady Evans’, and those of all other ladies whose existences I value. Their soft voices, unhurried but clear, shall lull me to sleep, while the rays of the sun, and, after the sun, of the moon, fall like notes of music on their raised rings and silver ornaments. Come, wave black veils in the moonlight, lovely ladies. Come, sing me to sleep with a lapping of harbour waters, with comfort and the peace of a long dream. . . .