Birthday Party

by C. H. B. Kitchin

  “I suppose,” Cruttley said, “we ought to be getting back.”

  “Why shouldn’t we all have supper at the inn?” I suggested. “An early supper. Do you think your mother would mind?”

  “We could ask her,” Marjorie said.

  We walked back to the farm. Mrs. Cleetham suddenly became an authority in my life—a being whom I must propitiate, a goddess.

  “I don’t see any harm in it, and it’s very kind of these gentlemen, I’m sure,” the goddess answered. “But you must be back by eight at the latest.”

  We assured her that we had to start back before eight.

  The inn was only across the road from the farmhouse. We were shown into a kind of parlour. Marjorie giggled when Judith, her friend, began to lay the table. Rose said nothing, looking wide-eyed, like me, at the dark beams in the low ceiling. The windows were small, and in that glimmering light the oldness of the wood and its smooth but irregular surface seemed suddenly to acquire a meaning for me, to carry me back to a quiet age before I or my creed had come into being—an age when we were more closely linked with the earth, and could still feel our kinship with it. And this earth was our universe. No thought then of protons and electrons. We were living in an age of magic, black as the oak, the prey of forces that transcended us, yet impregnated us. It was a most fantastic reverie. Humanity suddenly ceased to be an end, and I myself became possessed of a dark force that was older than mankind.

  The mood lasted to our farewells to the two girls. Beyond my saying, “I shall come and see you again soon,” I don’t know what was said.

  During the homeward journey Cruttley talked to me a little, and I managed to reply. We said good-night and I went to bed still full of ecstasy, and, thinking suddenly of Carlice, and how I would bring Rose there, got out of bed and knelt down and prayed. “O God, grant I may never let Rose down!”

  Illusion.

  And retribution came next day, with the telegram about Joan. And here I am, in the train approaching Newbury, where the car should be waiting for me. An extravagance this, because I could have taken the slow train to Whitchurch.

  2

  James noticed I was wearing a pale green tie. Oh, I’ll conform all right, so far as I can. I haven’t a morning coat, and won’t commit the folly of buying one. I’ve brought my black school suit with me instead. It’s a bit shiny and tight. If Joan were here, she’d manage to find my black tie. I wonder if Dora has unearthed some black for herself. But I’m forgetting, women can’t suddenly wear something ten years old.

  James is driving very slowly. We might be following a hearse. Perhaps he really feels that this is a sorrowful journey. I ought to be sitting in front, with him, instead of lolling in the back of the car. Joan would have sat in front. So would my father. That shows I’m not really fitted to be a country squire.

  If I can, I’ll speak to Dora quietly and tell her what I intend to do. I’ll tell her at once, quite frankly, that I may be marrying soon. I wonder how she’ll take that. There was a time, after I’d been reading some French novels, when I wondered if she wasn’t in love with me herself. I couldn’t explain on any other grounds why she bothered about me so much, and was always so careful to see that I had little Benjamin’s double portion. I underrated her sense of duty. Since my “conversion” I have tended to underrate the strength of middle-class sentiment.

  I shall say that I may be marrying quite soon, and that, for this reason, it would relieve me if she could begin to make arrangements for her own future. And I shall tell her that even if I don’t marry, I’ve no intention of living at Carlice as an exotic bachelor. Putting it bluntly, I shan’t want Dora to keep house for me. After my birthday, of course. Till then, everything must go on as it has for the last ten years. It relieves me to think that the time till my birthday is so clearly mapped out. Schools, my viva, then a trip to Russia with Gievely and Brench. Then home, a few days before the great event. Then a meeting with my solicitors, who disgorge reluctantly, and I am free. Free, that is to say, to do what I ought to do—the only true freedom. As to this, Russia may clarify my mind. If I read myself aright, Russia will so convince me that I shall really take the plunge and put myself and Carlice at the disposal of the Communist party. This means losing more old friends, just as I’ve already lost Bunny Andrews. But it’s a poor ideal that lets friendship stand in its way—or any other of the bourgeois virtues.

  James drives more quickly now, like a horse with his nose turned to home. No doubt he wants his mid-day meal. As I do. “And when all physical needs are perfectly satisfied, what then?” That was the broadminded clergyman at our last meeting of the Labour Club. “Then,” somebody said, “who knows, we may have the millennium. But they aren’t satisfied yet, and you’ll do more harm than good, Padre, by looking ahead too far.” They reproach us on the score that our creed is materialistic. Yet we are formed of matter. My very feelings are matter—or if they’re not (to quote the horrible old pun) they don’t matter. They are irrelevant illusions, phantasms of escape from a reality you can’t face. O harsh true creed!

  I can say this, and yet know that I myself am the most pitiable prey of illusions. It only needs a fine afternoon in early June, a babbling brook studded with willow-trees, a pretty face, to make me forget all my doctrine, so laboriously acquired. A not unhealthy sign, some people might say. Illusions have a biological value, hence their origin. Yes, but if we know they’re illusions, can we enjoy them? Can we let ourselves go? Isn’t it precisely at such moments that one is most eager to convince oneself that here, at last, we are touching reality? Witness my absorption in the old oak beams of the pub, while Rose was sitting beside me, my certainty that the Infinite had me for once in His Mind. “This has been planned especially for you, Ronald Carlice.” And later, my bedside prayer, “O God, grant that I may never let Rose down.” I still blush at the thought of that prayer. I have prayed—or should have prayed, if I believed rationally in prayer—that I might never be false to what I knew to be right, that I might never let the party down. But never so instinctively, never so fervently. The truth is, I’m still hopelessly and utterly warped. I should start again, not on the first floor at Carlice, but in a communal crèche for children with no parents but the state. How they will laugh at me, these children of the future!

  And I am weak enough to wish to add, “How, if they understood me, they could excuse me.” But there won’t be time for excuses, and why, anyway, should they bother to understand such a transient oddity as myself, while there are new metals to discover, new stars to weigh, new secrets in the electron to explore?

  3

  We have lived through luncheon, tea and dinner. Dora is wearing her black. When I came in, she made as if to kiss me and I wasn’t quick enough to let her. She sniffles, this brilliant June day, as though she has got a cold. “Aunt Isabel will think the garden looking very lovely,” she said. So it is, for those who like that sort of thing. I wandered round it after luncheon—a meal during which we said nothing to one another. The perennials are just reaching their climax, peonies in full flower, delphiniums growing while you wait, lupins covering the bank with massed spikes, iris-beds glittering in the heat-haze—and all the rest of the patter. And on the side of the house facing the drive, every blind has been tightly drawn down. Despite that—or was it because of that?—I had an impulse, after luncheon, to take that walk which we used grandiloquently to call the Big Circle—through the park by Herbert’s field and Wicken’s farm, across three fields, through a wood, out into the fields again past Mildon’s cottage, through the spinney and into the Park again, approaching the garden through the lovers’ walk. The hay was only half mown. They have stopped work, I supposed, in Joan’s honour.

  I walked slowly, wishing to be away from the house as long as I could, and glad to find that I felt no vestige of proprietary pride. Even the little memories that came up—here the site of a “for
tress” that we built when I was twelve, this bank where, one year, five robins nested, the ditch into whose muddy water I fell one Christmas Day—meant little to me. I might have been reading about them in a prolix novel—one of those old-fashioned narratives which assume that small events, occurring to small personalities, are worthy of record. I was far more concerned with what lay before me—with bracing myself to face to-morrow’s ceremony and to-morrow’s company. Aunt Isabel doesn’t come here till to-morrow. She is staying in London, supervising, by telephone, the arrival of Joan’s body. I ought to have done that—if it really had to be done.

  I came in late for tea. Dora insisted on having another pot made for me. I sat with her half an hour when they had cleared away. Small talk mostly, but she did say, “I begged her not to fly. She said she would ask Aunt Isabel what she thought.” I answered, “But of course Aunt Isabel would tell her to fly. It was the sensible thing to do, if she could afford it.” I had the feeling that, despite this accident, Aunt Isabel would tell me to fly to Russia, if it were possible. I ought to admire her for it.

  Then I went out into the garden and read one of my textbooks for Schools. I had suggested that we needn’t dress for dinner. Eames interrupted me three times by calling me to the telephone—two tedious condolences, and a message from Aunt Isabel, to say that there was no hitch in her arrangements. Joan’s body would arrive to time. Isabel was sweet and kind, but I felt slightly sick after talking to her. Then as I was going to wash, the undertaker called, and asked me questions I couldn’t answer. In the end, I gave him Aunt Isabel’s telephone number, and told him to ring her up, and do as she said. It seemed a little unfair.

  I don’t think I’ve ever dared not to dress for dinner at home before. What a confession! Eames didn’t seem, however, to disapprove. Perhaps he regarded my day-clothes as part of the ritual. I had found a black tie among my worn-out socks, and put it on. Aunt Dora had altered her dress a little, but was still in black. I wondered what finery she was cherishing for to-morrow. After dinner, I took coffee with her in the morning-room. We sat in two big chairs, either side of the gunroom door. I studied the carving, scroll by scroll, wondering if it had any beauty. She studied her foot, which tapped irritatingly on the carpet.

  “Ronnie!” she said suddenly in a peculiar voice. And then, not quite knowing what I was saying, I burst out:

  “Auntie Dora, I have been wanting to talk to you for some time.”

  She looked at me like a frightened hen, her head on one side.

  “You know I’m twenty-one on September the eighth,” I went on. “We both know what’s to happen then. Well, I’m afraid it isn’t going to be quite as my father intended.”

  She looked so scared, that I hurried on with, “I mean, when I come into the place, I shan’t just live here as he lived here. I shall use it for some political purpose I think important. If I marry—and I have met someone, as a matter of fact—Aunt Isabel wouldn’t approve and I dare say you wouldn’t——”

  Here she broke in with, “Oh, Ronnie, I do hope you’ll be happy.”

  Her eyes filled with embarrassing tears.

  “I don’t expect to be happy,” I said. “It isn’t what I’m here for.”

  Bunny Andrews would have pulled me to pieces over that remark, but Dora only sat dangerously still, as if she were waiting for some frightful news. Then the sunset struck my face, and I moved to another chair, where she couldn’t see me, unless she altered her attitude.

  “Whether I marry or not,” I continued, “I don’t want this house to go on any longer in the old way—surviving, like a period-piece, from an age which had different social values. In other words—I hate to say it, Auntie Dora—this house will be no place for you. I do hope that doesn’t upset you very much.”

  I paused with conscious feebleness. She drew herself together, as if in desperate search for a dignity which made her slightly ridiculous, and said, “Oh, but of course, I’ve been expecting that. I’ve never thought I should always be wanted here.”

  I almost demurred at the word “wanted,” but thought better of it. Our conversation might too easily slip on to a sentimental plane, full of endearments and veiled reproach.

  Instead, I said, “I think it’s been frightfully good of you to stick it for ten years. I’ve never imagined this house meant much to you.”

  For a moment she wondered how to take that. Then she said, “It was my duty to stay to begin with, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, yes. Some people might think so. Others might have said you were rather wasting your life. I don’t want you to waste it any more.”

  (Why couldn’t the woman say she’d be glad to go?)

  “It has been dull,” she said meditatively. “I had thought, during the last two or three years, specially after Joan gave up farming and came home again, of moving to London. Then I shouldn’t have been in Joan’s way, or in your way, and I should have been leading the kind of life I suppose I was intended for. Is that what you mean by ‘not wasting my life’? I dare say it isn’t, but it doesn’t matter. But I felt somehow I ought to stay the time out. You may understand better some day——”

  To my horror she dabbed at her eyes with an inanely small handkerchief.

  “I know, and Joan knew,” I said uncomfortably, “that you’ve been very good and kind to us the whole time. Just think what frightful rows we should have had if Aunt Isabel had taken your place here. She’d have driven us out—or we should have murdered her——”

  Then an awful thing happened. Dora broke down into roaring tears and said, “She’s murdered Joan. She’s murdered Joan.”

  I got up, went over to her chair and uttered platitude after platitude. “You mustn’t say things like this. You really mustn’t. It’s all my fault for starting this conversation to-night of all nights. But I thought it was such a good opportunity. Auntie Dora, do pull yourself together. It makes me so wretched.” And so on.

  While I spoke, she murmured incoherently about Aunt Isabel and me and having something to say to me, but she couldn’t say it then. It was a real scene. I patted her hand mechanically, fearing that Eames would come in to draw the curtains. In the end, I did say, “Auntie Dora, I’m sure I hear Eames in the hall.” A lucky remark; for she dried her eyes at once and said she would go to bed. I told her that I should also go to bed early, but would take one turn in the garden first. And I said good-night, and added—out of sheer weakness—“Please do forget what I’ve said to-night, if it hurts you.” She looked at me with surprise and said, “Oh, Ronnie, it isn’t that.”

  For a moment I thought she was going to have another attack of hysteria, but then Eames really did come in, and we both scuttled away like rabbits—she into the hall and I through the French window out into the garden, where the real rabbits scuttled away at my approach.

  And so we have lived through lunch and tea and dinner. We’ve still got to live through to-morrow. To-morrow I shall come down late and work myself up into a whirl of inefficiency, concentrating on the arrangements and getting them all wrong, always being in the way and never to be found when I’m wanted, disappearing when I ought to be saying good-bye to someone and going to fetch more sherry without having the cellar-key. Do I tip the undertakers? Or does somebody do it for me? Or isn’t it my place to do it at all, as I’m still a minor?

  I don’t understand how people get through these things and cope with all the paraphernalia of gentility. Perhaps my politics have something to do with this incompetence of mine—this shrinking. “Poor Ronnie, he’s so hopeless in a crisis.” But this isn’t a real crisis. It’s only make-believe—a pandering to a superannuated code. I would have stopped it if I could, but they took it out of my hands. Well, let them see to it. This show is their last chance here—the last of the big parades from Carlice Abbey.

  If Joan were here, she’d laugh and agree with me.

  Ch
apter VII: DORA CARLICE

  THE house is very full of noises to-night. That must be a big moth flapping over there by the window. Tan has clumped downstairs again. Whatever for? Why can’t he settle in his basket? Poor Tan, if I do get a little flat, how he will hate it. But Ronnie won’t want him, and he seems to think he belongs to me. I suppose that’s because I’m here nearly all the time.

  That noise didn’t come from the stairs. That was the morning-room, or even the gunroom. I used to think you couldn’t hear noises in old houses, but you can. We had noises in Elmcroft, of course, but they were different. You knew what and where they were. There is one thing, this furniture doesn’t creak. I suppose it’s too old. The dressing-table I chose for my twenty-first birthday present used to scare me terribly at Elmcroft, till I found out that it was the fitting of the mirror. Cheap new wood. I wonder who’s got that dressing-table now. It fetched twenty-six shillings in the sale, and Daddy paid eighteen pounds. It just shows you.

  It’s silly to think we’re going to be burgled, just because it’s after midnight. We were burgled once here, and it happened when the house was full of people, all dressing for dinner. And our two burglaries at Elmcroft weren’t at night either. One was in the morning, about ten o’clock, and the other—if you can call it a burglary—he just ran in and took the silver tray from the hall-table—at three in the afternoon. The silly maid had left the front door open.

  I shall never get to sleep if I go on thinking like this. But I can’t stop thinking. And reading seems to tire my eyes now. I suppose I ought to see an oculist and get glasses. Oh dear! The things one has to do as one gets older. And I ought to go to the dentist again soon. I know he’ll want me to have those two out, and begin hinting at a small plate which will screw my mouth into a funny shape. I wish I hadn’t such a tiny mouth. There’s no advantage in it, and people don’t admire them nowadays.