The Feast

by Margaret Kennedy

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What has this country done that is so very reprehensible?’

  For a few seconds they all gaped in surprise at the renegade.

  ‘This Government …’ began Eirene.

  ‘Oh I know. Most of us don’t like the Government. But why is this country so very wicked? People who deserve to starve must surely be very wicked. Mrs. Lechene … I’ve heard you say you’re a socialist. Do you think this country deserves to starve?’

  ‘It’s not the Government,’ said Anna, a little uncertainly. ‘Any other Government would be just the same. It’s the class war. This whole country is being bitched by anger and spite and intolerance and aggressiveness … a new kind of Puritanism….’

  ‘Don’t you make a rather indiscriminate use of that word?’ broke in Mr. Siddal. ‘Surely we got rid of the Puritans in 1660?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean men in funny hats with names like I—am—but—a—potshard—Hawkins,’ said Anna, with increasing earnestness. ‘I mean Holy Bullies. I mean people who can’t live and let live, but have this lust to be pushing the rest of us around, and pretend it’s for our good. They think their Holy Cause gives them a heavenly warrant to jump on other people’s stomachs. And they seem to run the world now. All the politicians have taken to talking as if they were God’s Head Prefects. Look how they quote the Bible at us! Look how they insult anyone who disagrees with them! They might be parsons, insulting people from the pulpit, where nobody can answer back. These Holy Bullies don’t want people to agree and settle differences. They want to insult and enrage people and force them. Personally, I think it’s a great pity we ever left off being monkeys. They don’t have these holy ideologies. They only fight over nuts or when they’re rutting.’

  ‘And do you really suggest, Madam, that you have left off being a monkey?’ thundered the Canon. ‘I take leave to doubt it.’

  ‘You ask what is wrong with this country?’ exclaimed Mr. Paley. ‘Let me tell you that this country, and not only this country but the entire civilized world, is being rotted and destroyed by the vicious cry for equality. Equality! There is no such thing. It’s simply an eruption of the hatred of the inferior for the superior….’

  ‘Monkeys don’t insist that their ideas are God’s ideas….’

  ‘God,’ proclaimed the Canon, ‘has only one idea.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Mr. Siddal.

  ‘How limited of Him, when we have so many,’ cried Anna.

  ‘… we have cosseted and flattered and pampered the inferior masses,’ droned Mr. Paley, ‘until they really believe themselves equal with their betters. We have told them that they are born with equal rights …’

  Miss Ellis, properly enraged, broke in:

  ‘What betters do you mean, Mr. Paley? Rich people? Why should they claim to be better than anyone else? What have they got to prove it? How are they different? Does a big car and a mink coat make a person better …?’

  ‘… if the people of this country ignore God’s purpose in creating mankind, then God will have no further use for them …’

  ‘… we have allowed every gutter brat to become infected by the idea that he has done something meritorious merely in getting himself born. No matter how incompetent, shiftless, lazy and thick-headed he may be, he thinks he’s entitled to an equal share in the country’s wealth, an equal claim to its respect, an equal voice in its destinies. Pernicious nonsense! In a just society he would be entitled to exactly as much as he deserves. No more.’

  ‘… this country is heading for the scrap heap. Make no mistake about that! We are rapidly sinking to the monkey level …’

  ‘But does anyone want a just society?’ protested Mr. Siddal. ‘I’m sure nobody does. It would be ghastly. Just imagine having to admit that all the top dogs really deserved to be on top! What smugs they would be! And how shame making for the rest of us …’

  ‘… Mrs. Cove blames poor people for wanting nylons and pine-apples. If the rich didn’t have such luxuries they wouldn’t …’

  ‘… far too many people agree with you, I’m afraid, Mrs. Lechene. That is why this country will be scrapped.’

  ‘We’re all going to be scrapped anyway, Canon Wraxton. In a Holy War between Democracy and Communism.’

  ‘No, no, Paley! Let us at least be able to criticize our betters! I’ve only met one duke but I got considerable satisfaction out of finding him a very stupid fellow, and thinking what a much better duke I should have made myself …’

  ‘And what is wrong with nylons and pine-apples, Miss Ellis?’

  ‘If the rich didn’t have them, Lady Gifford, the poor wouldn’t want them. It’s the rich that set the example …’

  ‘… a just retribution on a Godless world. Personally I should treat people who admire monkeys as if they were monkeys.’

  ‘… no sop to poor human vanity. In a just society the under dog would be allowed no self-respect. He’d have to admit he was at the bottom because he was no good.’

  ‘He did admit it, Siddal, for hundreds of years. Before all this nonsense started….’

  ‘I shouldn’t mind, Canon Wraxton. We treat monkeys very nicely. We give them nuts and never preach at them. I wish we were half as kind to each other….’

  ‘We exterminate any animal that has become a pest.’

  ‘Exterminate! That’s a great word with the Holy Bullies. It wasn’t so bad when all that sort of thing was confined to you parsons. You’ve always had a lovely time burning each other at the stake. But the rest of us used to know that it’s uncivilized to lose our little tem-tems and start exterminating anyone who happens to disagree….’

  ‘The mills of God grind slowly….’

  ‘… thinks that nobody is to give him orders, or live better than he does, or understand anything that he does not understand, or work harder….’

  ‘… grind exceeding small! All standards are lowered. There is a universal moral degeneration. Children no longer obey their parents. The Sabbath is profaned. Chastity is ridiculed. The Churches stand empty….’

  ‘… till the country is pulled down to the level of the lowest. And no country can survive at that level.’

  ‘If the churches are empty, it’s because all the religious people have exterminated each other….’

  The noise was terrific. It reminded Sir Henry of the London barrage. The Canon had the biggest artillery, but Anna Lechene’s boom was quite impressive, and the protests of Miss Ellis were let loose on a rising shriek, like a series of rockets. Mr. Paley’s relentless monologue continued, undeflected, droning in to the attack. Mr. Siddal barked intermittently. Lady Gifford’s voice was only heard in the occasional lulls, but she had been talking vehemently for some minutes and she now gained a hearing by getting up from her chair, which forced all the men to break off and get up too.

  ‘Money,’ she was saying, ‘is the root of all evil. Always. I’m afraid I must go to bed now. So tiresome. But I’m under rather strict orders about bed times. And really, you know, if everybody thought less about money it would be quite simple. They think they would be happier if they had more. But that’s not so. The happiest people are often quite poor. Did you never hear that wise old story about the king who …’

  ‘Yes!’ cried everybody. ‘Yes!’

  For there was a general panic lest they should be going to be obliged to hear again that hackneyed fable of the happy man who had no shirt.

  ‘You try being happy with no dinner!’ shrieked Miss Ellis.

  Eirene raised her eyebrows and replied with quiet dignity:

  ‘Naturally nobody can be happy if they’re hungry. But in a happy country, quite poor people get enough to eat, while in a miserable country, like this one, even rich people can’t get enough. We only want money to buy things. We can’t eat money. Yet people think they want it and ask for more and more wages. And that makes everything so expensive they get fewer things instead of more. The higher the wages, the less everybody gets. It all comes from love of money. Good
night! Harry dear … will you give me an arm upstairs?’

  As the door closed behind the Giffords, Miss Ellis sent up another rocket.

  ‘I never! No I never! She ought to be on the dole. Then she’d find out if money matters!’

  ‘Still, she made quite a point,’ said Anna. ‘People do concentrate on cash rather than on getting value for it.’

  Mrs. Cove, who had not contributed very much to the barrage, looked up from her knitting and said, with a sniff of disgust:

  ‘It isn’t money people seem to want, nowadays. We shouldn’t be in this hole if they did. All they want is less work and shorter hours. Hunger is the only call they’ll answer. As soon as their stomachs are full they slack off. They don’t want anything that means effort. They don’t want higher standards unless somebody else pays. You see … you see what will happen when all our money is spent. The schools will be the first to go. For years they’ve educated their children at our expense. When they have to pay for it themselves you won’t hear them howling so loud about education. Look at all the waste and extravagance! In my opinion it’s sheer laziness that is ruining this country. People hate work. They think it a hardship.’

  She sniffed again and held up one grey sock against another, measuring the length.

  Nobody took up her point. Mr. Paley, a little ashamed perhaps at his own volubility, had retired behind a newspaper. Anna and the Canon had shouted themselves hoarse. The only comment came from Miss Ellis, who exclaimed that she had never been so insulted in her life.

  ‘Who by?’ asked Mr. Siddal.

  ‘By a lot of people. I’m not to ask for higher wages; it’s wicked. I’m not to ask for shorter hours; it’s wicked. I’m not to think I’m born with any rights at all; it’s wicked. I’m not to stand up for myself; it’s wicked. If there were more people like me there would be fewer like you, Mrs. Cove.’

  ‘That,’ said Mrs. Cove, ‘would be a pity.’

  Miss Ellis rose, muttering, and flounced out of the room just as Mr. Siddal took up a position on the hearthrug and cleared his throat.

  ‘Don’t tell me you are going to start now!’ cried Anna.

  ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t,’ said Mr. Siddal. ‘All the rest of you have said what is wrong with the world. Why shouldn’t I? …’

  He broke off to cross the room and look out of the window.

  ‘I thought I heard something fall,’ he explained. ‘But it was a false alarm. Nothing there. I thought the Pendizack poltergeist had been at work again.’

  And he came back to the hearthrug.

  ‘What poltergeist?’ asked Anna.

  ‘Didn’t you know we had one? It throws things at night out of the top floor windows … little objects of value….’

  Mrs. Cove sat up abruptly and gaped at him.

  ‘We’ve heard various classes of people blamed to-night,’ he continued, ‘for our sorry condition … the envious, the luxurious … the lazy, the intolerant, and so forth … what! Mrs. Cove, are you leaving us?’

  Mrs. Cove was bundling her knitting into a bag. With an abrupt good night she hastened from the room.

  ‘What a meanie you are, Dick!’ reproached Anna. ‘Is it really those children who have been playing tricks with her soapstone?’

  ‘I strongly suspect that it is.’

  ‘She’ll skin them alive.’

  ‘Oh no! If she does, Paley’s wife and Wraxton’s daughter, not to speak of Nancibel, Robin and Hebe, will skin her alive. The little Coves can look after themselves. The little Coves are immensely powerful! They have got the whole house in their pockets. They are the Meek, who are going to inherit the earth, and they will feast above our graves. But I, being a sportsman, have a soft spot in my heart for poor Mrs. Cove, that dying gladiator. Now I don’t think any one class of individual is to be blamed in this collapsing world. If there wasn’t something a little wrong with all of us we could deal with any one pernicious group. But we can’t because nobody is grateful enough. Ingratitude! That’s what is the matter with everybody. And isn’t that because every man, any man, has a completely false idea of what he really is? He will regard himself as an independent and self-sufficient unit—a sovereign state. And in his dealing with the rest of us he imagines he is negotiating with other sovereign states. No wonder the negotiations break down. For by himself he is nothing. Nothing at all. All that he is, everything that he possesses, he owes to the rest of us. He has nothing that is really his own.’

  ‘He has an immortal soul,’ stated the Canon.

  ‘Which he didn’t make himself. He is simply a creature presuming to negotiate on equal terms with his Creator. If he could ever fully realize what he owes to the rest of us he would be so flooded, so overwhelmed, with humility and gratitude that he would only be anxious to pay his debts, not claim his rights. He’d be the easiest fellow in the world to play ball with.’

  ‘I do not think,’ observed Mr. Paley, ‘that I owe anything to anybody. What I am, what I have, are the result of my own efforts.’

  ‘You didn’t conceive yourself or give birth to yourself. You didn’t invent the language you use, and in which the wisdom of other generations has been communicated to you by other people. You couldn’t even do a noble deed without some help from us: it was we who first gave you a notion of nobility and anyway you’d need somebody else to do it to. You didn’t weave the cloth you wear or grow the bread you eat.’

  ‘I pay for what I have.’

  ‘Do you pay enough? Does anybody pay enough? Has any man repaid a millionth part of all that he has received? Where would you be without us? Did you ever read the life of Helen Keller? Blind, deaf, dumb … a soul in prison … an intellect frozen by solitude … unable to reach us … all alone! And then …’

  Mr. Siddal paused, for Mr. Paley had risen with a smothered cry.

  ‘You said?’

  ‘I said nothing,’ gasped Mr. Paley, who had grown very white.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Anna.

  ‘No. I … I’m ill …’ He turned furiously on Mr. Siddal. ‘You’re talking nonsense. You’re talking rubbish….’

  A spasm shook him and he rushed from the room.

  ‘Now what,’ enquired Mr. Siddal, ‘can I have said? Why should a reference to Helen Keller give Paley a fit? It’s a wonderful story. She found us through the one link left: a sense of touch. They used to pour water on her hand, over and over and over again, and each time they did it they spelt out the word on her fingers. At last she understood. It was a message. We were there. She went half crazy. She rushed round the room, snatching, grasping, touching everything within reach, holding out her poor little fingers for more names, more words, more messages. Then the brain could function. Then the soul could expand. Through her finger tips she learnt all that we know.’

  Anna yawned, and the Canon, leaning back in his chair, tapped impatiently with his foot. They were now Mr. Siddal’s only audience, and they did not encourage him to continue. But he pursued his point, rocking up and down on his heels in front of the fireplace.

  ‘I don’t think that man is going to survive. There is this fatal flaw in our construction; a kind of moral imperviousness to a truth which we can perceive intellectually. Reason tells us that we should be grateful. Reason tells us that, if we were, we might be able to co-operate in the pursuit of happiness. But reason can’t run the machine. It can only draw up blue prints. Civilization after civilization has gone down into the dust because we cannot manage to be humble.’

  ‘And is that why you hog it in the boot-hole all day?’ asked Anna.

  ‘Yes. That’s why I hog it in the boot-hole. I am ‘born but to die and reason but to err.” If everybody else saw that as clearly as I do they would all hog it in boot-holes. But you are all very busy and active in the pursuit of happiness and security. A vain pursuit. You are nothing and you can do nothing for yourselves. You might do something for each other, if you really believed in each other’s existence. But you don’t. Very few people are r
eally able to believe that anybody exists except themselves. Too few. They can never do more than start something which grows a little and then dies.’

  ‘What a ray of sunshine you are,’ said Anna, getting up. ‘Well … I still think the monkeys get top marks. Good night, Canon Wraxton.’

  The Canon did not return her salutation. He waited until she had gone, and then he said:

  ‘Now that we are alone I’d like a word with you, Siddal.’

  ‘If it’s about my son and your daughter….’

  ‘It’s not. I know you count for nothing in this house. No! It’s about a cock-and-bull story that was told to me to-day. I know what is behind it. Somebody wants to scare me out of the place. It’s not the first attempt. And I’m asked to believe that the house isn’t safe; that the cliffs are likely to subside!’

  ‘Who said so?’

  ‘Never you mind. If you don’t know, I shan’t tell you. But there’s no doubt that my informant was set on by somebody or other. Plenty of people here, I imagine, want to get rid of me. If you know who they are, tell them this: I wasn’t born yesterday. They must think of a better lie.’

  ‘Do you mean the Other Cliffs?’

  ‘You know best what cliffs I mean. I was told that you have had a letter from the Government telling you to clear out of this place immediately. Is that true or is it not?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr. Siddal. ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘I thought not. I thought you’d admit as much if I nailed you down to it. Very well. Now I know what to think. I wish you a good evening.’

  Mr. Siddal sat meditating for some time in the empty lounge. Before he returned to his boot-hole he had an impulse to look into the boiler-room. The coke furnace was crackling merrily, and the room was very tidy. There was no way of telling whether all the letters he had left there had been burnt up or not.

  6. The Poltergeist

  ‘Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty,’ counted Blanche, as she stacked the invitation cards.

  ‘But there are twenty-three going to the Feast,’ said Maud.