The Feast

by Margaret Kennedy

  ‘It’s getting me down,’ she declared as she pulled off her clothes. ‘Really it is. Every morning I have to drag myself there, and I can’t get out quick enough at night. All the spite and the quarrels and the unpleasantness! It’s only a few people, but they make a regular inferno for the rest of us. You wouldn’t believe so few could do such a lot of harm. Of course Ellis is the worst. Know what she’s saying now?’ She paused to pin her curls on the top of her head. ‘She’s going round telling the visitors that the Hotel is insanitary. Says the Government says it’s got to be closed.’

  ‘Old cat!’

  Mrs. Thomas put the basin on a chair in front of the range and filled it from the big kettle.

  ‘If I could catch her at it I’d go straight to Mrs. Siddal, I really would, though I hate tale telling. But she’s just doing it for spite, to crab the hotel, and it ought to be stopped.’

  ‘How do you know she’s saying it, then?’

  ‘Fred. That’s why I don’t like to interfere. He always gets hold of the wrong end of the stick … and it doesn’t do to accuse a person unless you’re quite sure of what you say. If I’d heard it myself it would be different….’

  Nancibel knelt in front of the basin and began to soap her arms, breasts and shoulders.

  ‘… He was collecting the tea tray on the terrace and he heard her talking to Mr. Paley in the lounge. So along comes Fred to the scullery and says: heard the news? This place, he says, has got to be shut down. Mr. Bevin’s written to Mr. Siddal …’

  ‘Mr. Bevin!’ cried Mrs. Thomas. ‘Never!’

  ‘He’s in the Government, isn’t he?’

  ‘Foreign Minister, you silly girl. Got quite enough on his mind arguing with the Russians. No, it’s Bevan more likely.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Nancibel. ‘Bevin and Bevan … I always mix them up myself, so you can’t blame Fred.’

  She stood up to lather her hips and thighs.

  ‘I don’t know how you girls manage to be so ignorant,’ complained Mrs. Thomas. ‘You’re supposed to be so much better educated … you learn I don’t know what all at school. But you don’t read the papers and you don’t listen to the wireless and you don’t know anything about the country. Now I left school when I was thirteen, but I do take an interest, and I go to the W.I. lectures, and I know the difference between Bevin and Bevan.’

  ‘Be a honey, Mum, and scrub my back.’

  ‘You’re nothing but a baby,’ scolded Mrs. Thomas, fondly.

  ‘You scrub Dad’s back.’

  Nancibel knelt luxuriously before the fire while her mother scoured her beautiful white back, kneading shoulders, spine, ribs and hips with the ancient and ritual art of women who have, for hundreds of years, soothed the tired muscles of their men.

  ‘Your Dad gets stiff in the fields.’

  ‘So do I get stiff at Pendizack. That’s ever so lovely. Go on!’

  ‘But what’s wrong with Pendizack?’ asked Mrs. Thomas. ‘Could it be the well, d’you think? They say wells are insanitary, nowadays.’

  ‘I’m sure I hope not. They’d never have the cash to bring the company water all the way down from Tre-goylan. I told Fred to keep his mouth shut and mind not to repeat such a story. But it shows you the sort of spiteful thing I mean. Going on all the time. I don’t want to let Mrs. Siddal down, but I can’t stand much more of it.’

  ‘Want me to dry your back?’

  ‘If you would do! I’m not the only one to feel they can’t stand much more of it. We had quite an argument in the kitchen, before I came off, about this picnic tomorrow. The children want it up on the Point, but Gerry, he says we can’t lug all that food and drink up there, why not have it on the rocks just outside the garden gate? So then Miss Wraxton said just what I’ve been saying. She said no, it’s got to be as far away from this hotel as we can get, she said. Nobody could hope to enjoy themselves anywhere near this place, she said. And Mrs. Paley said the same. Get up and get out was what she’d been feeling all the week. And it’s quite true. You’d never be able to forget all the nastiness there is going on there, or else poor old Mr. Paley would be putting his dreary face out of the window, like a horse looking over a gate, or else Canon Wraxton would rush out and throw something at anybody. Honestly Mum, that place may not be insanitary, but it’s something a lot worse. Nobody could be happy inside a mile of it.’

  Nancibel stood up, relaxed and refreshed after her massage. She yawned and stretched her arms above her head, filling the little kitchen with her naked glory.

  Mrs. Thomas made a sound of agreement, but her attention had wandered back to the letter behind the ink bottle, and the fear that an important decision might be made too hastily. Because, she thought, even if he is a bit soft, won’t he be the easier to manage? And the life would be easier, easier than mine, though she won’t be getting such a good man as Barny. I would like for her to have something better than I’ve had…. Question is: how better? P’raps that Bruce …

  She took the basin into the back kitchen while Nancibel put on an old coat and collected her clothes.

  ‘That chauffeur …’ began Mrs. Thomas, coming back.

  ‘Oh, he’s gone,’ said Nancibel quickly.

  ‘Gone? I thought they were staying till …’

  ‘He’s left that job. Gone off to get himself a better one.’

  ‘Well … I call that a bit sudden. Sounds a bit impulsive to me, leaving a good job all of a sudden like that! Nancibel … I think you ought to consider seriously about Brian before …’

  ‘Oh no, Mum. I couldn’t ever. I’ve outgrown Brian.’

  ‘This Bruce … will he ever come back, d’you suppose?’

  ‘He might do,’ conceded Nancibel, flushing.

  ‘Well, let’s hope, if he does, you don’t start finding you’ve outgrown him too!’

  Nancibel pondered.

  ‘I don’t think I shall,’ she said slowly, ‘if he does come back.’

  ‘You’ll outgrow the boys on the other side of your face one of these days,’ cried Mrs. Thomas in sudden irritation. ‘You’ll outgrow yourself into an old maid. Twenty years time, when you’re wearing the willow, you’ll be sorry you went about outgrowing everybody in such a hurry!’

  Nancibel laughed and went up the steep little staircase, on tiptoe, to the bed which she shared with her sisters. Mrs. Thomas sighed, turned off the radio, and followed her.

  Friday

  1. Mr. Paley’s Diary

  I have had my dream again. I said that I should set it down here if I had it again. But the memory fills me with such horror that I can scarcely write.

  It was Siddal’s fault. He brought it on. If he had not said what he did, I might have escaped this dream.

  I could not shake off the impression for many hours after I woke. I was alone. Christina leaves me alone now, every night.

  I had gone to bed rather early, after some conversation in the lounge. Perhaps I had become over-excited, and that made me dream. Christina came in. She was changing her shoes. She told me that she wished to remain here until the end of the month; two weeks longer than we had intended. There is some trouble here. They say Mrs. Siddal is ill. Miss Wraxton is to be cook and my wife wishes to help her. It is no concern of mine, but I have no objection to staying. Nor am I impressed by that imbecile housekeeper’s story. I did not believe it at all when she first spoke to me. But yesterday, after tea, I went up to the cliffs to examine the alleged cracks. And now I am inclined to think that there may be some grounds for it, though I should accept no opinion save that of an expert. I do not suppose that this jack-in-office who wrote to Siddal knows more than I do. The cracks seem to be widening rapidly, and they are sufficiently near to the edge of the cliff to suggest the danger that the entire cliff face may come down some time or other. I should not be in the least surprised if it did. And in that case I do not see how this building can escape. Siddal, however, must think otherwise, or he would not remain here.

  I am quite unperturbed
. It is not my habit to scuttle about like a rabbit. My life is not so valuable to me nowadays. I only write of this because I am reluctant to set down my dream.

  My dream is as follows:

  I do not, generally, attach great importance to dreams. I have had very few in my life, as far as I can remember. But I dislike all dreams intensely. One acts so foolishly in most dreams. They are humiliating and grotesque. It is, however, the horror, the horror, of this one which unnerves me.

  It is this:

  Siddal says he never opens his letters. Perhaps he never opened this one, which would explain why he stays on. I never thought of that. But it does not signify, as I am resolved to stay here.

  This is my dream. It is always the same.

  I have been asleep. I wake up in absolute solitude. I am suspended in a vacancy which is neither dark nor light. I cannot even see darkness. There is not even darkness for me to see. There is nothing … nothing except myself. The fact that I AM is the only fact. There is no other. But not at first. Not at the beginning of my dream. There is something else then. I am smoking a cigar. I can see it, feel it and smell it. I can see the spark of light at the end. It is infinitely precious because it is the last thing left that is not myself. When it is gone there will be nothing. So I smoke it very slowly. I do not dare not to smoke it because it might go out and then I should not see the spark any more. But, however slowly I smoke it, the time comes, the time comes, when it is finished. The stub burns my fingers, and I drop it, though I have been resolving never to do so; to allow the burn, since a burn, pain, from that which is not myself, would be better than absolute solitude. But I drop it. The small spark falls like a shooting star and is gone. After that there is nothing, for ever and ever.

  Nothing.

  I AM.

  Nothing

  I AM.

  For ever.

  I AM

  Nothing.

  Impossible that this should ever happen to a … what shall I say? To an intelligence? Cogito ergo sum. But I do not think, in my dream. That which is not myself I perceive through my senses. If I should survive my senses … what then? Of what, then, should I think? Cogito ergo sumus ego et non ego.

  I have described my dream, but not adequately. I have not explained that I awake into this vacancy, and that this, my present life, is my dream…. I am not afraid of dreaming. But I fear to awake….

  2. Circe

  ‘Branw ll’s innocnt y lids …’ typed Anna.

  She broke off to swear, for the letter e had vanished from her typewriter. For some weeks it had been loose and now it had gone altogether. The Bleeding Branch must remain at a standstill until she could find a substitute machine.

  There was an old Remington in the office, never used by the Siddals, who could not type, but put there in case they should some day collect a manageress who could. Anna remembered it and set off in search of someone who would give her leave to borrow it. Mrs. Siddal was not likely to be accommodating, but Mr. Siddal might be open to persuasion, and to his boot-hole she repaired. He was not there. Fred, who was scuffling about in the passage, said that he had gone to the stables to find something in the bins. So Anna carried her request to the stables.

  The bins were a row of garbage cans which were put in the stable yard on Fridays when a weekly lorry called from Porthmerryn. Some contained true garbage and some clean paper for salvage. But Mr. Siddal had emptied them all into a heap in the middle of the yard, as a preliminary to his search. Cabbage stalks, cinders, tea leaves, coffee grounds, egg shells, and tins were all mixed up with letters and newspapers. Still wearing his old dressing-gown, he crawled round the noisome heap, fishing out this letter and that letter, glancing at it, and throwing it down again. Duff, up in the loft, was playing Stravinski.

  ‘Well …’ said Anna. ‘Are you trying to find something to eat?’

  Mr. Siddal said that he was looking for a letter. He was not sure if it existed. And if it ever had done so it might have been burnt yesterday. But it might be in these bins because Fred had, on the instructions of Miss Ellis, removed all the unburnt papers to the bins.

  ‘You’ve looked at the same one three times in two minutes,’ exclaimed Anna. ‘Why can’t you have some method? What sort of letter is it?’

  He was vague. He did not know what it would look like and he asked her to examine a brown envelope close to her foot.

  ‘Not me,’ said Anna. ‘It’s all over tea leaves. Get it for yourself.’

  Growling, he reached for it.

  ‘But what would it be about?’ she insisted.

  He told her. Crawling about and feverishly burrowing under cabbage stalks, he told her about the mine, the cracks, Sir Humphrey Bevin’s visit and the Canon’s hint.

  ‘I’m quite in the dark,’ he complained. ‘I’m not quite sure he didn’t invent it. But if it’s true …’

  Anna was impressed and suggested that he should write to Sir Humphrey. But he was not content merely to do that. The day, he said several times, was Friday. He could not, at the earliest, get an answer before Tuesday. And in the meantime the blow might fall. He seemed to be quite panic stricken.

  ‘It hasn’t fallen yet,’ said Anna. ‘One might hope it would stand up till Tuesday. And you’re not sure the Canon didn’t invent it.’

  ‘But in the meantime where can we go?’

  ‘What does Barbara say?’

  ‘She doesn’t know. I haven’t told her yet. I thought I’d try to find the letter first.’

  ‘You’ll have fun telling Barbara. It would give you less trouble if you opened your letters, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t rub it in, Anna. I’m so frightened. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. I shan’t sleep till Tuesday. Don’t you feel it’s disquieting?’

  ‘I do, rather. I think perhaps I’ll go to-morrow after all.’

  ‘What would you do in my shoes?’

  ‘Say nothing to anyone till I’d heard from Sir Humphrey.’

  Siddal sat back on his haunches. He was sweating from his unaccustomed labours.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘perhaps … but I don’t know how I’m going to stick it till Tuesday. I’ve searched thoroughly, and the thing is not here. I get a spasm whenever I look at those cliffs.’

  ‘You haven’t searched thoroughly‚’ said Anna. ‘There are lots you haven’t looked at.’

  ‘I shall die of sunstroke if I stay here,’ he said, pulling himself on to his feet by holding the edge of a bin.

  And he set off for the house, the cord of his dressing-gown dragging over the stones behind him.

  ‘But what about all this muck?’ she asked, pointing to the garbage heap.

  ‘Somebody will have to put it all back in the bins. I’ve done my bit.’

  He paused, lifted his voice, and yelled for Duff, whose head presently appeared at the loft window.

  ‘Tidy up this yard,’ commanded Mr. Siddal, making off again.

  The strains of Stravinski ceased and Duff came down.

  ‘The filthy old brute,’ he said, when he saw the condition of the yard. ‘What on earth was he doing?’

  ‘Looking for something he’d lost,’ said Anna.

  ‘I’m not cleaning up. I’ve got to go into Porthmerryn and buy a bald head at the carnival shop. For the Feast.’

  ‘Can you drive a car?’ asked Anna.

  He could, he declared, drive any car.

  ‘Then would you like to drive me, in mine, to Porthmerryn? I hate driving, and I want to hire a typewriter.’

  Duff tried to conceal his glee at getting a car to drive. He seldom did. He was so much pleased that he shed all lupine pretensions until he had got Anna’s Hillman up the drive and on to the high road, without grinding the gears. Then, relaxing a little, he responded to her sidelong smile.

  ‘So you’re going to the Feast,’ she said. ‘How funny!’

  No place for a wolf, as he immediately realized. He said languidly that it would be a crashing bore but that one couldn’t very well
get out of it. And, anyway, was Anna not going? He had heard so.

  ‘I found an invitation on my plate at breakfast,’ she said. ‘Very pretty. So I accepted. The Canon, by the way, tore his up. But after the children had gone out of the dining-room. And old Paley left his on his table with all his empty envelopes. I do think they are a couple of nasty old men. They could have accepted and then cut it.’

  ‘Is that what you’ll do?’ asked Duff.

  ‘How much fun will it be?’

  ‘No fun at all. Kid’s games and lemonade. Madly boring.’

  ‘But sitting all alone in the hotel wouldn’t be very gay either.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be all alone. You’d have the nasty old men. And Lady G., who is much too ill to come.’

  ‘Oh, well … if you can’t think of anything better for us to do, I suppose we’d better go. Look out! You nearly had us in the ditch.’

  Duff drove a few yards in silence and then pulled up on the grass by the side of the road. He could not impersonate a wolf and drive at the same time. He turned off the engine. The cliff country of small fields and stone walls became very silent. They could hear larks singing. Anna did not ask why he stopped. Perhaps she thought it safer.

  ‘I could,’ said Duff, ‘think of something better to do.’

  ‘So could I,’ said Anna.

  ‘I don’t like you,’ he told her, abandoning his wolf technique. ‘It’s only fair to say so first.’

  ‘Oh, but I know that.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘Not a bit. I get more kick out of it really.’

  ‘More kick if the man dislikes you?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t look surprised. So do you.’

  Duff laughed excitedly.

  ‘Perhaps I do. I don’t mind you knowing what a brute I am.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Anna. ‘So I shall cut this picnic. I shall stay in my room.’

  ‘I can’t cut all of it. There’d be a row and a hunt for me if I don’t show up at the start. We’ve got this musical procession. But I could slip away after a bit … perhaps …’