Parade's End

brother, and he wouldn’t take a penny when he in turn became Groby. Fortunately, there was the heir…. Otherwise he could not have gone with that girl!

Two pangs went through him. His son had never written to him; the girl might have married a War Office clerk! On the re-bound! That was what it would be: a civilian War Office clerk would be the most exact contrast to himself!… But the son’s letters would have been stopped by the mother. That was what they did to people who were where he was. As the C.O. had said! And Valentine Wannop, who had listened to his conversation, would never want to mingle intimately in another’s! Their communion was immutable and not to be shaken!

So he was going to write to her: freckled, downright, standing square on feet rather widely planted apart, just ready to say: “Oh, chuck it, Edith Ethel!” She made the sunlight!

Or no, by Heavens, he could not write to her! If he stopped one or went dotty…. Wouldn’t it make it infinitely worse for her to know that his love for her had been profound and immutable? It would make it far worse, for by now the edges of passion had probably worn less painful. Or there was the chance of it!… But impenitently he would go on willing her to submit to his will; through mounds thrown up by Austrian projectiles and across the seas. They would do what they wanted and take what they got for it!

He reclined, on his right shoulder, feeling like some immense and absurd statue: a collection of meal-sacks done in mud, with grotesque shorts revealing his muddy knees…. The figure on one of Michael Angelo’s Medici tombs. Or perhaps his Adam… He felt the earth move a little beneath him. The last projectile must have been pretty near. He would not have noticed the sound, it had become such a regular sequence. But he noticed the quiver in the earth….

Reprehensible! He said. For God’s sake let us be reprensible! And have done with it! We aren’t Hun strategists for ever balancing pros and cons of militant morality!

He took, with his left hand, the cup from the rock. Little Aranjuez came round the mound. Tietjens threw the cup downhill at a large bit of rock. He said to Aranjuez’s wistful, enquiring eyes:

“So that no toast more ignoble may ever be drunk out of it!”

The boy gasped and flushed:

“Then you’ve got someone that you love, sir!” he said in his tone of hero-worship. “Is she like Nancy, in Bailleul?”

Tietjens said:

“No, not like Nancy…. Or, perhaps, yes, a little like Nancy!” He did not want to hurt the boy’s feelings by the suggestion that anyone unlike Nancy could be loved. He felt a premonition that that child was going to be hurt. Or, perhaps, it was only that he was already so suffering.

The boy said:

“Then you’ll get her, sir. You’ll certainly get her!”

“Yes, I shall probably get her!” Tietjens said.

The lance-corporal came, too, round the mound. He said that “A” Company were all under cover. They went all together round the heap in the direction of “B” Company’s trench down into which they slid. It descended sharply. It was certainly wet. It ended practically in a little swamp. The next battalion had even some yards of sand-bag parapet before entering the slope again with its trench. This was Flanders. Duck country. The bit of swamp would make personal keeping in communication difficult. Where Tietjens had put in his tile-siphons a great deal of water had exuded. The young O.C. Company said that they had had to bale the trench out, until they had made a little drain down into the bog. They baled out with shovels. Two of the shovels still stood against the brushwood revetments of the parapet.

“Well, you should not leave your shovels about!” Tietjens shouted. He was feeling considerable satisfaction at the working of his siphon. In the meantime we had begun a considerable artillery demonstration. It became overwhelming. There was some sort of Bloody Mary somewhere a few yards off, or so it seemed. She pooped off. The planes had perhaps reported the position of the Austrian gun. Or we might be strafing their trenches to make them shut up that weapon. It was like being a dwarf at a conversation, a conflict — of mastodons. There was so much noise it seemed to grow dark. It was a mental darkness. You could not think. A Dark Age! The earth moved.

He was looking at Aranjuez from a considerable height. He was enjoying a considerable view. Aranjuez’s face had a rapt expression — like that of a man composing poetry. Long dollops of liquid mud surrounded them in the air. Like black pancakes being tossed. He thought: “Thank God I did not write to her. We are being blown up!” The earth turned like a weary hippopotamus. It settled down slowly over the face of Lance-Corporal Duckett who lay on his side, and went on in a slow wave.

It was slow, slow, slow… like a slowed-down movie. The earth manoeuvred for an infinite time. He remained suspended in space. As if he were suspended as he had wanted to be in front of that cockscomb in whitewash. Coincidence!

The earth sucked slowly and composedly at his feet.

It assimilated his calves, his thighs. It imprisoned him above the waist. His arms being free, he resembled a man in a life-buoy. The earth moved him slowly. It was solidish.

Below him, down a mound, the face of little Aranjuez, brown, with immense black eyes in bluish whites, looked at him. Out of viscous mud. A head on a charger! He could see the imploring lips form the words: “Save me, Captain!” He said: “I’ve got to save myself first!” He could not hear his own words. The noise was incredible.

A man stood over him. He appeared immensely tall because Tietjens’ face was on a level with his belt. But he was a small Cockney Tommy really. Name of Cockshott. He pulled at Tietjens’ two arms. Tietjens tried to kick with his feet. Then he realised it was better not to kick with his feet. He was pulled out. Satisfactorily. There had been two men at it. A second, a corporal had come. They were all three of them grinning. He slid down with the sliding earth towards Aranjuez. He smiled at the pallid face. He slipped a lot. He felt a frightful burning on his neck, below and behind the ear. His hand came down from feeling the place. The finger tips had no end of mud and a little pinkishness on them. A pimple had perhaps burst. He had at least two men not killed. He signed agitatedly to the Tommies. He made gestures of digging. They were to get shovels.

He stood over Aranjuez, on the edge of liquid mud. Perhaps he would sink in. He did not sink in. Not above his boot tops. He felt his feet to be enormous and sustaining. He knew what had happened. Aranjuez was sunk in the issuing hole of the spring that made that bog. It was like being on Exmoor. He bent down over an ineffable, small face. He bent down lower and his hands entered the slime. He had to get on his hands and knees.

Fury entered his mind. He had been sniped at. Before he had had that pain he had heard, he realised, an intimate drone under the hellish tumult. There was reason for furious haste. Or, no…. They were low. In a wide hole. There was no reason for furious haste. Especially on your hands and knees.

His hands were under the slime, and his forearms. He battled his hands down greasy cloth; under greasy cloth. Slimy, not greasy! He pushed outwards. The boy’s hands and arms appeared. It was going to be easier. His face was now quite close to the boy’s, but it was impossible to hear what he said. Possibly he was unconscious. Tietjens said: “Thank God for my enormous physical strength!” It was the first time that he had ever had to be thankful for great physical strength. He lifted the boy’s arms over his own shoulders so that his hands might clasp themselves behind his neck. They were slimy and disagreeable. He was short in the wind. He heaved back. The boy came up a little. He was certainly fainting. He gave no assistance. The slime was filthy. It was a condemnation of a civilisation that he, Tietjens, possessed of enormous physical strength, should never have needed to use it before. He looked like a collection of meal-sacks; but at least he could tear a pack of cards in half. If only his lungs weren’t…

Cockshott, the Tommie, and the corporal were beside him, grinning. With the two shovels that ought not to have stood against the parapet of their trench. He was intensely irritated. He had tried to indicate with his signs that it was Lance-Corporal Duckett that they were to dig out. It was probably no longer Lance-Corporal Duckett. It was probably by now “it.” The body! He had probably lost a man, after all!

Cockshott and the corporal pulled Aranjuez out of the slime. He came out reluctantly, like a lugworm out of sand. He could not stand. His legs gave way. He drooped like a flower done in slime. His lips moved, but you could not hear him. Tietjens took him from the two men who supported him between the arms and laid him a little way up the mound. He shouted in the ear of the Corporal:

“Duckett! Go and dig out Duckett! At the double!”

He knelt and felt the boy’s back. His spine might have been damaged. The boy did not wince. His spine might