Parade's End

So that Christopher had rather been additionally discredited than much helped by his services to the country. Sylvia had been able to put it, very reasonably, that Christopher was by nature that idle and dissolute thing, a soldier. That, in times of peace, had helped her a great deal.

Still, Mark had been pleased with his brother, and, once Christopher had been invalided back and had returned to his old-tin saving depot near Ealing, Mark had at once set wheels in motion to get his brother demobilised so that he might look after Groby. By that time Groby was inhabited by Sylvia, the boy, and Sylvia’s mother. The estate just had to be managed by the land-steward who had served his father, neither Sylvia nor her family having any finger in that; though her mother was able to assure him, Mark, that the estate was doing as well as the Agricultural Committee of grocers and stock-jobbers would let it. They insisted on wheat being sown on exposed moors where nothing but heather had a chance, and active moorland sheep being fattened in water- bottoms full of liver fluke. But the land-steward fought them as well as one man could be expected to fight the chosen of a nation of small shop-keepers….

And at that date — the date of Christopher’s return to Ealing —Mark had still imagined that Christopher had really only been holding out for the possession of Groby. He was therefore disillusioned rather nastily. He had managed to get Christopher demobilised — without telling him anything about it — by just about the time when the Armistice came along…. And then he found that he really had put the fat in the fire!

He had practically beggared the wretched fellow who, counting on living on his pay for at least a year longer, had mortgaged his blood-money in order to go into a sort of partnership in an old-furniture business with a confounded American. And of course the blood-money was considerably diminished, being an allowance made to demobilised officers computed on the number of their days of service. So he had docked Christopher of two or three hundred pounds. That was the sort of mucky situation into which Christopher might be expected to be got in by his well-wishers…. There he had been, just before Armistice Day, upon the point of demobilisation and without an available penny! It appeared that he had to sell even the few books that Sylvia had left him when she had stripped his house.

That agreeable truth had forced itself on Mark at just the moment when he had been so rotten bad with pneumonia that he might be expected to cash in at any moment. Marie Leonie had indeed, of her own initiative, telephoned to Christopher that he had better come to see his brother if he wanted to meet him on this side of the grave.

They had at once started arguing — or rather each had started exposing his views. Christopher had stated what he was going to do and Mark had voiced his horror at what Christopher proposed. Mark’s horror came from the fact that Christopher proposed to eschew comfort. An Englishman’s duty is to secure for himself for ever, reasonable clothing, a clean shirt a day, a couple of mutton chops grilled without condiments, two floury potatoes, an apple pie with a piece of Stilton and pulled bread, a pint of Club medoc, a clean room, in the winter a good fire in the grate, a comfortable armchair, a comfortable woman to see that all these were prepared for you, and to keep you warm in bed and to brush your bowler and fold your umbrella in the morning. When you had that secure for life you could do what you liked provided that what you did never endangered that security. What was to be said against that?

Christopher had nothing to advance except that he was not going to live in that way. He was not going to live in that way unless he could secure that or something like it, by his own talents. His only available and at the same time marketable talent was his gift for knowing genuine old furniture. So he was going to make a living out of old furniture. He had had his scheme perfectly matured; he had even secured an American partner, a fellow who had as great a gift for the cajolement of American purchasers of old stuff as he, Christopher, had for its discovery. It was still the war then, but Christopher and his partner between them had predicted the American mopping up of the world’s gold supply and the consequent stripping of European houses of old stuff…. At that you could make a living.

Other careers, he said, were barred to him. The Department of Statistics in which he had formerly had a post had absolutely cold-shouldered him. They were not only adamant, they were also vindictive against civil servants who had become serving soldiers. They took the view that those members of their staffs who had preferred serving were idle and dissolute fellows who had merely taken up arms in order to satisfy their lusts for women. Women had naturally preferred soldiers to civilians; the civilians were now getting back on them. That was natural.

Mark agreed indeed that it was natural. Before he had been interested in his brother as a serving soldier he had been inclined to consider most soldiers as incompetent about Transport and, in general, nuisances. He agreed too that Christopher could not go back to the Department. There he was certainly a marked man. He could possibly have insisted on his rights to be taken back even though his lungs, being by now pretty damaged by exposure, might afford them a pretext for legally refusing him. H.M. Civil Service and Departments have the right to refuse employment to persons likely to become unfit for good. A man who has lost an eye may be refused by any Department because he may lose the other and so become liable for a pension. But even if Christopher forced himself on the Department they would have their bad mark against him. He had been too rude to them during the war when they had tried to force him to employ himself in the faking of statistics that the Ministry had coerced the Department into supplying in order to dish the French who demanded more troops.

With that point of view Mark found himself entirely in sympathy. His long association with Marie Leonie, his respect for the way in which she had her head screwed on, the constant intimacy with the life and point of view of French individuals of the petite bourgeoisie which her gossip had given him — all these things together with his despair for the future of his own country had given him a very considerable belief in the destinies and indeed in the virtues of the country across the Channel. It would therefore have been very distasteful to him that his brother should take pay from an organisation that had been employed to deal treacherously with our Allies. It had indeed become extremely distasteful to him to take pay himself from a Government that had forced such a course upon the nation and he would thankfully have resigned from his office if he had not considered that his services were indispensable to the successful prosecution of the war which was then still proceeding. He wanted to be done with it, but at the moment he saw no chance. The war was by then obviously proceeding towards a successful issue. Owing to the military genius of the French who by then had the supreme command, the enemy nations were daily being forced to abandon great stretches of territory. But that only made the calls on Transport the greater whilst, if we were successfully and unwastefully to occupy the enemy capital as at that date he imagined that we obviously must, the demand for the provision of Transport must become almost unmeasurable.

Still, that was no argument for the re-entry of his brother into the service of the country. As he saw things, public life had become — and must remain for a long period — so demoralized by the members of the then Government with their devious foreign policies and their intimacies with a class of shady financiers such as had never hitherto had any finger in the English political pie — public life had become so discreditable an affair that the only remedy was for the real governing classes to retire altogether from public pursuits. Things in short must become worse before they could grow better. With the dreadful condition of ruin at home and foreign discredit to which the country must almost immediately emerge under the conduct of the Scotch grocers, Frankfort financiers, Welsh pettifoggers, Midland armament manufacturers and South Country incompetents who during the later years of the war had intrigued themselves into office — with that dreadful condition staring it in the face, the country must return to something like its old standards of North Country common sense and English probity. The old governing class to which he and his belonged might never return to power but, whatever revolutions took place — and he did not care! — the country must return to exacting of whoever might be its governing class some semblance of personal probity and public honouring of pledges. He obviously was out of it or he would be out of it with the end of the war, for even from his bed he had taken no small part in the directing of affairs at his office…. A state of war obviously favouring the coming to the top of all kinds of devious storm petrels; that was inevitable and could not be helped. But in normal times a country — every country — was true to itself.

Nevertheless he was very content that his brother should in the interim have no share in affairs. Let him secure his mutton chop, his pint of claret, his woman, and his umbrella and it mattered not into what obscurity he retired. But how was that to be secured? There were several ways.

He was aware, for instance, that Christopher was both a mathematician of no mean order and a churchman. He might perfectly well take orders, assume the charge of one of the three family livings that Mark had in his gift and, whilst competently discharging the duties of his cure, pursue whatever are the occupations of a well-cared-for mathematician.

Christopher, however, whilst avowing his predilection for such a life — which as Mark saw it was exactly