Parade's End

allowed to trim the hedge, but apparently the birds knew Gunning…. For Marie Leonie all birds were moineaux, as who should say “sparrers” as in London they called them — just as all flowers were giroflees — as you might say wall-flowers…. No wonder this nation was going to rack and ruin when it wasted its time over preserving the nests of sparrers and naming innumerable wall- flowers! The country was well enough — a sort of suburb of Caen: but the people!… No wonder William, of Falaise, in Normandy subjugated them with such ease.

Now she had wasted five minutes, for the glass tubes, hinged on rubber, that formed her siphon from barrel to bottle had had perforce, to be taken out of the spile-hole, the air had entered into it, and she would have to put it back and suck once more at the tube until the first trickle of cider entered her mouth. She disliked having to do that; it wasted the cider and she disliked the flavour in the afternoon when one had lunched. The little maid also would say: “A — oh, meladyship, Ah du call thet queer!”… Nothing would cure that child of saying that though she was otherwise sage et docile. Even Gunning scratched his head at the sight of those tubes.

Could these savages never understand that if you want to have cidre mousseux — foaming — you must have as little sediment as possible? And that in the bottom of casks, even if they had not been moved for a long time there will always be sediment — particularly if you set up a flow in the liquids by running it from a tap near the bottom. So you siphon off the top of the great casks for bottling mousseux and bottle the rest of the cask and run the thickest into little thin-wood kegs with many hopes for freezing in the winter…. To make calvados, where you cannot have alembics because of the excise… In this unhappy country you may not have alembics for the distilling of apple-jack, plum-brandy or other fines — because of the excise! Quel pays! Quels gens!

They lacked industry, frugality — and above all, spirit! Look at that poor Valentine, hiding in her room upstairs because there were people about whom she suspected of being people from the English lord’s house…. By rights that poor Valentine should be helping her with the bottling and ready to sell that lugubrious old furniture to visitors whilst her lord was away buying more old rubbish…. And she was distracted because she could not find some prints. They represented — Marie Leonie was well aware because she had heard the facts several times — street criers of ambulant wares in London years ago. There were only eight of these to be found. Where were the other four? The customer, a lady of title, was anxious for them. For presents for an immediate wedding! Monsieur my brother-in-law had come upon the four that were to make up the set at a sale two days before. He had recounted with satisfaction how he had found them on the grass…. It was supposed that he had brought them home; but they were not in the warehouse at Cramp the carpenter’s, they were not to be found, left in the cart. They were in no drawer or press…. What was to prove that mon beau-frere had brought them home from the sale. He was not there: he was gone for a day and a half. Naturally he would be gone for a day and a half when he was most needed…. And where was he gone, leaving his young wife in that nervous condition? For a day and a half! He had never before been gone for a day and a half…. There was then something brewing; it was in the air; it was in her bones…. It was like that dreadful day of the Armistice when this miserable land betrayed the beautiful pays de France!… When monsieur had borrowed forty pounds of her…. In the name of heaven why did not he borrow another forty — or eighty — or a hundred, rather than be distracted and distract Mark and his unhappy girl?…

She was not unsympathetic, that girl. She had civilisation. She could talk of Philemon and Baucis. She had made her bachot, she was what you would call fille de famille…. But without chic… Without… Without… Well, she neither displayed enough erudition to be a bas bleu — though she had enough erudition! — not enouch chic to be a femme legere — a poule who would faire la noce with her gallant. Monsieur the brother-in-law was no gay spark. But you never know with a man…. The cut of a skirt; a twist of the hair… Though to-day there was no hair to twist; but there is the equivalent.

And it was a fact that you never knew a man. Look at the case of Eleanor Dupont who lived for ten years with Duchamp of the Sorbonne…. Eleanor would never attend scrupulously to her attire because her man wore blue spectacles and was a savant…. But what happened…. There came along a little piece with a hat as large as a cartwheel covered with greenstuff and sleeves up above her ears — as the mode was then….

That had been a lesson to her, Marie Leonie, who had been a girl at the time. She had determined that if she achieved a collage serieux with a monsieur of eighty and as blind as a bat she would study the modes of the day right down to the latest perfume. These messieurs did not know it, but they moved among femmes du monde and the fashionable cocottes and however much she at home might be the little brown bird of the domestic hearth, the lines of her dresses, her hair, her personal odour, must conform. Mark did not imagine; she did not suppose he had ever seen a fashionable journal in her apartments that were open to him or had ever suspected that she walked in the Row on a Sunday when he was away…. But she had studied these things like another. And more. For it is difficult to keep with the fashion and at the same time appear as if you were a serious petite bourgeoise. But she had done it: and observe the results….

But that poor Valentine…. Her man was attached enough, and well he should be considering the affair in which he had landed her. But always there comes the pic des tempetes, the Cape Horn, round which you must go. It is the day when your man looks at you and says: “H’m, h’m,” and considers if the candle is not more valuable than the game! Ah then… There are wise folk who put that at the seventh year; other wise ones, at the second; others again at the eleventh…. But in fact you may put it at any day on any year — to the hundredth…. And that poor Valentine with four spots of oil on her only skirt but two. And that so badly hung, though the stuff no doubt was once good. One must concede that! They make admirable tweeds in this country: better certainly than in Roubaix. But is that enough to save a country — or a woman dependant on a man who has introduced her into a bad affair?

A voice behind her said:

“I see you have plenty of eggs!” — an unusual voice of a sort of breathless nervousness. Marie Leonie continued to hold the mouth of her tube into the neck of a burgundy bottle; into this she had already introduced a small screw of sifted sugar and an extremely minute portion of a powder that she got from a pharmacist of Rouen. This, she understood, made the cider of a rich brownness. She did not see why cider should be brown but it was considered to be less fortifying if it were light golden. She continued also to think about Valentine who would be twittering with nerves at the window whose iron-leaded casement was open above their heads. She would have put down her Latin book and have crept to the window to listen.

The little girl beside Marie Leonie had risen from the three-legged stool and held a dead, white fowl with a nearly naked breast by its neck. She said hoarsely:

“These ’ere be ’er Ladyship’s settins of prize Reds.” She was blonde, red-faced and wore on her dull fair hair a rather large cap, on her thin body a check blue cotton gown. “’Arf a crownd a piece the heggs be or twenty-four shillings a dozen if you take a gross.”

Marie Leonie heard the hoarse voice with some satisfaction. This girl whom they had only had-for a fortnight seemed to be satisfactory mentally; it was not her business to sell the eggs but Gunning’s; nevertheless she knew the details. Marie Leonie did not turn round: it was not her business to talk to anyone who wanted to buy eggs and she had no curiosity as to customers. She had too much else to think about. The voice said:

“Half a crown seems a great deal for an egg. What is that in dollars? This must be that tyranny over edibles by the producer of which one has heard so much.”

“Tiddn nothin’ in dollars,” the girl said. “’Arf a dollar is two bob. ’Arf a crown is two’ n six.”

The conversation continued, but it grew dim in Marie Leonie’s thoughts. The child and the voice disputed as to what a dollar was – or so it appeared, for Marie Leonie was not familiar with either of the accents of the disputants. The child was a combative child. She drove both Gunning and the cabinet-maker Camp with an organ of brass. Of tin perhaps, like a penny whistle. When she was not grubbily working, she read books with avidity – books about Blood if she could get them. She had an exaggerated respect for the Family but none for any other soul in the world….