Parade's End

his family that the sharp drilling of the telephone had sounded from the hall. Immediately the strong German accent of Lord Wolstonemark had, with its accustomed disagreeableness, burred in her ear. He had said that the Cabinet was still sitting and they desired to know at once the code that Mark used in his communications with various ports. His second-in-command appeared to be lost amongst the celebrations of that night. Mark had said with a sort of grim irony from the bedroom that if they wanted to stop his transport going out they might just as well not use cypher. If they wanted to use a twopenny halfpenny economy as window dressing for the elections they’d have to have, they might as well give it as much publicity as they could. Besides, he did not believe they would get into Germany with the transport they had. A good deal had been smashed lately.

The Minister had said with a sort of heavy joy that they were not going into Germany, and that had been the most dreadful moment of Marie Leonie’s life; but with her discipline she had just simply repeated the words to Mark. He had then said something she did not quite catch, and he would not repeat what he had said. She said as much to Lord Wolstonemark and the chuckling accent said that he supposed that that was the sort of news that would rattle the old boy. But one must adapt oneself to one’s day; the times were changed.

She had gone from the instrument to look at Mark. She spoke to him; she spoke to him again. And again — rapid words of panic. His face was dark purple and congested; he gazed straight before him. She raised him; he sank back inertly.

She remembered going to the telephone and speaking in French to the man at the other end. She had said that the man at the other end was a German and a traitor; her husband should never speak to him or his fellows again. The man had said: “Eh, what’s that? Eh?… Who are you?”

With appalling shadows chasing up and down in her mind she had said:

“I am Lady Mark Tietjens. You have murdered my husband. Clear yourself from off my line, murderer!”

It had been the first time she had ever given herself that name; it was indeed the first time she had ever spoken in French to that Ministry. But Mark had finished with the Ministry, with the Government, with the nation…. With the world.

As soon as she could get that man off the wire she had rung up Christopher. He had come round with Valentine in tow. It had certainly not been much of a nuit de noces for that young couple.

Part Two

SYLVIA TIETJENS, using merely the persuasion of her left knee edged her chestnut bay nearer to the bay mare of the shining General. She said:

“If I divorce Christopher, will you marry me?”

He exclaimed with the vehemence of a shocked hen:

“Good God, no!”

He shone everywhere except in such parts of his grey tweed suit as would have shown by shining that they had been put on more than once. But his little white moustache, his cheeks, the bridge but not the tip of his nose, his reins, his Guards’ tie, his boots, martingale, snaffle, curb, fingers, fingernails — all these gave evidence of interminable rubbings…. By himself, by his man, by Lord Fittleworth’s stable-hands, grooms…. Interminable rubbings and supervisions at the end of extended arms. Merely to look at him you would know that he was something like Lord Edward Campion, Lieutenant General retired, K.C.M.G. (military) M.P.V.C., M.C., D.S.O…. So he exclaimed: “Good God, no!” and using a little-finger touch on his snaffle-rein made his mare recoil from Sylvia Tietjens’ chestnut. Annoyed at its mate’s motion, the bad-tempered chestnut with the white forehead showed its teeth at the mare, danced a little and threw out some flakes of foam. Sylvia swayed a little backwards and forwards in her saddle, and smiled downwards into her husband’s garden.

“You can’t,. you know,” she said, “expect to put an idea out of my head just by flurrying the horses….”

“A man,” the General said between “Comeups” to his mare, “does not marry his…”

His mare went backwards a pace or two into the bank and then a pace forwards.

“His what?” Sylvia asked with amiability. “You can’t be going to call me your cast mistress. No doubt most men would have a shot at it. But I never have been even your mistress…. I have to think of Michael!”

“I wish,” the General said vindictively, “that you would settle what that boy is to be called…. Michael or Mark!” He added: “I was going to say: ‘his godson’s wife.’… A man may not marry his godson’s wife.”

Sylvia bent over to stroke the neck of the chestnut.

“A man,” she said, “cannot marry any man’s wife…. But if you think that I am going to be the second Lady Tietjens after that… French hairdresser’s widow…”

“You would prefer,” the General said, “to go to India….”

Visions of India went through their hostile minds. They looked down from their horses over Tietjens’s in West Sussex, over a house with a high-pitched, tiled roof with deep windows in the grey local stone. He nevertheless saw names like Akhbar Khan, Alexander of Macedon, the son of Philip, Delhi, the Massacre at Cawnpore…. His mind, given over from boyhood to the contemplation of the largest jewel in the British Crown, spewed up those romances. He was member for the West Cleveland Division and a thorn in the side of the Government. They must give him India. They knew that if they did not he could publish revelations as to the closing days of the late war…. He would naturally never do that. One does not blackmail even a Government.

Still, to all intents he was India.

Sylvia also was aware that he was to all intents and purposes India. She saw receptions in Government Houses in which, habited with a tiara, she too would be INDIA…. As someone said in Shakespeare:

I am dying, Egypt, dying! Only

I will importune Death a while until

Of many thousand kisses this poor last

Is laid upon thy lips….

She imagined it would be agreeable, supposing her to betray this old Pantaloon India to have a lover, gasping at her feet, exclaiming: “I am dying, India, dying….” And she with her tiara, very tall. In white, probably. Probably satin!

The General said:

“You know you cannot possibly divorce my godson. You are a Roman Catholic.”

She said, always with her smile:

“Oh, can’t I?… Besides it would be of the greatest advantage to Michael to have for a step-father the Field Marshal….”

He said with impotent irritation:

“I wish you would settle whether that boy’s name is Michael or Mark!”

She said:

“He calls himself Mark…. I call him Michael because I hate the name of Mark….”

She regarded Campion with real hatred. She said that upon occasion she would be exemplarily revenged upon him. “Michael” was a Satterthwaite name, “Mark,” the name for a Tietjens eldest son. The boy had originally been baptised and registered as Michael Tietjens. At his reception into the Roman Church he had been baptised “Michael Mark.” Then had followed the only real deep humiliation of her life. After his Papist baptism the boy had asked to be called Mark. She had asked him if he really meant that. After a long pause — the dreadful long pauses of children before they render a verdict! — he had said that he intended to call himself Mark from then on…. By the name of his father’s brother, of his father’s father, grand-father, great-grandfather…. By the name of the irascible apostle of the lion and the sword…. The Satterthwaites, his mother’s family, might go by the board.

For herself, she hated the name of Mark. If there was one man in the world whom she hated because he was insensible of her attraction it was Mark Tietjens who lay beneath the thatched roof beneath her eyes…. Her boy, however, intended, with a child’s cruelty to call himself Mark Tietjens…

The General grumbled:

“There is no keeping track with you…. You say now you would be humiliated to be Lady Tietjens after that Frenchwoman…. But you have always said that that Frenchwoman is only the concubine of Sir Mark…. You say one thing, then you say another…. What is one to believe?”