Parade's End

“No, we don’t,” the other would answer. “That’s what this enquiry is about.”

“You’ve got,” Tietjens would continue, “on the north side of a beastly clay hill nine miles from Southampton three thousand men from the Highlands, North Wales, Cumberland…. God knows where, as long as it’s three hundred miles from home to make them rather mad with nostalgia…. You allow ’em out for an hour a day during the pub’s closing time. You shave their heads to prevent ’em appealing to local young women who don’t exist, and you don’t let ’em carry the swagger-canes! God knows why! To prevent their poking their eyes out, if they fall down, I suppose. Nine miles from anywhere, with chalk down roads to walk on and not a bush for shelter or shade… And, damn it, if you get two men, chums, from the Seaforths or the Argylls you don’t let them sleep in the same hut, but shove ’em in with a lot of fat Buffs or Welshmen, who stink of leeks and can’t speak English….”

“That’s the infernal medicals’ orders to stop ’em talking all night.”

“To make ’em conspire all night not to turn out for parade,” Tietjens said. “And there’s a beastly mutiny begun…. And, damn it, they’re fine men. They’re first-class fellows. Why don’t you — as this is a Christian land — let ’em go home to convalesce with their girls and pubs and friends and a little bit of swank, for heroes? Why in God’s name don’t you? Isn’t there suffering enough?”

“I wish you wouldn’t say ‘you,’” the dark man said. “It isn’t me. The only A.C.I. I’ve drafted was to give every Command Depot a cinema and a theatre. But the beastly medicals got it stopped… for fear of infection. And, of course, the parsons and Nonconformist magistrates…”

“Well, you’ll have to change it all,” Tietjens said, “or you’ll just have to say: thank God we’ve got a navy. You won’t have an army. The other day three fellows — Warwicks — asked me at question time, after a lecture, why they were shut up there in Wiltshire whilst Belgian refugees were getting bastards on their wives in Birmingham. And when I asked how many men made that complaint over fifty stood up. All from Birmingham….”

The dark man said:

“I’ll make a note of that…. Go on.”

Tietjens went on; for as long as he stayed there he felt himself a man, doing work that befitted a man, with the bitter contempt for fools that a man should have and express. It was a letting up, a real last leave.

IV

MARK TIETJENS, his umbrella swinging sheepishly, his bowler hat pushed firmly down on to his ears to give him a sense of stability, walked beside the weeping girl in the quadrangle.

“I say,” he said, “don’t give it to old Christopher too beastly hard about his militarist opinions…. Remember, he’s going out to-morrow and he’s one of the best.”

She looked at him quickly, tears remaining upon her cheeks, and then away.

“One of the best,” Mark said. “A fellow who never told a lie or did a dishonourable thing in his life. Let him down easy, there’s a good girl. You ought to, you know.”

The girl, her face turned away, said:

“I’d lay down my life for him!”

Mark said:

“I know you would. I know a good woman when I see one. And think! He probably considers that he is… offering his life, you know, for you. And me, too, of course! It’s a different way of looking at things.” He gripped her awkwardly but irresistibly by the upper arm. It was very thin under her blue cloth coat. He said to himself:

“By Jove! Christopher likes them skinny. It’s the athletic sort that attracts him. This girl is as clean run as…” He couldn’t think of anything as clean run as Miss Wannop, but he felt a warm satisfaction at having achieved an intimacy with her and his brother. He said:

“You aren’t going away? Not without a kinder word to him. You think! He might be killed…. Besides, probably he’s never killed a German. He was a liaison officer. Since then he’s been in charge of a dump where they sift army dustbins. To see how they can give the men less to eat. That means that the civilians get more. You don’t object to his giving civilians more meat?… It isn’t even helping to kill Germans…”

He felt her arm press his hand against her warm side.

“What’s he going to do now?” she asked. Her voice wavered.

“That’s what I’m here about,” Mark said. “I’m going in to see old Hogarth. You don’t know Hogarth? Old General Hogarth? I think I can get him to give Christopher a job with the transport. A safe job. Safeish! No beastly glory business about it. No killing beastly Germans either…. I beg your pardon, if you like Germans.”

She drew her arm from his hand in order to look him in the face.

“Oh!” she said, “you don’t want him to have any beastly military glory!” The colour came back into her face: she looked at him open-eyed.

He said:

“No! Why the devil should he?” He said to himself: “She’s got enormous eyes; a good neck; good shoulders; good breasts; clean hips; small hands. She isn’t knock-kneed; neat ankles. She stands well on her feet. Feet not too large! Five foot four, say! A real good filly!” He went on aloud: “Why in the world should he want to be a beastly soldier? He’s the heir to Groby. That ought to be enough for one man.”

Having stood still sufficiently long for what she knew to be his critical inspection, she put her hand in turn, precipitately, under his arm and moved him towards the entrance steps.

“Let’s be quick then,” she said. “Let’s get him into your transport at once. Before he goes to-morrow. Then we’ll know he’s safe.”

He was puzzled by her dress. It was very business-like, dark blue and very short. A white blouse with a black silk, man’s tie. A wideawake, with, on the front of the band, a cipher.

“You’re in uniform yourself,” he said. “Does your conscience let you do war work?”

She said:

“No. We’re hard up. I’m taking the gym classes in a great big school to turn an honest penny…. Do be quick!”

Her pressure on his elbow flattered him. He resisted it a little, hanging back, to make her more insistent. He liked being pleaded with by a pretty woman; Christopher’s girl at that.

He said:

“Oh, it’s not a matter of minutes. They keep ’em weeks at the base before they send ’em up…. We’ll fix him up all right, I’ve no doubt. We’ll wait in the hall till he comes down.”

He told the benevolent commissionaire, one of two in a pulpit in the crowded grim hall, that he was going up to see General Hogarth in a minute or two. But not to send a bell-boy. He might be some time yet.

He sat himself beside Miss Wannop, clumsily on a wooden bench, humanity surging over their toes as if they had been on a beach. She moved a little to make room for him and that, too, made him feel good. He said:

“You said just now: ‘we’ are hard up. Does ‘we’ mean you and Christopher?”

She said:

“I and Mr. Tietjens. Oh, no! I and mother! The paper she used to write for stopped. When your father died, I believe. He found money for it, I think. And mother isn’t suited to free-lancing. She’s worked too hard in her life.”

He looked at her, his round eyes protruding.

“I don’t know what that is, free-lancing,” he said. “But you’ve got to be comfortable. How much do you and your mother need to keep you comfortable? And put in a bit more so that Christopher could have a mutton-chop now and then!”

She hadn’t really been listening. He said with some insistence: “Look here! I’m here on business. Not like an elderly admirer forcing himself on you. Though, by God, I do admire you too…. But my father wanted your mother to be comfortable….”

Her face, turned to him, became rigid.

“You don’t mean…” she began. He said:

“You won’t get it any quicker by interrupting. I have to tell my stories in my own way. My father wanted your mother to be comfortable. He said so that she could write books, not papers. I don’t know what the difference is: that’s what he said. He wants you to be comfortable too…. You’ve not got any encumbrances? Not… oh, say a