Aranjuez said:
“Our only V.C….” Swift jealousy went through her.
Aranjuez said:
“I say… that he…” Good boy! Dear boy! Dear little brother!… Where was her own brother? Perhaps they were not going to be on terms any more! All around them the world was roaring. They were doing their best to make a little roaring unit there, the tide creeping into silent places!
The thin woman in black on the dais was looking at them. She drew her skirts together. Aranjuez had his little hands up as if he were going to lay them pleadingly on her breast. Why pleadingly?… Begging her to forget his hideous eye-socket. He said:
“Wasn’t it splendid…, wasn’t it ripping of Nancy to marry me like this?… We shall all be such friends.”
The thin woman caught her eye. She seemed more than ever to draw her skirts away though she never moved…. That was because she, Valentine, was Tietjens’ mistress…. There’s a picture in the National Gallery called Titian’s Mistress…. She passed perhaps with them all for having… The woman smiled at her, a painfully forced smile. For Armistice…. She, Valentine, was outside the pale. Except for holidays and days of National rejoicing….
She felt… nakedish, at her left side. Sure enough Tietjens was gone. He had taken McKechnie to shave. The man with the eye-glass looked critically round the shouting room. He fixed her and bore towards her. He stood over, his legs wide apart. He said:
“Hey! Hullo! Who’d have thought of seeing you here? Met you at the Prinseps’. Friend of friend Hun’s, aren’t you?” He said:
“Hullo, Aranjuez! Better?”
It was like a whale speaking to a shrimp: but still more like an uncle speaking to a favourite nephew! Aranjuez blushed with sheer pleasure. He faded away as if in awe before tremendous eminences. For him she too was an eminence. His life-hero’s… woman!
The V.C. was in the mood to argue about politics. He always was. She had met him twice during evenings at friends’ called Prinsep. She had not known him because of his eye-glasses; he must have put that up along with his ribbon. It took your breath away: like a drop of blood illuminated by a light that never was.
He said:
“They say you’re receiving for Tietjens! Who’d have thought it? You’re a pro-German — he’s such a sound Tory. Squire of Groby and all, eh what?”
He said:
“Know Groby?” He squinted through his glasses round the room. “Looks like a mess this… Only needs the Vie Parisienne and the Pink Un… Suppose he has moved his stuff to Groby. He’ll be going to live at Groby, now. The war’s over!”
He said:
“But you and old Tory Tietjens in the same room… By Jove the war’s over…. The lion lying down with the lamb’s nothing…” He exclaimed “Oh damn! Oh, damn, damn, damn…. I say… I didn’t mean it…. Don’t cry. My dear little girl. My dear Miss Wannop. One of the best I always thought you. You don’t suppose…”
She said:
“I’m crying because of Groby really…. It’s a day to cry on anyhow…. You’re quite a good sort, really!”
He said:
“Thank you! Thank you! Drink some more port! He’s a good fat old beggar, old Tietjens. A good officer!” He added: “Drink a lot more port!”
He had been the most asinine, creaking, “what about your king and country,” shocked, outraged and speechless creature of all the many who for years had objected to her objecting to men being unable to stand up…. Now he was a rather kind brother!
They were all yelling.
“Good old Tietjens! Good old Fat Man! Pre-war hooch! He’d be the one to get it!” No one like Fat Man Tietjens. He lounged at the door; easy; benevolent. In uniform now. That was better. An officer, yelling like an enraged Redskin, dealt him an immense blow behind the shoulder blades. He staggered, smiling into the centre of the room. An officer gently pushed her into the centre of the room. She was against him. Khaki encircled them. They began to yell and to prance, most joining hands. Others waved the bottles and smashed underfoot the glasses. Gipsies break glasses at their weddings. The bed was against the wall. She did not like the bed to be against the wall. It had been brushed by…
They were going round them: yelling in unison:
“Over here! Pom Pom Over here! Pom Pom!
That’s the word, that’s the word; Over here…”
At least they weren’t over there! They were prancing. The whole world round them was yelling and prancing round. They were the centre of unending roaring circles. The man with the eye-glass had stuck a half-crown in his other eye. He was well-meaning. A brother. She had a brother with the V.C. All in the family.
Tietjens was stretching out his two hands from the waist. It was incomprehensible. His right hand was behind her back, his left in her right hand. She was frightened. She was amazed. Did you ever! He was swaying slowly. The elephant! They were dancing! Aranjuez was hanging on to the tall woman like a kid on a telegraph pole. The officer who had said he had picked up a little bit of fluff… well, he had! He had run out and fetched it. It wore white cotton gloves and a flowered hat. It said: “Ow! Now!”… There was a fellow with a most beautiful voice. He led: better than a gramophone. Better….
Les petites marionettes, font! font! font….
On an elephant. A dear, meal-sack elephant. She was setting out on…
The Last Post
Oh Rokehope is a pleasant place
If the fause thieves would let it be
Part One
HE LAY STARING at the withy binders of his thatch shelter; the grass was infinitely green; his view embraced four counties; the roof was supported by six small oak sapling-trunks, roughly trimmed and brushed from above by apple boughs. French crab-apple! The hut had no sides.
The Italian proverb says: He who allows the boughs of trees to spread above his roof invites the doctor daily. Words to that effect! He would have grinned, but that might have been seen.
For a man who never moved, his face was singularly walnut-coloured; his head, indenting the skim-milk white of the pillows should have been a gipsy’s, the dark, silvered hair cut extremely close, the whole face very carefully shaven and completely immobile. The eyes moved, however, with unusual vivacity, all the life of the man being concentrated in them and their lids.
Down the path that had been cut in swathes from the knee-high grass and led from the stable to the hut, a heavy elderly peasant rolled in his gait. His over-long, hairy arms swung as if he needed an axe or a log or a full sack to make him a complete man. He was broad-bcamed, in cord breeches very tight in the buttocks; he wore black leggings, an unbuttoned blue waistcoat, a striped flannel shirt, open at the perspiring neck and a square, high hat of black felt.
He said:
“Want to be shifted?”
The man in the bed closed his eyelids slowly.
“’Ave a droper cider?”
The other again similarly closed his eyes. The standing man supported himself with an immense hand, gorilla-like, by one of the oaken posts.
“Best droper cider ever I tasted,” he said, “’Is Lordship give me. ’Is Lordship sester me: ‘Gunning,’ ’e ses…. The day the vixen got into keeper’s coop enclosure…”
He began and slowly completed a very long story going to prove that English noble landlords preferred foxes to pheasants. Or should! English landowners of the right kidney.
’Is Lordship would no more ’ave that vixen killed or so much as flurried, she being gravid like than… Dreadful work a gravid vixen can do among ’encoops with pheasant poults…. Have to eat fer six or seven, she have! All a-growing…. So ’is Lordship sester Gunning….