‘Poor child, she will feel the parting.’
Aunt Teresa looked at him vaguely. ‘Sylvia, oh, she is coming with us, of course.’
‘But — my wife—’ he stammered. ‘She must stay with me.’
‘Gustave,’ she said very quietly, ‘stop it. I can stand a good deal. But there is one thing I simply cannot stand at all — anyone disagreeing with me. Stop it. Stop it! For God’s sake.’
‘But — she — she’s my wife.’
My aunt gave him one furtive look.
‘You want to kill me?’ she asked.
Gustave said never another word.
‘Today is Sunday. We leave on Wednesday,’ ordered my aunt.
‘But all the packing,’ Berthe wailed. ‘And all the thousand and one little things we leave unsettled.’
‘Gustave can wind up our affairs.’
Gustave sat silent, as if a little dejected.
‘Gustave!’ said my aunt. ‘You must try and obtain a transfer to Brussels as soon as you can — and, to start with, a long annual leave.’
Gustave only smiled, and showed a black tooth at either corner of his mouth, and there was perhaps an indication in his faintly sardonic nod that Gustave regarded such a contingency a remote one.
‘Courage!’ said Uncle Emmanuel.
‘Alors, en avant!’ commanded my aunt. ‘I can’t endure this exile any longer. I must have a complete change. And at Dixmude I shall at least have Constance to look after me.’
‘Hasn’t Berthe then looked after you?’ I asked, looking across at Berthe with a twinkle.
‘Berthe,’ said my aunt, ‘is not a trained nurse.’
‘What about the flat?’
‘Gustave will look after it.’
Then the packing began. It began in real fury. For we had only three days. We worked as if stripped to the waist. All the boxes and hold-alls and cases and trunks had been hauled down from the attic, and were being filled, filled to overflowing, to the point of bursting, tightly strapped up — and still the travail went on night and day: while Aunt Teresa, ensconced in her soft bed, was writing out the labels. Captain Negodyaev, hearing of our sudden flight, had a violent relapse of persecution mania and begged us piteously, for the love of all saints, to take him with us to Europe.
‘Why, man, you’re all shot to pieces,’ Beastly observed, surveying the Russian’s tremulous frame with compassion. ‘I daresay you had better come along.’
‘And my wife and Natàsha?’
‘Yes — why not?’
Captain Negodyaev was wringing Beastly’s hand with gratitude. But the question of their going with us in the last resort depended — though why it should so depend no one really knew — on Aunt Teresa. And finally my aunt said: ‘Yes.’ Gustave was to see his bank manager and director the same day (though it was Sunday and the bank was closed) to arrange for a substantial loan; and Gustave came back to say that he could do this only on the strict condition that on his return to Brussels Père Vanderflint took instant steps to sell his pension.
‘Yes, sell the pension,’ Sylvia agreed.
‘Well — yes.’ said Aunt Teresa.
‘Yes, my angel,’ Uncle Emmanuel rejoined, not without some concern. ‘What shall we live on, however?’
She did not answer at once. ‘There are ways and means,’ she replied.
This too, it seemed, could be got round. Gustave had relations who had an interest in a number of cinematographs in Dixmude, and an uncle on the city council, and possibly — he could not say for certain — but possibly some sort of post as films censor or something could be promised his father-in-law on arrival in Dixmude, carrying with it a modest stipend, which would, however, compensate him for the loss of the pension.
‘Yes, that will do very well,’ Sylvia said gaily.
Between Sunday and Wednesday we lived in a whirl and a trance. Removing. Here they had settled, by all accounts for a long stay, and were gradually nearing the inevitable doom — flagging, sagging, fizzling out. And now — suddenly — removing, living again, beginning anew, planning, struggling, bracing. ‘Oh, my God!’ Berthe, wedged in between trunks, wailed aloud. And, with this, spring was beginning. Spring was beginning. Over half the globe it was beginning, a verdant hope renewed. I hardly saw Sylvia. The moral issues were happily out of our hands. If there is a seat of justice, a day of judgment, Aunt Teresa will, in her own good time, answer for this curious mismanagement of the convenances. Meanwhile I decline to discuss this delicate subject any further. I wash my hands of the whole business. Gustave was not an eagle. And if I were Sylvia I should not have gone back to him. But then, nor would I have married him in the first place. She married him, and she went back to him — till Wednesday morning. It was her affair. I have no comment to make. Indeed, I have nothing further to say.
On Tuesday afternoon Aunt Molly paid her last visit to Uncle Lucy’s grave; and on Wednesday morning at quarter to ten we were ready to drive to the station.
‘There are only two more questions,’ said Aunt Teresa, as she was putting on her hat. ‘One is Vladislav.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Uncle Emmanuel. ‘I’ve spoken to the General about Vladislav. And I have recommended him for the Cross of Saint Stanislav.’
‘And the other is Stepàn.’
‘I went to Stepàn,’ I said. ‘He is still in his bunk.’
‘Gustave,’ she said, ‘you might keep an eye on Stepàn.’
‘Oui, maman,’ said Gustave, and touched his Adam’s apple.
‘And now we can be off.’
‘Come on, Harry. Come on, Nora,’ Aunt Molly called.
‘Oh, where’s my umbelera?’ wailed Natàsha.
‘There it is.’
‘Come on.’
On the stairs as we went down we were stopped by the daughter of the actual-state’s-councillor.
‘No time’—I held out a warning hand. ‘We’re leaving.’
‘I won’t be long. The main feature of our proposition for the reform—’
‘Quite so, but, you see, we are pressed for time; we have to catch a train.’
‘Yes, yes, yes. I won’t be long. We want, if the Allied Governments will assist us with our alphabet—’
‘Quite, but we are afraid to miss our train.’
‘Yes, yes, yes. I won’t be many minutes. Primarily, we want to introduce phonetic—’
‘But, really, we shall miss the train—’
‘Madame, nous sommes pressés. We have no time; our train is leaving,’ intervened my uncle.
‘I will be brief and outline the scheme in a few concise—’
‘Good-bye!’
We swept past her.
46
GENERAL ‘PSHE-PSHE’ WAS AT THE STATION IN HIS grey coat with a scarlet lining, and I instructed our guards — two Hungarian prisoners-of-war awaiting repatriation and dressed up as Tommies and led by an old squinting British corporal — Corporal Cripple — now proceeding to his Tientsin station for discharge — to accord the General the requisite military honours. But they were a sleepy lot of fellows, and presented arms to an excise clerk instead, much to his delight. We made what military display we could, but the War Office had long since withdrawn our men, and our parade was not redeeming. Colonel Ishibaiashi had sent a guard of honour. The little Nippons in their red-banded caps looked smart enough, but the officer, every time that he shrieked the word of command, sounded just as though he were being skinned alive, so that the Russian peasants who gazed on from behind the fence laughed aloud in derision.