Happy Ending
On a splintered tree stump in the biggest battlefield in the history of the world, Adam sat down and read a letter from Nina. It had arrived early the day before, but in the intensive fighting which followed he had not had a spare minute in which to open it.
Doubting Hall,
Aylesbury.
Dearest Adam—I wonder how you are. It is difficult to know what is happening quite because the papers say such odd things. Van has got a divine job making up all the war news and he invented a lovely story about you the other day how you’d saved hundreds of people’s lives and there’s what they call a popular agitation saying why haven’t you got the V.C. so probably you will have by now isn’t it amusing
Ginger and I are very well. Ginger has a job in an office in Whitehall and wears a very grand sort of uniform and my dear I’m going to have a baby isn’t it too awful but Ginger has quite made up his mind it’s his and is as pleased as anything so that’s all right. He’s quite forgiven you about last Christmas and says anyway you’re doing your bit now and in war time one lets bygones be bygones.
Doubting is a hospital did you know. Papa shows his film to the wounded and they adore it. I saw Mr. Benfleet and he said how awful it was when one had given all one’s life in the cause of culture to see everything one’s stood for swept away but he’s doing very well with his “Sword Unsheathed” series of war poets.
There’s a new Government order that we have to sleep in gas masks because of the bombs but no one does. They’ve put Archie in prison as an undesirable alien Ginger saw to that he’s terrific about spies. I’m sick such a lot because of this baby but everyone says it’s patriotic to have babies in war time why?
Lots of love my angel take care of your dear self.
N.
He put it back in its envelope and buttoned it into his breastpocket. Then he took out a pipe, filled it and began to smoke. The scene all round him was one of unrelieved desolation; a great expanse of mud in which every visible object was burned or broken. Sounds of firing thundered from beyond the horizon, and somewhere above the gray clouds there were aeroplanes. He had had no sleep for thirty-six hours. It was growing dark.
Presently he became aware of a figure approaching, painfully picking his way among the strands of barbed wire which strayed across the ground like drifting cobweb; a soldier clearly.
As he came nearer Adam saw that he was leveling towards him a liquid-fire projector. Adam tightened his fingers about his Huxdane-Halley bomb (for the dissemination of leprosy germs), and in this posture of mutual suspicion they met. Through the dusk Adam recognized the uniform of an English staff officer. He put the bomb back in his pocket and saluted.
The newcomer lowered his liquid-fire projector and raised his gas mask. “You’re English, are you?” he said. “Can’t see a thing. Broken my damned monocle.”
“Why,” said Adam, “you’re the drunk Major.”
“I’m not drunk, damn you, sir,” said the drunk Major, “and, what’s more, I’m a General. What the deuce are you doing here?”
“Well,” said Adam. “I’ve lost my platoon.”
“Lost your platoon… I’ve lost my whole bloody division!”
“Is the battle over, sir?”
“I don’t know, can’t see a thing. It was going on all right last time I heard of it. My car’s broken down somewhere over there. My driver went out to try and find someone to help and got lost, and I went out to look for him, and now I’ve lost the car too. Damn difficult country to find one’s way about in. No landmarks… Funny meeting you. I owe you some money.”
“Thirty-five thousand pounds.”
“Thirty-five thousand and five. Looked for you everywhere before this scrap started. I can give you the money now if you like.”
“The pound’s not worth much nowadays, is it?”
“About nothing. Still, I may as well give you a check. It’ll buy you a couple of drinks and a newspaper. Talking of drinks, I’ve got a case of bubbly in the car if we could only find it. Salvaged it out of an R.A.F. mess that got bombed back at H.Q. Wish I could find that car.”
Eventually they did find it. A Daimler limousine sunk to the axles in mud.
“Get in and sit down,” said the General hospitably. “I’ll turn the light on in a second.”
Adam climbed in and found that it was not empty. In the corner, crumpled up in a French military greatcoat, was a young woman fast asleep.
“Hullo, I’d forgotten all about you,” said the General. “I picked up this little lady on the road. I can’t introduce you, because I don’t know her name. Wake up, mademoiselle.”
The girl gave a little cry and opened two startled eyes.
“That’s all right, little lady, nothing to be scared about—all friends here. Parlez anglais?”
“Sure,” said the girl.
“Well, what about a spot?” said the General, peeling the tinfoil from the top of a bottle. “You’ll find some glasses in the locker.”
The woebegone fragment of womanhood in the corner looked a little less terrified when she saw the wine. She recognized it as the symbol of international goodwill.
“Now perhaps our fair visitor will tell us her name,” said the General.
“I dunno,” she said.
“Oh, come, little one, you mustn’t be shy.”
“I dunno. I been called a lot of things. I was called Chastity once. Then there was a lady at a party and she sent me to Buenos Aires and then when the war came she brought me back again and I was with the soldiers training at Salisbury Plain. That was swell. They called me Bunny—I don’t know why. Then they sent me over here and I was with the Canadians what they called me wasn’t nice and then they left me behind when they retreated and I took up with some foreigners. They were nice too though they were fighting against the English. Then they ran away and the lorry I was in got stuck in the ditch so I got in with some other foreigners who were on the same side as the English and they were beasts but I met an American doctor who had white hair and he called me Emily because he said I reminded him of his daughter back home so he took me to Paris and we had a lovely week till he took up with another girl in a night club so he left me behind in Paris when he went back to the front and I hadn’t no money and they made a fuss about my passport so they called me numéro mille soixante dix-huit and they sent me and a lot of other girls off to the East to be with the soldiers there. At least they would have done only the ship got blown up so I was rescued and the French sent me up here in a train with some different girls who were very unrefined. Then I was in a tin hut with the girls and then yesterday they had friends and I was alone so I went for a walk and when I came back the hut was gone and the girls were gone and there didn’t seem anyone anywhere until you came in your car and now I don’t rightly know where I am. My, isn’t war awful?”
The General opened another bottle of champagne.
“Well, you’re as right as rain now, little lady,” he said, “so let’s see you smile and look happy. You mustn’t sit there scowling, you know—far too pretty a little mouth for that. Let me take off that heavy coat. Look, I’ll wrap it round your knees. There, now, isn’t that better?… Fine, strong little legs, eh?…”
Adam did not embarrass them. The wine and the deep cushions and the accumulated fatigue of two days’ fighting drew him away from them and, oblivious to all the happy emotion pulsing near him, he sank into sleep.
The windows of the stranded motor car shone over the wasted expanse of the battlefield. Then the General pulled down the blinds, shutting out that sad scene.
“Cozier now, eh?” he said.
And Chastity in the prettiest way possible fingered the decorations on his uniform and asked him all about them.
And presently, like a circling typhoon, the sounds of battle began to return.
Reading Group Guide
Vile Bodies
A Novel by
EVELYN WAUGH
The modest success
of Decline and Fall enabled Evelyn Waugh to marry his fiancée, Evelyn Gardner, in the summer of 1928. They delayed their honeymoon until the spring of 1929, at which point Waugh wrote to his father, “I think I can promise a novel for the autumn and a very good one too.” Following is a selection of his correspondences with friends and family as he returned from his honeymoon, began to write a novel “about bright young people,” then saw his marriage to “She-Evelyn” collapse when she announced she was in love with another man.
[Written on Bristol Hotel, Cairo, paper]
To Henry Yorke1
Abingdon Arms,
Beckley,
Oxford
July 20, 1929
Dear Henry,
I was relieved to get your letter because once when I wrote a book a young man called Carew whom I had always liked wrote to tell me how good he thought my book was and I was so disgusted by the letter that I never could speak to him again without acute embarrassment and I thought perhaps my letter had had that effect on you; well I am glad it hasn’t.
I have written 25,000 words of a novel in ten days. It is rather like P. G. Wodehouse, all about bright young people. I hope it will be finished by the end of the month, and then I shall just have time to write another book before your party.
By the way, would you like a seventeenth- (or eighteenth, I’m not sure) century water color of the Prodigal Son which I bought in Malta for a wedding present, or are you against “antiques” and would rather have a labor-saving device for the kitchen?
Nancy Mitford came and drove us to Savernake on Sunday, and I formed a clear impression that she and Robert are secretly married, or is that my novelist’s imagination?
In the evenings I sit with the famous in the kitchen drinking beer. I like so much the way they don’t mind not talking. Rich people always get shy when there’s a silence or else they start thinking, but in the public house they will sit mute for five or ten minutes and then just go on talking at exactly the place they left off. Were they like that at Birmingham? By the way did you say what the papers said you said about being jolly good pals with the boys at the works and all that? (I didn’t know about Ld. Rosebery and was rather impressed.)
Do go and see Evelyn and Nancy. I’ve just sent them some caviar so you could eat that.
Are you going to Bryan and Diana’s2 party? I might go up for it if I thought there would be anyone who wouldn’t be too much like the characters in my new book.
I know what you mean about purple patches. My new book is black with them—but then I live by my pen as they say and you don’t.
Yours,
Evelyn
My distinguished sentiments to your young lady. I hope she’s still firm about Talkies.
To Harold Acton
Abingdon Arms,
Beckley,
Oxford
July 1929 [Date unknown]
Dear Harold,
It is sad that we never meet now. How are you? I was in London yesterday and the day before, but they told me that you were away or I would have come to call. I see your name often in the papers, reported as appearing at parties. I nearly came up again today for Bryan’s party but I feel so chained to this novel. I am sure you will disapprove of it. It is a welter of sex and snobbery written simply in the hope of selling some copies. Then if it is [at] all a success, I want to try and write something more serious. I have done half of it and hope to get it finished in another three weeks.
It is very peaceful here, completely uninterrupted. I bought a copy of a magazine in Oxford because I saw your name on the cover and found that poem I particularly like about the bath.
I went to see Peter Quennell3 who seems still to be beset with quarrels—this time with Sachie.4 Why is it I wonder that people who write books seem incapable of sanity in their personal relations (except, I hope, us).
Do, if you ever have a spare minute between the Prince of Wales and Emerald Lady Cunard,5 go and see Evelyn and Nancy in Islington. They would so much like it.
I long to see more of the Medici book 6 and to hear your criticisms of my novelette.
I hope you are not really angry with me for admiring Henry’s book.
Love,
Evelyn
To Catherine and Arthur Waugh
The Ridgeway,
Shere,
Guildford
August, 1929
Dear Mother and Father,
I asked Alec to tell you the sad and to me radically shocking news that Evelyn has gone to live with a man called Heygate.7 I am accordingly filing a petition for divorce.
I am afraid that this will be a blow to you, but I assure you not nearly as severe a blow as it is to me.
I am staying here with Lady Vita Russell on my way to Bryan and Diana Guinness in Sussex. I shall be in London on Wednesday or Thursday. My plans are vague about the flat, etc.
May I come and live with you sometimes?
Love,
Evelyn
Evelyn’s defection was preceded by no kind of quarrel or estrangement.8 So far as I knew we were both serenely happy. It must be some hereditary tic.9 Poor Baroness.
To Harold Acton
The Ridgeway,
Shere,
Guildford
August 4, 1929
A note to tell you what you may have already heard. That Evelyn has been pleased to make a cuckold of me with Heygate and that I have filed a petition for divorce.
E.W.
To Harold Acton
Barford House,
Warwick
September 1929 [date unknown]
My Dear Harold,
No. Evelyn’s defection was preceded by no sort of quarrel or estrangement.10
Certainly the fact that she should have chosen a ramshackle oaf like Heygate adds a little to my distress, but my reasons for divorce are simply that I cannot live with anyone who is avowedly in love with someone else.
Everyone is talking so much nonsense on all sides of me about my affairs that my wits reel. Evelyn’s family and mine join in asking me to “forgive” her, whatever that may mean.
I am escaping to Ireland for a week’s motor racing in the hope of finding an honorable grave.
I have absolutely no plans for the future. Evelyn is to live on at Canonbury. Naturally I have done no work at all for two months.
I did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live, but I am told that this is a common experience.
Love,
E
To Henry Yorke
The Royal George,
Appledore,
N. Devon
September 1929 [exact date unknown]
Dear Henry,
I put off going abroad and came here to make a last effort at finishing my novel. It has been infinitely difficult and is certainly the last time I shall try to make a book about sophisticated people. It all seems to shrivel up and rot internally, and I am relying on a sort of cumulative futility for any effect it may have. All the characters are gossip writers. As soon as I have enough pages covered to call it a book I shall join Bryan and Diana in Paris.
Do you and Dig11 share my admiration for Diana? She seems to me the one encouraging figure in this generation—particularly now she is pregnant—a great germinating vat or potentiality like the vats I saw at their brewery.12
I suppose it would be absurd to suggest you coming here for a weekend? It is a very long journey and not very comfortable when you get here, but it is lonely and there is very interesting bathing, if either of you like that, full of unexpected cross currents. I can’t remember how much I told you in my letter about the details of my divorce—but I expect you know all about it now.
I had a harrowing time with my relatives and Evelyn’s. The only parents to take a sensible line were the basement boy’s 13 who stopped his allowance, cut him out of their wills, and said they never wanted to see him again.
There is some odd hereditary tic in all those Gardner girls—I think it is an intellectual failing mor
e than anything else. My horror and detestation of the basement boy are unqualified. There is practically no part of one that is not injured when a thing like this happens, but naturally vanity is one of the things one is most generally conscious of—or so I find.
Can you suggest anything for me to do after Christmas for six months or so—preferably remunerative but that is not important—but essentially remote and unliterary? I might go and dig in Lord Redesdale’s bogus gold mine 14 if he would let me. Or there is a man called Spearman15 who says I can hunt whales. Do think of something?
Evelyn
P.S. If you hear any amusing opinions about my divorce, do tell me. Particularly from the older generation. The Gardner line is that I am very “unforgiving.”
P.P.S. It is extraordinary how homosexual people however kind and intelligent simply don’t understand at all what one feels in this kind of case.
To Henry Yorke
17A Canonbury Square
December 1929 [exact date unknown]
Dear Henry,
You must not think from this address that I have gone to stay with the Heygates. I am living at Thame at Mr. Fothergill’s and expect to be here off and on until Christmas. Why do not you and Dig come for a weekend (as my guests, of course)? It would be so much fun. Bryan and Diana have just left. It is really quite comfortable.
I am so delighted to hear of your creating a scene at a night club with the Heygates. I have decided that I have gone on for too long in that fog of sentimentality and I am going to stop hiding away from everyone. I was getting into a sort of Charlie Chaplinish Pagliacci attitude to myself as the man with a tragedy in his life and a tender smile for children. So all that must stop and one conclusion I am coming to is that I do not like Evelyn and that really Heygate is about her cup of tea.