The Parasites

  “Darlings, you would be bored with London. Those horrid sirens going. Much nicer in the country.”

  The children would potter round the flat, peering into cupboards, while Maria dragged on her clothes, and Polly chatted.

  “They need new shoes, and Caroline’s coat will never do another summer; it’s amazing how they grow. I was thinking if we had time to go into Daniel Neal’s, or perhaps Debenham’s, a nice catalogue came from Debenham’s the other day addressed to you, I opened it, I knew you wouldn’t mind; and if we do the dentist afterwards… Is that the telephone? Would you like me to answer the telephone for you?”

  “No, thank you, I can answer it myself.”

  Even with this hint, Polly would not leave the room. She stood waiting, wondering who it was that rang up Mummy… Too often it was Niall. Niall back from an expedition to New York. Public Relations. So he said. Though what Niall had to do with Public Relations no one ever found out. He never found out himself.

  When Polly was in the room, Maria spoke down the telephone in private code. “Is that Mr. Chichester? This is Miss Delaney here.”

  Niall, as Mr. Chichester, knew the code signal. He laughed the other end of the telephone, and lowered the voice that had been loud.

  “Who’s with you? Charles or Polly?”

  “My children are up from the country, Mr. Chichester, and my day is very full.”

  “I suppose that means the dentist. Will they stop the night?”

  “Definitely no, Mr. Chichester. Not even if there is a fog. Perhaps you can call for me at the theater, and we can discuss that article of yours in Women and Beauty about cooking in the home.”

  “I should adore to, Miss Delaney. Food is such a problem. I find I miss Indian curry more than anything… Darling, can I stay the night?”

  “Where else would you go, Mr. Chichester? And do you remember a dish called Bombay duck? I can’t wait for Bombay duck.”

  “I’ve forgotten Bombay duck. Does it mean I have to sleep on the floor? The last time I slept on the floor I got lumbago.”

  “No, that’s the way they cook curry in Madras… I must go now, Mr. Chichester. Good-bye.”

  Back again to childhood, to hiding sweets in cupboards, to doing things that Truda said one must never do. Must there always be someone in the room?

  “Is Mummy going to take up cooking lessons?” said Polly brightly.

  “Perhaps—perhaps.”

  And still not dressed, still only in a girdle and a brassière, with her hair beneath a turban, and grease on the face, and the morning’s letters yet to open.

  “DEAR MISS DELANEY, —I have written a three-act play on free love in a Nudist colony, and for reasons I cannot understand, it has been turned down by every manager in London. I feel strongly that you, and you, alone, would give just the right quality to the character of Lola…”

  “DEAR MISS DELANEY,—I saw you some years ago, in a play whose title I have forgotten, but I have always remembered the smile you gave me when you autographed my album. Since then ill-luck has dogged me, I am broken in health, and have just come out of hospital to find my wife has run away with all my savings. If you can see your way to letting me have a temporary loan of three hundred pounds…”

  “DEAR MISS DELANEY, —As Chairman of the Crookshaven Committee for Fallen Women, I am wondering whether you would be good enough to launch an appeal…”

  Into the wastepaper basket went the lot.

  “So I thought I could put a good hem on the bottom,” said Polly, “and the dress could do her another winter, but it’s the socks that are the trouble. They are through their socks so quickly, and the difficulty I’ve had in the village to get the shoes soled and heeled. Mr. Gatley is so unobliging, we have to wait our turn now, just like anybody else.”

  Then a sudden yell. One of the children had fallen down and cut its chin on the edge of the bath. Pandemonium; sticking-plaster must be found. Where was the sticking-plaster? “Mummy needs a new first-aid box. Mummy does not take care of herself properly.” Mummy did take care of herself. Mummy was perfectly all right as long as she was left alone.

  The dentist, shopping, lunch, shopping again; and the blessed relief of seeing everybody off at the station on the three-fifteen. A pang, for one brief moment, because of the little faces at the window and the waving hands; a queer inexplicable clutch at the heart. Why was Maria not with them? Why did she not look after them? Why did she not behave like other mothers? They were not hers. They did not belong to her. They were Charles’s children. Something went wrong from the very start, and it was all her own fault, because she had not thought about them enough, she had not loved them enough; there was always someone else. A play, a person, always something else…

  A funny, lost feeling of despair, turning away from the platform, and pushing through the barrier with those soldiers carrying their kit. What was it all for? Where were they all going, what was Charles doing in the Middle East, why was she here? All those people pushing through the barriers. All those bewildered, searching faces.

  In the theater there was safety. A deep embedded sense of home, of safety. The dressing room that needed doing up, with the plaster coming off the walls, the dusty ventilator. The crack in the basin. The worn bit of carpet that the rug could not cover. The table, and the pots of cream. Someone knocking on the door. “Come in.” Charles was forgotten, the children were forgotten, the war and all those strange loose threads of life that parted and dissolved; these could be forgotten too. The only safety lay in subterfuge. In doing what she had done from the beginning of time. In pretending to be someone else… But not only that. In being a gang, a little group together, a ship’s crew.

  During the performance the rattle of an express train overhead coughed and gasped to its destination. Then the sudden silence. THEY had begun again.

  Why did not Niall come and fetch her home afterwards? It was the least he could do, to call for her at the theater. Try the telephone. No answer from the telephone. Well then, where was Niall? Supposing, when that last thing burst, it had got to Niall?

  “Does anybody know where they had it tonight?”

  “Croydon, I think.”

  Nobody knew. No one was certain. Then another knock at the door. “Come in.” And it was Niall. The surge of relief that turned to irritation.

  “Where have you been? Why didn’t you come before?”

  “I was doing something else.”

  No use, ever, to question Niall. He was a law unto himself.

  “I thought you might be in front,” she said, crossly, cleaning her face.

  “I’ve seen the play four times, and that’s about three times too many,” answered Niall.

  “I was rather good tonight. Quite different from the time you saw me last.”

  “You’re always different. I’ve never seen you do the same thing twice. Here, take this parcel.”

  “What is it?”

  “A present I bought you in New York, Fifth Avenue. Horribly expensive. It’s called a negligee.”

  “Oh, Niall…”

  And she was a child again, tearing at the wrappings, flinging tissue paper on the floor; but quickly collecting it again, because tissue paper was difficult to find. Then pulling from the box a flimsy floating idiocy, transparent and impractical.

  “It must have cost the earth.”

  “It did.”

  “Public Relations?”

  “No, Personal. Don’t ask me any more. Put it on.”

  It was such fun to have a present. Why was she such a child about a present?

  “How does it look?”

  “It looks good.”

  “It feels good. I shall call it Desire Under the Elms.”

  There were never any taxis to be found. They had to grope their way back to the flat through fog, listening to the onrush of the panting, puffing train, above them in the sky. And it was exasperating, and queer, irritating and strange, that the person she loved most in the world, even now, was the
person she had smacked and bullied as a child. Why reach this point in life, and go on clinging to the same little sullen boy? The same familiar eyes, and mouth, and hands? In moments of elation, in moments of despondency, always return to Niall. Always make Niall the whipping-boy, the scapegoat to a mood.

  “The thing is…”

  “The thing is what?”

  “The thing is, instead of bringing me Desire Under the Elms you should have brought me loads of food in tins. But of course it never entered your head to do that. Gorged as you were, with steak.”

  “What sort of food?”

  “Well, hams, and tongues, and chickens’ breasts in aspic.”

  “I did. I left a great parcel of stuff with the hall porter. You’ll see directly. But not chickens’ breasts. Frankfurters.”

  “Oh! Oh, well…”

  Pottering in the flat, between the bedroom and the kitchen, one moment she talked to Niall, and the next to the humming kettle.

  “Now, don’t you dare boil over, I’ve got my eye on you… Niall, what are you doing in my linen chest, leave it alone.”

  “I’ve got to find another blanket. What’s this thing, plaided, underneath an ironing board, all Scots wa’ hae where Wallace bled?”

  “You can’t have it… yes, you can; but don’t spill brandy on the bottom.”

  “I haven’t any brandy. I wish I had. The flat is icy. My teeth are chattering.”

  “Very good for you. Pickled with steam heat… Now I’ve lost the tin-opener. Niall, what have you got on? You look like a nigger minstrel.”

  “They are my American pajamas. Desire Under the Dog-wood. Don’t you admire them?”

  “No. That awful liver-colored stripe… Take them off. Wear Scots wa’ hae instead.”

  “I thought I might wear Scots wa’ hae as well.”

  Another rattling train clattered overhead. Where to? Where from? Better fill the hot-water bottle quickly.

  “Are you hungry, Niall?”

  “No.”

  “Will you be hungry later?”

  “Yes. Don’t worry. If I am I’ll bust open one of the tins of Frankfurters with a shoehorn. By the way, what was Bombay duck?”

  “Sharing a compartment in a sleeper. Had you forgotten?”

  “Oh, of course. But how does it apply to us, tonight?”

  “It doesn’t. It was just to put off Polly.”

  The lovely warmth of a scalding cup of tea, and then a bottle in its cover against the toes. The lovely silence when there were no express trains, no rattling doors and windows; only the ticking of the bedside clock, the hands luminous in the darkness, standing at ten to one.

  “Niall?”

  “What?”

  “Did you see that bit in the evening paper about the wife of some old Colonel Noseworthy dying and asking to have ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ played at her funeral?”

  “No.”

  “Such a good idea. I keep wondering who it was she had got under her skin.”

  “Old Noseworthy, I suppose. Maria, what are we meant to be doing?”

  “I don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s heaven.”

  “Well, stop talking then…”

  In the hall at Farthings someone sounded the gong. Maria opened her eyes, and sat up shivering. She reached for the bath-plug, and the tepid water ran away gurgling, roaring, outside the bathroom window. She was going to be very late for Sunday supper.

  21

  Celia shut the door of the children’s bedroom behind her. It is true, she said to herself, what we were saying this afternoon; they are different from what we used to be. Our world was one of fantasy. Theirs is reality. They don’t pretend. An armchair is always an armchair, to the modern child, never a ship, never a desert island. The patterns on the wall are patterns; not characters whose faces change at dusk. Games like draughts, or ludo, are games of skill and chance; even as bridge or poker are to an adult. Draughts to us were soldiers, ruthless and malignant; and the crowned king on the back line a puffed-up potentate, jumping with horrible power, backwards and forwards, from square to square. The trouble is, the children have no imagination. They are sweet, and have carefree, honest eyes; but they have not any magic in their day. The magic has all gone…

  “Children tucked up, Miss Celia?”

  “Yes, Polly. I am so sorry I did not come up to give you a hand with the baths.”

  “Oh, that’s quite all right; I heard you talking in the drawing room, and I thought you must have plenty to discuss. Mrs. Wyndham’s looking tired, don’t you think?”

  “It’s only London, Polly. And the rainy weather. And being in a play that is not doing very well.”

  “I suppose so. Such a pity she doesn’t take a long rest, and stay down here with Mr. Wyndham and the children.”

  “It’s not easy for an actress to do that, Polly. Besides, it would not suit her.”

  “The children see so little of her. Caroline writes to Daddy twice a week from school, never to Mummy. I can’t help thinking sometimes…”

  “Yes, well, I must go and tidy, Polly. I shall see you at supper.”

  No confidences from Polly about Maria. No confidences about Charles, about the children. Too many love affairs she had to straighten and settle, too many private pangs and woes. The Irish night-nurse who had lived with them during the final months before Pappy died, she had been the worst. Her endless letters from a married man. Always the flow of someone else’s tears.

  To live vicariously meant, decided Celia, not to live for other people; but to see life only through their eyes and never through your own. By doing this, of course, she had been spared much pain. At least, she supposed she had. Celia washed her hands in the washbasin in Caroline’s bedroom, which had been allotted to her for the weekend, and sponged her face. The water was cool. Someone, Maria no doubt, had drained away the hot to fill her bath, the water was running still… Take love affairs, for instance. If she, Celia, had ever had a love affair no doubt it would have turned to gall and wormwood, or it would have proved abortive from the start. She would have been one of the sort of women whom men left. “Have you heard about poor Celia? That brute of a man.” He would have gone off and deserted her, for somebody else’s wife. Or else he would have been married himself, like the young man and the Irish nurse, and a Catholic, and unable to be divorced. He and Celia would have met, miserably, week after week, year after year, sitting on a bench in Regent’s Park.

  “But what are we to do?”

  “There is nothing we can do. Maud won’t hear of separation.” Maud would live forever. Maud would never die. Celia and the man would sit in Regent’s Park, talking about Maud’s children. She had been spared all that. It was a great relief. Nor, looking back, would there have been time for it. There had been so much to do for Pappy during those helpless years. There had been no time for her drawings and her stories. Much to the exasperation of Mr. Harrison and his firm.

  “If you don’t do them now, you know, you never will,” he said.

  “I promise you I shall. Next week, next month, next year.”

  They became tired of her, after a while. She did not keep her promises. She was only a half-fledged artist, after all. The quality that had excited Mr. Harrison and the rest, the quality that had been Mama’s, must dwindle away and die. Surely it was more important to make a person happy. It was more important for Pappy, lying helpless in his bed, to watch her with his eyes and say, “My darling, my darling,” and to give to him the little comfort that she could, than to sit alone, writing, drawing, creating people who had never lived at all. It was not possible to do both. That was the heart of the matter. She had known it, when she had taken Pappy home from hospital. Either she must give her time to him, for his remaining years, or she must let him go, and turn upon herself and feed her talent.

  It was a choice. A simple issue. And she had chosen Pappy.

  The thing that people like Mr. Harrison had never understood was that to do this was no sacrifice. It w
as not unselfishness. She had made her choice of her own free will, because she wished to do it. However demanding Pappy may have been, however tiring, however petulant, he was, in the true and deepest sense, her refuge. He shielded her from action. His was the cloak that covered her. She need not go out into the world, she need not struggle, need not face the things that other people face—because she looked after Pappy.

  Let Mr. Harrison and his colleagues go on thinking her a genius hiding from the light of day. By lying hidden, she could not be proven otherwise. She could have done this, she might have done the other, but she could not do either, because of Pappy. Let Maria stand out upon the stage, with the glare upon her. The applause came, but she risked stony silence too; she risked failure. Let Niall write his tunes, and wait for criticism; the tunes might be praised, but they could be damned as well.

  Once a person gave his talent to the world, the world put a stamp upon it. The talent was not a personal possession anymore. It was something to be traded, bought, and sold. It fetched a high price, or a low one. It was kicked in the common market. Always, forever after, the possessor of the talent must keep a wary eye upon the purchaser. Therefore, if you were sensitive, if you were proud, you turned your back upon the market. You made excuses. Like Celia.

  And that is the real reason I looked after Pappy, she thought, as she changed her shoes and stockings, because I was afraid of criticism, afraid of failure. Charles was all wrong when he attacked the others. I am the parasite, not they. I preyed on Pappy, while they went into the world. Pappy was dead, but still she made excuses. The war… She could not be expected to draw pictures in the war. There were many more important things to do. Cleaning floors in hospitals. Serving in canteens. Helping in training centers for the blind. There had been so many things that a single person, unattached, could do. A single woman, unattached, like Celia. And I did them all, she thought, I never stopped, I was busy all the time, few women worked as hard as I did. But why am I talking to myself like this? What am I trying to prove? The war is over, the war is dead, like Pappy. What, then, do I live for now?