The Parasites

  “Aren’t we going to have anything to drink?” she said.

  Mary Rose it was. But rather a grumpy, pouting Mary Rose. Left in the cherry tree too long by Simon without sustenance.

  In the same grim silence, Charles approached the sideboard. He poured the claret. No question of warming it now. Celia and Polly both refused, greatly to Niall’s relief; Polly with her usual breathless laugh when offered alcohol, “Oh, no, Mr. Wyndham, not for me. I have to face tomorrow.”

  “So have we all,” said Charles.

  That was a poser. That was a hit below the belt. Even Mary Rose, her eyes a misty blue and full of dreams, registered interrogation. Niall saw her flash a look across the table at her husband, a wary, doubtful look; then she relapsed once more into her role.

  Attack is the best form of defense. Somebody was always saying that. Montgomery or Slim. Niall had heard it on the wireless several times, during the war. He wondered if the method would apply tonight. Supposing he leaned forward to his host and said, “Look here, what is all this? Where do we stand?” Would Charles stare blankly back at him, nonplussed? The old days were best. The old lost days of duels. A wineglass shivering to fragments. A wine stain down a lace cravat. A hand on the hilt of a sword. Tomorrow? Yes, at dawn… Meanwhile, you did nothing. You attacked the thigh of chicken. You drank your claret and found it much too chill, too sour. A fair Communion wine. Charles, groping in the cellarette after his second gin, had passed over the pre-war stock from Berry Brothers, and had brought out something else. One of those vinegar vintages, marked twelve-and-six. No matter. Let it go… Celia found a caterpillar in the salad, and hid it swiftly under an outside leaf. Mrs. Banks was not so thorough after all. It was so easy to clean a lettuce, if you rinsed it well. Examined every leaf, then rinsed, then shook the whole thing in a clean, damp cloth. A good thing the caterpillar had been on her plate and not Maria’s. Maria would have said, “Oh, God—look at this,” and somehow, this evening, that kind of remark would not have been in place.

  If only somebody would talk and break the silence; but in an easy way. The children would have helped. The children would have prattled on, unconscious. No one could create an atmosphere when there were children. It was at this moment that the announcer in Grand Hotel chose to tell his listeners that the orchestra would play a selection from the dance tunes of Niall Delaney. Polly looked up from her wishbone with a wide, bright smile. “Oh, how nice,” she said. “Now we shall all be pleased.” All perhaps but Niall Delaney. Jesus, how ill-timed.

  “It’s rather hard,” said Niall aloud, “to hear one’s mistakes in public. A writer, after all, can forget about them, once he has returned his proofs. Not so the composer of dud songs.”

  “You mustn’t say that, Mr. Niall,” said Polly. “You always will belittle yourself. I’m sure you do know, really, how popular they are. You ought to hear Mrs. Banks in the kitchen washing up. Even her voice can’t spoil them! Ah, this is my favorite.”

  It was everybody else’s favorite too, five years ago. Why bring it back? Why not let it die, in the limbo of lost moods? Anyway, the fools were taking it too fast. That awful bouncy rhythm… Nine in the morning, it had been, the sun streaming through the window of his room, and, so unexpectedly for him at that hour, the energy of all the world on waking; with the song in his head. He had gone to the piano and played the sound of it, and then had rung Maria.

  “What is it? What do you want?” Her voice heavy with sleep. She hated the telephone before half-past ten.

  “Listen. I want you to hear something.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t madden me. Listen.”

  He had played the song half a dozen times, and then lifted the receiver again, and he had known how she was looking, with the turban round her head, and the eye-pads on her eyes.

  “Yes, but it should not do that at the end,” she had said. “It should do this.” And she sang the last bar so that it went up at the end, instead of down, and of course that was what he had meant all the time.

  “You mean like this? Hold on, while I put the telephone on the piano.”

  He had played it again, going up, as she wanted it; and he sat on the piano stool, laughing, with the receiver tucked between his head and his shoulder, a mad, cramped position, like a ventriloquist’s dummy, while she hummed the tune down the receiver into his ear.

  “Well, now may I go to sleep again?”

  “Yes, if you can.”

  That had been the fun of the mood, for five minutes, for ten minutes, for one hour perhaps, at most. Then it went. Then it belonged to the crooners. To Mrs. Banks, to Polly… He would have liked to get up and switch the wireless off, the business was ill-judged, lacking in taste. It was as though he, Niall, had deliberately told the producer of Grand Hotel to play these songs just now, as an insult to Charles. A modern flinging of the gauntlet. I can do this. What can you do?

  “Yes,” said Charles slowly, “that is my favorite too.”

  Which, thought Niall, is the sort of thing that makes me want to get up from the table, and go out of the room, and drive to the sea and find my leaky boat and sail it to perdition. Because the look in Charles’s eyes as he said that is a thing I can never forget.

  “Thank you, Charles,” said Niall. And split a baked potato.

  Here was the chance, thought Celia. Here was the chance to make everything all right. A bond between us all. Bring Charles into the fold. It was the fault of each one of us, shutting Charles outside. Maria had never realized it. She had not understood. Her mind had always been a child’s mind, questing, curious, full of mirrors, reflecting other people. She had not thought about you, Charles, simply because children never think. If the moment could be held, simply by the bond of Niall’s music, everything might yet come clear. But Polly blundered in.

  “The boy was so funny on the walk this afternoon,” she said. “He asked me, ‘Polly, when we are grown up, shall we be clever and famous like Mummy and Uncle Niall?’ That depends on you, I told him. Little boys don’t become famous who bite their nails.”

  “I bit mine to the quick until I was nineteen,” said Niall.

  “Eighteen,” said Maria.

  She knew who stopped him too. She stared at him, stonily, across the table. And now it’s gone, thought Celia, the moment. We have missed the chance. Charles filled his glass with claret and said nothing.

  “Besides,” continued Polly, “you don’t just become clever and famous by sitting back and doing nothing. That’s what I told the boy. Mummy would like to spend more time in her home, with you children and Daddy, but Mummy has to work in London, at the theater. And do you know what he said to that? He said: ‘She doesn’t have to work. She could just be our Mummy.’ It was really rather sweet.”

  She sipped her glass of water, crooking her finger, smiling at Maria. I can’t make up my mind, thought Niall, whether Polly is a criminal, cunning and dangerous, ripe for the Old Bailey; or just so bloody stupid that it would be kindness to wring her neck and spare the world more pain.

  “I think,” said Celia bravely, “that the thing to tell the children is this. Being famous is awfully unimportant. What is important is to like the thing you do. Whether it is acting, or composing, or gardening, or being a plumber, you must like the thing you do.”

  “Does that apply to marriage?” enquired Charles.

  Celia had blundered worse than Polly. Niall saw her bite her lip.

  “I don’t think Polly was discussing marriage, Charles,” she said.

  “No,” said Charles, “but my son and heir obviously was.”

  It is a pity I’m not a brilliant conversationalist, thought Niall; one of those flamboyant creatures who toss phrases into the air like pancakes, and whip them back and forth across the table. This would be my chance. Steer the conversation into broad, wide channels, and from thence into the realm of abstract thought. Every word a gem. Marriage, my dear Charles, is like a feather bed. For some the down, for some the pointed quill. Op
en up the mattress and the whole thing stinks…

  “Is there any breast left?” asked Maria.

  “I’m sorry,” answered Charles, “you’ve had it all.”

  Well, that was one way out of it. And saved the brain much effort.

  “What I always mean to do,” continued Polly, “is to get a book and write down all the funny things the children say.”

  “Why get a book when you remember them so well?” asked Niall.

  Maria got up from her chair and wandered to the serving table. She dug a fork into the trifle, wrecking the surface. She tasted it, and made a bitter face, and put back the fork belonging to the apple tart. Having spoiled the appearance of the third course, she came back again to the table with an orange. The only orange. She dug her teeth into it, spitting out the skin. If this was a different sort of party, reflected Niall, now would be the moment to start a questionnaire, the kind of questionnaire we play when we’re alone. Where is the best place to kiss a person whom you love? It depends upon the person. Must you know them well? Not well enough. Oh, well, in that case, probably the neck. Beneath the left ear. And travel downwards. Or, as you became more intimate, upon the ankle. The ankle? Why the ankle? Maria flipped a pip across the table. It hit Niall in the eye. I wish, he thought, that I could tell her what I’m thinking now. It would shatter Mary Rose, and we could laugh.

  “I am afraid,” said Polly, watching Maria’s orange, “that I forgot to put any sherry in the trifle.”

  Charles rose, and began collecting the plates. Niall helped himself to a slab of Danish cheese. Celia took trifle, to spare the offended Polly. Besides, the apple tart would be wanted for tomorrow.

  “It’s quite a job remembering everything,” said Polly, “and really Mrs. Banks is not much help. She only puts the bare rations on the grocery order. I don’t know where we’d be if I didn’t put on my thinking cap each Monday.”

  Monday, thought Niall, was a day to be avoided. Heaven help the world on Mondays.

  Charles gave himself neither sweet nor cheese. He broke off the edge of a biscuit, staring steadily at the silver candlesticks, and then poured out for himself the last of the claret. The dregs. The draft was potent. His face, though heavy nowadays, was usually without great color, and brown, from being mostly out of doors. Now it reddened, and the veins appeared. His hand played with his glass.

  “Well,” he said slowly, “and what conclusion did you reach this afternoon?” Nobody answered. Polly glanced up, surprised.

  “You’ve had half a day,” he continued, “to consider quietly whether I was right or wrong.” The bravest of the three took up the challenge.

  “Right about what?” asked Maria.

  “Right,” said Charles, “about your being parasites.”

  He lit a cigar, and leaned back in his chair. Thank the Lord, thought Niall, the dud claret has blurred his feeling. Charles won’t suffer while the claret lasts. The announcer on the wireless said good-bye to Grand Hotel. The orchestra played themselves out, and vanished.

  “Does anybody want the serial?” asked Polly. Charles waved his hand. Like a well-trained hound, she understood his signal. She got up, and switched the wireless off.

  “I don’t know that we discussed it,” said Maria, biting her orange, “we talked of so many other things. We always do.”

  “We had a curious afternoon,” said Niall. “We all three of us plunged back into the past. We remembered lots of things we thought forgotten. Or, if not forgotten, buried.”

  “Once upon a time,” said Charles, “in my official position as magistrate of this district, I was obliged to attend an exhumation. The opening of the grave was unattractive. And the body smelled.”

  “The smells of unknown people, dead or alive, are never attractive,” said Niall, “but one’s own smell, and the smell of those you love, can have a curious charm. And a certain value too. I think we found it so, this afternoon.”

  Charles drew at his cigar. Niall lit a cigarette. Celia listened to her own anxious, beating heart. Maria ate her orange.

  “Indeed,” said Charles. “And what value did you extract from your dead past?”

  “Only what I’ve always suspected,” said Niall; “that you travel full circle, like the world upon its axis, and return to the same place from where you started. It’s very simple.”

  “Yes,” said Celia, “I feel that too. But there’s more to it than that. There’s a reason why we have to do it. Even if we do come back to the starting place, we’ve acquired something on the way. A sort of knowledge. A sense of understanding.”

  “I think you are both quite wrong,” said Maria, “I don’t feel that at all. I am not back where I started from, I have reached some other place. And I have got there through my own effort, and my own will. There is no going back. There is only going forward.”

  “Really?” said Charles. “And may one ask, to what?”

  Polly, who had glanced from one to the other of us, with a bright yet bewildered look, snatched at her chance to join the conversation.

  “We all hope Mummy will go forward to another big success when her present play comes off,” she said. “That is what Mummy hopes too.”

  Pleased with her discretion, she began to stack the plates upon the tray, ready for clearing. It was close to her moment for departure. Sunday supper, yes; but tactfully, she left when Mrs. Banks opened the door and handed in the tray of coffee. Daddy and Mummy liked their coffee to themselves. And Mrs. Banks liked help with the dirty dishes.

  “Success,” said Niall, “really did not come into our discussion. Like fame, as Celia said just now, it’s so very unimportant. Too often it can be a millstone round the neck. Success stories, too, in our particular walk of life, are always very boring. Once anyone is launched, there is no story. Maria’s success story would be lists of plays. My own, a string of tunes. They could not matter less.”

  “What, then, in your opinion, does matter?” enquired Charles.

  “I don’t know,” said Niall, “and I never have. I wish to God I did.”

  Mrs. Banks opened the door, and stood motionless, bearing the tray of coffee. Polly took it from her. The door closed again.

  “I will tell you what matters,” said Charles. “It matters to have principles, to have standards, to have ideals. It matters to have faith, and a belief. It matters very much if you love a woman, and a woman loves a man, and you marry, and you breed children, and you share each other’s lives, and you grow old together, and you lie buried in the same grave. It matters even more if the man loves the wrong woman, and the woman loves the wrong man, and the two come from different worlds that just won’t mix, that won’t turn into one world, belonging to both. Because when that happens, a man goes adrift and is lost, and his ideals and illusions and traditions get lost too. There is nothing much to live for anymore. So he chucks his hand in. He says to himself, ‘Why bother? The woman I love does not believe in any of the things that I believe in. Therefore I may as well stop believing in them too. I also can lower standards.’ ”

  He took the cup of coffee that Polly had placed beside him, and stirred it with the spoon. There was no need to stir. There was no sugar in the coffee.

  “Please, Charles,” said Celia, “don’t talk like that. I can’t bear to hear you talk like that.”

  “I could not bear it,” said Charles, “when I began to think like that. Which was quite some little while ago. I’m used to it now.”

  “Charles,” said Niall, “I’m bad at putting points across, but I think you have the whole thing out of focus, out of line. You talk of different worlds. Our world, Maria’s, and mine, is different from yours, and always has been; but only on the surface. We have our traditions too. We have our standards. But we look at them from another angle. Just as a Frenchman, say, sees things another way to a Dutchman, to an Italian. It does not mean that the two don’t mix. Don’t get along together.”

  “I quite agree,” said Charles, “but as I have never asked a Fren
chman, or a Dutchman, or an Italian to share my life with me, you evade the point at issue.”

  “What is the point at issue?” asked Maria.

  “I think,” said Polly, standing by the door, “if you don’t mind, that I will say good night now, and go along and help Mrs. Banks with the washing-up.” She flashed a smile at us and went.

  “The point at issue,” answered Charles, “is whether you give, in life, or whether you take. If you take, there comes a time when you suck the giver dry, just as you, Maria, at the minute have sucked the last of that orange. And the outlook, for the taker, becomes grim. The outlook for the giver is equally grim, because he has practically no feeling left. But he has enough determination to decide one thing. And that is not to waste the little feeling that remains.”

  The ash from his cigar fell in the coffee saucer. It lay in a spot of liquid, and turned soggy brown.

  “Quite frankly,” said Maria, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean,” said Charles, “that we have all come to a parting of the ways.”

  “Have you had too much claret?” asked Maria.

  Not enough, thought Niall. Charles has not had enough. If there could have been but half a bottle more, Charles would not suffer. Nobody need suffer. We would only have thick heads tomorrow morning. Whereas now…

  “No,” said Charles, “I have only had enough to loosen the tongue, which happens to have been tied too many years. This afternoon, while you three were raking up the past, I came to a decision. Quite a simple one. People take it every day. But as it will affect the three of you, you may as well be told.”

  “I came to a decision too,” said Niall swiftly. “We possibly all three did, in our various ways. You asked me just now what mattered in life. I lied when I said I did not know. It matters to write good music. I have never done it yet, I probably never will. But I want to try. I want to go away and try. So whatever you were deciding on your walk in the rain, you can safely count me out of your calculations. I shan’t be here, Charles. It will mean one parasite the less.”