Self Condemned (36 page)

“You think so?” Hester became aware of a contradiction in her husband. He was not really gentle: she did not mean that he was ungentle, but he could not claim to be gentle. Yet he had always exhibited an authentic distaste for physical violence. At school he had been an athlete. But he tended to avoid the more brutal sports. It was as a gymnast that he had excelled. He had once told her how it had always thrilled him to fly through the air in a large gymnasium. The sight of him bandaged there on the settee, delivering himself of an exceptionally brutal remark (it was the sort of remark that most men make, but he had been a refrainer) naturally provoked her attention.

It was almost as though he had been privy to her thoughts: for he remarked, “We have had our baptism of fire, have we not, in the violent life of this hotel. It is an astonishingly violent place, but no more violent than the world of which it is so perfect a microcosm.”

“Oh,” Hester murmured.

“How extraordinarily, when one shuts oneself up in a little segment of the world like this hotel, it is brought home to one what a violent place the world is.”

“This hotel is not typical,” she demurred.

“It is. The kind of bourgeois family we were brought up in is highly deceptive. War is cheerfully maintained by everybody; our military aristocrats glory in ‘blood and sweat and tears.’ But if a bank clerk were given power he would kill even more millions.

So far no one has been
killed
in this hotel. But thousands are killed on the roads, and millions over in the battlefields. You are right, this hotel is not typical. It is a nice quiet hotel — a rather mild microcosm.”

The Indian’s wife gave a bloodcurdling shriek.

“That woman,” he observed, “is asking
to be killed
, as loudly as she knows how to.”

“I am afraid that you are right,” Hester agreed.

“And now we are in harmony with the hotel,” he told her. “If I lived here much longer I should be a full-scale blood sacrifice.”

He was now himself again, Hester thought, and she looked over at him fondly.

“Oughtn’t you to get a little sleep?” she reminded him. But there was a knock on the door: it was Jim Greevy, and instead of sleep, René visibly braced himself, and stuck bravely out his beard.

“How do you feel, Mr. Harding? You struck a very bad patch.

I did all I could. But it wasn’t much.”

“We do not underestimate what you did, Jim. You were splendid.”

“Oh rats,” said Jim, with violent modesty; turning to Hester, “I wiped the beer off you as it was thrown over you! That’s all I did.”

“You did more than that. You sided with the limey — you, an Irishman!”

“There is that,” Jim laughed.“TomThorne is a dangerous man.

A year back he served a term of imprisonment for manslaughter.

I would not have him in the place if it were mine. He fights every time he comes here. And tonight he had that Yank with him.”

“Ah yes, that Yank.” René patted the sling. “I had this arm over my face. That was when I was on the ground. That Yank kicked it pretty hard.”

“Yes, I’ll bet he did,” said Jim. “He’s a nasty piece of work.

Of course he’s a draft-dodger; that seems to contradict what they say. They say he’s very well known in the States, at his weight a champion. But if he is a champ, what the heck is he doing draft dodging? Uncle Sam looks after his champions. He would not be wasted in Guadalcanal, I mean.”

“Perhaps he’s no champ,” René laughed. “But he felt like a champion to me when he was doing that tattoo on my belly.”

“No, he may be a champ all right, but there must be something else. Anyway, he goes everywhere now with Tom Thorne. That shows the sort of man he is. He ought to be pushed back into the

States. Last night I noticed he didn’t take on that big chap, you know, who went after Tom Thorne.”

“Oh, didn’t he? The little coward.”

Jim shook his head. “No. It would not be that. Everyone knows that Fitz was a Mountie.”

“Ah, I see what you mean. As a draft dodger he would prefer not to draw attention to himself.”

“Yes,” Jim nodded; “yes, that, and probably something else.”

“So that big fellow used to be in the Mounties?” René enquired.

“Yes. He’s a good scout is Fitz. I knew he would not see a stranger like yourself beaten up. All the same” (he rubbed his hand over his eyes in a quick bashful gesture), “I had just stuck my spectacles in my pocket when I saw old Fitz get up; and he knocked Tom down with a proper haymaker. Tom Thorne is a man who doesn’t usually find himself on his back.”

“Mr. Greevy, I do think that was splendid of you …”

“Yes, Jim, it was jolly decent of you to get ready to do battle in that way. The ex-Mountie’s intervention was a wonderful stroke of luck for all of us.”

“It was that. He is a very popular man, is old Fitz, with all except thugs like Tom Thorne.”

There was a pause, and then Hester spoke.

“But what had my husband done to these people? It all seems very extraordinary looking back on it.”

“Yes, that puzzles me too,” René said. “What on earth had poor Hester done? Why pour beer over her head? Apart from its being blackguardedly, it doesn’t seem to make sense, does it, Jim?”

Jim smiled wryly, and gave his face another violent rub. “Yes, Mr. Harding, unfortunately it
does
make sense to me all right.”

“Sense of what kind!” almost shouted René. “You mean we are the kind of people over whom it is natural to empty beer and to kick ’em in the teeth?”

Jim laughed nervously.“Well, you put it that way, Mr. Harding, but it is a fact that in such a place as I am the manager of it is natural for almost anything to happen. — Especially to strangers. — You don’t make a noise like a Canadian!”

“That’s too bad.”

“It isn’t even that. I might as well say it, it is the English accent I’m afraid.”

“Mr. Greevy, you really mean that? ...” Hester looked very distressed.

“I don’t like saying it, Mr. Harding, but you must have noticed yourself that the English are not very much liked. Let me be frank …”

“Please do,” René told him.

“There is always the high-hatting charge. You see, in such a place as ours, Mr. Harding — who has a voice that can be heard …”

“And why not?” clamoured René. “Are we to speak in whispers then?”

“No, Mr. Harding, of course not, I did not say that. But you are a man who knows the world, and there
is
a time to speak soft and low. People think you are swanking, the sort we have down there, if you talk very loud about things they don’t understand.”

René gave an angry and dramatic sigh. Turning to Hester he said, “You see how it is, being English is an unpopular thing to be. To be Scotch is all right, to be Irish is just fine” (he winked at Jim), “but being what we are, we had better stop here in this Room, rather than go out and expose ourselves to the displeasure of the natives — everymanjack of whom comes from the British Islands.”

René pushed over a packet of cigarettes to Jim, after taking one himself. Jim looked uncomfortable. The direction the conversation had taken made him regret his frankness. But René continued, and Jim looked up a little apprehensively.

“What I would like to know is the degree in which these are war conditions. In peace time is there this perpetual drunkenness and fighting?”

“Yes and no,” Jim answered. “Everything is worse today. But the Canadian is at all times an ugly man when he is full of liquor.”

Jim Greevy now enquired whether the kick on the left arm had broken anything: and whether the bandage round the head signified anything serious.

René reassured him. He told him his arm was dislocated merely: it was painful, but would be all right soon. Shortly after that Greevy left.

“Well, that was from the horse’s mouth. We were imprudent, even at six o’clock, not to quieten down our voices.”

There was a bloodcurdling shriek from the end of the passage. It continued solidly for three or four minutes.

“I wish someone would empty some beer over that woman,” Hester smiled mirthlessly. “But she ‘makes a noise like a Canadian,’ so that is all right I suppose.”

XVII
VOWS OF HARDSHIP

B
lizzards blew from the Pole downwards, though they were abominably vacillating, and this was a severe one. Hester had gone to the groceteria about noon: it was no farther than the other end of the block, but you faced north to go to it from the hotel. Hester had to move doubled up, and to stop a half-dozen times, and stand with her back to the ice- blast, which whirled around her as soon as she turned, so that she stood in a whirlpool of snow. Each time she stopped she was very quickly forced around again in order to escape the whirlpool: and at intervals this mannerism was repeated again and again. Her hair was full of frozen snow and her lips froze against her teeth when she reached the groceteria: she went up to the glass case, and stared through at the items for sale, odds and ends of butchery. These showcases were such as are used in museums for the display of antiquities, and to begin with this method of exhibiting meat is displeasing to English people. She selected four kidneys as a treat for René, for the evening meal, and two Idaho potatoes — or if not Idahoes they were almost as large.

This was Christmas-type eating, a foretaste of what it would be incumbent on them to do in the way of extravagance in four days’ time. But they would not have the money to have much of a Christmas dinner: so why not spread the Christmas dinner out? Christmas had made everything worse, and Hester had privately reached a state of mind where she would whisper to herself, “To hell with economics!” as she pointed to a packet of frozen peaches in the ice chest. Why did they not go to the British High Commissioner, say they had no money, and ask to be shipped home? They had known another Englishman who had done that: there was no difficulty about it. They could not travel together, but what of that if they got back to England. It was also in this spirit that, before she left the groceteria, she added half a pound of mushrooms to her other purchases. Fortified by the heat in the shop, she then went back into the storm, ploughing through the snow in her overshoes. Her stockings were wet above the knee, and the whirling snow drove down inside her overshoes.

When Hester reached the hotel, she was breathless and uncomfortably hot. She collapsed upon a seat near the front door, tearing her ulster open to ventilate the burning interior. At last she was able to move through the hotel, and then, her heart still thumping, stumble up the annex stairs. She burst into the Room with a protesting “Oh,” and sank on the settee, struggling to recover her breath. She did not indulge in speech for a while: then she said, to the amused René,“Never, but never, have I encountered such a beast of a blizzard! It is like a million dervishes whirling around one.” — But when the contents of the shopping bag was revealed to René he was less amused.

“Mushrooms! Idahoes! What does all this signify? Is this Christmas?”

“I am sorry.” She exhibited contrition. “I was demoralized. Very demoralized. Please put it all down to the blizzard: I lost all sense of time and space.”

These luxurious purchases, this succulent raw material spread out upon the table, obviously produced acute dejection in René, and filled him with the darkest forebodings. The fact that his left arm was out of action had made it much more difficult for him to work. To be behind-hand with his work raised up the spectre of insolvency, and Furber, that was worst of all — and then
par
dessus le marché
, Christmas!

He gave up his afternoon rest, for he felt that the mushrooms and the Idahoes pointed to the necessity of making up for the time lost resulting from the brawl of six days before. When tea time came he showed great appreciation of the Salada and of some stale cookies, which had been rejected as compromisingly old when they were entertaining Mr. Starr. He appeared to be in an exceptionally good mood, so Hester thought she would speak to him of her growing unwillingness to prolong the occupation of the Room, and of her longing to shake the dust of this country off her thrice-patched shoes.

“Just look at that blizzard,” she exclaimed, waving her hand towards the window. “While I was sweating and freezing, gasping for breath, and trying to prevent my heart from beating a hole in my side, when I got back to the hotel this morning, I said to myself, ‘Hester, you have been in this country long enough.’”

René ho-ho-ho’ed. He did not suspect the existence of any purpose behind this
boutade
.

“We are great friends, aren’t we, René, as well as lovers?” she said softly.

René was thinking of the work he had to do after tea: he did not take this in for a few moments: they were not accustomed to say things of that kind to one another. But then he turned squarely towards her, reached over and planted his hand on hers.

“The greatest pals in the world, Ess. I don’t believe there ever have been such pals.”

“I don’t believe there have been either, René.” He had taken his hand away and passed it through his hair, and frowned, as if confronted with some difficult problem. He stared at her intently. She became self-conscious at this scrutiny; she felt like some wild animal not accustomed to be looked at. We take our being for granted, our physical presence comes to enjoy the anonymity of furniture. What was he searching for, what information that he did not possess already?

“I see, I see,” he almost hissed, “a stranger who has become a sister.” And it flashed through his mind how his belief in blood, in the Family, had taken him, in the crisis of his life, to a lot of strangers beginning with his mother.

There was only Helen, and that was not because she was a sister. But here, all the time, was the person he should have gone to. “Hardship! I am beginning to love hardship. It sharpens the sight. When I look, I see. I see what a grand woman you are. I used to think that you were scheming and frivolous — I am afraid that you must have seen that I thought that.”

“I sometimes feared you thought that,” she agreed. She saw her chances of an opening slipping away. She had trembled when he spoke so favourably of hardship.