Self Condemned (50 page)

“If it was so unattractive, why did you go there to live?” enquired Hester, in a tone of bored protest. Why must she be told about this repulsive place?

“All the less brutally ugly spots had already been occupied. We were latecomers.”

“I see,” said Hester miserably. She looked towards Professor McKenzie. But the two professors were absorbed in harrying some little problem which had made its appearance, and been spotted by René.

Laura McKenzie smiled, and remarked, “No use looking at
him
. You must hear what an awful time we had. As soon as war became certain it was decided that no speck of light must be visible to a night raider, and wardens were appointed to see that this did not happen. No other nation ‘blacked out’ in this way. But as if the war were not enough, ‘war conditions’ were so luxuriated in by that blood-sweat-and-tears merchant …” Her husband turned quickly towards her.

“Laura, I believe you are about to speak of a man to whom we all should be grateful.”

“Rubbish, darling,” said Laura, “but I will say no more lest it might offend. Anyhow” — resuming her conversation with Hester — “I was telling you about the blackout. It is still in force.

The most disagreeable type of men volunteered for the job of air raid warden. We had a real beauty at Crackbrook. He prowled round our house every night. If a chink of light was visible he thundered upon our door. We were fined, most unjustly, several times, and then I took no more trouble to conceal my low opinion of him.”

“How unpleasant! Weren’t you able to blackout your windows?”

“Of course I was!” Laura McKenzie told her. “But there is always a chink somewhere.”

“I suppose there is,” sighed Hester.

“But if the warden was an enthusiastic snooper, the billeting officer was an alcoholic old sadist, for whom the war was a heaven-sent opportunity. She hated me, probably because I was the only woman in her part of the hamlet who did not fawn upon her. The house we had rented was small, and there were three of us, with our seven-year-old son. But there was a tiny room upstairs that was not occupied. One afternoon, after a bad night of bombing in the East End, several busloads of children and cripples arrived.This frightful woman planted a crippled boy of twelve on us. To my protests she answered that I had a spare room, and that no one else had any accommodation for him. People who took in a cripple received thirty shillings a week, and some of the local people were glad enough to take one in. There must have been
someone
who would have been glad to have him. But there was nothing for it. The billeting officer and the constable were buddies, there was no one to appeal to, so we had this Jewish child of twelve (she had picked a Jew for me!) until one day he disappeared. He complained one week that I was under-nourishing him, and the billeting officer got my week’s sustenance money docked.The cripple was excessively aggressive, and on one occasion he struck Ian with his crutch.”

“How frightful!” Hester’s face screwed up into a painful grimace. “Surely you could appeal to the police?”

“Of course, but the police was the fat, red-nosed ‘boyfriend’ of the billeting officer. The cripple said that my husband had hit him first!”

“How disgusting!” Hester looked as if she were about to cry.

“Well, I need not retail how horrible the shopkeepers became. If you gave them large tips that was all right. If you did not, you were treated atrociously. Some of them must be getting quite rich; especially of course owners of food shops.”

“How horrible!” Hester was now actually weeping.

Professor McKenzie looked around at this moment, and saw the tears emerging from the miserably staring eyes, he then looked angrily at his wife.

“You have made Mrs. Harding cry,” he said.

“Sorry.” (This was apparently what Laura always said, when she offended.) “I did not notice …”

“I am not crying,” protested Hester, very confused. “It is the Canadian light — it often makes my eyes water.”

They then began talking about the difference between soft English light, and the hard relentless Canadian variety. Professor McKenzie had had to go to an optician, and René, too, said he thought of having smoked glasses for the winter time, against the glare of the snow.

“Things are all right in the north and west of England, I believe,” Laura told her shrinking guest — a great concession showing that she was really a kind-hearted woman.And with that Hester’s ordeal was over. There was no further mention of the unattractive sides of the English character, or those parts of England which were hard on the eye. The excellent cognac which accompanied her coffee re-mellowed her, and put a melancholy sparkle in her eye, for she was extremely susceptible to good brandy.

When they moved back into the living room, René enquired if any Canadians were to be expected as after-dinner guests.

Upon learning that no one had been asked to meet them, René removed his ribbon from his jacket, and put it in his pocket.

“Hester asked me to wear this, in case we should be called upon to meet some of the natives. I hope you didn’t think I stuck that in my coat for you!”

“I think your ribbon is a well-deserved and colourful emblem. I wish I had one, and I should always wear it if I had!”

McKenzie added.

“I am quite sure you would not,” retorted René, “except in the company of the ignoble.”

It was not long before René asked Laura McKenzie if she would please play them something. Without fuss she went over to the piano and played several pieces very well. Asked to play some more, she played several more pieces, until René said to himself, “She is going to play for the rest of the evening.” However, although entreated by René to continue, she
did
stop after the second batch.The Hardings learned that Laura had just begun her career as a pianist when she married. “I had not the money,” she informed them, “to hire halls, so I should certainly have failed.”

As a couple, René said to himself, the McKenzies were good-lookers. A dark, slightly built man, McKenzie wore the no-longer-popular “side-boards” — without being “dressy” he was careful about his clothes; and Laura, with a complete absence of self-consciousness, wore rather expensive ones. It had not escaped René that he was the object of a very friendly feeling on the part of his host.

The McKenzies appeared to be on especially good terms with the rector of the Anglican Church dominating the Hill; a very large church, almost acting as cathedral to English-Canadian Momaco. The Reverend William Trevelyan was an Englishman, and René supposed that Laura McKenzie’s connection with the Church was at least a contributing factor to the more than usually cordial relations subsisting between the McKenzies and the rector. In any case, they seemed to wish René to meet this clergyman without delay.

The English colony in Momaco was especially, almost uniquely, strong; and the Reverend William Trevelyan was a person highly influential in Momaco. Quite half the board of governors of the University belonged to his flock. This fact alone demonstrates the unusual position of the English in that city, for, in most of the great cities of Canada, the English occupy a very minor position. McKenzie explained the meaning of the Reverend W. Trevelyan to René; it was arranged that Trevelyan should be informed of the presence in Momaco of this very original and well-known historian.

“Trevelyan’s response will be immediate, I feel quite sure of that,”McKenzie affirmed.“He is a man of considerable intelligence. This is rather rare, I imagine, in the Church of England.”

Hester was a quietly unconvinced witness of these proceedings, as though one man were proposing to the other a sovereign cure for indigence. She half-turned, with a half-smile in the direction of her hostess. She left the house with rather mixed feelings about Laura McKenzie; admitting to herself, and later to René, that Laura was a curious, a bitter, and arrogant woman, but quite amusing notwithstanding.

When the Hardings took their departure, the McKenzies looked at one another; McKenzie said, “I like Harding;” his wife observed, “She’s a funny one, but she has her points.”

XXVI
RENé BECOMES A COLUMNIST

T
he next day, McKenzie telephoned. His Reverence would much like to meet the author of
The Secret History of World War II
which he described as “very naughty.” Could René and his wife come to dinner the next night?

The Trevelyan dinner was a great success. The clergyman appeared to like René in spite of the “naughtiness” of what he wrote. He had read a little history, and he liked discussing, from a churchman’s angle, the years immediately succeeding the setting up of a separate English church in the sixteenth century. This, actually, was a period with which René was particularly familiar.

René, on his side, was not at all displeased with this contact: he felt there was a good deal of shrewdness underneath the cleric’s rather flourishy talk. The following Sunday the Hardings were at the morning service in St. George’s Church, and René’s tall bearded figure was noted with satisfaction by the Reverend WilliamTrevelyan.The church, to the astonishment of the Hardings, accustomed to the empty churches of England, was full,Victorianly full.The greater part of the congregation was English. Hester found herself surrounded by English people: though, unfortunately, just ahead of them was a Canadian couple; and the pleasing illusion which she might otherwise have enjoyed, that she was once more in England, was denied her.The Canadian voices, whose responses were louder than those of anyone else in their neighbourhood, and the lusty rolling of the
r
’s, spoilt her enjoyment of her favourite hymn,“For those in peril on the sea.” It was, however, consoling to feel that there were other Britons suffering the horrors of Momaco and that she was not a solitary martyr.

During the next few weeks they made the acquaintance of numbers of people, some of these, both Canadian and English, were just people it was thought the Hardings might like to know; others were big shots, of potential use to René. One of these was the proprietor of the
Momaco Gazette-Herald
. This was a contact of great significance, for René was offered a weekly column in that paper, which was so well paid that it changed their economic position overnight; and so radically, that they moved from the Hotel Laurenty to an apartment hotel in a more desirable quarter of the town.

One would have supposed that this last event would have stirred Hester into a certain elation. But that was not the case. She even warned René against the dangers of this new prosperity.

“Whether Momaco ignores you or
fêtes
you, it is always Momaco. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life in this awful city? The fact that you have been recognized all of a sudden, and have been given a newspaper job which will enable us to live comfortably, changes nothing.You do not want to be a journalist, do you? This column merely keeps us alive. Is that all you want to do, René? Just
keep alive
?”

Formerly René would have laughed, in the hope of wearing her down by mirth. Now he looked at her very seriously, for she was a problem which had to be faced with all the resources he possessed.

“A city is good or bad, attractive or horrible, according to the people it contains, and which of its citizens you happen to know. You call it ‘horrible’ because of horrible conditions under which we lived for three years. If we had lived under similar conditions, London would be horrible.”

Hester laughed. “These classroom arguments get one nowhere,” she answered. “It may be a good piece of logic, but it has no connection with the reality. London was where we were born. I might agree with you if I had been born in
Momaco
— though I should know it was a pretty poor place to be born in (if I had any intelligence).”

René drew in his breath. “If we are speaking of
realities
, then let me say that I have no intention of stopping in Momaco longer than I can help. So your argument that because I have got a good job I shall therefore live here forever is fallacious.”

“Thank God for that!” said Hester with a bitter fervency, getting up and going into the bedroom, there leaning out of the window, inhaling the milder airs which were blowing from the south.

René came into the bedroom behind her. She started and stiffened as she heard him. Was he proposing to resort to the venustic argument of the bedchamber? She hoped he was not. She had never denied him her body, but she wished he could understand that copulation was nothing to do with logic. But this was not what he proposed. When she turned round, he took her hands. “Hester, I had something else to say. One of the people in Momaco is myself. Another is yourself. The fact that
you
are in Momaco changes Momaco a great deal for me. Now today you have written to several people in London, to Susan, to your Mother. You love London, and are homesick, because perhaps a certain half-dozen people are there — you love those people collectively more than you love me? You would rather be in London with Susan, perhaps, than live in Momaco with me?”

“You know I would not,” she replied. “You know that the question is absurd. But your question implies something that is not true. It implies that my motives are purely selfish in desiring to leave this place and to return to London. That is absolutely untrue. Listen, I would throw myself out of that window if I knew that my death would result in your returning to England, and that nothing else would do so.”

This was typical of the way their half-disputes would end. In a half-threat, or in something he felt it wiser to ignore or to turn his back on. After all, the open window was there. But on this occasion he turned on her reproachfully.

“If you threw yourself out of that window, it would achieve nothing except to break my heart. It would shatter London as much as Momaco into a million pieces. — Momaco — London! — How I have come to hate those names!”

An almost sinister expression of loathing was on his face as he said this. The effort to conduct these conversations upon the normal social plane had really grown to be beyond his powers of nervous endurance; to present a face undistorted by passion, to employ the innocuous forms of civil speech, instead of springing at her and shaking her till her teeth rattled, howling in her face, “Bosh, bosh, bosh, bosh! Quack, quack, quack, quack! Listen, intolerable sparrow! London is as useless to me as Momaco is to you. There are no conceivable circumstances which would ever make it possible for me to
work
, to teach, to exist intellectually in London, after my resignation.
Here
it is possible for me to work and here I stop — here I stop. I do not need you to tell me ten times a day that it is not worth while to work here, to work in Momaco.
Of course
it is not. I know that — I know that … better than you can ever know it. I am, let me assure you,
madly
aware of that. But I also know that I will never again become a nameless piece of human wreckage. I may not be much. I may not amount to much.
But
my shoes shall be shone: my pocketbook shall be packed with newly printed notes: my quarters shall be in the smart clean part of town —
shall
be — and there is an end of the matter. If you say
London
once more I will paint you all over with the word London in big red letters, and tie you up, and mail you to Susan. — That is a
mild
ending for such a pest.”