The Feast (13 page)

‘I’m very sorry, Eirene.’

‘No, dear. I don’t think so. If you were really sorry for me you’d try to make things easier instead of more difficult.’

‘I do all I can,’ he muttered.

She flushed, sat up in bed, and spoke with unusual energy.

‘How can you say that when you force me to live in this horrible way when we could be perfectly comfortable? I heard from Veronica this morning. She says there’s plenty of everything in the Channel Islands if you’ve got the money to pay for it.’

‘Eirene, we’ve been into all this before….’

‘You force me to live in these coolie conditions….’

‘They are not coolie conditions. You know nothing whatever about coolie conditions….’

‘Don’t shout, Harry. Please don’t shout. You know how any kind of a scene upsets me. Can’t we discuss this quietly?’

Sir Henry lowered his voice and stated that coolies eat nothing but rice.

‘Which we can’t get,’ said Eirene Gifford triumphantly. ‘So we’re worse off than coolies. I’m sure I should be only too glad to eat rice … I love risotto … but Mr. Strachey won’t let me have it because the workers don’t care for it. All my friends in America say they do not know how we manage on our rations. Everybody who can get out is getting out, except us.’

‘I’ve told you before, Eirene, that there’s nothing to stop you going to Guernsey if you want to.’

‘But it’s no good unless you come too. I’d have to pay income tax. We can’t get off income tax unless we both go.’

‘I’ve told you I’m not going, and I’ve told you why.’

‘You think it’s unpatriotic. You think patriotism matters more than your wife and family.’

‘Well … yes. I suppose I do.’

‘Then don’t pretend you’re sorry for me. If you want to see me starve for the sake of a government you never voted for … a Government that says you aren’t worth a tinker’s curse….’

‘It didn’t.’

‘Yes, it did. You aren’t organized Labour. Mr.
Shinwell
said that everyone who isn’t Organized Labour is not worth a tinker’s curse.’

‘Shinwell isn’t the entire Government.’

‘I’m not so sure. Mr. Attlee daren’t sack him, though he can’t get us any coal.’

‘Well, Eirene, if Shinwell called me his blue-eyed boy,
would you be content to let me stay on the Bench and do my job?’

‘Don’t be stupid, Harry. You know he never would.’

‘I must admit it’s not very likely.’

‘And for the sake of these people, who only want to liquidate you, the children are to be under-nourished …’

‘I really don’t think they are.’

‘Of course they are. They’re only getting fifteen hundred calories when they ought to get three thousand.’

‘A day or a week?’

She was silent for a moment, and he was sure that she did not know.

‘They don’t look undernourished,’ he said. ‘Compared with the Coves …’

‘The Coves,’ said Eirene, ‘are apparently going to get all the marshmallows in Porthmerryn.’

‘Too bad. Did Shinwell arrange that or Strachey?’

‘Both,’ said Lady Gifford. ‘If the Conservatives had got in we shouldn’t have had these shortages. Look, Harry: perhaps Mrs. Cove might be willing to exchange. She might like some of my nougat instead.’

‘If she’d wanted nougat she’d have bought it. There was plenty.’

‘You could tell her how ill I am. But don’t worry. Just go on saying you’re sorry, and don’t make the slightest effort to help me.’

She fell back upon her pillows again and her eyes filled with tears.

Sir Henry hesitated and then stole out of the room. In a quarter of an hour he was back again with a bag of marshmallows which he put upon the table beside her bed.

‘Harry! Where did you get them?’

She took one and tasted it critically, wrinkling up her nose.

‘Mrs. Cove.’

‘She exchanged them for mine?’

‘Er … no. She sold them to me.’

‘Good heavens!’

She tasted another and added:

‘They aren’t very nice. Did she offer or did you ask?’

‘I offered an exchange and she refused. Then she mentioned that her children don’t care much for sweets. They prefer books. She said they often sell their sweets to buy books. So then I offered to buy their
marshmallows
.’

‘How much did you give?’

‘Eight and six.’

‘But Harry! That’s fantastic. More than three times what she gave.’

‘I thought it pretty stiff, but she said they couldn’t get a decent book for less. And I knew you wanted the sweets.’

There was a tap on the door and Hebe appeared, also carrying a paper bag.

‘Why darling,’ exclaimed Lady Gifford. ‘Good
morning
! Have you been having a good time? What have you been doing? Give me a kiss.’

Hebe extended her cheek and, as she received the caress, her lips moved in the silent curse of the Spartans.

‘We went into Porthmerryn for our sweets,’ she said, putting her bag on the counterpane. ‘These are
marshmallows
. I got them because I know you like them best.’

‘Why … how darling of you! But I can’t take them, you know. Not your sweet ration.’

‘You always do,’ said Hebe coldly. ‘I don’t care for sweets.’

She gave a hard glance at the bag already in Lady Gifford’s hands, and ran off.

‘Hebe’s austerity,’ said Lady Gifford, ‘is really
formidable
.’

‘H’m,’ said Sir Henry.

The undisguised contempt in Hebe’s manner had shocked him.

‘Is she often like that?’ he asked.

‘Like what?’

‘So much … so very much with her nose in the air?’

‘She’s very reserved. Sensitive children often are.’

‘She’s not our child, after all. One wonders …’

‘What?’

‘If she’s all right … with us….’

‘My dear Harry! Where could she have got a better home? She has everything a child could want; or would have if we weren’t obliged to live in this
God-forgotten
country.’

Perceiving Guernsey once more upon the map he made his escape. Hebe’s expression still disquieted him. It was not right that any child should look so at her mother, or speak so either. Somebody ought to reprove her for it, and the obvious person to do so was himself. He had not wanted to adopt her, or the twins. He had done so merely to please Eirene. But he had signed papers and agreed to act the part of a father to them, and he could not feel that he had ever done very much to fulfil this promise.

He supposed that they were all bound, as they grew older, to criticize Eirene to a certain extent. He did so himself, and faults which were apparent to him could not be hidden from their sharp young eyes. But they must also learn, as he had, to tolerate and excuse her, or life would become impossible.

He went downstairs and wandered about the beach for a while, aghast at the discovery that life could really
become
more impossible than it was already. For nine years he had been resigned to the fact that his marriage was a disaster and had tried to make the best of a bad job. But he had thought of it as a calamity which could only affect Eirene and himself. He had never perceived that it might involve the children. Nor had it, as long as they were babies, tended by nurses on the upper floors of Queen’s Walk.

And babies they had still been when he saw them all off for the United States in 1940. Caroline had been five, Hebe three and the twins were little more than a year old. He had been a trifle uneasy over the adoption
of Luke and Michael, in the Spring of 1939, foreseeing the outbreak of war in a near future and fearing a period of domestic upheavals. But Eirene had been set on it. An obstinate optimism was one of her strongest
characteristics
. She would never believe that anything unpleasant was going to happen; she condemned anyone who did. Her tranquillity remained unshaken until the fall of France in 1940 threw her into a corresponding panic and sent her scuttling across the Atlantic.

For five years he had lived his solitary life in the
basement
of Queen’s Walk, working as best he could, eating when and where he could, through the raids of ’40 and ’41, through the flying bombs and through the rockets. To some extent he had relished it. Release from the constant irritation of listening to Eirene compensated for a great deal of material discomfort. He was active in Civil Defence and enjoyed the grim good fellowship of the Wardens’ Post. In many ways he felt that his life was more satisfactory than it had been for some years past.

In the early months of 1941 he acquired a mistress, a step which he would never have been allowed to take had Eirene been at home. He was a little surprised at himself but was, at that time, discovering a great many other things at which to be surprised. She was a
red-haired
girl, one of the women wardens, and neither in the pre-war nor in the post-war world would he have found her attractive. Her name was Billie. She had a slight Cockney accent. He used to patrol the streets with her on noisy nights. Her stock of limericks was
inexhaustible
, and when a bomb fell she invariably told him a new one. He remembered her best in a tin hat, grasping the business end of a fire hose—a gallant trollop demanding nothing and giving what she had, with careless hospitality. After some months she joined the Wrens and vanished from his life. But in a very short while she taught him several things about women which he had never known before.

He realized that Eirene could never, at any time, have loved him. This, according to Billie, was probably his own fault. He had not, she said, ‘educated the poor girl up to it.’ She also told him that where the bedroom is wrong the whole house is wrong. She was a coarse creature, but he took some of her maxims to heart. Only he felt that, in his own case, the converse might be true: at Queen’s Walk the whole house was wrong and the bedroom, therefore, would never be right. A submissive husband cannot be a successful lover.

Gradually his bitterness towards Eirene melted away. He made resolutions for the future, vowing that when she and the babies came home he would make a fresh start. He would rule his wife and she would love him. In the excitement of reunion some tender link might be forged. For he expected them all to come back quite unchanged.

They returned in the summer of 1945, changed beyond recognition. The babies had become people—they asked questions, they had points of view. And Eirene was an invalid, feeble, emaciated, unfit for any normal life. She needed a nurse rather than a husband, and he was obliged to postpone his plans for a better life. There was some talk of her ultimate recovery, though nobody seemed to be able to tell him what ailed her.

On his way back from the beach at lunch time he encountered Hebe again. She was sitting on the terrace parapet, her cat on her shoulder. If she was to be
reprimanded
, now was the time.

‘Hebe,’ he said severely. ‘I want a word with you.’

She lifted her lovely eyes to him and waited.

He took her to task for her manner to her mother. Eirene, he reminded her, was very ill and suffered a great deal.

‘What’s the matter with her?’ asked Hebe.

‘She … we aren’t quite sure. Unluckily they can’t find out.’

Hebe gave him a searching look and her expression
changed. He could have sworn there was at last a touch of compassion in it, but he had the oddest impression that this pity was not for Eirene.

‘She’s loved you,’ he said, ‘ever since you were a little baby. She’s done everything for you.’

‘Who was my real mother?’ interrupted Hebe, with some urgency.

‘Eh … er … I don’t know her name, my dear.’

‘Don’t you know anything about her?’

‘I …we know some of the circumstances. You’ll know them some day … when you’re older.’

‘Why not now?’

‘We think you’re still too young.’

‘A
child’s questions ought always to be answered honestly and sincerely or else it gets a compress.’

‘Complex. I am answering you honestly.’

‘Am I a bastard?’

Sir Henry was startled, but after a moment’s thought said:

‘Yes. But that’s not a word you should use. Where did you learn it?’

‘Shakespeare. Are Luke and Michael …?’

‘What they are is none of your business.’

‘Just tell me one thing. Did I belong to poor people? Working people?’

‘No.’

Her face fell.

‘I wish I had,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘I think they’re nicer.’

‘Often they are,’ he agreed.

‘But if I belonged to rich people, how did I come to be adopted?’

‘They didn’t want you. We did.’

‘Why didn’t they want me?’

He hesitated again, but decided she had better have it.

‘You’d have been in their way.’

‘Oh!’

She looked down at the flagstones and kicked her bare heels against the wall. He felt sorry for her. And he remembered that when they had taken her as a baby he had raised this point with Eirene: how would the child feel when she learnt, as she must learn some day, that her own mother did not want her? That it had been no case of necessity or hardship which had thrown her on the chance kindness of strangers? To learn this, at any age, might, he suggested, be a shock. But Eirene had assured him that she would never ask.

And now he had dealt the blow; dealt it carelessly, without any tender preparation. She had asked for it, but she was only ten, and he should have put her off. It was not to do this that he had sought her, but to act the part of a good father.

‘Was my mother a virgin?’ asked Hebe suddenly.

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Are you sure? How can you be sure?’

‘Don’t talk nonsense. A virgin can’t have children.’

‘One did,’ said Hebe darkly, jumping off the parapet.

He could think of no reply to that and let her run off. He felt that she could give as many shocks as she got, and ceased to reproach himself quite so bitterly.

Evangeline Wraxton was coming on nicely. Her
improvement
was not apparent at meal times; huddled into a chair opposite her father she twitched and muttered as before. But she no longer sat in her room all day. She bathed with the Giffords and played rounders with them on the sands. She ran well and her laugh, heard for the first time at Pendizack, was pretty.