The Feast (4 page)

‘I’ll go up and tell him we have rooms,’ volunteered Gerry, who thought that the poor girl really did not look fit to climb that hill again.

But she seemed to be so much disturbed at this idea, so sure that she must go back herself, and so averse from his company, that he had to let her go alone.

‘I’m astonished they weren’t comfortable at the
Bellevue
,’ said Mrs. Siddal. ‘It’s a very nice hotel. I wonder if they’re all right.’

‘Ring up and find out, before they come,’ suggested Gerry.

‘I could do that. I could ask Mrs. Parkins, in
confidence
… one doesn’t like to turn away a
windfall
….’

She rang up the Bellevue, but got no further than the name of Wraxton when a torrent of squeaks from the telephone interrupted her. Mrs. Parkins had a great deal to say about the Wraxtons.

‘Well?’ asked Gerry, when the colloquy was over.

‘They’re all right as regards money. They paid for a week in advance, though they only stayed two nights. But she says he has the most awful temper; he quarrelled with everybody and objected to cards and dancing in the lounges. And he was very rude to the staff.’

‘Oh Mother … don’t let’s have them.’

‘If he’s a Canon they must be respectable. We can’t afford to have rooms standing empty….’

‘But if he’s that sort of man….’

‘We don’t have cards or dancing … or much staff for him to be rude to. And it’s only for a week.’

‘You said yourself that you don’t want windfalls.’

‘It’s twelve guineas.’

Outside there was a sound of wheels crunching on
gravel. They looked out of the window and saw a large car cautiously nosing its way round the last bend, between the rhododendrons. It drew up before the front door.

Miss Wraxton was driving, and the Canon sat behind. He was so exactly what they had expected that both the Siddals were startled. They had imagined a man with a large nose, bushy brows, small red eyes, purplish
complexion
and a controversial lower lip; and here he sat. His priestly garments only made him more formidable, for they threatened eternal punishment to anyone so rash as to disagree with him.

‘Oh dear …’ whispered Mrs. Siddal. ‘Oh dear. I
can’t
…’

She went to the front door, supported by Gerry, and determined to say that she had no rooms after all.

But the Canon, who had got out of his car and was standing in the porch, was so very civil and affable, and she felt it to be so great a concession that he did not seem to be angry with her, that in a burst of gratitude she let him the rooms at once. It was, she felt, so very, very kind of him to be in such a good temper. Nothing seemed to put him out; he was positively glad to hear that there would be a number of children in the house, he did not object to small rooms, and he offered to pay for the week in advance. The bargain was concluded in a blaze of sunshine, and the only cloud came from the awkwardness of his silly daughter who could not give an intelligible answer to Gerry’s question about the luggage. She twitched and muttered and grimaced until her father’s attention was drawn down upon her. He gave her a glance of deep disgust and said:

‘Since my daughter chooses to behave like a half-wit I must answer you myself, Mr. Siddal. The small blue suitcase is hers. All the rest of the luggage is mine.’

And he cut short further incoherencies by adding:

‘That will do, Evangeline. If you can’t talk sense, don’t talk at all.’

Nothing else occurred to ruffle him except a little
unpleasantness in the hall, where he encountered the Paleys just setting off on their day’s picnic. Mrs. Siddal introduced them, and the Canon, in his sunny mood, was ready to shake hands. But they merely bowed and marched out of the door. Mrs. Siddal had become so inured to their habitual haughtiness, to the fact that they never smiled at any one, that she did not at first estimate the impression it must make on the Canon. He stood staring after them, unable for a moment to speak.

‘What intolerable insolence,’ he said, after a while. ‘Who
is
Mr. Paley?’

‘He’s an architect. You must have heard of him. He did the Wessex University buildings.’

‘Oh? That man! Yes. I’ve heard of him. Is he always as offensive as this?’

‘He … they’re very reserved people,’ quavered Mrs. Siddal. ‘I don’t think they meant to be rude.’

‘Oh, don’t you? I do. I’ve never been treated like that in my life.’

He continued to discourse upon the incivility of Mr. Paley while she took him upstairs and showed him his room. And the sight of the offending couple, as they crossed the sands, kept him for some time at his window, drumming on the glass and muttering:

‘I foresee that I shall have a word or two to say to Mr. Paley unless he mends his manners.’

Gerry, when she went downstairs again, was
reproachful
.

‘What have you done?’ he said. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I was so frightened of him. And he was so nice, when he asked for the rooms. I couldn’t face upsetting him.’

‘He wasn’t so amazingly nice,’ said Gerry. ‘Just normally polite. What did you expect him to do? Break all the furniture?’

‘I’m sure I’ve seen him before somewhere. I wish I could remember … and I seem to know his name….’

Gerry took the Canon’s baggage up in two journeys, and then carried the little blue suitcase along to Miss Wraxton’s room. The girl was sitting on her bed when he went in, quite still for once, and staring straight in front of her. She did not move or thank him when he put down her suitcase. But as he went out she smiled, not at him but at something behind him. It was a very odd smile indeed, and it sent a chill down his spine.

That girl, he thought, as he went downstairs, is in a fair way to go off her rocker.

The train from Paddington was crowded, and many people were obliged to stand in the corridor all the way to Penzance. But the four Gifford children had seats. They had neither waited in the queue outside the barrier nor struggled on the platform. Two heavily bribed porters got the seats for them, under the generalship of a
secretary
and a butler, in a third class carriage where the competition with other heavily-bribed porters is not so keen. A widow with three little girls, who tried to assert a prior claim, was pushed out into the corridor, and the Giffords were installed, supplied with luncheon tickets, sweets and magazines, and instructed to apply to the guard if they wanted anything.

Sentiment among their travelling companions had been on the side of the widow, and nothing about the Giffords was likely to change it. They had an unusually
well-nourished
look, and no family could have been so
faultlessly
dressed on its legal clothing coupons. They belonged quite clearly to the kind of people who feed in the Black Market, who wear smuggled nylons and who, in an epoch of shortages, do not scruple to secure more than their share.

But mankind is strangely tolerant, especially to children,
and the sins of their parents would not have been visited upon the Giffords if they had not behaved as though they owned the train. They played a very noisy game of Animal Grab during the first part of the journey, and Hebe insisted upon letting her cat out of its basket. It was this careless arrogance which brought retribution upon her, and upon Caroline and Luke and Michael. For when they went down the train to luncheon their seats were re-occupied by the widow and her family, and
nobody
interfered to stop it.

There was no aroma of the Black Market, or of clothing books purchased from needy charwomen, about the
newcomers
. They looked like an illustration in a ‘Save Europe’ pamphlet. Everything they had was meagre. The three girls were tall and pallid, like plants which have been grown in the dark. Their teeth were prominent but they wore no straightening braces; their pale blue eyes were myopic, but they wore no spectacles. Their hair was home cut, in a pudding basin bob, and their shabby cotton dresses barely covered their bony knees.

The widow herself was a spare little woman, grim and competent. She whisked her family into the compartment as soon as the last Gifford had vanished down the corridor, thrust each docile child into its appointed seat, removed all the Gifford luggage from the rack and replaced it with her own. She did this with a speed and in a silence which might have daunted protest, if any had been offered.

Having taken her own seat she produced, from a string bag, a packet of dry-looking pilchard sandwiches, dealt out three apiece, and handed round water in an enamel mug. At the end of this Spartan meal she
provided
the children with pieces of grey knitting. But not a single word did any of them say.

A gloom settled upon the compartment and the
pendulum
of public sympathy swung back a little towards the handsome, noisy Giffords. It seemed that this woman was familiar. Everyone felt that they had met her before.
She had appropriated something from each of them at one time or another, with the same speed and
competence
. She had got in front of them in the bus queue. She had snatched the last piece of fish off the slab under their noses. And her children, spiritlessly knitting, were her weapons.

But the pendulum swung back again when the Giffords, flushed with food, came hallooing back along the corridor, pushing past the standing travellers and trampling on their feet. Such a set of young hooligans could be left to fend for themselves.

There was a stupefied pause while the Giffords
discovered
their baggage in the corridor, and, peering through the window, identified the intruders.

‘It’s the orphanage,’ said Hebe. ‘They’ve pinched our seats.’

For she had noticed these thin girls in the corridor and had decided that they must be orphans travelling in charge of a matron. And she had wondered if she would have looked as awful as they did if Lady Gifford had not adopted her to be a sister to Garoline.

‘What beastly cheek,’ said Luke.

Caroline suggested that they should summon the guard. But Hebe had already opened the door and sailed in to do battle.

‘Excuse me,’ she said to the Matron-in-Charge,’ but these are our seats.’

The Matron glanced up. She scrutinized Hebe from her tawny curls to her sleek legs, and then she went on with her knitting.

‘We were sitting here,’ said Hebe. ‘We went to lunch, but we left our luggage. You had no right to put our luggage outside.’

She looked round the compartment for support, with the confidence of a child nurtured in privilege. She encountered glances of indifference, of amusement, but not of sympathy.

‘You shouldn’t have let her,’ she told them angrily.

At that a woman in the corner spoke up:

‘They paid for their seats, same as you ’ave.’

‘We got them first,’ said Hebe.

She made a sudden pounce on the smallest orphan, jerked it up and was about to take its place when the Matron intervened. Smoothly and quietly she seized Hebe’s arm and thrust her back into the corridor. Her hand seemed to be made of iron; it did not feel as if it had any flesh on it at all. And just before she let go she gave Hebe a savage pinch. Then she shut the door on the Giffords, returned to her seat and took up her knitting.

‘I’ll go down and find the guard,’ said Caroline.

‘No,’ said Hebe, rubbing her pinched arm. ‘They got in without the guard. We must retake the fortress by our own strength. We must observe the rules of warfare.’

‘But Mathers tipped him ten shillings.’

‘I know. But Spartans would never call in the guard.’

‘I’ve got a water pistol,’ said Michael, trying to open his attaché case. ‘I can fill it in the lavatory.’

‘No. The local natives are unfriendly. We mustn’t use artillery. We must lay an ambush. We’ll wait. Sooner or later those orphans will have to go down the corridor. When they do, we’ll pop in and take our seats again.’

‘She’ll push us out.’

‘Not if we’re prepared. She took me by surprise. If she pinches, we’ll pinch back.’

They waited and it was not long before one of the orphans, after a whispered colloquy with the Matron, rose and came into the corridor. Like lightning Hebe popped in and took the vacated seat. No notice was taken of her, and nothing was said until the absentee returned and stood timidly in the doorway. Then the woman leaned forward and addressed Hebe.

‘Will you kindly move from my daughter’s seat?’

Daughter?
thought Hebe. Then they aren’t orphans
after all. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I shan’t move. It’s mine, for I had it first. If you try to put me out again I shall have you committed for assault. My father is a judge and I know all about the law. You’ve given me a bruise already that I could show in court.’

She pulled up her sleeve and showed the mark of the pinch.

After a short pause her antagonist sat back and said:

‘I’m afraid, Blanche, that you’ll have to stand for a while, as this child does not know how to behave. Try to sit on a suitcase in the corridor. I want you to rest that poor back all you can.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ said Blanche.

The poor back was an unexpected thrust, and erased the impression made by Hebe’s bruise. ‘Been ill, has she?’ asked the woman in the corner.

‘Yes,’ said the Enemy. ‘Only just up from a bad illness.’

A murmur of sympathy went round the compartment. Hebe, blushing but defiant, asked if they all had poor backs. Opinion hardened against her.

‘Pity about some children,’ said the woman in the corner. ‘Think they own the earth because their father is a judge. Working people’s children would be ashamed to behave like that.’

Blanche in the corridor sat down upon a suitcase and returned the stares of Caroline, Luke and Michael. They, too, were impressed by the poor back. Caroline offered her a sweet, which she refused with obvious reluctance.

‘Go on,’ said Luke. ‘We’ve got lots more. They’re
marrons
glacés.
Off the ration.’

Still she shook her head.