The Feast Page 5

  Nancibel was sceptical.

  ‘Stopping at the Marine Parade? Then whatever was he doing at the Drill Hall? They’ve dances every night at the M.P., and a much better band.’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t like the M.P. dances. He says the people there make him sick. Nothing but business men and their bong zammies.’

  ‘Bong how much?’

  ‘Bong zammies. You know … French for tarts. He’s ever so good looking, Nance. And can he dance! But you see he doesn’t feel at home anywhere because of his childhood.’

  ‘What was the matter with his childhood?’

  ‘Well, really, it’s quite a romance. You see he was born in a slum…. You know … in Limehouse. An awful place. And all his family was on the dole. But he got out of it and got himself educated and made a lot of artistic friends, and now he’s a writer.’

  ‘Good gracious! When did he tell you all this? At the Drill Hall?’

  ‘Yes. You see he said he felt he could talk to me. He felt I was sort of different.’

  ‘Alice, I know you never left home because you were in the net factory. But even in Porthmerryn there were the G.I.’s. What’s kept you so green?’

  ‘He’s not what you think,’ said Alice a little crossly. ‘He’s not the type boy you’d have met when you were in the A.T.S.’

  ‘I never met any type boy that didn’t want to talk about himself, and they all told me I was different. But I will say I never met one that made enough money writing to stop at the M.P. Let’s hope he sends some of it back to his poor family in Limehouse.’

  They had moved to the sea wall and were leaning on the parapet, listening to selections from Il Trovatore played by the band. Dusk was falling and the lights of the harbour were beginning to shine in the water. The sea was very calm. An occasional wave fell with an indolent flop on the shingle. Across the bay Pencarrick Lighthouse sent a long beam through the air, sweeping from the horizon to the mysterious, dim mass of houses on the hill.

  ‘There he is!’ cried Alice suddenly.

  She pointed out an astonishingly beautiful young man who was wandering moodily all by himself on the shingle.

  Nancibel’s heart missed a beat. And then it nearly stopped altogether from sheer surprise. For she had believed that such moments were over and done with for ever and ever. She had thought that her heart was broken. Nor did she want to have it mended; she had decided to get along without it.

  ‘Isn’t he lovely?’ breathed Alice.

  ‘A slum?’ said Nancibel.’ What a tale! He never came out of no slum. It takes orange juice and Grade A milk to grow that sort.’

  And a moment later, when he looked up, recognized Alice and flashed a dazzling smile, she added:

  ‘Why, look at his teeth! I know slummies when I see them.’

  ‘You know everything, don’t you, Nancibel Thomas?’

  ‘They’re tough all right, some of them. But they’re short, and they don’t have teeth like a film star.’

  He was crossing the shingle and climbing the flight of stone steps up to the parade. Alice poked a curl back under her snood.

  ‘And what’s his name?’ asked Nancibel. ‘You didn’t say.’

  ‘Bruce.’

  He was standing before them. Alice said:

  ‘This is my friend, Miss Thomas.’

  And Nancibel was included in that brilliant smile for a couple of seconds before it vanished. The discovery that she was Somebody, not just another girl, wiped it clean off his face. He stared, hesitated, and suggested that they should all go and eat ices at the Harbour Café.

  ‘We want to listen to the band,’ Alice said.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ protested Bruce. ‘It’s terrible. You girls can’t want to listen to terrible music like this.’

  ‘O.K.,’ said Alice. ‘We’ll go to the harbour.’

  For it had occurred to her that they would meet many more of her personal friends down that way, and she wanted to show off her new escort.

  The three of them set off: and the scandalous account which he gave them of the goings on at the Marine Parade made it a very pleasant walk.

  ‘Five thousand clothing coupons,’ he assured them. ‘All stolen, of course. And the thing is done quite openly. The head waiter hawks them in the dining-room.’

  Alice exclaimed and wanted to hear more. Nancibel said nothing, though she smiled at them both in a genial way. It’s all waiters’ talk, she was thinking. He pretends to have the gen on the visitors, but no visitor would know so much as that. He’s some kind of servant….

  ‘You don’t say much,’ he protested at last.

  ‘P’raps that’s a good thing,’ said Nancibel.

  ‘She’s one of the quiet ones,’ said Alice.

  ‘She doesn’t look it.’

  But he had money. His clothes were expensive looking, and the wallet which he produced in the Harbour Café was full of notes.

  Her heart was beating quite steadily now. It had only been in that first moment, when she saw him alone on the beach, that it betrayed her. For an instant he had seemed to be some touching counterpart of herself: alone, young and unhappy. And she still felt that she could have liked him if so much had not been wrong.

  His accent was wrong: a refined superstructure upon Cockney foundations. Half the idioms which he used had evidently been picked up very recently from one person. They decorated his discourse like ornaments on a Christmas tree. And he was showing off all the time—about the Marine Parade, about his intellectual friends, about his lowly birth. Showing off to her, as she was very well aware, though the thick-headed Alice did not seem to have tumbled to it. And very awkward it was going to be, when they all went home; because he would want to escort her, and Alice would think she had poached.

  But Alice had her own problem and was not anxious to let him accompany her, where he might read the notice on the gate. She had been showing off herself, to a certain extent. So, when they left the Café, she suggested that he might see Nancibel up the hill.

  ‘I’ve got to meet another girl friend. So I’ll say bye-bye.’

  ‘O.K.,’ exclaimed Bruce, betrayed, by alacrity, into a discarded idiom. ‘I mean, I couldn’t like anything more. Thank you for a delicious evening.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Alice. ‘Bye-bye, Nancibel.’

  ‘Bye-bye, Alice.’

  For the length of the first street the young pair walked in silence. Nancibel was a little surprised at herself for letting him come with her since she had found so much in him to dislike. But all through the evening, while he kept talking and glancing at her in hopes that she would say something and she had sat silent, she had been aware of the inevitable climax, the explanation which was bound to follow. They might as well get it over now.

  When they got among the little narrow streets and started climbing the hill, he broke out:

  ‘What kind of girl are you, Nancibel? Why don’t you talk?’

  ‘Because I don’t like your way of talking,’ said Nancibel.

  ‘Ah? I thought you didn’t. What’s the matter with it?’

  ‘Well … for one thing … I don’t like what you said about your home.’

  ‘Don’t you? I suppose I should have concealed my slum origin.’

  ‘Why do you keep calling it a slum?’ cried Nancibel, exasperated. ‘I think it’s very hard on your mother.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She must have been a good mother. Anyway she gave you plenty to eat, by the looks of you. Why should you tell everybody her house was a slum in that scornful sort of way? It mayn’t have been much of a place, but I’m sure she worked hard to have it as nice as she could.’

  There was such a long pause after this that Nancibel thought he was too much offended to say another word. They reached the top of the hill and left the houses behind them. A winding lane took them across the cliffs among little fields fenced by high stone walls. The town and its lights lay below, and they could see the great curve of the twilit ocean.

&
nbsp; ‘I wasn’t born in a slum,’ said Bruce at last.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We lived in a nice Council House on a building estate. Five rooms and a bathroom and quite a big garden. Dad was very proud of the garden. He was never on the dole. He worked for the Metropolitan Water Board, and he got eight pounds a week. We had a three-piece suite in the sitting-room, and my mother always had her washing out on the line on Mondays before any other women in the road.’

  ‘My goodness gracious! You weren’t born in Limehouse at all?’

  ‘No. All lies. I tell them because Limehouse is easier to live down. People think more of you if you’ve risen from the gutter. But a home like mine is impossible to get away from.’

  ‘Why should you want to? I think it sounds very nice,’ said Nancibel.

  ‘Well … I want to be Somebody. I … I don’t want to be mass produced; I want to be original.’

  Nancibel nodded. She understood all that very well—the need to be Somebody.

  ‘You’re not so disgusted you don’t want to talk to me any more?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I did a little bit the same thing once myself. When I went into the A.T.S. I said my name was Rita. I hated my name: it’s so sort of countrified and old-fashioned. I felt I could be a quite different person if only I was called Rita.’

  He was so much reassured by her manner that he hardly listened.

  ‘It’s true about my writing,’ he hastened to say. ‘I’ve written a novel and it’s to be published.’

  ‘You mean printed?’

  ‘Yes. And when I’ve got the money I shall do nothing but write. Er … at present I’m a secretary … a chauffeur secretary.’

  ‘What’s it about? Your book?’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it, if I may,’ said Bruce happily. ‘It’s about this kid, see? Well … he’s a kid at the beginning of the book.’

  The Christmas tree idiom was stripped off, and the native Cockney emerged as he grew excited.

  ‘Born in a slum …’

  ‘Oh help!’ cried Nancibel. ‘You’ve got slums on the brain.’

  ‘Several distinguished writers happen to have seen the book,’ said Bruce a little stiffly. ‘And they think very well of it as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure. Excuse me. Go on.’

  ‘Some people may find it too outspoken, but if they don’t like it they must lump it. I’m not writing to spare their feelings. These things should be exposed.’

  ‘Do you begin with him being born?’ asked Nancibel, craftily.

  Bruce relented and continued:

  ‘Yes. He’s a bastard, you see.’

  This, to Nancibel, was a reflection on the kid’s character, not on his lineage, and she asked:

  ‘Why? What did he do?’

  ‘He didn’t do anything. But he had no father. His mother was on the streets. The opening chapter, where he’s born, is pretty strong. So he grows up in these terrible surroundings and then the war comes and he’s evacuated to the country.’

  ‘And a good thing too!’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. He gets sent to a terrible farm where he’s treated worse than ever. It’s one of these lonely farms where things go on that nobody dares write about. But I’m going to make people sit up. Well … then he grows up a bit more and he meets this woman … she’s a good deal older than he is, a wealthly, aristocratic woman, and very beautiful of course, and she takes him up, just for a whim, and he becomes her lover.’

  ‘Where does he meet her?’ asked Nancibel.

  ‘He’s the Boots in a hotel where she’s staying. But she takes him with her to her house in Mayfair. Of course she’s terribly depraved. And when he finds out what she really is he strangles her and gets hung.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes. I wanted to call it Waste. But that title’s been taken. So I’m calling it Hangman’s Boy.’

  There was a pause, and Nancibel felt she must say something.

  ‘Well,’ she ventured, ‘I expect you’ll feel better now you’ve got it all written out.’

  ‘It doesn’t appeal to you at all, as a story?’

  ‘N-no. Not much. I’m afraid I don’t like miserable books.’

  ‘What kind of books do you like?’

  ‘I like books about nice people. And a story where it all comes out right in the end.’

  ‘But Nancibel, that’s not true to life.’

  ‘I daresay not. Why should it be?’

  ‘You’re an escapist.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You don’t want to face facts.’

  ‘Not in story books, I don’t. I face plenty between Monday and Saturday without reading about them.’

  Bruce sighed.

  ‘I don’t think a book ought to be sad,’ said Nancibel, ‘unless it’s a great classical book, like Wuthering Heights.’

  ‘Oh! You’ve read Wuthering Heights. Did you like it?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t think it was the right part for Merle Oberon. Running about with bare feet, well she was hobbling most of the time. You could see she wasn’t used to it.’

  ‘Oh … you mean the film.’

  ‘Yes. The picture. That was a classic. Like Pride and Prejudice. Those Bronty sisters were classical writers.’

  ‘Seeing the picture isn’t the same as reading the book.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s the same story, isn’t it? But what I mean is if you’re a classical writer it’s all right; you can get people so interested they don’t mind its being sad.’

  ‘And I’m not a classical writer?’ suggested Bruce.

  ‘You can’t be till you’re dead,’ said Nancibel.

  ‘The Brontês happened to be alive when they wrote their books. They didn’t wait till they were dead.’

  ‘Oh. I see what you mean. Well … it’ll just depend on if you can get people interested, won’t it?’

  ‘And it doesn’t interest you?’

  ‘Not the way you tell it. Look … this is my home. Good night, Bruce.’

  ‘Good night, Nancibel.’

  She ran up a path and opened a cottage door. For a moment he saw her framed in an oblong of light and got a glimpse of a family within, sitting round a table with tea cups. Faces turned to greet her. Then the door shut.

  He turned and strolled back to the town. Nancibel was a stupid, almost an illiterate girl. Nancibel was unique; the most delightful girl he had ever met. Hangman’s Boy was tripe. He would burn it. He was a great classical writer, and he might rank with ‘the Bronty sisters’ if only he could find something to write about. Soon, very soon, he would find something. The world was all before him. He must see her again.

  He was cast down and uplifted; humble yet full of a tonic exhilaration. He knew that he had done nothing so far, but he had never been more sure that he was Somebody. He walked on air until the lane brought him within sight of the town again. Down on the marine parade the band was still playing.

  His spirits fell to zero. He remembered who he was and what he was.

  Sunday

  1. Extract from the Diary of Mr. Paley

  August 17th, 1947.

  I had the Dream again last night. I came out of it sick and very cold. I could not sleep again. I do not wish to describe it, but if I have it again I will do so, here. I am not sure that it is a dream.

  I am sitting at my usual post by the window. Christina means to go to Early Communion. She broke our contract of silence last night, and asked me if I would be so good as to wake her at seven o’clock. I undertook to do so.

  I do not care for the church here. The parson is an Anglo-Catholic and calls himself, I believe, ‘Father Bott.’ He is in constant trouble with his Bishop; he reserves the Sacrament, hears confession and will not read what is written in the Prayer Book, but edits and alters it in a most irresponsible way. He arrogates to himself a priestly prestige and authority which would be perfectly proper in the Roman Communion, but to which the Church of England gives him, in my op
inion, no claim.

  Nevertheless I shall think it my duty to accompany Christina. I shall not, of course, communicate. I do not consider myself fit to take the Sacrament. When I explained this to Mallon, the Rector of Stoke, he said that nobody is fit. I completely failed to make him understand my position. He would have given me the Sacrament with no scruples whatsoever. He said that God has forgiven me. I told him that I do not forgive myself.

  My wife, I told him, asserts that she has forgiven me. But I do not think she ought to do so. A stricter sense of justice, a finer appreciation of the moral values involved, would have impelled her to judge otherwise. He asked me if this criticism applied also to the Almighty. I said that I cannot suppose the Creator to be inferior to His creature. Why should I suppose He forgives me if I do not forgive myself?

  I know what is in Christina’s mind. To-day is the child’s birthday. Does she think I do not remember? She complains, or used to complain, that she cannot bear to be alone in her grief. But does she really suppose that she is alone? Is there one memory which tortures her and does not also torture me? As we kneel, side by side, in Church, we shall both be recalling the same scenes. They will be clearer for me than for her, because I have a more accurate memory.

  I could describe the wall-paper of the room where she lay: it had a pattern of blue ribbon on a white ground: blue ribbon crossed lattice-wise on bunches of cornflowers. We were in lodgings in Leeds. It was such a small room we scarcely knew where to put the cradle. That day was the happiest in our lives. But even then she angered me by wishing for some trifle, a pink coverlet, I think, which she had seen in some shop window. It was beyond our means at that time. She spoke thoughtlessly, not meaning to wound me. But she should not have reminded me of my poverty. I would have bought her the pink coverlet if I could. I would have given her the moon if I could. By complaining she made me feel that she regretted the luxury of the home she forsook when she married me. But she was weak and ill, so I said nothing.