Ford Madox Ford - The Parade's End Tetralogy - Some Do Not, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up & Last Post

‘I say,’ she said, ‘go and see they don’t hurt Gertie. I’ve lost her . . . ’ She pointed back to the sandhills. ‘There looked to be some beasts among them.’

She seemed a perfectly negligible girl except for the frown: her eyes blue, her hair no doubt fair under a white canvas hat. She had a striped cotton blouse, but her fawn tweed skirt was well hung.

Tietjens said:

‘You’ve been demonstrating.’

She said:

‘Of course we have, and of course you object on principle. But you won’t let a girl be man-handled. Don’t wait to tell me, I know it . . . ’

Noises existed. Sandbach, from beyond the low garden wall fifty yards away, was yelping, just like a dog: ‘Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!’ and gesticulating. His little caddy, entangled in his golfbag, was trying to scramble over the wall. On top of a high sandhill stood the policeman: he waved his arms like a windmill and shouted. Beside him and behind, slowly rising, were the heads of the General, Macmaster and their two boys. Farther along, in completion, were appearing the figures of Mr Waterhouse, his two companions and their three boys. The Minister was waving his driver and shouting. They all shouted.

‘A regular rat-hunt,’ the girl said; she was counting. ‘Eleven and two more caddies!’ She exhibited satisfaction. ‘I headed them all off except two beasts. They couldn’t run. But neither can Genie . . .

She said urgently:

‘Come along! You aren’t going to leave Gertie to those beasts They’re drunk . . . ’

Tietjens said:

‘Cut away then. I’ll look after Gertie.’ He picked up his bag.

‘No, I’ll come with you,’ the girl said.

Tietjens answered: ‘Oh, you don’t want to go to gaol. Clear out!’

She said:

‘Nonsense. I’ve put up with worse than that. Nine months as a slavey . . . Come along !’

Tietjens started to run—rather like a rhinoceros seeing purple. He had been violently spurred, for he had been pierced by a shrill, faint scream. The girl ran beside him.

‘You . . . can . . . run!’ she panted, ‘put on a spurt.’

Screams protesting against physical violence were at that date rare things in England. Tietjens had never heard the like. It upset him frightfully, though he was aware only of an expanse of open country. The policeman, whose buttons made him noteworthy, was descending his conical sand-hill, diagonally, with caution. There is something grotesque about a town policeman, silvered helmet and all, in the open country. It was so clear and still in the air; Tietjens felt as if he were in a light museum looking at specimens . . .

A little young woman, engrossed, like a hunted rat, came round the corner of a green mound. ‘This is an assaulted female!’ the mind of Tietjens said to him. She had a black skirt covered with sand, for she had just rolled down the sandhill; she had a striped grey and black silk blouse, one shoulder torn completely off, so that a white camisole showed. Over the shoulder of the sandhill came the two city men, flushed with triumph and panting; their red knitted waistcoats moved like bellows. The black-haired one, his eyes lurid and obscene, brandished aloft a fragment of black and grey stuff. He shouted hilariously:

‘Strip the bitch naked! . . . Ugh . . . Strip the bitch stark naked!’ and jumped down the little hill. He cannoned into Tietjens, who roared at the top of his voice:

‘You infernal swine. I’ll knock your head off if you move!’

Behind Tietjens’ back the girl said:

‘Come along, Gertie . . . It’s only to there . . . ’

A voice panted in answer:

‘I . . . can’t . . . My heart . . . ’

Tietjens kept his eye upon the city man. His jaw had fallen down, his eyes stared! It was as if the bottom of his assured world, where all men desire in their hearts to bash women, had fallen out. He panted:

‘Ergle! Ergle!’

Another scream, a little farther than the last voices from behind his back, caused in Tietjens a feeling of intense weariness. What did beastly women want to scream for? He swung round, bag and all. The policeman, his face scarlet like a lobster just boiled, was lumbering unenthusiastically towards the two girls who were trotting towards the dyke. One of his hands, scarlet also, was extended. He was not a yard from Tietjens.

Tietjens was exhausted, beyond thinking or shouting. He slipped his clubs off his shoulder and, as if he were pitching his kit-bag into a luggage van, threw the whole lot between the policeman’s running legs. The man, who had no impetus to speak of, pitched forward on to his hands and knees. His helmet over his eyes, he seemed to reflect for a moment; then he removed his helmet and with great deliberation rolled round and sat on the turf. His face was completely without emotion, long, sandy-moustached and rather shrewd. He mopped his brow with a carmine handkerchief that had white spots.

Tietjens walked up to him.

‘Clumsy of me!’ he said. ‘I hope you’re not hurt.’ He drew from his breast pocket a curved silver flask. The policeman said nothing. His world, too, contained uncertainties, and he was profoundly glad to be able to sit still without discredit. He muttered:

‘Shaken. A bit! Anybody would be!’

That let him out and he fell to examining with attention the bayonet catch of the flask top. Tietjens opened it for him. The two girls, advancing at a fatigued trot, were near the dyke side. The fair girl, as they trotted, was trying to adjust her companion’s hat; attached by pins to the back of her hair it flapped on her shoulder.

All the rest of the posse were advancing at a very slow walk, in a converging semi-circle. Two little caddies were running, but Tietjens saw them check, hesitate and stop. And there floated to Tietjens’ ears the words:

‘Stop, you little devils. She’ll knock your heads off.’

The Rt. Hon. Mr Waterhouse must have found an admirable voice trainer somewhere. The drab girl was balancing tremulously over a plank on the dyke; the other took it at a jump; up in the air—down on her feet; perfectly business-like. And, as soon as the other girl was off the plank, she was down on her knees before it, pulling it towards her, the other girl trotting away over the vast marsh field.

The girl dropped the plank on the grass. Then she looked up and faced the men and boys who stood in a row on the road. She called in a shrill, high voice, like a young cockerel’s:

‘Seventeen to two! The usual male odds! You’ll have to go round by Camber railway bridge, and we’ll be in Folkestone by then. We’ve got bicycles!’ She was half going when she checked and, searching out Tietjens to address, exclaimed: ‘I’m sorry I said that. Because some of you didn’t want to catch us. But some of you did . And you were seventeen to two.’ She addressed Mr Waterhouse:

‘Why don’t you give women the vote?’ she said. ‘You’ll find it will interfere a good deal with your indispensable golf if you don’t. Then what becomes of the nation’s health?’

Mr Waterhouse said: