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

‘You mean that?’ Sylvia asked. ‘It’s not just a way of talking?’

‘No, it’s not just a way of talking,’ Tietjens answered. ‘I lay in bed in the C.C.S . . . Your friends were dropping bombs on it.’

‘You might not call them my friends,’ Sylvia said. Tietjens said:

‘I beg your pardon. One gets into a loose way of speaking. The poor bloody Huns, then, were dropping bombs from aeroplanes on the hospital huts . . . I’m not suggesting they knew it was a C.C.S.; it was, no doubt, just carelessness . . .

‘You needn’t spare the Germans for me!’ Sylvia said. ‘You needn’t spare any man who has killed another man.’

‘I was, then, dreadfully worried,’ Tietjens went on. ‘I was composing a preface for a book on Arminianism . . . ’

‘You haven’t written a book! ‘ Sylvia exclaimed eagerly, because she thought that if Tietjens took to writing a book there might be a way of his earning a living. Many people had told her that he ought to write a book.

‘No, I hadn’t written a book,’ Tietjens said, ‘and I didn’t know what Arminianism was . . .

‘You know perfectly well what the Arminian heresy is,’ Sylvia said sharply; ‘you explained it all to me years ago.’

‘Yes,’ Tietjens exclaimed. ‘Years ago I could have, but I couldn’t then. I could now, but I was a little worried about it then. It’s a little awkward to write a preface about a subject of which you know nothing. But it didn’t seem to me to be discreditable in an army sense . . . Still it worried me dreadfully not to know my own name. I lay and worried and worried, and thought how discreditable it would appear if a nurse came along and asked me and I didn’t know. Of course my name was on a luggage label tied to my collar; but I’d forgotten they did that to casualties . . . Then a lot of people carried pieces of a nurse down the hut: the Germans’ bombs had done that of course. They were still dropping about the place.’

‘But good heavens,’ Sylvia cried out, ‘do you mean they carried a dead nurse past you? . . . ’

The poor dear wasn’t dead,’ Tietjens said. ‘I wish she had been. Her name was Beatrice Carmichael . . . the first name I learned after my collapse. She’s dead now of course . . . That seemed to wake up a fellow on the other side of the room with a lot of blood coming through the bandages on his head . . . He rolled out of his bed and, without a word, walked across the hut and began to strangle me . . . ’

‘But this isn’t believable,’ Sylvia said. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t believe it . . . You were an officer: they couldn’t have carried a wounded nurse under your nose. They must have known your sister Caroline was a nurse and was killed . . . ’

‘Carrie,’ Tietjens said, ‘was drowned on a hospital ship. I thank God I didn’t have to connect the other girl with her . . . But you don’t suppose that in addition to one’s name, rank, unit, and date of admission they’d put that I’d lost a sister and two brothers in action and a father—of a broken heart, I dare say . . . ’

‘But you only lost one brother,’ Sylvia said. ‘I went into mourning for him and your sister . . .

‘No, two,’ Tietjens said; ‘but the fellow who was strangling me was what I wanted to tell you about. He let out a number of ear-piercing shrieks and lots of orderlies came and pulled him off me and sat all over him. Then he began to shout ” Faith! “ He shouted: “Faith! . . . Faith! . . . Faith!’ . . . ” at intervals of two seconds, as far as I could tell by my pulse, until four in the morning, when he died . . . I don’t know whether it was a religious exhortation or a woman’s name, but I disliked him a good deal because he started my tortures, such as they were . . . There had been a girl I knew called Faith. Oh, not a love affair: the daughter of my father’s head gardener, a Scotsman. The point is that every time he said Faith I asked myself “Faith . . . Faith what?” I couldn’t remember the name of my father’s head gardener.’

Sylvia, who was thinking of other things, asked: ‘What was the name?’

Tietjens answered:

‘I don’t know, I don’t know to this day . . . The point is that when I knew that I didn’t know that name, I was as ignorant, as uninstructed , as a new-born babe and much more worried about it . . . The Koran says—I’ve got as far as K in my reading of the Encyclopaedia Britannica every afternoon at Mrs Wannop’s —“The strong man when smitten is smitten in his pride!” . . . Of course I got King’s Regs. and the M.M.L. and Infantry Field Training and all the A.C.I.s to date by heart very quickly. And that’s all a British officer is really encouraged to know . . .

‘Oh, Christopher!’ Sylvia said. ’ You read that encyclopaedia; it’s pitiful. You used to despise it so.’

‘That’s what’s meant by “smitten in his pride,"’ Tietjens said. ‘Of course what I read or hear now I remember . . . But I haven’t got to M, much less V. That was why I was worried about Metternich and the Congress of Vienna. I try to remember things on my own, but I haven’t yet done so. You see, it’s as if a certain area of my brain had been wiped white. Occasionally one name suggests another. You noticed, when I got Metternich it suggested Castlereagh and Wellington—and even other names . . . But that’s what the Department of Statistics will get me on. When they fire me out. The real reason will be that I’ve served. But they’ll pretend it’s because I’ve no more general knowledge than is to be found in the encyclopaedia: or two-thirds more or less—according to the duration of the war . . . Or, of course, the real reason will be that I won’t fake statistics to dish the French with. They asked me to, the other day, as a holiday task. And when I refused, you should have seen their faces.’

‘Have you really ,’ Sylvia asked, ‘lost two brothers in action?’

‘Yes,’ Tietjens answered. ‘Curly and Longshanks. You never saw them because they were always in India. And they weren’t noticeable . . . ’

‘ Two! ‘ Sylvia said. ‘I only wrote to your father about one called Edward. And your sister Caroline. In the same letter . . . ’

‘Carrie wasn’t noticeable either,’ Tietjens said. ‘She did Charity Organization Society work . . . But I remember: you didn’t like her. She was the born old maid . . . ’

‘Christopher!’ Sylvia asked, ‘do you still think your mother died of a broken heart because I left you?’ Tietjens said:

‘Good God, no. I never thought so and I don’t think so. I know she didn’t.’

‘ Then! ‘ Sylvia exclaimed, ‘she died of a broken heart because I came back . . . It’s no good protesting that you don’t think so. I remember your face when you opened the telegram at Lobscheid. Miss Wannop forwarded it from Rye. I remember the postmark. She was born to do me ill. The moment you got it I could see you thinking that you must conceal from me that you thought it was because of me she died. I could see you wondering if it wouldn’t be practicable to conceal from me that she was dead. You couldn’t, of course, do that because, you remember, we were to have gone to Wiesbaden and show ourselves; and we couldn’t do that because we should have to be in mourning. So you took me to Russia to get out of taking me to the funeral.’