Cards of Identity (30 page)

‘They don’t actually cut up the dogs and badgers, do they? To see what’s inside, and why?’

‘No, it’s all talk.’

‘I’m glad to hear that. Suffering and wasted money give me goose-flesh: I put myself in the animal’s place. My husband never went to bed without cleaning his horse.’

‘That was so as not to waste money, Mrs Paradise. The horse lasted much longer.’

‘You don’t think it was just out of love?’

‘Well, a sort of far-seeing love, perhaps. I’m sure he never groomed the cat.’

‘He always had a kind word for it.’

‘I’ll not press that point, Mrs Paradise. If my memories were as sacred as yours I would keep them safe from any argument.’

‘I don’t believe you were quite as wicked as you remember, Mr Jellicoe.’

‘I was, Mrs Paradise,
exceedingly
wicked, and nothing hurts me more than to have it questioned.’

‘All right, we won’t quarrel. Let’s rehearse each other our parts.’

‘That is what we were doing.’

‘Parts,
Mr Jellicoe, not pasts!’

‘Oh, oh! Gladly! Where shall we start?’

‘Let’s with the Queen in bed.’

‘If you don’t mind, Mrs Paradise, I’d rather not. Although it’s yours, I know it by heart.’

‘Then let’s do Hermione in her boudoir.’

‘Again, it’s so familiar. Let’s do the King’s speech when he swoons at last.’

‘Am I in that?’

‘How can you be, Mrs Paradise? It wouldn’t be a speech if there were two in it.’

‘That’s what I mean, Mr Jellicoe. You have a whole page without interruption.’

‘That’s what
I
mean, Mrs Paradise. That’s why it’s so important.’

‘Well, I’ll hear you your swoon if you’ll promise to hear me my boudoir.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll start, while you work up your mood.’

When he had finished, she said: ‘You do do it wonderfully, Mr Jellicoe! For a man who thinks so much, you put in so much ginger. And all those movements with your arms! Why, even your ears tremble! Now, let me do Hermione….’

‘That’s
much
better, Mrs Paradise,’ he said, when she had done. ‘But there are stall certain places where you don’t seem to know what you are talking about. It’s clear that you are very moved, but the cause remains unknown. Listen, and I’ll read it myself.’

‘No, please don’t, Mr Jellicoe. It spoils all the pleasure if another voice chimes in. I’d rather not know than be corrected.’

Miss Tray entered, leading Towzer. ‘Good morning all,’ she said. ‘Well, how d’you think he looks? Hold up your head, Tow, for the lady.’

‘I must say he’s a transformation,’ said Mrs Paradise. ‘What’s that on his ear?’

‘Only egg.’

‘Won’t it come off?’

‘I don’t believe in doing things for him. The way to change him is to let him change himself. That’s what the doctor says, and I agree. How do you like his new clothes? I have to admit, I
did
choose them for him. But if I’d left the choice to him he’d be wearing nothing but a hank of bast.’

‘I think your choice has been on the feminine side,’ said Jellicoe, looking Towzer up and down. ‘I wouldn’t choose a mauve tie and a pale green shirt for myself, especially with a spade-beard and a nigger-brown suit. However, I know nothing about gardening.’

‘It looks
very
pretty, Miss Tray,’ said Mrs Paradise. ‘Don’t you listen to Mr Jellicoe. Men are always spoil-sports when it comes to clothes. I think you have sharpened him up wonderfully. I’d never know he was the same person.’

‘He only wears it for Shakespeare and best, of course. The doctor had it in the big chest.’

‘He is still receiving medical attention, is he?’ asked Jellicoe.

‘Of course. He wouldn’t be here otherwise, would he?’

‘I thought he was gardening for the Captain.’

‘That’s what he thinks too. We’re not even going to mention such things in his hearing or try and pin him down in the least. Promise
me, will you, that if ever he mentions “the Captain”, or some such fantasy, you won’t correct him?’

‘Why, no,’ said Jellicoe, giving her a puzzled look.

‘We are simply going to nurse him forward and leave him absolutely free to decide for himself. At the moment, he’s still at the stage where he’s hoping to escape responsibility … Just look at him! He knows we are talking about him.’

‘Do you really think he does, Miss Tray?’ asked Jellicoe. ‘I know dogs do.’

‘I am certain of it.’

‘Then perhaps we shouldn’t do it,’ said Mrs Paradise kind-heartedly.

‘But we
should,’
said Miss Tray. ‘That’s how ideas will filter into his head again. The doctor makes a suggestion to me; I make the suggestion in front of Tow, and Tow makes it to himself – we
hope.
By doing it this way, the doctor and I cannot be accused of having forced anything on him. All his changes will be entirely his own.’

‘I should like to meet this doctor someday,’ said Jellicoe. ‘He sounds like the sort of man I could learn something from.’

‘I did suggest that to him only yesterday,’ said Miss Tray, ‘but he suggested postponing it until you were not quite so busy.’

‘He is in the house, then?’ asked Jellicoe.

‘Why, yes, all the time,’ said Miss Tray, giving Jellicoe a puzzled look.

‘Mr Towzer may
understand
things,’ said Mrs Paradise, ‘but I must say he doesn’t
speak
very much.’

‘Not with strangers, Mrs Paradise. He is afraid they may try and persuade him to be different.’

‘Strangers, Miss Tray! But he’s been with us for years. He was here with my late husband.’

‘His breakdown has destroyed all that, Mrs Paradise. You and Mr Jellicoe live entirely in the past. But the past doesn’t exist for Tow. Only the present matters – and, fortunately, I am a large part of it.’

‘It seems very hard, Miss Tray, that me and Mr Jellicoe should have to renounce all claim to a very dear old acquaintance – that
we
should have to suffer because
he
’
s
forgotten the things we remember. It’s particularly hard on me, who treasures memories so much.’

‘Well, let’s just change the subject,’ said Miss Tray. ‘May I ask if you are settling into your parts?’

‘Very well. Mr Jellicoe is word perfect in all four of his. He even has a different voice for each.’

‘It’s sea-training does that,’ said Jellicoe. ‘But what of Mr Towzer? I can’t imagine how a man who is speechless in everyday life will enunciate Shakespeare.’

‘Well, he’s word-perfect too, Mr Jellicoe. Once he realized it was only poetry, he learnt it immediately.’

‘Then I’m afraid Mrs Chirk is going to be the weak link in our chain.’

‘She’s coming now,’ said Mrs Paradise, ‘so don’t be rude in front of her, poor thing. Remember, she’s quite uneducated.’

Mrs Chirk came in at breakneck speed, red and panting.

‘All done, Mrs Finch?’ asked Mrs Paradise chummily.

‘Half of them done, Mrs Paradise: I’ll get to the Execution wing after dinner. Oh, dear me! I
am
upside down! I don’t know my left from my right or my head from my heels! If I sat down even for a second I’d never be able to pick myself up again!’

‘I hope you know your
parts,
Mrs Chirk,’ said Miss Tray sternly. ‘We all know ours and it wouldn’t please us to think that you were going to let us down.’

‘I can’t fix my mind on them, Miss Tray. I tell myself who I’m supposed to be, but after a few minutes my mind’s a blank again. And having to be
two
women
and
speak the Prologue doesn’t make it any easier. And then there’s the washing-up.’

‘The washing-up has nothing to do with it, Mrs Chirk. It is entirely separate from acting. I think there must be something hostile to the stage in your character.’

‘There’s nothing hostile in
me,
Miss. I’m the humblest of creatures.’

‘That’s what we all think of ourselves, Mrs Finch.’

‘I’ll do better, Miss, when we have our costumes on. Then I’ll only have to glance down to know what I’m up to.’

‘Why don’t you write your name in big letters on a piece of paper and keep it in front of you?’

‘Which name would that be, Miss?’

‘Whichever one you’re doing, of course.’

‘I’ll try that, Miss. Just as long as I keep the different pieces separated. If I muddled them, it would be the death of me.’

‘Think of it as like your ration-book, Mrs Chirk. Your name, on the
cover, represents the whole book, but the various pages represent the different things that go into you.’

‘Or think of it as like your work,’ suggested Jellicoe. ‘One minute you are dusting madly; the next, waxing feverishly; the next, scrubbing frantically. Sometimes you are on hands-and-knees like a dog, sometimes rubbaging like a badger. But always
you,
whatever your posture.’

‘It’s kindly meant, I’m sure, Mr Jellicoe, but if you don’t mind I’ll not confuse it worse by being different animals as well. I’m not one for bringing things into my life; my peace comes when I can throw them out.’

‘But all things in life are related to each other, Mrs Finch.’

‘They may be, Mr Jellicoe, but it’s not for me to play Happy Families.’

‘Well, since we’re all here,’ said Miss Tray, ‘how about a little rehearsal? Which act do you know best, Mrs Chirk?’

‘The first, Miss. I’m not one to forge ahead in search of trouble.’

*

‘
Who’s
looking for trouble?’ asked the President angrily. ‘All I said was that by the time Shubunkin had put sex through his upper and nether millstones, I cared little what sex
anyone
was. I also remarked on what seems to me a most interesting fact – that some functions, of which sex is one, are naturally so stimulating that they become dull when put on paper. I may have added something about its being time for lunch.’

‘It was a shocking way to receive a work that embodied months of toil and ingenuity,’ said Dr Shubunkin furiously.

‘That was my point. Naturally, the matter proceeds so rapidly.’

‘May I say, with all respect for his office,’ said Mr Jamesworth, ‘that the President is at the bottom of all this quarrelling?’

‘No, sir you may not. It is absurd to open a sentence with all respect and close it with none.’

‘I shall not move from this floor,’ said Dr Shubunkin, ‘until justice has been done to my history.’

‘We can always give it a free pardon,’ said the President.

‘Shame!’ cried the doctor’s claque.

‘I was the first to applaud poor Bitterling’s little effort the other day,’
said the doctor, ‘because I always sympathize with people who have done their best. When that best is my own, my sympathy is bottomless.’

Dr Bitterling feverishly wrote on a piece of paper and held up the words: ‘Why
be
a subordinate if there is to be no flattery?’

‘Precisely,’ said Dr Musk. ‘Why be?’

‘I can only tell you, gentlemen,’ said the President, ‘that if you don’t reach a friendly conclusion I shall turn the matter over to Mr Harcourt and let him have the last word. None of you will like
that.’

‘Me least of all,’ said Mr Harcourt. ‘I think it a shame that my opinion should count only when my betters are irreconcilable. People used to say of my elder sister: “You can always depend on her in an emergency.” How she hated it! “There’s only an emergency every twenty-five years,” she used to say: “Who am I supposed to be in the other twenty-four?”’

‘Things have come to a pretty pass,’ said Dr Musk, ‘when the day starts with sex and winds up with Harcourt’s sister.’

‘The history showed Shubunkin at the very peak of his peculiar zest,’ said Father Orfe. ‘We religious proselytizers appreciate zest, because a fast car is easier to steer.’

Stapleton got up and said in a trembling voice: ‘It is agonizing for me to recall the dreams I had during the war of what peace would be like. I thought everyone would disarm and be the best of friends. Now, I wonder why I was wounded at all.’

‘I expect you were the type that always is,’ said Dr Shubunkin.

‘Mr Stapleton, your
heart
is in the right place …’ began the President.

‘That’s what the fox said to the goose!’ cried Dr Musk.

‘Gentlemen, we have strayed far from the heart of the matter,’ protested Mr Jamesworth.

‘Then I shall return to it – decisively,’ said Dr Shubunkin, working his face like a shuttle. ‘The heart of the matter is: When is a President not a President? And the answer is: When he fails to give his subordinates that mingled discipline and flattery which constitute true leadership.
There!’

Amid silence the President rose slowly to his feet and looked hard at the doctor. ‘Shubunkin,’ he said. ‘Do you invoke Clause (
a
)
of Rule 1?’

Before answering, the doctor glanced quickly round the room to test the moral of his claque. Finding it none to good, in that the gentlemen concerned were all suddenly studying their feet, he replied defensively: ‘Well, it’s a bit thick, you know.’

The President put on pince-nez, stared closely at the doctor for some moments, and said: ‘I can’t see from here. Are you eating crow or flying the Jolly Roger?’

‘A direct apology would not be in keeping with Shubunkin’s distinctive identity,’ said Dr Musk. ‘Like all sexologists, he must be permitted the fullest ambiguity.’

‘His assertion
and
its contradiction must be swallowed as one,’ said Father Orfe.

‘Though, if he has erred,’ cried Mr Harris, ‘he must bare his neck to the short sword.’

‘I don’t know what the quarrel’s about,’ said Mr Harcourt, ‘but I do think it’s cruel to make people apologize. To prevent anyone making me, I always hasten to make the apology first.’

‘The President is
never
cruel,’ said Stapleton. ‘He is the perfect healer whose image was so often in my mind when I was in the hands of the
R.A.M.C
.’

Suddenly, from a back seat, Captain Mallet arose. So impressive was his gradual ascent into common view, so portly the bearing of his head, that all the members, including the President, gave a sharp twitch – except Dr Shubunkin, who gave a score. ‘I am only a plain, blunt officer …’ began the captain, but was silenced by a burst of applause. ‘I am only a plain, blunt …’ he began again, and was once more silenced by loud enthusiasm. ‘I am only a plain …’ he began a third time, and then gave up.