The Feast (2 page)

Yet the house had an innocent and helpless appearance this morning. All the curtains were drawn and there were no bright splashes of bathing dresses hanging out of the windows, for nobody bathed now that the Bergmans had gone. And she remembered how she had once met Mr. Bergman by the rocks, as she crossed the sands. He was going down to bathe. He had looked very hard at her and hesitated, as though he might be going to make a pass at her. But he did not. He said good morning quite respectfully and went on down the rocks. Nobody now made passes at her any more. Her trouble, and the fortitude which had carried her through it, had turned her into Somebody. Even coarse Mr. Bergman could see that she was not just another girl, just another plump, pretty, black-haired girl. Even her mother seemed to see it for she had left off offering advice to Nancibel and sometimes actually asked for it.

Not all the curtains were drawn, as she saw when she got closer. Poor Mr. Paley was sitting, as usual, in the big bay window on the first floor. He looked like a statue, staring out to sea. And there was a flicker from an attic casement, just under a row of cormorants which sat on the ridge of the roof. Miss Ellis had peeped and dodged back.

Nancibel quickened her pace and ran up the steps carved in the rock. A gate at the top took her on to the garden terrace whence a path led round to the back of the house. Her white overall hung on a peg, just outside the kitchen and her working shoes stood on the floor beneath it. She put them on quickly and went into the kitchen. A kettle was already simmering on the stove. For this she knew she had to thank Gerry Siddal and not Fred, the waiter. Work at Pendizack was always far easier when Mr. Gerry was home on his holiday. He not only did a great deal of it himself, but he saw that Fred, who also slept in the stables, got up in the
morning. As she came round the house she had heard a rhythmic squeaking within, which meant that Fred was pushing his carpet-sweeper up and down the dining-room floor.

When early tea and cans of hot water had been taken upstairs she would have to do the lounge while Fred did the hall and stairs, and Mrs. Siddal cooked the breakfast. Then there would be the washing-up and the bedrooms and landings and bathroom to do. Somehow, between them, Fred and Nancibel would get it all done before lunch-time.

But not if there’s really ten more coming this afternoon, she thought, as she carried up the Paleys’ tea. I can’t do all those extra bedrooms. Ellis will have to do some.

A year ago, before she was Somebody, she would not have thought this so calmly. She would have rehearsed a heated manifesto about being put upon, she would have become flustered when she mentioned the matter to Mrs. Siddal. Now she knew how to look after herself without unpleasantness.

She knocked at the Paleys’ door and was told to come in. The early light streamed through the uncurtained window. Mr. Paley still sat there, writing in an exercise book. Mrs. Paley lay in her half of the bed, her neat grey head swathed in a pink net setting-cap. There was a petrified atmosphere about the room as though
something
violent had been going on there, and its occupants struck into immobility only by Nancibel’s knock. The Paleys always gave off this suggestion of a violence
momentarily
suspended. They would eat their breakfast every morning in a sombre, concentrated silence, as though bracing themselves for some enormous effort to be sustained during the day. Shortly afterwards they could be seen crossing the sands, carrying books, cushions and a picnic basket. They walked in single file, Mr. Paley leading. Up the cliff path they went, and out of sight over the headland. At four o’clock, having, as the flippant Duff Siddal suggested, disposed of the corpse, they returned in
the same order to take tea on the terrace. It was difficult to believe that they had done nothing all day save read and eat sandwiches.

Nancibel put the can of water on the washing-stand and took the tea-tray to the bedside. Mrs. Paley, she
perceived
, was not really asleep. She lay tense and rigid, her eyes tightly shut. Neither Paley said anything, and all the violence no doubt broke out again as soon as the door was shut on them.

Tea for Miss Ellis came next. She never said
come
in
when you knocked. She always called out:

‘Who is it?’

One day, vowed Nancibel, I’ll say it’s the Duke of Windsor.

‘Your tea, Miss Ellis.’

‘Oh? Come in.’

The room was frowsty and full of cardboard boxes. It had been a nice little room before Miss Ellis came, with bright chintzes and good furniture. But she had managed to give it a poverty stricken look. She put nothing away; all her possessions lay strewn about that the world might see how shabby, soiled and broken they were. Her teeth grinned shamelessly on the dressing-table beside the filthy brush and comb. But the most squalid object in the room was Miss Ellis herself, in a torn, mud-coloured
dressing-gown
, her greasy black hair falling over her eyes.

‘Have you done the lounge?’

‘No, Miss Ellis.’

(A nice row there’d be if she didn’t get her tea till I’d done the lounge!)

‘Then you’d better do it right away, Nancibel.’

‘Yes, Miss Ellis.’

‘Is Fred up yet?’

‘Yes, Miss Ellis.’

‘Has he done the dining-room?’

‘He’s doing it, Miss Ellis.’

‘Very well. When you’ve done the lounge you can go and help in the kitchen. I shall be down shortly.’

This ritual conversation took place every morning and its offensiveness was deliberate. The implication was that Nancibel lacked both the wit to remember the usual routine and the conscience to follow it without a daily reminder. It was called Getting After The Girl, and constituted, in Miss Ellis’s opinion, the major part of her duties: a task not to be undertaken for less than four pounds a week.

Fred was still pushing the sweeper about when Nancibel came downstairs. She took it away from him and told him to go and dust the stairs, whereat he breathed heavily and replied:

‘Nancibel, you are Ree-dundant. That is to say, you are not wanted.’

This was also a formula, frequently repeated. It was Fred’s one witticism and he was very fond of it. But he was a good-natured boy and always did what she told him to do.

A few minutes’ break, and a cup of tea, came after the lounge was finished. Mrs. Siddal was now in the kitchen, which smelt of coffee, toast and sizzling bacon. She moved aside from the stove to let Nancibel get at the tea-pot, and said that a crib must be brought in from the stables and set up in the big attic.

‘Mrs. Cove, who is coming this afternoon, wants to have all her three children sleeping with her. I imagine they must be quite small, as she says they won’t be taking dinner.’

‘It’ll be a job to get
four beds in there,’ said Nancibel, sipping her tea.

‘Yes. And we must get three other rooms ready. The sea room for Lady Gifford and her husband, and the two rooms above it for their children. Ask Miss Ellis for sheets. You’d better….’

Her words were drowned by the noise of the gong, hammered in the hall by Fred. Immediately she lifted the porridge pot on to the table and began to ladle out two bowls of porridge for the Paleys, who always came
down the moment the gong rang. The pot was heavy and Nancibel, watching her, thought how awkward it was to have a lady working in the kitchen. Mrs. Siddal was a passable cook, but she had taken to housework too late. She had no muscle and no knack. She was clumsy and amateurish; she made many unnecessary movements. Her pretty hair was always falling into her eyes and her overalls were crumpled half an hour after she had put them on. Nancibel’s mother could have done twice as much in half the time.

Poor thing! thought Nancibel. Let’s hope she gets a proper cook soon. P’raps that’s what’s wrong with the house. P’raps I shouldn’t feel so blue here if there was a cook.

Duff and Robin Siddal came in from bathing, their wet towels round their necks. They were sent out into the yard again to hang the towels on a line while their mother spooned out bowls of porridge, which she set for them on a side table by the window. It had never been her
intention
, when she opened the hotel, to feed her family in the kitchen. The Siddals were to have had their own table in the dining-room, where Fred could wait on them. But they had found that they could not talk in the
dining-room
. The guests embarrassed them.

‘Where’s Gerry?’ she asked, when they came back, ‘Didn’t he bathe with you?

‘No,’ said Duff. ‘He’s attending to the electric light machine.’

‘His porridge will get cold.’

She put Gerry’s porridge bowl into the oven to keep warm and wondered who would have seen to the electric light if Gerry had not been there. Of her three sons he was the most loving and the least loved. For he had
inherited none of the charm which had betrayed her into marrying Dick Siddal. Heaven knew from what plebeian strain he received his stocky build, his snub nose and his tendency to boils. Even as a baby he had bored her, though no child could have given less trouble.
Low-spirited
, affectionate and conscientious, he had plodded his dreary way to maturity without giving her one
endearing
memory. Even his letters during the war (and he had fought at Arnhem) were so flat as to be almost unreadable.

She was ashamed that this should be so and that the other two should entirely divide her disappointed heart. For Robin took after her own kin—the Trehernes. He was the picture of a brother she had lost in 1918, ruddy, comely and blythe. And Duff was the son of her dreams: he had Dick’s charm, Dick’s beauty, Dick’s brilliance, untarnished as yet by Dick’s failure. She could deny nothing to Duff. But she made a faint stand when he asked for cream with his porridge.

‘Not after to-day,’ she said. ‘I shall have to keep what there is for Lady Gifford. She’s going to be very difficult to feed. But I must do my best, for Sibyl Avery sent her.’

‘What’s the matter with her?’ asked Duff. ‘It sounds a very nice illness. I wish I could catch it.’

Shuffling feet were heard in the kitchen passage. The master of the house had emerged from his lair in the quondam boot-hole. He stood for a moment in the
doorway
, hugging his old dressing-gown round him, as if uncertain of permission to come in. Duff and Robin moved their chairs to make room for him and his wife handed him a bowl of porridge, which he accepted with exaggerated humility, apologizing to his sons for giving them the trouble to move. He was in his Poor Relation mood.

After a short, embarrassed pause, Duff made an effort to resume the conversation.

‘Two more families,’ he said, ‘will make a lot of extra work.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Siddal. ‘And Nancibel can’t do it all. Miss Ellis will have to do the bedrooms. I told her so last night.’

‘Mother!’ cried Robin. ‘How brave you are! What did she say?’

‘She was shocked beyond speech. But she did manage to ask if I expected her to empty slops. I said I did.’

‘Now she’ll walk out,’ prophesied Duff.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Mrs. Siddal. ‘I don’t think she could get any other job.’

Her voice was sharp, as she said this, and a hard line appeared round her mouth. This sharpness and this hardness were not natural to her. Work she did not mind, or sacrifice of leisure, rest and comfort. But she hated having to stand up for herself when people treated her badly, and she had begun to realise that ruthless bullying was the only method likely to succeed with Miss Ellis. For Duff’s sake she must learn how to hold her own, for Duff would never go to Balliol unless the hotel could be made to pay.

‘I’d do it myself,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t do for me to be upstairs in the morning.’

Mr. Siddal ate his porridge and turned timid glances from one face to another. He was doing his silent best to make them feel uncomfortable. He was pointedly managing to be left out. Yet they knew that if they were to make any attempt to include him in the conversation he would disclaim all understanding of it. The affairs of the hotel, he would imply, were too much for the intellect of such a worm as himself.

Duff, however, ventured to address him directly.

‘I don’t think Ellis had better empty the slops, do you? She might empty herself out by mistake. She’s very like a slop really—a human slop.’

Siddal conveyed an immense uncertainty as to the nature of slops and their place in the scheme of things. But after a while a light dawned on him.

‘I begin to grasp it,’ he said to Duff. ‘It’s the basic problem of Socialism, isn’t it? As defined by the
Frenchman
to whom the beauties of an egalitarian society were explained.
Mais
alors
,
qui
videra
le
pot
de
chambre
?
’

‘That,’ said Mrs. Siddal, flushing, ‘is what every
civilized
person should do for himself. But I wish we had more bathrooms.’

‘Oh I know,’ said Siddal. ‘I think so too. And so did Tolstoi. At least, I seem to remember that he wrote with passion on the subject. Didn’t he, Duff?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Duff sulkily.

‘Oh … I forgot. Your generation doesn’t read
Tolstoi
. So sorry. Old fogies shouldn’t harp on books which have gone out. And anyway, our guests don’t seem to be civilized. They all have a capitalist mentality and leave it to Nancibel, as we did till we became proletariat
ourselves
. She is beautiful and she is good and she is extremely intelligent and she is worth all the rest of us put together, but she is the only person in the house to whom we can entrust this office without a social upheaval
because
she is a farm labourer’s daughter.’

‘I do read Tolstoi,’ said Duff. ‘I only …’

‘Here’s your bacon,’ said Mrs. Siddal, thrusting a plate under her husband’s nose.

‘Thank you. Is this really for me? All this? You can spare it? Well, in a truly just community (and that’s what we want to secure, don’t we, Duff?), this job would be given to the lowest and the last … the least useful, the least productive citizen. An admirable principle. I’m all for it. We have only to consider who, in this household, fills the bill. Who pulls least weight? Who can best be spared from more important tasks?’