‘Me!’ It had taken his breath away.
‘Yes, you.’ She nodded at him like a wise child.
‘Why, am I bitter?’
‘I think you are,’ she told him. She appealed to the Wavertons.
‘I know what you mean,’ said Margaret. ‘It’s not perhaps the exact word, but it will do.’ Then she addressed herself to Penderel: ‘Yes, you are bitter, you know.’
‘Of course you are, Penderel,’ said Philip heartily. ‘You’re one of the worst post-War cases I know, a thundering sight worse than I am. Come on, admit it. You’re the sort of bloke they denounce in little talks in Bright Sunday Evening Services.’ He grinned and pointed his pipe-stem across the table. ‘Stand up to your question and explain the wormwood.’
Penderel made a comical little grimace. ‘Well, I never knew I was so obvious. I suppose I shall have to explain myself. I went into the War when I was seventeen, ran away from school to do it, enlisting as a Tommy and telling them I was nineteen. I’m not going to talk about the War. You know all about that. It killed my father, who died from over-work. It killed my elder brother, Jim, who was blown to pieces up at Passchendaele. He was the best fellow in the world, and I idolised him. It was always fellows like him, the salt of the earth, who got done in, whether they were British or French or German or American. People wonder what’s the matter with the world these days. They forget that all the best fellows, the men who’d have been in their prime now, who’d have been giving us a lead in everything, are dead. If you could bring ’em all back, fellows like Jim, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of ’em, you’d soon see the difference they’d make in the place. But they’re dead, and a lot of other people, very different sort of people, are alive and kicking. Well, I saw all this, took an honours course in it, you might say, for it was the only education I got after the fifth form. Then towards the end of the War I fell in love. I was convalescent in a country house and it was spring. She was staying there, and every time we went out walking every little gust of wind snowed down blossom on us. I’ve never seen a place so thick with apple blossom and cherry blossom. And she’d be waiting down there. We became engaged. The world was all made over again and I’d only got to see the War through to find it all waiting for me. I thought about nothing else, went back to France, went through the dust and the gas of the last push in the summer and autumn of ’eighteen, thinking about nothing else. Then just after the Armistice I got a letter. It was all a mistake; we weren’t really suited, too young to know then; she’d found someone else; we’d always be friends. All very reasonable, no doubt, but you see I’d been thinking about nothing else. I got out of the Army, went home and saw her once, and gave it up. But I remember I went down to the old place that spring, in ’nineteen, and all the damned blossom was out again, miles of it, snowing through the air as it did before. It made me ache to see it. I told myself that it hadn’t been there for me and only another kind of frost would stop it. I packed my traps and set off to look for work.’ He stopped and looked down at his fingers drumming on the table.
‘Go on,’ said Philip, after they had waited a few moments. For that he received one of Margaret’s fierce little nudges, always so surprising because they never seemed part of her. They belonged, in fact, to the other Margaret, the one inside. This was the first he had had for some months and it was so welcome that it tingled.
‘I’ll cut it short,’ said Penderel. ‘Well, the good fellows were nearly all gone, love was off, and the world was in a filthy muddle, but there was still work. That was the thing. I told myself I’d work like hell. I could have gone up to Oxford or Cambridge, but didn’t want to go. I wasn’t in the mood for listening to the patter of dry little men in spectacles and then going ragging with a lot of kids. I felt there was nothing a varsity could teach me that I wanted to learn. Pure arrogance, of course, but there you are. I didn’t even want to play their games, their solemn good-form games. I’d go and work, find a man’s job. There was an African scheme going, good land for ex-officers and all that, and so I scraped together every penny I had and went into it and out to Africa. I won’t bore you with that. It was a swindle, and a particularly dirty swindle, the kind that sticks in your gullet. Africa didn’t want me, at least the part I saw didn’t, and I came back broke. I drifted about town for some time and swapped drinks with other fellows in the same boat. The work idea was off, but I was still looking for a job, which isn’t the same thing at all though. One or two of the fellows I knew joined the Black and Tans, and I nearly joined myself—nobody else seemed to want me—but I happened to like the Irish and I didn’t like the sound of their prospective job. So I hung about, talking over schemes with other drifters and having too many drinks. I sold one or two things on commission but found it a poor, dirty game. Then I found I hadn’t a bean, didn’t want to borrow, so put in a spell of navvying, up North on some public works, got the job through pure influence. That did me good, but I haven’t the navvy temperament and technique and it was about as hard as a spell of penal servitude. But I stuck it till we were paid off, came back to town and went round the bars, seeing if there was anything doing. There was—there always is, if you’ve got the stomach for it—but I couldn’t do it. I tried to write—I’d got plenty of material—but could only make a rotten hack job of it, just spoiling the stuff. Then my mother died. She’d not had much to live for after father and Jim went. My one sister had married and was out in India, and I wasn’t exactly a howling success as the prop and mainstay of the family. Some money came to me. It wasn’t much and it didn’t last long. I’ve seen to that. There’s still a little tied up, but I’ve borrowed on the strength of that. When you’ve nothing to do, no aim of any kind, very few real friends, money doesn’t last long. There are twenty-four hours in every day to be paid for, bought off, you might say. I’m one of the ugly ducklings of the War generation, the sort that will never become swans. Already another generation’s come up, who understand this world, who don’t let it take them in, kids soft enough in body and speech but really as hard as nails, all out for a damned good time. They know what they want and how to get it, and nothing’s going to take them in. I’m out too for a damned good time—there’s nothing else to be out for, nothing left—but I don’t get it. And I never will.’
He looked round at the faces turned to his. Mr. Femm appeared impassive, Sir William slightly uncomfortable, and the Wavertons and Gladys serious and sympathetic. Then suddenly he started up and broke into speech again, this time swiftly, vehemently.