That Hideous Strength

‘I think I do understand the sentiment that still attaches to the small man, but when you come to study the reality as I have to do–’

‘I should want to pull it to bits and put something else in its place. Of course. That’s what happens when you study men: you find mare’s nests. I happen to believe that you can’t study men; you can only get to know them, which is quite a different thing. Because you study them, you want to make the lower orders govern the country and listen to classical music, which is balderdash. You also want to take away from them everything which makes life worth living and not only from them but from everyone except a parcel of prigs and professors.’

‘Bill!’ said Fairy Hardcastle suddenly, from the far side of the table, in a voice so loud that even he could not ignore it. Hingest fixed his eyes upon her and his face grew a dark red.

‘Is it true,’ bawled the Fairy, ‘that you’re going off by car immediately after dinner?’

‘Yes, Miss Hardcastle, it is.’

‘I was wondering if you could give me a lift.’

‘I should be happy to do so,’ said Hingest in a voice not intended to deceive, ‘if we are going in the same direction.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I am going to Edgestow.’

‘Will you be passing Brenstock?’

‘No. I leave the by-pass at the crossroads just beyond Lord Holywood’s front gate and go down what they used to call Potter’s Lane.’

‘Oh, damn! No good to me. I may as well wait till the morning.’

After this Mark found himself engaged by his left-hand neighbour and did not see Bill the Blizzard again until he met him in the hall after dinner. He was in his overcoat and just ready to go to his car.

He began talking as he opened the door and thus Mark was drawn into accompanying him across the gravel sweep to where his car was parked.

‘Take my advice, Studdock,’ he said. ‘Or at least think it over. I don’t believe in Sociology myself, but you’ve got quite a decent career before you if you stay at Bracton. You’ll do yourself no good by getting mixed up with the NICE–and, by God, you’ll do nobody else any good either.’

‘I suppose there are two views about everything,’ said Mark.

‘Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one. But it’s no affair of mine. Good night.’

‘Good night, Hingest,’ said Mark. The other started up the car and drove off.

There was a touch of frost in the air. The shoulder of Orion, though Mark did not know even that earnest constellation, flamed at him above the tree-tops. He felt a hesitation about going back into the house. It might mean further talk with interesting and influential people; but it might also mean feeling once more an outsider, hanging about and watching conversations which he could not join. Anyway, he was tired. Strolling along the front of the house he came presently to another and smaller door by which, he judged, one could enter without passing through the hall or the public rooms. He did so, and went upstairs for the night immediately.

Camilla Denniston showed Jane out–not by the little door in the wall at which she had come in but by the main gate which opened on the same road about a hundred yards further on. Yellow light from a westward gap in the grey sky was pouring a short-lived and chilly brightness over the whole landscape. Jane had been ashamed to show either temper or anxiety before Camilla; as a result both had in reality been diminished when she said goodbye. But a settled distaste for what she called ‘all this nonsense’ remained. She was not indeed sure that it was nonsense; but she had already resolved to treat it as if it were. She would not get ‘mixed up in it’, would not be drawn in. One had to live one’s own life. To avoid entanglements and interferences had long been one of her first principles. Even when she had discovered that she was going to marry Mark if he asked her, the thought ‘but I must still keep up my own life’ had arisen at once and had never for more than a few minutes at a stretch been absent from her mind. Some resentment against love itself, and therefore against Mark, for thus invading her life, remained. She was at least very vividly aware how much a woman gives up in getting married. Mark seemed to her insufficiently aware of this. Though she did not formulate it, this fear of being invaded and entangled was the deepest ground of her determination not to have a child–or not for a long time yet. One had one’s own life to live.

Almost as soon as she got back to the flat the telephone went. ‘Is that you, Jane?’ came a voice. ‘It’s me, Margaret Dimble. Such a dreadful thing’s happened. I’ll tell you when I come. I’m too angry to speak at the moment. Have you a spare bed by any chance? What? Mr Studdock’s away? Not a bit, if you don’t mind. I’ve sent Cecil to sleep in College. You’re sure it won’t be a nuisance? Thanks most awfully. I’ll be round in half an hour.’

4 (#ulink_119cab93-aaed-5f66-b9e8-950b4b075c12)

The Liquidation of Anachronisms (#ulink_119cab93-aaed-5f66-b9e8-950b4b075c12)

Almost before Jane had finished putting clean sheets on Mark’s bed, Mrs Dimble, with a great many parcels, arrived. ‘You’re an angel to have me for the night,’ she said. ‘We’d tried every hotel in Edgestow, I believe. This place is going to become unendurable. The same answer everywhere! All full up with the hangers-on and camp-followers of this detestable NICE. Secretaries here–typists there–commissioners of works–the thing’s outrageous. If Cecil hadn’t had a room in College I really believe he’d have had to sleep in the waiting room at the station. I only hope that man in College has aired the bed.’

‘But what on earth’s happened?’ asked Jane.

‘Turned out, my dear!’

‘But it isn’t possible, Mrs Dimble. I mean, it can’t be legal.’

‘That’s what Cecil said…Just think of it, Jane. The first thing we saw when we poked our heads out of the window this morning was a lorry on the drive with its back wheels in the middle of the rose bed, unloading a small army of what looked like criminals, with picks and spades. Right in our own garden! There was an odious little man in a peaked cap who talked to Cecil with a cigarette in his mouth, at least it wasn’t in his mouth but seccotined onto his upper lip–you know–and guess what he said? He said they’d have no objection to our remaining in possession (of the house, mind you, not the garden) till 8 o’clock tomorrow morning. No objection!’

‘But surely–surely–it must be some mistake.’

‘Of course, Cecil rang up your Bursar. And, of course, your Bursar was out. That took nearly all morning, ringing up again and again, and by that time, the big beech that you used to be so fond of had been cut down, and all the plum trees. If I hadn’t been so angry, I’d have sat down and cried my eyes out. That’s what I felt like. At last Cecil did get onto your Mr Busby, who was perfectly useless. Said there must be some misunderstanding but it was out of his hands now and we’d better get onto the NICE at Belbury. Of course, it turned out to be quite impossible to get them. But by lunch-time we saw that one simply couldn’t stay there for the night, whatever happened.’

‘Why not?’

‘My dear, you’ve no conception what it was like. Great lorries and traction engines roaring past all the time, and a crane on a thing like a railway truck. Why, our own tradesmen couldn’t get through it. The milk didn’t arrive till eleven o’clock. The meat never arrived at all; they rang up in the afternoon to say their people hadn’t been able to reach us by either road. We’d the greatest difficulty in getting into town ourselves. It took us half an hour from our house to the bridge. It was like a nightmare. Flares and noise everywhere and the road practically ruined and a sort of great tin camp already going up on the Common. And the people! Such horrid men. I didn’t know we had workpeople like that in England. Oh, horrible, horrible!’ Mrs Dimble fanned herself with the hat she had just taken off.

‘And what are you going to do?’ asked Jane.

‘Heaven knows!’ said Mrs Dimble. ‘For the moment, we have shut up the house and Cecil has been at Rumbold, the solicitor’s, to see if we can at least have it sealed and left alone until we’ve got our things out of it. Rumbold doesn’t seem to know where he is. He keeps on saying the NICE are in a very peculiar position legally. After that, I’m sure I don’t know. As far as I can see, there won’t be any houses in Edgestow. There’s no question of trying to live on the far side of the river any longer, even if they’d let us. What did you say? Oh, indescribable. All the poplars are going down. All those nice little cottages by the church are going down. I found poor Ivy–that’s your Mrs Maggs, you know–in tears. Poor things! They do look dreadful when they cry on top of powder. She’s being turned out too. Poor little woman; she’s had enough troubles in her life without this. I was glad to get away. The men were so horrible. Three big brutes came to the back door asking for hot water and went on so that they frightened Martha out of her wits and Cecil had to go and speak to them. I thought they were going to strike Cecil, really I did. It was most horribly unpleasant. But a sort of special constable sent them away. What? Oh yes, there are dozens of what look like policemen all over the place, and I didn’t like the look of them either. Swinging some kind of truncheon things, like what you’d see in an American film. Do you know Jane, Cecil and I both thought the same thing: we thought, it’s almost as if we’d lost the war. Oh, good girl–tea! That’s just what I wanted.’

‘You must stay here as long as you like, Mrs Dimble,’ said Jane. ‘Mark’ll just have to sleep in College.’

‘Well, really,’ said Mother Dimble, ‘I feel at the moment that no Fellow of Bracton ought to be allowed to sleep anywhere! But I’d make an exception in favour of Mr Studdock. As a matter of fact, I shan’t have to behave like the sword of Siegfried –and, incidentally, a nasty fat stodgy sword I should be! But that side of it is all fixed up. Cecil and I are to go out to the Manor at St Anne’s. We have to be there so much at present, you see.’

‘Oh,’ said Jane, involuntarily prolonging the exclamation as the whole of her own story flowed back on her mind.

‘Why, what a selfish pig I’ve been,’ said Mother Dimble. ‘Here have I been chattering away about my own troubles and quite forgetting that you’ve been out there and are full of things to tell me. Did you see Grace? And did you like her?’

‘Is “Grace” Miss Ironwood?’ asked Jane.

‘Yes.’

‘I saw her. I don’t know if I liked her or not. But I don’t want to talk about all that. I can’t think about anything except this outrageous business of yours. It’s you who are the real martyr, not me.’

‘No, my dear,’ said Mrs Dimble, ‘I’m not a martyr. I’m only an angry old woman with sore feet and a splitting head (but that’s beginning to be better) who’s trying to talk herself into a good temper. After all, Cecil and I haven’t lost our livelihood as poor Ivy Maggs has. It doesn’t really matter leaving the old house. Do you know, the pleasure of living there was in a way a melancholy pleasure. (I wonder, by the bye, do human beings really like being happy?) A little melancholy, yes. All those big upper rooms which we thought we should want because we thought we were going to have lots of children, and then we never had. Perhaps I was getting too fond of mooning about them on long afternoons when Cecil was away. Pitying oneself. I shall be better away from it, I daresay. I might have got like that frightful woman in Ibsen who was always maundering about dolls. It’s really worse for Cecil. He did so love having all his pupils about the place. Jane, that’s the third time you’ve yawned. You’re dropping asleep and I’ve talked your head off. It comes of being married thirty years. Husbands were made to be talked to. It helps them to concentrate their minds on what they’re reading –like the sound of a weir. There!–you’re yawning again.’

Jane found Mother Dimble an embarrassing person to share a room with because she said prayers. It was quite extraordinary, Jane thought, how this put one out. One didn’t know where to look, and it was so difficult to talk naturally again for several minutes after Mrs Dimble had risen from her knees.

‘Are you awake now?’ said Mrs Dimble’s voice, quietly, in the middle of the night.

‘Yes,’ said Jane. ‘I’m sorry. Did I wake you up? Was I shouting?’

‘Yes. You were shouting out about someone being hit on the head.’

‘I saw them killing a man–a man in a big car driving along a country road. Then he came to a crossroads and turned off to the right past some trees, and there was someone standing in the middle of the road waving a light to stop him. I couldn’t hear what they said; I was too far away. They must have persuaded him to get out of the car somehow, and there he was talking to one of them. The light fell full on his face. He wasn’t the same old man I saw in my other dream. He hadn’t a beard, only a moustache. And he had a very quick, kind of proud, way. He didn’t like what the man said to him and presently he put up his fists and knocked him down. Another man behind him tried to hit him on the head with something but the old man was too quick and turned round in time. Then it was rather horrible, but rather fine. There were three of them at him and he was fighting them all. I’ve read about that kind of thing in books but I never realised how one would feel about it. Of course, they got him in the end. They beat his head about terribly with the things in their hands. They were quite cool about it and stooped down to examine him and make sure he was really dead. The light from the lantern seemed all funny. It looked as if it made long uprights of light–sort of rods–all round the place. But perhaps I was waking up by then. No thanks, I’m all right. It was horrid, of course, but I’m not really frightened–not the way I would have been before. I’m more sorry for the old man.’

‘You feel you can go to sleep again?’

‘Oh rather! Is your headache better, Mrs Dimble?’

‘Quite gone, thank you. Good night.’