The Feast Read Free

laugh—not much to laugh at—but I had a good laugh then—I was just outside in the passage. This Socialist Government does not look after poor people like they promised but they have brought rich people down, which is one comfort.
    It is miles from Porthmerryn and the shops so of course she cannot get any staff. All she has got is a daily housemaid so called and a mentally deficient youth supposed to be a waiter. She has to do the cooking till they cangeta cook. And they have not got any boarders just now, only a barmy old couple name of Paley—but there is supposed to be two families coming this evening.
    Well Gertie I must finish this another time because it is getting on for 8 a.m. and I can see Nancibel, the said housemaid, coming across the sands and I must get after her or nothing will be done. No rest for the wicked! …
3. Extract from the Diary of Mr. Paley
    P endizack. Saturday, August 16.
     
    I have been sitting here at my window since five o’clock this morning, watching the tide go out. I can see the pretty young chambermaid … I forget her name … coming down the cliff path from Pendizack Headland. She comes this way every morning, across the sands, whenever the tide is out. It must be later than I thought.
    Christina is asleep. She will not wake until the maid brings in our tea and cans of hot water. Then a new day will begin. This respite will be over. When Christina wakes I shall no longer be alone.
    She will not ask why I have been sitting here half the night. She no longer asks me questions: no longer cares to know how it is with me. She passes her life, at my side, in silence. It is, no doubt, a wretched life, but I cannot help her. At least she is able to sleep. I am not. The maid has reached the sand now, but she is walking very slowly. She is a graceful young creature. She walks well. She is, I believe, quite a favourite with Christina. But my wife is always inclined to be sentimental about young girls: for her they represent the daughter we lost. The maternal instinct is a purely animal affair. A cat which has lost its kitten will suckle a puppy quite contentedly , so I have been told.
    I had a talk with Siddal, our host, yesterday. He toldme that Pendizack Cove used to be called Hell’s Kitchen and that his sons wished to call the house Hell’s Hotel. Since he seemed to regard this as a joke I made shift to laugh, and did not say, with Mephistopheles: Why this is Hell! Nor am I out of it. But that line, that line, haunts me wherever I am. I can never escape from it.
    Let me, if I can, think of something else. Of what shall I think? Can I think? Sometimes it appears to me that I have lost the power. Thought travels. I remain … where I was.
    I will think of Siddal. He is a curious fellow. Were I able to feel for any other creature I should pity him greatly. For it appears that he has never been able to support himself. And now that he has lost all his money he must live on his wife’s labour—accept bread at her hands. He has no position here. He receives no respect. He lives, so they tell me, in a little room behind the kitchen, a room which, in the old days, was used by the boot-boy. All the best rooms in the house have, of course, been vacated for guests. Mrs. Siddal sleeps somewhere up in the attics and the Siddal boys in a loft over the stables.
    How can Siddal endure such a life? If he must sleep in the boot-hole, why does he not insist that his wife sleeps there with him? I should do so. But then I could not have acted as he has, in any particular. I should have refused to allow my house to be exploited in this manner. It is done, so I understand, in order to pay for the education of the two younger boys. If education must be bought at such a price, then, say I, it has been bought too dearly. Moreover, these boys obviously despise and ignore their father.
    Yet he is not without intelligence; was, I gather, considered brilliant as a young man. He went to the bar. Why he failed there