Parade's End

Mrs. Satterthwaite:
[to Sylvia] No, you married above your intellect and don't take kindly to disadvantage.

[Christopher is making notes in a large book. Sylvia angrily throws a tea cup at him; it misses, shattering next to him]

Sylvia Tietjens:
Do you know what he's doing? He's making corrections in the Encyclopedia Britannica. If I'd killed him, no jury would convict.

Mrs. Satterthwaite:
There are times when a woman hates a man, even a very good man as my husband was. I have walked behind a man's back and nearly screamed with the desire to sink my nails into the veins of his neck. And Sylvia's got it worse than I.

Sylvia Tietjens:
I am done with men. Think of all the ruin that child has meant for me. Christopher's perfectly soppy about him.

Mrs. Satterthwaite:
You don't deserve your husband, anyway. I can't imagine why he sent that telegram. "Resume yoke" indeed!

Sylvia Tietjens:
He sent it out of lordly, dull, full-dress consideration that drives me distracted. He couldn't write me a letter because he'd have to put "Dear Sylvia" - and I'm not. He's that precise sort of imbecile. I'll settle down by his side, and I'll be chaste. I've made up my mind to it. I'll be bored stiff for the rest of my life. Except for one thing: I can torment that man and I'll do it, for all the times he's tormented me.

[at breakfast, Reverend Duchemin is about to say grace, but he is drunk and becoming very offensive]

Reverend Duchemin:
[to MacMaster] You look tired. Worn out. I detect the pallor of self-abuse.

[Reverend Horsley splutters as he drinking a cup of tea]

Christopher Tietjens:
[mutters to Valentine Wannop] Don't turn round. Vincent MacMaster is quite capable.

Reverend Duchemin:
Post coitum tristia. Ah, the sorrows of spent semen. Boys - or girls in your case.

Parry:
Sir, your fish is getting cold. I'll bring the kidneys.

Vincent Macmaster:
[mutters to Edith Duchemin] If he'll eat a little, it brings the blood down from the head.

Edith Duchemin:
Oh, forgive. It's dreadful for you.

Vincent Macmaster:
My dear lady, please don't worry. It's what I'm for.

Edith Duchemin:
Oh, you good man.

[Duchemin rambles on in Latin]

Vincent Macmaster:
[mutters to Edith Duchemin] I can stop this. Shall I?

Edith Duchemin:
Yes - anything.

[MacMaster gets up and goes to have quiet word with Parry]

Reverend Duchemin:
[smiling at Miss Fox]... the lament of the wife of the boy-buggerer: "My dear, I have an arsehole too!"

[Miss Fox smiles back at him - being stone deaf she has not heard a word he's said]

Vincent Macmaster:
[to Parry] Get him out. The way you beat Kid Cantor at Hackney baths.

Reverend Duchemin:
"Alas, my dear, with women it's more a case of having two cun..."

[Parry goes up to Duchemin and knees him in the groin]

Parry:
[pretending to help him] You all right, sir? It's time to write your sermon, sir. Ready, there we go.

[Parry helps Duchemin, who is considerable pain, out of the room]

Vincent Macmaster:
[to Edith] Dear lady, it's all over now.

Edith Duchemin:
Please forgive. You can *never* respect me.

Vincent Macmaster:
You're the bravest woman I know.

Sir Reginald:
This department [the Imperial Department of Statistics] exists to show that just as there are different ways to put things into words there are different ways to put things into numbers.

Christopher Tietjens:
I detest and despise the work I am asked to do in the department, whose purpose seems to be to turn statistics into sophistry. I am resigning. Good morning.

Sir Reginald:
Resigning? Don't you want to be a man of influence?

Christopher Tietjens:
No. I'd prefer to be in the trenches.

Christopher Tietjens:
[sadly] I can't go back. The sentimentalist must be stoned to death. It makes everyone uncomfortable.

Valentine Wannop:
Why didn't you kiss me then? Why didn't you?

Sylvia Tietjens:
Oh, Christopher! If you had once in our lives said to me "You whore!" "You b*tch!" or about the child or Perowne, you might have done something to bring us together. And I dare say, if you're shot... Christ... between the saddle and the ground, you'll say you never did a dishonourable action. In the name of the Almighty, how can any woman live beside you?

Christopher Tietjens:
But I never disapproved of your actions.

Sylvia Tietjens:
I'm done for you. I'm not going to listen to you.

Christopher Tietjens:
You were let down at the beginning by a brute. So you have the right to let down a man. It's woman against man, now and ever has been.

Sylvia Tietjens:
Your brother refers to me as "that whore". I haven't had a man, Christopher, in five years, and more. Not one. I haven't let myself be kissed or touched. Not once since Perowne. Potty Perowne! Can you see how I must have been feeling, to go off with a fool like Potty? I was not in my senses. I broke under your forbearance, your permanent well-mannered forgiveness for my doing the dirty on you, when I married you not knowing - still not knowing whether my child was yours or Gerald Drake's. You forgave without mercy. To scream blue murder and throw me out would have been a kindness. Compared to five years under your roof, banished from your comfort.

Sylvia Tietjens:
I've quite got over you, you know.

Gerald Drake:
Well, that's love, I suppose.

Sylvia Tietjens:
No, I mean hating you. I got over loving you years ago.