Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (49 page)

Marie Hélène, though disgusted with Mrs Jevington's lack of
savoir-faire,
saw clearly that Yves would have to go. She set her mind to securing this at the cheapest rate possible, and also, if it could be done, to seeing that Stéphanie remained in her useful new role. Where money was concerned she had little pride. What little she had she swallowed and wrote to Elvira. She banked on Elvira's contrition over the scene she had made to dispose her favourably to recompense in general. She made great play with the disappointed expectations of Madame Houdet, the years of work she had given to Mrs Portway. But to reduce Elvira's sense of guilt from the general to the particular, she dwelt on the constant misery caused to Robin by Yves' presence. It must be admitted that it troubled her conscience to do this, but she felt that the circumstances called for desperate measures. She added that she proposed giving a sum of money to Yves herself, although she did not name the sum.

Larrie had not been exaggerating when he told John that he was in terrible trouble. He had drifted from lodgings to Salvation Army hostels and Rowton Houses after leaving Inge. He was too frightened to seek out John; too work-shy to go to Frank; too miserable and hysterical to resume his old street life in more than a haphazard way. As Vin had told Gerald, he had got into very bad company, if 'badness' can be measured in terms of weakness and stupidity. He had met two older Irishmen, but only so much older that they had both reached the age of twenty-five. They were, as Vin had said, burglars, but inefficient, inexperienced burglars. They persuaded Larrie into doing a job on a house in Kensington, and then, having just enough sense to see that they could not dispose of the 'stuff' without being traced, they left him with a heavy suitcase to carry. Larrie was quite without any idea of what to do, so he took the case to Frank Rammage's and asked if he could leave it in his old room. 'I knew you'd keep the room, as you promised, Frank,' he said, 'just as you knew I'd return here. If there's still work that you can find me, I'll be glad to do it, for it's work I need.' He told Frank that he had to go up West, but that he would be back that night to sleep in his old room. He had just enough self-control to get through this piece of play-acting, but when he turned the corner into Earl's Court Road, hysteria seized him and he began to run. He ran all that evening until he had tracked John to Marie Hélène's.

It was a week later that the police, in the course of their investigations, visited Earl's Court Square and, after a long interview, arrested Frank Rammage on the charge of receiving stolen goods. He appeared in the box at the magistrates' court - pink and plump and bewildered. He seemed particularly distressed at the sordid condition of the two young Irishmen who stood beside him. He was committed for trial, but released on bail. At the Old Bailey, however, the police withdrew the case against him, stating that they could offer no evidence that he had received the goods knowing them to be stolen.

The judge, in dismissing Frank, permitted himself the unusual luxury of a word of admonition.' It would seem,' he said,' that you have been involved in this case largely through your own folly. You have taken upon yourself the task of housing criminals and vagrants with some scheme of reformation in your mind. However well-intentioned this may be, I would remind you that there are a number of excellent, organized bodies concerned solely with this task. You would be wise to leave such work to them. You may be more unfortunate next time and find yourself involved in the results of a crime.' The two Irishmen received sentences of eighteen months each. Rourke, the third man concerned, was stated by the police to have left the country.

Frank returned to Earl's Court Square in a daze. He resented the judge's remarks and he began at once to 'turn out' an upstairs bedroom as the best cure for brooding on his grievance. While he was busy there, Mona, the depressed ex-tart, looked in. She had with her a girl in the tightest of jeans and the largest of slop sweaters. 'This is Bobbie,' she said. 'I want you to fix her up with a room, Frank.'

'Are you working, duckie?'  Frank asked.

'Yes. She's got a job in a café,' Mona said.

'Well. There might be one in a week,' said Frank, 'but there's nothing now.'

'Bobbie's been in trouble,' Mona said, and she watched to see Frank's expression change. Surely enough he looked more hopefully at the girl, though his tone was still snappish as he said, 'Oh well. We can fix you up with something, I dare say. You can have a li-lo in Mona's room tonight.' The girl produced some notes. 'Put that away,' Frank said. 'You'll need all your money the first week of your work. You pay me next week.'

As the women departed, he resumed his scrubbing, but without the same angry violence.

It was lucky that Larrie had a passport all ready for the once proposed summer vacation abroad with John, for now he had to take the holiday without any preparation. They set off for Spain, where they could make the money last longer. Larrie was full of talk as they drove southward. He'd make it all up to John; he'd never forget his friend's kindness; he'd join the Foreign Legion; he'd get a ship at Barcelona; come what might he would never leave John; this was the man's life he'd always wanted, to travel and see the world; sure he'd have no difficulty with foreigners, wasn't he half Spanish himself? and had he never told John the story of his Spanish mother? he'd stand no foreigners taking the mickey out of him; and so on. He insisted that Johnnie should have the holiday that they had once proposed. John pointed out that they could ill afford to hire a car or to waste time dawdling their way through France. Larrie would listen to none of it. Hadn't Johnnie said he wanted to see these caves? Didn't his Johnnie like driving a car? There was no bloody cops that'd stop Larrie Rourke's friend from having what he wanted. John pointed out again and again that there was no danger whatever from police, this was not an extraditable offence, but the less the danger the more Larrie insisted on playing the thrilling game of evading the law. They were made to turn down side roads, to lose their way in complicated routes, and, eventually, in an excess of Larrie's zeal, to sleep in woods and fields.

As the glamour of the journey wore off - and with an unshaved and unwashed Larrie this process was hastened - John became utterly depressed and increasingly irritated. He tried to tell himself that although Larrie was not the charmer he'd been seeing all these months, he was not as worthless as he had sometimes feared. It was, of course, perfectly true: even Larrie's cunning was only an excess of histrionic emotion; he was a stupid, highly-strung, hopeless delinquent. He's a lost boy, John thought to himself, who needs my help. He could not, however, but realize that he was far more completely 'lost' himself. He had lived on a heady mixture of ideals and careerism. He had pepped up the mixture with the extra 'kick' of a double life; and now he was left with nothing but the dregs to survive on. He lapsed into moody, self-pitying silence. Larrie talked on and on.

A storm burst over them as they slept in a field outside Limoges and they were soaked to the skin. John's hypochondria added a nagging fear of pneumonia to his more real worries. Pictures of foreign hospitals and solitary death came before him, pushing out the comfortable images of Thingy's coddling, the luxury of his flat, the glamour of being a celebrity. He was aiding a fugitive criminal; he had shut the door on return to England.

He sneezed and ached and grew really alarmed as they drove under a blistering sun by the bushy woods and meadows of the Lot. In the end, he agreed to Larrie's continuous demands to be allowed to drive the car, although the boy was an inexperienced driver and had no licence. Soon they had lost their way among steep red cliffs and scrubby broom and tough grass. Larrie grew irritable with the heat. John shivered with a temperature. Their quarrelling grew more violent.

'It was a terrible day for me,' Larrie cried, 'when I met you. A terrible day. I was an innocent, decent lad till then.'

'You bloody little liar,' John shouted.

'I'll not let any man call me a liar. I'll fight the man that says it.' The car rocked perilously on the precipitous road.

'Shut up and mind your driving,' John said. But Larrie went on calling, 'I'll fight. I'll fight you.' John refused to make any answer.

Soon Larrie's worked-up rage gave way to tears. 'There's no-one, no-one I have in life,' he cried. 'I wish I were dead.' Still John gave no answer. 'I'll kill myself,' Larrie went on. 'I'll kill us both. Indeed, it would be better if the world were rid of our sort.'

John reckoned without the determination of hysterics, but Larrie reckoned without his poor command over the car. He swerved to frighten John and, in a moment, the car was over the edge, falling ten or more feet to a ridge below. Larrie was thrown through the windscreen. A vein in his neck was severed and he bled to death among the wild lavender. John lay trapped by his legs beneath the body of the car. It was two hours before he was found. They took him to hospital in Cahors, and to save his life they were forced to amputate his right leg.

CHAPTER
3

El
VIRA
'
S
immediate reaction to Marie Hélène's letter was to ignore it. At first she was too preoccupied with her misery, and then quite suddenly, as the miserable summer rains changed to a sunny autumn, she was too happy. She fell in love again with a young painter. As she told her friends, 'It's such wonderful bliss to be in love with someone who's one's own age and who has some sort of mind - I mean actually in
this
case Joe's got a frightfully good one. But this awful obsession I've had for middle-aged men with splendid careers - forever watching bald spots growing and listening to talk about stock markets. And it got worse and worse, because with my last one I almost got a thing about his father, who must have been quite sixty and a sort of manic-depressive, only distinguished. And then the heaven of Joe's not being married!' In fact Joe was five years younger than Elvira and she began a frantic life of dealing with his socks and getting him better rooms and seeing that he ate regularly. In the meantime, however, she did produce a lot of money for the Houdets - nearly half, in fact, of what Lilian had left her. She was moved in part by the wish to free Robin of an incubus as the last thing she could do for him - Elvira was very romantic. But a far more potent motive was her feeling that Madame Houdet, at any rate, deserved reward from both herself and Marie Hélène, and to produce money freely would be to put Marie Hélène to shame - Elvira was also a somewhat priggish moralist. In communicating her offer to Madame Houdet, she said that she was shortly to marry Joe Adams, an important young painter of the Lupus Street Group, and asked Stéphanie to retail the news to the Middletons.

Yves accepted the offer on his mother's behalf very quickly, although he assumed great pique at Elvira's stipulation by which he was only to benefit if he agreed to leave England. He was, in fact, piqued, but not by this. England had proved most uncongenial to his talents, even his Bromley widow proving herself adept at taking what he offered and making inadequate returns. He would not be sorry to leave it. Nevertheless, he was disgusted that neither Elvira's substantial offer nor Marie Hélène's very small contribution was accompanied by any sexual demands upon him.

Madame Houdet was upset that Elviras offer had been made to her alone. She was horrified that any gains to Yves would mean his departure. She could not bear to be separated from him, yet she hated to leave the little world she had built up in Hampstead. Marie Hélène, who did not wish to lose her services, did everything she could to reach a bargain with her - she would leave her full control of the household economy, she would give her a special room in which to entertain the large circle of decayed Hampstead gentlewomen whom she now patronized. But Stéphanie's love for Yves was too great, and in early September they left together for Mentone. Yves was all smiles and kindness, and Stéphanie persuaded herself that she might have bought as much as a year's peace for herself.

As they crossed the Channel, another loving mother and son passed them en route. Inge had left for Cahors the day that the news of John's accident reached her; and now, thanks to the tireless efforts of Gerald and Robin, the authorities had agreed that there should be no prosecution for John's assistance to Larrie in his escape. The full scandal had not got into the papers, but one way and another his career was at an end. Lovingly now Inge brought him back to Marlow in his wheelchair.

John's difficulties, in fact, had taken up much of Gerald's time during August. Nevertheless, through all the family troubles, and despite the constant nag of the Melpham problem, he retained his new buoyant mood, though not, perhaps, with quite the carefreeness of the night of Marie Hélène's party. He continued to work both on the
History
and on his own book; he started quite suddenly to go to exhibitions of contemporary painting, and even bought one or two works by young artists, although when he got them home he decided that he was not sure of his feelings and did not hang them. His interview with the Cressetts left him with a feeling that he would never obtain any evidence even faintly conclusive of his beliefs about Melpham, although he was more certain than ever that they were correct.

One afternoon, however, Derek and Maureen Kershaw came to see him. They wanted news of John.

'Of course, it will be a long business,' Gerald said, 'learning to walk, but my wife'll take him up to the hospital at Richmond. She'll look after him all right at Marlow.' - Derek and Maureen exchanged glances - 'He'll be so happy to see you, I'm sure,-' Gerald said.

Derek said, 'Oh, good,' but Maureen broke in, 'Not at Marlow, he won't, I'm afraid. Johnnie's mother hates Derek's guts.'

Derek frowned, but he added, 'I'm afraid Johnnie's mother's never been keen on his friends who wanted him to have a life of his own, sir.

Gerald said, 'Surely that's not quite fair. After all, John's not a boy any more, hardly even a young man. And then he's had a fine career.'