Carnforth's Creation (4 page)

Paul looked hurt. ‘Then tell me what a poet or a pianist would have to do to grab half the column-inches a middling pop star gets when he chucks his girl friend. Shoot the Prime Minister?’

‘I’m sure poets don’t want that kind of publicity,’ Eleanor replied curtly.

‘Don’t you believe it,’ laughed Gemma. ‘Course they haven’t a hope. People don’t want to be different any more; they want to be
part
of things; shared thoughts, shared looks. Mods, rockers, hippies …’

‘Totally pathetic,’ remarked Eleanor, determined to remove Gemma’s knowing smile. ‘All that tripe about “doing their own thing”, which is supposed to mean being wonderfully original, but really means fooling around like all the other hippies.’

Gemma nodded enthusiastically. ‘
That’s
what the poor old poets are up against.’

Sure she was being made fun of, Eleanor could not think of a suitable answer. Roy was grinning at her. ‘I’ll tellya what Gemma reckons. You can forget originality if you want to get things across these days. Gotta pick the right popular cliché and turn it inside out.’ He appealed to Gemma meekly, ‘Got that right, did I?’

Delighted to see Gemma’s smile fade, Eleanor also enjoyed the way Roy was gnawing at a bone, using a pose of
loutishness
to ridicule the argument he had just repeated. His face, which had struck Eleanor as weaselish to start with, now seemed more striking – intelligent, but tough too (this perhaps due to a slightly crooked nose, superimposed on otherwise delicate features).

‘So what
is
the right cliché?’ asked Matthew, suddenly coming to life.

‘Progressive pop,’ moaned Roy, as if it was too obvious to need stating. ‘In fact any kinda music that isn’t out to rip-off the broiler-chicks.’

Paul smiled bravely. ‘And
I
’
m
cynical.’ He tut-tutted sadly. ‘Millions of young girls growing up, and what are they? Broiler-chicks, band-aids. Not enough for Roy to colour all their emotional experiences.’ He shook his head. ‘Nope, he wants to be one of rock’s philosophers. Preaching love, equality, and getting together with Biafra; then blasting off in his little ole jet, in time to make-out with a few starlets before dinner with his tax lawyer.’

‘Protest wasn’t just a rip-off,’ Roy insisted, looking flushed and angry.

Paul said, with a calmness, which would have made Eleanor scream in Roy’s position, ‘It still grossed more in two years than all the aid to India in twenty.’ He turned to Matthew. ‘That’s just
one
of the paradoxes your film can look at.’

Roy choked on a mouthful of wine. ‘You never said nothing about a film …’

Paul gazed at him steadily. ‘That
was
rather
absent-minded
of me.’

‘Like hell,’ spluttered Roy, still coughing. He appealed to Matthew, ‘Is this straight up? Are you a TV director?’ Matthew nodded. Roy rounded on Paul. ‘Big joke, never telling me a fucking thing.’

An embarrassed stirring in the silence that followed. Veronica said icily, ‘I’m not surprised, if that’s how you react.’

A moment later Eleanor realized that Roy was not the only angry person at the table. Bridget looked accusingly at Matthew. ‘When I said you ought to go ahead with Paul’s idea, you told me you’d never dream of …’

Matthew coughed uneasily. ‘I’m afraid Paul and Gemma did, uh, rather jump to conclusions.’

This time Gemma reacted as extravagantly as Roy
moments
earlier. ‘You said it was a formality,’ she cried, ‘
only
three
days
ago.
’

Matthew studied his plate. ‘I’m afraid I’ve changed my mind.’

‘Do we get to know
why
?’ hissed Gemma, leaning towards him like a silver snake.

‘I think later might be better.’

‘Thank God someone’s got some sense,’ declared
Veronica
.

‘Is it because of
his
dismal performance?’ demanded Gemma, stabbing her fork in Roy’s direction.

Matthew shook his head emphatically. ‘Not in the least … I found everything he said very interesting. No. I think I went off it some time ago.’ His placid delivery left Eleanor unprepared for Gemma’s sudden torrent of nursery abuse; Matthew was sly, deceitful, a pig, and several other things she could not quite catch. As Roy started to snicker, Gemma flung down her napkin and left the room.

With Bridget looking at her husband as though she would like to dismember him; Paul speechless for the first time Eleanor could remember; and Roy’s laughter at last
erupting
, Eleanor found herself laughing too, though she could not imagine why. Most of what she had heard had been far from reassuring.

Believing his marriage founded in general upon honesty and trust (and knowing there was hardly a lie he wouldn’t use to avoid telling Bridget about his recent dealings with Gemma), Matthew rarely wasted time trying to resolve these
contradictions
. In the library next morning, he was sitting leafing through the comprehensive range of newspapers and
magazines
set out in overlapping rows on the large table in the centre of the room, when Bridget came in. She walked by
without a word, and stood with her back to him, gazing out of the window. Matthew had no difficulty imagining the
brooding
look her angular features would wear. As Paul had once said, consumptive pallor and coppery hair were great advantages in the Pre-Raphaelite wronged and haunted league.

In their bedroom the night before, Matthew had explained away Gemma’s fury as thwarted egotism. For anyone so infatuated with her persuasive powers, the mildest
disappointment
would seem an intolerable rebuff. Charged directly with seeing her on the sly, Matthew had played his ace. If he
was
, why would he have risked saying anything she might construe as public humiliation? Bridget had switched her attack. How could he have had the gall to accept Paul’s invitation, knowing he meant to spit on the man’s pet project the moment he arrived?

Glancing at her hunched shoulders, Matthew knew he would be in for a frosty weekend unless he persuaded her that his attitude to Paul’s plans owed nothing to pride, envy, or morbid fears about his influence. No easy matter, since Bridget’s dissatisfaction with teaching work, and her desire to exchange their relaxingly scruffy flat for something more elegant, made Paul’s prediction of a film-linked cash bonanza particularly welcome. Somehow Matthew would have to convince her that nothing would ever cajole him into making the brand of living soap opera Paul seemed to have in mind.

‘Listen, love,’ he murmured, coming up to her, ‘Paul’s suggesting something very tricky. He wants to chart a young hopeful’s rise to fame, while the process is actually going on. That’s not like retracing an established singer’s steps to stardom.’

‘So?’ she retorted flicking a wisp of hair away from her eyes.

‘So the filming has to take place at invervals over a longish period.’ He tried an encouraging smile. ‘But
when
exactly
do we film Roy?’ He gave her time to see the problem. ‘In practice, when Paul phones me to say he’s set-up some
particular event for the cameras.’

‘You’ll be doing some setting-up too, won’t you?’

Matthew sighed. ‘
I
can’t choose what sort of record
company
to approach; can’t have publicity ideas; can’t influence the management in any way … whereas Paul obviously can.’ He frowned. ‘So Paul’s script takes over, and Roy conforms or goes.’

‘It’s the same for most stars, surely? Time someone made a truthful film about it.’

‘Truthful? The very fact of a film being made will mean breaks he wouldn’t otherwise have got near to.’

‘Lucky him.’

‘Oh, sure. The idealistic lad who’s turned into a
money-grubbing
monster.’

Bridget shrugged. ‘If that’s what usually happens, why worry? You wanted it truthful.’ She smiled. ‘You can’t have it both ways.’

‘Both ways?’ he rasped. ‘I won’t have it
any
way.’

His main regret as he left the room, was that he had not done so ten minutes earlier. To choose the wrong moment with Bridget was to guarantee failure.

After Matthew’s departure Bridget remained by the
window
, watching another pantechnicon draw up outside the gatehouse. Since shortly before breakfast a stream of similar vehicles had been arriving, filled with paraphernalia for the evening’s festivities: dozens of little gilded chairs, almost as many small round tables, musical instruments, cinematic and sound equipment, potted palms and ferns, and a great many packing cases. Most of these items were now being manhandled to the huge marquee near the park, by a gang of removal men in green overalls. While she was watching, Paul walked into the courtyard, talking earnestly to a gaggle of hippy-like people, possibly members of a fringe theatre group. Bridget smiled as he began to mime a sequence of actions for them. So conventionally handsome in that marble-browed upper-class way she had once been inclined to disparage, Paul seemed to stride among his hirelings like an ideal aristocrat from the pages of a period romance. But
one, miraculously, aware of this impression, and playing his part with good-humoured gusto.

Just watching Paul made Bridget more exasperated with Matthew. Paul would obviously be entertaining to work with; the film couldn’t fail to be original; and everyone would get something out of it – a great deal if it boosted Roy’s future record sales. But knowing Matthew,
that
alone
would be enough to put him off. At times (and this was one of them) Bridget felt that there was something unhealthy about Matthew’s habitual mistrust of Paul’s motives.

She walked gloomily from the library, and paused at the foot of the stairs. The butler was lecturing a bevy of
temporary
waiters on the geography of the place. Lady Carnforth came striding towards them, her riding boots rapping out a sharp tattoo on the marble floor.

‘Hankin, who gave permission for the grand piano to be moved?’

‘His lordship, my lady.’

‘And what’s that caravan doing in the stable yard?’

‘I’m told it’s for the artists’ make-up.’

‘Please see that it’s moved.’

‘Certainly, my lady.’

‘Oh, and Hankin, I want the King’s Room and the Tuscan Gallery locked. I’ve seen people in unsuitable shoes carving up the floors.’

When Eleanor hurried into the court, Bridget was
intrigued
to discover whether Paul would be the next target of her displeasure. To see a girl in her very early twenties flinging her weight about like a Tsarist princess amused Bridget, but also made her envious of such self-confidence. After her morning ride Eleanor had not removed her hairnet, which added to her air of patrician negligence.

Paul was no longer in the court when Eleanor emerged, but Bridget overheard her ask the men unloading the
pantechnicon
where he was. Unable to imagine a better way of forgetting Matthew than witnessing what promised to be a piquant confrontation between two remarkably self-willed people, Bridget followed at a distance.

Since the formal gardens were on the grand scale, she had a job keeping Eleanor in sight as she raced down terrace steps and cut through walled enclosures flanked by herbaceous borders. At length she reached the long Statue Walk,
stretching
from the east side of the house to the marquee.

There were many people at work on either side of this wide path; some uncoiling electric cables, others siting spotlights in the beds, and some half-dozen occupied in dragging new plinths (faced in some plastic stone-substitute) into the gaps between the classical statues. As Eleanor approached him, Paul was chatting to an electrician. Bridget saw several men coming down the walk, carrying what looked like naked women, but, as the distance narrowed, turned out to be shop-dummies. Still with her back to these prawn-pink figures, Eleanor began to upbraid Paul. Pretending to have come upon them by chance, Bridget made a show of looking about, at last ‘catching sight’ of Paul and waving. Eleanor, who was facing the other way, did not see her as she came closer.

‘Why are these things being dumped in the beds?’ she asked Paul, jabbing her riding whip at one of the plinths. ‘Has Martin been told?’

‘Of course.’

‘There still ought to be a gardener here.’

At this moment Eleanor turned and recoiled sharply. The dummies and their hefty bearers, were within yards of her. The plaster figures were clad in silver briefs, and had
sequinned
caps glued on their breasts. The purpose of the extra plinths was clear.

As Paul greeted Bridget, one of the men grunted, ‘Where do we dump these birds, guv?’

‘On the ground for now.’

Eleanor stared hard. ‘What sort of taste would you call this?’

Paul studied his feet. ‘Aesthetics is a fearfully dodgy area.’

‘Really?’ replied Eleanor, plainly wanting to give vent to powerful emotions but feeling inhibited in front of a relative stranger. Already Bridget wished she was somewhere else.

Paul said diffidently, ‘Isn’t calling something “bad taste” another way of saying one finds it incongruous?’

‘They’re vulgar and totally unfunny.’ Eleanor glanced angrily at Bridget.

‘Oh come on, Elly,’ he laughed. ‘In a shop-window, nobody looks twice, but next to Roman statues …’

Eleanor flicked some mud off a boot with her whip. ‘Like manure in art galleries?’

‘But imagine them lit up,’ he pleaded.

‘You
know
how insulted people will feel.’

Hearing an emotional thickness in Eleanor’s voice, Bridget moved away, fearing tears or shouting. In fact Eleanor rallied, and listened tight-lipped while Paul
murmured
about wanting to amuse and divert. He had got little further, when she turned and strode away towards the house.

Bridget stayed where she was, feeling awkward.

‘Oh dear,’ he sighed at last. ‘Perhaps she had a point.’ He gazed at her with exaggerated anxiety. ‘Do you think so, Brigitta?’

‘I’ll wait till they’re lit up.’

‘You teach comedy, don’t you?’

She shrugged. ‘It works if one laughs …’

‘Watch that plant,’ he yelled at a workman. ‘Actually Eleanor was right about one thing, I
do
want to raise the county’s blood pressure.’ He pulled a long face. ‘Mind you, it’s probably medicine twenty years too late.’

As they sauntered down the Statue Walk, Paul seemed dismayed in case he had somehow offended Matthew, who had seemed so keen on their joint venture until recently. It distressed Bridget to hear Paul ruminating on the way in which friends tended to drift apart as their circumstances changed.

‘Honestly,’ she murmured, ‘I don’t think Matty’s even slightly influenced by things like that.’

‘Maybe not.’ Paul glanced at his watch, and thought a moment. ‘Look, I know what I’m going to tell you happened ages ago, and can’t explain everything, but it may help …’

For the next few moments, Bridget listened to Paul’s
account of a summer Sunday, a dozen years earlier, when Paul, as a boy at prep school, had invited Matthew home to Castle Delvaux for the day. Since his parents’ quarrels had then been novel enough to shock him, the visit had been marred for Paul by his mother’s unhappiness. In the
afternoon
the two boys had spent an hour on their own,
wandering
through the house. Matthew had been overwhelmed by the paintings. Beginning to feel bored, Paul had suggested lightly that, since Matthew was so interested in pictures, he might get round to giving him one when they were his. Then he had added in the same half-joking vein, that if Matthew ever decided to swop his electric Maserati for a picture at a later date, that would be fine by him. Matthew had
considered
the suggestion for some time before finally declining.

That evening, back at school, Paul had admitted how unhappy he was. Matthew had not said much, but the following morning, after chapel, he had thrust at Paul his treasured car, telling him he could keep it without strings. Paul recalled raising token opposition before accepting. In fact that had not been quite the end of the story, because, several days later, during Latin, Paul had slipped Matthew a scrap of paper, promising ‘to my best friend Matthew N a picture when I get Delvaux’.

Bridget laughed uneasily. ‘You’re surely not saying you should have delivered?’

Paul watched some butterflies fluttering around a
buddleia
. ‘Not many people give away what they value most.’ His distant expression was suddenly replaced by one of those flicks of close attention Bridget remembered so well from the past. ‘Don’t you see?’ he urged. ‘Somewhere along the line Matthew got the idea that he was the one who always did the giving. Isn’t that why he backed out of making a film with me?’

‘It’s possible,’ conceded Bridget, her voice sounding scratchy. A clear presentiment of what was coming dazed her. He moved closer, intently questioning.

‘If I make some sort of gesture … do you think I could … put things right?’

A long silence while she stared at the cascading flowers of a laburnum tree.

‘So what about a picture?’ he went on, without
particular
emphasis. He smiled. ‘I’d hardly miss one; and I did say I would. Of course it’d have to be a “bedroom picture”; all the stuff downstairs being more or less
sacrosanct.’

No wonder women adored him, she thought … being able to say something so extraordinary and still look anxious; almost expecting to be refused. Bedroom pictures? On one wall of the room she was sharing with Matthew, a
breathtaking
portrait of a child by Hoppner; next to it a Hobbema landscape, small but perfect. Yet probably he
wouldn’t
miss either … perhaps hadn’t seen them once that year. Looking at the tiny glinting cross of an aeroplane, she felt dizzy.

‘He’d think you were buying him,’ she said, in a tone that shocked her. Because Matthew would certainly turn it down? Because Paul knew he would? Because her
disappointment
was despicably intense, because …?

Paul considered; head on one side, as if this had not occurred to him. Perhaps it really hadn’t. The laughter lines deepened around his eyes. ‘So I tell him I’ve given up the idea of a film.’ Her silence got through to him. ‘He might think I wasn’t sincere?’ She nodded. He drew in a deep breath, and kicked at the gravel underfoot. A moment later he laughed triumphantly. ‘So I give it to
you.
How can that put
him
under any obligation?’ Anticipating objection, he added gently, ‘In my place wouldn’t you sometimes want to do things for people you cared about?’

‘Don’t think I’m not bowled over,’ she began shakily.