Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie (3 page)

His eyes, fixed upon Lizzie’s face, filled with tears, so that her features became blurred and her hair more woolly than ever, as he recalled with a sinking heart that one critic after another had described him as the new humorist and his book as the funniest of the month. Sadly he drew from his pocket a sheaf of press cuttings. He knew them by heart already, and to look at them again was like pressing upon the tooth that aches in the hope that after all it perhaps does not ache unbearably.

R
EALLY
F
UNNY
B
OOK BY
N
EW
W
RITER

A
MUSING
F
IRST
N
OVEL

E
X-UNDERGRADUATE
’
S
D
ÉBUT AS
H
UMORIST

With great bitterness Paul remembered how he had written that last chapter, working through the night until he felt that he had arrived at that exact blend of tragedy and pathos for which he searched. As he wrote, the tears had poured down his cheeks. The frustration of two souls, battered beyond endurance by circumstances over which they had no control, unable even to make good their escape from a world which now held nothing for them, had seemed to him a noble, beautiful and touching theme. And nobody else had even remotely apprehended his meaning, not one person.

Putting the press cuttings back into his pocket he pulled out of it a letter which turned his thoughts towards an even more painful subject.

‘P
AUL
D
ARLING
(it ran)

Paul sighed deeply. That the girl whom he so distractedly adored had thus mocked his book was a wound indeed, but not a death blow; he had never, if the truth be told, entertained a very high regard for her mind. It was her unkind and neglectful conduct towards his person that was causing him so much unhappiness.

Considering her youth (she was twenty-two), Marcella Bracket had all the worst characteristics of the lion hunter developed to an extraordinary degree. She belonged to that rare and objectionable species, the intellectual snob devoid of intellect. Poets and painters were to her as earls and marquesses are to the ordinary snob; the summit of her ambition was to belong to what she considered a ‘highbrow’ set of people, to receive praise and adulation from the famous. Unfortunately for her, however, whilst knowing through her parents several earls and marquesses, she had not as yet managed to scrape even the most formal acquaintanceship with any great man of letters, nor had the only artist of merit to whom she was ever introduced been at all insistent that he should paint her portrait. Therefore, when poor Paul fell in love with her, which he did for some unaccountable reason at first sight, she saw in him a promising bottom rung to that particular ladder of social success which it was her ambition to climb. She even allowed him to think that they were unofficially engaged in order that she could go about with him, meeting his friends, nearly all of whom were people she had long wished to know, and at the same time picking up from him certain clichés and ideas that might be regarded as a passport to that society of which she hoped to become
a member. In time, of course, she intended to marry some rich and colourless man so that she could settle down in Chelsea – a hostess; meanwhile it pleased and flattered her to feel herself the object of hopeless passion in one who had already a certain reputation for brilliance amongst the younger people.

Paul, who although he suspected something of this, only partly apprehended the situation, and moreover thought himself very much in love, was constantly plunged into a state of gloom and depression by her treatment of him. That very day, thinking thus to buy her company for the afternoon, he had invited her to luncheon at the Ritz, a luxury which he could ill afford. He had arrived there, admittedly a few moments late, to find that she was accompanied by the mindless body of Archibald (‘Chikkie’) Remnant. They were drinking champagne cocktails. When Paul appeared she hardly threw him a word, but continued to gossip with this moron for at least twenty minutes, after which ‘Chikkie’, having thrown out several unheeded hints that he would like an invitation to lunch, strolled away leaving Paul to pay for his cocktails. The meal which ensued gave him very little satisfaction; Marcella proved to be in her most irritating mood. In the intervals of ordering all the really expensive items on the menu, for it was one of her principles in life that the more you make people pay the more you can get out of them in the end, she chattered incessantly about her success with various young men unknown to Paul. He gathered that, so far from it being her intention to spend the afternoon with him, she had planned to leave him the moment that lunch was over and go down to Heston for a flying lesson with another admirer. The feeling that he was so soon to lose her from his sight again made him cross and restless, and he was almost glad when she did finally depart in a large Bentley for her destination of loops, spins and jupiter wapities. He knew quite well that by now an aerial flirtation would be in progress, for Marcella was an inveterate flirt.

Meanwhile he had come to Millbank for consolation, only to discover, as so many must have done before him, that there is in good art a quality which demands contentment if not happiness in its observer, its very harmonies serving but to accentuate disharmonies within. On the other hand, contemplation of the second-rate, by arousing the mind to a sort of amused fury, can sometimes distract it a little. Hence Mrs. Rossetti. Paul felt, however, that his present unhappiness was too deeply seated to be much shaken, and that even time would be powerless against such a situation as his. There seemed to be no hope, no ray of comfort. The career for which he had longed from childhood, that of a writer, was evidently closed to him; he never wished again to face a chorus of praise uttered in such lack of comprehension. Nor could his affair with Marcella come to any more satisfactory conclusion, for although he loved her, he knew that he would always dislike her.

The copyist now came down from her high stool and began to pack up. Lights appeared, making the place look more dismal than before, and a little fog seemed to have penetrated, although outside the day had been clear and beautiful. Paul’s thoughts returned to his present surroundings. He looked at his watch, which had stopped as usual, and decided that he would go home. Marcella might telephone, in which case he would like to be there – his landlady was bad at taking messages. He rose to his feet, and was about to wander towards the door when he noticed the unmistakable figure of Walter Monteath hurrying through the Turner room on his way, no doubt, to the French pictures. He looked round on hearing his name, and catching sight of Paul, said:

‘Hullo, old boy, fancy seeing you here. I am pleased. Sally and I have just laughed ourselves ill over your book by the way; it is heavenly. Those policemen! Honestly, my sides ached. And the pawnbroker was divinely funny too. How did you think of it all? I’d give a lot to write a book like that, everyone’s talking about it. Well, and where are you off to now?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Paul, trying to look pleased at this praise. ‘What are you doing? Can’t we have a drink somewhere?’

‘Yes let’s. As a matter of fact, I’m just on my way to Amabelle’s for a cocktail, so why don’t you come along too. I know she wants to see you; she was asking about you only yesterday. If you don’t mind waiting a moment while I have a look at the Puvis we’ll go straight away. I’ve got a car outside; for once it’s not being repaired at the works.’

Whilst Walter, who apparently was going to write an article on Puvis de Chavannes, was examining the picture of John the Baptist, Paul gazed at the large Manet and wished he were dead. He felt, however, that like the hero of his own book, he would be too cowardly and ineffective to achieve a satisfactory suicide; he was no Roman soldier to lean upon his sword.

Presently, as they drove towards Mrs. Fortescue’s house in Portman Square, Walter said, shouting to make himself heard above the twitterings, groanings and squeakings of his ancient motor car:

‘Sally and I met your Marcella last night; she was out with that poor mut Remnant and they joined our party later. We thought she was rather a dreary old do. Whatever do you see in her, Paul?’

‘Heaven knows,’ said Paul, drearily.

Amabelle Fortescue, unlike so many members of her late profession, was an intelligent, a cultured and a thoroughly nice woman. The profession itself had, in fact, been more a result of circumstances than the outcome of natural inclination. Cast alone and penniless upon the world at eighteen by the death of her father, who had been a respectable and well-known don at Oxford, she had immediately decided, with characteristic grasp of a situation, that the one of her many talents which amounted almost to genius should be that employed to earn her bread, board and lodging. Very soon after this decision was put into practice, the bread was, as it were, lost to sight beneath a substantial layer of Russian caviare; the board, changing with the fashions of years, first took to itself a lace tablecloth, then exposed a gleaming surface of polished mahogany, and finally became transformed into a piece of scrubbed and rotting oak; while the lodging, which had originally been one indeed, and on the wrong side of Campden Hill, was now a large and beautiful house in Portman Square.

Amabelle, without apparently the smallest effort, without arousing much jealousy or even causing much scandal, had risen to the top of her trade. Then just as, at an unusually early age, she was about to retire on her savings, she had married a charming, well-known and extremely eligible Member of Parliament whom she lost (respectably, through his death) some three years later. After her marriage she became one of the most popular women in London. Her past was forgiven and forgotten by all but the
most prudish, and invitations to her house were accepted with equal satisfaction by pompous old and lively young.

The house itself was one of Amabelle’s most valuable assets, and its decoration, calculated as it was to suit the taste of the semi-intelligent people who were her friends, showed a knowledge of human nature as rare as it was profound. What could be more subtle, for instance, than the instinct which had prompted her to hang on the walls of her drawing-room three paintings, all by Douanier Rousseau? Her guests, on coming into this room, were put at their ease by the presence of pictures, and ‘modern’ pictures at that, which they could recognize at first sight. Faced by the works of Seurat, of Matisse, even of Renoir, who knows but that they might hesitate, the name of the artist not rising immediately to their lips? But at the sight of those fantastic foliages, those mouthing monkeys, there could arise no doubt; even the most uncultured could murmur: ‘What gorgeous Rousseaus you have here. I always think it is so wonderful that they were painted by a common customs official – abroad, of course.’ And buoyed up by a feeling of intellectual adequacy, they would thereafter really enjoy themselves.

The rest of the house was just as cleverly arranged. Everything in it belonged to some category and could be labelled, there was nothing that could shock or startle. People knew without any effort what they ought to say about each picture, each article of furniture in turn. To the Victorian domes of wool flowers in the hall they cried, ‘How decorative they are, and isn’t it quaint how these things are coming back into fashion? I picked up such a pretty one myself at Brighton, and gave it to Sonia for a wedding present.’ To the black glass bath those privileged to see it would say, ‘Isn’t that just too modern and amusing for words, but aren’t you frightened the hot water might crack it, darling?’ And to the Italian chairs and sideboards, the exquisite patina of whose years had been pickled off in deference to the modern
taste for naked wood, ‘How fascinating, now do tell me where you get all your lovely things?’