Honeybath's Haven (7 page)

In this somewhat ignominious way, Honeybath escaped from the maze, and found that Ariadne had descended from her perch and was awaiting him.

‘Thank you very much,' he said. ‘I'm afraid I was a little short with you about the birds. I've no doubt they are delightful. But I had no notion of threading the thing. My entering it at all was – um – inadvertent.'

‘Just that, sir. And a maze is rather a flustering place.'

‘No doubt.' Honeybath didn't enjoy being detected as having become flustered in so absurd a fashion. ‘By the way, do you happen to have seen a man in a big white hat?'

‘Ah, him! He's one of the shy ones, he is.' The gardener again spoke on his indulgent note. At the same time he looked at Honeybath appraisingly, as if estimating whether he was to be placed in the same category. ‘Would you just have come into residence, as they say?'

‘No, nothing of the kind. But I have an appointment at the house, and it looks as if I may be late for it.' Honeybath found he didn't want to prolong this humiliating episode. He wondered whether he ought to tip his rescuer. It was unlikely that the inmates of Hanwell Court went around handing out sums of money in return for small services, but his own position as a casual intruder was somewhat different. He decided that Ariadne would take no exception to the cost of a couple of pints, and acted accordingly. ‘Thank you very much,' he said again. ‘Perhaps I'll see the birds on another occasion. Meantime, good morning to you.'

As he walked away he found himself thinking not about the gardener but about the man in the Panama. Was he among those of the inmates whom a tactful meiosis would describe as disturbed? Curiously enough, he felt not. Although undoubtedly a shy one, he hadn't given the impression of being off his head. Rather, he had seemed rationally wary, much as a displaced person in an unfamiliar environment might be. This was a perplexing notion, and Honeybath didn't make a great deal of it. He walked on briskly, reached the front door of the house, rang a bell, and made himself known to the servant who answered it.

 

 

 

There was a small hitch. Brigadier Luxmoore (who was styled the Bursar, and was presumably the top man in an administrative way at Hanwell Court) had been called away on a family emergency, and had left Honeybath his apologies. Dr Michaelis, however, was holding himself available. Honeybath judged it legitimate to inquire what position Dr Michaelis held in the establishment, and was told that he was the Medical Superintendent. He had already gathered from his brochure, and indeed from what he had been told on his previous visit, that full medical and nursing services were on tap at Hanwell. Even when terminal illness befell you the place didn't turn you out except in your coffin. But that it should actually support a resident physician seemed a shade disconcerting. If it didn't suggest a madhouse (as at least some other evidences did), it at least suggested a sanatorium. For some reason Honeybath at once thought of the one in Thomas Mann's
The Magic Mountain
. There was a Dr Krokowski there, who chatted you up on your complexes when he wasn't tapping your chest. Perhaps Dr Michaelis was a psychiatrist. It was more probable that he simply went in for geriatrics in a general way. Honeybath wasn't attracted by the notion of becoming a subject for the application of gerontology. He wasn't that old yet. And he never wanted to be, either. Perhaps if he could read his own future what would be revealed would be a mercifully instant encounter with a bus. But that wasn't to be relied on – which was why he was poking around Hanwell Court now.

Dr Michaelis himself proved to be no greybeard. He was youngish, alert, and possessed of good professional manners. It was clear that he was accustomed to deal with more than medical issues when required, and that this familiarity extended to the behaviour of prospective clients cautiously obtruding second thoughts about closing with Hanwell Court. Honeybath noted with approval that he was far from pushing any objectionable sales-talk.

‘It's entirely a matter of the times, isn't it?' Michaelis asked pleasantly. ‘Formerly, an elderly woman of some substance would continue to live in her own house, with a reliable servant or two, and a companion. A man like yourself would do something very similar; he'd have a flat or chambers conveniently placed for his club, and so forth, and a reliable man who'd cook for him and valet him and everything else. But for decades now the whole trend of social legislation has militated against all that. We have to huddle together if we're to survive. That seems the long and the short of it. And here at Hanwell Court we try to provide the huddle without any positive squash. It's expensive, and it's going to become more so. But you've probably had the figures about all that.'

‘Yes, I have,' Honeybath said. He was inclined to be favourably impressed by Michaelis' frank avowal of the state of the case.

‘I suppose,' Michaelis went on, ‘that most reasonably civilized people aren't too keen on gross inequalities of wealth. But downright levelling and crude egalitarianism are another matter. It's hard not to feel we're being specially pitched on, wouldn't you say, Mr Honeybath?'

‘I don't know that I see it particularly that way.' Honeybath was slightly surprised by this drift in the Medical Superintendent's conversation. ‘Some are being impoverished more quickly than others, no doubt. But pretty well everybody is in for a bad time.'

‘Don't you ever have a sense that unknown people – faceless men, as it has been very well put – are ganging up against you? That you must almost regard yourself as the victim of a conspiracy?'

‘I can't say that I do.' Honeybath's surprise increased. He even felt a certain discomfort in face of the sharply appraising glance with which Michaelis had accompanied these questions. ‘And may we turn,' he asked firmly, ‘to one or two more specific issues? It's very probable, Dr Michaelis, that it would be my intention to go on painting.'

‘Ah! Yes, indeed.' Michaelis was at once enthusiastic. ‘Titian is the great exemplar there. Went on painting far into his nineties. Splendid fellow!'

‘Titian mayn't even have lived into his nineties.' Honeybath was conscious of rather snapping this out – perhaps at being displeased at hearing a celebrated painter patronized in this way. ‘And my point is a simple one, Dr Michaelis. I'd have to be assured of a room with a good north light.'

‘But of course!' The Medical Superintendent betrayed surprise that there should be any question about this. ‘At Hanwell we regard such matters as of the utmost importance. Everything must be done to sustain our residents in their sense of useful occupation.'

‘As with Lady Munden and her seaweed.'

‘Exactly so. How pleasant that you know Lady Munden.'

‘And Colonel Dacre and his rifle-range.' Honeybath was about to add ‘And the man with the electronic golf-ball.' But he reflected that here he had perhaps been made the recipient of a confidential disclosure, which he ought not to pass on. ‘I quite agree about the importance of having something to do in one's old age,' he said. ‘Knitting or chess or abstruse mathematical calculation: it all comes to the same thing, no doubt. With me it will be painting, as long as my eyesight holds.'

‘And, what is more important, your inspiration.' Michaelis produced this comparative estimate with confidence. ‘I feel nothing is of more importance here than the creating of favourable conditions for the exercise of the artistic temperament.'

Honeybath was rather at a loss before this. He supposed the chap meant well – but here, surely, was a whiff of sales-talk after all.

‘Don't you feel it to be rather tricky ground?' he asked. ‘It's often under unfavourable conditions that what you call the artistic temperament seems to make out best.'

‘A most interesting paradox.' Michaelis nodded gravely, with the air of an intelligent man properly open to instruction by an expert. ‘And I agree, of course, that inspiration is a most unpredictable thing. You hear its voice, and have to obey.'

‘Inspiration isn't a voice. It's a breath.' Honeybath made the pedantic point a shade crossly, having grown rather tired of this conversation.

‘Ah, yes. But surely, Mr Honeybath, you hear voices from time to time – advising you to do a thing one way and avoid another? It's a common trait among artists, I believe.'

‘I don't think you believe anything of the sort. And the assertion is nonsense, in any case.' Honeybath was suddenly very angry. ‘Dr Michaelis, please don't take me for a fool. It may be your duty to assess intending residents here in terms of their nervous stability, or liability to neurosis, or whatever the jargon is. But spare me this fishing around for notions of persecution and auditory hallucinations. And I shall withdraw my application here, since I have clearly been misinformed. I had no idea that it has the character of a clinic for the mentally deranged.' Honeybath rose to his feet. ‘And I regret that the misapprehension has resulted in my wasting your time.'

‘But it's nothing of the sort!' Dr Michaelis had sprung to his feet too, and appeared extremely upset. ‘And I do apologize Mr Honeybath, for having been so clumsy. It is perfectly true that I am obliged a little to sound the nervous constitution of our applicants. But the reason is this: we have to be careful to accept as residents here only a small number – you may call it a quota – of persons in any way eccentrically disposed. To take that small number, we regard as a social duty. And I assure you that, so far, our policy has been acomplete success. Our lives are so arranged here that nobody's privacy need be invaded by anybody else, and such oddities as a few of our guests exhibit do no more than – how shall I express it? – make for interest. And the people who
are
a trifle strange benefit enormously from remaining in normal society under conditions so carefully controlled that it is impossible for them to be the slightest nuisance to anybody. That, quite simply, is the state of our case, Mr Honeybath. I hope, therefore, that you will reconsider the matter in the light of my remarks.'

Charles Honeybath ought, perhaps, to have said ‘Damn your remarks, sir!' and departed from Hanwell Court without more ado. This would have been uncivil – even unpardonable in view of the fact that Michaelis had gone to some trouble to explain the set-up within which he clearly made a perfectly honourable living. But at least it would have got the situation straight, since Honeybath for some reason now knew in his heart that he would never become an inmate of this curious establishment. But he was sensitive about his position. He had gone some little way in committing himself to the place, and now he had the appearance of shying away from it because it had been revealed to him that, on the most respectable grounds of social conscience and policy, it afforded shelter and support to a small proportion of harmless cranks. True, they were affluent cranks, and somebody made a profit out of them somewhere. But the arrangement was laudable rather than censurable in any way, and if he now bolted because it had been revealed to him he would in fact be doing injustice to his own tolerably liberal mind. His turning away from Hanwell Court as Honeybath's haven was really prompted (a little introspection told him) by something quite different and not easily analysed or expressed. The place just wasn't
him
. It had been revealed to him – to put it bluntly – that he'd rather end his days in a garret than at Hanwell's opulent remove from the common traffic of life. But he couldn't decently decant this feeling on young Dr Michaelis, and he decided (weakly, perhaps) that he must ease himself out of a false situation by temporizing means.

‘I'm grateful to you for explaining things,' he therefore said. ‘And I'll come to no final decision in a hurry.'

‘That is everything we could hope for, Mr Honeybath.' Dr Michaelis was now composed – even smooth – again. ‘And, meanwhile, I wonder whether we might now go and hunt for that room with a good northern light? Even if you don't want it yourself, you might have a fellow-artist to whom you would wish to recommend it. And I'd like you to be assured of the sincerity with which I speak when I say how much I'd like to see Hanwell being useful to a few distinguished artists, or writers, or the like, in their later years. Not that the distinction is all that important. It's the lifetime's dedication to the hard labour of art that counts with me.'

Honeybath listened, and again felt himself to have rather a liking for Michaelis. The man had made an honest and not ignoble little speech. So he allowed himself to be guided through the splendid building once more, and presently the appropriate quarters were found: a great high room with perfect lighting, and with attached to it a small and secluded sitting-room having a glorious view over the park and a distant line of downs – this and a bedroom and bathroom all firmly behind the occupant's own front door. A more nearly perfect disposition of things for a solitary artist of advancing years it would have been hard to conceive. It failed to shake Honeybath, but at least it enabled him to be abundant in civil expressions. He ended by lunching in Hanwell Court along with those of the inmates opting for public refection at this time of day. People sat at their own small tables at a well-calculated remove each from the other. You could converse with a neighbour without shouting, or without unsociability you could treat yourself as being in solitude. The fare was excellent, and there was the unobtrusive adjuvant of a capital hock.

After this, Honeybath sought out Michaelis again, took a politely non-committal farewell, and got away. The notion that he might commend the place to somebody else didn't again enter his head. But it was to do so fatefully – indeed, fatally – in the not distant future.

 

 

 

Edwin Lightfoot was back in England. He had been back in England – and in Royal Crescent, Holland Park – for some weeks before Honeybath heard of it. The news came to him, once more, through the agency of Lightfoot's brother-in-law, Ambrose Prout. And Prout, as on a previous occasion, was extremely worried. He entered Honeybath's studio one morning – he virtually broke in – with the plain object of spreading despondency and alarm. At first Honeybath simply resented the irruption. He had no sitter with him, it was true, but he was engaged on the tricky if not wholly unfamiliar task of transferring to a canvas the Robes and Star of the Order of the Garter as these august habiliments were disposed in front of him, draped upon a kind of tailor's dummy adapted for the purpose. The Star was proving particularly awkward; he had set it at an oblique angle to the picture-plane, and it was refusing to look like the resplendent gewgaw it was.