Jackson's Dilemma (8 page)

 

There was a great deal of traffic entering London and the sky was darkening. The final jam made Benet curse. What an idiot he was. Was he to spend all night in the car? At last he reached his house, opened the gates, and drove the Rover in as far as the garage. He closed the gates and walked back to the steps which, nearer to the street, led up to the front door.The house was dark. In the faint summer dusk and the dim light which came in from the road he fumbled cursing with his keys. He very quietly undid two locks and slid in through the door. As he closed the door and reached for the light, another light appeared in a room beyond, then a dark figure appeared in a doorway. Benet turned on the light in the hall.

‘Hello, Sir, are you all right?’

‘Yes, of course!’ said Benet.

‘Have you any news? Miss Rosalind rang me.’

‘No!’ said Benet.

‘Would you like something to eat or -?’

‘No - ’

‘Well, goodnight -’

‘Goodnight, Jackson.’

Jackson was his servant.

Owen Silbery was sitting alone in his studio. He had had his dreadful recurring dream. He is buried in sand up to his neck, he cannot move his limbs, the tide is coming in, the tide begins to reach him, the spray touches his face, he screams, he tosses his head back, his only possible movement, no one comes, the water begins to attack his mouth, he swallows the water, it has covered his mouth, he cannot scream any more, it begins to cover his nose ... Owen detested this dream, it made him feel
very
sick, and it particularly annoyed him because he thought that he hadn’t even really invented it, it was not his dream, hadn’t he seen it in a film a long time ago?

It was the next day, the day after the terrible one. The busy telephone had produced no news. Owen had, on the previous evening, driven Mildred to her tiny flat (he had given up asking her to let him buy her a larger one). He had then returned to his house in Kensington, and eaten some oddments out of the fridge, and drunk a lot of whisky and seen the news on television and gone to bed, imagining he would not sleep. However he slept. And now there was this unspeakable horror and a sense all around him of chaos and depredation. And they would be speculating about whether the poor girl had committed suicide. Owen himself had often contemplated suicide and possessed the requirements thereof. And did he not, he reflected, as a painter, imagine, create, and gaze upon what was degraded and vile? Of course such things too became his art and thereby transformed, ha ha! He must remember to drink a toast to Otto Dix. He was real. Owen was sitting in his quiet studio looking at a half-painted abstract. He hated the picture.
Expressionism,Fauvism, Dada, Cubism, Neue Sachlichkeit, Frightfulnessism. Foutu métier.
He leaned forward and scratched the canvas with his fingernail. He was becoming lazy, and with laziness came idleness, agonising, solitude and loss of being. The only person who had really understood him was Uncle Tim - though even he -

He got up and cleaned the brushes and put them in order and rubbed his hands on a paint rag. He sighed a long familiar sigh. He had silenced his telephones. He moved softly about his studio, pulling up the blinds which had been obscuring some of the windows. The cruel sunlight entered. His studio was spacious, occupying the whole second floor of his house. He had created it long ago when he had had three walls removed and enjoyed for the first time, his own space, his own light. His house was big and tall, bought with his first really big money, a retaliation for his unbearable childhood and the wound about which he never spoke. He kept no servant or cleaner. The plain wooden floor of the studio was kept by Owen extremely clean and tidy. The dining room and sleek kitchen on the ground floor, and the drawing room and ‘study’ on the first floor, were reasonably in order. There was also a basement which had once (before Owen’s reign) housed a maid, and now contained correctly slotted special pictures, together with various machines and things. The third floor began to reveal certain ‘natural’ traits of the present owner, now appearing as the stairs ascended. In one large room there was a huge bed, Owen’s bed, never properly made, but randomly covered at times by a huge red counterpane. This bed sometimes reminded Owen of days gone by, when ladies had regularly come down from the north to pose for him, no questions asked. No doubt their husbands were unemployed or had cleared off and they were supporting numerous children. It was no business of his. Opposite, in rows of cupboards, showing only their colourless sides, were other innumerable undisposed of ordinary pictures. Owen sometimes, now less often, pulled out one at random. Now, having left his studio and climbing up the stairs, he entered this room, searching for something. He pulled it out at last, a portrait he had painted once of Lewen Dunarven. He studied it for some time. He put it back again. Not a good likeness. He came out. He felt tired and wanted to lie down upon his bed. However he decided to go up further and look out of the fifth floor window. The fourth floor here, detained him, consisting of a handsome rarely used guest room and opposite, Owen’s special treat, his dark room, whose walls were covered with very interesting photos, including (among the mild ones) a picture of Mishima posing as Saint Sebastian, mentioned recently by Benet. Mishima had died at his own hand. What monumental courage it must take to slash one’s stomach open, knowing that an instant later a kind friend would remove one’s head. A pity there was no available photo of that.

On the fifth floor, which covered the whole area, Odradek, pet of Kafka, reigned. Everywhere senseless, nameless and timeless entities lay in piles, cardboard boxes, containing unconnected unnameable things lay piled one on another, heavy soiled garments, long ago devoured by moths, innumerable old books, no doubt of great value, kicked to pieces, ancient letters some unopened, broken china, broken glass, ancient newspapers, collections of stones - Owen picked his way to the window and looked out. Below him, stretching away, there were green gardens, filled with bushes and tall trees and backs and fronts of houses, beyond him and above him was the blue enormous sky and just below it, London.

Owen turned away with a sigh, kicked some entities aside, and reached the door. He slowly descended the stairs as far as the reasonably tidy drawing room upon the first floor. There was a large mirror above the fireplace. He looked at himself in the mirror. His copious hair, which had been genuinely very dark, almost black, was now successfully dyed completely black. He had put on weight. Did anyone notice? It didn’t matter. His aggressive profile remained the same. Uncle Tim had once likened him to a toad, a particular toad in the garden at Penndean. Owen liked toads. He went to the telephone and released it. Almost instantly it rang. It was Mildred.

‘Oh, Owen - have you heard anything?’

‘No.’

‘We’ve been in touch with the police. You haven’t thought of anything?’

‘Thought?
No.’

‘You know Benet came back late last night. Has he rung you?’

‘No.’

‘Were you out?’

‘I turned the phone off.’

‘Of course, you were working. Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘May I come and see you? I won’t stay long.’

‘Mildred, just fuck off please.’

He put the telephone down and switched it off again. He sat down in one of the deep armchairs and covered his face with his hands.

 

 

 

 

Benet was standing upon the doorstep of a large house near Sloane Square, which was very familiar to him, though he had not visited it for a long time. He was disturbed to notice how anxious he now was, as a mass of memories crowded upon him. He straightened his tie and smoothed down his ruffled red-brown hair. He rang the bell. The bell was familiar. He waited.

The door opened. Anna Dunarven appeared instantly, smiling.

‘Oh Benet, I’m so glad to see you! We had no time to talk properly down there, come in, come in, what’s the news of Marian?’

‘No news, alas, not yet. Anna, forgive me for coming suddenly like this, I ought to have written, I couldn’t find your telephone number and - ’

‘Yes, yes, I changed it, I should have given it to you, anyway here you are, follow me, you know the way of course, everything is the same, isn’t that strange!’

He followed her into the memorable drawing room, he saw the sun shining upon the garden, they stood together by the window.

‘Those trees have grown.’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought at once when I came back. They’ve kept it all very well, haven’t they. This room is all the same, except I’ve moved things about a bit.’

‘I see the old elephant is in his place on the mantelpiece.’

‘Yes, would you believe it, they had put him away in a cupboard, I had to search for him! How you all must miss Uncle Tim.’

‘We do. We’ve been missing you too.’

‘Oh Benet, you are just the same, your hair stands on end so thick and red and ruffled, like it used to, not a bit of grey, you are so handsome and your eyes - your eyes are so blue -’

Anna threw her arms round Benet’s neck, he felt her hair warm upon his cheek, he put his arm around her waist. They released each other. They had known each other for a long time, in fact Benet claimed to have introduced Anna, then twenty, to Lewen Dunarven, then thirty. He had met and known them both separately in London, Anna as a friend of Elizabeth Loxon, who was a friend of Mildred, and Lewen as a frequenter of the British Library. He had also sorted things out for Anna after Lewen, a distinguished Irish scholar, had so unexpectedly died. He had known Anna’s mother, who had died in France after Anna’s departure there ‘for ever’. The boy, now nine, or was it ten, years old, had never known his father.

Standing apart, they held hands, surveying each other, then releasing their hands and becoming sombre.

‘So what happened to Marian, do you know anything?’

‘We know nothing,’ said Benet. ‘I was wondering if you had any clues or ideas -’

‘You don’t think I’m harbouring her?’

‘Of course not!’ said Benet. He had however now reached the stage of anything being possible. Women take refuge with women. He could at least attempt to picture the degree of despair which must have occasioned Marian’s missive. Surely she must be with
someone
- unless some terrible thing had occurred.

Anna, reading his mind, said, ‘I might have taken her in, but I haven’t!’

‘She was very fond of you.’

‘And I of her. I have no idea where she might be. I have been so long away.’

‘Of course - Oh Anna, it is so dreadful -’

‘What did the letter say - just that she had decided not to get married -?’

‘Yes. That - and saying sorry.’

‘What a shock. Poor Edward. Look, let us sit down.’

They left the window and sat upon the big red velvet settee. Benet looked up at the elephant. He turned to her saying:

‘It was so kind of you to come for the - we are all hoping that now you will stay.’

‘I might stay, yes, but -’

‘Really, stay, and live here, in your own house, not go back to France?’

‘Yes, of course I’d live in France too - but I don’t know. I might rent the house again later on.’

‘You are as beautiful as ever. I love your green dress.’

Anna laughed. ‘Do you mind if I smoke? I know you don’t.’ She reached out for the packet of cigarettes which was lying in the large blue glass bowl upon the long low table in front of them. She lit the cigarette, trembling a little and smiling. She said, ‘Would you like a drink, would you like to stay to lunch?’

He thought, she will soon be in tears, I mustn’t stay, anyway I can’t stay. ‘I’m sorry I can’t - but could you come and have dinner with me tonight?’

‘No. I’m afraid I’ve got another -’

‘Oh Anna, we were all so happy, and now it’s pure hell -’

‘Are you sure you - all right - but I want to see you again very soon. I may want your advice.’ ,

‘Oh heavens — I would do my best! Now I must go and see Edward, poor devil.’

Anna, who used previously to ‘put up’ her hair in some neat and ingenious mass, now had it undone, tossed back, a smooth rill of straight pale-yellow hair reaching almost to her waist. She raised her hand now to her smooth clear brow, as if enquiring what her hair was up to. Benet gazed at her. Owen, who admired her and had painted her, said she had the calmest woman’s face he had ever seen. Her face, devoid of make-up, displayed the faintest glowing shade of pink in her cheeks and lips. Her eyes were pale blue, her lips and eyes expressed often a detached, perhaps wistful, amusement. She could also look pensive, and gentle, and far away. Now, holding her cigarette firmly in her nicotine-stained right hand, she lifted her left hand to the neck of her dress, displaying unconsciously her plain golden wedding ring and diamond and ruby engagement ring which Benet suddenly remembered from the remote past, her wedding, his few and brief visits to her in France, she did not care for visitors; and in that moment he felt a sudden urge to speak of Lewen - and then he thought, she may not want to stay here, where Lewen’s dying was so terrible. No wonder she ran away to France.