The Flame of Life (2 page)

‘Generally, yes. People make way for a fat man. They respect him.'

Handley lit a cigar. ‘Unless there's a war on.'

‘No danger of that.'

‘Civil war, I mean.'

Teddy laughed. ‘When I go into a restaurant the waiters smile. I'm always served first, whether they know me or not. I get bigger helpings, what's more.'

Greensleaves' office made him uneasy because three of his paintings hung on the well-lit walls. They seemed out of place, set there for dealers and customers who saw them only as so many square yards of investment. Handley knew, however, that his attitude was a bad one, indicating a lack of detachment and even backbone. He was, after all, happy enough when Teddy took out his cheque book and passed a chit for three thousand pounds.

He put it in his wallet. ‘That'll get me through the weekend! I don't need the other for the moment.'

They were disturbed by the buzzer, and when the door opened Handley recognised Lady Daphne Maria Fitzgerald Ritmeester (names he'd seen in an up-to-date
Who's Who
which he'd bought to get basic facts on people he bumped into now that his paintings sold at the proper prices).

‘You've already met, I believe,' Greensleaves said.

‘Twice,' Handley stood up, ‘and both times I asked her to kiss me, but she didn't.'

‘On the first occasion you were drunk,' she said, with half a smile. Her charming and grating voice was the sort that would make you feel unsure of yourself if you thought there was a chance of going to bed with her. She was a thin middle-aged woman with dark hair piled over a splendidly intelligent face. Her grey eyes seemed over-exposed due to skilful make-up and care, and her faintly spread nostrils created a subtlety for her lips that they might not otherwise have had. Handley sensed that men would have to be a hundred times more gentle before such women would come to like them.

She turned to Greensleaves. ‘I just popped in to give you this,' taking an envelope from her Florentine leather bag.

Teddy blushed at money instead of sex. There has to be something that embarrasses him to the marrow, Handley thought. Lady Ritmeester had bought some of his work, including the Lincolnshire Poacher, that star piece of his one-man show at which they'd first met.

‘How long are you in town?'

‘Depends,' he said. ‘Till tomorrow, perhaps.'

She lit a cigarette and sat down. ‘How's the country?'

‘Restful, as long as I can get away.'

‘I hear you run some sort of community?'

‘An extended family, really. A five-star doss-house.'

‘I thought the revolutionary thing nowadays was to eliminate the family.'

He laughed. ‘That sort of theory's for young people who haven't got families. I have seven kids, so who could get rid of that lot? There would have been another but my wife lost it after our house caught fire in Lincolnshire. I'm afraid to make up a manifesto against the family in case she gets pregnant again. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The only thing is to make it bigger. It drives me up the zigzags.'

‘You could simply walk away,' she teased, much to Teddy's enjoyment as he opened her envelope, and put the cheque in his drawer.

‘If a man's up to his neck in a bog how can he get up and crawl off? He needs a tractor to pull him free, and then it might yank both his arms out and he'd bleed to death. Still, there is some good in the family. The State's helpless against it – or one like mine. Any system that screams against the family only wants to abolish it for its own ends – good or bad. It wants such power for itself. Who wouldn't? Will you have lunch with me?'

Launched in the same tone as his speculations on the family, the request took her by surprise: ‘What a strange idea!'

‘It would be if we went to a fish 'n' chip shop for a piece of grotty cod washed down with a bottle of high-powered sauce,' he said. ‘But I mean real lunch at the Royal Bean up the street.'

She was an expensive production with the palest of porcelain skin as if, should you start to take her clothes off, she'd come to pieces in your hands. ‘You fascinate me.'

‘You're like a woman,' she answered. ‘Full of tease. A real man, I believe it's called.'

No response was good enough, at least not while he expected it. ‘I'd be delighted if you'd have lunch with me.'

If he thought about it he couldn't imagine anything more grisly, but it was too late to back out now. ‘As an experiment, then,' she said, still with that damaged but maddening smile.

Teddy wondered if they'd need to use his desk to make love on – they were getting along so well – and had an impulse to begin clearing it, so as to inch himself back into their talk. They had forgotten him, and only such rude and crude behaviour could make them pay for it.

CHAPTER TWO

Handley suggested a taxi, but she preferred to walk the two hundred yards. They had the luck of a table near the curtained window. He offered a cigarette from his packet. ‘Do you eat out much?'

‘Reasonably often.'

‘I usually get stomach poisoning, though this place looks all right.' He snapped his finger, but no one heard it.

‘That's the disadvantage of a restaurant,' she said. ‘Not good for one's self-confidence.'

She was enjoying herself, and what man could want more than that? He knew he was not very strong on courtship, and Daphne Ritmeester sensed it, too, and was trying to make him pay for it. But time was on his side, and they were no longer close to the prying ears of Teddy Greensleaves, which made them somewhat easier on each other.

‘If a man is eating alone,' he said, ‘and he complains about something or other he gets good treatment. But if he dines with a woman he doesn't because the waiter's back goes up, since he thinks he's only trying to impress the woman. Even if the man is justified in his complaints the waiter thinks he should show solidarity with the male sex and not mention them, especially in front of a woman. You can't win. They've got the class war in one eye and the sex war in the other. If I had my way there'd be nothing but counters where you had to go up and get your own.'

‘How perfectly horrible,' she said. ‘I'd never eat out.'

‘You could bring a maid,' he suggested, ‘and she'd queue for you.'

Had he really done the paintings she so much admired? It was like having lunch with your chauffeur simply because he was a good driver. And yet, not quite. This might turn out more interesting. ‘Tell me about your life,' she said when half a melon, big enough to float away on across the blue lagoon, had been set before them. ‘How did you become a painter?'

‘My life's simple,' he replied. ‘Always will be, I hope. After prep school, Eton and Oxford, I got a commission in the Brigade of Guards. Fought in France, back through Dunkirk, went to Egypt and got wounded – though not in the groin. I rejoined my battalion and went to Italy, wounded again, invalided out, nothing to do except draw my pension and paint pictures.'

She laughed. ‘That's not what you told the newspapers.'

‘You've got to make up a good story,' he said, pushing his melon aside because it tasted like marrow. ‘Uncle Toby would disown me if I didn't. I love you. But you must forgive me – not for saying that, because I can't imagine anyone not coming out with it – but for being so blunt and common. I can't make pretty speeches. I paint, not talk. I've never been good at weaving snares of words around women. If I'm so tongue-tied that I can only say “I love you”, you'll have to forgive me.'

It seemed impossible to get through to him. There must be a gap in his armour somewhere. He knew she was thinking this, and saw that if he kept up his rigmarole long enough she might come to bed with him. ‘Do you paint all the time?'

‘Every minute God sends.'

‘Don't you get bored?'

‘I love you, Daphne.'

‘Don't you get bored with that?' He was too impertinent to be her chauffeur.

‘Let's go to Paris for a couple of days.'

‘Certainly not.'

‘Venice, then.'

It was ludicrous. She laughed. He rubbed his hands under the table. Wiping them on the cloth, she thought, pointing to the napkin. He drew it across his moustache.

‘You haven't got your passport,' she said.

He took it out of his pocket. ‘I never leave the house unless it's on me – even if only to the pub for a packet of fags – in case I decide not to go back. I always do, though. You only vanish when all the ends will be left hanging.'

‘You're a very destructive person.'

‘Not really. To myself maybe.'

‘You make my blood run cold,' she mocked.

‘Here's the horsemeat,' he said, glad to end such a note.

For a thin woman she showed great appetite, and if he kept up with her it was only to get his money's worth, and because he'd left home with no more than half a grapefruit and a thimble of black coffee under his belt.

He filled her empty glass close to the brim, hoping she'd bend her lips to the table to sip it, so that he could look down her dress. But he'd underestimated her dexterity, for she lifted it easily without spilling a drop.

He apologised: ‘I'm no good at serving people.'

‘You'd never make a waiter,' she smiled. ‘When did you last go to the mainland?'

‘Fortnight ago. Got so bored with my community I lit off in the car. Drove five hundred kilometres to this posh hotel south of Paris. Cost fifty francs for a room and bath. Same again for something to eat. I got sloshed over dinner, so daren't use the bath I'd paid for in case I drowned. I climbed into bed with my boots on to make up for it. After all, fifty francs is four quid. I really do love you.'

She jumped, though not, he noted, with annoyance. He imagined it might be due to his quick change of voice and because he touched her warm, silken kneecap under the table. ‘Why do you keep on?'

He sensed she'd be disappointed if he suddenly lost heart. She hadn't been entertained at lunch for a long time, and so unexpected.

‘Listen,' he said confidentially, eyes lit as he leaned closer, ‘I can get all the women I want, just by telling them I love them. If I say it earnestly enough – but not like a beaten dog – no woman can resist it. It always works, even if you do it only ten minutes after meeting them. Often that's more effective because they think that if you can fall in love so quickly you'll never be able to see their faults. A thing like that almost persuades them they're in love with you. But only the best women believe you when you say you love them, and they're the ones you want.'

She noticed how impeccably dressed he was, how lean-faced and handsome, with his well-chiselled head, short hair and clipped moustache. ‘You may not know it,' she said, attempting to divert him, ‘but I'm married.'

‘Your husband's on the board of fifty-four companies.'

She tapped her empty plate. ‘Fifty-six.'

‘My stud-book's out of date.'

She picked up the menu to choose dessert.

‘He's afraid the country's heading for a Labour Government.'

‘It'll shoot rapidly out as soon as it gets in,' he reassured her. ‘There's nothing predictable about the English, bless 'em. I was in the butcher's the other day buying the daily cow, and he was bewailing the power of the trade unions and said what England needs is a dictator to put a stop to 'em. He was in raptures at the thought of it, so I said: “Yes, I'd love that as well. That would really ruin the country. Blokes like you would go down first. I'd bloody love that, because as soon as it happened I'd be on my way to Switzerland.” You should have seen his face drop. Because I'd got money he thought I was on his side.'

‘Poor fellow!' she said.

‘You know,' he went on fervently so that she couldn't interrupt, ‘I can normally look people in the eyes, but when I'm in love I can burn anyone off the face of the earth. Your eyes are generous and clever. Don't think I don't fall in love even though I am forty-three. My brain may get soft, but the charge is still there. It's not lust or wick-fever either because when I'm in love, as I am now, my slonker isn't so ready to stiffen though it burns like a poker in the fire when it gets there at last. My sight is clearer and I wear glasses less when I'm painting. I'm not shy and devious anymore when I'm in love, even though I have more to hide because
I'm
married as well!'

Her hand shook at the menu. The smile left her. She was glad the waiter came, and they ordered a dessert which, he reminded her, was as high and ornate as the hat she'd been wearing when he first saw her two years ago: ‘I'll do a picture when I get home. The idea's forming in my third and visual eye. Lady Ritmeester's hat! It won't be a big one, but its colour will dazzle the world!'

She'd heard more loving speeches in the last half hour than from her husband in fifteen years. The skin under her make-up was burning. ‘I'll order more wine – no, champagne,' he said, ‘to toast the way I feel about you.'

He felt a hand on his wrist. ‘Pay the bill,' she said. ‘We'll get a taxi to my flat on Mount Street.'

It was a last ploy to call his bluff, but she knew it wouldn't work, and hoped it wouldn't, and it didn't, though under her confidence she wondered where it would lead – if anywhere.

So did Handley as he helped her into her coat and caught another whiff of her subtle expensive perfume, and a glimpse of the pearls laying along the pale flesh of her neck.

From the long corridor he could see it was the sort of flat that cost a hundred pounds a week to rent furnished. Everything was Harrod's best, tables of expensive rosewood, dark green panelling, heavy half-drawn curtains, an elaborate dressing-table with a pink marble top, built-in wardrobes (a bad touch that, he felt) and a high, enormous bed which redeemed everything. She'd led him straight into the bedroom so that the maid wouldn't twig.