The Merciless Ladies (28 page)

‘What is?'

‘Whether we shall be back.'

‘Oh?'

‘Yes …'

‘I don't get it. Didn't Paul say he had bought this cottage and wanted to go up there to paint? You don't mean he wants to
stay
there?'

‘That's his idea at present.'

‘… So all the discontent has come to a head at last.'

‘Yes.'

I picked up a literary weekly and dropped it on some others.

‘He's had ideas like this before', I said. ‘They've been simmering for years. Don't you think he'll let off a bit of steam and then go back to his simmering?'

‘You've been out of touch, Bill. He's really in earnest this time. It's quite true he hasn't painted a portrait for two months. He's refused every commission.'

‘Then what is he doing?'

‘Not anything really. And yet everything. His studio is littered with half-finished canvases.'

‘What of?'

‘Landscapes, people, faces, buildings, when you can recognize them. Often he just mixes colours.'

I moved more magazines. ‘ He seemed to get the same impulses after the Marnsett case. I thought he'd come to terms with them. Have you been encouraging him?'

‘Not by anything I say or do! But he thinks – says – feels – I have to bear some of the responsibility.'

‘That's unfair.'

‘Last week he painted an interior of the studio. He squeezed the colour direct on to the canvas out of the tube. When he showed it me we nearly had a fight, like Mrs Marnsett only the other way round. I said it was marvellous. He said it was phoney Rouault.'

‘Who won?'

Her lips moved. ‘ I did. On condition I kept it out of his sight.'

‘Perhaps I shouldn't ask – but do you believe in what he's doing now?'

She got up and walked to the window. The limp really had almost gone.

‘The other day an old gentleman came asking for Paul. Paul was out. Becker, he said his name was. A little Frenchman with a bald head and a big black tie. Looked like a ballet master.'

‘He's head of the Grasse School, where Paul went.'

‘Yes, he told me. He's just retired. That's why he thought he'd call. He hadn't seen Paul for four years. He kept eyeing me up and down, as if trying to make up his mind about me, and then he began to talk about Paul's painting. He didn't say very much but I caught the note of, well – it was the way Daddy would have spoken of a favourite physics pupil who had become a chartered accountant. After a bit I couldn't refrain from telling him what Paul was doing now. Coming from me, the news didn't impress him. He shook his head and said it was too late, one couldn't drop an acquired technique. This head-shaking went on so long that he provoked me into showing him the studio painting I've just mentioned.

‘As soon as I'd shown it him I was sorry, because he said nothing but just stared, and I began to be afraid Paul would come back and catch us. In the end I had to take the picture away from him. He apologized then and chatted quite brightly without mentioning the picture. I asked him to come again when Paul was in, and he promised to. I showed him to the door. When he got there he twiddled his hat and said: ‘‘The emotional vision is there. At present he's only half able to hold it and less than half able to Transcribe it. It's certainly like nothing he's ever done before. If he goes on from there I shall be happy to swallow my doubts.'' '

Outside a taxi turned and moved down the street.

‘Did you tell Paul?'

‘Yes. He wasn't very interested. Other opinions don't seem to matter to him over this.'

‘This cottage', I said. ‘I suppose it's the one you wrote about in one of your letters?'

‘Yes. Paul bought it. He didn't tell me until last month. He's had it done up and a couple of extra windows put in.'

‘I thought you didn't like it.'

Her eyes grew thoughtful. ‘I didn't like the occupant of the cottage. With ourselves alone there things would be quite different.'

‘You'll probably be back before the spring. This break may do him all the good in the world. Like the voyage in the
Patience
. He may need these breaks and rests. But he won't resist the lure of London for long.'

‘I'm not sure I want that, Bill. I'm not sure I want to return here myself – except for keeping contact with one or two good friends. I shall be quite content to change back to a simpler life. But, now it's come to the point, I'm just a little afraid for him. Although it was not exactly intentional on my part, I've – helped him to make this move. And I'm a little afraid that he may make the attempt and fail.'

She came back and leaned her elbows on the back of the chair. You see, Bill, as I look at it, there's a certain secret satisfaction in discontent if it carries with it a feeling of ‘‘I really could do something else if I wanted: I despise what I'm doing because I could do
better
.'' But there's no satisfaction in the sort of failure which might follow the attempt. You can only say to yourself then: ‘‘I've no right to despise what I'm doing because that's all I'm good for.'' And painting goes so deep with Paul that I wonder what he might do if that happened to him.'

She had certainly grown up.

‘I've known him fifteen years', I said. ‘He's not failed yet.'

‘I said I was only a
little
afraid. But that's because so much hangs on it … Anyway, I felt I had to come. We've been trying to get away and so many things have delayed us. So putting it off another week …'

‘Set your mind at rest. I'm content if—'

The door bell whirred. ‘Hold on … Probably someone for the last tenant.'

I went to the door and opened it. Paul was there.

IV

‘I wondered if I might catch you in, Bill.'

‘Yes', I said.

He stood there, strongly built, well dressed, self-contained, the very reverse, so it seemed, of a temperamental artist.

‘Lucky I remembered your number', he said, and then he caught sight of Holly. ‘Well, I'm hanged!' He looked at her quizzically. ‘So this was where you went.'

‘Yes', said Holly. ‘I thought of telling you, and then I thought I wouldn't.'

He came in and slipped off his coat. ‘All women are deceitful. Even this one. And I suppose you came here to tell him secretly all the things I came here to tell him secretly.'

‘I thought you weren't perhaps going to explain everything to him', said Holly. ‘And he ought to know.'

‘You are a couple', I said; ‘both sneaking round like this. If you want to go and live in Cumberland, go with my blessing. Paint yourselves pink if you like. Don't think I care.'

Paul looked at Holly. ‘He doesn't care.'

‘Yes, he does', said Holly. ‘He's just on his dignity.'

‘Well, have it your own way. Stop for a drink now you're here, anyhow.'

Paul sighed and sat slowly in a chair.

‘So you're going to cut right away from London?' I said. ‘Going to be a primitive and grow hair down your back.'

‘One doesn't need to leave London for that.' He accepted the drink and looked at it until its presence in his fingers registered itself. Then he put the glass down. ‘ Thanks, I don't.' He looked at Holly again and smiled; then turned to me. ‘I've been hunting sprats all my life, Bill. Ever since I took to fresh air in the
Patience
and met Holly I've been convinced that I ought to be a deep-sea fisherman. Well, there's only one thing to do, go out and try, even if I don't catch anything.'

I said: ‘Send me down a whale from time to time.'

‘When we're settled—' Holly began.

‘When we're settled', Paul said, ‘you must come up and examine the catch for yourself.'

‘Holly said you wanted to free yourself from old associations. If—'

‘Don't be a fool. Come for a month to begin with. It'll be your own fault if you don't.'

His eyes were darker than usual. They looked quite old.

‘What are you trying to do, Paul?'

‘Do?' He put the tips of his square fingers together and stared at the cage. ‘I've not done much yet. I'm a blind man trying to see, a small-time artist hag-ridden by a vision … I'm trying to learn to spell over again – and to forget most of the words that have come in so useful up to now. How can I say more than that without becoming pompous? It's nothing
unique
, for God's sake. Even great artists get these troubles. Renoir did. Many others.'

‘At one time', I said, ‘you had another end in view.'

‘Oh, I know. Every second-rate politician eats his words – and I'll bet you could quote some of mine. But that's the way it is. We live by our mistakes – and the lucky ones learn by them.' He looked at the clock. ‘I must get back. Not that there's much to be done now the daylight's gone. Coming, Holly?'

‘Yes.'

‘All this, Bill, is for your private ear. We shelter the public from such enterprising views. Tomorrow we leave for a holiday in Cumberland. How long we stay depends on what happens there, and what happens here is nobody's business but our own.'

‘And mine', I said.

He patted my arm.

‘Of course.'

I think it was Bismarck who said that military campaigns are often decided by ‘the imponderables'. You can prepare for so much, plan and arrange and think it all out; but the unexpected, the unforeseen and unforeseeable, will still emerge to upset it. Burns of course had the same idea a good deal earlier.

It might be better for their reputation as thinking adults if the element that went wrong with Paul and Holly's best laid plans came into the category of an imponderable. Unfortunately not. That evening, and for many months afterwards, it never occurred to me that they had not taken into account a stumbling block which was so obvious.

Letters were desultory; and I have to admit that at this time I was more absorbed in my own work than ever before or since. To become literary editor of one of London's newspapers, a bachelor, just thirty, with the entrée of all literary and dramatic circles, was as precise a recipe for satisfaction and happiness as I can imagine.

And I was
rich
too – on an income of a thousand pounds a year. It was a time when a room at Claridge's cost two pounds a night, you could buy a good shirt for fifteen shillings, beef was sevenpence a pound, coal l/5d a hundred weight, and certain furnishing firms advertised complete furniture for a house for twenty-six guineas.

That my contentment was not absolute was probably because at the heart of the thing, surrounded by all the hard work and the excitement, I was lonely, and though I went out with girls from time to time they never seemed to mean enough. It wasn't done in those days to live openly with a girl without marrying her, and there was none I wanted to marry.

Yet it was a lovely life, and I have often wondered since why I threw it all away. Was it for friendship, for love, or out of a sort of inverted vanity, supposing I could arrange or alter other people's lives?

Christmas came and went, and still no news of a return. People were beginning to inquire as to Paul's whereabouts. I had been given permission to provide vague particulars but no address. Some greeted the information with raised eyebrows or a cynical quirk of the mouth. At the turn of the year he had resigned from two of the three clubs of which he had been a member – his attendances had been falling off ever since his new marriage. Old friends and old members were indignant and laid the blame on Holly. These possessive women: Stafford had been specially unlucky in marrying two of the same sort. One wouldn't think to look at his second wife that she could grasp and hold the reins, especially when dealing with a headstrong man older and far more experienced than herself. It only showed.

To my suggestion that the change of habits might be Paul's own choice they adopted a wisely knowing air. After all, why should he want to go and bury himself in the country at the height of his success? When I retorted with the query: Why should she? they responded with, Oh, well, Paul was such a good-looking fellow and such a favourite with the ladies and she so ordinary, was it not fairly clear that she was determined to keep him for herself as long as she could?

In March Paul instructed a firm of auctioneers to sell the contents of his Chelsea home. In a note to me he said: ‘ Did I tell you that when I split up with Olive I made a deal with her father to stay on at Royal Avenue and pay a rent for it? It was a fairly civilized arrangement, except that I was paying a higher rent than he could have got from anyone else. Well, we're OK up here, and there seems simply no point in keeping a place in London. I'm not bothering to come down for the sale, as it's a melancholy business disposing of one's possessions, even though you'll find when you come to Crichton that we've brought most of our favourites with us.'

Morbid curiosity took me to the sale, but I wished I hadn't gone, for a large number of Paul's friends were there, puzzled at his move. Most things brought good prices, including twenty-three paintings and sketches. None of his ceramic ware was on offer.

Most unexpected visitor at the sale was Diana Marnsett with her new husband. She had remarried the previous month. Her second husband, a film director with a Hungarian name, was a big, dark, heavy-featured man dressed in a pin-stripe blue suit and light-topped calf-leather shoes. One couldn't see him being as indulgent towards her as old Colonel Marnsett. She herself had deteriorated in looks, and it seemed that a few more years might bring Paul's maligned portrait near the truth.

She didn't bid all afternoon.

Of that other lady who had figured so largely in Paul's past I saw nothing at all. Nor for a time did I have any news of her. Then one day I saw her maid-companion, the sullen, spotty Maud, on a bus going up Piccadilly, and took a seat beside her.