Always your loving Marcus.
The white-washing was finished, the studio floor scrubbed. Ben’s drawings had been stacked and stowed in numbered folios. His pens and brushes graded and various tubes of solidified oil paint, used once, and then abandoned, had been discreetly shovelled into the dustbin.
There was nothing left to do.
He had been gone two weeks when the postcard came from Christopher. Emma was in the kitchen of the cottage, making coffee and squeezing orange juice, still wrapped in her dressing-gown and with her hair tied back in a pony tail, when the postman, who was a cheeky young man in an open-necked shirt, put his head round the door and said, “Well, and how are you this morning, my handsome?”
“Splendid, thank you,” said Emma, who had been putting up with this camaraderie ever since she returned from Paris.
He flapped a bundle of letters at her. “All for your old man. But … here … is a postcard for you.” He inspected the picture before Emma snatched it from him. “So vulgar those things are; I don’t know how decent folks can buy them.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Emma rudely, scarcely glancing at the bulging lady in the bikini before turning the card over to see who it was from. The postmark was Brookford.
Emma darling, when are you coming to see me? I can’t come and see you, because we’re up to the ears in rehearsals for Dead on Time. Phone number Brookford 678, best about ten in the morning before we start work. Producer nice chap, stage manager bloody, all girls have spots, and not as pretty as you. Love Love Love Christo.
The nearest phone box was a mile away, so Emma went down the street to the ramshackle grocer’s where she bought cigarettes and tins of food and soap flakes, and used the telephone there.
It was an old-fashioned one, in two separate bits, and with a hook that you jiggled to get the operator. She sat on a beer crate and waited while the call was put through and a grey and white cat, fat as a cushion, came and lay exhaustedly across her knee.
The phone was answered at last by a cross-sounding female.
“Brookfield Theatre.”
“Can I speak to Christopher Ferris?”
“I don’t know if he’s in yet.”
“Could you go and look?”
“Oh, I suppose so. Who shall I say it is?”
“Say Emma.”
The cross female departed. Various voices could be heard, chattering. A man in the distance shouted, “Here I said, you clot, not there.” And then there were footsteps and a voice, and it was Christo.
“Emma.”
“You are there. They didn’t know if you were in.”
“Yes, of course I’m in … we’re rehearsing in five minutes … Did you get my postcard?”
“This morning.”
“Did Ben read it?” (He obviously hoped that he had.)
“Ben isn’t here. He’s in America. I thought you’d know.”
“How should I know?”
“It’s been in all the papers.”
“Actors don’t read papers and if they do it’s always the Stage. But if the old boy’s in America, why didn’t you let me know and come and stay with me?”
“For a hundred reasons.”
“Name two.”
“Well, he only meant to go for a week at the most; and I didn’t know where you were.”
“I told you. Brookford.”
“I don’t even know where Brookford is.”
“Thirty-five minutes from London, trains run every half hour. Look, do come. Come and stay. I’ve been moved into a sinister basement flat. It smells of dry rot and old cats, but it’s ever so cosy.”
“Christo, I can’t. I must be here. Ben’ll be home any day now, and…”
“Did you tell him about meeting me again?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“The subject never came up.”
“You mean you were scared?”
“I was nothing of the sort. It was simply—irrelevant…”
“Nobody’s ever called me irrelevant and got away with it. Oh, do come, ducky. My little basement nest needs the touch of a woman’s hand. You know, scrubbing and all that jazz.”
“I can’t come till Ben’s home. Then I’ll try.”
“It’ll be too late by then. I’ll have got it clean. Please. I’ll get you a free ticket for the show. Or two tickets and you can bring a friend. Or three tickets and you can bring them all.”
His voice dissolved into amusement. He had always laughed at his own jokes.
“Oh, very funny,” said Emma, but she was laughing too.
“You’re just playing hard to get. You wouldn’t stay with me in Paris, and you won’t come and keep house in the wilds of Surrey. What have I got to do to win your heart?”
“You won it years ago and you’ve had it ever since. Truthfully, I’m longing to see you. But I can’t come. I simply can’t come till Ben gets back.”
Christo said a rude word.
The telephone went pip-pip-pip.
“That’s it, then,” Christo. “Let me know when you make up your mind. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Christo.” But he had already hung up. Smiling foolishly, going back over every word he had said, she put the receiver back on to the hook. The cat on her knee purred momentously, and Emma realised it was about to produce a family at any moment. An old man came into the shop to buy two ounces of plug, and when he had gone Emma picked up the cat and placed her gently on the floor, and felt in her pocket for loose change to pay for the call.
“When are the kittens due?” she asked.
The old woman behind the counter was called Gertie, and wore, indoors and out, an enormous brown beret pulled down over her eyebrows.
“Only time can tell, my dear.” She put Emma’s money into her till, which was an old tin box, and gave her her change. “Only time can tell.”
“Thank you for letting me use your phone.”
“It’s a pleasure,” said Gertie, who always listened, shamelessly, and relayed every word she heard.
* * *
In March it had been like midsummer. Now, in May, it was cold as November, and pouring with rain. He had never imagined Porthkerris in the rain; had always pictured it painted in the bright blues of summer, gay with the white wings of gulls and yachts, everything dazzling in a glaring sunlight. But now squalls, borne in on a cutting east wind, were flung against the windows of the hotel, sounding like fistfuls of pebbles. The gusts rattled the casements and then whined away beneath doors, down chimneys, blowing curtains, chilly and inescapable.
It was a Saturday, and Robert, flat on his bed, had been asleep. He looked at his watch and saw that it was five to three, so he reached for a cigarette, and lit it, and lay, watching the leaden sky race across the window, and waiting for the telephone to ring.
It did, at precisely three o’clock. He lifted the receiver.
“Three o’clock, sir,” said the hall porter.
“Thank you very much.”
“Sure you’re awake, sir?”
“Yes. I’m awake.”
He finished the cigarette, and stubbed it out, and got up, pulling on his white towel robe and heading for the bathroom for a hot shower. He hated sleeping in the afternoon, hated waking with the feeling that his teeth were itching, and that he was on the verge of a splitting headache, but after driving all through the night from London it had been impossible to stay awake. He had had an early lunch, and left word with the porter to call him. But the wind, blown up while he slept, had wakened him first.
He dressed, put on a clean shirt, tied his tie, picked up the jacket of his suit, and then changed his mind, and pulled on a polo-necked sweater instead. He combed his hair, slid his belongings from the top of the dressing table into his trouser pockets, took a raincoat from the back of the door and went downstairs.
The lounge was thick with the silence of mid-afternoon. Elderly residents snoozed, snoring lightly in dry heated air. Frustrated golfers
watched the rain, rattling loose change in the pockets of their tweed knickerbockers, wondering if the weather was going to let up, if there would be time for nine holes before it got dark.
The hall porter took Robert’s key and hung it up.
“Going out now, sir?”
“Yes, and perhaps you can help me. I want to get to the Society of Artists Gallery. I believe it’s an old chapel, converted. Have you any idea where it is.”
“That’s down the old part of the town. Know your way round, do you?”
“I know the Sliding Tackle,” said Robert, and the hall porter grinned. He liked a man who used pubs as landmarks.
“Well … say you’re going to the Sliding Tackle, but turn up the street before you get there. Up, away from the harbour. Narrow little road, very steep, and there’s a square at the head of it. Gallery’s on the other side of the square. You can’t miss it. Got great posters up outside … not that any living soul can make head nor tail of them…”
“Well, we’ll have to see. Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.” The porter swung the revolving door, and Robert was ejected into the bitter cold. Rain hammered at his unprotected head, he hunched himself into his raincoat, and picked his way across the gravel, trying to avoid the worst of the puddles. Inside, his car smelt damp and musty, an alien smell over the usual one of leather and cigarettes. He switched on the engine and the heater began to hum. A leaf was stuck in the blade of the windscreen wiper, but when he turned it on, the leaf was dislodged and torn from the wet glass by the wind.
He drove down to the town, and it was all deserted, abandoned, the inhabitants in a state of siege from the weather. Only a drenched policeman stood at point duty at the foot of the hill, and an old lady fought with an umbrella. The narrow streets acted as chimneys for the wind, which funnelled up them, cold and ferocious as a torrent of water, and when he came out on to the harbour road, he saw that the tide was full, and the harbour itself grey and choppy, fleeced with white-capped waves.
He found the street the porter had described. It climbed away from the harbour between crowded cottages, the cobbles wet and shining like the scales of a newly-caught fish. It crested the hill, and opened out into a picturesque square, and he saw the old chapel, a solid, gloomy building, quite at odds with the poster at its door.
PORTHKERRIS SOCIETY OF ARTISTS
SPRING EXHIBITION
Admission 5/-
Beneath this was a strange motif in purple—the suggestion of a staring eye, a six-fingered hand. Robert decided that he could see the hall porter’s point of view.
He parked the car, and went up the streaming steps, and through the door, and was immediately assailed by the smell of a paraffin stove. He saw that the old chapel had been white-washed, the walls soared to high private windows, and liberally hung with every sort and size of painting.
Just inside the door, her knees covered with a rug, sat a lady in a felt hat. On one side of her was a wooden table, with catalogues and a bowl for money, on the other was the paraffin heater, at which she was trying to warm a pair of purple-knuckled hands.
“Oh, close the door, close the door,” she implored as Robert blew in on a gust of wind. He leaned against the door, shutting it, and feeling in his trouser pocket for two half-crowns. “What a freezing day,” she went on, “and this is meant to be summer. You’re my first visitor this afternoon. You are a visitor, aren’t you? I haven’t seen your face around the place.”
“No, I haven’t been here before.”
“We’ve got a most interesting collection—you’ll have a catalogue, of course. Another half-crown, please. But I think you’ll agree, well worth it.”
“Thank you,” said Robert, feebly.
He took the catalogue, decorated with the same purple hand-and-eye motif as the poster outside, and opened it casually, running his eye down the list of artists for the name he wanted.
“… er … any particular artist?” The woman at the desk managed to sound diffident, but she had an inquisitive gleam in her eye.
“No … not really.”
“Just generally interested, I expect. Are you staying in Porthkerris?”
“Yes…” he began to move away from her. “For the moment I am.”
He took it slowly, pacing down the long room, feigning interest in every picture. He had found the name, Pat Farnaby. Number 24. The Journey, by Pat Farnaby. He stayed a long time at number 23, then moved on again.
The colour pounced at him. There was a sensation of great height, a dizzying sensation, like vertigo. And yet with it, a sense of elation, as though he were above the clouds, caught, suspended, between the blue and the white.
You must go, Marcus had said. I want you to form an opinion of your own. You can’t remain the man who keeps the books for the rest of your life. Besides, I’d like to see your reaction.
And this was it. This pure, high note of simple colour.
After a little, he went back to the persistent lady. He was aware that all the time she had been watching him. Now, he thought, she was bright-eyed as a greedy robin, waiting for a bread crumb.
“Is that Pat Farnaby’s only exhibit?”
“I’m afraid so. It was all we could persuade him to let us have.”
“He lives around here, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, yes. Out at Gollan.”
“Gollan?”
“That’s about six miles away, out on the moor road. It’s a farm.”
“You mean he’s a farmer?”
“Oh, no.” She laughed. Merrily, thought Robert, as though she were following the directions in an old-fashioned play. “He lives in the loft over the barn. Here,” she drew a scrap of paper towards her, wrote an address. “If you want to see him, I’m sure you’ll find him here.”
He took the paper. “Thank you very much.” He started for the door.
“But don’t you want to look at the rest of our exhibition?”
“Another time, perhaps.”
“It’s so interesting.” She sounded as though her heart would break if he did not look at some more pictures.
“Yes, I’m sure. But another time.” It was at this moment that he thought of Emma Litton. His hand on the doorknob, he turned back. “By the way, if I wanted to find Ben Litton’s house … is it near here? The house, I mean, not the studio?”
“Well, of course, it’s just round the corner. About a hundred yards down the road. It’s got a blue gate. You can’t miss it. But you do know that Mr. Litton’s not at home?”
“Yes, I know.”
“He’s in America.”
“Yes, I know that, too.”
* * *
It was still streaming with rain. He got back into the car, and started the engine, and nosed it forward down a street as narrow as a burrow. At the blue gate he left it, parked, completely filling the road, and went through the gate, and down a flight of steps which led to a flagged courtyard where tubs stood, filled with drowned-looking plants, and a painted wooden seat disintegrated slowly in the damp. The house itself was long and low, single-storied, but the uneven roofs and ill-matched chimney pots indicated that it had once been two small cottages, or even three. The front door was painted blue to match the gate, and had a copper dolphin as a knocker.
Robert knocked. From above a stream of water poured down upon him from a faulty gutter. He stepped back and looked up to see where it came from, and as he did so, the door was opened.
He said, “Good afternoon. Your gutter’s leaking.”
“Where on earth have you sprung from?”
“London. You should get it mended or it’ll rust away.”
“Have you come all the way from London to tell me that?”
“No, of course I haven’t. Can I come in?”
“Of course…” She stood back, holding the door open for him. “But you are the most disconcerting man. You keep just turning up, with no notice at all.”
“How can we give you notice if you aren?
??t on the telephone? And there wasn’t time to write a letter.”
“Is it about Ben?”
Robert went into the house, ducking his head beneath the lintel of the door, unbuttoning his wet raincoat.
“No. Should it be?”
“I thought he might be home.”
“As far as I know he’s still basking in that balmy Virginia sunshine.”
“Well, then?”
He turned to face her. It occurred to him then that in an odd way she was unpredictable as the weather itself. Each time he met up with her, she seemed a different person. To-day she wore a dress in red and orange stripes, and long black stockings. Her hair had been caught back on the nape of her neck with a tortoiseshell slide, and her fringe had grown. It was too long, it would get into her eyes, give her a squint. As he watched her, she pushed it back, off her face, with the heel of her hand. It was a gesture both defensive and disarming and it made her seem very young.
He took the scrap of paper out of his pocket and handed it across to her. Emma read it aloud.
“Pat Farnaby, Gollan Home Farm.” She looked up at him. “But where did you get this?”
“From the female at the Art Gallery.”
“Pat Farnaby?”
“Marcus is interested.”
“Why didn’t he come himself?”
“He wanted a second opinion. Mine.”
“Have you formed one?”
“It’s difficult to say after seeing only a single painting. I thought I might be able to see some more.”
Emma said warningly, “He’s a very odd young man.”
“I should expect him to be. Do you know where Gollan is?”
“Of course. It belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Stevens. We used to go out in summer for picnics on the cliffs. But I haven’t been since I got back this time.”