‘I don’t remember it with distaste.’
‘Oh, no’, she said. ‘Oh, no. But not to be repeated. In case you came here for that purpose.’
‘No … I’ve told you why I came. Though the memory came back soon enough when I saw you. What’s wrong, Olive?’
‘Wrong?’
‘Yes. Wrong.’
She considered me. ‘ Because I choose not to fall down on my back before you? This unbearable arrogance—’
‘Not me, Olive. Any man. Because there isn’t any other man, is there?’
‘What the hell business is it of yours?’
‘None, obviously.’
After a moment she said: ‘There’s a drink on the table.’
‘Thanks, I’m OK. You’re not in a company mood tonight. I think I’ll push off.’
‘If I’d been in a company mood tonight I wouldn’t have been at home when you called. I cancelled a theatre. And with a man, for your interest.’
‘Will you have a drink?’
‘A couple of fingers of brandy. If I take more it makes my head worse …’
‘Seriously, Olive, why don’t you remarry? There are plenty of other fish in the sea besides Paul and the Sharble fellow.’
‘You want me to get off Paul’s back? Is that the purpose of the visit?’
‘That’s the second or third guess you’ve made about my purpose. Can’t you accept the truth – that I just wanted to see you?’
She laughed shortly. ‘ No. Don’t you know your reputation – that you only call when you want something.’
I refused to rise to the taunt. ‘ Who doesn’t?’
‘Were you thinking of proposing marriage to me yourself?’
‘As I’ve said before, I’m not a marrying man.’
‘Where was the accent on that?’
‘But since you raise the question of Paul …’
‘Ah …’
‘What’s the point of this new summons?’
‘You’ve heard of it, then … Simply to have money to pay the rent of this flat. My parents paid it for six months, but now my father has just died.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know … But, Olive, anything you get out of Paul – whatever it is – will be swallowed up in legal costs. What are you really getting out of it? Surely revenge is pretty sour by now? Because some other woman has made a success where you failed? Dead Sea fruit, isn’t it?’
‘What other sort of fruit would you like me to pick?’
‘Something with life and flavour in it. We’ve all only so many hours to enjoy the decent, warm things of the world. Why shrivel up your soul before its time?’
‘My soul’s well able to take care of itself.’
‘Believe me, if it were only your own soul you were poisoning I’d let it rot in peace.’
‘I know’, she said. ‘That’s what amuses me.’
I could have struck her then, because she had made me lose my temper.
I sat down. ‘All right. All right. Since we’re talking about Paul, let’s level on that. Have you seen any of his recent work?’
‘I saw one in the Ludwig window. I thought it pretty much of a daub.’
‘At least you must admit he’s trying to do something new. You’re an artist, Olive. If you create something yourself you must surely respect the efforts of a fellow artist. Gauguin and Van Gogh were laughed at not so very long ago. Who can be certain that Paul isn’t doing the same sort of thing today? Why then go out of your way to stultify his efforts and to make his life inrolerable?’
She lit a cigarette, snapped out her lighter, leaned her head back. ‘Gauguin, did you say? Van Gogh?’
‘Well?’
‘You’re mentioning them in the same breath as my ex-husband? Oh, dear! Paul, the pretty portrait painter, turned genius. Did I once say you were a poor journalist?’
‘What he was painting in London is gone and forgotten. He’s working now on the raw stuff of life. Of course I can’t prove to you he’s a genius. Of course I’m not certain that his present work is going to be this, that or the other. He’s only just beginning to find himself. But it’s supremely honest. There’s not a trace of the fake or the meretricious about it. And in the time he’s been in Cumberland he’s made big strides … Supposing, just supposing he is good – so good that he’ll have a biography writren about him someday. D’you want the biographer to write: ‘The greed and malice of his first wife were responsible for the short duration of his most brilliant period. Her conduct would have been less inexcusable in a woman of mean intelligence, but having some artistic ability herself …’’ ’
She drew in her cheeks over the cigarette. Her eyes looked sunken.
‘He’s really got you fooled, hasn’t he! You don’t think of my feelings! Paul, the oppressed genius. What a ramp!’
‘I’m only suggesting you should give him a chance by dropping out of his life.’
‘Why should I drop out? To help create a phoney legend—’
‘I’m not trying to create anything. I know there’s your side to the case. But it’s time it was all forgotten, put aside. You can’t go on having vendettas for ever.’
She looked me over, coolly, politely, her lips firm.
‘Because you’ve caught me at home, you suppose I’m sitting here eating my heart out for Paul? What damned stupid nonsense! I live a good life! I live it as I please, not at the beck and call of some man who supposes he’s God’s gift to the world! I’m free, and I’m going to stay free. All I want is that Paul should earn enough to keep me, as well as that timid one-legged bespectacled creature who’s got him in tow now. Let him come back to London and earn what he’s capable of earning and pay me a fair maintenance! When he does that there’ll be no further quarrel between us.’
‘He won’t do that. He’ll stay up there if it kills him.’
‘Then let it kill him! D’you think I care? He emerges from some dirty shop in Lancashire, climbs as far as he can on a trick talent for portrait painting. He battens on to Diana for what he can get out of her. But he can’t marry her, so he throws her over for me. Olive will introduce him here and there. Olive has social connections and will bring him the type of client he wants! Then when he’s firmly established with them Olive can go to hell! She can rot on any convenient slag-heap!’ She twisted her body and stared at me with cold anger.
‘Is that how you really see him?’
‘Has he ever had a thought in his life except for himself? Name me one!’
‘There’s other—’
‘Why should I bother to underwrite his daubs and experiments? Look at this place! Now my father’s died my mother loses part of his pension and can afford little enough for me. So unless Paul does the right thing I’m going to have to give it up!’
‘Why dont you work?’
‘What at? My paintings don’t sell, as you damned well know! What else am I useful for? Assistant in a ladies’ dress shop? Teach the Theory of Art at a local day school? Design Christmas cards? Go and live with my mother and nurse her headaches as well as my own? … Not while Paul is alive, dear! Not while he’s quietly putting money away and pretending to starve—’
‘He’s not putting money away. I can assure you of that.’
She got up and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Oh, you can throw dust in the judge’s eyes, but don’t try it on me! What about the clinging Holly? She has money of her own, and everything he makes now goes into her name. Don’t think I don’t know how these things can be worked!’
‘They’ve sold practically everything to pay you’, I said.
‘They did. Oh, I’m sure they did. Can you imagine dear little Holly saying in her fluty tones: ‘‘Paul, dear, we can’t afford a new car this year because we have the alimony to find.’’ Can you imagine a normal woman, let alone a scarecrow with a tubercular hip? …’
She stopped at the look on my face. With an effort she took control of herself.
‘I’ve told you to go once.’
‘You’re d
ying’, I said. ‘You’re dying of malice and envy and hate. It’s killing you. For God’s sake try to come alive again.’
I went then without looking at her again. I went out into the little box hall and ran down the stairs into the street.
There was no more to be done.
Chapter Twenty-One
In a café in Fleet Street hard by the entrance to Chancery Lane I met the discreet Mr Rosse and took tea with him. He ate three large muffins specially plastered with butter, and while we talked he delicately licked a finger-tip.
‘I’m beginning to believe you, my dear Mr Grant’, he said. ‘The first Mrs Stafford has a combative side to her nature which will be hard to overcome.’
‘This maintenance business’, I said. ‘There must be some remedy to the complaint, surely. A man like Mr Stafford may have an income which fluctuates between very wide margins year by year. One year he may earn two thousand, the next he may not make two hundred, especially during this transition period. What’s to prevent the woman from bringing a summons every time his income goes up, thereby forcing him to bring one every time it goes down?’
‘In principle, simply nothing at all.’
‘But in practice?’
‘In practice? Well …’ Mr Rosse stirred his tea with the little finger of the right hand raised. ‘In practice it wouldn’t be worth her while. In practice the – lawyers concerned do their best to save the money of their respective clients by coming to a compromise agreement which is as nearly fair as possible to both parties.’
‘Yes’, I said. ‘That seems very reasonable. And in this case—’
‘Three weeks ago I proposed to the lawyers acting for Mrs Stafford that I would be pleased to submit to my client any reasonable compromise proposal they cared to send me. Their answer was that, acting on the instructions of their client, they were not prepared to submit or consider a compromise proposal. And I have since heard, strictly inter nos of course, that Mrs Stafford threatened to change her solicitors if they persisted in advising her to settle.’
I bit at a piece of toast with none of Mr Rosse’s refinement. ‘That means, practically speaking, a court case every year. The woman’s beside herself with jealousy. You can’t reason with her and you can’t bribe her. You can’t get at her at all. We’re kicking against a brick wall, Mr Rosse.’
The solicitor nodded. ‘I have only met Mr Stafford at the High Court hearing. He strikes me as a difficult man to prescribe for. One can only offer advice.’
‘And I can only pass it on.’
Mr Rosse finished his muffins, stared at his plate. I ordered some more.
‘If I were in Mr Stafford’s position I’d simply come up for the next hearing and defend myself. Let him say that he cannot afford a barrister; that will immediately emphasize his position vis-à-vis his first wife. Then if the judgement goes somewhat against him, as it must if he has earned over a thousand pounds this year, let him default on his payments. Let him make no effort to pay. Let his wife summons him again. Let her go on issuing garnishee orders. It’ll keep her well occupied. It’ll keep her amused. It’ll cost her a pretty penny. It’s really a question of staying power. In the end she’ll get tired. After all, in cases like this, it is usually the husband who comes off best in the long run.’
I nodded. ‘Very good advice. The trouble is you’re not prescribing for a normal man. He wouldn’t come down and defend himself in court – I’m pretty sure. Nor would he tolerate bailiffs knocking on his door. Olive Stafford has more staying power than he has, and she’ll last the course if it finishes her. It’s much more likely to finish him instead.’
‘Failing anything else’, said Rosse, ‘it might be worth the trifling expense to employ an inquiry agent. One never knows what one is going to find. And naturally there is a dum casta clause in the maintenance agreement.’
‘What the devil is that?’
‘A clause making it a condition of the payment that the wife shall remain chaste. Very necessary and right.’
‘I think it would be a waste of money. You could try it but I think it would simply fail. Olive is – an unusual creature. She’s really very pretty, and can be charming; but she’s as unlovable as granite. Even if she ever took the time in her exhausting social life she’d be scrupulously careful to cover her tracks. She’s not altogether sexless, of course, but I believe she hates giving way. She resents being possessed. There are insects, aren’t there, in which the female kills the male afterwards. There’s something of that in her nature.’
Mr Rosse was looking at me interestedly. ‘ She’s probably had affairs. But to get her remarried is the best solution.’
‘No doubt.’
‘Surely she would prefer some trifling loss of independence to the uneasy debt-ridden existence of a divorced wife?’
‘You have to remember that until a year ago she was getting an allowance of two thousand a year. Every prospective husband hasn’t that to offer.’
‘No. A reasonable view … You say when you went to see her she was perfectly determined to go on with it, laid all the blame on her husband, I suppose?’
‘Yes. All.’
Mr Rosse began another muffin.
‘Well, she’s not – hm – unusual in that respect anyway.’
II
For a while nothing. All this time my own life was going on, full and exacting and satisfying. In the country the financial crisis had mounted and a National Government formed under Ramsay MacDonald. Another idealist corrupted by the establishment. Or another hothead discovering the hard facts of life. Depending how you looked at it. Thank God I no longer had a responsibility to report it.
One in three Americans was out of work; six hundred banks had closed their doors; the skyscrapers were proving useful platforms for suicide; dispossessed householders camped in broken shacks on the sides of rivers; former industrialists begged the price of a meal.
I sold my Morris Minor and bought a Wolseley Hornet, the first small car brought out by that distinguished firm, the smallest six cylinder ever. One and a quarter litres. A new radical design, pushing the engine far forward over the front wheels. I didn’t keep it long enough to discover all the bugs: that the valve springs were too weak, that the tiny cylinders suffered excessive wear, that its ‘twin-top’ gear was occasionally valuable for overtaking but was no use whatever on gradients because there was not sufficient power.
A play was in rehearsal to open shortly at Drury Lane called Cavalcade. St John Ervine in the Observer wrote of Coward that he was ‘a faithful representative of the spirit of his time. If we wish to understand some of the youth that grew to manhood in the War, we must take a good look at Mr Coward, in whom the gaiety and despair of his generation is exactly mixed. He has no faith in life here or hereafter …’
P. Steegman had just painted Somerset Maugham, a commission which almost certainly would have fallen to P. Stafford if he had still been functioning. There was talk of an award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to John Galsworthy.
I had a girl-friend called Jane Bowker, with whom for a few months I thought something important and serious for us both was growing. But always I found myself not totally lost. Often I thought of Holly in Cumberland. And often I thought of Olive in Clarendon Gardens. Maybe I was always doomed to live other people’s lives more urgently than my own. It is perhaps a failure of personality, which accounts for so much.
As autumn approached I had another letter from Holly.
‘Paul has been away for five days. This, I know, should be in capital letters. He had a letter last week to say that old Dr Marshall, your one-time headmaster, was dying, so he packed a bag and went. I had a woman in to sleep; but I’m not in the least afraid of being alone here. When you get to know it the valley isn’t eerie any longer.
‘I was turning out a suitcase yesterday and came across the photographs taken in the old Patience. What a crazy scheme of ours to come home in that little leaky cutter!
‘Do you remember a d
iscussion we had, you and I, in the saloon of the Patience right in the middle of the bad weather? It was a deep one, about religion and God and seasickness, and having something to believe in, though it never really got going. But I did feel in those days that life had been examined too closely for my good. It wasn’t that I couldn’t see wood for trees; but I couldn’t see the trees for the wood. Life in a thoroughly well-run, well-explained universe just wasn’t attractive.
‘Things have changed a bit since then. Not that I see things much more clearly, but the perspective is better. For a long time now I’ve watched a man struggling to express his personal view of life, which he alone can feel. That has knocked holes in the scientific explanations.
‘Not because Paul’s pictures are necessarily good. I wonder if you see what I mean, Bill? The man with the one talent is just as good an argument as the man with ten, so long as he uses it. If I were starting a religious revival I should put down as a first law that it is the business of all of us to create something to the very highest level of our ability, whether that something is a symphony or a cake, a home in a city or a pair of shoes, a cathedral or a field of corn. Aren’t such people the people who are happy? And don’t we all, by the act of producing something which has not existed before, show a sort of kinship with the something which made us?
‘Here endeth the first lesson. Not very impressive; but I feel there’s a sort of personal truth for me wrapped up in it. Be kind enough not to laugh.
‘Paul has been doing two pictures with the palette knife for a change. He uses the PK like a workman using a trowel for building a house. I want him to send you one.’
‘I had a letter from Bertie last week; my first this year. No thought of returning home. He seems to be the happiest of any of us.’
On the back of the letter, written in pencil was a postscript.
‘By the way, I’ve come to the conclusion I’m going to have a baby. About March. Perhaps this fact has a hidden influence on the prosy part of this letter. After all, if a girl can’t start a religious revival once in her life …