The Tumbled House Read online

  “That’s quite the most conventional lie I’ve ever heard you tell.”

  “Joanna, I’m the father of a grown man.”

  “Yes, how is Michael?”

  “Overgrown. But will you?”

  Her gaze slightly unfocused from his, as if she was taking her physical body out of his arms. Her smile faded, lingered at the corners of her mouth. “We’ll see.”

  Neither spoke then for a time in the silence. Her mind was going round and round within a small circle of assembled facts, never straying outside them to glimpse the remoter issues, picking a heady and reckless and slightly sensual way round a central position of loneliness.

  The hall was shadowy when they went out, the stairs in darkness. She said: “I’ll get you brandy. I think I know where there should be some.” She went into the kitchen and unlocked a cupboard.

  He waited for her. He said: “You know it’s true what I said —however much you may scorn.”

  “What?”

  “There hasn’t been anyone like you.”

  She came back with the bottle but he did not move aside. She smiled into his eyes.

  He said: “A thing like that doesn’t happen very often, a fusion, a unity, call it any name. When it does happen it can’t happen to one only. I know it happened to me.”

  “So?”

  “It’s simple reasoning from there on. I can’t claim that you haven’t found it since. I don’t know. All I know is that it couldn’t have been unimportant in your life.”

  “So?”

  “You should be honest with me.”

  She said: “ Darling, you know you couldn’t bear it. Would you like your brandy here?”

  He put his hand on her shoulder, tentatively but firmly. She moved a trifle bur did not withdraw. In her mind at that moment there was no inner position to withdraw to. He kissed her. She put her hands down defencelessly, deliberately.

  He drew her to him, kissed her again on the mouth and neck. She said with a hint of detached mockery: “This is very good brandy.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Fine Liqueur Cognac, vintage 1893.”

  “Don’t drop it,” he said. “Put it very carefully on the floor.”

  Chapter Two

  It was nearly two months later that they all met, two of them for the first time, and all together for the last time; in the penthouse of the Dorchester where Wolseley Dorrit the Canadian pianist was giving a supper-party. An, old friend of the Marlowes, he had flown to England in the same plane as Don for a concert at the Festival Hall, and, being the only nephew of a man with a big stake in Canadian Pacific, he could afford to spend twice his concert fee on entertaining his friends afterwards.

  There amid the Third Empire Messel, with the long windows looking out over the moonlit trees of the park and with the susurration of the late night traffic carried upwards by the breeze, they talked over drinks for half an hour and then went into the glittering dining-room for supper.

  Dorrit took one end of the table and Don Marlowe the other. Don was a strongly-built fair-haired young man with candid eyes and a breadth of shoulder. Explosive was a word Roger had used, and it fitted. Generous, quixotic, with a streak of wry humour, alternately self-doubting and self-confident, at twenty-nine he stood professionally on the threshold between obscurity and eminence, and the frown on his face tonight showed he had not yet made up his mind whether the last three hours had pushed him any distance one way or the other. He was in any case tired after his tour and would have been happier to have gone off somewhere for a quiet supper with his wife, instead of coming to this gilded affair.

  Joanna. Joanna was talking to Dorrit at the other end of the table. Don’s eyes travelled over her composed, beautiful, rather esoteric face to her bare shoulders, her elbow-length green gloves pulled off at the wrists, the swell of her breasts under the silver-grey frock, the narrowing curve of her waist. In this empty mood following the expenditure of spirit of the last few hours, his thoughts kept without impulsion to the main lines of love and desire and friendship.

  Friendship. His eyes moved on and met those of Roger Shorn, who was sipping his wine assessingly. Don grinned at him and Roger smiled back. Further down the table his young sister Bennie was talking to Roger Shorn’s boy, Michael. Odd they had never met before, considering his long friendship with Roger.

  “You are Sir John Marlowe’s son, aren’t you?” said the wife of the Canadian High Commissioner over the fish course.

  “Yes,” said Don.

  “If I were his son I should be very, very proud of his memory. It must have been a shock to hear of his death.”

  “It was. He seemed well when I left. He was just beginning another book.”

  “I read his Crossroads when it first came out. I think it’s done more for the disillusioned young than anything else written in this generation.”

  Don murmured something polite.

  “And it’s good, I think,” she added, “ to be the distinguished son of a distinguished father. I enjoyed the concert tonight just as much as I can say. May I mention just one thing?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re—quite different to meet from what I expected. I mean after seeing you conduct.” She continued in some confusion: “ To meet, you seem so much younger, more unassuming. Less commanding. I do hope I’m not offending you by saying this.”

  “I’m due for the psychiatrist any day,” Don said. “Then it’ll all be winkled out.”

  She looked at him seriously and then suddenly smiled. “But you’re joking! … But that’s exactly what I mean.”

  At the top of the table Wolseley Dorrit said to Joanna: “Don is looking good after his trip. I guess you must have missed him quite a lot.”

  “I did,” said Joanna.

  “Next time you must go with him. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate him taking this concert. It made such a difference.”

  In a pause in the general talk the hiss and bubble of the fountain in the courtyard outside could be heard. Hock was poured into Roger Shorn’s glass, and Roger twisted it round once or twice in his long slim fingers before putting it to his lips. A moderate wine, a Reisling Spatlese, he thought, but not a good year, probably ’ 54. One couldn’t expect too much on these occasions.

  Both his partners were occupied, so he was free to look round. He glanced at his host, who was still talking to Joanna Marlowe, and then quickly back at her husband, Don, poor fellow … But lucky fellow. The only one here of real innate gifts, but showing them and growing them too young. The time to achieve success was when it was too late to enjoy it. That way struck an equilibrium in life and so pleased the gods.

  Nearby Roger’s son was talking animatedly to Don’s sister, Bennie Marlowe.

  Michael Shorn was saying: “ I can’t understand why we haven’t met before. Dad’s known your brother and your father for years.”

  Bennie Marlowe looked at him with her wide dark eyes. “Is it so surprising? You are at Cambridge——”

  “Was.”

  “And I am away half my life. You didn’t come to Don’s wedding?”

  “When was that? Two years ago? No. Anyway, it doesn’t so much matter not meeting you until now so long as we make up for lost time.”

  She raised her eyebrows and smiled but did not speak.

  He said: “Don’t you find it an awful bore flying, for a living?”

  “No. I like it.”

  “Well, will you come out with me sometime?”

  “Thank you. I’d love to.”

  “What about Monday?”

  “Monday night I shall be in Istanbul.”

  “What a life! Tuesday?”

  “Tuesday should be all right. But I hate promising when I’m actually on a flight. If I get stuck in Rome it’s expensive to telephone.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of being kidnapped by a Turk?”

  “Not more than by a Greek. And less than by an Italian. Have you met Don often before?”

  �
�Only when Roger has brought him home.”

  “Your father’s very good looking, isn’t he?”

  “Women usually think so. Can we say Tuesday night then? Eight o’clock?”

  “I live in Pond Mews, near the South Kensington Tube. Will you——”

  “Alone?”

  “No, with another girl.”

  “I’ll call for you then. Mind an old and smelly car?”

  “No, I like them.”

  “We’ll do a round of the town. D’you know the Eleuthera? Or the Middle Pocket? I’m practically uncrowned king of night clubs.”

  “I thought you’d just come down from Cambridge?”

  “I was sent down. We disagreed on certain principles.”

  She looked at him again, her expression one of smiling doubt. “Michael, perhaps I should warn you. I love dancing but I hardly ever. I do so many other things that I haven’t time. And I’m not uncrowned queen of anything.”

  “You are now,” he said quietly.

  The waiters, ankle deep in carpet, served the last course. Great rococo mirrors multiplied their activities down interminable but diminishing salons.

  Dorrit said to Joanna Marlowe: “Tell me, who is that talking to Don now? I kind of know his face.”

  Joanna plunged her fork into the foam-covered sweet, but then let the fork lie. “Roger Shorn, the columnist. I thought, as host.…”

  “Oh yes, we were introduced. But when it came to fixing this party I know only eight or ten people in the country so I left it to Don and to my agent to make up the numbers.”

  “It would be Don who invited him. They are old friends.”

  “I guess as a columnist he’s a pretty powerful man.”

  Joanna shrugged. “ I don’t think they get as powerful on this side of the Atlantic, Wolseley. But of course a man like Roger has influence in all sorts of ways. As it happens, he got me my first part in television.”

  “Is that so? Before you married Don?”

  “Oh, yes, a couple of years. That’s his son talking to Bennie.”

  “You don’t say. I shouldn’t have thought he was old enough to have a grown-up son. Tell me, is that sweet not to your liking? Maybe you’d rather have cheese?”

  “Thank you, Wolseley, no. I can’t eat a thing more.”

  Roger and Michael took a taxi back to Roger’s flat in Belgrave Street.

  They were silent for a time while the cab circled Hyde Park Corner and turned into Grosvenor Place. Then Michael said: “Enjoy the evening, Dad?”

  “I bore with it all right. One reaches a stage when experiences which should be exciting are only freshened up if something gives them a new cutting edge.”

  “And that means what?”

  “Applied to tonight it means that the Brahms No. 4 and that dreary Schumann A Minor could only have been really enjoyable if conducted and played superlatively well.”

  “And you didn’t think they were?”

  “I didn’t think they were. Don, for once, lacked finesse, and, as for that little draper or whatever he is in private life.…”

  Michael hunched his shoulders. “ You should put that in your column.”

  “Music criticism isn’t my job.… Did you like Bennie Marlowe?”

  “Very much. I got quite a new cutting edge.”

  Roger smiled. “All right, all right. Michael, keep Thursday free. I have Sir Percy Laycock and his daughter coming to dinner. Laycock’s a millionaire, self-made but unassuming and agreeable. It could be rather important.”

  “What is she like?”

  “I haven’t met her but I believe she’s about twenty-two and quite pretty.”

  “Are you trying to marry me off?”

  “There’s no conscription. But she’d certainly be a match if you fancied her.”

  Michael looked at his father’s pale distinguished face as it was lit by a passing car. He looked like a poet, like Day Lewis or a shaven Tennyson, successful but sad.

  “What have you against Bennie Marlowe?”

  “Nothing at all, Michael.”

  “I detected something in your voice.”

  Roger smiled. “ Go on with you. Think again.”

  The taxi stopped and they got out and went upstairs to a Georgian apartment on two floors. The living-room had dark green panelled walls, with heavy curtains in a striking green and white flowered design flanking the white venetian blinds. Lamps with black drum shades cast light down on polished eighteenth-century surfaces. Not disfiguring the walls were two Italian triptych pieces, a Delacroix pencil drawing, a Dufy sketch. Roger poured himself a whisky and said: “ Take a beer if you want one. I have to phone a paragraph through to the office tonight.”

  “Dad,” said Michael.

  “Yes?” Roger paused with his hand on the door of the study.

  “I hope you won’t think it rude of me if I say, now that it looks as if I shall be in London more or less for good, I should very much like a couple of rooms on my own.”

  “You’ve a room of your own here.”

  Michael shook back his black hair. “It isn’t quite the same. You know how it is. You must have felt the same in your own life.”

  “Well, let’s talk of it when you’ve got a job. It would be expensive, you know.”

  Michael picked up a bottle of beer and opened a drawer in the Sheraton writing-desk. “As it happened I saw a place today that would just suit me. That’s why I mentioned it. And not too expensive. But it would have to be snapped up.”

  “Where?”

  “Roland Gardens. Just the two rooms.”

  Roger said: “ You’ll find the opener in the other drawer.… How much?”

  “Ten a week.”

  “Furnished?”

  “No, but I could borrow enough to make do from friends.”

  Michael opened the beer. He clinked the bottle against the glass and some froth escaped on his fingers. He licked them and put the bottle down.

  “I thought if you could advance me the rest of my allowance for this year.… I’ll get a job soon enough, but I just want a month or so to breathe, to look round. I’d still like to get into engineering.”

  Roger went across and lowered the blinds. The action drew his thoughts away to Joanna for a moment or two.

  “I like you living here, Michael. You’ve only been back two weeks.”

  “I know. It’s—awkward. Of course I’d look on this as discharging any obligation.…”

  “It isn’t a question of discharging an obligation. One doesn’t treat one’s son like a bad debt. And of course I can get you work.”

  “My sort of work?”

  “Maybe. It’s really a question of being able to wait for the suitable thing.”

  “We’ll keep in close touch, of course.”

  Roger considered his son. “ I think you’re putting the cart before the horse, Michael. However, let’s not talk about it now. Lunch with me tomorrow. We’ll consider it then.”

  After the door had closed Michael finished the last of the beer and dabbed his lips. Over the years a rapport had developed between father and son. The various women in the older man’s life had never really come between them, and their liking for each other went deeper than the usual relationship because from the first it was as if the usual relationship had nor existed. There was not often a conflict of wills between them: when it came Roger usually got his way while appearing to concede everything. But in the matter of the flat Michael suspected that his father’s was a token resistance which would give ground under pressure.

  Chapter Three

  The newspapers were delivered at nine on a Sunday. Although it was Don’s turn, Joanna slipped out and made tea, and he did not wake until she tapped the tea-cup with a spoon and slid the bundle of papers under his pillow. He stretched and yawned and smiled his thanks at her, while she pulled back the black-and-white-striped curtains and slid into the other bed.

  “A lovely day.” She arched her back, stretching. “Pour me a cup of tea.”


  He did so. “ It’s good to be back. What did you do with your Sundays while I was away?”

  “I told you. Don’t you ever read my letters?”

  “Did you go down to the Old Millhouse much?”

  “… Just for the funeral, and then a couple of times since. I’m afraid you’ll find it a mess. We didn’t touch more of his papers than we needed.”

  “Did Bennie go with you?”

  “For the funeral, of course. The other times I rang her but she was away.”

  Don sipped his tea meditatively. “ Though we didn’t see a lot of him, something important is missing since I came back.”

  “I know.”

  “You feel it too? I can’t quite get used to the idea of his not being there. Last night I nearly rang him.”

  “I saw him twice just before Christmas. He seemed much the same as always—self-contained, cheerful, as usual more interested in what I was doing than in talking about himself. I asked if he’d like to spend Christmas with me here, but he said he wanted to work. Bennie went down for Christmas Day, and that was the last time she saw him.”

  There was silence for a tune.

  Don said: “ What days are you working next week?”

  “Monday, Tuesday and Friday.”

  “I’d like to get out of London for a bit. I have to see Henry de Courville on Thursday.”

  “Henry? Why?”

  “I gather that George Bratt is quite seriously ill.” Bratt was assistant conductor at Govern Garden.

  “Does that mean they may have something to offer you?”

  “It might. It’s an ill wind.… Of course it would only be temporary; but still.… Perhaps we could go down to Midhurst next week-end.”

  He looked at her, but some trick of the light shadowed the expression in her eyes. “What does Roger say about last night?” she asked.

  Don fished the papers from under his pillow and passed them to her. She opened The Sentinel and turned to page three. “Half a paragraph. The usual thing.”

  “Let me see.”

  While she poured more tea he read it for himself. “Youth had its fling,” she said. “Why be so patronising? And it’s not young for a pianist. If he were eighteen it might be worth remarking.”