The Merciless Ladies Read online

  Perfunctory clapping.

  ‘This audience!’ said Holly. ‘ Why do they have a Municipal Orchestra if nobody wants to hear it?’

  I glanced round. ‘People cling to the sun. Like flies to a wall; especially in autumn.’

  ‘No, they say it’s always like this when the soloist’s unknown. Even when he’s better known it’s not too good.’

  ‘One thing. That won’t affect Leo.’

  ‘No’, she agreed, and broke off as a little applause rippled round the auditorium. The composer had made his appearance.

  A dark morning suit, his broad face shadowed with a frown; the fingers of his right hand touched the cuff of his left sleeve as he came to the front of the platform and made a slow bow. He looked like Schubert. At the piano, he adjusted the seat, took out a large handkerchief to mop his hands and brow, nodded to the conductor and they were off.

  I am an occasional concert-goer, but no music critic. I can’t tell whether I like a piece of music by reading the score; I’m not always completely certain whether I’m going to like it on first hearing; I have even known my attention to wander to a fly creeping across a lady’s bare back in the row in front, and that during a Bach programme. So real musicians, Leo included, will not be unduly depressed by the knowledge that I could make little of his first big work.

  They’ll be even less impressed when I say I don’t really like a concerto with an inordinate number of fifths and I’ve always felt that the use of a piano as a percussion instrument is a limited one. After a while I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate that way.

  For Leo was not behaving too well. At every break in the solo part he took out his handkerchief and mopped his hands and brow afresh. He frequently shot his cuffs and sometimes put a hand to his side or his forehead as if in pain. Then he waited like a hawk with hands poised over the keys for his next entry. Leo at school flipping bits of ink-soaked blotting paper at a bust of Gladstone. Leo swimming in the creek at Newton with his head under water, blowing bubbles like a codfish. I thought of him sulky and temperamental in his late teens. I remembered the look of his upturned face when we dragged him out of the gas-filled room in his Euston lodgings. I forgot the music and came back to it and forgot it again.

  When it was over there was a good deal of what sounded like genuine applause. The interval followed, but Holly said: ‘ Sit still. He asked us not to rush round in the middle, and he’s playing some preludes of his own in the second half. What d’you think of it, Bill?’

  I shook my head. ‘Difficult at a first hearing. Deeper than I can go.’

  ‘Pick and shovel needed’, said Paul, who, I could see, had been much irritated by Leo’s mannerisms.

  ‘You’re beastly rude’, said Holly. ‘I thought at one time—’

  ‘What’s Lady Lynn doing over there?’ I asked, seeing a long, pink face at the other side of the hall.

  ‘She wanted to form an undisturbed judgement. She sent Daddy up in the circle. Are you really back for good this time, Bill?’

  ‘It looks like it. And glad to be. You? …’

  Her eyes met mine. ‘ I feel fine now.’

  ‘You didn’t take on an easy job’, I said. ‘Thank God you seem to be making a go of it.’

  ‘I do’, she said simply.

  ‘What are you two mumbling about?’ asked Paul.

  ‘He’s congratulating me on having made you a happy man’, Holly said.

  ‘She hasn’t done that’, said Paul. ‘I was born with a divine unrest. There’s no cure for it except the bottle.’

  ‘Still working hard?’ I asked.

  ‘I haven’t accepted a fresh commission for nearly two months.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Don’t look at me’, said Holly. ‘It’s Paul’s own doing.’

  Paul was studying the programme. ‘Wonder who took this photo of Leo.’

  ‘I suppose he hasn’t been painting any more Diana Marnsetts?’ I suggested.

  ‘Oh, no; he’s been very well behaved—’

  ‘Like a performing seal’, said Paul.

  ‘—But seems to be getting tired of sardines’, she finished.

  The orchestra was filing in again.

  ‘So you haven’t brought home an Italian wife’, said Paul. ‘ Did you leave one behind?’

  ‘By the way’, said Holly. ‘Did you know Leo was married?’

  ‘No! When did this happen?’

  ‘Not many weeks ago. We didn’t know until he arrived in England. He’d forgotten to tell us. That’s his wife sitting with Mother.’

  A dark, pretty girl with black hair and a sulky mouth.

  ‘Good Heavens!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Holly asked quickly.

  Paul mouthed at me.

  ‘Nothing’, I said. ‘For a moment I thought you meant the awful freak at this side. What’s her name?’

  ‘Jacqueline’, said Holly. ‘Her name was Dupaix. She’s a Belgian.’

  ‘Nice looking.’

  ‘Yes’, said Paul. ‘ If I were ever going to add to my famous courtesans, which God forbid, I’d like her to sit as Madame de Montespan.’

  ‘Hush’, said Holly.

  The second half of the concert was about to begin.

  II

  We had tea afterwards in the Pavilion Café, and everybody discussed Leo’s concerto. Fortunately Leo was impervious to criticism.

  The little Belgian sometime teacher of dancing greeted me gravely and without sign of recognition. Perhaps she didn’t remember me from the brief interview we had had at her door seven years ago. Now she was the wife of a composer, the perfect young matron. Any other life was forgotten, and with the instinct of her race she would settle down and order his life and have children and save money. I wondered if they had been in touch with each other all this time.

  Leo sat at her side, aloof and gloomy, deeply conscious of the pearls he had been casting before – well, the uneducated. His hair curled over the back of his collar and he wore a black cape thrown carelessly about his shoulders and fastened with a large gold clasp. The only person he listened to with any show of interest was his mother.

  ‘It has its points’, she was saying, pulling at the brim of her disreputable hat. ‘It has its points, Leo. There’s design in it. One can see the bones of a well-thought-out structure. But you must remember that a musical sentence is not a juggler’s stick to be turned any way and twisted inside out. Very well in moderation, but carried too far you lose dignity and achieve only inebriety. Well, Bill, how pleasant to see you again! Why haven’t you been over for the week-end recently?’

  ‘It’s a long way from Rome’, I said.

  ‘Are you still there? Nice of you to come all this way for Leo’s concert.’

  I congratulated Leo. He waved my remarks aside. ‘It’s practice, you know. Gives one an insight into the mentality of provincial audiences.’

  ‘Those antics’, said Lady Lynn. ‘I’d almost forgotten. Most distressing. You must get out of them. Take a course of Yoga, I was afraid for you. What do you say, Paul?’

  ‘I enjoyed the concert’, said Paul. Leo glanced at him but his expression didn’t change.

  ‘It only shows’, said Sir Clement. ‘I’m not really musical so there was a lot I couldn’t follow. The man I was standing next to in the gentlemen’s lavatory seemed very pleased with the whole thing. Personally, the orchestral dissonances put me off.’

  ‘Come to dinner on Saturday’, Holly said to me.

  ‘I’d love to but I’ve agreed to spend the week-end with Pennington – that’s the editor, you know. This is a new departure for me. From Foreign Affairs to Eng. Lit. is a jump. I’ll be free by Thursday. Would that do?’

  Paul frowned at me, his eyes searching mine. There was an added sensitivity, a certain look of strain. ‘We’ve bought this cottage in the Lake District and we’re supposedly leaving on Wednesday. The whole thing’s been badly stage managed.’

  ‘Well, I’ll still be here
when you come back. It’s going to be hectic for me these first weeks.’

  The chatter went on around. I suddenly felt apart from my friends. Apart, a stranger and lonely. In Rome it didn’t matter. Here … well, Holly and Paul were sufficient to themselves. So were the others. So was I for that matter. We each went our own way, bent on particular ends …

  A few moments later I got Paul alone and said: ‘What do I hear about Olive? She hasn’t married Sharble?’

  ‘He welshed on her. He was cleverer than I was and saw the danger signals in time. Mind you, it’s hard luck on Olive in a way. She’d have made the perfect MP’s wife. I gather they went on some sort of cruise, and he met this other girl, Elizabeth something, and when they got back to London it was never the same between them. Then he just wrote Olive a letter …’

  ‘So now the poor little piggy got none.’

  ‘No … I hear she’s been ill, but whether it’s something serious or just an emotional thing I don’t know. Anyway I’m grateful to Sharble for making the right motions at the right time. Otherwise I would never have been free.’

  Holly came towards us.

  ‘What’s happened to your limp?’ I asked.

  She laughed. ‘Last year I met Dr Gorstone, the bone man, and he said half the trouble was simply habit in walking, so he sent me to a friend of his who taught me to walk. That’s all. Paul was furious.’

  ‘Not literally ragingly furious’, he said. ‘Merely irritated. I want Holly to remain as she is without surgical or other improvements.’

  ‘In one week we go back to Paris’, the new Mrs Lynn said. ‘There Leo is the great success. The French are so much more advanced. We have a little apartment, so small, but just big enough. We sleep beside the piano. You must come and see us, Madame Lynn.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that’, said Lady Lynn. ‘Paris is so improving. We’ll go there together, Clem. Ill buy a new hat.’

  ‘Hm’, said Sir Clement, drinking tea.

  ‘I haven’t been to Paris’, said his wife, ‘since the year Eddington spoke to the Royal Society on Electromagnetic-gravitational geometry. All I remember is the policemen standing like inverted Y’s blowing whistles and people rushing about in tumbrils.’

  ‘You mean the buses’, said Leo.

  ‘And’, said Lady Lynn, ‘I remember a man in a cap stopped Clem and offered to sell him some obscene postcards.’

  ‘Did he buy them?’ Paul asked.

  ‘I tried to engage him in conversation’, said Sir Clement, ‘I was interested in his mentality. But he didn’t seem to appreciate my efforts and ran down a side alley.’

  ‘When I make some money’, said Leo, ‘I’ll rent a decent flat and you can stay with us. But anyway, there’s a passable little hotel round the corner. Of course it isn’t fashionable Paris.’

  ‘Perhaps we could put off going to Cumberland’, Holly said in an undertone to Paul. ‘The first week Bill’s back … And there’s no special hurry.’

  ‘I should be very upset if you did that’, I interrupted.

  Paul smiled. ‘We’ll leave on Saturday week instead.’

  III

  I’d given up my old place, so temporarily was in a grander service flat in Red Lion Square. There to my surprise I found Holly waiting on the following Monday evening about seven. The porter said she’d been waiting an hour, and I was apologetic as we went up in the lift. Nothing wrong, I hoped.

  She shook her head.

  I led her in, apologizing for the mess of books, magazines and newspapers that festooned the living-room. Coming back like this and being put in charge of the literary page of a daily … One had to take in a great deal in a short time.

  ‘You needn’t talk’, she said, ‘to put me at my ease.’

  ‘Sit down’, I said. ‘ Then I shall believe you.’

  She obeyed, pulled off her hat, shook out her hair. We both sat quietly, waiting for each other for a moment or two, neither speaking. I went to the side table.

  ‘Get you a drink? Excellent brand of soda water, with or without lemon barley. Or do you go in for the hard stuff now?’

  She smiled across at me. ‘I would have rung you, but I didn’t know till the last minute. Paul began painting about five, and then I knew I could slip out without his noticing.’

  ‘Some dread secret?’

  ‘Not really. But I wanted to see you privately and try to explain things.’

  I offered her a cigarette, but she again refused. ‘Well, we’re private enough here’, I said.

  She seemed not to be listening. ‘I only wanted to tell you that we are going away on Wednesday after all, and to tell you why.’

  ‘Because you arranged to, presumably.’

  ‘Yes, but we’re such old friends. It doesn’t seem good enough – at least not without the fullest explanation.’

  I sat on the chair opposite her. ‘Well, don’t take it to heart, Holly. You’ll be back.’

  ‘That’s the question.’’

  ‘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 c
ome 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.’