Dark Angel (90 page)

“Yes, well, I don’t use that name now. I changed it. For business purposes, see? I’m Cunningham now. I’ve been Cunningham for forty years.”

I thought:
Conyngham/Cunningham.
I thought:
There is another story here, one I shall never know.
He had turned back, meanwhile, to the house.

“It’s weird.” The mid-Atlantic accent, which had wavered, was now firmly in control. “I wanted this place. I waited for years for it to come on the market. I knew it would, in the end. I thought, when it does, see, I’ll buy it. Only …”

“Only now you don’t want it?”

“No. I don’t.” He turned back to me. He gave a shrug. “Can’t say why exactly. It doesn’t … measure up.”

“Well, the house is run-down now,” I began. “I know that. It needs restoration. But—”

“Oh, it’s not
that
.” He gave me a scornful look. “I’d want to do it over, in any case. I had thought, maybe you—I’ve seen your work. Anyway. No point in discussing that. It doesn’t suit. Time is money. No point in wasting either. I have to get back.”

He set off at a rapid pace, to the front of the house and his waiting car. His driver climbed out. He doffed his cap. He opened the rear door.

“Well trained.” Tubbs/Cunningham gave a small tight smile. “But then, I was well trained. I know how things are done.”

He glanced back at the house one last time. I began to see why he might have considered employing me to redecorate this house—a decision that would have had nothing to do with any skills I might have as a decorator. The server, served. I realized for the first time that Garstang-Nott was an irrelevance. It was me that Cunningham disliked.

“You know how many indoor servants there were then?” He gave me a cold glance. “Fifty. Who knows? Maybe that’s what I miss. All that bowing and scraping. Yes, my lord. No, my lady. Three bags full, my lady. You know what I used to be paid to pick up clothes? A pound a week.”

“
With
room and board, I imagine,” Garstang-Nott put in, none too politely. “And it
was
rather a long time ago.”

They exchanged glances of cordial hostility. Cunningham climbed into his car. He made—to me—one last remark before it pulled away.

“Jumped-up little creep,” said Garstang-Nott. “Made his first pile as a black-marketeer, I believe. Rather a crook, didn’t you think?”

I made no reply. I did not share Garstang-Nott’s political or social certitudes; neither did I agree with them. I thought Arthur Tubbs more interesting, and more complex, than that. To be exploited, then to wish to exploit; to seal a business career by purchasing the very house where you once served—I could see the sad logic of that.

I looked at Winterscombe with new eyes. I saw its capacity to transmute, to be valued, in many different ways by many different people. For Arthur Tubbs the house was a revenge for years of servitude; for my grandfather, escaping the taint of trade, a way of obliterating all memory of factories that made bleach. For Montague Stern it had represented freedom and power, a dominion where the outsider could rule, a bequest to a dream-son. To Constance it had been a house of secrets; to my father, an elegy; to me, a shrine to a lost childhood. All of us, I thought, in our different ways, had looked at bricks and mortar and created a chimera.

I could see the danger. I think it was then, looking at Winterscombe, that I determined, truly determined, to let it go.

“It’s not …
as I remembered it
,” Cunningham had said to me, before he rolled up the car window. I was struck by that. Chance remarks can often lead one around a necessary corner.

“Wexton,” I said, when Garstang-Nott had departed and I had gone inside. “Would you mind if I went up to London tomorrow? I want to go to a lecture.”

“Sure,” Wexton replied, in a way that made me immediately certain that he knew which lecture, given by whom, and that he, too, was included in Freddie and Winnie’s benign conspiracy.

Going to my room that night, knowing I would not sleep, I thought of all the versions of the past I had been given: There were as many possible versions as there were people. But there remained one version still unexplored, and one story so far excluded. My own: the past as
I
remembered it.

It was territory long avoided. Only one person, I think, could have persuaded me back there, and it was he who waited for me there, obscured by the practiced evasions of the last eight years.

Oh, yes, I knew where this route led. It led backwards, but also forward, to that man in the laboratory: my American, Dr. Frank Gerhard.

He
cured
people. That was his profession. After taking his medical degree at Columbia, he moved on to Yale, then the Scripps-Foster Institute, where he pursued his biochemical research. His special field was the transmutation of cells, the anarchy or—if you like—the internal wars that disrupt the human body’s equilibrium. He was a biochemist; I was a decorator. You will see now, I hope, why a parting eight years before had easily remained absolute. To meet again required decisive action, on his part or on mine. There was no likelihood of chance encounters. The paths of biochemists and interior decorators do not often cross. He worked in America: I avoided that country. We were both, perhaps, excessively careful; even in the same city accidental meetings would have been unlikely. I regretted this. There had been many times, those past eight years, when (not believing in destiny) I had wished some such force might have intervened and given us—a nudge.

On the other hand, had it done so, I might have been obstinately blind to it. I could be blind—I had been blind when we first met. I met Frank Gerhard through my work, and through my friendship with his mother, the impossible Rosa. I was to meet him again, on several occasions, over several years. That first time I met him, at Rosa’s house, he said two words to me: “Hello” and “Goodbye.” Behind the greeting and the farewell, I thought I sensed indifference, even dislike—for which there seemed no very obvious reason. Five minutes in my company (and that first meeting was as brief as that) seemed enough to make him dismiss me. This rankled. I resolved to ignore his reaction, and him; since he continued to make his dislike plain whenever we met, this was not always easy.

The first time I was unable to ignore him was in 1956. It was early spring. Constance and I were in Venice. Yes, it was the occasion on which Conrad Vickers (part of Constance’s entourage) took that photograph outside the church of Santa Maria della Salute.

Frank Gerhard was in Venice on an errand of mercy. His father, Max Gerhard, a professor of linguistics at Columbia, had died some months before. The visit to Venice had been planned by Frank and one of his brothers (the Gerhards were an enormous family) in an attempt to help their mother, Rosa, through a difficult bereavement. Rosa, grateful and brave but not a good actress, was trying to pretend, I think, that this plan had been a success.

Rosa, attacking grief with her customary energy and with an air of bewildered defiance, was dressed in red. Guidebook in hand, she had just been conducting her family on an exhaustive, very Rosa tour of the church, buttress by buttress.

Constance, Conrad Vickers, and I, together with several other Constance acolytes, had—predictably—been engaged on more frivolous pursuits. The acolytes included Bobsy and Bick van Dynem (then in their early thirties and dubbed the Heavenly Twins by the gossip columns, on account of their fortune and their dazzling good looks); we had just been to visit some distant connection of the Van Dynem family, and were going on from this principessa’s house to Harry’s Bar.

The two groups, one gaily frivolous, the other sadly exhausted, chanced upon one another in the sunshine of a perfect Venetian afternoon. Constance, catching sight of Rosa in the distance, said, “Oh
no.
Too late for evasive action.” Rosa, who had not known we were in Venice, gave a cry of pleasure. She embraced me. She greeted Constance warmly. I drew aside and looked out over the water. The reflections of a beautiful city bent upon its surface; the light was as gold as a Veronese.

“Hello,” Frank Gerhard said to me as, some five minutes later, we lined up for one of Conrad Vickers’s impromptu photographs. My friend Rosa, glad to be rescued from culture, I think, was talking to Constance, whom she had known for many years, Constance’s firm having decorated all of Rosa’s many houses. Vickers fussed and rearranged the group; there was some horseplay between the Van Dynem twins with a Panama hat. Bobsy put the hat on my head and ruffled my hair—I remember that. I removed it and said, a little sharply:

“Don’t do that.”

Constance, who like to pretend that Bobsy van Dynem was a suitor of mine, made a knowing face. Bick van Dynem complained; he said he wanted a drink. Conrad, still fussing, rearranged his group. He placed me first on the edge, in the shadow of the church, then pulled me out into the sunlight again. I found a silent Frank Gerhard by my side. I looked toward the church. The shutter clicked.

I expected Frank Gerhard to say goodbye at once; to my surprise, he did not. He gave the Van Dynem twins a dismissive look, yet he seemed inclined to linger. He edged me away from the rest of the group.

We exchanged brief notes on our respective activities in Venice. Escaping from Constance’s endless round of cocktails and parties, I had visited the Accademia the previous day. Frank Gerhard had been there as well. We must have missed each other by minutes.

This coincidence—not so remarkable in itself—seemed to make him thoughtful. He gazed down at the waters of the Grand Canal. Light, then shadow, reflected by the water, moved across his face. He seemed troubled. I ventured some faltering and inadequate remark about his father. He acknowledged the remark in a brusque way. I risked a few more stilted words; I was, in those days, painfully shy. They elicited little response. I looked at Frank Gerhard in his black suit; I told myself that, no matter the circumstances, he was difficult, brooding, impolite, and (I had noticed this quality in him before) abstracted.

Rosa, meanwhile, was discussing houses with Constance—a subject Constance had initiated. Could she have forgotten that Rosa was newly widowed? It was possible; Constance could be careless about the details of other people’s lives.

“Well, Rosa,” she was saying, “and when is the next move to be? You know, sometimes I think you move house the way other people pack suitcases.”

“Oh,” Rosa said, in a quiet voice, “I won’t move again. Not now. You know—because of Max.”

She gave as she said this a small gesture of distress. She turned away. Behind her back Constance caught Conrad Vickers’s eye; she made an impatient face. When Rosa rallied and began to speak again, Constance interrupted her hastily.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “But don’t let’s talk here. Bick will expire for want of a drink. We’re going to Harry’s Bar. Come with us, Rosa. We’ll have Bellinis.” Rosa’s kind face at once lit up. She had always liked Constance, and probably believed the invitation generously meant. She accepted with some alacrity. I felt sorry for her and furious with Constance. My godmother was socially ruthless. Once at Harry’s Bar, I knew, Constance would find some pretext; Rosa and entourage would be unceremoniously dumped.

Frank Gerhard, too, had seen that glance exchanged between Constance and Vickers. I saw him move across to his mother and speak to her quietly.

“No, no,” Rosa replied. “I’m perfectly fine, not tired at all. Harry’s Bar! I’ve never been there. Thank you, Constance.”

Frank Gerhard spoke briefly to his brother, drawing him aside. The brother took Rosa’s arm. The group began to move off. Only Frank Gerhard and I remained by the church; the gap between us and the Bellini contingent widened.

Frank Gerhard, frowning after them, seemed to come to an abrupt decision. To my astonishment, as I moved to follow the others he took my arm. He said:

“We don’t have to join them.”

“I just thought—”

“I know what you thought. Rosa will be all right. Daniel will look after her. Would you like a drink? There’s a place near here, a quiet place….”

He scarcely waited for an answer. Still keeping hold of my arm, he steered me down a narrow street. We went through a maze of passageways, at a fast pace; we turned through an arch, crossed a bridge.

Neither of us spoke. Finally we reached a small café situated in a courtyard. It was shaded by the branches of a magnolia tree; water fell from the mouth of a stone lion into the shallow basin of a fountain. We were the only people.

“I found this place the first day I came to Venice. Do you like it?” He seemed oddly anxious that I should.

“I like it very much. It’s beautiful.”

He smiled as I said this, and his face was transformed; it lit with an infectious, irreverent amusement.

“You don’t like Harry’s Bar then?” I said, as he drew out a chair for me.

“No, I do not like Harry’s Bar,” he replied. “I do not like Harry’s Bar at all. It is the one place in Venice I would avoid above all others.”

“And you don’t like Bellinis?”

A glint of mockery had come into his eyes: I knew that it was the company he was avoiding, not the bar or the Bellinis, and I think Frank Gerhard knew I knew that. He made no comment however, merely shrugged.

“The painters, yes. The drink, no. However, I’ve earned a drink, I think. This afternoon, at Santa Maria, I believe I saw every window, every statue, every pavement, every altarpiece. I could recite the
Guide Bleu
comments by heart. It’s a very large church—a very large church
indeed.
Very beautiful, too, of course, but after the fifty-sixth buttress …”

“Rosa is indefatigable.”

“She is.” He looked at me solemnly, still with that glint of amusement in his eyes. “However …”

“It helps her?”

“I think so. I hope so,” he replied shortly. “What would you like? Do you like Campari?”

When the Camparis arrived, the rims of the tall glasses had been sugared. I remember that. The drinks were the color of liquid rubies. There were rivulets of condensation on the outside of the glasses, and I fixed my eyes upon these as we talked. I was shy, as I say—used to Constance dominating any social situation, and clumsy at making conversation. I had never been alone with Frank Gerhard before, and I found him intimidating. He had then recently completed his doctorate at Yale (I knew this from Rosa, who was fiercely proud of him) and, for a while I tried to ask him about this, about his work, about New Haven.