England Made Me (14 page)

It was true. He was not cut off in the white-panelled room, behind the vase of autumn roses; his prosperity was like a studied insult. He has not asked me to sit down, he is afraid for his tapestry chairs because my coat's a little wet. ‘A dinner's a good thing,' Minty repeated, filling up time while he thought of some story, some joke, some rumour to leave the Minister less happy than he found him.

He said: ‘I saw your book was reviewed in the
Manchester Guardian
.'

‘No,' the Minister said, ‘no. Really. What did they say? I never read reviews.'

‘I don't read poetry,' Minty said. ‘I only saw the headline: “A Long Way After Dowson”. Did you say,' he went on quickly, ‘that you'd been buying some of the new Krogh stock? You ought to be careful. There are rumours about.'

‘What do you mean? Rumours. . . .'

‘Ah, Minty gets to hear a thing or two. They say there was nearly a strike at the factory.'

‘Nonsense,' the Minister said. ‘Krogh was here at tea. He advised me to buy.'

‘Yes, but where did he go afterwards? That's what everyone's asking. Did he have a telephone call?'

‘He had two.'

‘I thought so,' Minty said.

‘I bought a good deal of the last issue,' the Minister said.

‘Well, well,' Minty said, ‘there are rumours. Nothing that you can get hold of. They may send the price down a little, of course, but you can't expect every flutter to turn out well. Besides, you're a poet. You don't understand these things.' Minty chuckled.

‘What are you laughing at?'

‘“A long way after Dowson”,' Minty said. ‘You can't deny that's neat. Trust me always to tell you things. A diplomat can't be expected to know what's happening in the streets. But trust Minty.' He dripped his way towards the door. ‘I'm always ready to help a fellow from the old school.'

In the long white passage he paused under the portraits of Sir Ronald's predecessors; in their ruffs, in their full-bottomed wigs, painted by local artists, they had a touch of un-English barbarity, a slant about the eyes purely Scandinavian, their breast-plates obscured by furs. Behind a Stuart courtier could be seen a pair of reindeer and a landscape of mountain and ice. It was only the later portraits which bore no national mark at all. Wearing official dress, knee-breeches and medals and ribbons, these models represented an art internationalized at the level of Sargent and De Laszlo. They were much admired, Minty knew, by Sir Ronald who would soon join them on the wall, and an unusual tenderness mingled in Minty's brain with the more usual bitterness, a tenderness for the framed men in wigs who had indeed been cut off, though not so completely cut off as he was cut off, a tenderness for the paintings which Sir Ronald called ‘curious'. He walked gently to the door, leaving a trail of damp footmarks down the silver grey carpet, and let himself out.

The rain had stopped, an east wind drove the clouds in grey flocks above Lake Mälaren, and darts of sunlight flicked the wet stones of the palace, the opera house, the House of Parliament. The motor-boats passing under the North Bridge scattered spray which the wind caught and flung like fine rain against the glass shelters of the deserted restaurant. The naked man on his wet gleaming pedestal stared out over the tumble of small waves towards the Grand Hotel, his buttocks turned to the bridge and passers-by.

Minty went into a telephone-box and rang up Krogh's. He said to the porter: ‘Is Herr Krogh still at the office? It's Minty speaking.'

‘Yes, Herr Minty. He hasn't gone out.'

‘Is he going to the Opera tonight?'

‘He hasn't ordered his car yet.'

‘Get me Herr Farrant on the phone if you can.'

He waited a long while, but he was not impatient. On the dusty glass of the box he drew little pictures with his finger, several crosses, a head wearing a biretta.

‘Hullo. Is that Farrant? This is Minty speaking.'

‘I've just been out buying glad rags,' Anthony said. ‘Shoes, socks, ties. We're for the Opera tonight.'

‘You and Krogh?'

‘Me and Krogh.'

‘You seem to be as thick as thieves. Listen. Could you get me a line on this strike they've been talking about?'

‘He's not what you'd call a ready talker.'

‘I can get you a good price for a story.'

‘Do we go fifty-fifty?'

Minty smudged out with his thumb the face, the biretta; he drew another cross, a crown of thorns, a halo. ‘Listen, Farrant. This is my livelihood, it's my bread and butter, why, Farrant, it's even my cigarettes. You've got a good job; you don't need fifty-fifty. I'll give you a third. Honestly I will.' Almost automatically he crossed his fingers and relieved himself of the responsibility for a broken promise. ‘You'll take a third, won't you?' He prepared to plead further, his voice took on the tone of a small boy hanging round a tuck-shop door who begs his seniors to treat him to a piece of penny bun, a section of chocolate. ‘Really, you know, Farrant' – but Anthony took him completely by surprise, granted him everything. ‘Why, I'll only take a quarter, Minty, if it's like that. Good-bye. I'll be seeing you.'

Minty stood with the receiver in his hand wondering: What does he mean by that? Isn't he going to play square? Is one of the others after him? And he felt a harassed jealousy of the horde of shabby men who waited like himself outside Krogh's, bribing the porter, watching doorways when Krogh dined out, going home themselves late and hungry to their fourth-floor lodgings on the further bank. Has Pihlström got hold of him? Beyer? Has Hammarsten bought him? He saw Pihlström in his mud-splashed suit trying to work an automatic with foreign coins. He saw Beyer shifting the mats from under his beer-glass to his neighbour. He saw Hammarsten . . . . You can't trust them, he thought, you can't trust them. He hung up the receiver, drew the flat of his hand over the haloes and crosses, and stepped out into the grey autumn afternoon.

A spot of lunch, Minty? It's the first day of the financial month: a letter from the family; a new reference at the top of the solicitor's note; I've teased the editor and I've teased Gullie and I've teased the Minister; surely a small extravagance would be timely: a spot of lunch. But duty first, Minty, always duty first.

He rang up the newspaper and told them to have a photographer outside the opera-house.

And then lunch.

But again he was detained. A church claimed him. The darkness, the glow of the sanctuary lamp drew him more than food. It was Lutheran, of course, but it had the genuine air of plaster images, of ever-burning light, of sins forgiven. He looked this way and that, he bent his head and dived for the open door, with the caution and the dry-mouthed excitement of a secret debauchee.

4

Anthony felt conspicuous until the lights went out, but he didn't care a hang. He knew he looked well in evening dress, even when it had been bought ready-made. There were two empty seats on his left-hand and two empty seats beyond Krogh. They were deliberately isolated in the fourth row; the two seats immediately behind them were also empty. Anthony began to calculate how much it cost Krogh to go to the theatre.

‘Do you often come here, Mr Krogh?' he asked, glancing upwards at the glittering and tiaraed boxes, the curiously out-dated atmosphere of the house: shoulders and diamonds and grey hair; a woman studied them with a lorgnette. It was as if they were taking part in some traditional ceremony reserved to age.

‘Every first night,' Krogh said.

‘You must be musical,' Anthony said.

The Royal Box was occupied; the King was not present (he was abroad playing tennis), but the Crown Prince sat there with his wife and patiently exposed himself to Stockholm society; it was his duty so long as the lights were up to be seen. The interest of the theatre was divided between the box and the stalls where Krogh sat, between rank and money; Anthony got the impression that money won.

‘Do you know each other?' he asked. ‘I mean do you know the Crown Prince?'

‘No,' Krogh said, ‘I've been once to the Palace, to a reception. I know his brother.'

The dowagers watched them greedily when they spoke, a bowing of tiaras, a flashing of opera-glasses; a grey little withered man with a bright ribbon across his shirt-front bowed and smiled and tried to catch Krogh's eye. Anthony, looking up at the Royal Box, saw that even the Prince was watching them. It was curious to think that Krogh was probably the only stranger whom the Prince knew by sight. The square intellectual face was bent towards them with patient interest.

Both men were tired, but Krogh's tiredness gave an impression of physical exhaustion. His evening dress fitted him badly about the shoulders; there was a touch of vulgarity in the diamond studs which did not seem to belong to him; it was as if he were wearing another man's clothes, another man's vulgarity. ‘Listen, Farrant,' he said, ‘if I fall asleep you must wake me before the end of the act. I mustn't be seen asleep.' He added: ‘Tuesday is always a tiring day for me.'

The lights of the great central chandelier went out; darkness ran quickly along the edge of the circle, descended on the stalls.
Tuesday
. The violins began tentatively to search for something and could not find it, wavered and despaired.
Tuesday
. A woman sneezed. The light on the conductor's baton-tip darted like a firefly downwards.
Tuesday night
. I promised, Anthony thought, that's tough on her, and the violins caught and held the emotion of regret: for loss, for the pain one gives, for what one forgets. She's dumb; she may have sat round all day. Wavering, lamenting, the cry of a bird over grey commonland, a poisoned draught, irreparable love, death that ends everything, a woman's sneeze again; it's tough on her, stone stairs, ‘no milk today'. She's dumb. Davidge the name, and death the black sail.

The curtain rose; long robes of poison green and purple picked up the dust from the boards; an elderly woman sang shaking blonde pigtails; the footlights glittered on tin breast-plates; a draught of wine was taken and a boat set sail. It was meaningless.
Tuesday
. I'll telephone in the first interval. It makes one feel guilty (returning, false friend, to face King Mark) when they are so dumb, when they fall for one. A kind of innocence; she ought to learn to make herself up properly: the lipstick the wrong shade for that sunburn lotion; she drank the schnaps that day in Gothenburg as if she had never drunk anything stronger than sherry before.

The coloured water in the beaker, the actress with tipped glass, the doped drink, soprano sorceries, this fuss over irreparable love.

It's not a question of love; only when someone falls for one so easily one likes – oh, hell, what, to let them down gently, to do as one would be done by (the remembered sudden pain of Annette's disappearance dwarfed the music, the agony in a sound superficial compared with the agony in a sight, the pencilled wall, the soapy stairs). If she were less dumb, if she had not fallen quite so easily to all those damned silly stories, I shouldn't mind. He looked at Krogh. ‘Mr Krogh.' He shook him by the elbow and Krogh woke.

‘It's getting so noisy,' Anthony whispered, ‘I expect it's close to the end.'

He was right; great gusts of music billowed the purple velvets; stout Vikings strode singing to the footlights; betrayal; the panting breasts of a weeping soprano; my friend; the falling curtain.

‘Do you mind,' Anthony asked, ‘if I slip away and telephone?'

‘No, no,' Krogh said, ‘you can't do that. People will come and talk to me. They'll ask me if I like the thing.'

‘Say that you were too tired to listen.'

‘If only things were as easy as that,' Krogh said, ‘but you don't understand. This is Art. Great Art.' He dropped his voice. ‘I read about it somewhere. It's one of the great love-stories of the world.'

‘No, no,' Anthony said. ‘You've got it wrong. You're mixing it up with
Carmen
.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Of course I'm sure. After all, I was awake, Mr Krogh. Besides, I know the story. This is just about a fellow who sends his friend to bring him back a wife. And there's a mix-up about a drink which is supposed to give people a letch for each other; the fellow's friend and the girl drink it and they get a letch for each other. But she's still got to go back and marry the other fellow. You can't call that a great love story. It's all too fantastic. What did they need to put in all that about the drink for? You don't need to drink anything to fall in love.'

‘You may be right,' Krogh said.

‘Then can I go and telephone?'

Krogh said with sudden suspicion: ‘Is it the Press? I won't keep you a day if you get in touch with the Press.'

‘No, no, Mr Krogh,' Anthony said, ‘this is just a girl.' He began to explain. ‘We had a date together and I forgot about it.'

‘You mean,' Krogh said, ‘you were going out together?'

‘Yes. We'd have gone to a movie or to a park. Is there a park here where you can sit about?'

‘And you'd have enjoyed that?' Krogh asked. He turned in his chair and said in a low voice: ‘You'd take her to the park and – what is it you say?'

‘Neck,' Anthony said.

‘That's the word. I remember friends of mine – oh, years ago – in Chicago.' He said in a tone of joyful surprise: ‘Murphy. O'Connor. Williamson. How odd it is. I thought I'd quite forgotten their names. We were working on a bridge there. That was before I invented the cutter. I don't think Hall was there. Aronstein. That was another name.'