The Merciless Ladies (29 page)

‘Well, Mister Grant', she said. ‘Hm – well …'

Maud and I had disliked each other from the start. I asked after her mistress.

‘Oh, up and down as you might say. Attacks of nerves and can't sleep. Like her mother that way. Just nerves, I say. Things upset her too easy. We came back from Cannes last month.'

‘You're still in Clarendon Gardens, I suppose?'

‘Oh, dear, yes. Just had it redecorated. Not before it was time, I'd say. And got rid of some of that white furniture. Shows every mark.'

‘Your mistress doing any painting?'

The scornful expression on the woman's face deepened.

‘Mrs Stafford ain't well enough to spend all her life before an easel. And she's plenty of more important things to do.'

‘I'm glad to hear it.'

‘Good life, yes; she's more invitations than she knows what to do with. What with week-ends in the country and first nights and the rest.'

‘You reassure me. It needs a strong constitution to stand up to that.'

She turned her head towards the window with a sharp movement. The bus ground along.

I felt pleased at having provoked her, but a little disturbed.

‘One gets out of touch with things. Is Mrs Stafford thinking of marrying again?'

She gave an irritable shrug. ‘She don't confide in me. You'd better ask her about it yourself, Mister Grant, hadn't you?'

‘I will', I said. ‘One never knows.'

‘Once bitten, twice shy, I should say.'

‘That's the way. Keep her to that view, Maud, and you're safe enough.'

I left the bus, with the satisfaction of knowing that I had rubbed her up the wrong way. But tempering that satisfaction was a sense of disquiet as to who was paying for the expensive refurnishing and redecoration.

It was high time to take up that long-standing invitation to Crichron Beck.

II

The following week there was a chance of a break, so I set off in a little car I had just bought. It was one of the first Morris Minors, Sir William Morris's reply to the immensely popular and successful Austin 7, a direct challenge in the small car market. It seemed ideal for getting about London. It cost £125 new.

I spent a night in York and decided to go in by the Langdale road and over the Wry Neck Pass. The road past the Pikes is pleasant enough, with the sharp green little mountains rising almost from the fringe of the road. After asking several times I was directed through a couple of gates and a farmyard and began the long slow climb over a bumpy road between narrow stone walls. This goes on for some time before one reaches the pass proper, which in fact seems to be no pass at all but an ill-made track over the shoulder of the mountain. Twice my engine boiled, and once there seemed some danger of the car side-slipping on the greasy mud over the edge and into the field a few hundred feet below.

When the summit was reached, the mountain tops, so much more impressive than their real height, brooded and gloomed. One didn't feel one had much right pottering about up there among the clouds and the silence. The descent was not fierce but the surface was bad and crossed a number of watercourses. One came down into a shallow cup of a valley, largely barren but with a few clusters of trees dotted among boulders and cairns. In the distance was a grey stone-built, slate-roofed cottage, with another small stone house about half a mile beyond.

A stream ran beside the cottage and several elm trees clustered behind. A woman was in the garden playing with a dog. It was Holly.

As the sound of my engine reached her in the great empty silence she looked up, shading her eyes with her hand. Then she saw the car and ran indoors. Presently she came out again with a man in his shirtsleeves, and they both peered up. I blew my horn, with a sense of apology for the noise. The echo came back from the opposite hill. They waved.

It seemed ages then, traversing the bumpy road, before I reached the cottage. The dog ran up barking. I recognized his russet brown snout. He was Ethelred, that cocker spaniel who had disgraced himself in the drawing-room at Newton on the afternoon when I had discussed Holly's marriage with Lady Lynn.

III

They had spent money on the house, and everything was painted light to give an added sense of airiness and space and cleanliness. Some of his furniture had been brought here and also the best of his ceramic ware. Upstairs they had knocked two bedrooms into one to make a studio for Paul. The furniture was covered with chintzes and the curtains were of the same material. Whatever it had been at the time of their first visit, the cottage wasn't gloomy now.

Nor even dusty and untidy like Newton. Compelled to do her own work, Holly had developed some latent housewifely sense which kept the place neat and clean.

Of course the valley was eerie. No suggestions from Holly were needed. Spring was not far away, but one scarcely heard the song of a bird. The stream was the only commentator, the one never-ceasing voice in a vacuum of silence. The mountain slopes lay quiet and bare, ever changing in mood and colour under the ever-changing sky; cloud and sun, cloud and sun, rain and sun and mist and sun. Black specks of sheep were crumbs on a counterpane which changed patterns away in the distance; a wind now and then moved down the valley; clouds drifted with it bringing soft rain; and through all the empty silence ran the thin, brittle voice of the stream.

But they were not altogether alone. The house a quarter of a mile down the valley was still empty, bur there were three farms within a radius of five miles, and milk and bread was brought to them daily from one of these. Gipsies and crofters passed up the valley.

Paul had become a walker. Every day, in an open-neck shirt, a worn pullover worthy of Sir Clement, and old flannel trousers, he went off, pipe in mouth and satchel over his back, striding across the moors. Sometimes Holly went with him. He smoked constantly but didn't drink at all. He seemed serious, absorbed, more open of manner than I had known him.

As for his pictures, one had no need to ask to see them, for they were everywhere, none of them hung on the walls, but stacked in corners of the kitchen, the living-room, the bedrooms and his studio. He had no regard for them; they were not treated as ornaments but as lumber. Much of his work had gone little further than the sketching stage. But all of it was taken from definite models and all models were recognizable for what they were. There was no question of inventing abstract forms. He seemed to depend closely on his model to help him towards the reality of what he was looking for.

I said to him: ‘The more I see of art the less I'm able to judge it. A few of these appeal to me, but I don't know – whether they're good.'

‘They're rungs in a ladder. But all the rungs aren't a step up.'

‘I've often wondered about you. Do you miss London and its excitements?'

‘Not its excitements. I'm well content up here; shall be more so in another six or twelve months when I begin to get somewhere.'

‘You're not thinking of returning, then?'

‘What makes you ask?'

‘Most of your friends think you will.'

‘What
friends
have I got? Do you think I'm likely to let up at this stage?'

‘Up to this visit I'd reserved my judgement. Now I'd say no.'

‘The only thing which would be likely to influence me to move were if Holly were unhappy.' He turned over one of his pictures and stared at it moodily. ‘ You know, I can't even remember painting this one. I don't look for ideas; they just won't let me alone. Of course this had no merit; it just helped to express something, helped me on my way. That's all they do. I'm too much in a hurry to be able to stop to finish. I miss London now and then, but not often, not as often as you'd think. I've no time.'

I began again to look through the pictures.

‘If you like', he said, ‘pick out a dozen and take them home. They're no use to me.'

I stared at a curious farm scene, seen through the wheel of a cart. It was all suggested rather than shown, in the way that the Japanese by painting a line of blue along a horizon suggest the sky.

‘I might even try to sell them for you. No point in letting them get mildewed and dirty.'

Paul smiled. ‘Would you show them if you were an art dealer?'

‘Well, yes, I think so.'

‘Go on: look again.'

‘All dealers aren't afraid of new ideas.'

‘But they wouldn't buy these. I don't think Leo is a genius, but even if he were, do you think the public would pay money to hear him practising scales? These are my scales.'

‘Why not let the public judge? Your name still counts. You're not an unknown artist struggling for recognition. You're a well-known artist breaking new ground.'

‘With a well-known flair for publicity', said Paul. ‘Well, take 'em if you like. Take what you fancy. Don't think I've come to despise money. I could do with some now. But it's got to be kept in its place – and its place is below stairs.'

I thought he was going on, but the dog came in and he said nothing more. The opportunity to put my questions passed. Well, I would first sound Holly.

Their day was simply planned – almost too simply for one of Paul's hitherto erratic habits. They rose at eight and he worked all day, with a light breakfast and a sandwich lunch. Holly cooked a meal in the evening, and afterwards he sat and read and smoked or dozed while Holly wrote letters or read or did some of the work her father had sent her. They had sold the Chrysler and went once a week to shop in Ambleside on a rickety old motor bicycle and sidecar.

We did a great deal of walking during the three days I stayed with them, over the moors, and sometimes we climbed to tops of the more accessible of the strange, distinguished mountains. We wandered round the dew-ponds and sheltered together under hedges while showers beat on the grass and stones. Clouds followed us and hid us in their damp vapours, so that we had to wait until they were past before continuing on out way. Sun glinted through fine hazes and from sudden patches of pale washed-blue sky. We turned homewards as the sun deepened the shadows between the hills, and ate hungry meals and then sat and smoked and talked before the odorous peat fire. Whether he knew it or not, Paul was recreating as nearly as possible on land the conditions of isolation from material things he had first found in the
Patience
.

Yet to speak of a peaceful and leisurely routine left out of account altogether the ferocious concentration he put into his working hours.

Paul's attitude towards Holly, their attitude towards each other, had crystallized during the months they had been in Cumberland. Paul often wore a preoccupied, morose expression when alone or working – one was reminded of the sullen boy of Turstall days – but that expression never failed to change when he spoke to Holly. Her presence provided him with some sort of reaction which he needed and welcomed. They often joked with each other, but their fun was noticeably devoid of that sub-acid flavour which often characterizes exchanges between married people.

On the morning I was leaving there was a chance at last to speak to Holly. Paul had gone upstairs, leaving us at the breakfast-table.

‘You know Paul has offered me the choice of his paintings to take back to London?'

She nodded and I said: ‘It's strictly a business proposition. Ten per cent on sales.'

‘You'll deserve your full twenty-five', she said, smiling.

‘Well, he won't do anything himself. Someone has to look after him.'

She tapped on the table with her fingers. ‘Before, he was doing something quite different: his painting was honest craftsmanship of which it was ridiculous to feel ashamed. But now … well, he's not painting for money and not painting to please anyone. He's just working out his own – his own future.'

‘Will you help me to choose the pictures?'

‘Of course.'

I swallowed my last corner of toast. ‘Can you manage financially?'

‘We need very little.'

‘For yourselves. But Paul has commitments.'

Her eyes moved to stare out of the window at the low clouds masking the top of the opposite hill. ‘Paul lived extravagantly when he was making money. And then the three lawsuits cost him thousands.'

‘It's this question of Olive. Has he been able to pay her her allowance or has she been content to let it get in arrears?'

‘Olive is the snag.'

‘You mean he hasn't been able to pay her in full?'

‘He's paid her all until this quarter. By selling up Royal Avenue furniture and the rest.'

‘What is it he has to find?'

‘Five hundred a quarter.'

‘My God!'

‘Sh! He wouldn't want me to tell you.'

‘
Tell
me! But it's something that one has to
know
about! It's monstrous – far worse than I ever imagined! What sort of provision did Paul make before he left London?'

‘None, as far as I can make out. He'd become so accustomed to his success that I suppose he didn't think it would end. That's silly, a stupid explanation! … But when you've been making eight or nine thousand a year and 've got a healthy bank balance you don't quite imagine it will disappear so quickly. That's the only way I can imagine it happened. Of course in those days I knew nothing about it. Paul always tried to keep his money affairs separate – away from me …'

‘And now', I said. ‘And now?'

‘Well … Things have been made worse by claims for unpaid income tax in the last two years when he was earning so much. That's all cleared up now. Except for Olive we could manage well. But, with her, it's a hand-to-mouth existence. Very soon we shall have to start selling these.' She made a gesture towards the pieces of ceramic ware. ‘But that'll be the end of our assets.'

‘You
are
a couple of children', I said. ‘Paul far more than you. And
surprisingly
so! He was brought up to count his pennies … That he should have gone this far astray … Of
course
there must be an adjustment. I don't know how it will work, but it must work somehow.'