The Merciless Ladies (5 page)

Paul was not jealous, only amused. With a greater sense of responsibility for Leo's welfare, I was a bit anxious and eventually tackled him about it. Paul's affair had at least been discreet. His, being Leo, naturally was less so; and Colonel Marnsett, long-suffering though he might be, could probably turn nasty if too obviously provoked. It wouldn't be a happy beginning, I pointed out to Leo, if he were to be involved in a divorce case at the very outset of his career.

‘I should welcome it', said Leo. ‘Lord, man, d'you think I like seeing her tied to that withered old bounder? If she were free I'd marry her tomorrow!'

‘On prospects and a family allowance?' I suggested.

He flung out of his chair. ‘You know damned well I can't earn more or I would! I'll earn presently. But she has money of her own. Yes, I'd even sponge on her rather than see her tied to him.'

‘What does she feel about that?'

He looked at me with a sort of angry hauteur. ‘Good God, man, d'you think we talk about money when we're together, when every minute's precious?'

‘No', I said. ‘Sorry. But these prosaic details may crop up if you're not careful. I'm only trying to be helpful.'

‘Well, shut up and talk about something else, then.'

Paul smiled when I discussed this conversation with him.

‘Diana's been a good friend to me', he said, ‘but I never got too deeply involved. It doesn't do with her. Actually I
don't
much like the way she's treating Leo. I know she says she's in love with him and all that – but hers isn't the same kind of love. Women are funny that way, I think. You imagine them the most romantic of creatures, but really they're intensely practical.'

‘Speaking from experience', I said.

He smiled again. ‘ Speaking from experience. Also from painting them. A good portrait is a kind of wooing. People begin by trying to hide themselves behind the subterfuge of their best behaviour. But after a while it slips. Of course, it's easier for an artist to see through a woman than it is for a lover.'

‘Diana's having a whale of a time.'

‘Well, Diana is intoxicated with her own beauty. She's no more capable of resisting Leo than a glutton is of taking the biggest and juiciest chocolate. She's become even more lovely this month – have you noticed? But mark you, she's perfectly level-headed underneath. Only let her get some danger signal from the Colonel and she'll drop Leo flat. At least, that's how I see it. I may be doing her an injustice.'

‘All I hope', I said, ‘is that she sees Marnsett's danger signal in time.'

Leo naturally enough was responsible for the sudden termination of the affair. Since talk, argument, deep humourless discussion were the very breath of life to him, could he be expected to keep quiet about the greatest experience of his existence? Not at all. At one time I was afraid he might even write home with details of the whole affair.

Actually little of the truth reached Newton; though such was their inconsequence that one wonders if this news would have shaken the academic calm.

And then, true to Paul's prediction, Diana saw the red light. A concert of Bela Bartok music she had promised to attend found Leo alone and an empty seat beside him. The next day it was known that Colonel and the Hon. Mrs Brian Marnsett had left for a holiday in Scotland.

… We all thought Leo had taken the matter pretty well. After all, it's not pleasant to come up to London, an intense and unsophisticated young musician, to be taken up by one of the most beautiful women of her time and the leader of her set, to have a presumably passionate affair with her, to exchange Heaven knows how many protestations of undying devotion, to bask in the glory of being the one chosen above all others, and then to find when it comes to the pinch that she prefers her husband after all. One needs a cool head, a good sense of proportion and, maybe, a sense of irony. Leo was deficient in all three.

Later I learned that he had written to her every day, having assured himself that her attitude was a manoeuvre to deceive her husband. It kept him going. He even went so far as to deride us secretly for imagining the affair was finished.

But when she returned she refused to see him, and when they met once in public she turned her back on him. It was hard then not to realize that the only victim of one's deception was oneself. I think he convinced himself that everybody was now going to laugh uncontrollably at his downfall. And that was insufferable.

One morning I was sitting at my desk wondering if the League of Nations would be able to prevent war between Italy and Greece over the murder of an Italian general, when I was connected to a professor at the Royal College of Music, who seemed concerned to know whether I was as close a friend of Mr Leo Lynn as he had been told.

‘Why? Is anything wrong?'

‘Well, we're not sure. He's been absent for the last week without explanation or apology. A friend thought you might know where he might be.'

‘No … I suppose you've sent to his lodgings?'

‘They say he's not been there since Monday. We wired his home but they've heard nothing from him.'

‘Oh', I said, frowning my disquiet at the receiver.

‘I'm afraid there's not much left for us to do but inform the police. His attendances, of course, have been irregular for some time, and we're not anxious to raise an unnecessary scare …'

‘Can you give me until this evening? I may or may not be able to help, but I could try. There are one or two places …'

‘Of course. But if you could let us know. I think we must do something more positive by tomorrow morning at the latest …'

When he had hung up I rang Paul and fortunately he was free. He said he'd meet me at Leo's lodgings in half an hour.

When we got there a middle-aged woman opened the door. She had enlarged eyes and a thick neck and seemed indisposed to let us in.

‘Have you no idea where he might have gone?' I asked.

‘He's only in for breakfast usually and I see nought of him besides, except when I goes up to clean his room. And a regular mess it is too. There he sits strumming on ‘ is piano while I pushes the carpet-sweeper round ‘ is feet.'

‘Does he – did he ever bring a lady back with him?'

‘Not if I knew anythink about it he didn't! I don't have no loose behaviour in this 'ouse. But last Sunday Gertie, that's the maid, did see 'im leaving with a young woman, and told me. I was going to tackle 'im with it but I've not 'ad the chance.'

Under pressure she summoned Gertie, who confirmed this information. She had not seen the visitor's face but had heard her speak with a foreign accent.

Nebulous ideas of Diana using broken English to disguise her identity moved through my mind and were expelled. Diana surely would not come to such a place under any guise.

‘May we go up to his room?' I asked.

‘I suppose so. You won't find much there.'

She was right in that the ancient grand piano dominated the rest of the shabby furniture and left little space for manoeuvre. I wondered what her other lodgers said about the noise. Easier to be a painter.

While the landlady was shouting something down the stairs I said: ‘
Another girl
? Surely to heaven he's not been keeping two going.'

Paul shook his head. ‘The Diana affair has been over for all practical purposes for five weeks. He may have been seeking consolation.'

‘The same consolation so soon?'

Paul rubbed his chin. ‘We had a dog at home that used to sit up and beg to Father for his supper every night. When Father was laid up with a broken leg we used to find the dog sitting up and begging to a broomstick that stood in the corner behind Father's chair.'

‘You've got a nasty mind', I said.

Paul wandered aimlessly round the room, staring at himself in the mildewed mirror, smearing a finger with the dust of the mantelpiece, taking in the battered gas fire, the unemptied ash-trays.

He said: ‘Suppose I go down and get Mrs What's-it to let me phone Diana. After all, she might have some knowledge of his movements.'

‘There are some letters here', I said. ‘ D'you think it would be all right to read them?'

‘Please yourself.'

While he was gone I picked up the letters and glanced through them. Presently he came back.

‘Sometimes', he said, ‘ I don't think Diana is a very nice character. I mean is she
really
prepared to give herself to a man and then drop him like a discarded toffee paper?'

‘You prophesied that.'

‘But there are ways and ways. I hold no brief for Leo; I know he's made a fool of himself. What I implied was that when you scratched a woman's security you found underneath a cool common sense, an eye to the main chance, which is not altogether admirable but is certainly excusable. But when you scratch Diana you get granite – or maybe it's cheap flint.'

‘There's nothing in the letters. There's this card: ‘‘
Mlle Jacqueline Dupaix, Teacher of Ballroom Dancing, 4 Markham Mansions, Paddington
.'' I wonder …'

‘Near my old haunts', said Paul. ‘It's not the sort of district Diana would approve of. Bring that card along and let's try Miss Dupaix.'

We bade goodbye to the landlady, who was waiting suspiciously on the steps, and took a tube.

Markham Mansions was even poorer than Leo's address, and we climbed four flights and pressed the bell without much hope of finding the lady at home at this hour. But a girl came to the door and answered to the name we inquired for.

I let Paul do the talking. By this time experience had done far more than tuition or cultivation to give him an easy manner.

Mlle Dupaix was very young, with dark eyes and a sulky mouth and a habit of flinging back a lock of black hair from her brow. She would not admit us, even when our mission was made known, and kept a hand up to the neck of her dressing-gown as if she suspected our intentions.

She made no secret of the fact that Leo had been there, but said he had left that morning. Leo had been sharing her room since Sunday night. She gave dancing lessons both here and in Greek Street, where she had met Leo. She had known him a month. He was very unwell, very upset, suffering from a malaise. He had said he was coming and had come. He had stayed and not gone out. They had cooked their meals together. This morning he had said he was going and had gone. No, she did not know where. Possibly home; who could tell? Now, please, she was busy.

We stared together at the door where a moment before her dark, sulphurous but attractive face had been.

‘Is she telling the truth?'

‘Yes', said Paul.

‘I got that impression too.'

We went down the stairs.

‘Well', I said, ‘Leo's particular broomstick isn't a common prostitute.'

‘No, indeed', said Paul. ‘A distinctly uncommon one. I'd like to paint her as Madame de Montespan. I've always wanted to paint Madame de Montespan.'

I glanced at him. ‘Yes, what is this idea you've got?'

‘What idea?'

‘Someone told me you were thinking of painting a series – famous courtesans, they said. Using, I presume, present day models.'

‘That's the idea.'

‘With what end in view?'

‘What end could there be except the usual? To exhibit. Probably to sell. It seems to me an interesting notion.'

I kicked some mud off my heel. ‘It isn't exactly a forward step, is it?'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘Well … it's
illustration
, isn't it? It's not quite the – the creative art I thought you were aiming at.'

‘You'll sound like old Becker soon, Bill. Serving God and Mammon etc. Anyway that objection is
rubbish
. Plain
rubbish
. What about Rubens and his ‘‘Rebecca'' and his ‘‘Sarah'', and five hundred other people out of the Bible? What about ‘‘The Last Supper''? Is that illustration? What about Vermeer's ‘‘ Diana at her Toilette''? Or ‘‘Christ in the House of Martha and Mary''? Illustrations? Or Rembrandt's allegorical paintings? Or just a few thousand others?'

‘You out-gun me', I said. ‘Sorry I spoke.'

‘No need to be. But don't join the crap-brigade. There are one or two critics have got me in their sights – I was too good too young. The fact that I'm going to paint a series of high-class prostitutes doesn't accord with accepted ideas quite as well as if I was painting the twelve thousandth allegorical portrait of the Virgin Mary. That's all.'

We had been walking back towards the tube.

I said pacifically: ‘So what's the next move about Leo?'

‘I suppose we could telephone again, see if by any chance we've crossed in the post. Though my general feeling is to let it drop.'

‘We'll telephone', I said.

We entered a nearby call-box and I rang Leo's lodgings. The now familiar voice of Leo's landlady came crackling through the wire.

Who? Mr Who? Never heard of him. Oh, Mr Lynn. Yes, he'd just come in, just after we'd left. See him? No, she hadn't seen him. She knew his footsteps. Speak to him?

The line faded out, became clear again. Speak to him? Hold on: she'd see.

A long wait. Hullo. Were we still there? She'd been up to his room but he wouldn't come down. Yes, she'd given the name. Well, there it was; it wasn't her business if we'd fallen out over something …

Contact ended, and I hung up and explained the position to Paul.

He gave a shrug of impatience. ‘ Oh, blast the fellow; if he wants to nurse his grievance, let him. Anyway, you can phone the school. I'm going home to do some work.'

I didn't move. ‘ I've got a hunch, Paul.'

‘Well?'

‘I'd like to see him.'

‘Well, go and hold his hand if you want to; I've done with the fellow, leading us all over London.'