The Partnership

by Barry Unsworth

  The doorbell rang again and this time Eric went to answer it. He looked, not flustered exactly – he would rarely look that – but certainly put out. It must have been a distinctly unpleasant experience for him, seeing wave after wave of people entering, not knowing anything about them. And Simon expected any minute …

  The new batch of arrivals seemed livelier. Foley thought it probable they had been drinking somewhere on the way. Now he heard Simon’s name mentioned for the first time by a middle-aged man of dishevelled appearance with glasses and a fair, forked beard. ‘As Simon said to me himself,’ he heard the man say. He was the centre of a small group in the middle of the floor. ‘This boy, there was this boy wearing earrings and a Salvation Army bonnet, and he said to me, Simon said to me – you know that sudden … whimsical way he has – “How camp can camp get?” he said, you know that sudden, whimsical way he has of saying things. I thought it was rather good. On the spur of the moment. “How camp can camp get?” ’ The man laughed delightedly, levelling his pronged beard at people. Some of those listening smiled, but others seemed rather bewildered.

  ‘But why was the boy wearing earrings and a Salvation Army bonnet?’ he heard a plump girl say. ‘And at a camp, of all places.’

  ‘Of course, it’s some years ago,’ the bearded man said. ‘I daresay he wouldn’t remember me now.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Foley said, reaching Graham at last. He could not remember having spoken to a capless Graham before and found the difference striking. Graham drank some whisky, winking over the rim of his glass.

  ‘I borrowed a bicycle from a bloke in the village,’ he said. ‘Well, the bicycle was lying around, so I took it. You never ask the Cornish for anything. They clam up on you. Bloody hard work, cycling. Worth it, though. Plenty to drink here, and some food later I expect.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Foley. ‘I didn’t know you knew Max.’

  ‘He bought a water-colour from me once, years ago. He knows something about painting. And I used to see him sometimes in the pub at Lanreath, before I was barred for using improper language, and insulting the Cornish. I’m barred from every pub in the district now. I worked it out that I’d have to travel twenty-five miles altogether just to get to a pub I’m not barred from. And back again, of course. Twenty-five miles. He’s not a bad bloke, Max isn’t. Doesn’t matter a monkey’s to me what he gets up to, you know what I mean. A lot of these chapel-goers get up to a lot worse. He’s asked me round here once or twice, but I never came before, it’s too far. I thought I’d come tonight, though. It’s by way of being a farewell party.’

  ‘You don’t mean you’re leaving?’ exclaimed Foley.

  ‘Looks like it, boy. Life is getting too difficult here, with these bloody Cornish. And not being able to get to a pub, that doesn’t help. Besides I’ve sold that painting.’

  ‘Not the big one?’

  ‘Yes.’ Graham collected saliva in his mouth and swirled it around for some time. ‘Sold,’ he said without jubilation. ‘Chap came last week, said he’d heard of me from a friend, asked to see the picture. Then he said he’d buy it, just like that. I don’t know who the friend was, I thought it might be Max but he says not. He’s not himself tonight, is he? Standing about fiddling and smiling, not saying anything. He isn’t drinking either, is he? He must have turned over a new leaf.’

  ‘He’s being kept on his best behaviour ready for Simon Lang.’

  ‘Who is Simon Lang? Oh, you mean this mate of his, this actor. I don’t think much of actors. I got three hundred pounds for the picture.’ He turned uneasy eyes on Foley. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without that painting.’

  ‘There’ll be others,’ Foley said, as lightly as possible. He too felt appalled at the selling of the picture. He had never thought of it as a commodity at all, but as a sort of self-perpetuating activity. ‘What will you do now?’ he asked.

  ‘I might go to Belgium,’ he said, ‘stay there for a bit. I’ve always wanted to go to Belgium and see the pictures there. I don’t like the Belgians much.’

  ‘What about that mural you were doing for Bailey? Did you finish it?’

  Graham smiled. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I finished it all right. I’ve had half the money as a sub. I’m not likely to get the rest.’

  ‘Why not? He’ll pay you sooner or later. He’s probably a bit pushed just at present. He owes me money too.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky!’ Graham said. ‘Bailey is in trouble.’ He drained the remainder of his whisky and took a step in the direction of the drinks. ‘Bailey,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘is in the shit. Well and truly. I hear he’s talking about doing me up, but he’ll never get to me. I’m taking the plank up.’

  ‘Why?’ said Foley. ‘What sort of trouble?’ But Graham had stepped out of earshot.

  Max still stood at the far side of the room, not far from the swishing of the drinks, the clink of ice and sussurations of soda, all of which must have been trying for him. However, thought Foley, he probably feels better there than if he were out of sight of the stuff altogether. Eric now, as Foley watched, moved over and stood beside Max, a head taller, incontestably in command of the situation. They spoke together for some time. Eric urbane, Max’s face somewhat puckered, supplicatory. Foley felt sure that Max was pressing for a gin and Eric was stalling him. Eric must have had pretty strict instructions from Simon not to let Max have any, at least till Simon himself arrived; and this, in its inhuman way, was wise, because Max could never have stopped at one drink; once he started he went on and on; and on. By the time Simon came he might have been beyond everything. One could never tell with Max because it didn’t always depend on the amount of alcohol he consumed but on some sort of interior equipoise. So they were right to be careful. It is undesirable, after nearly two years, to be unable to articulate a dozen words coherently to your eminent protector.

  He was moving towards them with some idea of listening to what they were saying, when he found his way blocked by the man with the forked beard, who seemed to have already achieved a measure of intoxication. His glasses were quite thickly misted over as though someone had breathed very heavily on them. From behind these steamy lenses Foley felt himself observed and, returning the look, saw the man’s eyes, dark and strangely inert, like prunes viewed through a plastic lid.

  ‘Hey,’ said this bearded person. ‘Have you heard the latest about Simon?’

  It was at this point that Foley, reviewing the matter afterwards, decided that the whole temper of the party changed. Over the bearded man’s shoulder he saw Moss, bearing down with a certain deliberation on Max and Eric.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Foley said. He sidestepped the bearded man and was in time to see Moss hand Max a large, brimming, gin.

  He saw the look of outrage on Eric’s face, the gratitude on Max’s, and he was near enough now to hear Eric say in well-modulated but pointed tones that Max was on the wagon, didn’t he know? For answer Moss nodded and said cheerio to Max who it seemed had been waiting only for this magic word and now downed the drink in a gulp, without a further glance at Eric, and when this was done stared intently at the empty glass in his hand.

  ‘Go and get yourself another one, Max,’ Moss said, with a quite astounding air of authority. So far he had ignored Eric but he now turned to him, nodding his large head. ‘Did you really think I was going to sit back and let you put Max at a disadvantage with every single person in this room?’ he said.

  It is surprising how quickly people scent discord. Although he had not been speaking particularly loudly, these words of Moss’s fell on a certain hush. Even the bearded man, having now recovered from Simon’s rich humour, seemed aware that something was wrong.

  Under this blow to the authority he had been establishing throughout the afternoon, Eric’s poise was visibly impaired. He said: ‘It’s better for Max not to drink. Surely you know that, whoever you are?’

  ‘Better for Mr Lang, you mean,’ Moss said, i
n the same ponderous way. ‘I don’t see why everything should be made easy for Mr Lang.’ This use of the formal mister, implying a culpable lack of familiarity, clearly put Moss beyond the pale with the other people in the room. An indignant muttering was to be heard here and there. Eric tossed his head. Mortification had fixed a sort of Mephistopheles sneer on his face. ‘You are quite obviously,’ he said, ‘incapable of understanding the situation.’

  Moss regarded him with an increased intensity. ‘If I were you,’ he said, ‘I’d push off back to Swan Lake or wherever you come from, pretty sharpish.’ The physical menace in his voice was unmistakable and Eric did not mistake it. He put a hand on his hip and turned away, flinging the single word ‘charming’ over his shoulder. He retired in good order but Moss’s dangerous stillness made it all look like a tantrum. And Moss was left in undisputed possession of the field.

  Conversation gathered again but with a difference now. People seemed slightly distracted. Moss had driven a breach in the general tone of the evening; he had cut across the mood of adulation and insinuated a discord, the prospect of a scene. Now he remained beside Max, and Foley saw they were talking earnestly, or rather that Moss was talking and Max listening, and disposing of his third – or was it fourth? – gin.

  He glanced at his watch. Ten past ten. Simon Lang was bound to be arriving soon. Foley was wondering where Max had got to when Max suddenly appeared at his side, a different, ginned-up Max, bright-eyed, chirpy, disposed to mockery. ‘So there you are,’ Max said.

  ‘Nice party, Max,’ he said.

  ‘Fine body of people, all friends of friends of friends,’ Max said, and passed a hand completely over his face as though he were wiping it clean of something. Obviously he had been making up for lost time, since Moss set him going. The delay in Simon’s arrival was demoralising several of the guests. The fork-bearded man had sunk to the floor, with his back propped against the wall, and appeared to be asleep. Foley saw with some surprise that he had no socks on.

  Max said: ‘Did you see how Michael put down that Eric? Michael is a wonderful person. Eric is Simon’s current number, you know. Did you know? He always gets his boy friends to run errands for him and do his mopping-up. It’s a sort of training in deportment. Like royal pages. Eric has rather ballsed this one up though, hasn’t he?’ Max giggled. ‘Her Majesty will not be pleased. It could make all the difference to Eric’s career of course, that’s why they all mind so much. They don’t care who they sleep with so long as it gets them forward a bit, do they? I suppose Simon has promised him a part. Still it’s a bit strong, isn’t it? Michael says it’s a bit strong, too.’

  ‘What is?’ Foley asked.

  ‘Well, as Michael was just saying to me, I ought to mind Simon sending down his boy friends to make sure I’m fit for company. Michael says this is insulting to me.’ Tears appeared quite suddenly in Max’s eyes without effecting any visible tremor of his features. ‘Don’t you think, honestly?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure he doesn’t mean it like that,’ Foley said, very carefully. ‘He is trying to protect you. And after all, he is a very busy man, a famous man.’ Saying this he felt a certain malicious pleasure in undermining Moss’s influence. ‘Don’t forget, Max, that Simon is a very well-known person,’ he added.

  ‘Well, of course,’ Max began eagerly, the tears quickly vanishing in the pleasure of discussing Simon’s fame. ‘Well of course, he is famous. In my opinion Simon is a great actor. I would go so far as to say – oh, excuse me, I must see what Michael wants.’ Moss had in fact at that moment made a sort of slow beckoning gesture, like Hamlet’s father’s ghost. Max scuttled back to him at once, and at once Moss began talking to him earnestly. Max again listened, his face seeming to express a precarious composure. Eric hovered nearby, looking both anxious and disdainful. He did not, however, try again to intervene.

  Foley helped himself to another drink. He was beginning to feel that expansiveness that marks the early stages of drunkenness. Also he found that he was enjoying the party very much.

  Suddenly Eric appeared beside him and said, ‘Excuse me, can I speak to you?’ He drew Foley a little to one side, then went on: ‘Look, can you do something with this friend of yours, this Moss person? You did come together, didn’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Foley.

  ‘Well, look at him,’ Eric said in a controlled voice. His face was pale with vexation. ‘He’s simply pouring gin into Max and saying the most ghastly things to him the whole time. All the wrong things. And Simon is due at any moment. I’ve been working all day to keep Max on the rails. Max hasn’t seen Simon for nearly two years and it’s going to be a terrible failure if we can’t get this person away from him. There’ll be a ghastly row and Max will be bitterly sorry when it’s too late. And it will all be your friend’s fault. What is he trying to do, anyway? Is he queer or not?’

  ‘I don’t know what he’s trying to do,’ Foley said. ‘Yes, he’s queer, I suppose.’

  ‘You don’t seem very sure. What about you?’

  ‘No, I’m not, not at all.’

  ‘I see. That’s why you don’t seem to mind how he behaves. I thought, that since you came together … Anyway, I think you ought to go and try to reason with him. Surely he wants to do what’s best for Max?’

  Eric made a scornful gesture that embraced the whole room. ‘Just look at the appalling collection of people he’s got in here. Just whoever was in the tatty lounge bars he goes to. He doesn’t know himself who they are. Simon will be utterly furious when he sees them here. Max knows he comes here to be secluded. Just look at them. There’s a man there who isn’t wearing any socks and a person in a navy-blue sweater has eaten all the cheese.’

  ‘Graham, that would be,’ Foley said.

  Eric’s harassed expression had given way to one of dismay. ‘You don’t know what Simon can be like when he’s upset about something,’ he said. ‘Please see what you can do. I can’t do anything, he snaps at me like a mastiff, my dear, whenever I go anywhere near him.’

  ‘All right,’ Foley said, ‘I’ll try, but 1 can’t promise anything.’ He moved towards where Max and Moss were sitting, stepping as he did so with some distaste over the extended legs of the bearded man. When he reached them he saw they were holding hands. Their two faces turned to him at the same time, Moss’s expressionless, Max’s showing wonder and something like apprehension, like that of a child who has been listening to a gripping fairy story with sinister elements.

  Foley said, ‘How goes it?’ and worked his way round to the side furthest from Max. He began speaking to Moss in low tones. ‘Do you really think, Michael,’ he said, ‘that Max should be encouraged to drink quite so much? You know what he’s like. You don’t want to cause a row with Simon, do you? Eric seems to think that you are upsetting –’ He broke off abruptly, checked by the sudden darkening of Moss’s face.

  ‘Go away,’ said Moss.

  ‘Well, really!’ Foley exclaimed.

  ‘I might have known you’d take their part.’

  ‘I was only trying to help,’ Foley said, wishing he did not sound so plaintive. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Michael, that’s all. You’re certainly not doing Max any good. Simon Lang is all he’s got, you know.’

  Moss glanced sideways at Max’s face before speaking again. ‘It’s a good job for you Max didn’t hear that,’ he said, speaking with almost closed lips, so that the words came out slurred and fierce. ‘Now, go away.’

  For a long helpless moment Foley looked into the other’s face, which so recently had pleaded with him, and wept. It was closed against him now, irrevocably. There was anger and obstinacy in it, and something else, something like exultation.

  ‘Very well,’ Foley said. ‘No one can say I didn’t try.’

  Moss stopped looking at him the moment he began to withdraw. He reached over and with surprising gentleness and dexterity adjusted Max’s tie. While he was doing this Max brought his glass up over Moss’s arm and took a l
ong drink. The moment, in this particular conjunction of activities, seemed symbolical to Foley. He was about to return to Eric and report his failure when the slam of car doors was heard outside. It was an expensive slam. Foley realised that Simon Lang had arrived at last.

  Things happened quickly but at first smoothly. There was a reshuffling and repositioning among the people present. Eric moved towards the door, smoothing his hair. Moss spoke to Max who stood up and broke into a smile. Simon Lang appeared at the door followed at his heels by a barrel-bodied hound with huge jaws and little bloodshot eyes. He stood there for a moment frowning in what looked like surprise. Everybody stopped talking at once and the only sound for some moments was the slight wheezing of the dog. It was an effective entrance.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Simon Lang said, smiling a little, raising his eyebrows, giving them all time to take him in.

  Foley studied the famous features, making the same adjustment as everyone else there to the flesh and blood presence of the actor, after so long an acquaintance with the heroic image. He found it a difficult adjustment to make. Simon Lang had made his name in films, and in the sort of films that featured Simon Lang the concern was always with the character in action, athletic, law-enforcing-or-defying, amorous. Even his static moments were stressful, as when he faced unblindfolded a firing squad, or teetered, monosyllabic, on the brink of a proposal. One never got a glimpse of the banal interludes that take up so much of ordinary life. But here in this room Simon was to be taxed in a different way: he was standing on the same carpet as everybody else and they knew how far from heroic they were. A sudden drop was inevitable. What Foley chiefly felt, apart from this, was that Simon’s features had, as it were, suffered in transition from the pure empyrean, a certain blurring, almost a melting. The famous aquilinity was there of course, the profile passionate and ascetic, that had wet the hankies of millions. But, full on, the face was heavier than might have been supposed. Almost it could be said to have jowls. There was a certain brutality of confidence in it, and the lips were considerably fuller, more everted, than the cosmeticians had ever permitted to appear publicly.