Statues in a Garden

by Isabel Colegate

  ‘Thanks, Reggie. I’ll certainly try. I’m most awfully grateful to you.’

  Perhaps Aylmer thought that Reggie was exaggerating, or perhaps he thought that Philip was sharp enough to cope with Horgan, or perhaps he thought that all stockbrokers were untrustworthy and that it was only to be expected, or perhaps he was merely over optimistic and hoped it would all turn out all right in the end. Whatever the reason, all he did was to say to Philip next time he saw him, ‘Oh, by the way, my inquiries about Horgan didn’t elicit much in his favour. You want to be careful with him.’

  ‘His reputation isn’t the best thing about him, I’m afraid,’ said Philip carelessly. ‘I can handle him, though.’

  ‘I must say he seemed all right to me,’ said Aylmer conciliatingly. ‘Perfectly straightforward, I thought. Typical business man, of course, but the sort of person you know where you are with.’

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Philip.

  ‘I dare say you are quite right to go ahead,’ said Aylmer. Perhaps it was just that he wanted to avoid a scene.

  11

  Cynthia had been to Ascot.

  She had come home early in order to rest before dinner, leaving Violet with her future parents in law, the Moretons. As she opened the door of the flat she heard laughter from the drawing room. She went in and found Kitty, Alice and Philip. They had just finished tea. When they saw her they stopped laughing and stood up.

  She refused the offer of tea and said she would go and take off her hat. A moment or two after she had shut the door she heard their laughter begin again. She sat at her dressing table and slowly pulled out the long hatpins.

  She thought, I am tired, I won’t go back there, the children don’t need me, I will lie on my bed.

  But she sat on at the dressing table, meeting her own gaze, but thinking nothing.

  Soon there was a tap on the door. ‘I am just going. May I come in and say goodbye?’

  ‘Of course.’ She stood up.

  He came in.

  ‘It’s dark in here.’

  ‘Don’t turn on the light.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I like it. It’s soothing. I’m tired.’

  ‘Did you enjoy yourself?’

  ‘Of course. I always do.’

  ‘Then why are you tired?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was hot.’

  ‘Lie down.’

  ‘I am going to.’

  ‘Have you taken off your shoes?’

  ‘Yes.’ She sat on a chair and leant one arm on the back of it. ‘Philip?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know I never interfere. But it is to some extent my responsibility I mean, Miss Benedict.’

  ‘Oh, Alice. Do you know, I rather like her.’

  ‘I had noticed that.’

  ‘She doesn’t like me. She likes Edmund.’

  ‘Edmund?’

  ‘Yes, Edmund. The young heir.’

  ‘But you don’t mean – I mean, she cannot expect?’

  ‘She doesn’t expect anything. She is very docile. All the same I think she is quite attracted by me. She disapproves of me. She’s rather a prig, you know. That’s why Edmund appeals to her. But I think I have a certain sort of dangerous attraction for her. It’s rather a challenge, I suppose. And how shocked poor old Edmund would be.’

  ‘Please don’t talk like that. I don’t understand why you do it.’

  ‘But I never shock you, do I? You only pretend. And I believe that secretly you would be rather pleased if I were to violate Miss Benedict.’

  ‘Philip!’

  ‘In some sort of strange way you would be gratified. It would satisfy that urge towards violence to which you will never admit.’

  ‘You are talking complete rubbish.’

  ‘After all, you want me to be a fine manly man, don’t you, a credit to my sex? You know what happens to sons who never grow out of loving their mothers, don’t you? And as you are always pointing out, you are my mother, more or less.’

  ‘No, I don’t know what happens to them.’

  ‘They take to nameless vices and are absolutely no use at all to a good woman.’

  ‘I think it would be a great pity if any son were ever to grow out of loving his mother, but she is bound to hope he will have no vices at all, even ones with names.’

  ‘Mayn’t he pick his nose? When no one is looking, I mean.’

  ‘I’m tired and I can’t understand you. Please don’t make me wrestle with you in a struggle which I don’t understand. I suppose you are joking. No, don’t answer, then at least I can hope that you are. Go away now. Come and see me again tomorrow in a kinder frame of mind.’

  ‘I didn’t come to see you today. I came to see Alice.’

  ‘Please go now.’

  ‘Yes, Mother. Good night, Mother.’ He moved towards where she sat. ‘Don’t glimmer at me so sadly in the darkness.’ He bent to kiss her on the cheek.

  She took his hand and looked up at him. ‘How is it possible to understand so little someone one knows so well?’

  ‘And loves so much.’

  ‘And loves so much.’

  ‘How indeed? I might look in tomorrow. But you are never here.’

  ‘Come to lunch. The Birrells will be here.’

  ‘No, I want to see you alone I will find you though for myself. I will take you by surprise. Now you had better rest. It is nearly time to dress for the next harlequinade.’

  When he had gone she lay down on her bed. She cried a little, but then she fell asleep.

  Philip went on to see Horgan.

  James Horgan was, as Reggie Mather had reported, an adventurer, but he was not picturesque. He was small and firmly plump, balding, fat fingered and glossy. His nose was blunt and his eyes, his most attractive feature, round and bright. He wore silk shirts but bought ready made suits. The trappings of wealth did not appeal to him. He had imagination, but it was all applied to the making and manipulation of money, the spending of it was of no particular interest to him. He merely travelled first class, stayed at the Savoy, bought silk shirts, and had peaches sent to him from South Africa in the winter. He came from Bradford, but called himself South African. He never thought, walking briskly into the Savoy with a cigar and a camel hair overcoat, If my mother could only see me now. Not that he had anything against his mother, but he had long ago dismissed her from his mind. He had dismissed a lot of people, and things, from his mind it gave him his singleness of purpose. He had such a facility for figures as amounted almost to a mental deformity. They grew and multiplied inside his head until there was no room for anything else.

  When Philip went into his office in Threadneedle Street he was talking on the telephone. It was a small ugly office consisting of three rooms, a central one where the clerks and typists sat and one each for Horgan and Miller. A secretary was sitting by Horgan’s desk, waiting for him to finish dictating the letter which the telephone had interrupted. When he saw Philip he waved her away and indicated to Philip that he should take her place.

  ‘Yes, yes, it’s coming along very nicely,’ he was saying impatiently. ‘It’s no use being in too much of a hurry. Yes, we are going to push it a bit faster now. I know, I know. We shall be clear of everything by then. I’ve got some big buying on hand for this morning, as it happens. Just let me get on with it, will you?’ He put down the receiver, saying, ‘You’re no use in this business if you can’t keep a cool head. Now then.’ He was in his shirt sleeves. ‘Want something to do?’

  Philip nodded.

  ‘You can go down and do some buying for me. There’s a firm called Cape Enterprises, South African mining firm, been going several years, never done much good, quite a big firm, quoted on the London Stock Exchange, they’re going to boom, struck gold. Now if you’ve got anyone who might be interested we can get them some shares at a very favourable price, but it’s got to be done quickly. Know anyone with money?’

  ‘Everyone I know has money,’ said Philip. (This was his manner with H
organ. It was not unsuccessful).

  ‘Well, don’t tell everyone you know. What about your uncle? Want to let him in on a good thing?’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘I’d go into it yourself too if you can. There’s hardly an element of risk in the thing at all. But the news will break soon and then it will be too late.’

  ‘I’ll talk to my uncle as soon as possible. Thanks.’

  ‘I’ll give you the information before you go. Now here’s a buying list. Go down into the market and get some practice.’

  Money, thought Philip in Leadenhall Street, lovely old money. He skipped briskly round an old gentleman in a top hat. Christ I’m going to be rich. Oh Edmund, my dear fellow, I thought you wouldn’t mind if I dropped down for a day or two to show you my new Bentley, and this is Flossie, and Dossie, and, oh yes, Alice – you remember Alice? – quite a transformation, isn’t it? An amusing little dress, Poiret ran it up with his own hands to my design. Indecent? – nonsense, my dear fellow, the latest thing, Empire style, you know. Careful with that luggage – that’s Johnson, my man – got a little something for you, something to embellish the old home, don’t you know. Picked it up in Pans last week – Titian, yes, quite amusing, don’t you think? We’ve come straight from Ascot, little horse of mine won the Gold Cup – yes, wasn’t it a bit of luck? How’s the Bar? Briefs rolling in, I expect? Be buying Titians yourself next, ha ha.

  ‘Ha ha,’ he laughed aloud.

  Poor bloody fools, I’ll show them. Oh my dear old Asquith, what would I do with a peerage? No, no, all I care about is the good of the country. Well, if you absolutely insist – why not? Why not, indeed? And from Leadenhall Street out into Old Broad Street and the City workers going home and the hansoms. What a simple affair life is, an affair of knowing what one wants and of not being sidetracked by inessentials, abstractions, words you have heard but which mean nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Not after Doctor Freud, anyway, not that any of them have ever heard of him, poor outdated meaningless – oh my Christ, why does she love me, what does she mean, love? She doesn’t know what she’s talking about I’ll show her, I’ll –

  The river, the barges, the lamps, the warm dirty smell. Why are there so many people, why don’t they get a move on? A feeble clerk and his anaemic girl. Damn them. Why am I alone? No one knows I am here. Why am I here? Who am I? Why am I excluded? Where are my people? Why doesn’t being alone make me feel proud? Ah damn them, I’ll go and find Cindy. I ought not to have left her like that without a word, I ought to have written ‘Cab? Flood Street, and quick.’ Quick, before I am lost in the crowd.

  They seemed to be waiting for him in a high dark room, portentous Cindy and the painter whose studio it was and for whom she worked, the white faced man with the red beard sprawled across an armchair in the opposite corner, the group of three solemn men who had been talking by the window, and the tall black-haired man in full dress uniform of the 14th Hussars at the time of the Duke of Wellington who was standing superbly alone in the middle of the room. But he was only the landlord who lived in a dream world. ‘I’m going out to dinner,’ he explained kindly. The painter was telling Cindy about his neuralgia she looked in his mouth to find out if it might be caused by holes in his teeth. The three solemn men were talking about how to finance a literary review, and the bearded man was asleep.

  When he had made his explanation the landlord relapsed into a splendid silence. He was a man of property, immensely hand some but deluded. He had a collection of military uniforms which had been left to him by his grandfather. He liked to put them on and wander about the house making quiet battle cries in his deep mellifluous voice. He could tell you every detail of most of the major campaigns of British military history. He sometimes went about the streets of Chelsea in one or other of his uniforms, looking distantly down his fine long nose and humming ‘Marlbrouque s’en va’t en guerre.’ He was widely respected in the neighbourhood for his perfect manners and his habit of scattering largesse without discrimination in the shape of half sovereign pieces. People said of him that he was happy, but his large dark eyes were awash with doubt.

  When Cindy had finished looking into his mouth, the painter said, ‘Hallo Phillip,’ without much enthusiasm.

  Cindy said, ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  The literary men went back to their argument.

  ‘I was passing,’ said Philip, discouraged.

  ‘You can take us out to dinner if you like,’ said Cindy.

  He did. The three men went on talking about the review all through the evening. Towards the end they quarrelled rather badly. One of them went away, saying he could get a job on the New Statesman any time he liked, another said sensibly that he would go home in that case, and the third made a loud and impassioned speech about literary technique to which no one listened. By this time they were in an underground night club in Soho run by an alarming old lady of outstandingly foreign appearance, who pounced on the painter and dragged him towards the door with furious energy, she pummelled him and abused him in some Scandinavian tongue until he left, then she explained that he had looked as if he were going to be sick. The martial landlord, who was still with them, his dinner engagement having turned out to be mythical, stood up and began an elaborately worded protest. She sat him down firmly but kindly and he began to recite poetry.

  The red bearded man, revivified, began to talk about a new heaven and a new earth. Other people joined in Philip and Cindy went back to the two roomed flat in Kensington he had taken when he left the Army. She kept him awake by coughing. He lay with his head full of waking nightmares in which an immense, superbly uniformed figure swayed and loomed and boomed, ‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onward.’

  Philip saw Aylmer. He had arranged to look in at the flat before dinner Aylmer was already dressed for dinner when he arrived. Understanding that this was to be a business discussion, he led Philip into the tiny dark room which he used as a study when he was in London, and offered him a cigar Philip refused, but accepted a Turkish cigarette.

  He explained the advantages of Cape Enterprises.

  Aylmer said, ‘Of course, if it will help you in any way, I will certainly go to whatever figure you suggest. I think the best thing would be for you to have a word with Eldridge about it. He deals with all my financial affairs. Tell him I want to make an investment in this thing and arrange whatever you think best with him. Make it a sizeable investment, we might as well do the thing thoroughly. He’s just sold those houses on Clapham Common that your Aunt Marion left me, so he might as well use that money. He’ll drop me a line about it, I dare say, and I’ll send an immediate answer telling him to go ahead.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Philip. ‘I’m sure old Horgan will be pleased at my bringing in new clients. Indeed I think that’s the object of my existence in his eyes, that and a slightly mistaken idea he has of my respectability – but what I really hope is that it will make a good quick profit for you. That’s why I told you about it.’

  Aylmer rose from his chair, smiling. ‘And why I’m going to do something about it is in the hope of helping you get off to a good start in your new enterprise I’m more interested in that than in a quick profit.’ He stubbed out a half smoked cigar, and said, ‘Shall we see if Cynthia is in the other room? I know she would like to see you before you go.’

  When Philip told Horgan that Aylmer wanted £10,000 worth of shares in Cape Enterprises, Horgan said, ‘If you drop a word to show who they’re for when you’re buying them it mightn’t do any harm, let people know Horgan, Miller act for Cabinet Ministers these days, what?’

  Philip did mention it, thinking he was merely pandering to Horgan’s vanity. But, Horgan was not a vain man. He was concerned only to stimulate interest in the shares of Cape Enterprises.

  12

  Cynthia was listing wedding presents in a pretty vellum bound book adorned with tumbling cherubs and cornucopias overflowing with fruit. Violet had lost count and needed help so Cynthia listed wh
ile Violet at the desk tried to keep up with the thank you letters.

  ‘The Misses Bethell,’ Cynthia wrote, ‘garnet bracelet, Lucy Lady Hampden, four silver and tortoiseshell menu holders, Mr and Mrs Brodrick, 8 vols Kipling’s works, Colonel Stewart, silver and ivory paperknife.’ ‘Violet, Nancy Green is coming in to fit your chiffon blouses, had you forgotten?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Violet. ‘Bother. I said I would go for a ride with Kitty. Never mind, if she comes punctually I might still have time.’

  ‘Have you done the Tamworths?’

  ‘I’m just finishing it. It’s rather gushing, I’m afraid, but it was such a divine brooch that I can’t help it. They are darlings, aren’t they? Anyway Maud is terribly gushing herself, so it won’t matter. There, I think I’ll go up and get ready for Nancy. Then we needn’t waste any time.’

  ‘Yes, I should. Tell them to send her straight up.’

  ‘All right You don’t want to see the blouses, do you? They’re sure to be all right And then I’ll go for a – oh sorry, Granny, terribly sorry – I must rush.’