And he imagines he can sport a Harrow tie and get away with it. No Captain of Games, no member of the Philathletic Club with a bow tie and a braided waistcoat, would have been capable of a more honest indignation. It was only that Minty had more self-control. The twisting of his arm had taught him it, the steel nibs dug into his calf, the spilt incense and the broken sacred pictures. It had indeed been a long and hard coition for Minty; and when the carefully chosen malicious moment had come for requital, after the correspondence with the chemist in Charing Cross Road, the receipt of the plain packets, it had not been Minty who had flinched, but his accomplice. His accomplice stayed, failed to reach the sixth, became something in the City; it was Minty who left, after long hours with the housemaster, not expelled but taken away by his mother. Everything was very quiet, very discreet: his mother subscribed for him to the Old Boys’ Society.
Ex for All. There was no need to watch Krogh’s now that Farrant was safely inside. Farrant needed money. Farrant sported a false tie. Farrant was safe. But the day, which had begun so well with a letter from the family, must be passed to the best advantage. Tomorrow he would have to remember to keep his mind free from malice and uncharitableness in honour of St Zephyrinus; today he could give full rein to every instinct. St Louis had never done anything to help him. Weak in bed he had prayed to him after he had been drained, but St Louis had not heard; the despised, the forgotten Zephyrinus had replied.
I will see the Minister. And Minty, he told himself with a sly twinkle, what a tease you are. Old enough to know better. A great big tease. He chuckled ingratiatingly to himself, coming out into Gustavus Adolphus’s square, his black coat dripping rain; the grey monarch faced Russia, the rain running from his sword-hilt and the umbrellas clustered like mushrooms under the pillars of the Opera House. Minty and one random taxi had the square to themselves. There’s no real harm in Minty, he thought, planning how he might get to the Minister past the so-efficient Calloway, the army of young diplomats with broadcasting voices.
Calloway nearly shut the door in his face, but Minty was too quick for him. ‘I’ve got to see Captain Gullie,’ he said. He knew the geography of the Legation well, slipped past Calloway, down a white-panelled passage, into the military attaché’s room. The military attaché looked up with a scowl. ‘Oh, it’s you, Minty, is it? What the hell do you want now?’ Self-consciously he twisted his ginger moustache, shifted his monocle. On the desk in front of him lay the bound volume of a magazine.
‘I’m seeing the Minister,’ Minty said, ‘but he’s busy for the moment. I thought I’d just pass the time of day. Busy?’
‘Very busy,’ Gullie said.
‘I thought you’d be interested to hear that there’s another Scotsman come to town. Name of Farrant. Says he’s a MacDonald.’
The back of Gullie’s neck flushed. ‘Are you sure? Farrant. I don’t know the name. You might hand me my clan-book. There it is. Just by your elbow.’ Minty handed the little red book of clans and tartans to Gullie.
‘Of course,’ Gullie said, ‘we Camerons can’t bear a MacDonald. It’s as impossible for a Cameron to be friends with a MacDonald as for a Frenchman –’
‘I had the pleasure of meeting your mother the other day,’ Minty said, rambling round the room with an air of secret amusement. Gullie flushed again. ‘What a marvellous accent. Really one would never know she was German. But tell me, Gullie, you Camerons – what’s your quarrel with the MacDonalds?’
‘Glencoe,’ Gullie said.
‘Well, well,’ Minty said. ‘What are you reading, Gullie?’ He looked over the other’s shoulder at the bound volume of a German nudist magazine. ‘Quite a little pornographic library you have here.’
‘You know very well,’ Gullie said, ‘that my interest’s artistic. I paint ships and the –’ he twisted his monocle – ‘the human figure. Damn it all, Minty, there’s no Farrant here. The fellow must be an impostor.’
‘I may have got the clan wrong. It may have been Mac something else. All those ships yours?’ He waved at the little pictures which hung two deep round the white walls: small ships of every kind, barques, brigantines, frigates, schooners, dancing on bright blue formal waves. ‘Where do you keep the human figure?’
‘I have them at home,’ Gullie said. ‘Look here, Minty. The fellow’s not a MacPherson, nor a Macfarlane, nor a – is he a straight fellow?’
‘No, I shouldn’t think so,’ Minty said.
‘He shouldn’t go about saying he’s a MacDonald.’
‘It may have been Mac something else.’
‘We’ll catch him out at the Caledonian dinner. I’ll spot his tartan.’
‘I’ve come to see the Minister,’ Minty said, ‘about a Harrow dinner. I’d better be getting along. He’ll be impatient. You don’t mind if I use your door, do you?’ He left a little pool of water where he had been standing. ‘So long, Gullie. Stick to ships. Cut out the human figure.’ His teasing tone altered to admit a touch of venom, a scrap of sincerity. ‘It’s so ugly, Gullie, all those protuberances.’ Before Gullie could stop him, he was through the door behind the desk.
Yes, it was ugly, the human figure. Man or woman, it made no difference to Minty. The body’s shape, the running nose, excrement, the stupid postures of passion, these beat like a bird’s heart in Minty’s brain. Nothing could have more stirred his malice than the sight of Gullie pouring over the photographs of naked breasts and thighs. A gang of schoolboys raced through Minty’s mind, breaking up his pictures of Madonna and Child, jeering, belching, breaking wind.
The Minister sat writing among his bric-à-brac at the other end of the deep carpet; Minty closed the door very softly. His eyes were a little dilated. The Minister’s sedate white hair, the pink cheeks lightly powdered after their shave, the grey expensive suit, Minty took them in. He was a little afraid of the force of hatred that Gullie had released. To use powder, to take such care with one’s clothes, to be so carefully brushed, the hypocrisy of it sickened Minty. The body still remained, its functions were not hidden by Savile Row. To think that God Himself had become a man. Minty could not enter a church without the thought, which sickened him, which was more to him than the agony in the garden, the despair upon the cross. Pain was an easy thing to bear beside the humiliation which rose with one in the morning and lay down with one at night. He stood and dripped at the carpet’s edge and thought that at least one need not be so coarse as to love the body like Gullie or hide it under powder and pin-striped elegant suits like the Minister. Hating the hypocrites he waited for the Minister to look up, exposing his shabbiness with a mournful malicious pride. At last he said: ‘Sir Ronald.’
‘Good heavens, my dear fellow,’ the Minister said, ‘you gave me a start. How did you get here?’
‘I was calling on Gullie,’ Minty said, ‘and as he told me you were not busy at the moment, I thought I’d look in and see you about a Harrow dinner.’
‘What an extraordinary thing for Gullie to say.’
‘Of course you’ll take the chair, Sir Ronald?’
‘Why, my dear fellow, it seems such a short time since we had one, and frankly I’m horribly busy.’
‘It was two years ago.’
‘But you can’t pretend,’ the Minister said, ‘that it was a success. Really, it almost developed into a brawl. And some horrid fellow spilt cigar ash into my port.’
‘It would be a good way of putting over this new appeal they’ve sent out to old Harrovians.’
‘My dear Minty, there’s no one recognizes more than myself your really quite admirable work for the school, but one must draw the line somewhere, Minty. The trouble is there are too many soldiers here. Why can’t they learn Russian at home – or in Tallinn?’
‘There’s another Harrovian come to live in Stockholm. At least, he wears the tie. Brother of Krogh’s woman.’
‘That’s interesting,’ the Minister said.
‘He’s in the business.’
‘Remind him to write his name in the b
ook.’
‘I don’t believe he was at Harrow at all.’
‘I thought you said he was?’
‘I said he wore the tie.’
‘What a suspicious fellow you are, Minty. If he wasn’t straight he wouldn’t be in Krogh’s. I’d trust Krogh with my last penny.’
‘Why don’t you?’ Minty said. ‘They pay ten per cent.’
‘Well, I’ve had one or two little flutters in that direction,’ the Minister said. He leant back and smiled with a certain complacency. ‘It’ll pay for my holiday this winter.’
‘But the dinner?’ Minty said. He began to plead quite seriously; he made his wet way across the carpet. ‘It’s a good thing. It keeps us in touch. One evening in the year when one’s not a foreigner.’
‘Damn it all, Minty, this isn’t the Sahara. We’re only thirty-six hours from Piccadilly. You don’t have to be homesick. You can always trot across for a week-end. Look at Gullie. He’s always going over. I prefer to wait and go over for a month at Christmas. It’s the best time of year in England. Though I may take a few days’ shooting. No, you can’t pretend we’re cut off here.’
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 h
ang. 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.’
England Made Me Page 10
