An Artist and a Magician

by Hugh Fleetwood

  ‘Well I shall be here all weekend, so if you do fall out of bed again, don’t hesitate to call.’

  ‘Oh I shan’t. But I shall be careful. Actually—’

  However before she could start again on the difficulties of remaining vertical, Wilbur thought it was time to change the subject—and to start leading the conversation round to a point where he could, very naturally, bring up the subject of the letter he had received that morning. He did hope Pam would get the picture immediately, without his having actually to ask. She probably would—she seemed in quite good spirits today, and unless she was in a particularly grim mood, she never did make him grovel too much. Just enough of course—but then she was very ancient, and very British, and, as they said, of the old school.

  ‘Have you heard about the drought in England?’ he interrupted. ‘Apparently it’s going to be a disastrous year for the farmers.’

  That should do it, he thought. Because if the roof under which he sheltered was supported by the four columns of capitalism, and if, of these four columns, Jim represented commerce, Betty industry, and Bernard banking, it was Pam who represented the land-owners. She and her family possessed vast estates in England and France, sheep-farms in Australia, ranches in Texas, wheat-fields in the Mid-West and forests in Canada; so that the mention of weather conditions almost anywhere in the world was always of great interest and concern to her, and a subject particularly dear to her heart.

  Strangely enough though, today that didn’t seem to do it. Because Pam merely sighed, said shortly, ‘Oh it’s always a disastrous year for farmers, whatever the weather,’ and went back to sipping her pale and poisonous tea.

  Wilbur sipped his, too, and wondered what else he could try.

  ‘Have you been painting?’ he offered—along with a bowl of strawberries, over which he poured some cream.

  Pam accepted the strawberries, but refused the topic of conversation.

  ‘No,’ she muttered distantly. ‘I don’t think I shall be able to paint for a while. I have arthritis in my right hand, and I find it most difficult to hold my brushes.’

  This was a new complaint, and Wilbur said, ‘Oh my dear’; but he could see that Pam wasn’t even interested in her arthritic hands—nor, for the moment, her painting.

  ‘Actually,’ she said again—and again Wilbur interrupted her.

  ‘I got the most extraordinary brochure from the Royal Horticultural Society this morning,’ he said. ‘I meant to bring it to show you. There were some iris that you would love. I—’

  But Pam, who was glancing disconsolately round her iris-less garden, would be interrupted no longer, or side-tracked onto any other subject but the one she clearly wanted to speak about. She silenced Wilbur by suddenly putting her hardly touched bowl of strawberries back on the wicker table, saying, with un-Pam-like lack of understanding, ‘Ugh, these things are full of maggots,’ and starting, with a great deal of pushing and levering, to raise herself to her feet. Wilbur made a move to help her, but she shook her head dismissively and finished the operation alone. Then, tall and tube-like, poking the ground with her stick, she wandered gingerly up and down the little gravel patch in front of him, and said, for the third time, ‘Actually.’

  Wilbur took off his glasses and started polishing them on his damp shirt. There was obviously nothing for it but to listen.

  ‘I made a decision when I was lying on the floor last night. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, but last night I actually made up my mind. And having made up my mind I intend to act without delay. I mentioned to you on the phone this morning that I should love to go to Australia again. Well, I should, though whether I will or not remains to be seen. But what I have decided to do is leave Rome.’

  She paused, to allow the dramatic announcement time to sink in—which was just as well, because for a moment Wilbur was stunned. He put his glasses back on his nose and stared at the frail swaying woman, cool and pale in her overgrown garden. He felt the sky tremble over his head. Pam leave Rome. Pam leave Rome! She couldn’t. She was far too old. She had been here far too long. They had known each other for too long. She was a part of Rome, just as he was. She was a part of his life. An essential part of his life….

  Before he could say anything however, except, ‘Oh Pam,’ his tall old friend and benefactress continued. ‘There’s no one definite reason. Just a series of small things that add up to an overwhelming whole. First of all, though I hate to admit it, I’m too old to live on my own any longer. It’s ridiculous and hateful to be terrified every time one’s cleaning woman goes away for three days, just in case I fall over and can’t get up. Or what would have happened if that young man hadn’t been in his garden the other week? My voice isn’t very strong, and I doubt if anyone would have heard me call out. I could have lain here all night. And I know I could easily afford to have someone come in and live with me and look after me. But (a) this house isn’t big enough to have people living in, and (b) I’ve always loved it here just because I could live alone. I detest living with people, but if I’m going to have to, I don’t want it to be here where I’d be continually remembering and regretting the days when I was alone. I should become hateful and unbearable. Then let’s face it, the climate here is perfectly beastly. It’s much too damp, which is dreadful for my asthma, and I’m sure that’s what’s brought the arthritis on. And if I can’t or couldn’t paint any more, I might just as well be dead. And then again—though I am old, and I’m going to move because I’m too old to stay here, I refuse to give in. If I did give in, well, I probably would stay here, or take a bigger house or apartment somewhere more in the centre of town, where I could have people living in who would look after me, and I could just lie back and be miserable. But no—’ she raised her head defiantly towards the blazing afternoon sun ‘—I will not give in. I’m going to start a whole new life somewhere completely different. My first stop will be the South of France, where my younger sister lives. But I shan’t stay with her for long. No. I intend to set up my own household, and though, as I say, I will have to have people look after me, that’s a compromise worth making for all the advantages it will bring. And maybe I shall go to Australia. I’m sure Bobbie would love me to. But even if she doesn’t—no Wilbur, it’s time for a new life.’

  Wilbur gazed at her in awe as she positively soared over him now, the whole wild band of the Valkyries riding and rejoicing in her old, drying veins. And even the look—the contemptuous I’ve-freed-myself-so-why-don’t-you, won’t-you, can’t-you look that she cast down on him—was Wagnerian. He had never felt so tired, so grey, so over-weight, flabby, liquor-filled, out of condition, drab, in his life. It was as if Pam had suddenly, vampire-like, sucked his blood, his strength, and all his magic powers. And as if she too were aware of this, Pam went on, as she hobbled slowly back to her chair and began, even more carefully than before, to lower herself into it: ‘But you know Wilbur, I must say if it hadn’t been for you I doubt if I’d ever have found the strength or courage to make this decision. But you’ve always been so encouraging, always given me such hope, always made me realize that life must be lived, not just suffered passively. Must be taken in our hands and transformed. Well that’s what I’m going to do. Transform my life. My whole world. And it’s all due to you.’

  ‘Well, my dear,’ Wilbur finally managed to say as Pam’s outburst subsided at last—as she herself did, into her chair—‘I think it’s wonderful. I mean I shall miss you terribly, of course. But—well—upwards and onwards. Upwards and onwards.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Pam gasped, looking all at once tired out, and sounding more fluty and frail than ever. ‘I’m so glad you approve. I was quite worried in case you vetoed the whole idea, and told me I was a mad old woman.’ She started fumbling in the yellow handbag that hung from her arm, and after a while came out with a little white handkerchief with which she dabbed the sides of her mouth. She gave a little-girl laugh, and added, ‘Well, I probably am a mad old woman, but that doesn’t matter
very much either, does it?’

  ‘Not a bit. And you’re not mad at all my dear. In fact I think—’ and off Wilbur went, having gotten over his shock; giving Pam ideas, making suggestions, advising, amusing, and generally gilding her already glimmering dream. Doing, in other words, what he had always done and what he was so good at doing. Yet as he rattled on, giving the flying old lady shoves even further out into space, he was also leading up once again to a point where he could ask Pam—since this almost certainly would be the last time he’d be able to—to make him a final and most generous loan. A most, most generous one in fact—as, he decided while he talked, he might as well risk asking her for the entire six million he owed the wretched tax department. After all, what were six million lire to her? And if it really was due to him that she had found the courage to make this wild, magnificent gesture—then surely she owed him that, if not more. Much, much more.

  For half an hour he built her up, until he had her fairly spinning. No poet had ever searched more desperately for the right word, no painter tried to find the exact shade, than he worked in that garden, with the sun beating down through the trailing willow fronds, and the wasps attacking the strawberries, Pam’s freckled white arms, and his own sweating forehead. Fantasy after fantasy was tossed into the air, image after image; and he kept them all up there, juggling them with the most incredible dexterity, and never dropping one.

  Till finally he—and he hoped Pam—was ready, and he ended his show with a shake of the head, an irritated flap at a wasp, and a long breathed-out sort of sigh.

  ‘Well my dear, I can’t tell you how much I approve and how I envy you. I’d love to do exactly the same thing. I really feel I’ve had it here. Twenty-five years is long enough in any one place. I feel I’m going stale here and—oh, everything just piles up.’ He paused. ‘Do you know this morning I got a letter from the tax department. It appears I was supposed to pay some sort of special tax on my translations. Have you ever heard such nonsense?’

  ‘Oh, ridiculous,’ Pam snorted. ‘Just don’t give them a lira.’

  If this wasn’t a promising reply, before Wilbur could go on to explain why he would have to pay—after all, while no one would ever put Pam in prison, or confiscate her household goods, or send her out of the country, they just might do it to him—and exactly how much he would have to pay, and that he was absolutely at a loss as to how he was ever going to find a sum like that at a moment’s notice, the old lady had started talking herself again. And if the announcement of her departure had stunned Wilbur, what she said now made that shock seem like nothing more than the very mildest surprise.

  ‘That reminds me,’ she cooed, starting to fumble in her yellow bag once more, but this time coming out with a small notebook rather than a handkerchief, ‘and this is really most awfully embarrassing dear Wilbur, but before I go—I do think we ought to settle our business, don’t you.’ It wasn’t, remotely, a question. She opened the notebook and flicked through it, her 85-year-old eyes as sharp and bright as any efficient young secretary’s. ‘Now according to my calculations, I’ve loaned you some fifteen million lire over the years. I rang up my bank the other day and asked them to calculate the interest on that, but they said it would be extremely difficult what with inflation and devaluations and the changing value of money and all that. So I thought we could forget about the interest. That would be my going away present to you, I thought. But the principal—well, as I say, it’s fifteen million, and I would be most grateful my dear if we could settle at a fairly close date. I do hate to have outstanding business, and I really do want Rome to be a closed book. I want everything to be neat and finished and over. And I know you’ve been doing awfully well lately. Lillian was telling me the other day that you’re fairly weighed down with translations, and that you sold those two nice little Berman sketches most profitably.’ There was an apologetic pause. ‘And I hear that your dinner parties have never been so splendid.’ A sigh, now. ‘I did use to enjoy them so much, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get out more in the last few years. But—I mean I realize that to pay the whole sum in one go might be a little difficult dear, but I thought if we could do it in three lots of five million lire each time, that wouldn’t be too shattering, would it?’

  Trickle trickle trickle peed the cherub into the fountain, and buzz buzz buzz went the wasps.

  ‘It’s not really for me that I’m so eager to get everything settled,’ Pam finally filled the silence with, ‘but I am quite old, and I can’t live for ever, and I am very conscious of the fact that really I am holding everything in trust for Bobbie. It’s for her, really, you see. And I know you think I am fabulously rich, but it’s not true, and after taxes and everything poor Bobbie—I mean, I must safeguard her interests, and I would so hate for there to be any bitterness between us if she discovered that—well, I’d been giving away what is rightfully hers.’

  It droned on in the heat, that upper-class English voice that had been bred in mansions of polished wood and silver, that had been mellowed by centuries of tradition, that had been trained to command in the gentlest of ways, and been made sensitive by dreams of art. But Wilbur could no longer listen, no longer take in the words he was hearing. He was too dumbfounded, too flabbergasted, too hurt and beaten and betrayed even to try to. And this was someone he had thought of as a friend. Someone he had given some of the best moments of his life to, the ripest fruits of his creation. This was someone he had trusted, someone he had believed was basically good, who, despite all the advantages of her birth and upbringing, had managed in one way or another to get on the right side of the angels, and stay there. This was someone he had encouraged, exhorted, arranged shows of her water-colours for; introduced to all the people she would never otherwise have met but whom she professed to admire, worship and adore. And she dared to say that he was doing well, because he sweated out his life-blood every day on vulgar, ignominious translations—for which he was going to be taxed!—and had been obliged to sell those two little drawings he loved so much for a pittance. He was doing well because he gave splendid dinner parties. He had always given splendid dinner parties, always, even when flat broke, and never so splendid as the ones Pam herself had come to! She had heard—of course she had heard, as she sat alone listening to the whining wailing voices of bitterness and envy within her, listening to all those voices that always, only, told her of her own exclusion from a world not all the money on earth could have bought her, and condemned her to a world she had never had the courage to leave, however much she had pretended or even believed she wanted to. A world of falsity and exploitation and dull, crippling mediocrity. Oh, the Honourable Pam. This Regan! This Goneril! And he, the fool, had believed she was Cordelia. Oh the bitch. The cow. The false, faithless hag. He would like to kill her. Stick her head in that fountain and let her drown in cherub’s pee, let her eyes be eaten out by frogs! Let her—

  But since Pam had stopped talking, he did the only thing he could possibly do.

  Which was laugh.

  Not long, or very loudly. Just a quick, carefree laugh to show that it took more than a knife stabbed in his back and twisted round in his entrails to get him down. Fifteen million lire—plus six to the tax department. What was that? What was twenty-one million between friends? Six had been a problem. Twenty-one was a joke.

  ‘Do you know, my dear, I really believe I’m psychic. Because just this morning, just before you phoned and I got that letter I was telling you about, I said to myself, “Wilbur George, it’s time you got your financial situation straightened out.” And I went through all my books seeing who owes me money and who I owe money to, and—well, apart from the fact that everything balances out almost to the nearest cent, when you phoned and said you wanted to talk to me I thought this is it. I’m going to settle everything with Pam. And then I was just going to bring the subject up—in fact I’d just started to—when you started. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it’s quite extraordinary,’ Pam flut
ed, looking both relieved and—what? A trifle disappointed? Or merely apprehensive? Had she wanted a fight? Had she wanted tears and pleas; wanted at last to get her own back on her almost tame sprite who had always been just out of reach in the sunlight where she had longed to play—and felt cheated because even now he had slipped through her fingers? Or had she only been obeying the deepest dullest instincts of her shallow, dull soul—and was afraid that these instincts were being mocked? Who could tell—and anyway, who cared? If it was war she wanted, it would be war she would get. And she should at least know better than to go to war with a wizard. Start a new life indeed. Oh, the vanity of it! He would show her. She would never leave Rome. Never. And she would live long enough to regret that she had spoken to him like this, but no longer. He would concentrate all the most negative powers of his being on this seven foot tube of brittle bones and asthma. And all the dreams and fantasies he had tossed into the air before—he would let them fall to the ground before her eyes. Splat, splat, splat they would go, as they smashed with a squelch at her feet. And she whom he’d sent soaring into space—down she would come. Down face first to earth, to stare at the rank dark mud that was all her portion of that earth. Oh you lunatic Pam, he wanted to shout at her. You should never have done it. You should never have crossed swords with an enchanter.

  While Wilbur was letting himself run on like this, and wondering, at the same time, exactly what legal steps Pam would take when it became apparent to her in a few days or weeks that he couldn’t possibly pay her anything, Pam herself was starting to push up out of her chair again. Wilbur had never seen her so restless, and wondered whether she had felt the power of his reaction—perhaps he really could send out negative waves—or whether she was still feeling—as she had claimed to feel—embarrassed.