Gently With the Painters

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Aymas is younger than him, and quite a different brand of coffee. An angry young man, you’d probably call him, though you could substitute “ignorant” for “angry”. He looks like, and is, a farm worker who has taught himself to paint. He’s one of my principal bear-cats and I’m perpetually having to sit on him.

  ‘Baxter is married and has three children, Aymas would like to be thought a Don Juan. He was as thick as anyone with Shirley – she’d got the refinement he admired, you understand. But I doubt if it went any further. Shirley was amused but she wasn’t attracted. As for Aymas, he was satisfied to be thought her favourite – he basked, you might say, in her reflected culture. Incidentally, I left him arguing the toss in the cellar.’

  ‘That brings me to another thing I wanted to ask you.’

  Gently, at long last, had seen enough of the Wimbush fishes. They were curiously bloated and heavy-looking creatures, and though distinguished in detail, still depressingly alike.

  ‘The meeting itself – can’t you tell me something about that?’

  ‘Tell you what, my dear fellow?’

  ‘Wasn’t it noisier than usual?’

  Mallows screwed up his mouth. ‘N-no, I wouldn’t have said so. Just the same old fiddles playing the same old tunes.’

  ‘And what tunes were they?’

  Mallows twisted his mouth again; then he peered up at Gently, half questioning, half amused.

  ‘To kick off with, you’d better have a look at the pictures. They’ll probably tell you as much as I can about it. I’ll just say this … they’re a pretty fair sample. So have a look round, and then tell me what you find.’

  This was something which Gently had intended doing in any case, and after a moment’s silence, he fell in with the suggestion. With Mallows bobbing at his elbow he proceeded from stand to stand, answering with monosyllables and grunts the academician’s exclamations.

  Overall, it was such a mixture as one would have expected to find there, giving the impression of talent fixed between mediocrity and ability. Here and there a picture stood out as though in promise of better things, but one felt, in those surroundings, that such a picture was a lucky hit. There was nowhere to be seen the confident vitality of an established professional.

  Every exhibit, in fact, seemed in the nature of an experiment, and gave no suggestion of powers of reproduction. After a number of failures a fortunate canvas had evolved, but one could sense the inability to command such another. Once a year, there would be one or two to put in the exhibition.

  There was, however, a variety in the scope of the experiments, and this prevented the exhibition from being entirely dull. Apart from Wimbush’s fish there were other unusual lines – Shoreby, for instance, painted geometrical panels, and Lavery postcard-size abstracts.

  ‘That’s Aymas’s rude, raw brush …’

  Mallows pointed to a group of three vigorous landscapes. They commanded a certain distinction by their daring use of primaries, but otherwise Gently could see in them little of interest.

  ‘And yet the fellow has talent, if he ever lets it out. But he won’t while he sticks to understudying Seago … There’s one of Baxter’s posters – a surprising use of purple! – and a Phil Watts interior. He’s the youngster at the desk.’

  At the end of the tour Mallows turned to Gently expectantly, his brushed-up eyebrows giving him an owlish appearance.

  ‘Did you get what I meant, or would you like me to tell you …?’

  Gently grinned. ‘I think I got it … aren’t there two schools of thought?’

  ‘Splendid, splendid!’ Mallows patted him on the shoulder. ‘My opinion of you was never higher, Superintendent. You’ve hit the target first go – we’ve got a split down our middle. It’s tradition versus modernism that rocks the cellar walls.’

  ‘Aymas, Seymour and that lot …’

  ‘Precisely. Aymas is their champion.’

  ‘Wimbush, Lavery and Shoreby—’

  ‘They’re the shock troopers of the opposition. Numerically, Superintendent, the two factions are about the same, but the reactionaries shout the louder and the opposition is the more biting.’

  ‘And your job is to hold the balance?’

  ‘That, alack, is my leading function. On the first Monday of every month I fetch my armour from the cupboard.’

  Insensibly they had drawn back towards the booth of Wimbush fishes, which continued the least frequented site of the exhibition. But now, Gently noticed, they had a periphery of followers – the bored characters, undoubtedly members, who had been listening to Mallows’s address.

  In reality there were but three of them, and they kept out of normal earshot; but they were persistent in their presence and their covert observation. Two of them kept together and exchanged occasional words. The third, a narrow-featured man, stood a little distance further off.

  ‘Was it this split that caused the row … the one you had at the opening, yesterday?’

  ‘What else, my dear fellow? It was a deplorable piece of business.’

  ‘But it centred, I believe, on Mrs Johnson’s exhibit?’

  ‘That was only the spark which ignited the gunpowder.’

  Was there a suspicion of briskness in Mallows’s reply? Gently borrowed a moment while he felt for his pipe and tobacco. The RA, hands clasped behind him, appeared to be reassessing the Wimbush pictures; he had struck an attitude, his feet apart, his head thrust forward towards the canvases.

  ‘In fact, where did Mrs Johnson fit into this set-up – did she side with tradition or was she one of the modernists?’

  ‘Frankly, Superintendent – have you looked through her pictures?’

  ‘I have, but they didn’t answer the question for me.’

  ‘There you are, then!’ Mallows straightened up with a little spring. ‘For my money, you’re a pretty fair judge of these things. And I’m in the same position. I wouldn’t like to try to classify her. Her method was certainly traditional, though her pictures were rank with symbolism.’

  ‘Yet she must have taken a side …?’

  ‘No more she did than did her pictures. She had a talent for sitting on the fence, Superintendent. She was persona grata with both their houses. She could lean in both directions at once. She was an artist doubly committed, and both the factions would have claimed her.’

  ‘And after her death they would come to blows about it?’

  Mallows shrugged. ‘That’s a reasonable theory.’

  ‘One you know to be a fact?’

  ‘Damnation, Superintendent! I’m not a policeman.’

  Suddenly the artist looked about him, seeming, for the first time, to notice their following. He emitted a short, explosive ‘Hah!’ and waved his hands to invite them over.

  ‘I’ll introduce you to a sample, my dear fellow, then you can ask them silly questions yourself. The goat-faced gent is the celebrated Wimbush – him, I know you’ll like to meet in person!’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  GENTLY TOOK HIS tea in Glove Street, still without having returned to Headquarters. The café was a comfortable little haven, as useful for thinking as for eating. With a paper folded beside him he sat quietly puffing his pipe; a second pot of tea had been served him, and over the radio they were droning the cricket scores.

  In all, he’d met four of the Palette Group members, without including their lively chairman. There’d been the youngster, Watts, and the melancholy Wimbush, Seymour, a still-life painter, and Aymas the Ploughman.

  He hadn’t asked them very much, nor seemed too interested in them; he didn’t have the cards in his hand to make a strict interrogation profitable. His principal target had been Aymas, on account of his car, but also because he found him the most original character. And:

  ‘The dead woman, I believe, was a special friend of yours?’

  Aymas’s ruddy complexion had deepened and his brown eyes became more indignant. He was a little over thirty and of a sturdy, large-framed build. He had a handsome if bellig
erent face and a romantic shock of thick dark hair.

  ‘But don’t you run away with the idea …!’

  His hard, loud voice carried the stamp of the broad acres. It rose and fell in country cadences, it was sudden and pungent in driving home a point. Gently had asked him where his car had been parked, and Aymas, triumphantly, had told him that it was in Chapel Street.

  ‘Your slops must have sat there looking at it all the evening – if they’d come out in a hurry, it’d have sent them arse over tip!’

  All the same, Chapel Street wasn’t as remote as was the Haymarket – remembering the footway, in fact, it wasn’t remote at all. Of the others only Seymour had had something direct to be asked him: he was one of those who admitted to leaving the cellar before Mrs Johnson.

  But it was Mallows himself who had most strongly aroused Gently’s interest, sufficiently so to make him want to sit pondering the man. Just now and then one met somebody who stirred one fundamentally – colourful, tantalizing, challenging one to comprehend them. How much lay behind it, that gracefully worn lionskin? What batteries of private emotion lit the façade of public utterance? Mallows had held something back, of this Gently was certain: the academician suspected something which he didn’t intend to communicate.

  Gently remembered Stephens’s hypothesis and his lips parted in a smile. The laugh would be on him if his protégé had made a lucky guess! And perhaps it wasn’t so far out either, that diagnosis of blackmail. Mallows would have a lot to lose if his public character were assailed …

  So absent-minded did Gently become that in going out he forgot his change. A smiling manageress recalled him, and he was not displeased to find that she knew his name.

  He made his way across the marketplace, where pigeons were running among the closed-up stalls. The George III, a building coeval with its name, lifted a picturesque face above the brightly coloured tilts. It was tall and narrow and irregularly built, with handsome bow windows on its jutting first storey. The plasterwork had been painted a smooth pale grey, while the windows and elegant ironwork were a complementing shade of green. It stood on a slope and had a towering appearance, and behind it, softly baroque, brooded the majestic bulk of St Peter’s church.

  In the bar, a few of the stallholders had gathered for a pint and they stared at Gently for a moment as he came up to the counter. The publican, a short man with a finely clipped moustache, wore a tight black waistcoat and was serving in his shirt sleeves.

  ‘Superintendent Gently … can I have a word in private?’

  The publican winced as though Gently had used a rude word.

  ‘You can see I’m busy, can’t you …?’

  ‘I shan’t keep you for long.’

  ‘I’ve heard those tales before! Besides, what else do you want to know?’

  But he put his head round the corner, where he shouted something unintelligible, and after a short delay a barmaid appeared. She had a sulky expression and was still smoothing her hair; the publican, after muttering to her, led Gently into the back parlour.

  ‘It plays hell with my reputation, having policemen keep coming here. You’d think, from the way they do it, that she was knocked off in my cellar!’

  ‘That’s something that I want to see, by the way.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place? We can talk there as well as here.’

  The entrance to the cellar was from behind the bar counter, where a divided door gave access to a landing and a steep flight of steps. There was no need to switch on a light since the room below was lit by grating windows; in fact, apart from the staircase, it bore little resemblance to anything cellar-like. The walls were painted in green and cream and the floor was covered with a patterned lino. To the left, with a screen of dusty twigs, was a hearth and fireplace of mottled tiles. An old piano stood over in the corner and on the wall hung a fraying dart board; the floor was furnished with a few marble-top tables, but a number of chairs stood stacked under a window.

  ‘We call it a cellar, but it’s just another room. On account of it’s awkward to get at, we don’t bother with it as a rule. Then a party comes along and wants to have somewhere on their own … there’s a door into the alley, up that other flight of stairs.’

  Gently nodded an absent response and took a few steps about the room. It was a prosaic enough place, that, for painters to hold their meeting in! The green-and-cream decor gave it a frigid, canteen atmosphere, while the carelessly stacked chairs were suggestive of a store. And in the winter, it couldn’t have been too well lighted for the viewing of pictures …

  ‘Can you hear what’s going on when they’re having a meeting down here?’

  ‘Not unless the door’s open, and we mostly keep it shut. They have so many rows that it disturbs the regular custom – when they want a round of drinks, they come up and knock on the door.’

  ‘But you can hear when they’re having a row?’

  ‘Blimey, yes! You can hear them all right.’ The publican made an expressive snatching motion with his head. ‘But you can’t really hear what they’re saying, not unless you open the top and listen. It’s just a grumbling sound, you get me? Like someone had stirred up a nest of hornets.’

  ‘Was that how it was on Monday night?’

  ‘That’s how it was, and a blessed sight worse. You wouldn’t believe how they carry on – and they don’t drink enough to be anything but sober.’

  Gently pulled down a chair and reversed it for himself – not, like Johnson, to bring him luck, but because he preferred to lean on the back. From up the stairs one could hear the faint squeaking of the beer engine, but of the conversation in the bar not even a murmur filtered through.

  ‘You say that it was worse on Monday night?’

  ‘A blessed sight worse, that’s what I said.’

  The publican also pulled down a chair and, rather awkwardly, emulated Gently.

  ‘Mind you, it started off quietly enough – rather surprised me, it did, at first. As a rule they’re pretty well warmed up by eight, which is just about the time when the regulars come in. But last Monday – no; they were like a lot of lambs. They must be mending their ways, I think. Of course, there was a grumble or two now and then, but that wasn’t anything to what we’re used to.’

  ‘How long did it last?’

  ‘The best part of the evening. There was a darts match in the bar between us and the Bunch of Grapes. Well, they were just coming up to the final throw-off when we heard them letting fly down here in the cellar.’

  ‘What time would that be?’

  ‘Oh, well after nine. We’d had the news on the wireless and then turned it off again. It was just after I’d handed down another tray of drinks – I hadn’t hardly latched the door up when they was at it, hammer and tongs.’

  ‘Who was making all the noise?’

  ‘There you are, I wouldn’t know. But that bloke they call Aymas was bawling as loud as any. Then Mrs Johnson’s voice, I heard that once or twice, and I could hear Mr Mallows as though he were trying to quieten them down.’

  ‘How long did it go on?’

  ‘Up to closing, or thereabouts. Spoiled the darts match it did, they couldn’t concentrate through that. We switched the wireless on again, turning it up to kill the noise, but every time the music stopped you could hear them rumbling away.’

  Gently rocked his chair thoughtfully – this was a slightly different picture! Mallows had definitely tried to give him an impression of something more pacific. It was lively, he’d admitted, but no more so than other meetings. Nothing out of the way had happened – nothing for Gently to poke his nose into …

  ‘Who else was serving in the bar?’

  ‘Dolly, of course. And she’s my stepdaughter.’

  ‘She heard what was going on down here?’

  ‘The whole bar heard it – even the deaf ones.’

  ‘I’d like to speak to her, if you’ll send her down.’

  Dolly was a buxom-figured redhead and she had a prett
y, dimpled face. She came down carrying a glass of beer to which no doubt she had just been treated. Gently motioned to the other chair. She sat down, carefully smoothing her skirt.

  ‘You knew Mrs Johnson, did you, Dolly?’

  She nodded and sipped at her glass of beer.

  ‘Did you ever have occasion to speak to her?’

  ‘Of course I did. I knew the lot of them.’

  ‘What did you think of her, as a person?’

  ‘I dunno … she was queer, in a way. Sometimes she made a lot of fuss of me, other times I was so much dirt.’

  ‘Did you ever meet her outside the pub?’

  ‘Not to speak to nor nothing like that. She’d give me a smile if we met in the street … but only when she hadn’t got anyone with her.’

  ‘What sort of people did she use to have with her?’

  ‘Oh, that lot mostly, one or another of them. She liked Mr Mallows and the dark boy, Aymas, but they all put it on for her – I’m sure I don’t know why.’

  ‘Did you see her with Mr Allstanley?’

  ‘You mean the one who’s going bald? I can’t say I remember that … but then, I didn’t see everything, did I? He’s one of them who lives out, so you don’t see much of him in the pub. But the rest of them often drop in. There’s a couple sitting up there now.’

  ‘Was there anyone she was especially … fond of?’

  Dolly took a thoughtful sip at her beer. ‘No … not unless it was Stephen Aymas, and she was pally enough with him. I used to think she had a weak spot for money … Mr Mallows, and the one who works at the bank. But Stephen, he only works on a farm, so it couldn’t have been money in his case, could it?’

  She gazed up at Gently with naive hazel eyes, appealingly unaware of his being anyone out of the ordinary. Her make-up was heavy and clumsily applied; as though it were a ritual which she accepted rather as a duty.

  ‘You didn’t chance to meet her husband, I suppose?’