A Use of Riches

by J. I. M. Stewart

  “But one mustn’t hesitate to march with the times.” Craine, who was now sufficiently orientated, spoke with what he hoped would be a dissuasive irony.

  “That’s damned true. But, of course, there are regiments and regiments, after all.”

  “And co-respondents and co-respondents too, you may say. They don’t all wear the same shoes.”

  “Ha-ha! That’s deuced good.” Voysey had no appearance of being offended. “But one has to fake it all up pretty carefully, as I say. One mustn’t give some dirty-minded old judge any chance to take a passing crack at the women involved – our women, I mean. Not the thing, eh?”

  “Not the thing at all.” It’s you who wear co-respondent’s shoes – Craine thought uncharitably as he glanced at Voysey – but I’m damned if your grandfather wore boots.

  “My wife’s been a brick, I need hardly say – an absolute brick.” Voysey paused and looked puzzled, as if repetition had revealed something ambiguous in this image. “But it’s a frightful mess, all the same.”

  “How,” Craine asked with simple curiosity, “were you found out?”

  “We weren’t. I just came to feel, somehow, that I must get it off my chest. And it’s really a ghastly muddle. Not that Jane hasn’t been an absolute—hasn’t been marvellous. Still, I can’t help sometimes wishing that it hadn’t happened at all. All the kids, you know. And so on.”

  “Yes, of course.” Craine suddenly felt a strong and wholesome self-disgust. He resented Voysey as a sham member of his own class. This was absurd, for half the fellow’s kind in the City were just the same. And he resented him – what was not absurd merely, but ignoble as well – because of the way in which he and his Jane Petford-Smith had popped up in Arezzo to spotlight an unbeautiful incipient wandering of his own spirit. In point of fact he ought to be grateful to Voysey for a certain bracing action on that bad day – the day things had come unstuck. “But I expect the worst’s over,” he said. “Jane’s got character – as well as other things. You’ll be all right.”

  “Yes – I’m sure I shall.” Voysey rather pathetically brightened. “And, as I say, we’ve got hold of a good man. Not one of those smart chaps that spend all their time in the Divorce Court. I knew better than to go after one of them. The old fellows on the Bench like to score off them, you know. And you may get one in the eye by the way.”

  The bus swung into the Strand. It wasn’t very clear to Craine how this conversation was to be continued. He didn’t, looking at Jim Voysey’s florid face and indecisive mouth, find himself in command of any further reassuring remarks. “Have you been to Italy again?” he asked at random.

  “No, but I think we’ll go. When it’s all over, that is.” Voysey might have been referring to some protracted attendance upon a deathbed. “What about you, old boy?”

  What, Craine thought, indeed. And aloud he said: “I can’t keep away from that sun for long. A sign of old age, I don’t doubt. And, of course, it’s a bit of a release from the troublesome way things tend to go nowadays. Business things, I mean.”

  “That’s dashed true.” Voysey was as impressed as if an oracle had spoken. “And, of course, the one sort of trouble makes the other worse.”

  “Do you think so?” Craine’s generalising bent made him incautious. “I’ve been wondering, as a matter of fact. Would one’s private world be easier to cope with a couple of generations ago – in Ivy Compton-Burnett’s set-up, say, rather than in Angus Wilson’s?”

  “That’s pretty neat.” Voysey was at least aware that there was some highbrow reference in this, and was flattered at having it pitched at him. “You couldn’t put it better.” He paused and looked sharply at Craine. “How’s Jill?” he asked.

  “She’s very well, thank you.” Craine cursed himself. There was nothing like Jim Voysey’s sort of predicament for giving a fellow a nose.

  “Did I hear from somebody that she’s abroad still?”

  “Yes. We’re lucky – just at the moment – in having a household that runs pretty smoothly. Lets us skip about when we want to.”

  “With those friends of hers near that place, Arezzo—wasn’t it?—still?”

  “No. She’s at Saltino – along the road from Vallombrosa. We had another piece of luck: a decent villa with a marvellous view. But quite soon, of course, it will be a bit late in the year to be so high up.”

  Voysey said nothing, but it was clear that some interesting conception was forming itself in his mind. Craine was determined not to be chased off the bus. It didn’t escape him that Voysey had seen him buy his ticket. But the situation made him sharply doubt his and Jill’s policy of reticence. It was John Arnander’s ease that had been in question. His was a name sufficiently famous to make his resurrection a first-class sensation. And it had seemed wrong to let him face it blind when he had a chance of presently facing it with, so to speak, his eyes open. But gossip wasn’t, in the circumstances, a thing at all easy to avoid.

  “Saltino?” Voysey said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it. Quiet sort of place, is it?”

  “Well, no – it’s something of a resort. But for Italians, perhaps – Florentines mainly – rather than foreign visitors.”

  “Ah, Italians.” For a moment Voysey appeared almost alarmed at the pace at which his knowledge grew. He nodded towards the pavement. “Odd hats they’re wearing this year,” he said. “But then when don’t they?”

  The foreshortened figures of a good many women were in evidence on the pavement; and as far as their heads went, it seemed to Craine, one wore this and one that. But he responded civilly to this new and impersonal topic. And presently Voysey turned to a more fundamental aspect of his subject. “Have you noticed,” he asked, “that some quite decent girls walk about nowadays waggling their behinds like a movie tart’s?” Again he looked round the bus and made sure that he was not overheard. “Sex,” he said darkly, “is a deuced queer thing.”

  Craine told himself that what he didn’t like about this was the adverb. It was another impostor’s word. “Yes,” he said; “deuced queer.”

  Voysey made a pause during which he sucked the handle of his umbrella. “Do you think it’s true,” he asked, “what they say? That when a man gets old, however much he’s managed to bring off at this and that, it’s only what he’s had in bed that he looks back on with any satisfaction ?”

  Craine shook his head. “I doubt its being a universal truth. But I’ve no statistics.”

  “Quite so.” Rather curiously, Jim Voysey appeared to take encouragement from this reply. “It sounds as if it may be true. But if it is, one feels that it’s – well, all a bit of a sell.”

  Groocock had said something about a sell. “A sell?” Craine said. “There’s a sense in which one’s personal life will certainly be that. The last act’s bloody, however rich the fun earlier on.”

  Voysey looked disconcerted. Perhaps Pascal was beyond him. Or perhaps he was surprised to hear his inhibited companion swearing. “I suppose it’s true,” he said vaguely, “that we’re in the same boat.”

  “We certainly are.”

  “Well, I’m deuced sorry, old boy. Rotten luck.”

  It was decidedly Craine who was disconcerted this time. “We’ve got rather at cross-purposes,” he said. “I wasn’t . . . “

  “I guessed there was a spot of bother. There is, isn’t there?”

  “Nothing to speak of.” Craine paused on this ambiguity, and didn’t like it. “Or rather,” he went on, “a fresh one every day. Look at the bank rate.”

  Blessedly, Voysey was on his feet and preparing to dismount. His flushed face shone with genuine benevolence. “Look here,” he said, “I know you must have your own solicitor, and so forth. But if you find you want a really high-class chap to get up on his hind legs in court and talk, just give me a ring.”

  “Thank you very much,” Craine said. “And please give my love to Jane.”

  He had arrived at Weidle’s. There was a Tissot in the window, and a card announcing M
inor English Masters of the Later Nineteenth Century. Minor English masters, he thought idly: it was a title suggesting the most insignificant of conceivable categories in a public school. But what the actual fact suggested was something more relevant; Weidle’s active business operations at present were still conceived on economical lines. It wasn’t necessary to feel solicitous about him, since Craine couldn’t imagine that he wasn’t enjoying himself. Hadn’t it been with large relish that he retold Mark Lambert’s bizarre story of the painter who had gone in for an unexpected second innings? Weidle was now facing involvement in an actual situation very like that. But if the situation pleased his fancy, caught his imagination, he wouldn’t regard it exclusively in terms of his till.

  Craine spared a moment for the Tissot – it was a jolly affair of girls with parasols on board a man-o’-war; a period equivalent, he thought, of blondes in the bomb-racks – and then went inside. The young man was hovering – so alertly that Craine felt he might himself have been a ball coming out of the scrum – and he was conducted straight to the proprietor.

  “Would you care for an Etty?” Weidle had raised both hands in a gesture of welcome which was at once theatrical and charming. “Really a peach of a girl. Literally, you might almost say, rather than metaphorically. You feel you could pluck her from the bough.”

  “Is she on a bough?”

  “She’s on a swing – having climbed straight there, it seems, out of a pool. Her clothes are on the bank, very nicely painted.”

  Craine laughed; he liked Weidle’s beginning on this accustomed note. “No,” he said; “I don’t want an Etty, thank you.”

  “A pity. There are two ways of seeing them, you know.”

  “Ettys?”

  “Girls in general. As if you’d just taken the clothes off them, and as if they’d never had any. Profane and sacred art. And I’d feel life was the poorer for me if I had any settled notion which I prefer.”

  “I’ve a definite preference myself, but I’d be very sorry if you had.” Craine sat down with a great sense of ease. “And the boys?”

  “They’ll go to Pinn on the six-five. Meantime, I’ve dropped them into the National Gallery. It’s only prudent in me to give an eye to forming the next generation of connoisseurs. And they can go downstairs and get a capital tea.”

  “So they can. But not, my dear fellow, such tea as yours.”

  Weidle made his gesture again – but this time with an admirable restraint, as if he had been paid a compliment by some royal lady. “You can’t believe it hasn’t been ordered,” he said. And then he added at once: “They were going to operate this morning.”

  Craine was silent for a moment – the famous tea was in fact being brought in with admirable promptness – and then he asked: “Did you see any of the doctors?”

  “I had a talk with the surgeon when he arrived from Rome.” Weidle appeared slightly hurt that it could be supposed he had done other than go straight to the top. “He was non-committal.”

  “He would be, wouldn’t he?”

  Weidle hesitated. “I’d say he was very non-committal.”

  Craine accepted his cup absently. “I’ve a feeling it will be all right.”

  “So have I.” Weidle had a rare moment of hesitation. “But it’s a feeling I distrust. I’d call it a literary feeling – a feeling for a story. If Arnander doesn’t regain his sight, the climax goes wrong. Therefore he’ll regain his sight. But life isn’t like that.” He frowned, as if the triteness of his conclusion didn’t please him. “Or is it?”

  “The story will go on, all right – one way or the other. But tell me – well, tell me first about Arnander. He hasn’t fallen back into any sort of apathy?”

  Weidle shook his head – gently, but so that the fine silver of his hair stirred and lifted. “There’s an ending I hadn’t thought of there,” he said. “Arnander gets back his sight, and employs it – we’ll say – to arrange a collection of postage stamps. Painting is the last thing to enter his head.”

  “But it won’t be so?”

  “It won’t be so. Planting himself in front of a canvas is the one thing supremely before him. He’ll paint, all right. Or try to.”

  “And he’ll succeed?”

  “You know, my dear Craine, that I know nothing about painters. In fact, you’ve teased me on it.” Weidle made a disclaiming gesture that wasn’t wholly easy. “So your guess is as good as mine.”

  “That’s not true.” Craine was very serious. “What do you think?”

  “That it will depend on character – on guts. He’ll be an art student.”

  Craine put down his cup. He was really startled. “No!” he said. “It can’t be. You exaggerate.”

  “He’ll be an art student – absolutely. I’d exaggerate if I said he won’t know how to hold a piece of charcoal, or draw a line. But the labour of conquering his technique again! Hercules isn’t in it.”

  “You’ve talked to him? That’s how he feels himself?”

  “I’ve talked to him.” Weidle considered. “I doubt whether he himself has taken the measure of it. But he had more than a glimmer. It’s one of his fears, poor chap.”

  “One of them? And continued blindness is the other?”

  “I’d call it one of the others. There are more. But I can’t distinguish them. Perhaps he hasn’t got them in any sort of conscious focus himself.”

  “I see.” Craine stirred his tea – although it wasn’t the thing to do with it – and then looked up. “But perhaps you confound him with – well, ordinary folk. I’d distrust myself – if I had to look back on having gone so queerly to earth for so long. But he has his drive still, hasn’t he? His daemon, or whatever one calls it?”

  “I’d suppose so. But it’s a hard question. And inspiration isn’t guts.” Weidle glanced curiously, almost cautiously, at his companion. “You very much want him to paint?”

  “It would somehow represent – just for me, personally – something saved. And I think it would be easier for Jill.”

  There was a long pause. “That brings us to another aspect of things,” Weidle said.

  Craine had caught something evasive in this. “Wouldn’t it?” he asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier for her?”

  “You treat me as a sibyl.” Weidle gave the faint shrug of the shoulders in which one seemed to glimpse his father, Prince Schwarzenberg’s adviser. “Do you want me to give my impression of their relations?”

  “Yes.”

  “Arnander is extremely dependent on her. When he hears her voice, he vibrates to it. I can’t think of another word.”

  “It’s probably a good one.”

  “She is very unhappy. She realises a tragic situation.” For the second time Weidle hesitated. “Tell me,” he asked, “when she came back to you at Arezzo that morning, did she look as if she’d been through hell?”

  “Yes.”

  Weidle peered into his teapot. Then he thought better of this and looked straight at Craine. “That,” he said steadily, “mustn’t make you think she isn’t devoted to him.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “One would suppose, then, that she’d want him to find happiness in new and absorbed creation. No doubt she tells herself so every night. But – well, we end, I suppose, with some platitude about the human heart.”

  “I think,” Craine said, “that you said something about a tragic situation – about Jill’s recognising a tragic situation?”

  “Yes.” Weidle stood up and walked over to the easel which had once supported Arnander’s self-portrait. What stood there now was William Etty’s almost innocent girl. He stared at it and then turned round abruptly. “Take it,” he said, “in terms of simple biological drives – or whatever jargon makes least nonsense in our context. What, at that level where she’s next to helpless and driven, does she need?”

  Craine remained seated. He looked at Weidle as a rider might look at a stiff fence. “My children and her husband,” he said.

  Weidle gave an odd s
igh. It might have been of relief. “My dear man,” he exclaimed, “go away! You need to be told nothing.”

  “I need to be told about their children. You’ve seen something of Tim and Charles, there on the spot.”

  “She wants them to become attached to their father, and their father to them. She doesn’t in the least believe he’s a good buy for them. But she’s frightened of the void – the void in which he spent all those years. She feels that Tim and Charles might somehow become a bulwark against it one day. But that want in her isn’t a deep want. I’d call it, if it didn’t sound fantastic, something rather conventional. Tim and Charles are Arnander’s children, and she scarcely sees beyond Arnander. Yet those two boys simply don’t mean to her what her younger children – your children – do. Is that queer?” Weidle shrugged again. “I’m afraid that I, for one, just don’t know. But she has told me that she thinks of Tim, at least, as very akin to you.”

  Craine too had got to his feet. “Do you mean,” he demanded, “that in certain eventualities, and as a matter of practical accommodation, they might end up with my children, and I with theirs?”

  “I certainly think you would be well advised to see to it that you end up with Tim. About the little one, Charles – I don’t know. But he’ll make up his own mind – I believe with a good deal of passion – the one way or the other.”

  “My God!”—Craine had a bewildered moment in which he echoed Groocock’s judgment—”what a mess.”

  “Count your blessings, man.” Weidle’s voice was gentle. “Count your material blessings, if you’re not too proud. They can help, you know, when there’s a mess to tackle. But tip in anything you were born with or bred to. You’ll need the lot.”