Convinced now that he had the right cat by the tail, Lambert found the other’s obstinacy offensive. Irritated, he thought: When have I ever been wrong about a man’s real character? Never. Coming from a bit further down than so many of the chaps I know, I can’t afford not to keep my eyes and ears open…. The habit had been handed down to him by a line of ancestors who had never failed to nose, even out of a grave, secrets they could turn to account in their own business.
‘Don’t believe it if you’d rather not,’ he said, smiling and raising his eyebrows.
‘It’s all very unsavoury,’ Penny said. ‘Need we talk about it?’
‘No,’ Dinham muttered, ‘no. But I still wonder whether money… And that reminds me — I was told today that Harriet Ellis is very badly off. Can it be true?’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ Lambert said in a hearty voice, ‘nonsense. She goes everywhere — I’m always meeting her. I saw her not long since — at the Motts, in fact.’
Spanton went off into a high-pitched young giggle. ‘Harriet Ellis? But who is she? I never heard of her.’
‘A good writer,’ Dinham said roughly. ‘Better than a great many who are more praised. She gets marked down — for some reason. Quite unfairly.’
‘I never believe that,’ Penny said.
‘What?’
‘That a writer who isn’t praised can be good. Romantic poppycock, I call that.’
Dinham’s fear of offending her made him stutter. ‘I d-don’t know why she isn’t more praised. The only reason I can think of is that she’s something of a freak. That rouses people’s cruelty — you know how, in a herd, animals turn on a freak and kill it…. Perhaps all women who write — or paint or what have you — are freaks. Biological sports. Most of them have the instinct, or the sense, to disguise their freakishness. I don’t mean going so far as to hide their manuscripts under sofa cushions, but they take pains to act like females: they give parties, or they have love affairs — which proves that they’re only nice sensitive women, after all. Harriet Ellis doesn’t give off this reassuring smell of being a woman at heart — or in mind.’
A purely malicious impulse made Lambert say slyly,
‘A-ah, don’t be too sure that you know everything about Harriet Ellis. I’m told she and Mott had a great affair once — years ago.’
Spanton giggled again. ‘Oh, do tell us about it. It sounds so like antediluvian monsters at play.’
Lambert was sharply annoyed with himself. Why the devil did I say that? he asked himself. He said hurriedly, ‘I’ve no doubt it’s not true.’
‘If I must be honest,’ Penny said, ‘I don’t like her. She’s what the French call a bouche fleurie — I don’t meet her more than twice a year, but when I do she’s all honey, remembers something I said to her eight months back, smiles sweetly, asks me about something and hangs on my words — and not a sincere breath in her. All flattery. I wouldn’t trust her across the street. I’m sorry, of course, if she’s in a bad way, but…’
Her likeness to her father had become very noticeable as she spoke. I had no idea, Lambert thought, that she was quite so hostile to poor clumsy Harriet — who isn’t as bad as that. Ah, well, you never know what’s biting a woman where another one’s concerned. They’re like bitches.
‘I don’t think,’ Dinham said, ‘that it can be insincerity.’
Penny shrugged her shoulders. ‘Then what is it — if you know?’
‘It could be fear.’
‘Good heavens, am I so grim?’
‘I d-don’t mean she’s afraid of you.’ The blood rising in his thick hanging chops turned them a greyish purple. ‘I would have said she’s a brave woman, and too honest for her good. But even brave people, if they’re not stupid, can be afraid of life.’
Penny laughed unkindly. ‘My dear Jack, you are in a metaphysical mood this evening. What’s the matter?’
Lambert saw that she was becoming irritated: he was afraid, too, that Dinham, the silly clumsy fellow, might be going to drag Elder back into the conversation at this point. He said smilingly,
‘Well, as my wife always so wisely says: In this world you get what you ask for…. If you go about being honest you very soon annoy people who can punish you. No one really likes honesty, y’know…. In any case, Harriet Ellis doesn’t need any help. I can tell you that for a fact.’
And a good thing, too, he thought eagerly. No one of his peasant and village-solicitor ancestors had ever felt a more superstitious fear of misfortune, or a more powerful impulse to keep clear of the misfortunes of others. Not that he would admit this to himself, and he dealt with it in the most comfortable way possible — simply refusing to believe that anyone he knew could be in need. Since he was a kind man, this saved him a lot of unnecessary distress.
‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ said Dinham.
Later in the evening, when the whiskey decanter had been brought into the drawing-room, Penny said, ‘Jack, I must tell you… you’re always at Lambert to write —’ this, thought Lambert, was barely true — ‘well, he’s written something which is terribly good — an essay on Gregory Mott, on his books. Far too generous, too much praise, but a magnificent exposure of his faults as well. Vices, I call them…. Lambert, do get it and read it to us. Please.’
‘Good heavens no,’ her husband said. He was delighted and embarrassed: perhaps embarrassment was the stronger feeling, and yet, starved as he was of the praise their friends lavished on each other so faithfully, he felt tempted.
‘Oh, come now,’ said Beasley, ‘you know we’d like to hear it. You know Mott better than any of us — perhaps you know when he began to be the story of his own life. My life as Goethe, as St. Augustine, as old Lord Fauntleroy, as the noblest Roman of them all, by Gregory Mott, in six volumes.’
A boyish squeal from Spanton. ‘Yes, yes. Oh, clever. Oh do read it to us.’
Dinham said soberly, ‘I should like to hear it.’
‘Very well,’ Lambert said, smiling. ‘On your heads be it.’
He had a pleasant voice, with a warm northern undernote, and he read well. As he read he became aware that what had been polite resignation was turning into genuine attentiveness. At the end, there was a clapping of hands which seemed entirely unforced. So was the delighted malice with which Beasley said,
‘Y’know, when I was in France last winter — and I may say I was never worse bored and fleeced in my life — never again! — I saw a farmer nailing a cross together. He was making a beautiful job of it, smoothing the edges and all but carving the thing — and d’you know what it was for? To stretch the pig he’d just killed! S’a fact. Crucifixion of a dead pig! I laughed myself black in the face, but what pleased me was the care he took to make a really handsome cross, not any two sticks nailed together — a real labour of love. That’s your essay, my boy. A labour of love, a crucifixion of the animal, and a beautiful job.’
‘It really is good,’ Dinham said quietly. ‘May I have it for the London Letter?’
Lambert noticed the surprise in his voice…. Ah, you didn’t think I had it in me, did you?… He didn’t deeply resent it. What he felt was a sharp regret that he couldn’t say: Yes, take it, it’s yours.
‘Sorry, Jack. No, I’m afraid you can’t.’
‘Oh, but why not?’ cried Penny.
With a turn of prudence Lambert did not expect from him, Beasley said, ‘No, of course you can’t publish it. You can’t print an attack on your boss — even with so much of the best butter spread on it.’
‘But, my dear fellow,’ Lambert protested, ‘I mean every word of the praise. I do really feel that there isn’t another living writer with such a mastery of words. It’s superb writing.’
‘Superb humbug,’ said his wife. ‘A fake, like the man himself with his aristocratic friends and his politeness and his going to Mass and the rest. Don’t tell me.’
Looking at her, Lambert had a sudden stupefying sense that for all her acuteness, her shrewd hard sound mind, she had not the faintest i
dea why Gregory was good or even why he was bad and false. For a fervent moment he wished that she would hold her tongue about it. Even, now that he had had and enjoyed his triumph, he half wished he had kept his essay in its drawer in his desk. Gathering up the pages, he went to put it safely away again, with regret and pride.
When he came back into the room, Penny had made young Spanton sit with her on the sofa, where he sprawled his long legs across a rug that he kept creasing and grinding with his heels. Lambert noticed that the feet at the ends of these squirming legs were perfectly enormous, like a ploughboy’s.
‘Tell me — what do you want to do with yourself?’
Squirming furiously, ‘Oh, well, to write. But I know I have everything to learn, and no experience, and I don’t want to have to rush a book out, and then another and another, simply because I must eat — one good book, you know, and then three for the rent and rates, like everyone, all the writers you can think of, poor sweets. I should be so ashamed. What I want, what I hope for, is some work that brings me in just enough to live on — I have a little money of my own, oh, a teeny little bit, it nearly pays the rent of my rooms and my Mrs. Mop’s wages — and then I could take years and years growing up into being a writer. Do you think that’s too idiotic of me?’ He looked appealingly into her face, a look at once submissive, wild, half brave, half boyish. Showing, for all his tendency to fussy giggles, a modesty and a diffidence very creditable in a young man so clearly determined to rise.
‘We must see what we can do,’ Penny said. She beckoned Dinham to the sofa. ‘You’re short a reviewer, Jack, aren’t you?’
‘Am I?’
‘Well, yes, of course you are — with Tom Elder gone. He reviewed for you every week, didn’t he? You must give Spanton his place. You will, won’t you? At least try him out; I know he’ll be good.’ She gave Spanton one of her tight quick smiles.
Dinham did not answer at once: his lips moved. Perhaps he was closing an account with Elder or muttering over the phrases of an obituary or… how many different impulses do you feel towards the old friend you are replacing by a bright new young one?
‘All right,’ he said in a muted voice. ‘Come and see me in the office tomorrow and we’ll fix it up.’
Penny clapped her hands. ‘You see,’ she said to Spanton, with a little laugh of triumph, ‘you’ve come to the right house. You want to get on: trust me, I can help you.’
Chapter Two
Towards the end of the third week in March there was a meeting, the fifth, of the special Conference committee, at Rutley House. Before its members arrived Gregory ran through the agenda with Lambert in search of snags. They could find none. The list of names of the well-known writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, who had been approached and had agreed to come, was impressive. ‘If any names can dazzle your chaps,’ said Lambert, ‘these will.’
Gregory smiled faintly. ‘They’re not dazzle-able. Not by names.’
He read over the schedule of entertainments, beginning with Covent Garden and ending, on the last evening, with a dinner for three hundred and fifty persons: the two hundred delegates and a spattering of wives — not, thank God, said Lambert, many of these; ambassadors of the countries involved; the rest made up of merely English notables, spiritual and temporal. The whole week had been planned on so boldly splendid a scale that there were moments, between three and four in the morning, when Lambert woke up in a sweat of panic. Would the eighteen thousand pounds they had collected cover it? What frightful hitch — other than those he had imagined already — ought he to look out for? Who knew, really knew, about protocol — so that no outraged ambassador sat through the final banquet in a simmer of annoyance over his placing?
‘Need we have been quite so grand? After all, the chaps who are coming to talk are only writers and so on.’
‘We’re not doing it for them,’ Gregory said lightly.
‘Then who for, God help me?’
‘For our own glory. The honour and glory of the Rutley Institute. You can’t half do these things. Either you do them properly, and spend a devil of a lot of money to do it, or… in fact, you can’t get the money for a modest show, no one would give it, no one is interested in a hole-and-corner affair of — you said it yourself — writers and so on.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have had the nerve to plan anything like it myself. You——’
‘Don’t fuss yourself,’ Gregory interrupted, smiling. ‘I know we can pull it off.’
‘You mean you know that you can.’ The admiration he felt was tinged as he spoke with some other emotion — resentment, irritation, even a prick of jealousy. It’s going to be bloody hard work, he thought, and I shall be doing it, behind the scenes, while our Gregory is out starring in front…. Pulling himself up, he thought quickly: Well, what’s wrong with that?’
He sighed. ‘Have you prepared your speech?’
‘Not yet. I’m still waiting to hear from the French. Did you write again?’
‘Oh, the French,’ Lambert groaned. ‘Of course I wrote. You don’t think they answer letters, do you?’
‘They’re the most important,’ said Gregory mildly. ‘The chaps I must impress. I must keep my end up with them. Write again.’
‘For the third time…. You’re dining with me this evening, aren’t you?’
‘Tomorrow. Surely?’
‘It was tonight.’
‘I’m terribly sorry — I had it down for tomorrow. I’m dining this evening at the Athenaeum, with Pulmer. I don’t think I can put him off — he’s coming up from Oxford.’
Lambert grinned with annoyance and resignation. ‘No, of course you can’t. Well, leave it. Some time next week, perhaps.’
‘Whenever you like.’
‘When you have nothing better to do,’ Lambert said. Not quite liking the sound of this when he had said it, he put a hurried finger on the sheet of paper headed Entertainments. ‘What are we doing for the troops on Thursday? Nothing except the concert? Letting them buy their own dinner, eh?’
‘Yes. But—’ a remote expression came over Gregory’s face, as though he were contemplating some object placed at a great distance from him — ‘I had an idea that we might ask the Queen Mother if she would receive, say, twenty of the most famous chaps. Cocktails, perhaps.’
Lambert raised an eyebrow. ‘And how d’you hope to arrange that?’
Gregory said briefly, ‘I think we might. My wife is on quite good terms with her.’
She would be, thought Lambert. A silent spasm of laughter tore him. For a second he heard himself repeating the phrase next Thursday evening at dinner…. My wife is on quite good terms with the Queen Mother…. They’ll kill themselves laughing, he thought, pleased. But can I tell them? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
‘Well. If you can pull it off…. By the way, did you see in The Times this morning that Evelyn Lamb has died?’ He could not help grinning. ‘An Edwardian hostess they called her, poor old sinner. I wonder what killed her off? Old age? Food poisoning? Off her head? The way she lived it could be anything.’
‘It was heart failure,’ said Gregory. ‘I saw her only a week ago.’
‘You… What did you say?’
‘A week ago.’
‘You saw her — oh, you mean she was wandering about the streets again.’
‘I went to her house. I always do. Did.’
Lambert was completely at a loss. ‘I didn’t know you knew her. How long——?’
‘Only since last September. There was a paragraph in the papers — remember? I wrote and asked her if I could call, and I’ve been going there once or twice every month since.’ He smiled in the way that distorted one side of his mouth, as he did when he felt he ought to be laughing at himself. ‘It amused her and put her on her moral legs a little. I don’t think she saw many people.’
Can he possibly have forgotten, thought Lambert, that it was I who showed him the paragraph and told him about her dirty decaying house and the way she was living? Impossible…. Yet n
either Gregory’s tone nor his face implied that anything was hidden behind their complete simplicity. Lambert kept all expression except an ironical amusement out of his face. Inwardly he was in a rage of annoyance — worse than annoyance. He felt obscurely that what Gregory had done — to him — was unforgivable. What right, what reason, had he to spend time and kindness on the wretched old woman? And if he had a reason, what was it? Almost without knowing he was doing it, he tried desperately to imagine what interested or even cruel motive Gregory might have had. With an effort, he said genially,
‘I suppose you’ll make use of her in a novel.’
‘In the end,’ said Gregory, ‘one uses everything, but… poor old Evelyn… no, I don’t think so. Much too far gone.’
For a moment Lambert said nothing; he was too full of useless incoherent bitterness. Still seeking relief from it, he recalled an incident that had vexed him earlier today. ‘That fellow Bonnifet — he’s no damned good. No good at all. He comes late — hardly ever in the place before half-past ten — and when he is here behaves himself as though he were at least a member of the Board, not a clerk engaged to answer letters. We ought to get rid of him.’
‘He translates for us at home,’ Gregory said.
‘No reason for coming late.’
‘It’s not easy to get hold of young men with five languages.’
‘One is enough for Master Bonnifet to be impudent in.’
Gregory laughed. ‘I like him.’
‘I daresay, but——’
‘He’s all right,’ Gregory said in a final voice. ‘What’s the time now? Five. They’ll be here.’
As he spoke, Bonnifet opened the door and stood back to allow the first member of the committee to step into the room and glance quickly and soberly round the paintings as though calculating how much he would bid for them at the sale.
The eight men seated round the long Regency table were a miscellany of all ages from old to middle, were thin, gross, well or clumsily dressed, were amiable or frankly overbearing, but they had a common trait, a way of moving an eyelid or a finger, of turning an ear to listen, of settling into a chair, which said audibly enough: We are the rich, and the animal in our skin has that much wider freedom to move than the one in yours: do not expect us, therefore, to take too seriously your little gestures of fear and hope and faith…. And yet, thought Gregory, eyeing them as he sat down in his place as chairman of the committee, you came here this afternoon because I invited you, you are doing, for me, what I wanted you to do, you are going to approve my plans, mine, I, Gregory Mott, son of a forgotten nobody to whom a man who might be any one of you paid a grudged miserable pension after years of arduous service and at the first chance robbed him of half of it…. He felt an intoxicating happiness. I, Gregory Mott…
The Road from the Monument Page 17
