‘Who was it?’ he presently asked, with an air of friendly conspiracy.
‘Who was who?’
‘This girl you’ve had a night out with.’
‘Ah, that would be telling.’ Holme again produced his cheerful grin. It was almost – Cheel reflected with distaste – as if this cursory copulation had effected some quite disproportionate release of tension in the young man; had produced, indeed, something very close to a change of personality. Even Holme’s body seemed to have taken on, for the time, a new ease and a new poise. This was the Sebastian Holme, Cheel had to suppose, who had to so agreeable an end locked up Professor Ushirombo in a privy.
‘And it would be telling,’ Holme went on, ‘to no purpose. Not your line, Cheel. All you need is a rubber woman, with a five-year guarantee against pinching. They can be had in Port Said. I’ll get you a whopper one day.’ He clattered a couple of plates down on the table. ‘Eat up,’ he said. ‘Eat up, and then explain yourself.’
Cheel had no ability to eat up. His rage was such that his lower jaw appeared to be conducting a private epileptic fit of its own. What was unbearable was that Holme didn’t appear to feel that he had been insulting; he had the air of simply having made genial reference to established fact. But, once more, Cheel presently achieved control. He even got down some of the scrambled eggs and took a big bite at a roll. His jaw proved to come more or less all right when thus given plenty to do. And meanwhile he considered in silence just how this young man was to be told where he got off. The expression was a vulgar one, such as would not normally have been admitted by Cheel’s fastidious linguistic sense. But it was quite inadequate to the strength of his feelings now.
Holme, whose table-manners were predictably unrefined, had wiped his plate clean with a last fragment of roll.
‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘A lot better. Why cannot we as well as cocks and lions jocund be after such pleasures? No reason at all. And they come round again. That’s the marvellous thing.’
‘They do nothing of the sort!’ At last Cheel had spoken – more sharply than he had intended, perhaps. But it was a relief to have turned upon Holme, and he went on in the tone that he had begun. ‘Let’s get this clear. You cut right out of whore-mongering until this job is finished. Then you can get back to Africa, blast you, and fornicate among your damned blacks.’
These strong words – courageous as coming from one whom Holme had once laid out with a nasty right hook to the jaw – appeared to make very little impact. Holme, who had begun to mix himself another mug of the coffee stuff, simply continued to do so. Then he lit a cigarette, and as a polite afterthought offered the packet to Cheel.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘as soon as your bank opens I want you to drop in and fetch me some cash. Say £500.’
‘£500!’ Cheel was genuinely outraged. ‘And what, may I ask, would you be doing with £500? I’ve named your job. It’s to control your lecherous fancy and get on with those pictures.’
‘That’s the sum I want at the moment, old boy, and that’s the sum I intend to have. Perhaps for no better reason than to keep in my pocket. Perhaps to give Mervyn Cheel Esq. a glimpse of where Mervyn Cheel Esq. gets off. Get? A favourite word of Hedda’s that. And quite a useful one. Get, Cheel ?’
That it should be Cheel who was to be told where he got off was a proposition so outrageous to Cheel that he tried to laugh robustly – and succeeded only in producing a disconcerting scream. And at this Holme laughed robustly instead.
‘Draw it mild, Cheel,’ he said. ‘You’ve been imagining things, you know. Just because I work the way I do – hell-for-leather and all-oblivious for a couple of months – you’ve taken it into your silly head that you have me exactly where you want me. A harmless drudge, worth no more than a stick and a carrot. Have you a notion, my dear man, of the sort of things I’ve done and seen, the holes I’ve fought my way out of, the tables I’ve turned before now on rascals a damned sight more competent than you? When we first met, you know, I was still in a state of shock about Gregory. He was a very decent chap, as I think I said. Not that you’d understand that. But the point is that here I am as I am, and that sometimes I’ll work and sometimes I’ll do what I bloody well choose. Any remarks?’
‘Yes – several.’ Cheel had got to his feet – partly through mere agitation, and partly with some idea that it would be wise to preserve as much physical mobility as possible while this situation rose to its crisis. ‘If anybody’s been imagining things it’s been you. And I’ll tell you one of the things you’ve been imagining. You’ve been imagining that you are Gregory Holme, and entitled to sign Gregory Holme’s name at the foot of Gregory Holme’s cheques. Where might that put you? Not, perhaps, where Ushirombo would like to put you – which I suppose to be in the middle of an ant-hill, or something like that. But certainly in one of Her Majesty’s prisons for longer than it’s at all nice to think of.’
‘While Cheel Esq. continues to roll in his rotten Rolls?’ Holme laughed more robustly than before. ‘Don’t think I haven’t seen you in it. And a pretty beggar on horseback you look.’
‘You can put it in that vulgar way, If you like. But it’s the plain fact of the case. There’s nothing illegal, you know, in discovering that a man isn’t dead. And there’s nothing illegal in negotiating the sale of an artist’s pictures for him. If that artist happens to have been dead and come alive again – well, that’s his own affair.’
‘What about the story you told whoever bought “Mourning Dance with Torches”? What about the story you told whoever bought “Fishing Cats at Pool”? What about the story you must be telling now about “Clouded Leopards Playing”? Isn’t it plain false pretences to claim that these things were rescued from the Wamba Palace? Come off it, Cheel. We’re in this rotten show up to the neck together.’
‘You’re quite wrong there, Holme. I’ve put nothing in writing about where the things came from. And no court is going to waste much time over an aggrieved purchaser retailing a yarn he claims was spun to him over a couple of whisky-and-sodas. It’s you who are up to your neck, old boy. I haven’t so much as got my toes wet.’
Lighting a cigarette, Cheel paused to give time for this to sink in. He felt that he was recovering his own nervous tone, and that there was now a good chance of nipping Holme’s rebellion in the bud. At the moment, it would be best to go off confidently on another tack.
‘By the way,’ he said easily, ‘does the name of Wutherspoon convey anything to you?’
‘Wutherspoon?’ There was impatience in Holme’s voice as he repeated the name. He seemed, in fact, not in the least anxious to break off the battle. ‘I remember a Wutherspoon out in Wamba. They called him Wuggles.’
‘That’s the man. Would you say that he had any interest in art and artists?’
‘Oh, definitely. I remember that very clearly. It was an uncommon thing out there. But what has Wutherspoon got to do with our affairs?’
For a moment Cheel made no reply. His recovered poise seemed to have been knocked from under him. He had seldom – sensitive instrument that he was – felt a stronger intimation of trouble from afar. Seconds ago this had been no more than a faint tremor: the dying echo of something obscurely disturbing in the course of his last night’s luckless dinner. Now there was not only a tremor but a rumble as well. It was volcanic eruptions rather than earthquakes, he supposed, that began that way.
‘You’re quite sure?’ he asked. ‘We are speaking of the same man – a fellow like a mummy that’s been given a lick of yellow paint?’
‘That’s Wutherspoon, all right. Some sort of British government underling who started playing ball with one revolutionary group and another. It didn’t pay off, it seems. In fact, he was run out of the place.’
‘Exactly.’ Cheel had now fallen to pacing restlessly up and down the room. ‘Look here – could Wutherspoon possibly know about you and your brother?’
‘What do you mean – know about us?’ For some time now Holme had been sp
rawled on the couch. His posture seemed to Cheel quite insolently that of one who has lately taken an agreeable path to luxurious physical repose. ‘Is this another of your feeble notions of bullying me, old boy?’
‘It’s nothing of the sort. It’s something that I’m beginning to think may be serious. Could Wutherspoon possibly know that it’s you who are alive and Gregory who’s dead?’
‘He could not. Why should this rotten Wutherspoon be bugging you?’
‘I had dinner with him last night. When I tried to ask him a question or two about you and your work he took up the attitude that he couldn’t care less. When I persisted he created a diversion by flying off the handle.’
‘What rubbish!’ Holme laughed contemptuously. ‘Anybody might fly off the handle with you. Think what a beastly character you are.’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘Nobody possibly could. It’s a mean kind of beastliness, if you follow me.’
‘I’m not talking about what you think of me. I don’t care a damn about that. I’m talking of Wutherspoon’s behaviour. I don’t like his taking that violently evasive action. It meant something.’
‘It means no more than that you’re a jittery type, I’d say.’ Holme yawned, stretched out his arms, and flexed his wrists in sensuous ease. ‘And if it’s all you’ve left to jaw about you’d better go away. I feel like a spot of kip.’
‘It’s not all, by a long way. I come back to where I started. You may think you’re invisible behind that ugly great beard again. But I’m not going to have you risk discovery, all the same – not until your job’s completed. You’re not going out after that tart again – or any other tart.’
‘Well, well, well!’ Holme had sat up. He seemed genuinely astonished. ‘How on earth do you imagine you can enforce your crazy fantasy of discipline? Don’t you realize, you funny creature, that your attitude is plain pathological?’
‘Don’t you realize, you idiot, where you stand in this affair?’ With what was surely abundant provocation, Cheel was hugely incensed again. ‘You haven’t got two pence. You haven’t got a penny. And I’m your paymaster. Toe the line, or you’re down to bread and lard. And now, Holme, I’ll leave you to think it over.’
‘Do. By all means do.’ Holme had got to his feet. Although not gigantic, he was a very powerful young man. ‘But I suppose you will have to come back for that?’ He pointed to ‘Primal Scene with Convolvulus’. ‘You’ll have to come and smuggle it out – and then sell it?’
‘Certainly I shall.’
‘Very well. When you do come, it will be with that £500. If you arrive without it, I’ll give you a thrashing. Not a beating-up – because, you know, I’m quite civilized, really. Just a kid’s straight thrashing. But the hell of a one. Now, clear out.’
23
As when thwart winds meet, fear and fury joined battle in the breast of Mervyn Cheel. And on the flank, too, skirmished a small gale of sheer bewilderment. For the Sebastian Holme of this appalling morning was simply not the Sebastian Holme of his first acquaintance. He was not, for example, the Holme who had appeared almost as alarmed as himself upon the occasion of the irruption of the abominable Rumbelow. He was not the Holme who had looked positively hunted whenever there had been mention of his disagreeable wife. But he was a Holme – Cheel saw it clearly – who had now got his brother’s death and his own flight from Wamba distanced and behind him. More than that, he was a Holme who had started painting again, and was proving himself (so to speak) on canvas. Above all, he was a Holme who had just carried some squalid sexual intrigue to a successful conclusion. It was utterly revolting that so vulgar and trivial an exploit should, in a word, set a man up again. But life (Cheel reflected) is constantly confronting us with such sombre facts as this. One deeply read in its wisdom must accept such murky places as simply existing – and must make his market in them.
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘you’ll get your money in the end. But at present it’s no good to you. It serves only as a distraction. Look at that £50 I gave you.’
‘Gave me?’
‘Paid you. Transmitted to you. Whatever you like. All you can think to do is to run out and buy yourself finery – and hold onto five quid for a night with a tart.’
‘Cheel you’re filthy, too filthy for words.’ Disconcertingly, Holme had roared with laughter. ‘I’ve never had a woman for money in my life. I’ve never seen any sense in it. It’s a waste of cash, and must be a waste of woman too – like smothering ordinary, wholesome food in some cheap and nasty sauce. Have you ever thought of manufacturing something like that?’
‘I don’t see–’
‘It just occurs to me that yours would be rather a good name for it. A small bottle of Cheel, please. A bargain today, threepence off, and a packet of stomach powder thrown in free. Cheel makes happy homes. Cheel for getting down left-overs.’
It was natural that this highly offensive nonsense should leave its quarry unamused. Cheel moved in dignified silence to the door. And then – with weird prescience, as it proved – an obscure uneasiness once more overcame him.
‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘if it wasn’t a tart, who was it? How did you get off with her so quickly? It wasn’t somebody you’d ever known before?’ He looked almost pleadingly at Holme. ‘You wouldn’t be as insanely irresponsible as that?’
‘I do believe that you think it may have been Hedda.’ Carefree amusement again overcame Holme. ‘But it wasn’t. And it was nobody else from my past – or from Gregory’s, for that matter. It was just a wench I picked up.’
‘A low-class amateur?’
‘Not a bit of it. What you might call high-class, if your standards are cheap enough.’ Holme frowned. ‘No – dash it! – that isn’t right. She’s dumb and she’s vulgar – but I’d call her rather a good sort. And when it came to the really relevant thing–’
‘All right,’ Cheel said. He certainly didn’t want to listen to technicalities. ‘Now forget her.’
‘I’m not sure that I mean to. I only ran into her, you see, a week ago.’
‘You mean you’ve been going out quite regularly?’
‘Why the hell shouldn’t I? Not that I have, very much. But I did dodge out to see some sculpture by a chap I rather admire. It’s in a little gallery in Soho. And there this wench was. Saying she adored art, and making it rather clear she adored artists. I fell, silly old Cheel, I fell. I made a date with her for last night, and she kept it.’
‘Is she a lady?’ Cheel asked sombrely.
‘There aren’t any nowadays, so far as I know. She has a husband who’s a City gent, if that means anything. She had to get away from him and from two foul old men in a restaurant, it seems, in order to keep her promise to me. She said she was going to see her old governess.’
For a moment the familiar room in which he was standing swam round Cheel as if it were something ingeniously uncomfortable in a fun-fair.
‘Do you know her name?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘Only her Christian name – if it can be called that. It’s Debby.’
‘Did you tell her your name?’
‘Oh, no – just that I was a painter, and had lived in Africa. And I told her to call me Sebastian.’
There was a silence. Through it, Cheel was dimly conscious of sounds indicative that life elsewhere was pursuing the even tenor of its way. There was a ritual clatter, for instance, as appropriate personnel of the Greater London Council moved down the street, emptying dustbins. Farther away, a railway engine was signifying its arrival in the metropolis by an unnecessary but understandable wail of despair. And downstairs, somebody was struggling with one of the obsolete sanitary appliances of the departed substantial citizen.
The room had at least come to anchor. Admit – Cheel told himself – that this new crisis is a stiff one. And then go to work in a cool way to take the measure of it.
English painters with the Christian name of Sebastian and a history of domicile in Africa couldn’t be very thick on the groun
d. Any informed person hearing of such a painter would say ‘That must be Sebastian Holme’ – and then, presumably, add ‘But how odd, since Holme’s dead’. This was alarming in itself. But the real mischief, of course, was the fact of Debby’s acquaintance with Wuggles. It had the appearance of a fairly close acquaintance. At least Wuggles and Duffy were cronies, and Debby (when not escaping to visit her old governess) was more or less constrained to tag on. Moreover Wuggles himself was already in some way a danger-point. Cheel was convinced of this.
But there was one substantial saving fact. Debby’s relationship with Holme was of the most casual order, so far. Moreover it was a disreputably clandestine one. Debby might be excited about her newly acquired artistic bedfellow. But she would hardly be likely to go running off to tell either her husband or her husband’s familiar friend about him. At least Cheel supposed not.
Yet, it was true that, with thoroughly depraved people, you never knew. Shocking as it seemed, Cheel had heard of married couples who communicated to each other and to their friends whatever promiscuous encounters came their way. He couldn’t be sure that Duffy, Debby and Wuggles didn’t belong to a coterie in which such horrors obtained. If this were so, prospects were very bleak indeed. Wutherspoon at least, with his acrid tags from the poets, seemed not altogether a fool. If Debby chattered about her new conquest in his hearing there was no assurance that he wouldn’t put two and two together.
Money from Holme Page 14
