Christmas at High Rising: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Thirkell, Angela

  Amelia looked at Miss Brown with a shy but hopeful expression.

  ‘I did have an idea,’ she said. ‘I do dearly love a party, and I thought if it wasn’t terribly undignified for a highbrow gallery like yours, we might have a tea-party for the Private View. I could ask all the old friends who knew Uncle Charles, and all the children of old friends who are dead, and all the people who have lent pictures, and if people hear of food they are much more likely to come, and you could have a splendid squash, and it would be a good advertisement. I’d pay for the tea, of course, because I do like a party better than anything in the world, and if the show means that I can sell off Uncle Charles’s pictures, I can well afford to gamble on the tea.’

  ‘It’s an idea,’ said Miss Brown and, paying the bill out of petty cash, which she had taken the precaution to bring with her, she invited Amelia to come round to the gallery then and there, and talk to the directors. Only old Sir Dighton was in, and as he was the most susceptible member of the firm, he agreed at once to let Amelia have her tea-party (though not to pay for it), and took her into his private room to see the Mantegna, which was still ripening.

  ‘How much will you sell it for?’ asked Amelia.

  Sir Dighton thought of being shocked by her unrefined bluntness, but looking at her agreeable face and figure changed his outlook to fatherly and tolerant amusement.

  ‘It all depends, dear lady, upon the market and, to a lesser degree, upon the favourable or unfavourable verdict of William Hay, who is certainly the ultimate authority on Mantegna, though no more infallible than the rest of us. But probably he is merely a name to you.’

  Indeed he was a name to Amelia, but not as Sir Dighton meant it. When two people have met and fallen in love too quickly, and quarrelled too quickly, and separated with hard words which neither of them meant to say, and have both been too proud to write, and one of them has been out of England for three months, the name of each may mean a good deal to the other. Amelia still could not hear William Hay’s name without feeling that she was rather drunk in the middle of a display of fireworks. As for William Hay, he still felt that it was all Amelia’s fault, but when he read in Buenos Aires, in an old Times, that a memorial exhibition of Charles Wilson’s works was to be held at Phelps’s Gallery, his heart rebelliously hit him in the ribs in an unmistakable way.

  So Amelia said, yes, she knew his name.

  ‘We hope he may be in London in time to visit the exhibition of your uncle’s works,’ said old Sir Dighton. ‘Your uncle must have been an interesting man, Miss Wilson.’

  Amelia mechanically put on her sacred face and said the right things, and then Sir Dighton left her with Miss Brown.

  ‘If you’ll let me have a lot of Private View cards,’ said Amelia, ‘I’ll send them to people with a personal note. And I’d like to compare my list with yours in case we overlap. I have it here all ready made out, because I wanted so much to have a party that I thought I’d be all prepared.’

  Miss Brown got out the address book and Amelia crossed out some names on her list and added others. Presently she came to the name of William Hay.

  ‘Do you ask Mr Hay to all your shows?’ she enquired.

  ‘Oh yes. He’s a tremendous friend of the firm. There was rather a row last year, because our young Mr Dighton had words with him about Signorelli. Very silly of Mr Dighton, who is only a clever amateur,’ said Miss Brown, ‘but people will get snobbish about pictures. So Mr Hay went off to give good advice in Buenos Aires in a huff, without committing himself about our Mantegna, and we daren’t come quite out into the open about it till he comes back, particularly as the Royal British Gallery are jealous, and say it is only a School Of.’

  ‘I hope Mr Hay will come,’ said Amelia.

  ‘Pour cause?’ said Miss Brown, who had rather a good French accent.

  ‘For that very reason,’ said Amelia, embarrassed, but determined.

  ‘He will come,’ said Miss Brown composedly, and made a note on a pad.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Amelia, ‘I’ll have to ask an awful job lot of relations, but they’ll not look so bad among the rest, and it will please them frightfully to be remembered, and share in the glory and all. I think I’ve remembered them all, but I’m bound to leave someone out and give offence, though really with some of the relations, they are so grasping that they’ll take offence without your giving it.’

  Later in the afternoon, Mr Phelps and Mr Dighton came in from lunch and were told about the plans for the Private View. Both were inclined to be suspicious of the innovation of a tea-party, but Miss Brown flattened all their objections, pointing out that a long table at one end of the large room would not take up much space, and a firm of caterers would arrange everything.

  ‘By the way,’ said young Mr Dighton, ‘who do you think I saw at lunch?’

  As his father and grandfather appeared content to exist in a state of ignorance, good Miss Brown asked who it was.

  ‘Hay,’ said young Mr Dighton. ‘He’s back from Buenos Aires with a very repulsive Dago in tow.’

  ‘Dago?’ said Sir Dighton, staring coldly at his grandson.

  ‘Yes, sir. One of those monkey-faced Wops they keep out there. He’s rolling, of course, like all of them. Pity it’s only a loan exhibition of Wilson’s things we’re having. He might have bought the lot.’

  ‘What is a pity,’ said his grandfather, ‘is that you couldn’t hold your tongue about Signorelli before Hay went away. We might have done something about the Mantegna if you had been decently civil. Now Hay will probably crab it for all he is worth.’

  ‘That’s all right, Grandpapa,’ said young Mr Dighton. ‘We made it up at lunch and Hay is coming along to see your Genuine Old Master before long. His Dago seemed interested.’

  Accordingly young Mr Dighton received a roving commission to catch William Hay, with or without the Dago, give him the best lunch money could buy, and bring him, all nicely oiled as young Mr Dighton vulgarly put it, to see the Mantegna. But London has a great many invitations for a bachelor art critic with a wealthy South American client, and not till the day of the Wilson Private View was Mr Dighton able to secure his victims. After a sumptuous and protracted lunch, William Hay was delivered to old Sir Dighton to discuss the Mantegna, while the Dago, a charming Argentine of simian appearance called García, was handed over to Mr Phelps, who bored him considerably by showing him examples of recent French art.

  Meanwhile, young Mr Dighton went in search of Miss Brown, who was talking to a good-looking young woman.

  ‘Let me introduce Mr Dighton Phelps, one of our directors,’ said Miss Brown. ‘I don’t think, Mr Dighton, you have met Miss Wilson whose uncle’s pictures we are showing.’

  ‘I am delighted to meet the original Wide-eyed Innocence,’ said young Mr Dighton, who prided himself on remembering all about everybody.

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ said Amelia nervously, ‘at least you wouldn’t be if you were me, though that’s not exactly what I mean. It is really a curse, and Uncle Charles was always so cross, in spite of his venerable beard. I don’t understand about pictures at all, you know.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said young Mr Dighton, with his slightly too ready and too disarming smile. ‘We don’t pretend to be experts, Miss Wilson, merely salesmen, so you and I can meet on common ground.’

  ‘Well,’ said Amelia doubtfully, ‘I can’t quite believe you. But Uncle Charles didn’t like pictures either, except his own. He had a poem about them, which is a very good poem, only it’s difficult to get the rhyme exactly right.’

  ‘Oh, do let me hear it,’ said young Mr Dighton, with his rather too captivating smile.

  Amelia looked at him gravely, and after a pause spoke as follows:

  ‘There’s nothing nastier

  Than an Old Master.’

  For a moment there was silence, till young Mr Dighton could get his ready sense of humour to bear on the poem.

  ‘Perfect, perfect, Miss Wilson,’ he cried appreciatively, ‘and
as you say, most difficult to do justice to. I should like to tell it to Hay. It might encourage him to set proper value on my grandfather’s Mantegna.’

  ‘Is Mr Hay in the office still?’ asked Miss Brown.

  ‘Yes, he’s doing blood tests, or whatever they do,’ said young Mr Dighton, with his engaging affectation of ignorance. ‘He’ll be out soon. I must introduce him to you, Miss Wilson. A delightful creature. Forgive me, I must have a word with my father.’

  He darted away, and Amelia looked at Miss Brown.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Miss Brown. ‘If you want to talk to Mr Hay, I won’t let him leave the gallery.’

  ‘I do want to,’ said Amelia. ‘And it is going to be a very nervous day altogether. You see, Uncle Charles was very forthcoming to his female friends, though all honourable. And two of his very special friends will be here, Lady Buzzard and Mrs Hunt. Lady Buzzard sat to him for several pictures and feels she was his great inspiration. Mrs Hunt never sat to him, but she used to buy his pictures and rather felt she owned him. They aren’t very good friends, in spite of their age, which is so great that one might be excused for thinking they were old enough to be sensible.’

  ‘We have had plenty of trouble with them both already,’ said Miss Brown. ‘They tried to make themselves into a kind of hanging committee, and are both jealous of the other’s lendings. You will have to realise, Amelia, that this is their party, not yours.’

  ‘I don’t mind a bit. A party is always a party, and anyway Uncle Charles was my uncle, not theirs. Do you think Mr Hay will be long?’

  At that moment William Hay was passing through one of the crises which beset art experts. Undoubtedly the Mantegna was a Mantegna – there could be no possible doubt of it. Professor Schramm of Vienna, whose opinion William Hay rated only a little lower than his own, was ready to back him, and if Sir Alured Booth at the Royal British Gallery liked to say it wasn’t, that only proved the imbecility of middle fourteenth-century illuminated manuscripts thinking they could plunge into fifteenth-century painting. As far as the genuineness of the Mantegna went, William Hay was prepared to stake his whole professional reputation; but he did not want to do a good turn to the firm of Phelps. In spite of the reconciliation, young Mr Dighton’s ill-advised words about Signorelli still rankled, and William Hay did not like to think of the large profit (part of which would ultimately find its way into young Mr Dighton’s pocket) which the firm would make if his Argentine client bought the Mantegna. On the other hand, Señor García, who was quite impossibly rich, had come over to England with him expressly to buy Old Masters, and William Hay would be wanting in duty to a client if he didn’t let him get in early on the Mantegna. So life became very difficult, and William Hay expressed the greatest admiration to old Sir Dighton and asked if he might come again quietly one day and make up his mind. He then wrung Sir Dighton’s hand and walked out of his room into the gallery, and straight into Amelia Wilson.

  Both were too much taken aback to remember anything of their quarrel. Their souls were in their names, but before any further word of kindness or explanation could be uttered, Señor García burst out of Mr Phelps’s private room, and flung himself upon William Hay, making what were apparently violent protests, in Spanish.

  ‘It is most unfortunate, Hay, that your friend does not speak English,’ said Mr Phelps piteously. ‘I thought my collection of French triangulists might interest him, but I was unable to explain their interesting points. Perhaps he would care to look at them later on.’

  William Hay conveyed this invitation to Señor García who, looking Mr Phelps firmly in the face, remarked, ‘Most horreeble affairs.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Miss Brown, who wished to give Amelia a chance to speak to her friend, and had never been known to let a client go, ‘Señor García speaks French?’

  ‘Couramment,’ said Señor García with an atrocious accent.

  ‘In that case,’ said Miss Brown, in excellent French, ‘we might, if monsieur desires it, make a little tour of the galleries and regard the pictures of M. Wilsonne, the uncle of mademoiselle,’ – García bowed – ‘a talent of the most distinguished. A connoisseur such as monsieur cannot miss to appreciate the excellence of these pictures, veritable feasts, one can say, of English beauty of before-war.’

  Still talking, she led Señor García away to the farther gallery.

  ‘And now, Hay,’ said Mr Phelps, ‘I want to introduce you to Lady Buzzard, who is most anxious to meet you.’

  Lady Buzzard, a tall haggard woman, with smouldering remains of beauty, hung with turquoise chains and crowned with a toque of violets and a floating veil, advanced upon them.

  ‘Dear Lady Buzzard,’ said Amelia, automatically assuming her sacred face, ‘how very sweet of you to come, and it was so good of you to lend your lovely portrait and the two large pictures.’

  ‘Dear child,’ said Lady Buzzard, holding Amelia tightly with one hand to prevent her escape, while with the other she shook hands intensively with William Hay. ‘Dear child, you have no idea what anguish it was to me to lend those pictures. Their empty places seem to reproach me from the walls. I do so well remember your dear uncle saying to me, “Give your pictures away, Ida, sell them if you will, but never lend them.”’

  ‘Why did he say that?’ asked Amelia.

  ‘I will tell you, dear child,’ said Lady Buzzard, still holding William and Amelia in a grip of iron in case either of them should get away and talk to any of the other guests who were now pouring into the rooms. ‘I will tell you,’ she repeated absentmindedly, while her eye roved around in search of other victims. ‘You must come to lunch one day and we will have a real talk about your dear, dear uncle and I will show you some of the lovely little sketches I have – things quite unlike his usual work, done only for me. And now, Mr Hay, I want to pin you down to dine with me one day next week and bring your friend Señor García.’

  She dropped Amelia’s hand and pushed William Hay backwards into a corner so that he could move neither to the right nor the left. Amelia found herself seized by an elderly woman, thin as a skeleton, wound round with striped material and covered from head to foot with a liberal dusting of face powder.

  ‘Dear Mrs Hunt,’ said Amelia, ‘it was so good of you to come and lend your lovely picture.’

  ‘I am very, very angry with Sir Dighton,’ said Mrs Hunt, gripping Amelia’s arm with a claw-like hand. ‘I offered him three of my Wilsons and he has only taken one. The show is ruined without my Greta Banks and my Blue Eye, Beauty. Ah, there is William Hay, I must speak to him.’

  Releasing Amelia, she intruded her long bony body between Lady Buzzard and William.

  ‘Dear Lady Buzzard, so noble of you to lend all your pictures,’ she exclaimed. ‘When you only have three, it is positively angelic to part with them, especially when those walls so kill the effect of the paintings. And how delightful to see you back again, Mr Hay. When will you dine?’

  But before Hay could answer, Lazy Buzzard interrupted in her masculine voice.

  ‘I was just telling Amelia, dear Mrs Hunt, how lost I feel without my pictures. The empty spaces on the walls seem to reproach me whenever I see them. How I envy you only having been asked for one. One pays the penalty, you know, of having the best of a master’s work.’

  As Lady Buzzard rearranged her turquoise chains carelessly, to give an air of detachment to her unkind words, William Hay managed to sidle out of his corner with an apology and go across to Amelia.

  ‘I didn’t know you would be here,’ he said, ‘or I wouldn’t have come.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You probably don’t want me.’

  ‘Oh, William,’ said Amelia, whose heart began to break. But before she could express her sentiments, a hand was laid on her arm. She turned round and saw, far below her, a very stout shapeless woman, with grey hair escaping untidily from under a garden hat.

  ‘You don’t know me,’ said the little woman, with a brave smile.

  Amelia s
miled bravely back – far more bravely if the truth were known, for William was being snatched from her by old Sir Dighton, and she hadn’t the faintest idea who the brave little woman was. By a miracle of guesswork she hazarded an affectionate handgrip, saying, ‘Of course I do. It’s Popetty.’

  ‘Dear, dear child,’ said Popetty, her blue eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘You must forgive me if I call you Popetty,’ continued Amelia, all understanding smiles, ‘because Uncle Charles always called you that.’

  She omitted to add that Uncle Charles invariably added the epithet hell-cat, and that she had not at the moment the faintest idea of Popetty’s surname.

  ‘Dear, dear child,’ said Popetty again. ‘You know how rarely I come to London, but I had to make this effort, and I shall be able to tell your dear aunt all about this wonderful, wonderful day.’

  Now Amelia began to remember. Popetty lived with the widowed sister-in-law of Uncle Charles, but even that didn’t supply her with a surname.

  ‘And now, dear child,’ said Popetty, ‘introduce me to Sir Dighton. We used to meet in old days at Kensal Rise, but he may hardly remember me. I used to paint then, but I fear I have let that talent waste away in a napkin.’

  As Popetty wore a large blue enamel cross hanging upon her lumpy form, Amelia felt that it was all somehow very religious. Also she was terribly embarrassed at having to introduce someone whose name she didn’t know to Sir Dighton, who was earnestly talking to William. Summoning up her courage, she touched Sir Dighton’s elbow.

  ‘Sir Dighton,’ she said, without much assurance, ‘here is a very old friend who wants to meet you again. I expect you will remember her at Kensal Green.’

  Popetty suddenly became very breezy, and laughed in a hearty and alarming way.

  ‘There are still a few years left before we meet at Kensal Green, Sir Dighton,’ she said with an obese kind of archness, ‘but you haven’t forgotten Popetty?’