A Coat of Varnish (10 page)

When should it be? After the weekend? Early next week, perhaps Monday. Who should be asked? Kate was firm, positive, cheerful. Diffidence all gone. They mustn’t overwhelm the old lady: themselves, other acquaintances whom she appeared to tolerate. Also, the doctor, who had been involved. None of the grand relics of the twenties who lived in the neighbourhood – over whom, however, Lady Ashbrook, expecting them to be disappointed that she was still extant, might, so Humphrey thought, have liked to gloat. Then Kate said: ‘I shall ask Susan Thirkill. And her beastly father.’

‘Susan?’ Humphrey was taken aback. ‘I shouldn’t have thought–’

He couldn’t repeat what he had heard that morning, but both Paul and Celia had a shrewd notion of how Loseby had behaved. They all felt that Kate was being callous, but she stuck to it.

‘It might do her good,’ she said.

‘I’m not sure that life is a moral gymnasium.’ Humphrey was cross with her.

‘No, she has to face things. You never know what will turn up.’

She seemed to be less practical than usual, moved either by a forlorn hope or intention. Then she said that she would invite Alec Luria.

‘Lady A detests him,’ Paul protested.

‘Never mind, it might do her good.’ She gave Humphrey a defiant grin. ‘He’d enjoy it, and he’d add a bit of distinction. Also, I like him, and I’m not going to keep him out. Lady A shouldn’t have her own way all the time; she’ll have to get used to ours.’

With that vigorous statement, Kate closed the discussion. Actually they were all in spirits both serene and high. It was a little piece of domestic arrangement, prosaic, nothing in it, but they were in tune with each other, warmed by something like a group emotion, as they might have felt working at a purpose more significant than this.

Lady Ashbrook was on her best behaviour in the Lefroys’ house on the Monday evening. Escorted by Paul, she had insisted on going there on foot, walking slowly but erect across the top of the Square and then down the length of the far side. Although there was no shade, she did not put up her parasol, but held it in a white-gloved hand, as though she were at a garden party, ignoring sunshine, like other material things, telling Paul, in a tone less caustic than he had heard, that they must arrive at 6.25 p.m. precisely. ‘If they’re giving a reception in one’s honour, one has to be five minutes early.’ She went on: ‘Very obliging of them, I must say. I suppose I am the guest of honour. Though it does seem slightly ridiculous. Just for surviving, I believe. But I’m not the only survivor in the world, don’t you agree?’

When they reached the house, Monty Lefroy, not Kate, was waiting at the door. He greeted her in state.

‘I am very glad to have you in my house, Lady Ashbrook,’ he said with a grandiloquent gesture, arms open wide. He had presence, as statuesque as Alec Luria’s, though most would have considered with less reason. He stood as though certain of being recognised.

‘It is extremely kind of you to ask me, Mr Lefroy.’ Surprisingly urbane, thought Paul, having previously listened to her opinion of Monty.

They guarded her on her way upstairs, though she would take no help. Kate had pulled the sliding doors aside, so that there was a drawing-room as long as Lady Ashbrook’s own.

‘How are you, Mrs Lefroy?’ Lady Ashbrook nodded to Kate. ‘I was telling your husband that you are extremely kind.’

Kate gave an unconfident smile but said that, before others came, she wanted to get Lady Ashbrook into a chair at the far end. Outside that window loomed an ash-tree in the Lefroy patio. ‘Cooler there.’ Kate was more than usually brisk, being more than usually diffident. ‘They’ll all want to gather round.’

‘How kind. How kind.’ Lady Ashbrook’s voice descended to its lowest register.

Lady Ashbrook was already installed before Humphrey entered the room. He was followed by young men and women, some of whom he didn’t know. Kate and Paul had recognised that Lady Ashbrook, so far as she liked company, liked that of the young. One or two were distant relatives, collected by Paul, one or two were friends of distant relatives. Celia came in, and was at once welcomed.

‘Celia, my dear,’ cried the old lady resonantly, and presented her cheek.

Alec Luria was not welcomed so fervently. ‘Professor Luria, isn’t it?’ Susan Thirkill, shy and sullen, didn’t go near the focal chair. Humphrey noticed, to his surprise, that she looked less ravaged than when he had seen her in that house before. When she talked, though she wasn’t smiling, to one of the young men, Humphrey recognised for the first time what a pretty girl she was. Tom Thirkill had led his daughter in, and detached observers had the pleasure of watching him and Monty Lefroy compete for the monopoly of Lady Ashbrook. Neither succeeded. She caught the eyes of Humphrey and Paul, requiring them to flank her.

Tom Thirkill was soon a centre of attraction on his own. In spite, or because, of what they had read about him, the young clustered round. He looked entirely relaxed, far more glittering than alone with any single person. Yes, Humphrey admitted, the man had film-star qualities.

Paul had ordered plenty of liquor, but, for a London party, not much was being drunk. By sheer chance, most of the guests were relatively abstemious, Monty safeguarding his valuable health, Luria out of lifelong custom, the young because of a change of habit – all making Humphrey appear as though he were sousing. Still, the party was going well and, as it happened, was one that a good many of those present came to remember.

Lady Ashbrook wasn’t put out of humour by the presence of those she disapproved of, or despised; the Thirkills, that Jewish character whom everyone listened to. She had been brushing off such as those all her life. What she didn’t like was the spectacle of her own contemporaries, ladies who had been sought after in her own youth. They were reminders of mortality. There was no such spectacle to affront her. No dinosaurs, Kate and Paul had agreed, and there was none that evening. In private, Paul had allowed himself to say that one dinosaur was quite enough.

So, Tom Thirkill surrounded by the admiring or the inquisitive, or both, Luria having an earnest discussion with Monty Lefroy, Lady Ashbrook cheerful with her male companions, the level of contentment was high. It was a rare event, so far as Humphrey could recall, but Lady Ashbrook was even heard to reminisce, which, the past being the past, was not one of her indulgences. She was reminiscing about Edwardian house parties. ‘I keep noticing’, she said to Paul, ‘that you and your friend always call people by their Christian name.’

‘Usually,’ Paul replied.

‘Almost from the word go.’

‘Almost before it.’

‘It wasn’t so when I was a girl, you know,’ she said. ‘It can’t have been so in your time, Humphrey.’

‘It was just coming in.’

‘There was nothing to be said for those horrible weekends in country houses. They were the most boring form of entertainment anyone ever had. If you came down to breakfast, you saw extraordinarily boring young men – I may be imagining it, but they seemed to have collars up to their chins, saying to each other “Goin’ for a grind, Postlethwaite?” “Not a bad idea, Cuthbertson.” And they’d never call each other anything else as long as they lived.’

Lady Ashbrook had given a spirited imitation of a version of upper-class English which some thought she still spoke. In fact, she didn’t drop her final
g
s: the only relic of that odd usage was that she wouldn’t pronounce the
g
in strength. Paul was thinking something different. If she was so observant of the customs round her, she shouldn’t have called Kate, whom she knew well, Mrs Lefroy. But Lady Ashbrook, though she had the formal manners which made her take care to arrive in time, could never have had any trace of the manners of the heart. Which was what Humphrey had told them as they discussed the party.

Lady Ashbrook was happy. So were most of those present. It wasn’t like that star-crossed Sunday. The real reason was simple. For all but one or two, who had their own anxieties, there was, when they looked at the old lady, stately in her chair, no suspense, because she had none herself.

Although it was so hot, everyone, about as thoughtfully as so many bees, had swarmed into the inner half of the room within a couple of yards of Tom Thirkhill and of Lady Ashbrook’s chair. There the temperature had mounted; so did the vocal buzz. In the mêlée Celia was able to talk quietly to Humphrey without dislodging him from his post beside the old lady.

‘This is rather a good occasion,’ she said.

‘I am glad we did it,’ Humphrey replied.

Monty Lefroy, now circulating with patronising grandeur as befitted one who took it for granted that he would be deferred to, had overheard them. In his fine, resonant, modulated voice, he told them: ‘How right you are. I’m
very glad
we did it. I’m very glad we
did
it.’

‘It’s entirely Kate’s doing,’ said Celia in her most remote manner, no more impressed by consciousness of importance than she was by cultivated charm.

‘She’s a wonderful woman.’ Monty, unperturbed, spoke as though he were giving Kate a blessing. ‘She’s been a great help to me, an enormous help.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Celia’s voice came from a greater distance still.

‘You’re preaching to the converted, dear girl,’ said Monty, blessing her again. ‘I don’t know what I should have done without her.’ He turned towards Humphrey and another subject. ‘I have been talking to your friend Luria. He’s a very intelligent man. I was impressing on him that to solve any of the difficult problems you have to be able to think of nothing else, literally nothing else, for forty minutes a day. It doesn’t sound very much, I said, but very very few people in intellectual history have ever been able to do it. It’s extremely tiring. I find that it gets more tiring still as one gets older. It makes one sleep. I sleep night and day.
Night and day
.’

‘Have you solved your problem?’ Celia’s question was uninflected, not innocent.

‘We shall see. We shall see. I expect to begin my book soon.’

‘How long will it take you to write?’ Another uninflected question.

‘Some years. One can’t rush these things. It will be quite a short book. Two hundred pages, perhaps. Less if possible. The shorter the better. I want to say everything I’ve thought out.’

Once more with the air of benediction he passed on. Humphrey had taken no part in the conversation. Celia was regarding him, he noticed, with something like pity. What she said might have been irrelevant, a casual thought. It was a simple enquiry.

‘What do you want to happen?’ She watched him with clear eyes, her expression composed and friendly.

‘What do you mean, happen?’

‘I mean it’s not enough for you, just sitting round, is it?’

It could have seemed impertinent, from someone not much older than his own daughter. He didn’t feel it so. He believed that she knew the answer. She couldn’t expect him to give it now. Even if they had been alone, he would have been too secretive or too suspicious to be honest. So he said: ‘Oh, I take short views. The old Sydney Smith prescription for keeping up your spirits. At lunch-time don’t think farther than dinner. That way, one gets along.’

‘That won’t satisfy you for ever, will it? It won’t satisfy me…’

Now he could evade talking about himself.

‘What do you want to happen, then?’

‘I rather wish I knew.’ She gazed at him totally frank, uncushioned, demanding nothing. ‘No, I’m not unhappy. I’m not a depressive. If Paul has a bit of that, I haven’t. Perhaps I might stir myself more if I were. I think I should like to paint a few good pictures, but no, I’m not obsessed enough about that.’

‘You’ll get married again, won’t you?’

‘I’m not sure, you know. I’m not obsessed enough even about that.’ She said it with a curiously girlish smile, she was echoing herself, jeering at herself. ‘I wasn’t particularly successful at it last time – was I? – and I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.’

‘Come off it. Paul would marry you tomorrow.’

‘He would. If he thought I wanted it. Or needed it. Paul is a dutiful man. But I’m not sure I shouldn’t do him harm.’

‘You love him, don’t you?’ Humphrey found himself talking as easily as if he and Celia had once been married.

‘Oh, yes, I love him very much. Much more than he loves me. But I’m not sure I could live the life his wife would have to. Whatever he says, he’s made for the big game. He may even think he can get out of it, but I’m positive he won’t. I couldn’t cope with the kind of life he’s walking into. I should curl up inside. It’s all right being a bedmate. But before long he’ll want a hostess. I shouldn’t be any use at that. It would frighten me off.’

‘You’re too hard on yourself.’

‘I don’t think so.’

She wasn’t asking for reassurance, and he didn’t offer any more. She seemed utterly self-sufficient.

More noise round them. Lady Ashbrook was wearing her haughtiest smile, possibly after some remark of extreme wickedness, and was being cheered on by those round her. Celia looked straight at Humphrey and said, not with irony, quite simply: ‘This is rather a good occasion, isn’t it?’

An hour or so later, Humphrey was walking across to his house with Alec Luria beside him. Talking to Celia, Humphrey had firmly produced the stoical instruction, take short views; but to himself he didn’t seem specially apt at obeying it. Luria was saying he had heard Monty Lefroy called a recluse. But he hadn’t looked like that in the party they had just left. It had been interesting to see him walking about his own drawing-room, preening himself.

Taking short views didn’t soothe Humphrey. When he had watched that sight without such detached interest it had filled him with wishes, or even scenarios, for the future.

‘Preening himself. A bit of
folie de grandeur
. The way he throws his head back, you’ve seen that before, in cases of
folie
, haven’t you?’

‘I dare say,’ Humphrey muttered.

‘To be sure,’ Luria went on reflecting, ‘he’s not a nobody. I reckon that there was something in him once. They must have thought he had great promise. Not so pleasant, when people tell you that you have wonderful promise and then wait for something to happen. It was an occupational hazard among classmates of mine. Another of the Jewish fatalities. Of course, he’s not Jewish, at least I shouldn’t think so, but I could have shown you a few like him in the Village, when they all still lived there.’