Bohemian Girl, The (17 page)

Denton stared at him. ‘You mean you’re telling a story!’ he said.

‘We are? Well, now—’

‘I’m impressed. I’m more than impressed. Atkins, you really thought of that?’

‘Well—It isn’t as if I haven’t heard you talk about such things. A frame, I mean. Well, yes, I thought of it. Can we use the front door or can’t we?’

It was both the daftest idea Atkins had so far had and the likeliest, Denton thought, to work. It was laughable - Hampstead Heath was to be South Africa - and neither Atkins nor his pal knew anything about acting or photography or saying things with pictures, but the ‘kinema’, so far as Denton could tell, was a rough-and-ready thing that was being shown in empty shops and rooms, the pictures projected on a bedsheet and the audience paying a farthing to stand behind a rope. ‘Where are you going to show your picture, if it gets made?’

‘We’re looking at a butcher’s shop that went bust in Finsbury. I say we ought to go south of the river - more people, less competition - but my pal says closer is better.’

‘You’d be wise to buy some insurance.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘Running around shooting off guns, things could happen. Not to mention some householder who says he was so frightened by what he thought was a Boer invasion that he fell off the stepladder and is suing for a painful neck.’

Atkins put his lower jaw to one side. After some seconds, he said, ‘I’m glad we had this talk. Makes me think.’ He started for the back, turned around, thanked Denton again. ‘I’m grateful. The scales are falling from my eyes. You’ve got a head for these things. Invaluable.’

Denton thought he’d best take advantage of Atkins’s mood. ‘One thing.’

‘Sir?’

‘The lady who was here - Mrs Striker. A very private matter.’

‘I never thought otherwise.’

‘Not a word.’

‘I’m hurt you’d think it of me.’

A little later, Atkins brought up an almost high tea, lavish by the standards he usually set. ‘This’ll hold you until you get to the Criterion or some such posh spot for dinner.’ It was Atkins’s way of saying that Denton had told him something useful.

It was in fact to the Café Royal and not the Criterion that he made his way. He liked the Café Royal, its rather disorderly Domino Room, whose high-styled décor was so at odds with many of the patrons. Gold and blue-green, with caryatids near the ceiling and gilded pillars that evolved into acanthus trees as they grew upwards, it expressed an already dated idea of French archness. Upstairs, the Café Royal was fairly grand; down here at ground level, it was part bistro and part Bohemian hangout. The chicken pie and the milky coffee were famous, as were the shouting matches, the models, the touts, the odd fistfight, the philosophizing and pontificating that came and went through the place like a tide.

The waiter knew him. Or seemed to know him. The waiters were mostly Italian, rather cynical, given to ironic facial expressions. He never knew what they were really thinking.

‘Has Mr Frank Harris come in yet?’

The waiter eyed the room with one raised eyebrow, then shot out an arm. At the far end, towards Glasshouse Street, Denton picked out the dark head of Frank Harris. Harris was an editor, the magazines changing every few years under him like post horses, his notoriety remaining constant - hard-drinking, sensual, bellicose. Denton kept looking at him until his moving gaze - Harris always seemed to be looking for something better than he had - came his way. Denton waved. He said to the waiter, ‘The chicken pie and the red wine.’

‘A bottle, sir?’

‘A glass.’

The Café had been founded by a Continental. It had gone through a number of managers; the most recent, disgusted with the low tone of the Domino Room, had left it and opened what he thought a proper restaurant next door. The Domino Room, impervious to elevation, had gone its disreputable way.

‘By God, you’re back.’ Frank Harris had a loud voice, a shrewd eye and a moustache almost as big as Denton’s. He banged his own drink down on the table as he sat. ‘Why didn’t you join me up there?’

‘I don’t like that end of the room. Always seems cold.’

‘Yah! I hear you made a lot of money on your trip to wherever it was.’

‘Transylvania. Whoever told you that?’

‘Writing about motor cars, really! I heard you cleared a thousand pounds on the American serial pub.’ In fact, he’d got more than that for the articles, expected still more now that they were collected into a book, but he wouldn’t tell Harris that.

The chicken pie appeared. Denton cut into it. Inhaled, ate. Harris said, ‘I know that dish is famous, but I’m damned if I can see how hard-boiled eggs and chicken can go together. It’s like an English idea of French food. Speaking of money, want to invest some?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve an idea for a new mag. Make a fortune.’

‘I’m looking for a girl.’

‘Who isn’t? I could introduce you to Lotty over there - she’s quite nice, if you don’t let her talk.’

Denton, chewing, took from a pocket a photographic copy of the drawing that had been in Mary Thomason’s trunk. ‘That girl.’

Harris studied it. ‘The ethereal type. Missed her moment - would have been perfect for the Pre-Raphaelites. Although you never know, sometimes it’s these apparently angelic little females who just want to do it like rabbits. “There is no art to find the cunt’s construction in the face.”’

‘Is that a quotation? You English are always throwing quotations at me.’

‘I’m Irish, and it’s Shakespeare. I know more about Shakespeare than any man in England, were you aware of that? Truth.’ Harris put the photo of the drawing down. ‘Who is she?’

‘Student at the Slade.’

‘Why didn’t you say so?’ He turned almost completely around and shouted, ‘Gwen!’ The room’s growl of talk, counterpoint to everything that went on, continued. ‘GWEN!’ He turned back. ‘Gwen John - know her? Her brother’s Augustus, the rising star of English art.’

Denton allowed that he knew Augustus John by sight, had once had a desultory conversation with him.

‘Gwen’s twice the painter her brother is, but he’s got flash, and people get blinded by it. Ah, Gwen, me darlin’, here you are.’

A frowning, rather small young woman in multi-coloured scarves and kerchiefs was standing by the table. ‘I don’t like to be shouted at,’ she said in a husky voice.

‘Of course you don’t. The Café Royal’s rather out of your milieu, isn’t it, Gwen?’

She looked as if she might not answer him, then reluctantly said, ‘One of my friends wanted to come here for his birthday.’

‘Must have got a cheque from home. Gwen, this is Mr Denton, famous writer, trying to get a line on this face.’ He spun the drawing so that she could see it. ‘Ring any bells?’

Without bending, she looked down at the drawing. She seemed to have smelled something bad.

‘Slade girl, he says,’ Harris prompted.

‘Well, it isn’t Slade work, is it? Hard to find drawing that bad these days. You’re asking the wrong person.’

Before she could turn away, Denton said, ‘Why isn’t it Slade work?’

‘It’s
stumped
. Try Burlington House.’ She swirled away.

Harris looked after her and said in a musing sort of way, ‘You know, under all those rags, there’s quite a fine body? Not that that’s any more a sign of accessibility than the face. Mind, I’ve known skinny little things with no more tits than a tinker who wanted to be pounded like a piece of tripe. I once walked into a bookshop on a rainy day, nobody there but this animated broom-handle of a female about thirty; it took me about ten minutes to be fucking her on a collected works of Richardson. She had a bush like—’

‘Harris, has it ever occurred to you that there’s more to life than sex?’

‘Good Christ, I certainly hope not! Where did you hear a thing like that?’

‘Made it up myself.’

‘What an idea!’

‘I wanted to know if you recognized the drawing, not to hear your sexual autobiography.’

‘Well, I don’t know her.’ He tapped the drawing. He sounded grumpy.

‘What’s “stumped”?’ Denton said.

‘Hmm? Oh, drawing technique - use a screw of paper to push the charcoal around, rub it out, get lights and shadows. Slade teaches the use of the line - stumping not allowed.’

‘And Burlington House?’

‘The RA - the Royal Academy. Really, Denton, you’ve lived here long enough to know that.’

‘I don’t understand art.’

‘Nobody does - except me, of course. Gwen and her crowd believe the RA’s the work of the devil. No telling them that thirty years ago the people who now hang their crap in Burlington House were sitting here and saying the same things about
their
betters. Today a rebel, tomorrow an academician. The awful truth is, none of them is awfully good - not good as the really good are good. Britain hasn’t produced a first-rate draughtsman since Rowlandson. You see, the trouble is—’

Denton concentrated on the chicken and let the words drown in the general hubbub. He glanced towards the table where Gwen John was sitting with several other young women and a couple of young men - late-adolescent boys, really - all the women swathed like her in gypsy-like bits and pieces of colourful cloth. The young men expressed themselves in long hair and collarless shirts with scarves; one wore the blue cotton jacket of a French working-man, possibly the badge of a summer in Paris. They certainly looked unconventional, he thought, probably the reason for the costume, at least among the women - the gypsy look just then was the Bohemian uniform, to judge from the young women he had seen near the Slade - but there was also the possibility that they dressed like this because it was cheap. Like Janet Striker, perhaps they didn’t have money for clothes: the problem was the same, the solution different. Theirs, he had to admit, was more attractive.

‘Ever hear of the Russian ballet?’ Harris was saying. Denton had no idea how he’d got there from Rowlandson.

‘Can’t say I have.’

‘You’re impossible. Like talking to a cow. Did you know I was a cowboy once? In Kansas?’

‘I’ve heard you say so.’

‘Don’t you believe me? I was in Chicago, and these four cowboys came into a hotel where I was—’

Denton looked at the young artists again. Gwen John was looking at him, her right hand making quick movements over a small sketch pad. When she saw him looking, she gave an automatic, close-mouthed smile and went on.

‘So I left the hotel business and went into cattle-driving. Many adventures. I was younger then. You aren’t listening, are you?’

‘I’m tired.’

Harris got up. He was perfectly amiable. ‘I need an audience. If you have some extra money, let me know - I’ll put you on to a good thing.’ He strode away, heading back towards his end of the room.

Denton finished the last of the chicken pie, then the wine, and ordered coffee. A couple of minutes later, to his surprise, Gwen John came and stood by the table. ‘I want to apologize for being so abrupt,’ she said.

‘Oh - you weren’t. It was nothing.’

‘I can’t stand Harris. He’s wetter than a water meadow. Is he a friend of yours? I’m sorry if he is. I say what I think.’

She might have been all of twenty-two or -three, he thought, yet she had the settled sombreness of a middle-aged woman. She was not pretty, didn’t seem to care. He said, ‘Won’t you sit down?’

‘I’m with people.’ She looked back at them.

‘Would they recognize the girl in the drawing?’

‘Not if she’s at the Slade now. We’ve all been out for a while.’ She sat down. She didn’t want anything to drink. She looked at the drawing again and shook her head. ‘I was quite serious, actually, just didn’t say it very nicely - this was done by somebody with academic training. It’s good of its kind - quite good of its kind - but I don’t like the kind.’ She became suddenly almost accusing. ‘What’s your interest in her?’

‘She wrote me a letter, said somebody might hurt her. People write to me like that - they have an idea I’m some sort of—The newspapers have given people the wrong idea.’

‘Is it the wrong idea? You seem to be trying to help her.’

‘It’s a kind of obligation. I was away when she wrote - her letter was waiting for me—’ He wanted to change the subject. ‘I saw you drawing me. Was it the nose?’

‘You have a strong face.’

‘A strong nose.’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t care about pretty or handsome or that blather. It’s character I like.’ Then her friends came over and surrounded the table and said they were moving on. To his surprise, Gwen John said to him, ‘Why don’t you come? Some current Slade people will be there. Maybe they’ll recognize your drawing.’

He glanced at the others; they weren’t paying any particular attention to him.
I’m too old, too different.
‘I’d be intruding.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. Mark says you’re a serious writer.’ Mark was apparently one of the young men, ‘serious writer’ apparently a ticket to their world. She stood. ‘Coming?’

Well, he thought, maybe it would be an adventure, although he didn’t need an adventure. He’d just got back from an adventure. Thinking of Janet Striker, that a love affair is also an adventure, venturing into the landscape of her, her unmapped territory.

Out on Regent Street, there were introductions of a sort - this is Edna, this is Ursula, this is Gwen (a different Gwen), this is Tony, Mark, Andrew. They all began walking. They had pulled on an assortment of capes, outdated military overcoats, one bearskin coat so worn the pale hide showed through in patches. The boy in the French working-man’s jacket was now seen to be wearing rope-soled shoes, as well.

‘Is it a party?’ Denton said.

One of the young men - was it Andrew? - turned and said, ‘The Duchess of Devonshire’s evening salon.’ There was laughter.

Denton spent little time with young people. These seemed to him rather puppyish, innocent, the women apparently more mature than the men. There was no sense of who belonged to whom, if such arrangements in fact existed. They seemed rather jolly overall.