Fellow Passenger (9 page)

After the game we retired to the village pub. When the diffident captain had supplied me with a pint, he frightened me into hiccups by remarking:

‘I’ve never seen an off-break like yours since Howard-Wolferstan’s.’

‘Good Lord, you mean the spy!’ I exclaimed.

I cursed myself for my intemperate longing to play cricket again. My reply must have sounded wildly unnatural, but the tone, I suppose, passed as surprise and interest.

The name caught the attention of three or four other members of the team who were standing at the bar alongside. That was what the captain intended. He could at last claim some serious attention.

‘That’s the man! But I don’t think he was a spy.’

‘Did you know him?’I asked.

‘Oh, I knew him very well at Oxford. No more sense than a monkey! I can imagine him robbing a bank, but he never cared enough about anything to be a real communist.’

A libellous character! Still, I must admit that at the age of twenty I had not reached the responsibility of later years. He did not know me. He had merely heard of me, and very inaccurately. We may have had friends in common. But he had evidently watched me often enough playing cricket, and, talking to a stranger, it was a forgivable social lie to claim my acquaintanceship.

‘He admitted that he
was
a communist,’ I said.

‘My own speciality at that age was black magic,’ he answered surprisingly. ‘One would look back on those things with shame if they weren’t so absurd.’

‘But then what was he doing at Moreton Intrinseca?’

‘After women, of course. That was his hobby.’

I regretted that I could not show my indignation. Women have never been of great importance in my life. I delight in them immensely, yes. But I have never been under the influence of one woman for more than a month.

‘At least,’ I said, ‘it is one of the few hobbies which can be enjoyed by both sexes.’

That amused the party. Howard-Wolferstan was forgotten in the excitement of having amongst them a lecherous Bohemian straight from Chelsea. The cricketers listened to indecorousness as fast as I could invent it. It’s odd that the English should always consider that painters have the morals of stud bulls. I find it hard to believe that the creative mind can live in a state of excitement so continuous as that of the average business man.

Among my audience was the wicket-keeper. Courtesy demands that even in the private papers of a Traitor the name I give to him should be false. But a name of some sort I must use, if only for my own convenience. Flesh, character and name seem to be equally essential for solidity. Leave out the first, and you get something which interferes with the second law of thermodynamics. Leave out the second, and you have an exhibit at an agricultural fair. And without a name you have an unsatisfactory reality, as of some haunting woman once seen and never forgotten.

Robert Donolow - that’s the wicket-keeper - was a farmer and looked it. He was a man who could look any part so long as it called for a good presence and an honest geniality. He had been, I gathered, a diplomatist. The same face, with a little more pallor, would have suited that cheerful profession equally well.

‘Where are you off to?’ he asked.

I answered that I was going nowhere in particular, and that if I couldn’t find a cheap pub I should put up at a cottage.

‘Why not come back with me and stay the night?’

In such an atmosphere of bluff good-fellowship I could not possibly refuse; yet the invitation was somehow suspicious. Even admitting that I was well-spoken, intelligent and could bowl, I was not the sort of person whom I myself - if I had been myself - would have invited home without an ulterior motive. I was unkempt, probably disreputable, and there was no evidence whatever, beyond the portfolio, colours and folding easel, that I could paint.

I got into his battered estate car, and for the first couple of miles we discussed the match. Then, after a pause, he asked me:

‘Are you a modern painter?’

I replied cautiously that my art was purely abstract.

‘You mean that if you paint a cow, it doesn’t look like a cow but the sort of thoughts one might have about a cow?’

It seemed safe to agree to this.

‘I hoped you would,’ he said. ‘Of course one is often wrong to judge by appearances, but I somehow felt you belonged to the
avant-garde
.’

He was a bit out of date, but I was not going to tell him so. The real
avant-garde -
to go by the few shows I had time to see in London - dressed like stockbrokers.

‘And can I guess what your pictures represent?’ he asked. ‘Or do you have to explain them in words?’

‘I don’t have to,’ I answered, ‘but I find it helps if I do.’

‘I wish you would tell that to my sister. She paints, too. But she won’t explain. She says it doesn’t matter. Oh, you’ll have a lot in common,’ he added. ‘She’s very lonely down here.’

His glance begged me to be polite to her. He need not have bothered. I had every intention of keeping the conversation firmly fixed on her own paintings.

His farm turned out to be a pleasant, rectangular Regency house, which looked as if it had once been the vicarage. Separated from the house by a semi-circular gravel drive was a formal lawn surrounded by flower-beds, in which his sister was bedding out geraniums. It seemed a very harmless pursuit for so advanced an intellectual.

‘I’ve brought Michael Bassoon back with me,’ my host announced - and added more feebly when it was clear the name meant nothing to her:

‘He paints.’

Veronica put him in his place, answering, ‘Oh, yes?’ with a casually offensive lift of the voice which implied that her brother might be easily impressed by sideboards and a folding easel, but that, for her, artists worthy of serious consideration were few indeed. However, she shook hands with me cordially enough, and waved away the trivialities of gardening.

She was fond of gestures which were rather larger than life. No doubt they had grown upon her in the cut and thrust of youthful argument. She was, I suppose, about forty, with an arrogantly classical face which must have tended, when she was a girl, to limit her love affairs to those prescribed by the duty of self-expression; but at her present age it was possible to feel sorry for her, and to note that her profile was magnificent.

When I had had a quick bath - or as quick as could be considering the time spent scrubbing the dirt from the bathtub after removing it from my person - I found drinks laid out in the living-room. Robert Donolow’s hospitality was excessive from the start; when his sister appeared he had already ensured that my mood should be genial. Severity was still her keynote. Veronica was all black silk - a vaguely Chinese effect - from neck to ankles. The distance between them, though agreeable, was far too long.

As I was now shining with soap and gin, she decided to give me the benefit of the doubt.

‘Michael Bassoon,’ she murmured. ‘Now, of course I’ve heard the name, but I don’t quite—’

‘One has to be dead,’ I told her, ‘before the dealers will publicize one’s name.’

She liked that, so I felt on safe ground. The trouble was that I could not be sure how London painters talked. I had to back my knowledge of Ecuadorians. Apparently there was no noticeable difference.

‘And what’s in a name?’ I went on. ‘That lovely thing, now’ - I pointed to one of the remarkable splodges of colour on the walls - ‘I don’t know who did it, and what does it matter? It exists in itself.’

‘What would you call it,’ she asked suspiciously.

I carried my gin across the room, and looked over it at the picture.

‘The Composer,’ I said.

After all, Latin America is rotten with painters as good as Veronica and I knew what to look for. There was an ink-potty splash of blue in the left foreground and a thing which was certainly an eye with another thing which was probably a finger. The blue exploded north-east into an effective fountain of red and yellow pyrotechnics.

Veronica looked at me with respect, and a refreshing suggestion of humility.

‘The Analyst,’ she said. ‘I painted it.’

It seemed to me that there was little in common between a Composer and an Analyst, but evidently there was enough for me to relax. So long as I was not expected to discuss technique, I could carry on as an imposing authority. I kissed her hand. Robert Donolow beamed. We had some more gin.

Dinner was simple - cold beef in quantity and an excellent local cheese. Veronica, who was now addressing me shortly as Bassoon, took over the conversation and ignored Robert. He didn’t mind a bit, and kept filling our glasses with a youngish but insidious Burgundy. He was a delightfully unselfish brother, entirely content so long as Veronica could spread her wings.

When she had left us alone with another bottle - for she held by convention to that extent - I complimented him on his care of her.

‘I say, old boy, can she really paint?’ he asked.

He was not in practice and his speech was getting thick. Evidently he seldom treated guests as he was treating me. But I was no longer suspicious of his motives.

‘Just as well as I can,’ I replied.

‘Very fond of her,’ he said, ‘but farm not the right place for her. Can’t afford to give her an allowance, you see. So got to put her up and put up with her, put, put. Am I talking too much?’

I assured him that he wasn’t.

‘Shu-shuperfluous female,’ he went on. ‘Poor Veronica. Takes it out of me a bit. I’ve got to see to the cows. You go and talk painting.’

He grabbed a vast pair of Wellingtons from a corner and tripped over himself into the night.

Veronica was in the living-room, smoking far too many cigarettes. She supplied me with coffee and brandy, and begged to see a Bassoon - a real Bassoon with which I myself was pleased. It was no good showing her the studies of ecclesiastical architecture done by my predecessor between collecting-boxes, and I flatly refused to be responsible for his other work; but fortunately I had one of my own. The amount of alcohol which her brother had poured into Veronica had, I hoped, overloaded the centres of higher criticism. In any case I felt confident - for my mood was expansive - that the work was up to our common standard of originality.

I had painted it in oils while sheltering from the rain in a barn. What I was icily trying to do was to express a remembered colour: that of an Indian-dyed magenta skirt which my
mestiza
nurse used to wear on holidays. I captured it - at any rate towards the outside of the patch - and set it in a lot of emerald green straight out of the tube. I carried my unique painting around in a frame with a piece of cardboard across, because it would not dry. I had not realized that if you intend to keep walking without any fixed base, you must use watercolours or draw.

Frame and all, it was only intended to divert the eyes of policemen from my face. I propped it up on the mantelpiece for Veronica’s approval. My magenta patch looked rather like a horse, so I christened the picture Ploughland. She stood back and gazed devotedly. I thought she would - especially after I had explained that I had tried to paint a childhood memory. The field - that was me. My nurse - that was the horse. And the field was green because it had been ploughed the year before.

She swept over the coffee tray with a magnificent gesture, and ignored the damage with a still finer one.

‘Bassoon,’ she exclaimed, ’I would give anything to be able to afford that! It is the most exquisite, uninhibited infantilism I ever saw.’

‘It’s yours for a fiver,’ I said.

‘You can’t!’ she cried. ‘You can’t let it go for that!’

She was serious. I tried to give it to her. I made every possible disclaimer, short of shoving it into her arms and covering her with magenta and green. To my horror she extracted five pounds from her bag and forced them on me, protesting that it was robbery and that she should be ashamed of herself. She almost persuaded me that I was an unconscious genius. I can only hope that she was right. Certainly it would have been quite beyond an expert painter to produce such uninhibited infantilism.

Little sister’s face was gay with enthusiasm and worship when Robert Donolow returned sleepily from the cows. He never said - didn’t even imply - what he must have thought of her purchase. I wonder what made him give up diplomacy for farming. He looked as if he were about to give us or art in general his blessing, refrained, and staggered off to bed.

We followed shortly afterwards, Veronica talking incessantly of plans for my future. There was no opportunity for me to open my mouth. I could well imagine that, as Donolow said, she took it out of him a bit. And I could not even get away at my bedroom door, for he had placed me opposite her at the end of an interminable passage.

Having kissed her hand when it was not bedtime, I couldn’t very well avoid doing it again when it was. I hardly lingered over it more than courtesy demanded, but the delay gave Veronica an occasion for dramatics. What gesture she meant to make I do not know. It started off as Candida patronizing her poet; it became regretful - though somewhat alarmed - dismissal. And then she burst into tears. It was most awkward. All her severity had been dispelled by art and Burgundy, and there remained nothing but the classic profile. What could I do? I took the line of least resistance.