Money from Holme (7 page)

The Mall, in fact, was void. St James’s Park, on the other hand was crowded enough – and in the main with persons demonstrably from the simpler classes of society. Cheel found nothing disagreeable about this, since his social tolerance was such that the spectacle of his inferiors always held something gratifying to him. He did however draw the line at sharing a bench with a prole, and his fastidiousness for a time made it difficult to call a halt to his perambulation and seat himself in meditative ease. This, since he had a good deal to meditate, was vexatious, and he was glad when he did eventually find an unencumbered resting place. It was in full sunshine, and Buckingham Palace (always referred to by Cheel as Buck House) was cheerfully in view, with the Royal Standard flying above its roof. Cheel felt as pleased by this token of the sovereign presence as if it had been a private signal instructing him to drop in there for a drink.

But – he told himself – to work! His encounter with Hedda Holine had not – at least in any clearly analysable terms –brought him very much. Yet it had been abundantly worthwhile, since it
had
brought him that moment of cloudy but indubitable inspiration. How was he to clarify this? Not perhaps by taking, here and now, too anxious thought about the affair. For the higher reaches of imaginative achievement were, after all, intuitive territory. He would do best to cultivate a wise passiveness; to expose his mind, vacant and unemployed, to some seminal percolation from its own abundant inner recesses.

Coming down Piccadilly, he had bought an early edition of some evening paper. Pursuing his design of mental relaxation, he opened it and idly scanned its columns. There was, he found – as was to be expected – a notice of the Holme exhibition at the Da Vinci. Needless to say, it was a grossly incompetent affair – but at least the scribbler had caught the trick of shouting with what was going to be the crowd. It was what journalists call a rave notice. He read it through, and found himself wondering whether Sebastian Holme himself had read it yet. He too might have bought a copy of the paper in Piccadilly – if indeed he hadn’t been too discomposed at having in such odd circumstances just avoided his wife only an hour ago.

What was Holme doing now? What had he been doing yesterday, and what would he be doing tomorrow?

As Cheel asked himself these questions he felt a faint tingling down the length of his spine. They were unremarkable questions, in a loose or quasi-logical concatenation, and must be called ruminative or even wool-gathering rather than of any evident penetration. Yet Cheel saw instantly that they drove to the heart of the matter. For the answer to all of them was:
Damn all
. Or perhaps:
Eating his bloody head off
. For purposes of more elegant expression it might be said that Holme was (in that phrase of Henry James’ for a nicely poised character) en
disponibilité
. The silly sod (and this had been Cheel’s grand, glimmering perception from the first) was crying out to be
used
. In a sense this was true of all human beings. It was what they were there for, and success in life was a matter of being always on the job. But Sebastian Holme’s was a very special case. It had every title to call itself a challenging case. And the challenge was one to which any man in whom there breathed the spirit of true enterprise must feel virtually a moral compulsion to respond.

By such Enterprise
– Cheel recalled the poet Spenser as declaring –
many rich Regions are discovered
. But that – he reflected, as he gazed once more at his sovereign’s flag flying over her palace – had been in the First Elizabethan Age. There was far too little bold and resolute seizing of opportunity in the Second. People no longer, like Drake and Raleigh and worthies of that kidney, went out after things. Britons had become degenerate. They just didn’t know when and how to grab. In his own present situation nine out of ten of his countrymen would be perfectly content to do nothing at all. Cheel felt himself blushing for them.

But just
what
was to be done? First, he must track down Sebastian Holme once more. Holme must then be roused from his culpable skulking and idling, his reprehensible mutility. Whatever his motive for being dead, he must be brought alive again. Or rather, he must be brought, so to speak, half-alive. Yes – that was precisely it. And it must all be done by kindness – unless, of course, the situation, when further explored, suggested that more could be achieved by brutality. Firmly but kindly for a start, the young man must be shown how he ought to be comporting himself.

Cheel leant back on his bench, enjoying a relaxation promoted alike by the sunshine and the consciousness of his own benevolence. The movement made him aware that he was no longer alone. A man had sat down next to him and was now reading a newspaper. It was the same newspaper that he had himself purchased. The man was reading something on one of the middle pages; it might quite well be the critical notice of the Sebastian Holme Exhibition. The man gave a grunt which could have been of contempt or impatience or irritation, and he then let the paper drop to his side. Cheel turned slightly away. He had no impulse to inspect an undistinguished and probably plebeian stranger. Even so, the paper was within his vision, as was the man’s left hand, loosely holding it. Cheel suddenly froze. There was no mistaking that scar. He had been looking at it not much more than a couple of hours ago. In all the wide world, only Sebastian Holme had precisely
that
at the base of his left index finger and thumb.

For a moment the impression was overwhelming. Cheel was less conscious of the fantastic coincidence that had once more brought his quarry (which was perhaps the word) within his reach than he was of what a psychologist would have termed a purely ideated image. He saw once more the silly little screaming girl; he felt the bottle splinter as he swung it behind him; he smelt not only the reek of tobacco-smoke and alcohol but also (although this seemed fanciful) the warm blood spurting from the stupid young dauber’s hand. So powerful were these recollections that he found himself actually trying to dodge the blow which, in another second, was going to lay him out.

Then all this faded. The plain fact was that he had enjoyed the most incredible luck. He turned and looked boldly at Sebastian Holme – only to give a strangled yelp of astonishment. The man with the scar on his hand was as clean-shaven as he himself.

Or more so. It was when he noted this – the almost unnatural smoothness of Holme’s skin – and when he received too a faint whiff as of some cosmetic preparation floating in the air, that Cheel began to master the quite uncomfortable degree of bewilderment that had assailed him. Within the hour, Holme had had himself shaved.

‘What have you gone and done that for?’ It was with large surprise that Cheel heard himself speak with this admirable directness. He had done so out of an urgent sense that big issues were at stake.

‘Gone and done what?’ As he asked this, Holme’s gaze narrowed. ‘Aren’t you that bounder Cheel?’

‘Yes.’ It would have been more accordant with dignity, perhaps, to qualify this reply. But Cheel was bent on business. ‘Gone and had your beard off.’

‘Not my beard. Somebody else’s.’

‘I know. Your brother Gregory’s.’

‘How the hell do you know that?’

‘Portrait of the Artist’s Brother Gregory. Lent by Gregory Holme Esq.’

‘Of course.’ Holme stared gloomily at Cheel. Then he seemed to remember. ‘What were you doing with my wife in that pub?’

‘Trying to get to the bottom of something.’

‘And why was there a rumpus?’

‘Same reply, in a manner of speaking.’ Cheel was so pleased with this witticism that he took time off for a good laugh. ‘I’d pinched her behind. She resented it. Incalculable creatures, the ladies.’

‘You had a nerve.’ Holme was staring at Cheel with something like respect. ‘She’s an awful woman.’

‘I know.’

‘Why did you pinch her behind? For the hell of it?’

‘No. I’d done that earlier, as a matter of fact – in your show.’

‘In my show!’ Holme was suddenly indignant. ‘What do you mean, wasting your time assaulting people in my show? Why didn’t you look at the pictures, and not the wenches? But you always were a filthy man. Don’t I remember.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Cheel said. He saw no reason to linger over inessentials. ‘But I pinched your wife the second time as what you might call a diversionary manoeuvre. It started a row; you peered in from the bar; and then you made off. In fact, I gave you the alarm, and I hope you’re grateful. if she’d seen you she might have recognized you. I’m surprised she didn’t do so in the Da Vinci. It was half-witted, by the way, going in there today if you want people to think you’re dead.’

‘I couldn’t keep away. And the pictures shook me. I decided to go back later – and first I thought I’d have a quick one in that bar. When there was the rumpus, and I peered in and saw Hedda yelling like that – well, that shook me too.’

‘And now you’ve shaken the beard off?’

‘That’s just it. You know the devil of a lot. I decided! couldn’t bear it any longer.’

‘Being dead?’

‘Being dead.’

‘I think you ought to reconsider that.’ Cheel said this in a weighty and judicious manner. He didn’t at all like the way the thing was going. And he looked nervously round as he spoke. St James’s Park was frequented by all sorts of people, and at any moment somebody might drift along and, so to speak, welcome Holme back from the grave. ‘You mustn’t do anything rash. You owe it to yourself to consider the whole matter carefully. In fact I think we ought to go somewhere and discuss it in private.’

‘What’s this about? What the devil has it to do with you?’ Although Holme was obviously in some state of muddle or bewilderment he was also irritated and indignant. ‘Messing around with my wife, and now wanting to go somewhere private. You must be a sex maniac. I don’t want to have anything to do with you. You’re a filthy man, and I’ve always known it. And it’s too late anyway. I’m giving myself up. That’s why I blewed five bob on getting rid of the beard. It was Hedda who tipped the balance. She’s an awful woman. You couldn’t know how awful. But somehow she made me feel that this being dead business is a mistake. It has simply no future.’

‘That’s just where you may be wrong. I’d like to talk it over with you.’ Cheel stole a glance at the sulky, but at the same time sensitive and vulnerable face which the disappearance of the beard had revealed. ‘And that’s part of the trouble with being dead and buried, I suppose. Nobody to talk the whole thing over with.’

‘Perhaps it is. But I don’t trust you, Cheel. Mervyn Cheel, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, there you are.’

‘Don’t be silly, Holme. You can’t really be silly. Nobody who painted those things could be silly. It’s my job. I
know
.’

‘They surprised you? They surprised me. Brought together like that, and with all those nobs snapping them up. As I said, it shook me. And made me mad, as Hedda would say. Foolish, but I admit it.’

‘Then let me talk to you, my dear man.’

‘I’m not your dear man. And I don’t want anything today. Didn’t you see the notice on the gate? No Hawkers. Keep Out. This Means You.’

‘Holme, don’t be bitter. It’s true I may have something to sell. But you’d find it a damned good buy. Only, first, I must have the facts.’

‘Beware of the Dog.’

‘Of course if you can
only
be silly, I must simply go away.’

‘Although we abound in charity, we do not give at the door. Scram.’

‘Very well.’ Cheel got to his feet with dignity. ‘My assistance is rejected. The incident is closed.’

‘Fine. And when you meet a copper, send him along.’

‘Here’s one coming along now, as it happens. Constable!’ Cheel raised a summoning hand as he spoke. But he hadn’t really spoken at all loudly – a circumstance which he trusted to Holme’s disturbed condition to obscure from him. And this worked.

‘No – stop!’ Holme made an agitated grab at his companion. ‘I’ve got to think. I don’t know that I mean it – about giving myself up.’

‘Precisely.’ Cheel sat down again with the same poise with which he had risen. The policeman went past with no more than a glance at the man who had appeared to gesture a little oddly. ‘Precisely,’ Cheel repeated. ‘As you say, we’ve got to think out this thing together. And first – once again – the facts. Just what will you be in for, if they catch you?’

‘I don’t quite know. I’ve never seen it happen. Once or twice I heard it in the distance. They say it can last about a week.’

‘I see.’ Cheel, of course, didn’t at all see – unless it was the sudden possibility of Sebastian Holme’s being mad. ‘It has to do with your brother Gregory, I suppose?’

‘Yes, it does in a way have to do with him.’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘Kill Gregory?’ Sebastian Holme stared at Cheel in unfeigned astonishment. ‘Of course not. Rather the opposite, really. You might say I’ve brought him alive.’

‘You are
being
Gregory now – or, at least, you were being until you shaved off the beard this afternoon?’

‘That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?’

‘And Gregory is, in fact, dead?’

‘Obvious again. Gregory’s dead. Beastly dead. I liked him very much.’ Holme paused for a moment, and Cheel was revolted to notice that the young man had tears in his eyes.

‘His
body became
me
dead. I became
him
alive. It seemed the simplest thing.’

‘This was during the revolution, or whatever it was, in this outlandish Wamba place?’

‘Of course.’

‘Where things weren’t at all as they seemed. You weren’t killed. Perhaps your paintings weren’t destroyed?’

‘Not destroyed?’ Holme seemed astonished again. ‘Of course they were destroyed. I saw it happen with my own eyes. I can tell you it’s a very nasty thing to see. Almost as nasty as seeing–’ Holme checked himself. ‘Not destroyed!’ he repeated with contempt. ‘What put that in your head?’