I passed on from the shoes to the next window. It was a picture shop. Just three pictures in the window artily arranged with a drape of limp velvet in some neutral colour arranged over a corner of a gilt frame. Cissy, if you know what I mean. I’m not much of a one for Art. I dropped in to the National Gallery once out of curiosity. Fair gave me the pip, it did. Great big shiny coloured pictures of battles in rocky glens, or emaciated saints getting themselves stuck with arrows. Portraits of simpering great ladies sitting smirking in silks and velvets and lace. I decided then and there that Art wasn’t for me. But the picture I was looking at now was somehow different. There were three pictures in the window. One a landscape, nice bit of country for what I call everyday. One of a woman drawn in such a funny way, so much out of proportion, that you could hardly see she was a woman. I suppose that’s what you call art nouveau. I don’t know what it was about. The third picture was my picture. There wasn’t really much to it, if you know what I mean. It was—how can I describe it? It was kind of simple. A lot of space in it and a few great widening circles all round each other if you can put it that way. All in different colours, odd colours that you wouldn’t expect. And here and there, there were sketchy bits of colour that didn’t seem to mean anything. Only somehow they did mean something! I’m no good at description. All I can say is that one wanted terribly to go on looking at it.
I just stood there, feeling queer as though something very unusual had happened to me. Those fancy shoes now, I’d have liked them to wear. I mean I take quite a bit of trouble with my clothes. I like to dress well so as to make an impression, but I never seriously thought in my life of buying a pair of shoes in Bond Street. I know the kind of fancy prices they ask there. Fifteen pounds a pair those shoes might be. Handmade or something, they call it, making it more worthwhile for some reason. Sheer waste of money that would be. A classy line in shoes, yes, but you can pay too much for class. I’ve got my head screwed on the right way.
But this picture, what would that cost? I wondered. Suppose I were to buy that picture? You’re crazy, I said to myself. You don’t go for pictures, not in a general way. That was true enough. But I wanted this picture…I’d like it to be mine. I’d like to be able to hang it and sit and look at it as long as I liked and know that I owned it! Me! Buying pictures. It seemed a crazy idea. I took a look at the picture again. Me wanting that picture didn’t make sense, and anyway, I probably couldn’t afford it. Actually I was in funds at just that moment. A lucky tip on a horse. This picture would probably cost a packet. Twenty pounds? Twenty-five? Anyway, there would be no harm in asking. They couldn’t eat me, could they? I went in, feeling rather aggressive and on the defensive.
The inside of the place was all very hushed and grand. There was a sort of muted atmosphere with neutral-colour walls and a velvet settee on which you could sit and look at the pictures. A man who looked a little like the model for the perfectly dressed man in advertisements came and attended to me, speaking in a rather hushed voice to match the scenery. Funnily, he didn’t look superior as they usually do in high-grade Bond Street shops. He listened to what I said and then he took the picture out of the window and displayed it for me against a wall, holding it there for me to look at as long as I wanted. It came to me then—in the way you sometimes know just exactly how things are, that the same rules didn’t apply over pictures as they do about other things. Somebody might come into a place like this dressed in shabby old clothes and a frayed shirt and turn out to be a millionaire who wanted to add to his collection. Or he could come in looking cheap and flashy, rather like me perhaps, but somehow or other he’d got such a yen for a picture that he managed to get the money together by some kind of sharp practice.
“A very fine example of the artist’s work,” said the man who was holding the picture.
“How much?” I said briskly.
The answer took my breath away.
“Twenty-five thousand,” he said in his gentle voice.
I’m quite good at keeping a poker face. I didn’t show anything. At least I don’t think I did. He added some name that sounded foreign. The artist’s name, I suppose, and that it had just come on the market from a house in the country, where the people who lived there had had no idea what it was. I kept my end up and sighed.
“It’s a lot of money but it’s worth it, I suppose,” I said.
Twenty-five thousand pounds. What a laugh!
“Yes,” he said and sighed. “Yes indeed.” He lowered the picture very gently and carried it back to the window. He looked at me and smiled. “You have good taste,” he said.
I felt that in some way he and I understood each other. I thanked him and went out into Bond Street.
Three
I don’t know much about writing things down—not, I mean, in the way a proper writer would do. The bit about that picture I saw, for instance. It doesn’t really have anything to do with anything. I mean, nothing came of it, it didn’t lead to anything and yet I feel somehow that it is important, that it has a place somewhere. It was one of the things that happened to me that meant something. Just like Gipsy’s Acre meant something to me. Like Santonix meant something to me.
I haven’t really said much about him. He was an architect. Of course you’ll have gathered that. Architects are another thing I’d never had much to do with, though I knew a few things about the building trade. I came across Santonix in the course of my wanderings. It was when I was working as a chauffeur, driving the rich around places. Once or twice I drove abroad, twice to Germany—I knew a bit of German—and once or twice to France—I had a smattering of French too—and once to Portugal. They were usually elderly people, who had money and bad health in about equal quantities.
When you drive people like that around, you begin to think that money isn’t so hot after all. What with incipient heart attacks, lots of bottles of little pills you have to take all the time, and losing your temper over the food or the service in hotels. Most of the rich people I’ve known have been fairly miserable. They’ve got their worries, too. Taxation and investments. You hear them talking together or to friends. Worry! That’s what’s killing half of them. And their sex life’s not so hot either. They’ve either got long-legged blonde sexy wives who are playing them up with boyfriends somewhere, or they’re married to the complaining kind of woman, hideous as hell, who keeps telling them where they get off. No. I’d rather be myself. Michael Rogers, seeing the world, and getting off with good-looking girls when he feels like it!
Everything a bit hand-to-mouth, of course, but I put up with that. Life was good fun, and I’d been content to go on with life being fun. But I suppose I would have in any case. That attitude goes with youth. When youth begins to pass fun isn’t fun any longer.
Behind it, I think, was always the other thing—wanting someone and something…However, to go on with what I was saying, there was one old boy I used to drive down to the Riviera. He’d got a house being built there. He went down to look how it was getting on. Santonix was the architect. I don’t really know what nationality Santonix was. English I thought at first, though it was a funny sort of name I’d never heard before. But I don’t think he was English. Scandinavian of some kind I guess. He was an ill man. I could see that at once. He was young and very fair and thin with an odd face, a face that was askew somehow. The two sides of it didn’t match. He could be quite bad-tempered to his clients. You’d have thought as they were paying the money that they’d call the tune and do the bullying. That wasn’t so. Santonix bullied them and he was always quite sure of himself although they weren’t.
This particular old boy of mine was frothing with rage, I remember, as soon as he arrived and had seen how things were going. I used to catch snatches here and there when I was standing by ready to assist in my chauffeurly and handyman way. It was always on the cards that Mr. Constantine would have a heart attack or a stroke.
“You have not done as I said,” he half screamed. “You have spent too much money. Much too muc
h money. It is not as we agreed. It is going to cost me more than I thought.”
“You’re absolutely right,” said Santonix. “But the money’s got to be spent.”
“It shall not be spent! It shall not be spent. You have got to keep within the limits I laid down. You understand?”
“Then you won’t get the kind of house you want,” said Santonix. “I know what you want. The house I build you will be the house you want. I’m quite sure of that and you’re quite sure of it, too. Don’t give me any of your pettifogging middle-class economies. You want a house of quality and you’re going to get it, and you’ll boast about it to your friends and they’ll envy you. I don’t build a house for anyone, I’ve told you that. There’s more to it than money. This house isn’t going to be like other people’s houses!”
“It is going to be terrible. Terrible.”
“Oh no it isn’t. The trouble with you is that you don’t know what you want. Or at least so anyone might think. But you do know what you want really, only you can’t bring it out into your mind. You can’t see it clearly. But I know. That’s the one thing I always know. What people are after and what they want. There’s a feeling in you for quality. I’m going to give you quality.”
He used to say things like that. And I’d stand by and listen. Somehow or other I could see for myself that this house that was being built there amongst pine trees looking over the sea, wasn’t going to be the usual house. Half of it didn’t look out towards the sea in a conventional way. It looked inland, up to a certain curve of mountains, up to a glimpse of sky between hills. It was odd and unusual and very exciting.
Santonix used to talk to me sometimes when I was off duty. He said:
“I only build houses for people I want to build for.”
“Rich people, you mean?”
“They have to be rich or they couldn’t pay for the houses. But it’s not the money I’m going to make out of it I care about. My clients have to be rich because I want to make the kind of houses that cost money. The house only isn’t enough, you see. It has to have the setting. That’s just as important. It’s like a ruby or an emerald. A beautiful stone is only a beautiful stone. It doesn’t lead you anywhere further. It doesn’t mean anything, it has no form or significance until it has its setting. And the setting has to have a beautiful jewel to be worthy of it. I take the setting, you see, out of the landscape, where it exists only in its own right. It has no meaning until there is my house sitting proudly like a jewel within its grasp.” He looked at me and laughed. “You don’t understand?”
“I suppose not,” I said slowly, “and yet—in a way—I think I do….”
“That may be.” He looked at me curiously.
We came down to the Riviera again later. By then the house was nearly finished. I won’t describe it because I couldn’t do it properly, but it was—well—something special—and it was beautiful. I could see that. It was a house you’d be proud of, proud to show to people, proud to look at yourself, proud to be in with the right person perhaps. And then suddenly one day Santonix said to me:
“I could build a house for you, you know. I’d know the kind of house you’d want.”
I shook my head.
“I shouldn’t know myself,” I said, honestly.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t. I’d know for you.” Then he added, “It’s a thousand pities you haven’t got the money.”
“And never shall have,” I said.
“You can’t say that,” said Santonix. “Born poor doesn’t mean you’ve got to stay poor. Money’s queer. It goes where it’s wanted.”
“I’m not sharp enough,” I said.
“You’re not ambitious enough. Ambition hasn’t woken up in you, but it’s there, you know.”
“Oh, well,” I said, “some day when I’ve woken up ambition and I’ve made money, then I’ll come to you and say ‘build me a house.’”
He sighed then. He said:
“I can’t wait…No, I can’t afford to wait. I’ve only a short time to go now. One house—two houses more. Not more than that. One doesn’t want to die young…Sometimes one has to…It doesn’t really matter, I suppose.”
“I’ll have to wake up my ambition quick.”
“No,” said Santonix. “You’re healthy, you’re having fun, don’t change your way of life.”
I said: “I couldn’t if I tried.”
I thought that was true then. I liked my way of life and I was having fun and there was never anything wrong with my health. I’ve driven a lot of people who’ve made money, who’ve worked hard and who’ve got ulcers and coronary thrombosis and many other things as a result of working hard. I didn’t want to work hard. I could do a job as well as another but that was all there was to it. And I hadn’t got ambition, or I didn’t think I had ambition. Santonix had had ambition, I suppose. I could see that designing houses and building them, the planning of the drawing and something else that I couldn’t quite get hold of, all that had taken it out of him. He hadn’t been a strong man to begin with. I had a fanciful idea sometimes that he was killing himself before his time by the work he had put out to drive his ambition. I didn’t want to work. It was as simple as that. I distrusted work, disliked it. I thought it was a very bad thing, that the human race had unfortunately invented for itself.
I thought about Santonix quite often. He intrigued me almost more than anyone I knew. One of the oddest things in life, I think, is the things one remembers. One chooses to remember, I suppose. Something in one must choose. Santonix and his house were one of the things and the picture in Bond Street and visiting that ruined house, The Towers, and hearing the story of Gipsy’s Acre, all those were the things that I’d chosen to remember! Sometimes girls that I met, and journeys to the foreign places in the course of driving clients about. The clients were all the same. Dull. They always stayed at the same kind of hotels and ate the same kind of unimaginative food.
I still had that queer feeling in me of waiting for something, waiting for something to be offered to me, or to happen to me, I don’t quite know which way describes it best. I suppose really I was looking for a girl, the right sort of girl—by which I don’t mean a nice, suitable girl to settle down with, which is what my mother would have meant or my Uncle Joshua or some of my friends. I didn’t know at that time anything about love. All I knew about was sex. That was all anybody of my generation seemed to know about. We talked about it too much, I think, and heard too much about it and took it too seriously. We didn’t know—any of my friends or myself—what it was really going to be when it happened. Love I mean. We were young and virile and we looked the girls over we met and we appreciated their curves and their legs and the kind of eye they gave you, and you thought to yourself: “Will they or won’t they? Should I be wasting my time?” And the more girls you made the more you boasted and the finer fellow you were thought to be, and the finer fellow you thought yourself.
I’d no real idea that that wasn’t all there was to it. I suppose it happens to everyone sooner or later and it happens suddenly. You don’t think as you imagine you’re going to think: “This might be the girl for me…This is the girl who is going to be mine.” At least, I didn’t feel it that way. I didn’t know that when it happened it would happen quite suddenly. That I would say: “That’s the girl I belong to. I’m hers. I belong to her, utterly, for always.” No. I never dreamed it would be like that. Didn’t one of the old comedians say once—wasn’t it one of his stock jokes? “I’ve been in love once and if I felt it coming on again I tell you I’d emigrate.” It was the same with me. If I had known, if I had only known what it could all come to mean I’d have emigrated too! If I’d been wise, that is.
Four
I hadn’t forgotten my plan of going to the auction.
There was three weeks to go. I’d had two more trips to the Continent, one to France and the other to Germany. It was when I was in Hamburg that things came to a crisis. For one thing I took a violent dislike to the man and his wife
I was driving. They represented everything I disliked most. They were rude, inconsiderate, unpleasant to look at, and I suppose they developed in me a feeling of being unable to stand this life of sycophancy any longer. I was careful, mind you. I thought I couldn’t stand them another day but I didn’t tell them so. No good running yourself in bad with the firm that employs you. So I telephoned up their hotel, said I was ill and I wired London saying the same thing. I said I might be in quarantine and it would be advisable if they sent out a driver to replace me. Nobody could blame me for that. They wouldn’t care enough about me to make further inquiries and they’d merely think that I was too feverish to send them any more news. Later, I’d turn up in London again, spinning them a yarn of how ill I’d been! But I didn’t think I should do that. I was fed up with the driving racket.
That rebellion of mine was an important turning-point in my life. Because of that and of other things, I turned up at the auction rooms on the appointed date.
“Unless sold before by private treaty” had been pasted across the original board. But it was still there, so it hadn’t been sold by private treaty. I was so excited I hardly knew what I was doing.
As I say, I had never been to a public auction of property before. I was imbued with the idea that it would be exciting but it wasn’t exciting. Not in the least. It was one of the most moribund performances I have ever attended. It took place in a semi-gloomy atmosphere and there were only about six or seven people there. The auctioneer was quite different from those auctioneers that I had seen presiding at furniture sales or things of that kind; men with facetious voices and very hearty and full of jokes. This one, in a dead and alive voice, praised the property and described the acreage and a few things like that and then he went halfheartedly into the bidding. Somebody made a bid of £5,000. The auctioneer gave a tired smile rather as one who hears a joke that isn’t really funny. He made a few remarks and there were a few more bids. They were mostly country types standing around. Someone who looked like a farmer, someone who I guessed to be one of the competitive builders, a couple of lawyers, I think, one a man who looked as though he was a stranger from London, well dressed and professional-looking. I don’t know if he made an actual bid, he may have done. If so it was very quietly and done more by gesture. Anyway the bidding petered to an end, the auctioneer announced in a melancholy voice that the reserve price had not been reached and the thing broke up.