‘Is Mr Desmonde at home?’
‘No,’ she said, studying him. Then she added: ‘He’ll not be back till evening.’
‘I wonder if I might talk with you for a moment. My name is Maddox. Charles Maddox. You, I am quite sure, are Mrs Desmonde. I am, or rather I used to be, your husband’s agent.’
She hesitated. It was far from her custom to admit strange gentlemen to her house, yet his manner, open and direct, was not that of one desirous of selling unwanted articles.
‘Please come in,’ she said.
In the little front parlour, spotless and chilly, with its moquette furniture, upright piano, and potted fern in the window, she faced him guardedly, though predisposed in his favour by the thoroughness with which he had wiped his boots on the outside mat.
‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’
‘I should appreciate it, if it is not too much trouble.’
Without flurry, she brought him tea and hot buttered toast.
‘This is good of you. I’ve been on the go all the forenoon and missed my lunch.’ He paused. ‘Won’t you join me?’
‘No thank you.’ She declined a little primly, thinking that such informality would be going a little too far. ‘ The weather has turned fine at last.’
‘Yes, it’s a beautiful day.’
There was a pause.
‘Mrs Desmonde.’ He spoke with sudden resolution, after he had accepted a second cup. ‘You seem to be a most sensible person, and I particularly want your help. I have come here this afternoon to ask you to persuade your husband to permit me to handle his work.’
‘But you said you was his agent.’
‘A nominal title, I am afraid. I have not in eight years had a single Desmonde canvas in my gallery. While I am sure’ – he threw a quick glance of interrogation – ‘in his studio there are scores.’
‘Yes,’ she answered mildly, still rather at a loss. ‘They’re all out there. But he won’t part with them. He’s told me so. After they used him so bad, he vowed he’d never show another picture in his life.’
‘That was long enough ago, and since then there’s been a lot of water under the bridges. Mrs Desmonde’ – he leaned slightly forward – ‘art is a curious affair, it proceeds in a straight line for a certain number of years, then strikes off at a tangent. At some time your husband’s paintings were practically unsaleable. Now, because of information I have from Paris, I have good reason to believe that they would find a select and discriminating market.’
He had hoped to evoke from her a start of pleasure and surprise. Instead she smiled equably, not in the least impressed, least of all by the mention of the foreign city, which struck her as ridiculous.
‘Would that make such a difference?’
‘But of course. Why, financially … it might make a very considerable difference.’
‘My husband,’ she articulated the word with a kind of tender pride, ‘my husband don’t care a button for money. And bar what he needs for his paints, he never spends a penny on himself.’
‘Yet as an independent character, and I well know he’s that’ – Maddox floundered slightly but went on, bent on making his point – ‘surely it must be rather humiliating for him to … well … if you’ll forgive me … to be supported by you.’
‘He don’t never give it a thought,’ Jenny answered firmly. ‘And I shouldn’t never hope he would.’ She drew herself up. ‘What I have is as much his as mine, Mr Maddox, and it’s quite enough for both of the two of us. There’s this house, bought and paid for, and our two steady lodgers, to say nothing of as good as thirty pounds what we have in the Building Society. We couldn’t be more comfortable if we tried.’
‘Nevertheless,’ he still insisted, though rather lamely, ‘ a larger income could make things much easier.’ He glanced round the frightful little parlour, wondering at the same time how a person of Desmonde’s taste and susceptibilities could bear to live in it. ‘You could have a … a larger home. Then, I’m sure you work terribly hard. You could have help in the house … a good servant.’
She laughed outright, mirthfully, charmingly, as though he had made an excellent joke.
‘I was a servant, Mr Maddox, and I hope a good one. As for my work, I’d be miserable if I didn’t ’ave it. I tell you straight, I shouldn’t be ’ appy if we lived any different than we do now. And what’s more, I promise you, we shouldn’t be one half so cosy.’
Completely floored, he gazed at her in silence and, despite his defeat, with growing respect. The hideous black imitation marble timepiece on the mantelpiece indicated twenty-five minutes past two o’clock.
‘In the meantime,’ he ventured, ‘I suppose I couldn’t look around the studio?’
Her refusal was a masterpiece of kindly diplomacy. Indeed, his diffident manner and unprosperous appearance, which made her regard him as someone trying rather hopelessly to make a living by means so impractical as to verge on the fantastic, had already aroused her sympathy.
‘It might p’raps be as well to speak to Mr Desmonde first.’
‘I have spoken to him.’ His manner indicated how unproductive that approach had been. After a short silence he picked up his hat and rose. ‘You might be good enough to tell him that I called.’
‘I certainly shall. But I shouldn’t build too much on it if I was you.’
When he had gone Jenny returned to the kitchen, stood for a moment in puzzled thought, then, with a shake of her head, dismissing the matter from her mind, she went to take in her washing.
At five o’clock the door-bell rang again and, changed and ready, she hurried to admit her visitors.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, when she had greeted them. ‘Stephen isn’t home yet.’
‘We’re ahead of time.’ Glyn hung his hat and scarf on the hall stand. ‘By the way, did you have a call today from the agent, Maddox?’
‘Yes,’ Jenny said guardedly. ‘A Mr Charles Maddox.’
‘You let him have a couple of Stephen’s paintings, I hope?’
‘Good gracious, no. I couldn’t ’ave done that without permission.’ She smiled. ‘ It would ’ave been as much as my place was worth!’
‘I see,’ said Glyn and paused. ‘ Well, you two women can get together and gossip. I’ll go into the studio.’
He went directly through the kitchen and across the flagged back area, found the key under the mat and entered the ramshackle wooden shed where Stephen worked. Completely bare of furnishings, except for a broken-backed Victorian horsehair sofa along one wall, without even a stove, the place was uncomfortably chilly, but it was dry, and had an excellent north light. On an easel in the centre of the floor was a large incomplete painting of the river, while at the further end a stock of canvases of assorted sizes, all unframed, stood untidily together.
Richard took a good look at the unfinished work, meanwhile charging his pipe with plug tobacco, then, having lit up, he removed the painting, placed another from the stack upon the easel and sat down on the broken sofa to study it. After five minutes he again changed the canvas, re-seated himself, and resumed his meditative inspection – a process he repeated several times.
In all of Glyn’s movements there was a thoughtful deliberation, an air of maturity intensified by his heavy frame and massive head. At fifty, that earlier fiery intensity, the untamed Bohemian spirit that made him flout orthodoxy and snap his fingers at authority, had been subdued, or rather mellowed, by a genuine and well-merited success. His work in its sureness, its combination of freedom and dignity, had been accepted, rightly, as a worthy contribution to English art. No longer a vagabond, but a settled householder in Chelsea, married, a member of the Academy council, who had come to enjoy his position, he was, in a sense, in conflict with himself. Yet now, as he pondered over Stephen’s work in its opulence and audacity of colour, its prophetic disregard of the conventional rules of anatomy and perspective, its richness and subtlety of texture – the hard bone of the compositions hidden by a masterly execution of sc
umbles and glazes – in its sense of mystery, of something implied, always withheld, he knew that whatever the change in himself, at heart he was still the champion of the outlaw, upholder of the banner of revolt. The paintings in this wooden shack were, he realised, calmly, and without jealousy, not only far superior to his own, they were fit to hang, in their magnificent execution and originality, in company with the great. And as he considered how, during these past seven years, Desmonde had laboured without ceasing, unknown, unheard of, leading the life of an ascetic, a recluse, buried in this East End Dockland slum, refusing all contact with the world, nursing a sense of persecution that even with its basis of reality was dangerous in the extreme, he felt that it was time to act, to break at last this sustained complex of withdrawal. He had come today with the fixed intention of making this decision, and because of the pattern of his own later years, the solidity of his present position, his thoughts inevitably moved in one direction. Recognition – that was the solution. It had done much for him. It would do everything for Desmonde. Useless of course to speak to Stephen. He had tried that more than once without success. He had known of Maddox’s visit this afternoon – had been in consultation with the agent beforehand – and now that it had obviously failed in its purpose, he saw that he must act upon his own initiative.
With a frown of determination he rose, picked up a painting he had already singled out – Hampstead Heath – then, with brown paper and a piece of string, wrapped it up. Moving with unusual lightness, he went out, locked the studio and, using the area door, stepped into the back alley. In three minutes he was at the corner pub, the Good Intent, and after drinking a glass of ale, asked the barman to hold the package until he returned later that evening. It was not quite six o’clock when, quite unobserved, he got back to the yard and entered the kitchen.
Stephen, who had just arrived, came forward to meet him. As they shook hands, Glyn could not help thinking how great was the change in his friend since the days when he had first known him at the Slade. It was not his thinness alone, which emphasised all his facial bones and made deep hollows in his temples. Standing there, erect, as by an effort of will, in his rough paint-stained clothes, an old scarf draped across his shoulders, with his long boney hands and one cheek smudged with soot from a river tug, he conveyed the impression of a man supported by nothing but his own intensity. But the high colour on his cheekbones and the extraordinary brightness of his eyes saved him, gave to his expression a vivid sense of life.
‘Had a good day?’ Glyn asked.
‘Not bad. I’ve been down at Greenwich since morning.’
‘How is old mother Thames coming along?’
‘I’m having trouble with her – as usual. What have you been doing lately?’
Richard hesitated, fingered his watch-chain – no longer a frayed length of picture-cord but a gold Albert of admirable solidity, weighted by a cornelian charm, the gift of a satisfied sitter.
‘As a matter of fact I’m starting a portrait of Lord Hammerhead.’
‘You’re doing lots of portraits now. Is this another commission?’
‘Yes.’
‘I seem to remember the name. Isn’t he the brewer?’
‘Well … that is one of his interests.’
‘And art is another? These are the fellows who keep painting alive.’
From under his brows Glyn glanced sideways, a trifle suspiciously, wondering if there was not the slightest irony in the other’s tone, but Desmonde’s expression had remained open and cheerful. A pause followed, then Jenny, her face reddened by the stove, came forward with a steaming dish and, placing it on the table, cheerfully bade them be seated.
It was a plain but satisfying meal, the savoury stew served with potatoes in their jackets, a home-baked plum cake and a deep bowl of stewed apricots adding variety to the main course. Glyn, whose enjoyment of good food had increased with the years, and who showed evidence of this in his growing corpulence, set to heartily, yet despite his preoccupation he could not but remark how indifferent was Stephen’s appetite. He seemed neither to know nor care what he was eating, and only Jenny’s attentiveness kept his plate supplied. But his mood was unusually light-hearted, the beauty and life in his eyes were irresistible as he described in detail how, after a barge had almost run him down in mid-stream, he had engaged in argument with the skipper.
‘It was a good slanging match,’ he concluded gaily. ‘After it I completely lost my voice.’
‘What!’ exclaimed Jenny, with a glance towards him.
‘It was nothing. When I’m working I’ve no need to talk.’ Stephen turned to Glyn with a smile. ‘Tapley is almost stone-deaf. Often I don’t open my mouth from the time I leave this house till I get back.’
Glyn, with a sweep of his fork, made a gesture of disapproval.
‘It’s unnatural,’ he said. ‘ You’re like Anna. Sometimes I scarcely get a word out of her all day.’
Anna looked up, subdued, as always, and serious, but with an enigmatic upturn of her lips.
‘That was the first condition you made when I came to live with you.’
‘Came to live!’ Glyn protested. ‘Can’t you ever remember you’re a respectable married woman now?’
‘Sometimes I think we have become too respectable.’
‘What d’you mean? Don’t you enjoy your position a little? Look at the people you meet.’
‘Oh, we meet lots of people. We dress up and go to receptions where we stand all the time and can’t hear ourselves talk. We attend public dinners, sit in a draught, listen to long, pompous speeches. We are very much engaged. But we had more fun in Paris when you used to throw your boots at me and tell me I was just a slut.’
Stephen burst out laughing, but Jenny seemed a trifle shocked and Glyn himself looked distinctly put out.
‘You’re unjust, Anna. We’re older now. We have a certain standing, duties to be undertaken, responsibilities that must be accepted.’ He turned to Stephen. ‘ This kind of life you’ve fallen into … it isn’t right. It’s not good for you. We must get you out of it.’ ‘Really?’ Stephen smiled. ‘And how would you set about it?’
‘By ensuring that you have the rewards you so richly deserve.’
The pedantic tone of this remark made Stephen shake his head.
‘If someone had said anything as stuffy as that to you twenty years ago, you’d have knocked him down. I don’t want success. I’ve no time for it. Success, especially popular success, imprisons the spirit. Now that I’m free from the desire for it I can give myself unreservedly to my work.’
‘Now look here, Desmonde.’ Glyn spoke a trifle heatedly. ‘Let’s be sensible about this, without affectation. We’ll leave the public out of it … no one wants you to popularise your art. But do you mean to say that you’re indifferent to what people who really know, your fellow artists for example, may think of your work.’
‘No artist should paint for the applause or appreciation of his fellows. He should work only to satisfy himself.’
‘Indeed! So you propose never to show your work?’
‘In my early years I wanted passionately to show my paintings, to gain recognition, renown. Now I simply do not care. I don’t want to sell. I love my things, I like them around me, I enjoy taking them out and re-touching them. It’s enough that I myself know their quality.’
‘My God! It’s inhuman not to want some appreciation.’
‘Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty makes him the severest critic of his own works. And don’t blame me for that statement. It was Keats who made it.’
Glyn seemed about to embark on an explosive harangue, but he checked it and began to fill his pipe. Yet as he struck a match, forcibly, he told himself that he would not be put off, he would carry out his intention more determinedly than ever. Presently, adopting a milder, rallying tone, he said:
‘At least you’ll admit that you’ve been a trifle too exclusive lately. It’s not good for a fellow to b
e too much alone.’
‘But if one is working?’
‘I work too. Yet I have to get about a good deal – it isn’t always convenient but I do it and, frankly, I’ve got to like it. I meet my colleagues of an evening at Frascati’s, look in at the Garrick Club, attend Academy committee meetings. I think it’s high time you came out of hiding. Now, I have two tickets for Covent Garden. Don Giovanni. Thursday night. They were given me by Madame Lehman – you remember I did her portrait last year. Will you come?’
Slowly, Stephen shook his head. That word ‘ hiding’ which Glyn had used, and which he felt to be unjust, had hurt him.
‘I haven’t been to the theatre for fifteen years.’
‘You used to enjoy it in the old days.’
‘I’m too busy now.’
‘What rot! I insist. And you’ll have supper with me at the Café Royal after.’
‘Yes, do go, Stephen,’ Jenny pressed. ‘It’d make such a nice break for you.’
Desmonde looked from one to the other, a faint sign of strain appearing on his face, the look of one who must always be free, for whom in the mere hint of coercion, of constrained association with others, there could be nothing but disquiet. He knew himself so well, always fighting a vague apprehension, an unknown fear that seemed waiting round the corner, and saving himself by this very isolation which Glyn decried, finding forgetfulness in his work, in the happy obscurity of his life with Jenny. A refusal was on the tip of his tongue, but he had worked especially well that day. An unusual indulgence, the desire to please his wife and Glyn, caused him to relax his rule.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll come.’
‘Good,’ said Glyn, and he nodded, with a gratified air.
Chapter Two
The performance at Covent Garden was over and the audience came from the opera-house into the cool, clear air. For Stephen, who went out so seldom, it had been an evening of mild diversion, due less to Mozart’s effervescent melodies, for as a pure visual he was almost unmoved by music, than to observing its elevating effect upon Glyn, who, not unmindful of the glances of recognition directed towards him during the entr’actes, had maintained throughout an attitude which, while attractively Bohemian – his corduroy jacket, grey shirt and red tie were rather striking amongst the surrounding black and white – was yet shot with the dignity of an Academician who could command five hundred guineas for a half-length portrait and was always hung upon the line. The changes wrought by fame on Richard’s robust personality were not too damaging, but they were there, nevertheless.