Next to Nature, Art
They reach the clearing and stand admiring the view, a sweep of Warwickshire transformed by the golden evening light into a scene of pastoral nostalgia in which the eye is caught only by the spire of a church, a line of surviving elms crowning a hill.
Waterton fills his pipe, evidently in a state of comfortable appreciation. “ ‘Consult the Genius of the Place in all …’ ”
“I was afraid,” says his wife, “you were going to say that.” Her feet are now very wet and she has snagged her tights on a bramble.
“Sorry, dear” says Waterton mildly.
“Is this where that old guy fell on a rock?” asks Greg, approaching.
Toby explains, to the Watertons, that there was a tragic mishap yesterday in which one of the course members was injured. “Mercifully he seems to be recovering nicely. I gave the hospital a ring just now.”
Mrs Waterton enquires for how long the courses have been going and Toby, in replying, outlines briefly the Framleigh ideal. “A possibility for artistic withdrawal,” he says. “For us, of course, but for the ordinary people who come on the courses as well. That is how I like to think of it. A creative sanctuary.”
The Watertons, listening to this, move a little closer together, as though imperceptibly closing ranks. Mrs Waterton appears to forget her wet feet and Waterton tamps his pipe with a very square and unaesthetic thumb. He says, “I see. You feel then that the artist requires social detachment?”
“The artist,” says Greg, “has to alienate himself. Freak out in every way. Intellectually. Emotionally.”
“And what, then, is he or she going to be artistic about?” asks Mrs Waterton tartly. “ ‘The proper study of mankind …’ ” She glances at her husband and suddenly grins. “My turn …”
Waterton lays a hand on her arm, but addresses Greg. “Well, that’s always been a point of view, but I must say I prefer involvement myself. Both for creative purposes and as an artistic responsibility. Whatever that awkward term may mean. Mind,” he adds, turning to Toby, “I speak as a writer. I suppose there is a difference. But I would have thought the painter also …”
Toby is wearing his burdened look. He stares into Warwickshire and says, “The artist’s responsibility, so far as I am concerned, is to himself.”
“I’ll say,” snaps Paula, sotto voce but nonetheless drawing a quick glance from Mrs Waterton who announces that if nobody minds she is getting a bit damp and should they perhaps rejoin the others back at the house.
The duty group has been busy in the kitchen. Dinner, when it is served, is not too bad, in fact. The Watertons tuck into onion soup, macaroni cheese and tinned fruit salad. They chat pleasantly to members of the course. Mary Chambers, with great diffidence, asks a question or two about Richard Waterton’s novels: she has noticed that he always seems to bring in gardens and gardening and has wondered about this. She is reluctant to use grandiose words like symbolic but somehow manages to do so and finds that it is quite all right; she doesn’t feel as silly or out of her depth as she had expected. What Waterton has to say in reply is most interesting, and leads on to a more mundane but equally engaging conversation about the merits of various works of reference on plants. All in all, Mary has a good time.
Keith Harrap sits next to Paula, who seems uncharacteristically subdued. He notices for the first time how much attention Paula pays to her own person: she is forever adjusting it in some way – smoothing her hair behind her ears, caressing neck or breast, running a hand over the contours of her face. She is a very good-looking woman; it is as though she needs the reassurance of her body to confirm that she is really herself.
“We have had,” says Toby, “a bit of bother over the staff situation. But everyone has rallied round wonderfully.”
Tessa, who has an arrangement with Bob so far as the rest of the evening is concerned, is restive, with one eye on the clock.
Sue, by now, is in such a state of sexual tension and frustration that she is permanently a-twitch. She fidgets and judders and when Toby comes anywhere near she suffers an internal fever that is much the same as having a high temperature. Toby, who is well aware of this, and well aware also – since in some respects he is not totally impervious to the human condition – that the sexual drive of women is quite as strong as that of men (his own, as it happens, is rather low) is amused. Occasionally he panders to his amusement by giving her a smile across a crowded room, or brushing against her as he passes. He could put her out of her misery by taking her to bed at some point, but he probably will not bother; he has other things on hand just now. She has managed to sit herself next to him at dinner and spends the meal alternating between ecstasy and distress.
“God,” Paula says to Keith, “the last thing I want is this bloke holding forth on his boring books. Heaven knows what Toby thought he was about, asking him to come.”
Keith, nervous that the Watertons may hear this, glances up the table, but Waterton is talking to Toby; in an attempt to calm Paula he remarks that actually he hasn’t read any of them and wonders if she has. “I never have time to read, do I?” says Paula petulantly. Keith agrees that he too finds it difficult to fit in.
Waterton, who has come to look more and more strained as the meal progresses, is asking Toby, politely but with perhaps a certain absence of involvement, if it is possible to keep Framleigh economically viable by means of the Study Centre. Toby sighs. He indicates, in his reply, frustration and self-sacrifice, hints at official philistinism and obtuseness. “One has tried,” he says, “just about everything. I need hardly say that the Arts Council in its great wisdom has never seen fit to give Framleigh a grant.” Waterton looks noncommittal, but Mrs Waterton appears to choke slightly on her fruit salad. Sue says hotly, “That’s a shame”. Toby lays a hand for an instant on hers; “You’re sweet to say so. The truth is that it’s exactly what one would expect, the world being the way it is.”
The meal over, everyone goes through to the Common Room, where coffee is produced. The Watertons are both, by now, restive. Waterton disappears to the lavatory where he has a swig at the emergency flask in his raincoat pocket; he is not, in the normal way of things, a heavy drinker, but long years of literary life have taught him that there are certain associated trials for which it is necessary to be prepared and this evening is clearly going to be one of them. Slightly restored, he rejoins the others.
It is decided that the reading should be got under way. Waterton is installed in an armchair at the side of the fireplace, and, after a few introductory words, starts to read an extract from one of his early novels. He plans to follow this up with something from the most recent and then try to make a few points about development of style and technique. The audience settles.
Mrs Waterton is so placed that she has no option but to contemplate “Adam and Eve”. She tries looking sideways but there her attention is caught by a huge Moroccan bedspread which is used as a hanging, suspended by some kind of tasselled fixture from Kent’s cornice. A naturally tranquil person, rational so far as it is possible for anyone to be completely so, she feels quite disordered by this place. Mild irritation has already given way to some more serious malaise: she would rather like to be violently rude to someone which is not a thing she often is. She closes her eyes, seeking the reassurance of her husband’s voice.
At this moment all the lights go out.
Bob, over in the studio, has just handed Tessa a can of lager. He stands over her in the darkness and reflects that circumstances can occasionally be most remarkably accommodating.
Jason, upstairs in bed, opens his mouth and yells. He continues to yell for two or three minutes and then starts to pad downstairs, exhilarated now rather then distressed.
Waterton halts in mid-sentence. There are rustlings, the odd giggle. Paula exclaiming “Oh, Christ!” Toby gets up, says “I suggest people just stay put. Nick, give me a hand with candles.”
Toby and Nick are gone for quite a while. Conversation breaks out. The night is dark beyond the uncurtained windows
, so there is nothing to be seen but the suggestions of bodies dispersed around the room. Someone, getting up to grope for an ashtray, falls into someone else’s lap and there is much hilarity. Waterton attempts one or two light remarks and then gives up. Mrs Waterton sits morose and silent.
Jason potters across the hall and into the Common Room. He can’t see properly so he decides to crawl on his hands and knees so as not to walk into anything. He will find Paula and make her jump. There are lots of people sitting in chairs in the Common Room and it is difficult to know who is who. He crawls around legs, and finds a promising pair.
Mrs Waterton feels the shaggy head of some dog pressed against her calf, about, she senses, to bite. In her jangled state this is the last straw and she cannot stand dogs anyway: she lashes out with one foot. At the same instant Toby appears in the doorway shooting the beam of a torch ahead of him, there is a howl, and Mrs Waterton sees that she has clouted a small boy wearing nothing but the bottom half of a pair of pyjamas. Her own childlessness makes her possibly rather more susceptible to children than most people: she gets up, uttering a kind of moan, pushes past Toby into the hall and heads for the cloakroom.
Toby and Nick have not been able to find any candles. There should be a more than adequate supply in the store cupboard; there is always a supply, the Framleigh wiring system has not been renewed for forty years and this kind of thing has happened before; but there is not a damn candle in the place. In fact, Jason borrowed the candles some time ago when he had a den in the woods in which he was going to camp out. He has long since forgotten this, or indeed the existence of the den. So there are no candles and only two torches. Toby curses; Nick flutters in distress.
Jason howls, and is mollified by various people. Waterton, bewildered at his wife’s sudden exit, follows her from the room and finds her in the darkness of the cloakroom. “The best thing we could do,” she says, “is get out of this madhouse.” Waterton, himself unsettled and irritable, snaps that they can hardly do that. He makes use of his flask; Mrs Waterton takes it from him and says that if that’s the situation she’ll join him.
The Watertons, now a little heady, go back into the Common Room. One of the torches has been placed in the hall, providing a circle of light which does not reach very far. The Common Room is still in darkness and people are getting restive. Toby and Nick are now inefficiently searching the fuse box for the trouble; they replace various fuses, to no avail. Eventually they return and Toby announces that the bloody system seems to have conked out altogether and he has called the electricity board, who promise assistance before too long. He suggests that Mr Waterton should continue from where he was so rudely interrupted.
Waterton, by the light of the other torch, reads. But darkness has done something to the composure of the audience; there is now the disquieting stir of an unruly schoolroom. Someone mutters, and gets responsive suppressed laughter. Greg says something not quite audible that induces more laughter. Paula yawns loudly – though of course there is no telling from whom the yawn comes. Waterton becomes flustered and reads the same bit twice. He cuts the reading short before he had intended. At once Greg’s voice is heard. “That passage you repeat, is it some stylistic effect you’re after?”
“What passage?” asks Waterton, and then, irritably “Of course not, that was a mistake.”
“I beg your pardon” says Greg, “I thought we were into the nouveau roman.” He, too, has been bolstering himself with alcohol (that private bottle of scotch) and his usual extreme politeness has given way, disconcertingly, to something close to aggression. “If you don’t mind my saying so, the piece doesn’t have much thrust. It’s draggy. Maybe you could do something with the dialogue.”
Waterton finds that he does mind Greg saying so, quite extraordinarily much, in fact. A tolerant man, in the normal way, he has been reduced either by Framleigh or the unaccustomed use of the flask to thumping rage. “As it happens,” he begins, “the piece as you call it has been in print now for a considerable time, incorporated in a novel which some of my readers are kind enough to consider …”
“Excuse me,” says Greg, “I thought this was something you were trying to get published. Forget it.”
Waterton, who for many years has not so much tried to get a book published as despatched his next work to an expectant editor, swallows, carefully and deliberately. He selects words, aware that dignity requires precision, but before the words can come out Toby has broken in to remark smoothly that personally he loved that descriptive passage and to ask if anyone else has a question to put to Mr Waterton.
“Actually,” says Paula, “I’m interested because I used to write myself once though I never had time to finish the novel I was working on. Is the man in the book you?”
Waterton abandons the words he had selected and chooses others. Paula’s response is wearyingly familiar. He starts to speak but is interrupted by a shuffle and crash from the back of the room. One of the course members has complained of the room being stuffy and Keith Harrap, moving to open the window, has tripped. There is a confusion of apology and exclamation and the torch is borrowed from Waterton (who takes advantage of his relegation to darkness to have a swig at the flask, which he had had the forethought to put in the pocket of his jacket). “Sorry,” says Keith Harrap, meaning it.
“Oh dear,” says Mrs Waterton, “do let’s get on.”
She sounds petulant, and Waterton, taking up again his reply to Paula, has a pomposity and a defensiveness that was not there before. It is as though Framleigh has had the effect of disordering personality: Mary Chambers, observing this, sits in the gloom and reflects. Paula and Waterton are now engaged in an argument in which Paula’s observations are so maddeningly insubstantial as to drive Waterton, attempting response, to apparent sarcasms which are alienating his audience. Restiveness spreads.
“Well, I don’t really see what you’re getting at,” says Paula. “I just know as an artist that creativity is sort of from within. I mean right you learn method and so forth but the actual nitty-gritty, the real …”
“Oh, shut up!” says Mrs Waterton.
Jason, who is sitting on the floor under the big table, watches this with interest. He is quite used to hearing grown-ups talk thus – he has after all spent all his life with Paula – but he senses, with a child’s intuitive ear, that the comment is out of character. Disorder appeals to Jason.
“Shut up, shut up!” he chants, from his lair. Sue and one of the other younger members of the audience giggle.
Waterton gets to his feet. “I really think …” he begins. Something has happened to his voice: it is slurred, more from anger than the effects of the flask but the impression given is unfortunate. He starts again “To be quite frank I don’t feel that there is a great deal of point in …” Someone in the audience – Jean Simpson – gives a little hiss of disapproval. It is one thing for people like Toby and Paula to be unconventional, but an elderly man like that …
Toby also rises, and says things about maybe it’s getting late and our guests … Jason is still chanting shut up, loudly. Sue and her neighbour are killing themselves. Mrs Waterton walks out into the hall. Other people start to talk. Paula cries well, for God’s sake, all I said was …
Outside, the Jaguar driven by Sir Henry Butters, Chairman of Harpers Bank, slides to a halt in front of Framleigh. Sir Henry and his wife stare in perplexity at the building, from which no lights shine at all. The night is not quite black, since a half moon lurks somewhere behind cloud, which makes the unlit bulk of Framleigh even more disconcerting. “Are you sure …” begins Lady Butters, but at that moment a light is seen to waver across one of the large downstairs windows and from within comes a gust of sound, the sound of voices, rather loud, raucous voices. The Butters look at one another. “I think,” says Sir Henry uncertainly, “perhaps we had better come back another time. I understand from Jacobson they’re some sort of artistic colony.” Lady Butters gives Framleigh a look of alarm, and nods in agreement. The Jaguar
beats a hasty retreat into the night, passing on the avenue a Midlands Electricity Board van.
A quarter of an hour later, the Watertons’ car also leaves, at a smart pace. Mrs Waterton drives, hunched over the wheel. Neither Waterton speaks until, at the entrance to the park, Waterton says “There’s the most awful smell of petrol, dear, had you noticed?”
Five miles further on, at the side of a deserted road, the Watertons, on all fours, stare at the underside of their car, from which petrol issues in a fairly steady stream. Mrs Waterton recalls, through clenched teeth, that she had remarked on a bang from somewhere underneath when they approached Framleigh. It has started to rain once more.
Chapter 6
Jason stands at the end of a bed in which are Bob and Tessa.
“Push off, mate” says Bob amiably.
“Why’s she got no clothes on?”
“Because she was too hot. Hop it, there’s a good lad.”
Jason contemplates them. “I haven’t got anything to do.”
“Well, I have. Come on, hop it.”
“You don’t like me, do you?” says Jason, after a pause, in injured tones.
Bob sighs. “I think you’re great. Just at this minute I want to have a talk to Tessa.”
“What about?”
“This and that. Look, there’s some cash on that table. Why don’t you take twenty pence and toddle off down to the village shop and get yourself some ice-cream?”
Jason reflects. “O.K. Thirty, though.”
“All right” says Bob sharply.
“Why’s her face all red?”
Tessa gives a kind of moan. Bob sits up violently. “Bugger off, Jason. Right?”
Jason picks up forty pence from the table and walks to the door with dignity. He turns round and says, “Anyway you shouldn’t smoke cig’rettes in bed. I can see the ends in that ashtray. There’s notices about fire rules in all the bedrooms. I’ll tell Toby on you”. He goes out, banging the door.