‘I know! And you can get those colours like that?’
‘Once or twice in a lifetime, as perfectly as that. But in a smaller way, yes, pretty consistently, if you know your kiln. Do you like it?’
‘It’s the colours!’
For her it had been the form, before ever the jar had its imperial colouring. But he was approaching gingerly by his own way, and he had plenty of time. She thought now that the moment of emotion, true and poignant though it had been, had caused her to see him for a while as more promising than in fact he was. Most people can be ravished by colour. He had certainly been moved by the form, whether he knew it or not, or he would not have ached to set his hands round it. Experiencing with his body, he believed he was moving only through the eyes, because he knew nothing about his body yet. It was no duty of hers to teach him.
‘It’s nearly ten,’ she said, ‘they’ll be closing soon.’
They moved on quickly, for already the few other people remaining in the room were drifting towards the doors. She showed him graved and trailed ornament, bowls and beakers and bottles, crackle glazes, and brushwork as spare and fluent as a beautiful quiet voice.
‘Does a show like this bring you many sales?’ he asked, reverting into shyness now that it was nearly over, and therefore making a particular effort to appear at his ease.
‘Oh, most of these things are not for sale. I have to borrow back the ones that belong to other people, when I want to stage an exhibition. Don’t take this as a casual selection of my recent work – there are years of my life in this room. Some of the things I liked best I could never bear to sell. Others are where I know I can get them if I need them.’
‘The purple one,’ said Dennis, ‘you kept that one!’
‘Yes, I kept that one.’
He glowed because he had been right to like it, even if he did not know why. Away across the town the church clock was just striking ten; by the clear quality of the chime the air was frosty.
‘Theo will be coming to fetch me,’ she said. ‘I think I heard the car a minute ago. Can we give you a lift home?’
She was not greatly surprised when he backed rather hurriedly away from this offer, in a revulsion of shyness. He wanted to go away by himself, to walk home alone in the cold, sorting out the confusion of his thoughts, and reassembling his pleasant, disturbed features into the unremarkable face his family knew. Hearing Theo’s steps on the stairs, she gathered up her bag and gloves from the corner where she had left them, and turned again to look at the boy. Should she let it end there, or should she take the one short step which alone was needed to incorporate him permanently into her world? It could not be a very urgent or dangerous decision, and yet she hesitated to take the responsibility for it.
Well, there was Theo. Let him be the instrument of divination, if she didn’t wish to be committed. If he remembered, if he claimed the boy, flashing out with recognition and invitation, so be it. It was as good an oracle as any.
Theo came in whistling, and brought a great gust of frosty air in with him, buffeted before the hurrying folds of his tweed coat. He stood aside from the doorway to let two preoccupied lovers pass him on their way out to the last country bus, smiled after their incongruous young backs, as oblivious of art as of the cold, and came across the room in long, jaunty strides to collect his wife. Sober, the lines of his face had a taut and vehement intelligence, which seemed to derive its tension partly from the bones within, partly from the brilliance of the blue eyes. He was forty-five, greying, and habitually lived at a rate which should have aged him beyond his years; but in his good moments he still seemed to Suspiria the youngest of the young.
‘Well, Spiri, how did it go?’ He looked beyond her at Dennis, who was withdrawing unobtrusively towards the shadows and the door. His face flamed into irresistible laughter. ‘Well, hullo! My friend Forbes! What a surprise to see you here! I see Spiri made a conquest that night.’ He had possession of Dennis’s hand in a moment, and there was no more possibility of sliding away unnoticed. ‘I still owe you thanks and apologies for that drive home, by the way. Come home with us now for some supper! Dead safe, I assure you, I’m sober as a judge. It’s too early to go to bed yet.’
Suspiria said gently, watching the boy’s face: ‘Not for me, it isn’t. I’m tired. We must get home, and let Mr. Forbes do the same.’
‘Oh, really? Well, some other evening, then! Come tomorrow! We’ll have some music, and Spiri shall show you her workshop – teach you to throw, if you’ve a taste for it. What do you say?’
Dennis looked at Suspiria, a sudden, intent look.
‘Yes, do come!’ she said. ‘I should like it very much.’
She saw the answering eagerness leap into his eyes, and was aware of a sense of decision and movement; as if someone who had been standing irresolute for some time under an illegible signpost had suddenly taken his luck and the night in his hands, and set off firmly along one of the unknown roads, with all the conviction of a clairvoyant. Or, perhaps, of a gambler!
CHAPTER THREE:
The Ride to the Abyss
1
The family, fallen suddenly silent round the bright kitchen, listened to the diminishing hum of the motor-cycle until it died away in the distance. Even Mr. Forbes looked up over the evening paper, sensing the chill of doubt and disapproval in the room.
‘Of course,’ said Marjorie then, tying her scarf into a vicious knot, ‘you know where he goes!’
‘I can’t say he’s told us anything about it,’ said Mrs. Forbes, wriggling a hand into the recesses of one of Harold’s socks, ‘and since he broke off with Iris I haven’t asked him many questions, either. He’s grown up, it’s his own responsibility. I must say, I never saw any signs that he can’t very well manage his own affairs.’
‘We shall find that out in the long run, and so will he. Oh, no, I don’t suppose he’s going to bring his confidences here very much, for the future. We’re not good enough for him, now!’ Her sense of grievance about her marriage had caused her to adopt that tone about everything, so the family knew how to discount it; but the words were never very far from her lips, and no doubt some people took them literally. ‘I haven’t asked anybody anything myself,’ she said, ‘you don’t have to. It’s common knowledge that motor-bike of his is along the back road to Little Worth all hours of the day and night, except when he’s working. Fred brought the tale home from work and I’ve even had it said to me in the street. I always let on I know all about it, of course. “Oh, yes,” I say, “he’s very friendly with those Freeland people.” Then they say they didn’t know our Den was artistic, and I have to say, oh, yes, always has been, from a kid. Artistic! That little twerp! He knows about as much about art as a rice pudding does! What does he want with people like that? I bet they only want him to get a laugh out of him.’
‘The lad can have what friends he likes, can’t he?’ said Mr. Forbes in mild protest. ‘I don’t see what harm he’s doing, passing his time visiting them, if they like to ask him there. I don’t know nothing about folks like that, but he’s a smart lad enough, I don’t know as there’s anything funny about cleverer people than us finding him nice company.’
‘People like the Freelands just don’t take up with people like us, that’s all.’
‘Maybe Dennis isn’t like us,’ said Mrs. Forbes, doggedly darning.
‘He’s no better, anyhow – he only thinks he is.’
‘Well, are they any better?’ asked Winnie, who was applying lipstick before the mirror, and turned from the delicate task momentarily with her pretty lips distorted into a Japanese mask, to avoid smudging the effect before it was complete.
‘Better? A lot of lazy, shiftless no-goods, if you ask me, like most so-called artists!’
‘According to you, then, our little twerp ought to be quite at home with them,’ said Winnie cheerfully, and began to run the tip of her little finger over her lips industriously, until the bright, deep rose bow satisfied her. ‘So what are you worryin
g about?’ she said then, emerging.
‘All the same,’ said Harold, flat on his back in the biggest chair by the fire, nursing a cold, ‘it’s a funny set-up, look at it how you like. Bohemians haven’t got any position to keep up, that’s all tripe. The only position they’ve got is what they like to make for themselves, and for all I can see they haven’t got any money to set them apart, either. If they were even the same age it would be ordinary enough. But Freeland’s in the forties, and she can’t be a day under thirty-five. What on earth does he see in it, spending his time up there with them? And anyhow, I should have thought a kid his age would pretty soon have bored them stiff.’ The five years between himself and his younger brother seemed a very long time to Harold, as well as to his mother.
‘You spend enough of your time running round old Seaton and his wife,’ said Winnie, climbing into her coat, ‘and they’re over sixty, if they’re a day. I suppose that’s different.’
‘Well, of course it’s different! Show a bit of savvy! He’s my boss! I’m not wasting my time. A fellow’s got to look after his prospects, hasn’t he?’
‘We’re not all on the make,’ said Winnie disdainfully, sweeping towards the door and her latest date in a gust of heady perfume.
‘I think you ought to speak to him,’ said Marjorie, when the door had closed behind her sister’s airy departure.
‘I’ll do no such thing, and you leave him alone, too! He hasn’t done anything wrong, what right has anybody got to interfere with the way he likes to spend his time? He does his work properly, he brings money home, and he’s a good boy.’
‘You said yourself he was getting difficult to live with. And if there’s nothing queer about it, why doesn’t he talk about it to us?’
‘Because he’s twenty-two, and it’s his business, and he doesn’t think it’s any of ours. Difficult he may be, but that’s a stage they all go through, sooner or later. He left it late, that’s all. He’s never given me any cause to worry, and I’m not going to start acting as if he has.’
‘Well, of course,’ said Marjorie, picking up her handbag, ‘if you like him being as thick as thieves with that kind of people—’
No, she did not like the strange association, simply because there was no reasonable way of accounting for it, and up to now Dennis had been an eminently reasonable creature. On the other hand, no one knew of anything definably wrong with it. If those were the companions he chose, what business was it of anyone else’s? He was of age, and he had done nothing which could be called even irresponsible. If he stayed out sometimes rather late at night, so did many another young man, without being called to order for it. If he had broken off the affair with his first regular girl-friend, so did most young men at least once before they settled down, and not always as decently as Dennis had done it. Mrs. Forbes was even rather respectfully surprised herself when she thought of the circumstances. Iris had made the going from the beginning, and they’d never actually got as far as talking about marriage; he owed her nothing. He could hardly have been blamed if he’d just backed out, stayed away from their appointments, or avoided new ones; that was what many a boy in his position would have done. But not Dennis! He met her when he had said he would meet her; and when he was sure how he felt about it, he told her straight that it was no use going on, said he liked her, and wished her well, but he was sorry he wasn’t in love with her, and it would be a mistake for both of them if they continued meeting. No, he hadn’t done Iris any wrong. Marjorie, of course, was always down on the younger ones, because they’d been born at a better time, and had a sunnier childhood. She took it out in nagging tales like these. As often as not she was finding fault with Winnie for being pretty, and gay, and admired, now it was Dennis for having engaged the liking of two people of distinction. And after all, the whole family knew how he had first met them, there was no mystery about that.
And yet—And yet Mrs. Forbes knew that he was moving away from them all, gradually, steadily, helplessly. He didn’t want to, it was just happening to him, as it was happening to them, and there was no one in the world who could stop the process. When he was at home, which was seldom enough these days, he isolated himself in long silences, thinking his own thoughts, and sharing them with nobody. She did not think that they were invariably happy reveries in which he lived. He seemed to be in a state of perpetual unease, quietly but desperately excited; but if she had tried to prise any confidences out of him, no matter how lovingly, he would have taken fright and run for his life, indignantly denying any knowledge of change and unrest.
And he’d always been such a nice, open, placid child! A pity, thought Mrs. Forbes jealously, a terrible pity you couldn’t keep them like that!
2
When he was on his motor-bike, scudding along the unfrequented roads on his way to Little Worth, under the early frosty stars, and the cold winds of December that stung his lips and cheeks into numbness, he never had the slightest doubt that he was rushing towards an unalloyed happiness. It was only when his hand was at the very door that he remembered with a stab of uncertainty the many disappointments already past, the rapid, sickening descents from exalted eagerness into disillusionment. But always, even when he went home at last enraged and ill with his own inferiority, yet angry with what he took to be the signs that others also recognised it, he was sure that the next time would pay for everything, and waited for it with impatience and passionate hope.
It wasn’t as if they did anything to make him feel inferior. They were always nice to him, always pleased to see him. They never talked about art as if it were a mystery from which he was excluded, but always as if it were an integral part of living, with which he must have contacts, since he lived. They didn’t expect the contacts to be of the same kind as their own, because every human creature was to them unique, whether they troubled to explore him or not. No, there was nothing in their attitude to him which should remind him of his differentness and ignorance; rather he reminded himself, constantly, whenever Suspiria said something he did not understand, or Theo played music which had nothing to say to him. Most of all, of course, when there were other people there, people of their own kind, people who caught every inflection, and came back with instant, apposite argument, and did all the right things, all the things he didn’t know how to do. Those were the worst times of all.
The first time he had found friends of theirs at the house, he had tried to back out unobtrusively and go away, but Suspiria had been really angry, and taken him by the arm and dragged him inside with such decision that he had no chance to escape. She had presented him very firmly, and thrown him in among them to make his own way, and he had alternated between strident self-assertion and sullen silence all the evening, sweating in horrible unhappiness and hating her for not hiding and cradling him. She had not even given him as much help as she might have done; it had been Theo who had cherished him through the endless hours. And afterwards, when Suspiria had walked to the gate with him, and he had made that ill-judged attempt to make her feel ashamed at having ill-used him, it was he who had got the worst of it, a scolding that sent him away vowing not to go near Little Worth again.
‘You are a spoiled child,’ she had said vigorously, ‘you want to be nursed, and you want to stand on your own feet, too. Nobody can have it both ways. You have a place here, it’s yours, and no one else can fill it – no one, do you hear? Either take it, or leave it alone, but don’t cry about its being first too big and then too small.’
And like a fool, as he thought in his worst moments, he had gone back again and again for more, always confident that the next time would be different, because he wanted it to be so terribly. What had he ever really got out of it? He had learned to throw a simple cylinder on her wheel, and to do a few little jobs with pigments and glazes, occasionally to her pleasure and surprise. He had sat with people who gravely daunted him round the brick hearth, drinking beer out of home-thrown beakers of warm brown earthenware, or cocktails out of a motley collection of glasses sal
ved from the wreckage of several sets, and had watched the conversation soar out of his reach. He had listened to Theo playing Chopin and Schumann on the piano, and when there were others present the musical comment had usually gone beyond him, too, even though their circle was as motley a mixture as the cocktail glasses. He could always find a slight, somewhere in the course of the evening, perhaps becuase he was looking for one so assiduously. He knew himself that he went looking for them, but he was unable to stop the ill-advised search, because of the endless nag of reason at the back of his mind: ‘After all, I’m not really their kind. They let me in, but I’m a bit of a curiosity, not an equal. I don’t know the things they know, I don’t talk like they do, I haven’t got their backgound. I’m just an eccentricity of Theo’s and Suspiria’s, that’s all – a funny little chap she picked up somewhere from among the lower orders.’
Sometimes, when his jealous self-love had found a more than usually bitter taste about the evening, he could almost imagine the women saying to one another, as they drove back into town: ‘What on earth can Spiri want with that little tough of hers?’ And the answer: ‘Well, after all, I suppose he’s not bad-looking. A change from Theo, at any rate.’ Maybe he wasn’t very well up in the ways of Bohemia, but there were some things everybody knew. Artists had their own rules. Probably the prime proof of his lower-class simplicity was that he hadn’t tumbled to it long ago what was expected of him!
For there were other evenings, when no one was there but Theo, and Suspiria, and himself, and still others when even Theo was missing. Things were different then; then she had a use for him, she let him work her clay for her, and showed him how to load the big electric kiln built of light cream-coloured insulating bricks, and set him to work on the wheel when she was not using it, sometimes coming to correct his slips, to trim the edges off when he made them too thin and stuck his thumb through them, to set her hands over his and pull hard on them as she taught him to centre the clay properly. She was a hard tutor, she scolded a great deal, but she did not laugh at his efforts, she was always as serious about them as he was, and equally intent. And when he was adroit and quick, when she had stung him to a reckless force and decision which were not natural in him, but which seemed to be essential to this trade, then she could praise, too. She would throw her arms round his shoulders, and hug him to her in fierce, momentary approval, her breast against his arm for an instant as warm and vital as sunlight. When she had something good to show him, whether it happened to be a new and successful glaze or an idea for an improved tool, she would seize him by the hand as soon as he appeared, and tow him away through the house into the workshop to gloat over it with her. She handled him as she handled the clay itself, with absolute confidence and candour.