The Hearts and Lives of Men (35 page)

But, reader, it did not turn out like that! No such luck!

C
LIFFORD MOVED OUT OF
his and Helen’s house into the luxurious Mayfair flat provided by Leonardo’s for important clients—the kind who could say of a rare Rembrandt unexpectedly come onto the market—“I like that; I’ll have it!” But he was accustomed to luxury, and found it no compensation for the loss of his family life. He missed not just his wife but, surprisingly, even the terrible twins. He saw that it did not matter one whit if there were butter smears on his hand-blocked wallpaper or he could not listen to Figaro in peace because of the children’s demands; the answer was to have ordinary washable wallpaper and to listen to opera (softly!) after they’d gone to bed, like anyone else. Clifford did not believe, really, seriously, that the twins were Simon’s not his. It came to him that he’d chosen to believe it, temporarily, because he was guilty and jealous, and knew it. Moreover, he hadn’t meant to upset Helen so much. He saw, all of a sudden, that if he really and truly loved her he would have to abandon his habit of seducing women in order to behave cruelly in his rejecting of them later. For that, he now perceived, to his shame, was what his habit amounted to.

He saw all this because for six miserable weeks he waited for Helen to call and apologize and make it up, and she wouldn’t and she didn’t; and he was unused to rejection and quite shattered by it. He had time to think. He had kept himself so busy all his adult life he’d had little time for reflection. Even on vacation he’d not just done nothing, he’d made fresh contacts, been seen on the right ski slopes, at the right villa; if all else failed he’d managed the best suntan in town, earlier in the year than anyone else! Oh folly, folly! Vanity of vanities. He saw it all now. He loved Helen, he loved his home, his children. These were all that mattered. (People
can
change, reader, they really can!)

“No,” said Helen. “No. I meant it. I want a divorce, Clifford. Enough is enough.” She was adamant. She didn’t even want to see him. She had had enough, he heard through friends, of being passive, receptive, over-female—masochistic, in fact. And worse, Clifford’s parents, Otto and Cynthia, who had unaccountably sold their perfectly pleasant home, and were now trying to fit themselves into a small flat of the kind allegedly suitable for an elderly couple, and had aged ten years in the process, seemed to be on his wife’s side.

“You are selfish, self-willed, self-centered and unscrupulous,” his mother—his own mother!—said to him. Mind you, she herself was pretty miserable at the time. Take three paces in the flat in Chelsea Cloisters and you came up against a wall. It made her feel quite old. She longed to be back in her own large, gracious home, now sold—what had possessed them!—to Angie. What use was all that money in the bank? Though Sir Otto seemed happy enough, slipping in and out of the Ministry of Defense, taking little trips to the States, with Johnnie at his side, though when she looked in his passport—the only one she knew about—there were no entry-exit stamps to be seen at all.

Meanwhile, Angie was busy turning what was by rights Clifford’s family home into an out-of-town auction house, to be called Ottoline’s, for rare and fine works of art. The trees had been cut, the garden bulldozed, and the conservatory housed a heated swimming pool. Ottoline’s was competition for Leonardo’s—which did Leonardo’s no good. Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Leonardo’s had controlled the art auction world for decades, settling things happily enough between them—now outsiders were muscling in. What was Angie thinking of? She was, after all, still a director of Leonardo’s! She was fouling her own nest. Clifford’s nest, too. His family home! How sentimental Clifford was becoming—

Reader, you and I know exactly what Angie was thinking of. She was setting a wall of thorns around Clifford in order to be the one to rescue him. During the course of a single day, when Clifford was at his lowest ebb, she said three things to him. She’d taken him to Oxford; they were punting down the river. He was good at that, still fine, muscular and handsome, and Angie sat with her back to the sun and wore a shady, floppy hat and looked not too bad, for once.

“Of course, John Lally’s contract with you doesn’t hold water under European law. It is the human right of the artist to paint when and how he sees fit; you are unlawfully restricting him. He’s taking you to European Court. Yes, I’ve advised him to do so. He’ll come to me under my Ottoline’s hat when he’s shaken off Leonardo’s.” The Lally paintings, reader, were now worth large fractions of millions, not just ten of thousands. (What skillful professional manipulation can do for a painter!) If John Lally now started painting, in any quantity, for Ottoline’s, the money earned over the lean years by Leonardo’s (or so they saw it) would now in the fat years go to Ottoline’s, and Angie. Don’t imagine John Lally would see much of it either, in spite of her promises. “Initial purchase,” she had said. That would apply only to new paintings, not to anything already completed. But he hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t meant him to. He’d drunk quite a lot of Rioja over the lamb and Evelyn’s red-currant jelly. She, of course, had drunk almost nothing.

She also said, “Clifford, I’m pregnant. I’m having your baby!” He did not dare suggest an abortion. Even the old Clifford might have demurred, so steely and glittery was Angie’s eye. As for the new Clifford, he did not like the thought of life, any life, destroyed. He had become accountably soft, even nice. Reader, if only he hadn’t been so greedy; if only gold and money hadn’t so appealed; if only Cynthia had loved him better and filled up the bucket of his need—if only! What use are “if only’s.” Still, they’re interesting.

The other thing Angie said was, “Of course, Clifford, if you and I joined our Empires together we’d rule the world.” (The Art World, I can only suppose she meant. At least I hope so.)

“How do you mean, Angie? Join our Empires?”

“Marry me, Clifford.”

“Angie, I’m married to Helen.”

“More fool you,” said Angie, and told Clifford about Helen’s affair (alleged) with Arthur Hockney, the black New York detective Helen had employed to search for little Nell in the dreadful days after the child’s disappearance. You and I know, reader, that though Arthur was for many years hopelessly in love with Helen, there was nothing between them, nothing, and he was now happily with his Sarah, and had even, with her help, lately stood upon a platform and spoken at a Fund-raising for Black Artists in Winnipeg. And Angie knew it, but Angie was never one to let truth stand between her and what she wanted.

“I don’t believe you!” said Clifford.

“She told me all about it once,” said Angie, “when she was drunk. Some women are like that. Indiscreet when drunk. As Helen is quite frequently. So I expect all London knows. If she’ll tell me, she’ll tell anyone.”

And it was quite true that Helen did sometimes drink too much, and that Clifford hated it when she did, and so Angie’s mischief-making was the more effective. Helen was one of those unfortunate (or fortunate, if you like) few people upon whom a teaspoon of wine acts as does a tumblerful of gin on others. And you know what cocktail parties are, and art openings—and trays of glasses being handed around, and what with the noise and the excitement and the pleasure of being all dressed up and ravishingly beautiful—as Helen indubitably still was; each extra child seemed to add glamour, not inches—sometimes her hand strayed to the wine instead of the orange juice—oh you know how it is, reader!

And, reader, one way and another, before three months were out, with Angie’s help, Clifford had stifled his grief and turned it into anger and spite, and the divorce was underway.

A
NGIE LET IT BE
known that she expected Clifford to marry her. He thought he would, inasmuch as now he had lost Helen it scarcely mattered what he did, and Leonardo’s was important, and work the only area in which, it now and tragically seemed, he was successful. Even his own mother was against him. (Clifford, in other words, was low, very low.) He might as well marry Angie. Now these are not the terms on which you and I, reader, would consent to be married, but Angie was different. The rich
are
different. They expect to get what they want, and usually do. Pride somehow doesn’t enter into it. I won’t say they’re happier for it—it’s just that the rich somehow contrive not to develop too much capacity for unhappiness.

And besides, Angie’s baby was on the way, and since he had lost Nell, the apple of his eye, Clifford understood, as too few men do, the blessing a child, any child, bestows upon its parents.

“I’ll think about it,” said Clifford.

Such a marriage, of course, would present Clifford with many material advantages, as Angie let it be known. The understanding, delicately put, was that when Angie stopped being Wellbrook and became Wexford, Ottoline’s would amalgamate with Leonardo’s, and Angie would prevail upon John Lally, again, to restrict his output of paintings to maximize the Lally market, to everyone’s benefit (except, of course, the artist’s). She would also stop stirring things up in the Colonies (as she liked to call them) and keep the Johannesburg gallery bidding in a lively fashion for those Old Masters increasingly unpopular in the sophisticated European markets. In return she could start a similar Australian branch and call it Ottoline’s, not Leonardo’s—the difference between the two houses now being only in name. And Clifford could visit the twins and they could even come to stay, so long as he didn’t see Helen.

“Let Simon visit them,” said Clifford. “He’s their father,” and started counter-divorce proceedings, and won.

Helen wept, and wept, and no one could comfort her, though many tried. This wasn’t what she’d meant, no, not at all.

Presently she went home to Applecore Cottage to weep some more; this time she had three children with her.

“I told you so,” said John Lally, only once.

“Don’t say that to her,” said Marjorie, so he didn’t. The cottage was crowded with so many in it, and Marjorie was of course pregnant. He retired to the woodshed.

“I’m such a nuisance,” said Helen. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re more than welcome,” said Marjorie. “I know I can never take your mother’s place; I know you must resent the baby—”

“No, no—” said Helen, and suddenly didn’t. It was impossible not to like Marjorie, who made her father happy. He had taken to painting furniture in his spare time. Ordinary kitchen chairs glowed and fluttered with flowers and birds.

“What am I going to do with my life?” asked Helen. “I’ve made such a mess of it.” Another robin—how many bird generations since the first—hopped red-breasted in the garden outside and made her smile. She couldn’t indulge her grief; she had the children to think about now.

“That’s because you depend upon other people,” said Marjorie. “Learn to depend upon yourself.”

“I’m too old to change,” said Helen, looking no more than eighteen. Marjorie laughed, and Marcus, Max and Edward swarmed into the kitchen, demanding food. They were expensive children. They were used to drinking orange juice, when previous generations had drunk water. You know how it is with today’s children.

“I do so hate having to ask Clifford for money,” said Helen. “It’s like the old days. I can’t bear it.”

“Then earn it yourself,” said Marjorie, briskly. “You have every advantage.” And of course, when she came to think of it, Helen had.

A
NGIE SAID TO CLIFFORD
when finally the decree was through and her little baby Barbara already born—“I know, we’ll be married on Christmas Day.”

“No,” said Clifford.

“Why not?”

“Because that was Nell’s birthday,” he said.

“Who’s Nell?” Angie asked, honestly forgetting for the moment, and Clifford as near as dammit didn’t marry her, even after all that. Angie had been on her very best behavior lately, of course, but even so in the space of three months had hired and fired as many servants. Clifford could now see that what passed, if you were kind, as sparkiness and forthrightness, was in fact willfulness and rudeness, and that Angie was as bad-tempered as Helen was good—but on the other hand she wasn’t likely to betray him with other men, was she? Let alone ask former husbands to Christmas dinner; let alone be vague, forgetful and always late for appointments. No. The Wellbrook/Wexford marriage was highly suitable and six gold mines came with it and a great many very valuable paintings from the Wellbrook Collection—and Clifford soon overcame his doubts.

But at least the wedding wasn’t on Christmas Day. It took place on the first Saturday in January, and a very damp, windy day it was too, which blew Angie’s hair quite out of curl, and made her large nose red and noticeable, and you and I know, reader, that Angie needs all the help from the Beauty Salon she can get. The weathered look just didn’t suit her one bit; or the white dress she insisted on wearing. It was a kind of unkind bluey white, not the yellowy white which flatters, and it was too frilly; brides often lose their dress-sense on their wedding day and Angie was no exception. Some things money doesn’t help. Clifford, standing beside her, remembered Helen’s fragile, gentle beauty, and almost failed to say “I will.” But Angie nudged him. He said it. That was that.

Clifford and Angie lived sometimes in Belgravia (a leasehold house of spectacular grandeur, with overlarge rooms just right for paintings but terrible for human beings) and sometimes in Manhattan (a penthouse overlooking Central Park, so burglar-proof it took ten minutes to get inside). A series of Norland nannies had total charge of little Barbara.

Barbara would stay behind in the Belgravia nursery annex when her parents were in New York. Angie said New York wasn’t safe for children, but Clifford knew she just didn’t want the child around. The pregnancy had served its purpose: the living child was neither here nor there. Clifford made as much of Barbara as he could—but he was busy; there was never enough time. She was a quiet, docile little girl, who stayed too quiet, too docile. The new Wexford friends were smart, middle-aged and boring. Angie had no time for writers, artists or eccentrics, at least for now, though later she’d stray far further. And so Clifford was bored and wretched, and serve him right. It may have been Clifford’s unhappiness, in fact, which led him to sail so close to the law in his dealings with Leonardo’s (New York) in the fourth year of his marriage to Angie.