A Man of Parts (29 page)

There was barely room enough on the couch for them to lie together after sex, and certainly not to sleep, so they remained clasped together while Rosamund uttered in a rambling monologue whatever thoughts were passing through her mind. Sometimes these involved further startling confidential revelations about her family, about Hubert in particular. It appeared that he had seduced one of her school friends when the girl was staying with them at Well Hall. ‘How old was she?’ he asked. ‘Oh, seventeen, I think … It wasn’t entirely Daddy’s fault, Georgina rather threw herself at him, but then the silly girl started boasting about it at school and it got back to her parents, who were furious of course, but they decided it was better to hush it up rather than make a public fuss.’ He was astonished by this further evidence of Hubert’s lechery and his uncanny ability to avoid exposure and disgrace. But he was restrained in his comments because Rosamund was unwilling to criticise her father and appeared to regard his philandering as the consequence of a magnetism he was unable to control. ‘You can have no idea, unless you’re a woman yourself. He makes you feel that you are the only person in the world who matters to him. Alice told me she always found him completely irresistible, and Mother did too, I’m sure. She was pregnant with Paul when they married. Alice told me.’ He was uneasily aware that Hubert’s womanising had certain parallels to his own, but the great difference between them was that he did not pretend to believe in marital fidelity, he did not pretend he was in love with all the women he slept with, and he was often the pursued rather than the pursuer, as in the case of Rosamund. And Dorothy Richardson.

In August Dorothy unexpectedly initiated a renewal of their dormant affair. She invited herself to Sandgate and took the first opportunity to inform him of the latest crisis in her personal psychodrama. She was no longer sharing a flat with the formidable and unsympathetic Miss Moffat and had made a new friend, a young woman called Veronica Leslie-Jones, with whom she felt an immediate and reciprocated affinity, and who had recently moved in to live with her. Although Veronica had a male lover she made it obvious that she was also physically attracted to Dorothy, and Dorothy was disconcerted to find that she herself felt, for the first time in her life, feelings of genuine sexual desire – for Veronica.

‘You mean, you never felt genuine sexual desire for me?’ he said.

‘Well, yes, up to a point,’ she said reflectively. ‘But it was nothing like this. With you I was always self-conscious, my mind detached from my body, observing its reactions.’

‘Yes, I noticed.’

‘But with Veronica … the mind–body thing dissolves. It’s an intense feeling of wanting to merge one’s identity with the Other, as if we were twins or something in another incarnation – not that I believe in reincarnation.’

‘I should think not,’ he said.

‘I feel very confused,’ she said. ‘Does this mean that I’m a lesbian?’

‘It could mean you are bi-sexual,’ he said.

‘I don’t want to be bi-sexual,’ she said vehemently, ‘I don’t want to be a freak. I don’t want to be a lesbian either, for that matter.’

‘What do you actually do with Veronica?’ he said.

‘We embrace,’ she said. ‘And talk. That’s all – so far.’

This conversation took place in his garden-shed-study, which seemed to lend itself to acts of secular confession. ‘What do you want me to do about it?’ he said.

She pulled a face. ‘You’re so cold. You don’t love me, do you?’

‘I never said I did, Dorothy,’ he said. ‘I like you. I find you attractive. I have tried to make you happy. But you’re a difficult subject.’

‘Is that why you lost interest in me?’

‘I rather thought you’d lost interest in me,’ he said.

‘No, I didn’t,’ she said. ‘There’s a way in which ever since I’ve known you, you obliterate other men. You still do.’

‘So … what?’

‘Make love to me again.’

It seemed that she wished him to rescue her from lesbianism, and honour required that he should at least try – in any case he had pleasant memories of her compact body, dusted with fine golden hairs, and welcomed the opportunity to reacquaint himself with it. So he fitted her in between assignations with Rosamund, sometimes in the cottage, sometimes at venues in London. Once they walked for a day in the country near Tunbridge Wells, and at his suggestion made love in the bracken somewhere between Eridge and Frant. He always derived a special thrill from making love in the open air – it went back, perhaps, to his adolescent fantasies of Adam and Eve’s nuptial bower – and one of the first indications of his and Jane’s sexual incompatibility had been her flat refusal to indulge him in this respect, not even in a secluded part of their garden at Worcester Park. Dorothy however agreed nonchalantly, stepped out of her drawers, lay down on the coat he spread on the springy bracken, and opened her knees to him, talking all the time about a Russian novel she had been reading. Nothing much changed in this new phase of their relationship apart from the settings of their encounters. Dorothy made more of an effort at physical abandonment in the act of love than in the past, but as soon as it was over she resumed her tireless introspection or lectured him, criticising his materialistic philosophy, correcting the cockney vowels in his speech, and even criticising his prose style.

‘Listen to this,’ she said one afternoon when for once they were in her flat, and in her bed, Veronica being away for a few days. She reached across him to the bedside table for an advance copy of
In the Days of the Comet
, which he had sent her a few days earlier, and sitting up, naked but for her rimless pince-nez spectacles, began to read out a marked passage, one that had given him particular pleasure to write, describing the scullery in Atlas House. ‘
It was the region of “washing-up”, that greasy, damp function that followed every meal; its atmosphere had ever a cooling steaminess and the memory of boiled cabbage, and the sooty black stains where saucepan or kettle had been put down for a minute, scraps of potato-peel caught by the strainer of the escape pipe, and rags of a quite indescribable horribleness of acquisition, called “dish-clouts,” rise in my memory at the name
. That’s a terrible sentence.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘It’s far too long and congested, for one thing – you should have started a new sentence after “
meal
”, instead of putting a semicolon there. And there’s intrusive assonance – “
indescribable horribleness
”, for instance. But the real problem is the repetition of “
memory
”. When it first occurs we presume that it’s the subject of the long complex main clause that follows, but when we eventually come to the predicate it’s “
rise in my memory
” and we are confused. How can a memory rise in a memory? So we go back to the first “
memory
” and discover that it isn’t a subject after all, but an object, the metaphorical object of “
had
”: “
its atmosphere had ever … the memory of boiled cabbage
”.’

‘“
The memory of boiled cabbage
” is a good phrase,’ he protested.

‘It’s good in itself,’ she said, addressing him over her pince-nez like a severe schoolmistress. ‘But because it’s separated from the verb by another, non-metaphorical object, “
a cooling steaminess
”, we don’t connect it back to “
had
” on first reading, but presume it is the subject of a new clause. The grammatical ambiguity spoils the effect.’

He took the book from her hands and read the passage for himself. He had to concede that she was right, and thought to himself that he might in future ask her to read his galley proofs and suggest emendations. Jane, who was also a better grammarian than himself, was too deferential to make many editorial suggestions when she typed his work. He composed rapidly, the words flying off the end of his pen, and lacked the necessary patience to tune and polish his style like, say, Henry James – though for different reasons you had often to read
his
labyrinthine sentences more than once to make sense of them.

James had visited Spade House at last, staying for a weekend in August. ‘
Delightful to me is the sense of the end of my grotesque Years of Delay to tread your charming halls
,’ he wrote, when confirming the time of his arrival. He had sent a previous request to inform ‘
Mrs Wells, with my best remembrance, that my dietary is the
easiest
mere tissue of feeble negatives. I eat but little here below, but I eat that little long
.’ This was a reference to his ‘Fletcherising’ – the practice of chewing solid food at inordinate length before swallowing it, recommended by an American quack called Fletcher. Gip and Frank, when they had the opportunity, watched this performance with fascination. Gip called James ‘the Egg Man’ because he had three coddled eggs for breakfast, and perhaps because he looked somewhat egg-shaped these days, with his symmetrically curved paunch, clean-shaven oval face, and big balding brow. He was however an amiable and gracious guest, praising the appointments of the house with a gallant effort at sincerity. ‘My dear fellow, you have borrowed – or anticipated – the best features of my native country’s domestic interior design, while avoiding its vulgarity,’ he pronounced after a tour of the property. Even the lavatories attached to every bedroom attracted a commendation that was only slightly tongue-in-cheek – ‘a veritable sanitary utopia!’

Each of them had recently undertaken a tour of the United States, and both were shortly to publish books based on these experiences. ‘Yours will of course sell much better than mine,’ James said with a sigh, and he could not plausibly contest this prediction. The disappointing sales of James’s books, especially the three major novels he had published in recent years –
The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors
and
The Golden Bowl –
were a constant cause of complaint in correspondence, and also of a certain embarrassment in their relationship. Writing to praise
The Ambassadors
, he had tactlessly mentioned the sales of a book of his own short stories, and James had responded dolefully, almost accusingly, ‘
My book has been out upwards of a month and, not emulating your 4,000, has sold, I believe, to the extent of 4 copies
.’ He sympathised and did his bit to promote the appreciation of James’s work – warmly recommending
The Wings of the Dove
to Arnold Bennett, for instance, and choosing
The Golden Bowl
as one of his Books of the Year for the
Bookman
– but there was never any hope that James would be a popular writer.

James had written in generous and gratifying praise of
Kipps
a year ago, comparing him favourably with Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot, though as usual there was a hint of reservation beneath the extravagant encomiums. ‘
What am I to say about Kipps but that I am ready, that I am compelled, utterly to
drivel
about him? He is not so much a masterpiece as a mere born gem – you having, I know not how, taken a header straight down into mysterious depths of observation & knowledge, I know not which & where, & come up again with this rounded pearl of the diver
.’ The more one thought about this metaphor, the less credit it gave the novelist for artistry, and the more it seemed to attribute his achievement to luck. He was grateful, nevertheless, for the words of praise, and a little surprised that James did not take him to task for the scamped concluding chapters. When he mentioned this in conversation his guest looked a little shifty, and he suspected that James had not in fact read to the end of the novel. Never mind – he himself had never finished
The Golden Bowl
. They were both prolific writers and obviously hadn’t enough time to read every word the other had written.

James indeed was concerned that his friend was squandering too much of his time on politics. His detailed account of his struggles with the Fabian Old Gang was heard with polite interest at first, soon shading into boredom and disapproval. ‘These committees and cabals, these motions and amendments, these debates and dryasdust reports, they are death to the creative impulse, my dear Wells,’ James declared. ‘The job of the artist is to enlighten and enrich the collective consciousness by the exercise of his imagination in his chosen medium.
That
is his proper contribution to politics.’

‘Art for art’s sake?’ he questioned.

‘Art for Life’s sake!’ James said, with the air of a man laying down a trump card.

‘I want to change the world,’ he said, ‘not just describe it. One has to start somewhere, and I decided to begin by changing the Fabian.’

The first indication he had of the struggles ahead was a flurry of correspondence from members of the Executive in September. Charlotte Shaw wrote to say she had decided that she could not after all sign the Enquiry Committee’s report, obviously bowing to pressure from her husband. He replied curtly that she had betrayed him. Pease wrote to say he could not approve the publication of ‘This Misery of Boots’ as a Fabian tract unless offensive personal remarks about Shaw and the Webbs were deleted. He declined to censor his own text. Sidney Webb wrote to say that although the committee’s report contained ‘
much that is interesting and well put
’, he did not believe the Society would accept its proposals, because they would be too expensive to implement and no members of the Executive would be willing to serve on the three ‘triumvirates’ which the Report suggested should manage different aspects of the Society’s affairs in its place. He replied that they would see. Then Shaw wrote two letters in quick succession, neither of which made any mention of Charlotte’s defection.

The first took Pease’s side in the dispute over ‘This Misery of Boots’, and reminded him that he had declared to Shaw himself his intention of deleting the personal jibes for publication. He decided to capitulate, though not with the grovelling urgency recommended by Shaw: ‘
Write to Pease by return of post – wire – take a motor car and tell him in person, with ashes on your hat
.’ The second was written a few days later, during which time Shaw had evidently read
In the Days of the Comet
. It was an extravagantly long letter, scintillating with characteristic wit, and he could not restrain his admiration for Shaw’s eloquence even as he winced under his irony. It began with a playful pretence that the addressee’s recent churlish behaviour was motivated by jealousy: ‘
May I without indelicacy ask whether Jane has been unusually trying of late? Can it be that during your absence in America that Roman matron has formed an attachment for some man of genius nearer home – I will name no names, but, say, one whose more mature judgment, more majestic stature, more amiable disposition, and more obvious devotion to her person, has placed you at a disadvantage in her eyes?
’ Shaw then suggested how the problem might be resolved by acting out the solution hinted at in the conclusion of the new novel. ‘
What is all this in the
Comet
about a
ménage à quatre
? What does it mean? Why does the book break off so abruptly? Why not take some green gas and be frank? I have never concealed
my affection for Jane. If the moroseness and discontent which have marked your conduct of late are the symptoms of a hidden passion for Charlotte, say so like a man. She takes a great interest in you – one which might easily ripen into a deeper feeling if ardently cultivated
.’ Shaw developed his conceit at considerable length, concluding: ‘
Do not let a mere legal technicality stand between us. If you would like to make it a group marriage, and can get round Charlotte, and Jane doesn’t mind (if she does, I can at least be a father to her), you need apprehend no superstitious difficulties on my part
.’ This facetious scenario was all the more absurd because it was widely rumoured in Fabian circles that the Shaws’ union was a
mariage blanc
, but he recognised that Shaw was alerting him to the possible scandal that his novel might cause, and felt a qualm of premonitory uneasiness even as he smiled at these lines.