Guy Renton (38 page)

“Every time I see your sister-in-law I say the same thing to myself,” Renée said. “There's a woman who knows how to make the most of herself. Only a woman can tell how negligible she might have been if she had not had that knowledge.”

He only had time for a bare exchange of words with Renée. They had reached the point now when they scarcely bothered to see each other when they were in public.

“We've become like a husband and wife,” he said, “who are separated the moment they reach a party, are seated at the opposite ends of a dining-table and don't exchange two words till they're in the car going back.”

“Isn't that supposed to be one of the things about marriage, the talking of it over afterwards?”

Was it? He wouldn't know. Perhaps it was. Three-quarters of the pleasure of this as of so many other parties would be the telephone talk to-night or to-morrow morning, or the gossip across a lunch table at this or the other restaurant or in his flat. He had scarcely begun to talk to her before Margery had rejoined them. “Have you a dinner date?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Then you can take me out. I feel like being done rather well to-night. Wait just a moment though. I've got to try that number once again, though I know what the answer'll be.”

This time, however, on her return there was a very different expression on her face. Her eyes shone. “You needn't bother. I'm going to let you off. You can dine in one of those stodgy clubs of yours.” She laid her hand upon his arm, above the elbow, pressing it with an impulsive fondness. “Thank you,” she said, “for your lack of pattern.”

Three days later Guy received a large envelope from Rex containing a thin green pamphlet entitled ‘The English Mistery'.

“I would like this back,” the covering letter ran. “And I'd be grateful if you didn't mention it to any of your friends. We are in an embryo stage as yet.”

Guy glanced at the pamphlet; read a paragraph or two; then decided to study it more carefully at his leisure. This presumably was what Lucy had called ‘waiting to have the King take over'.

‘The Crown,' he read, ‘the ancient and only source of authority and loyalty which English men can accept and serve has been shackled and abused by the usurping sovereign “the money power” and the King has been shut off from the people by the mockery of Parliament. The Lords, who alone can give hope to
the people and lead by example, have lost real nobleness since political parties seized from the King the power to appoint peers, and the House of Lords now includes men who have neither the will nor the knowledge to lead and protect people.'

He skipped a page or two. ‘The task of the Mistery,' he learnt, ‘is to organize enough service to enable the King to govern again according to English tradition and the ancient laws of our people. This task cannot be accomplished by voting ... it will be long, difficult, and probably dangerous.'

The Mistery had been founded in 1930. The nature of its constitution was not clear to Guy. There was a Chancellor who was responsible for what was called ‘the thinking functions'. The Chief Syndic was the principal exponent of the art of Statecraft. There was a High Steward who supervised expulsions. There were Lords of the Mistery, local leaders, companions, and associates. Each initiate joined a ‘kin' in his own district. ‘The Communist cell idea,' Guy thought. His stupefaction increased as he read on. If this wasn't lunacy, what was?

“I suppose,” Barbara had said, “that when those toads actually do take the stage, I'll find out what women make all that fuss about.”

She did. It was a long confinement and a painful one, followed by one complication after another. It was three months before she was well enough to go out of doors. “I'm afraid I won't be much of a gipsy for you for quite a while,” she said to Norman.

The twins too, a boy and a girl, were weakly. They would need constant care. “I couldn't take them with me, and I couldn't leave them, you see that, don't you, darling. And besides,” she added, “with your exhibition coming on so soon you may not want to go away. You'll be getting so many commissions. I'm sure that every man who sees your pictures of me will want to have his wife's portrait painted by you.”

The exhibition was held at the end of April in one of the smaller galleries, the Grosvenor in Cork Street. It was elaborately launched; Margery organized its publicity, several paragraphs appeared headed ‘Wine firm's link with Art' and ‘Ex-International's sister painted by her artist husband'. Daphne gave
a cocktail party on its eve. Roger wrote round to everyone he knew with influence in the art world. Barbara sent out five hundred invitations to the private view. The day itself was bright and sunny, and at no time between eleven o'clock till six were there less than a dozen visitors to the gallery. By the end of the evening five of the pictures bore red wafers in their right-hand corners. Everyone said nice things. Barbara beamed. She squeezed Norman's arm. “Darling, I'm so proud of you, I can't wait to read the reviews.”

“You mustn't expect too much. The papers don't give much space to galleries. Several other painters are exhibiting this month.”

Too many painters were exhibiting. Sickert had a show at the Leicester, Eric Gill at the French Gallery, Lefevre were featuring international abstract art. The few lines that Norman received here and there were complimentary; it was by no means a bad reception, but there was no suggestion that a new force had entered the arena. By the end of the month only one other picture carried its red wafer.

“It gives one a let-down feeling,” Norman said. “It's three years' work; we've spent three months organizing the exhibition; we all got excited and worked up, and now that it's all over it doesn't seem as though very much had happened.”

“You've got yourself started,” Guy reminded him. “People have heard of you. It's only once in a hundred times that a painter starts off with fireworks. And when he does, more often than not it's a flash in the pan.”

“I daresay, but it does give one a let-down feeling. Oh well. There's nothing for it but to paint some more pictures and some better pictures.”

Whenever the day was fine, he went out sketching. Sometimes Barbara joined him but oftener she stayed at home. She liked sitting in the garden, watching the toads tumble over one another. “I suppose they can't mean anything to you,” she said to Guy, “they wouldn't to a man; they don't even mean much to Norman yet, but they're so distinct to me. They're so obviously a boy and girl, even at this age.”

A soft look came into her eyes. “Do you remember my saying that one of the nicest things in marriage was having someone of
your very own; but a husband can never be your own, in the way your children are. You only meet a husband after a lot of other people have been at work on him, but with your children, that's a start from scratch... and to have them playing round you in the very garden where you played as a child. Franklin was up here yesterday. He was so sweet with them. It took me back twenty years. It was like our old summer holidays, sitting out on the lawn together, gossiping. Do you see much of him these days?”

“Whenever I go to Lord's I seem to find him there.”

“Does he talk about doing anything, getting any job?”

“What is there that he could get? He's close on thirty now.”

“Is he? I suppose he is. How the time flies. But it does seem all wrong, his doing nothing. It was all right in the South of France, in a holiday atmosphere, but everybody works in London.”

“I fancy he feels that himself.”

During the casual talks, spreading over several weeks, that they had had at Lord's, Franklin had made a number of remarks that, negligible one by one, acquired, in their sum, significance. “It's oddly anomalous,” he had once remarked, “in view of the extreme respectability, you might almost say the hypocritical respectability of English domestic manners, that our taxation system by lumping a husband's and wife's income together and taxing it as one income, should make it an economy for a couple to live in sin.”

He had elaborated the point. “If I were to take a salaried job, I should move our joint income to a level where the added surtax would be higher than my salary. I should in fact be paying the government for the privilege of slaving in an office fifty hours a week.”

He had said it lightly; but Guy knew him well enough to recognize it as a form of self-defence. Guy knew also that Daphne's decision to stay in England must have considerably affected Franklin financially. He not only had to pay English income tax on an unearned income but at a rate determined by Daphne's income, which must be large. Franklin was nowadays ostentatiously economical: eating a sandwich in the bar instead of lunching in the Members' Room, drinking water instead of beer.
“I spend as little as I can on myself when I'm alone,” he said. “I've a suspicion that we may be finding ourselves in difficulties before too long.”

He was making a martyr of himself because his conscience was not completely clear: he also had a sense of grievance.

“Who's he seeing nowadays?” Barbara was continuing her questionnaire.

“I wouldn't know. They're friends of Daphne's for the most part.”

“And who are they?”

He shrugged. “You know what Daphne's life was, moving from one place to another, making one friend here, another there. You remember what her villa was like in Mougins.”

“But hasn't Franklin any friends of his own?”

“That's one of his troubles, I should say. He was never identified with any group. He left Oxford young. He's not played games in London. He's never had any profession here. He's been abroad so much.”

He remembered Franklin's remark all that time ago, ‘I like people who like me.' “He's one of those who fit into other people's lives; who don't organize lives of their own.”

Yes, that was Franklin's chief trouble probably. He had no real friends; more than once he had remarked to Guy on how much pleasanter the English were outside England. “They're all so busy and self-important here. Heaven knows what about.” As always he spoke with a casual insouciance. You needed to know him well to realize that he was on edge.

Once or twice on his way back from Lord's Guy looked in on them in Avenue Road. Daphne was little changed, as brisk and mondaine as ever; but with three times more energy. She had not put on weight, as women so often did after an operation of that kind. She was full of plans. It was high time that Julia led an English life. If she was to marry an Englishman, she ought to know something about England. “Besides, I'm tired myself of living among strangers' furniture. I've been paying storage on my own for twenty years. I'm going to buy a house. Julia needs a background, so do I.”

The resolve to settle in England was the only sign of change in her, and that change was of a very different nature from that
which she had anticipated on the eve of her operation. It was a proof of increased not of diminished vigour. She had been anxious, clearly, without cause. He was very glad though that they had had that talk; he would never have got to know her otherwise: they would never refer to it again, but it would be a bond between them.

Her days were now as busy as in the South of France they had been indolent and idle. She never rested. She was in a continual state of movement. She saw every important play, rarely missed a private view; saw most fdms. She gave constant lunch and dinner parties. She week-ended in the country. She consulted Franklin about her choice of guests. They never quarrelled; they never even disagreed. To the majority of his acquaintance Franklin must have seemed a singularly lucky human being. But Guy was worried on his account: he could not quite think why. He felt that something needed to be done about him, but he could not think what.

That summer Barbara announced that she was to have another baby. “I suppose it's rather soon,” she said, “but I can't say I'm sorry. I'm so happy with the toads, but I don't want to become too absorbed in them. I'd better divide myself a little.”

This news further postponed the resumption of her gipsy life. “It's too bad in a way. But we've plenty of time. And I daresay it's a good thing for Norman to work on English subjects for a little, and to keep in touch with English ideas.”

Guy did not remind her how she had argued thirty months ago about certain artists' need for sunshine. He fancied that she was on the whole relieved to have so good an excuse for staying another year in England.

Two weeks after the announcement of this news, Norman rang through to ask if he could call at the office; he had something that he wanted to talk over. He arrived in a dark pinstripe suit, clean-shaven. Guy stared at him astounded. He could scarcely believe that this was Norman: without his beard and in an urban suit he looked like everybody else.

“But why on earth ...” Norman cut him short. “You'll understand when I tell you why I've come. I've decided that with a rising and a growing family I need a steadier source of
income than my canvases. I'm wondering if you couldn't find a place for me in Duke and Renton. I knew that if I came round in a beard and corduroys you'd say ‘No' at once.”

“I suppose I should.”

“While as it is. . .” He paused interrogatively. Guy did not hesitate. It was the kind of question that had to be answered on the spot. Otherwise a wrong atmosphere would be created; possibly for ever.

“That's something I can answer right away. We'd be delighted. There's always been a vacancy since Franklin decided to be a gentleman of leisure.”

He saw no reason why Norman should not fill the vacancy with great success. A wine merchant needed more than anything social adaptability; he did not need to be an expert wine-taster. A quarter of an hour ago he could not have imagined his Bohemian brother-in-law seated at a desk, discussing with a client the respective merits of ‘28 and ‘29 clarets; but now with a smooth jaw and neat pinstripe suit, Norman looked as conventionally upper middle-class as any stockbroker. He looked what in fact he was, the son of an Admiral who had been to Winchester.