Honeybath's Haven (2 page)

‘What does he get agitated about?' he asked.

‘Oh, he just fusses over this and that, and can't stay put. There's probably some medical term for it, simply as a manifestation of senescence.'

‘Dash it all, Ambrose, our generation isn't exactly in its dotage yet! And can't Edwin settle to his work? He still turns something in to the Academy year by year.'

‘Well, yes – usually a portrait-sketch, or something of that sort. Pencil or pastel that he can fudge up in no time with that devilishly clever smudging thumb. But he gets down to no serious work at all.'

‘I see.' What Honeybath thought he saw was the occasion of the irritable note to be detected in Prout's own voice. An Edwin Lightfoot adequately toiling in his studio more or less automatically augmented his brother-in-law's bank balance. ‘But, Ambrose, why should Edwin sweat away if he has no mind to it?' Honeybath asked this challengingly. ‘The man's well enough off, and your sister is said to have her little packet. Age asks ease – as some poet or other says.'

‘A poet ought to know better than to say anything of the sort.' Prout's tone had changed. He was a merchant who, when speaking seriously, was always careful to regard creative endowments with respect. ‘When any sort of artist stops off, Charles, he's finished there and then. He can't just get out his golf-clubs like a stockbroker, or find all his satisfaction in helping his wife prune the rose-trees.'

‘Does Melissa go in for roses?' This question struck Honeybath as flippant even as he uttered it, and he realized that he was now feeling quite bad about what could be viewed as a desertion of his old friend. ‘Of course I'll drop in,' he said. ‘I'll take along a bottle of wine and insist on our finishing it together. It was a ritual Edwin and I had in the early days. It was usually a stuff from South Africa calling itself burgundy, and not half bad.' This time, Honeybath managed to laugh the comfortable laugh of a modestly prosperous man. ‘It was two bottles, as often as not,' he said. ‘We'd talk into the small hours. I remember our once arguing about the
Demoiselles d'Avignon
as if it had been painted the day before, although it must have existed before either of us was in his cradle.'

On this reminiscent note the conversation with Ambrose Prout had ended, and now Honeybath was fulfilling his promise. Only he had thought better of the bottle of wine. The gesture might have worked as a tacit acknowledgement of neglect. On the other hand it might have appeared a gesture clumsily contrived. He would do best simply to arrive empty-handed and manage an honest expression of contrition at an early stage of the meeting. Not that he must make too much of that. For the break in intimacy that had occurred was a regrettable fact for which he and Lightfoot would do best to acknowledge a joint responsibility. If they accepted this without any pother they would probably come together again easily enough. But if Honeybath were to make a to-do about his own culpability the effect might be of his elevating himself into a position of patronage towards Lightfoot the duties of which he had failed to discharge. And their relationship had never had anything of the sort about it.

These considerations accompanied Charles Honeybath as he sat on top of a bus on his way to Holland Park, and they suggest that, like most artists, he was sensitive in the sphere of personal relations. But he also had other thoughts in his mind: thoughts, as it happened, on artists in general. The serious practice of any art is obsessional, and that rather commonplace fellow Prout had been perfectly right in declaring that an artist simply can't stop off. If he does so, he virtually loses the sense of his own identity. He is, of course, luckier than most men in that society refrains from
ordering
him to stop off; from handing him a watch or a television set or an enormous cheque corresponding to his consequence hitherto in its fabric, and at the same time telling him to clear out. Society, on the whole,
likes
its artists to be immensely aged – perhaps because it feels itself safer from them when they have become eminent and doddering. Titian and Picasso, Voltaire and Bernard Shaw: their standing mounts with their years, and it occurs to nobody to tell them they ought to retire. The physicist loses his laboratory, the surgeon his beds, even the judge his bobbing barristers. But the artist goes on on his own: painting, scribbling, creating harmonies from catgut and a capful of wind.

Only – Honeybath told himself as his bus turned into Goldhawk Road – Degas' sight dims, Beethoven's ear dies on him, Shakespeare is probably bedevilled by a mounting nominal amnesia and doesn't even have Roget's
Thesaurus
to help him out. So what then? The artist too has to pack up, sharpen not his wits and sensibilities but his secateurs, and get out among his wife's roses.

Honeybath had no roses, and no wife either. He often tried to look ahead – and this present mission, which was to pick up the threads with another artist as old as himself and perhaps wearing not quite so well, put him in mind of the problem now. One could make prudent plans, and this he had done. He had put money by as carefully as any stockbroker, and a kind of old folk's home – one adequately corresponding to his station in life and his modest distinction – was already awaiting him. He wondered about Lightfoot. But Lightfoot's situation was different. He had a wife, and a wife younger than himself. He must be reckoning that, with luck, she'd see him through without any radical alteration in his domestic circumstances. Unless, of course, there were any strains and stresses in the Lightfoot
ménage
here in Holland Park that were likely to militate against that sort of easy decline into the shades.

Honeybath stood up, moved with caution along the swaying platform on which he was perched, and waited at the top of the stair until the bus jerked to a halt. Quite recently a friend of his, a famous pianist, had behaved incautiously with a rotary mower, and was now without an index finger. Honeybath had developed a mild phobia as a result of this. What terrified him was the thought of falling and breaking a wrist. If that happened they would patch it up marvellously, no doubt; within weeks it would be the same old wrist again for all common purposes. But in close proximity to paper or canvas how might it behave? The speculation was somehow even more alarming than the thought of an insidiously developing intention tremor.

He got off the bus, and set out vigorously in the direction of Royal Crescent, the abode of the Lightfoots. At this reunion, he warned himself, he must keep clear of gloomy themes.

 

 

 

Melissa Lightfoot opened the door of the flat. She stared at Honeybath and allowed herself a moment of blank non-recognition before she spoke. Since there was a good light on the landing, and since Honeybath was bareheaded, this was either offensive or absurd.

‘It's Charles,' Mrs Lightfoot said, apparently for her own information. ‘Charles Honeybath. Something must have happened. Somebody has hit him on the head, and he doesn't know where he's wandering. Or is he a fugitive from the police?'

‘Good evening, Melissa.' Honeybath remembered that this sort of nonsensical banter had been Melissa Lightfoot's notion of fun long ago. There was no particular animus in it. She might have made just these remarks if he were calling on his friends after no more than a fortnight by the sea. Melissa was a tiresome woman. It was perhaps one reason why Edwin had become (if Prout was to be believed) a tiresome man. ‘How are you, my dear Melissa?' Honeybath asked firmly. ‘At least you look uncommonly well. And how is Edwin? I'm ashamed not to have seen either of you for so long.'

‘He's asking about my husband. Shall I tell him the truth at once? I don't see why not. Edwin's mad.'

‘I'm very sorry to hear that.' Honeybath closed the front door of the flat behind him – Mrs Lightfoot having shown no disposition to perform this action herself. ‘What sort of madness, Melissa? It comes – doesn't it? – in so many different forms.'

‘Delusions. He believes himself to be somebody else, and never the same person two weeks running. Or even
something
else. A few days ago he set up that system of mirrors you use when you're going to do a self-portrait and don't want your left ear to face the world as your right. As if it made any difference! But what appeared on his drawing board wasn't a man at all. It was a motorcar. I wonder whether he's brought anything to drink.'

‘If Edwin…?' Honeybath realized his mistake. ‘I'm afraid not. I thought…'

‘He used to bring something to drink. Fortunately there's plenty in the house. The two of them can talk twaddle to each other through the night, and let me get some decent sleep for once.' Mrs Lightfoot had led the way into her sitting-room, and she now sat down. ‘Charles,' she asked, ‘did you ever hear of a man called Flannel Foot?'

‘Never.' Honeybath remembered that the third-person singular treatment was administered by Melissa only in a standing position. ‘Who is he?'

‘He's what Edwin has become now. It started with a horrible journalist calling on us three or four weeks ago. He's writing something about Flannel Foot, and it seems that Flannel Foot was living in this flat when they caught him.'

‘You mean he is a criminal?' By this time Honeybath had sat down too. There was no sign of Melissa's husband appearing. Perhaps he was away from home, which would mean that this awkward visit was going to fail of its purpose. Honeybath didn't know whether he would be disappointed or relieved. It didn't sound as if resuming relations with Edwin Lightfoot was going to be an easy matter. Prout had certainly been playing down the oddity of his mental state.

‘Flannel Foot
was
a criminal. He died on the 18th of December 1942, after doing five years' penal servitude to which he had been sentenced on the 2nd of December 1937.'

‘Good heavens, Melissa! Where have you collected all this rubbish?'

‘From Edwin. And he dug it out of some dreadful place where they keep all the old newspapers the world has ever seen. Dingley Dell, or some such.'

‘Colindale. Do you mean that Edwin has been researching into the life of this person?'

‘Yes, of course – and just because of this intrusive young man. Flannel Foot's real name was Vickers, and he was a burglar in a petty line of business. Children's piggy-banks and what could be got out of the gas meter. And he ended up, as I say, either in this flat or in another close by. It seems they can't be quite sure.'

‘On the strength of piggy-banks, Melissa? It sounds most improbable.'

‘He was pertinacious, it seems, and achieved about two thousand successful burglaries before slipping up. That's what has caught Edwin's fancy. So Lightfoot has become Flannel Foot. Only for part of the day, of course, since Edwin's madness is always a kind of bad joke. I believe he's at it now.'

‘I can't hear him at it.'

‘Of course not. That's the point. Nobody ever did hear Flannel Foot. Or see him, for that matter. But you
can
see Edwin. And here he is.'

Edwin Lightfoot had entered the room. He didn't look much changed. Or rather his physical man didn't look much changed. But he was wearing what might have been thought of as the Sunday attire of a respectable artisan of the Edwardian period, shiny and drab; a pair of shabby leather gloves; and a brown Homburg hat. Bright-eyed and apparently inwardly amused, he advanced soundlessly over the parquet floor. The soundlessness resulted from each of his feet being swathed in several yards of flannel. He might have been a gentleman of a past age, badly afflicted by gout.

‘Charles, my dear fellow, how nice to see you! It's a shocking long time since we got together.' Lightfoot sat down with perfect ease – or at least with perfect ease of manner, since he appeared not quite to have mastered the equipment that had presumably been Flannel Foot's speciality in the burgling way. ‘We really have very few visitors nowadays, and Melissa and I have to entertain ourselves as we can. She has probably told you how we've invented this little game like charades. I'm being a burglar at the moment, and she's not quite sure whether I'm after her placket or her purse. Would you care to join in? You can be Chief Inspector Thomas Thompson. “Youthful, black-haired Chief Inspector Thomas Thompson”, according to the
Daily Express
of the 4th December 1937. He's my grand adversary, you know. We're like Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes. The worthy Thompson has hundreds of coppers prowling the suburbs of London on the hunt for me, but he hasn't caught me yet. It's the flannel, you see. So light a foot will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint, as Shakespeare's Friar Lawrence expresses it.'

‘I'm very glad to see you keeping up your spirits, Edwin.' Honeybath managed to say this with difficulty. Although unexpected circumstances were apt to prove him a man of considerable resource, he didn't yet quite see how to tackle this situation. He wondered whether Lightfoot – this time like Shakespeare's Hamlet – was but mad north-north-west, and knew a hawk from a handsaw when other winds were blowing. But if this Flannel Foot business was a joke it seemed necessary to believe with Melissa that it was a bad one. Honeybath felt sorry for Melissa. That she was herself a tiresome woman didn't obscure the fact that her husband's freakishness – even if it was no more than that – couldn't be a thing at all nice to live with. And Lightfoot's deft rubbish about charades was alarming rather than composing. It somehow suggested the rapid cunning which the truly insane are reputed sometimes to command.

‘But enough of this nonsense,' Lightfoot said. He spoke with a lightness of air that decidedly didn't ring true. ‘Just let me remove these cerements, my dear Charles, and we'll have a marvellous talk.' He bent down and began unwrapping the ludicrous flannel from his feet. ‘And our compotations shall be in Château Leoville-Poyferre. Business is a little slack, you know, but I can still, praise God, run to a decent claret.'