The Documents in the Case (9 page)

Anyhow, Mr Harrison worked off my little lecture on the creative artist with great effect under my very nose the same evening, as though it was all his own work. Mrs H. started off with her usual lack of tact by saying: ‘I thought you said,’ and ‘I don’t want to discuss it,’ but, catching my eye, resigned herself to listen graciously and give consent. So the Hanging Committee is, after all, to have the happiness of gazing upon the portraits of Mrs Harrison and Miss Milsom — blest pair of sirens — and I hope they will be duly appreciative. Lathom is pleased — and so damn well ought to be! I hope it will calm him down, for what with the portraits and the fungus-book and one thing and another, he and I are both getting into a state of nerves.

I want peace and quiet. Damn all these people! Thank Heaven I’ve got the proofs to see to, because I’m in no fit state to write anything. My ideas are all upside down. I can’t focus anything. I suppose it’s just the usual ‘between-books’ feeling. I am going to take a few weeks’ lucid interval and read astronomy or physics or something. Personally, I’m dead sick of the blasted creative instinct!Yours all-of-a-dither, but still devotedly, Jack

1. The Same to the Same
   

15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater 1st February, 1929

Bungie, my darling,

What, in God’s name, are you going to do with me if I get jealous and suspicious? Or I with you, if it happens that way? I ask this in damn sober earnest, old girl. I’ve got the thing right under my eyes here, and I know perfectly well that no agreement and no promise made before marriage will stand up for a single moment if either of us gets that ugly bug into the blood.

You remember — months ago — I passed on a cheerful little matrimonial dialogue that took place by the umbrella-stand. Tonight we had the pleasure of hearing the thing carried on to the next stage.

Harrison had the brilliant idea of inviting Lathom and me to dinner to taste his special way of frying chicken. Well, there we all were — Miss Milsom frightfully kittenish in a garment she had embroidered herself with Persian arabesques. (‘I don’t know what they mean, you know, Mr Munting. Probably something frightfully improper! I copied them off a rug.’) Harrison who allows nobody to penetrate into ‘his’ kitchen when he’s working out a masterpiece, was frying away amid a powerful odour of garlic. No Mrs Harrison! We furiously make conversation — enter H. — gives a black look round, and disappears again. I count the things on the mantelpiece — two brass candlesticks, brass door-knocker representing the Lincoln imp — two imitation brass mulling-cones — ill-balanced pottery nude — quaint clock and pair of Liberty nondescripts. Front door goes. Kitchen door in the distance heard to burst open. ‘Well, where have you been?’ Awful realisation creeps over us all that the sitting-room door has been left open. I say hurriedly: ‘Have you read the new Michael Arlen, Miss Milsom?’ We are all aware that a prolonged cross-examination is proceeding. Lathom fidgets. Voice rises to appalling distinctness: ‘Don’t talk nonsense! How long were you at the hairdresser’s? — Well, what were you doing? — Yes, but what kept you? — Yes, of course, you met somebody. You seem to be meeting a lot of people lately! — I don’t care who it “only” was — one of the men from the office, I suppose — Carrie Mortimer? nonsense! — I shall not be quiet — I shall talk as loudly as I like — Did you or did you not remember —?’ Here I grow desperate and turn on the gramophone. In comes Harrison, putting a good face on it. ‘Here’s the wife, late as usual!’ We sit down to dinner in embarrassed silence. I murmur eulogies on the chicken. ‘Over-cooked,’ says Harrison, shovelling it all aside and savagely picking at the vegetables. After this, everybody is afraid to eat it, for fear of not seeming to know good food from bad. ‘It seems delicious to me, Mr Harrison,’ says Miss Milsom, profiting nothing from long experience. ‘Oh,’ says Harrison, sourly, ‘you women don’t care what you eat. It’s overdone, isn’t it, Lathom?’ Lathom, quite helpless with rage, says in a strangulated voice, that he thinks it’s just right. ‘Well, you’re not eating it,’ says Harrison, gloomily triumphant. By this time everybody’s appetite is taken thoroughly away. There is nothing on earth the matter with the chicken, but we all sit staring at it as though it was a Harpagus-feast of boiled baby.

Well, I’ll spare you the rest of the nightmare. The point is that this time, Mrs Harrison didn’t come in bubblingly eager to say where she had been and what she had been doing — and that next time the alibi will hold water — and then Harrison will start saying that you can’t trust women, and will very likely be perfectly justified.

Bungie — I see how these things happen, but how does one insure against them? What security have we that we — you and I, with all our talk of freedom and frankness — shall not come to this?

Love makes no difference. Harrison would cheerfully die for his wife — but I can’t imagine anything more offensive than dying for a person after you’ve been rude to them. It’s taking a mean advantage. And what’s the good of it all to him, if he loves her so much that everything she says gets on his nerves? I like Harrison — I think he’s worth a hundred of her — and yet, every time there’s a row, she ingeniously manages somehow to make him appear to be in the wrong. She is completely selfish, but she takes the centre of the stage so convincingly that the whole scene is engineered to give her the limelight for her attitudes.

This house is becoming a nightmare; I shall have to chuck it, but I must stay on till Easter, because the rent is paid up to the quarter and I can’t afford to lead a double life and Lathom can’t manage more than his own share. Hell!

I to Hercules comes out next month. I hope old Merritt won’t be let down over it. He continues to be enthusiastic. Senile decay, I should think. Well, we’ll hope for the best. If my Press is as good as yours I shan’t complain, my child.Your envious Jack

1. Note by Paul Harrison
   

It is unfortunate that throughout this important and critical period, from the end of November to the end of February, we should have no help from the Milsom correspondence. It seems that Miss Milsom and Mrs Farebrother had a renewed quarrel during the Christmas period, on the subject of the youth Ronnie Farebrother, mentioned in former letters, and that as a result they remained for some time not on speaking or writing terms. Mr Munting’s letters also contain no references to my father’s domestic affairs during the month of February — no doubt because he was preoccupied with his own private concerns.

During the last week of January, the wretched young Farebrother shot himself. This gratifying fulfilment of her prophecies of disaster seems to have driven Miss Milsom into a highly hysterical state of mind, which probably precipitated the mental collapse that followed. Her correspondence with her sister (which was then resumed) is therefore quite useless for evidential purposes. We can, therefore, only guess at the development of the situation between my stepmother and Lathom during February — the month in which my father’s duties took him away from home for fourteen days, in connection with the electrical installation in Middleshire. In view of the extraordinary incident which finally broke up the two households, it is, however, not difficult to form a correct opinion.

1. John Munting to Elizabeth Drake
   

15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater 17.2.29

Darling Bungie,

You have seen the reviews, of course! Bless my heart and soul, what has happened to the people? Of course, it was all started by that tom-fool at the Guildhall (I don’t know why Cabinet Ministers should be the only people who can sell one’s books for one nowadays) — but oh, my lights and liver! Oh, goroo! goroo! The silly mutton-headed G.P. is walking into the blooming shops by thousands and buying the thing! Paying for the thing. Shoving down their hard-earned seven-and-sixpences for it! Lord help us — what have I done that I should be a bestseller? Is thy servant a tripe-hound that he should do this thing? First edition sold out. Presses rolling out new printings day and night — Merritt nearly off his head and saying, ‘I told you so.’ Blushing author besieged in his charming Bayswater flat (!!!!) — Remarkable portrait of blushing author by that brilliant young artist Mr Harwood Lathom (done in a fit of boredom one afternoon when the model hadn’t turned up) being scrambled for by four Press agencies, two literary hostesses and an American lion-tamer! Everything gas and gaiters! Worm-like appeals, from publishers who turned Hercules down, for the next contract but seven, and the Wail and the Blues and the Depress and all the Sunday Bloods yapping over the phone for my all-important, inspired and inspiring views on ‘What does the Unconscious mean to me?’ — ‘Is Monogamy Doomed?’ — ‘Can Women tell the truth?’ — ‘Should Wives Produce Books or Babies?’ — ‘What is wrong with the Modern Aunt?’ — and ‘Glands or God — Which?’

Bungie, old thing, it all seems absolutely ghastly and preposterous, but the blasted book is BOOMING — and — shall we get married, Bungie? Will you take the risk on the strength of one fluky Boomer (which may perfectly well be a Boomerang and prevent me from ever writing anything worth doing for the rest of my life), and a set of contracts which I may go mad with inability to fulfil? Because, if you will — say so, my courageous infant, and we will tell your Uncle Edward to put up the banns, and prance off hand in hand our own primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.

Pull yourself together, Jack Munting!

Bungie, I’ve never told you how jealous I was because your books sold and mine didn’t. If I tell you so now, don’t remember it against me. Parson Perry says confession is a good thing. Perhaps he’s right. I confess it now — and now forget it, there’s a good girl. Perhaps even now it only means that my wretched book is howlingly bad. I always comforted myself with thinking that I must write better than you to be so unsaleable — but I’m filthily pleased and cock-a-hoop all the same.

Pull yourself together, Jack Munting! You are becoming hysterical. Your glands are functioning madly in the wrong places, and your Unconscious has come unstuck!

Anyhow, I’m going to have quite enough to depress me tomorrow. That crashing nuisance, Leader, has suddenly discovered that he knows the fellow who’s written the book of the season, and is coming along to ‘Look me up, old boy, and celebrate!’

There was a young student of CaiusWho passed his exams with a squaius,Ere dissecting at St BartholomewsInward St Partholomews, such as St Heartholomews,To discover the cure of disaius.

Oh, well, I suppose one of the penalties of success is the way it brings you in touch with your friends. I had an invitation to dine from the Sheridans last week. ‘Such a long time since we met, isn’t it?’ I will see to it that it shall be longer still.

Well, let me know about the matrimonial outlook, won’t you? I have a great many important engagements, of course, but I daresay I might be able to fit this little matter in somewhere!Yours pomposo e majestuoso, Jack

P.S. You need not trouble to make it a quiet one. I can easily afford a top-hat — in fact, several.

1. The Same to the Same
   

15a, Whittington Terrace 20.2.29

Darling Bungie,

Glory, alleluia! Then we will be married at Easter. Curse Uncle Edward’s scruples! I could make you just as good a husband in Lent — but, as you say, it’s a shame to upset the old boy. Now that the remote prospect has really come so (comparatively) near, I feel all wobbly and inadequate. It’s like bracing your muscles to pick up a heavy bag and finding there’s nothing in it. One thought it was years off — and here it is — and there it is, and that’s that.

9

Well!

Well, we are going to be married at Easter.

Well — it will be a good excuse for refusing silly invitations. No time. Frightfully sorry. Going to be married at Easter, you know. A lot to do. Ring. Best man. Bridesmaids’ presents and all that. Excuse me, old man, I’ve got to see my tailor. Cheer-frightfully-ho, don’t you know.

I couldn’t get rid of Leader that way, though. He was horribly hearty and stayed a very long time, and insisted on Lathom’s and my going down to the College to see over the labs and ‘meet a few of the men’, who all hated me at sight, by the way, when they did see me. I thought the sooner we got it over the better, so we went this afternoon. Lathom is in one of his vagrom moods — doing no work, and catching at any excuse to waste time. I tried to get out of it, but no! I ‘absolutely must come, old man’. I take it the idea was to impress Leader’s friends with the idea that men of intellect are proud to know him. It had not occurred to me that best-selling had such idiotic accompaniments.

Leader was in his element, of course, showing off his half-baked knowledge, and exhibiting fragments of anatomy in bottles. I can see Leader one of these days as the principal witness at an inquest, frightfully slapdash and cocksure, professing that he can tell the time of the murder to within five minutes by taking half a glance at the corpse, and swearing somebody’s life away with cheerful confidence in his own infallibility. He was highly impressive in the dissecting-room, but at his best, I think, displaying his knowledge of poisons (which, by the way, they seem to keep handy on the open shelves for any passing visitor to help himself to). He was very great on synthetic drugs — all made on the premises out of God knows what, and imitating nature so abominably — abominably well, that is — that chemical analysis can’t tell them apart. Indeed, indeed, sirs (and apart from the wearisomeness of Leader), but this troubles me. Synthetic perfumes from coal-tar are bad enough, and synthetic dyes, and I can put up with synthetic camphor and synthetic poisons, but when it comes to synthetic gland-extracts like adrenalin and thyroxin, I begin to get worried. Synthetic vitamins next, I suppose, and synthetic beef and cabbages — and after that, synthetic babies. So far, however, they don’t seem to have been able to make synthetic life — the nearest they have got is stimulating frog-spawn into life with needles. But what of the years to come? If, as the bio-chemists say, life is only a very complicated chemical process, will the difference between life and death be first expressible in a formula and then prisonable in a bottle?’