Unclouded Summer (24 page)

“It's nice playing with you,” she said. “There's something magnetic about your ball. It keeps mine straight.”

By the time they had reached the turn, they had come to feel they had known each other a long time. By the time they had
reached the turn, it had also come on to rain again. They were back at Charlton before five o'clock.

“Tea'll be in the room beyond the drawing room,” Marion told him.

Tea was a meal that ordinarily Francis did not take. A tea was in New York in the set he moved in, a euphemism for a cocktail party. He had read descriptions of teas in English novels, but he had not guessed how cosy it could be to come in on a cold rainy afternoon to cushions and armchairs and a large glowing fire before which, on a low table surrounded with a litter of Crown Derby crockery, a silver kettle would be boiling over a spirit flame beside a silver teapot. He had not guessed how substantial an English tea could be with its toast and muffins and paté sandwiches, its small cakes and its iced cake and its fruit cake. He had not known how much solid nourishment you could take three hours after leaving a lunch table and less than three hours before you started dinner. He had not known how lazily intimate talk can be over a tea table. He had not known how happily drowsy you could feel stretching out tired legs before the fire.

Eckersley rose to his feet and stretched his arms.

“I'm for the library,” he said. “I've a feeling I'm going to fall asleep.”

His wife go.t up too. “I've some letters to finish before dinner.”

Marion and Francis were left alone.

“I wonder,” she said, “if you would let me see your pictures.”

The case containing them was in the hall.

“Shall we go into the drawing room? The light's better there,” she said.

She went over them carefully as he set them out, making no comment until she had seen the last. Then she nodded. “They
are
good,” she said. “I knew they would be. Daddy's never wrong.”

She paused. She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I've been so excited about your coming here. I paint myself. I've so wanted to show my pictures to a real painter. To a young painter. You're the first young artist that I've met. It's only old painters who come down here. I don't care what they think. Would you let me show you my pictures, now?”

She spoke with an eagerness that touched him.

“Of course,” he said.

She brought down six pictures, landscapes and still lifes. Each had a pleasant sense of design and color. He was surprised that she should be so accomplished.

“I congratulate you. They're very good,” he said.

She flushed.

“Do you really mean that?”

“Of course, I do.”

“But how good are they?'

“How do you mean ‘how good'?”

“Are they good enough for me to paint professionally?”

“That's rather another matter.”

“I know it is. That's why I asked.”

“You see …” He hesitated. He looked more closely at the pictures. A hundred students at an art school might show promise, but only the work of one would amount to anything. “It's hard to tell yet,” he said. “One can't tell how you are going to develop.”

“I'm going to the Slade this autumn.”

“TheSlade?”

“The art school attached to London University.”

“That ought to be a help.”

“Of course it will. I know. But that isn't what I want you to tell me. The thing is this …” She stopped. Then suddenly started off in a quick blurted rush… “I don't know why I'm boring you with all of this but I can talk to you. You'll understand. It would be easy for me, with Daddy's influence, to get a start. I could get publicity. ‘Miss Marion Marriott, who is the daughter of the distinguished diplomat' -You know the kind of thing. It would be easy for me to have an exhibition. Daddy would give a party for it. All the right people would be there. One or two of the guests would buy pictures, to please Daddy. I should be launched overnight, and, of course, as you know as well as I do, it wouldn't mean a thing.”

He smiled a trifle grimly. “We have successes of that kind on our side too.”

“And it doesn't get them anywhere in the long run, does it?”

“It doesn't get them to first base.”

“I know. It cuts no ice with the real painters. They resent short cuts. And so do critics. My gossip paragraph value would depend on Daddy. His friends would think that they'd done ample when they'd bought one picture. My second show would flop completely. That's what I don't mean to have happen
in my case. That's why I want you to tell me if I'm any good. If there's any chance of my being any good I'll work as no one in the world's history has ever worked; but if I am not any good, I want to know it now, so that I can get started on something else. I've got to do something of my own. I can't just sit around down here waiting for somebody to marry me.”

She was flushed with the awkward overeagerness of the very young. He could understand now why she had looked at him in that confederate way at lunch. She was a rebel against the traditions of her home. Her painting was an expression of her rebellion, was the key with which she hoped to win to freedom. Would the key fit the lock, however?

He looked at her flushed face. It had bravery, a lonely kind of bravery. The last thing for which she asked was sympathy, but there was something strangely pathetic, strangely moving about her outburst.

He looked back at the pictures. What was there he could say to her about them? Who could tell if the promise in them would ripen into talent? It was a question of so many things, more than anything, of determination. Was not such little mark as he himself had made, the outcome of his resolve to justify his choice of painting as a career? In a country where a man was judged by his work, where a man who did not work did not amount to anything, his own choice of paint-ing as a career, instead of the law or business or education, had been an act of rebellion that had to be justified by its success. Would Marion ever feel like that? Would she ever find herself in the position of standing or falling by her painting? He doubted it; he doubted it very much. If she were poor, if she were obscure she might in the struggle for self-establishment convert her promise into talent. But she was not poor. She was not obscure. She possessed already, as her father's daughter, without a struggle so many of the attributes to a full way of living which for others existed as the prizes hard-won-to after years of struggle. The eye of the needle. It was hard, it was rare for the children of rich and prominent parents to succeed in the arts: they became dilettantes, touchy and vain and precious; a nuisance to themselves and others.

He looked at the pictures, then back at Marion. It would be easy enough to say something complimentary that would make her happy for the moment. Was it kind to her, though, was it fair in the long run to encourage her on a course which would almost certainly end unsatisfactorily; particularly when
there were so many other activities in which her father's position and prestige would be an assistance rather than a hindrance?

“I'm sorry,” he said. “But I just can't tell. I can't say more than that there's promise there. But I do think you should realize that the betting against your succeeding as a professional painter is a thousand to one against. I think you should have a second string.”

She flushed as he said that. He felt a brute for saying it. But he would have felt a cad if he had not. He would have been buying her friendship upon false pretenses.

From the passage came the sound of voices.

“That's Judy back,” she said.

The voices came towards the drawing room. Francis was facing the door. The high central candelabra had been turned on so that they could see the pictures better. Under its heavy glare, he could see Judy stare at the sight of himself and Marion; her mouth hardened in the way that it had that afternoon, in a way that it had never done in the South of France.

“I'm glad to see you've got to work so soon,” she said.

She came across to them, glanced cursorily at the pictures.

“They look good, we must ask Henry what he thinks,” she said.

Then she blinked. “This light's a bit too much for me. I'll see you later.”

As the door closed, Marion raised her eyebrows.

“She didn't like that.”

“Didn't like what?”

“Your showing your pictures to me before she's seen them.”

“Oh, surely…”

Marion laughed. “Judy likes to be the center of things round here.”

“Well, in her own home, naturally.”

“Exactly, as you say, in her own home, naturally.” There was a wry expression on Marion's face as she said that; then her expression changed, becoming once again direct and friendly. “I'm so glad you said what you did about my painting. It can't have been easy for you. I know that I can trust you now.”

Parker was setting out his evening clothes when he came upstairs.

“How does my dinner jacket strike you?” he inquired.

It was double-breasted, of a type that had recently become fashionable in New York. He wore it with a semi-stiff shirt with attached collar.

Parker hesitated. “Well sir, if I may say so, sir, it's the kind of thing that the Prince of Wales would wear.”

“Isn't that the highest compliment that you could pay it?”

“Well, sir, in certain places, sir.”

“And this isn't one of them you mean?”

“I think you'll understand what I mean sir, when you see what the other gentlemen are wearing.”

He did all right, though his host was wearing a velvet smoking coat, and the silk on the lapels of Eckersley's dinner jacket was shiny with long use, there was a gloss and freshness about the stiff-starched shirt fronts and the high-winged collars, an elegance about the diamond and pearl studs and links that matched the silk and sequins, the lace and velvet and georgette that the women wore. There was a parade atmosphere about it all with which his own soft collar and thin-ended tie did not accord. He did not feel embarrassed however on that account. He was here under false pretenses. He was glad, rather than otherwise, that the informality of his dress should set him apart from the remainder. He felt belligerent and aggressive. He felt different, he was glad he looked different. I'm not someone to be pushed around, he thought.

They sat down ten for dinner. Afterwards they cut for bridge. Sir Henry excused himself on the ground of work. Marion was engrossed in the new Edgar Wallace.

Judy was at another table. The last rubber dawdled on. It was after midnight before the guests could leave. When they asked Francis how long he was planning to stay in England, Judy answered for him. “We're going to keep him here a long, long time.”

They had walked out into the hall to say goodbye. After the warmth of the drawing room, its unheated air was cold. Eckersley shivered, as the front door closed. “One last quick nightcap to warm me up. Will you join me, Oliver?”

Francis shook his head. It was late and he was tired.

“No, thanks very much. I've had a long day. I'm for bed right now.”

“Me, too,” said Judy.

In silence they walked together up the staircase. At its head, they paused, looking uncertainly at one another.

“I'll just come and see that you've got everything,” she said.

He opened his door for her. A bedside lamp had been switched on; the coals had burned low in the rounded cauldron of the fireplace, lighting the threads of silver in the damask curtains, throwing a deep rich glow onto the high four-poster, onto the elaborate plaster ceiling, onto the stiff-starched linen of the sheets and pillow cases, onto the bowl of primroses on the dressing table. The room was warm, welcomingly warm, after the cold of the hall and passage. Everything here suggested peace and harmony. If only he could close this door behind them. If only they could be alone together in this kindly room. How quickly that watchful defensive expression of distrust would leave her eyes. How easily they could win back to their old fond intimacy.

She took a slow inventory-like look about the room. “Yes, I think you have everything,” she said.

Beside his bed, next to the carafe of water, was a silver biscuit box. She lifted the lid. “Yes, there are some biscuits there.”

She turned towards the door. For six months he had been dreaming of this moment; for six months in letters and cables, they had been planning for this moment. The moment had come and here they were, estranged and awkward.

“Sleep well,” she said, and held out her hand.

He did not take it. He could not say good night to her like this.

“Listen,” he said, “we've got to talk.”

“Not now.”

“But I don't understand, if you got my letter why you didn't answer it?”

“Your being here is my answer.”

“That's not an answer. It's an ignoring of everything that that letter said, everything I asked you to decide.”

“How can one decide things like that at a moment's notice?”

“But once my having been here, once my having stayed here as a guest…”

She would not let him finish.

“We can't go into all that now. Tomorrow or some other time, we'll have a long talk about it all. Not now … I must go now. Good night.”

She was resolved not to talk. But he was equally resolved to make her talk. He was not going to let her get away with this. She had to be made to see his point of view.

“Listen,” he said. “I write you a letter. I explain exactly what I feel. I tell you that there are two alternatives; I tell you that it is for you to choose, one or the other. You take no notice of my letter. You do not answer it. You won't discuss it. I told you that I could not come down to Charlton. You ignore everything I wrote. You trap me down here.”