The Merciless Ladies (20 page)

‘You sound like an aesthete.'

‘Well, I'm not that.'

‘Sure?'

I sighed. ‘Anything you say … I'm hungry. Let's go out and have an early supper.'

‘No. I'll cook something. You're surprised? Think I can't? Another challenge?'

‘Ham and eggs?'

‘Right.'

She didn't move.

She said: ‘Are you human, Bill?'

‘Quite probably.'

‘So am I. You still doubt that, don't you?'

‘No … I think you've got very strong feelings but they're usually under such careful control.'

‘As now?'

‘I can't answer for now.'

A few lights were coming on outside. They didn't illuminate the room so much as emphasize the growing dusk.

She said: ‘Have you ever made love in the early evening?'

‘No.'

‘Would it be different?'

‘Sight would be different. Touch would be the same.'

She finished her drink.

‘Would you like to give it a try?'

‘Yes', I said.

III

Later that evening she said: ‘You're damned right, you bastard, how do you understand me so well?'

‘I wish I understood you better.'

I might not have spoken. She was sitting by the dressing-table in a white gown, brushing her hair, which was longer than I had ever seen it.

She said: ‘There's been no one since Paul. Why? For just the reasons you say. I don't like pawing for the sake of pawing – louts demonstrating their manhood, to their own satisfaction if not to mine. Men who—'

‘This lout included?'

‘No … No, not that. You have always been – different. But don't think … don't think this is the beginning of an affair. It might even be a once only. Don't think something has been started.'

‘So why did it happen?'

She paused in her brushing, slim-boned wrist poised with silver brush, slowly lowering it.

‘Because … as I said, you are something different. I'm not sure I even
like
you. But I have always wanted – in a half subconscious way I have always wanted what has just happened. I half desire, half dislike you.'

Good God, I thought … Has it ever happened before – if so isn't it rare, rare – that two people should regard each other so similarly?

I said: ‘ Well, don't regret this.'

We were silent for a time. It was probably only about seven-thirty. She got up and sat on the bed beside me. I put my hand over hers.

‘And Paul?'

‘Paul?'

‘You said when we first met that you wanted to talk about him.'

She shrugged. ‘ Does it matter?'

‘It could.'

‘Does it matter that deep down I suppose he's the one?'

‘The one you care most about?'

‘I don't know.'

‘
Do
you?'

‘Yes … I suppose so.'

‘More than yourself?'

‘Don't bitch at me. I suppose when we met outside the Law Courts I thought of saying to you, what chance is there of getting him back? Reaction of the primitive female. Pity I didn't.'

‘Why?'

‘Because then this wouldn't have happened.'

‘So you do regret it.'

She shrugged. ‘There's something in me that always resents having to yield to this need. To be at the beck and call of another person, to be in a way dependent, to have to surrender one's sovereignty over one's own body, if only for a brief time. Regret it? No, that would be stupid. Besides, since no doubt you would like to know, you gave me satisfaction.'

‘I wasn't unaware of that.'

‘More satisfaction than Paul, sometimes. His commitment was seldom absolute.'

‘But you'd like him back.'

She made an irritable gesture. ‘Not in those
words
. It's too crude – in those words. But after all … setting aside any special significance in the wedding ceremony … we did agree, we gave our solemn word. He's mine – by right, by agreement, by law. Why should he – throw me
over
– as if I were something he could discard, dispose of, when he so chooses?'

I said: ‘ Would you think that attitude a suitable one for resuming a marriage?'

‘Why not? What's wrong with it?'

I hesitated, aware that our love-making, if you could call it that, was over. Yet she was vulnerable, in spite of her hardness. And she was sitting beside me, small and pretty and as tense as a wire.

‘It's an attitude of mind, Olive.'

‘What is?'

‘D'you remember before you married I said not to try to shackle Paul too closely. He's an impossible man to do that to.'

‘I know you were full of wise old saws.'

‘Possessiveness', I said. ‘It's a vice we all have and give way to. But you perhaps more than most. After your brothers died your parents must have given you almost anything you wanted. Didn't they? And since then – you're so
pretty
, so intelligent, so young and determined – haven't you nearly always got what you wanted? And
owned
it. I think you tried too hard to own Paul. You can't expect a man like him to become your possession, to think what you think, to dislike what you dislike, to have the opinions you feed him. Your grip was too tight. So in the end you lost him. Sooner than have a part title you gave up ownership altogether.'

‘What a journalistic imagination!'

‘Maybe.'

‘Are you saying I got what I wanted tonight because you couldn't resist me?'

‘Yes.'

‘Rubbish. You could have—'

‘Not rubbish at all. But you know I've always wanted you – in the same way that it seems you have wanted me. That was what it was.''

‘And now we can spit in each other's face. Is that it?'

‘I hope not … But you said you brought me here to discuss Paul. I'm discussing him. Nothing would please me better than to see the marriage back on the rails. But if that's the attitude of mind you're bringing to it I don't think you have a hope, Olive … Maybe you're both too individual even to
live
in the same house. Really, you need a man you can dominate. I don't know what
he
needs but certainly tact, certainly freedom, even perhaps more love.'

She looked at me and then got up.

‘Go to hell', she said.

The court was just as crowded next morning, but I could not see if Olive had managed to squeeze in. The case resumed with a legal argument concerning the admissibility of some letters, and this dragged on long enough to produce a surreptitious yawn from the foreman of the jury. One wondered how far a juryman's private life affected the outcome of an action involving perhaps many thousand pounds. Had the foreman for instance had a sudden satisfactory/ unsatisfactory affair the evening before with a pretty young woman who was soft of body and hard of mind and who had stretched out naked in the twilight on her white oval bed and later turned him out brusquely, contemptuously, as if dismissing not only him but the encounter for ever from her mind?

Witnesses went in and out of the box testifying to this and that, and it was eleven-thirty before Paul was called. As he rose and walked without haste to the witness box he showed no signs of nervousness, nor of the distaste and anger that this action had caused him. Shades of a gawky youth!

Mr Hart was all kindness, his rusty voice having quite lost that irritating quality he reserved for the opposite side. The examination went on about fifteen minutes, and then, having led Paul to answer one or two questions requiring a straight denial, Mr Hart said: ‘In conclusion, Mr Stafford; in choosing the position you did to hang this portrait in the Ludwig Galleries, were you
at any time
or
in any degree
actuated by spite or ill-will towards the plaintiff?'

‘No', said Paul.

After all, one had to expect hypocrisy on both sides.

A silence had fallen, as one gown folded itself and another was unfurled.

‘My Lord', said Sir Philip Bagshawe, ‘ may I ask your permission to have the painting of Mrs Marnsett brought into the court.'

Mr Hart was on his feet at once. ‘ M'Lord, throughout this case my learned friend has constantly tried to muddy the waters by introducing irrelevances. The libel he is attempting to prove is concerned with the
arrangement
of the portrait in relation to certain others. It has nothing whatever to do with the portrait itself.'

‘My Lord', said Sir Philip, ‘no one can have failed to notice that counsel based a very considerable part of his cross-examination of the plantiff upon the issue of her resentment at the sight of the portrait. I submit therefore that it cannot be irrelevant for the jury to be in a position to refresh their memories.'

‘The merits of the portrait', said Mr Justice Freyte, ‘have been an issue in this case from the beginning. It is indeed a two-edged sword which can be manipulated by both sides. I'm sorry, Mr Hart, but I can certainly see no objection to its being seen again. I take it you are not going to introduce fresh evidence regarding it, Sir Philip?'

‘No, m'Lord.'

The painting was duly carried in and propped against the stenographer's desk. To anyone who could see the original sitting in the second row, the portrait must have looked like a caricature. I thought of Paul's schoolboy efforts with the nude Miss Atkins.

‘Now, Mr Stafford', said Sir Philip. ‘In the course of this action a good deal of contradictory evidence has been given, and, I expect you'll agree, a good deal of animosity has been shown.'

‘It depends whom you mean it has been shown by.'

‘Never mind that for the moment. Shall we say that this painting of yours has given rise to a good deal of heart burning and ill-feeling?'

‘If you wish to put it that way, yes.'

‘In fact it might have been better all round if your original reluctance to paint this portrait had never been overcome.'

‘It would not', said Paul, ‘have been better for the legal profession.'

There was a ripple of amusement in the court.

‘Tell me, Mr Stafford, why were you reluctant to paint your good friend, Mrs Marnsett?'

‘I did not say I was reluctant. An artist accepts a commission in much the way, say, that a barrister does, not necessarily because he is in sympathy with his client but because it is his job.'

‘And in this case you were ‘‘out of sympathy'' with Mrs Marnsett?'

‘No. The result may have distressed her, but personally, after an initial reluctance, I found the commission stimulating.'

‘Got a kick out of it, one might say?'

‘I found it stimulating.'

‘A bit of good fun, I suppose.'

‘Fun doesn't enter into it.'

‘No', said Sir Philip reflectively, staring at the picture. ‘On consideration fun is too harmless a word.' He left his seat and walked over to the picture. Then he beckoned an usher to hold the painting where it could be seen by both the witness and the jury. ‘This is a modern painting, Mr Stafford?'

‘In style, d'you mean? Not particularly.'

‘You will surely admit that it is unconventional?'

‘Well, a portrait can be painted in a number of ways. It can be photographic, merely trying to copy the camera. Or it can simplify detail, giving an impression of the sitter rather than a meticulous transcription. Or the portrait may give rise in the artist's mind to a creative expression which doesn't conform to normal portraiture at all.'

‘I am indebted for the explanation. Which of these three ways have you followed here?'

‘To some extent the second, but mainly the third.'

‘So I should imagine!' The barrister glanced at his client, who was sitting on the bench near him. ‘You don't, I suppose, deny that the portrait is an unflattering one?'

‘So far as its exact reproduction of the sitter goes, no. But all portraits should be good paintings first and good portraits second.'

‘You consider this a good painting, Mr Stafford?'

‘Witnesses today have said so.'

‘I'm not concerned with them. I'm concerned with your own opinion. Do you consider this a good painting?'

‘Well, I like the carnations.'

There was another ripple of laughter in the court.

The judge had also been looking at the picture. ‘The trouble is', he said dryly, ‘that you put the bloom in the wrong place.'

The laughter was less restrained this time, broke, died away.

‘My Lord', said Paul, ‘I put the bloom where my instinct told me it should be.'

‘And the plaintiff, I think', said his Lordship, ‘apportions the blame by the same process.'

While the rising murmur again filled the court Sir Philip stood patiently, arms folded on chest. I remembered Freeman saying: ‘Bagshawe hates his examinations to be interrupted.'

‘Did it never occur to you', said Sir Philip at length, ‘that your old friend might be deeply hurt at this – this insulting portrayal?'

‘I didn't consider it insulting.'

‘Come, Mr Stafford, look at the plaintiff. Don't you see a beautiful woman? How could you have expected any woman to be pleased at this extraordinary representation of beauty upon canvas?'

Paul hesitated. ‘It didn't occur to me that she would be either pleased or insulted. I was too deeply absorbed in the painting to consider the feelings of the sitter.'

‘You are, I suppose, a pretty successful artist, are you not?'

‘Yes. On the whole.'

‘Make a pretty good income, I suppose?'

Paul turned slightly towards the judge. ‘My Lord', he said, ‘if my income will in any way influence the result of this case I shall be pleased to furnish the court with details.'

His Lordship put down his pen. ‘Hardly likely, is it, Sir Philip, that his income will affect the outcome?'