The Merciless Ladies (30 page)

‘You know … it's funny, I was brought up very strictly – in a
way
, don't laugh, Bill, in a
way
! – but I'd default tomorrow, let Olive pursue us if she wants to. Not Paul. There's something inbred in him that makes him unable to go back on his debts. Olive is one of them. His father is another. He still allows him a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and that's something we
can't
default on; the old man has bad arthritis now.' Holly looked at me through her lashes. ‘ Paul told me I wasn't to tell you anything of this.'

‘When did he say that?'

‘As soon as you arrived.'

‘Couldn't you have written me?'

‘My dear, I'm inclined to agree with Paul: it's time you stopped feeling a responsibility for us. We've got to live our own life and look after ourselves. You've got to live yours. Don't think we're not grateful for your friendship, but it isn't fair that you should take responsibilities that should rightly fall on us.'

I said: ‘Well, I should feel insulted if you didn't let me do something! Now will you help me choose these pictures?'

We assembled them and began to go through them.

‘Have your father and mother been up to see you here?'

‘They were coming at Christmas. Daddy couldn't manage it at the last moment.'

‘You're able to do some work for him, though?'

‘There's more time up here than in London. We hardly have any letters sent on. Vincent and Mary de Lisle came about a month ago and spent a long week-end. They liked the house and its surroundings very much and thought we'd arranged everything most charmingly; but I don't think they'll come again for some time. Paul and Vincent had a long argument. Vincent looks on it as a retrograde step. For him the metropolis is the place for first-class artists. He says Paul could change his style just as well there. He says that to come up here is to invite provincialism.'

‘What did Paul say?'

‘He just said if he could attain the provincialism of Cézanne, he'd be satisfied.'

She began to pack up the pictures I'd chosen, and I watched her long fingers busy with the parcel. ‘Are you going to work out your salvation as well as Paul his?'

She looked up and smiled. ‘Everybody doesn't need salvation, not in the way Paul does. He's got to produce what's in him or else go to the wall. But for my part …'

‘We all need some sort of spiritual satisfaction', I said. ‘It would be nice to feel that you are getting yours.'

Her mouth straightened. ‘Now Paul's started on this track I think he'll go on painting whatever happens: he's got to. But without me the inspiration would be crooked, bent, forced out
in spite
of everything. At present it's coming in a sort of steady flood,
because
of everything.'

‘Does that answer my question?'

‘In a way. You see, if the trouble with Olive can be removed and Paul can be allowed to go on and find what he's looking for, then that's going to help me to find what I'm looking for too.'

I picked up the parcel and carried it out to the car. She followed me, the breeze and the sun making bright confusion of her hair.

‘What will you do when you reach London?' she asked.

‘About Olive's allowance?'

‘Yes.'

‘See Kidstone first, I expect.'

‘Who is Kidstone? Does Paul know him?'

‘He's the solicitor who acted for him in all the lawsuits.'

‘I wonder then', she said, ‘if you could try somebody else. That's if you know of anyone. I think Paul would want you to.'

‘
Why
, for God's sake?'

‘You see', said Holly, ‘we haven't any money now, and Paul would feel that friends of his might undertake something for him on the strength of old friendships.'

‘Well, why
shouldn't
they? They've made enough money out of him in the past.'

‘I know. But we're arranging all this without Paul's consent. I know he'll be grateful to you if you're able to do anything; more than perhaps you realize. But I also know he'll feel more comfortable about it if he feels it isn't exactly a conspiracy of old friends to get him out of a tight corner of his own making. You do see what I mean?'

‘All right', I said despairingly. ‘I'll do what I can.'

IV

Three days later I went to see Mr Rosse, of Messrs Carp, Cleeve & Rosse of Chancery Lane. Mr Rosse was a very bald man with a pinkish head. He had protuberant eyes, a careful smile, a wing-collar and a discreet morning suit. I had met him through a Press friend and he specialized in divorce.

I put the matter to him. While I was talking he played with his pencil, rose and lit the gas fire, blinking and coughing slightly at the pop as it lit, and strolled round the room feeling the tops of his books for dust. When I had finished he came back and sat down.

Up to now he had only given an occasional grunt. At this juncture he put his finger-tips together and looked over them at me.

‘My dear Mr Grant, of
course
he can do something about it! The English law was not devised as a punitive system. Too often we get it the other way round, of course. Husbands disappear without trace, leaving their first wives high and dry. This is quite the exception rather than the rule … What your friend should do is to apply for a Summons for Variation. He'll be required to make an affidavit as to his present income, and in due course the matter will come up for adjustment.'

‘One drawback remains. Solicitors are not philanthropists. My friend must have paid them hundreds while he was wealthy. But a court hearing now might cost him more than he could afford to pay.'

‘Well, my dear Mr Grant, solicitors have to live. But their charges would be very much less ruinous than having to continue to pay permanent maintenance to the tune of forty pounds a week.'

‘Can the first wife contest the adjustment?'

‘Naturally. At the hearing her counsel will do everything he can to prove that the husband is still able to pay, if not all, then some considerable part of the original order. Your friend will have to appear in order to be cross-examined upon the affidavit he has sworn.'

‘As to his present income?'

‘As to his entire means and possessions. Yes.'

I said: ‘ He's one of those awkward devils who won't accept a loan; but I've a number of his pictures, and I think I could sell them sufficiently well to make the necessary fees. Would you be prepared to take it on?'

‘I'll take it on', said Rosse. ‘But it will be necessary to brief counsel. And I shall have to see your friend. Where does he live and what is his name?'

‘Paul Stafford. He lives in Cumberland. I shall have to persuade him to come down to see you.'

‘
The
Paul Stafford?' Rosse pursed his lips as if to whistle, but did not do so. ‘As bad as that?'

‘I'm afraid so.'

‘Well, well. He must have been making a tidy income until quite recently. But it soon fritters away if one gets mixed up with women.'

‘He's had the misfortune to become involved with two very awkward ones.'

Rosse adjusted his wing-collar in the mirror.

‘Take it from me', he said, ‘ninety per cent of 'em are awkward if they don't get their own way. I should know. I live out of them.'

During the next few days I tried to get in touch with Henry Ludwig, but he was in hospital after a heart attack and was not expected home for at least two weeks. Ludwig was a man who had assistants, never a partner, so I really couldn't expect Abrahams, his second man, to take the responsibility of a decision.

I went to see Mr Farman of the Grosvenor Gallery. He and Paul had not been on the best of terms of recent years, but he was an honest man – somewhat unusual in the world of dealers – and he would have a keen eye for the market.

Farman took me into his back room and I unwrapped my parcel. He took the pictures out one by one, put each on the easel, studied it, replaced it with another.

After he had done he took off his eyeglasses and polished them. ‘Certainly a great change.'

‘They're meant to be.'

‘If you hadn't told me they were his, Mr – ah – Grant, I should have no means of knowing it. I see no resemblance – of approach, of choice of pigment, of brush-stroke. I seriously don't think I could sell them.'

‘Does his name count for nothing?'

‘Oh, indeed. He has a great following for his portraits – and I got good prices for some of his earlier works. But these …'

‘You don't think they're very good?'

‘I don't think they're very good. They have originality of a sort – but it's the originality of being different, not of innovation. Besides, they're all unfinished.'

‘Except this one.'

He looked again at the painting of the studio. ‘Yes – You could say so.'

‘Other men have changed their styles.'

‘Yes. Oh,
yes
. And I'm not infallible. It may be these represent the growing pains, the birth pangs, and that in a few years something exciting will emerge. I don't see it there yet.'

‘Well', I said, ‘thank you.'

‘I tell you what I will do', he said. ‘I'll take that one. And that farm scene – where is it? – ah, here. I'll take those two and put them up, for old times' sake, on the usual commission basis. They might attract someone with an eye for the unusual. No one would be more pleased than I to help him.'

I hesitated. The things might go up on the wall for a couple of weeks and then be stacked away in the basement with a lot of other stuff, to be taken out occasionally and shown to a client. They might stay in the gallery for years. That wasn't what I wanted. But could one do better elsewhere? The trouble was he'd picked on the two I thought the most saleable.

I said: ‘ Can I sleep on it?'

‘By all means. Or you may find some other gallery more forthcoming. Sad news about Mr Ludwig, isn't it?'

II

I tried Carter & Ziesman of Bond Street, with whom Paul had done business occasionally. Mr Ziesman was tall and grey and tired, and after he had gone through the paintings he stood with his back to a magnificent Bonnard and talked about the Wall Street crash and the slump in England, the vast unemployment problem in Germany, the drop in values in the art world. After a few minutes he said: ‘Is Mr Stafford happy in Cumberland?'

‘He's certainly finding more satisfaction in this work than in his portraiture.'

‘It's an unfortunate time to change – to make such a radical departure.'

‘No doubt.'

‘If he can live without his portraiture I'd say good luck to him. We are in this world to fulfil ourselves. But if he has to live by his art then I'd strongly advise him to spend a part of his year doing the work for which he's now justly famous. Then for the rest he can thumb his nose at the public and experiment as he pleases.'

‘I don't think he finds it possible to do both.'

Mr Ziesman shook his head. ‘That's too bad. I can see merit in some of these. A sense of power. But the public won't see it.'

‘Surely the public has grown up a bit. I could pick out six paintings in this gallery now that the public wouldn't have looked at twenty years ago. Now they pay big prices for them.'

‘The public has become – more educated, Mr Grant. But only in some respects. It has been taught to understand – say – a little French and Latin. It doesn't yet read Greek or Arabic. If you follow me. At the moment – though I quite admire that farm scene – these paintings are almost worthless.'

‘So was Cézanne', I said. ‘And you could buy a Vermeer for eight pounds thirty years ago.'

‘Of course. Of course. The history of art is littered with examples. It's quite possible that in thirty years more some influential art critic will discover greatness in these Stafford canvases – call them unfinished masterpieces. So that farm scene might then become worth ten thousand pounds. But the chances are – the chances very strongly are – that it will never be worth more than ten.'

‘Well, thanks again.'

‘When this sort of thing happens', Mr Ziesman said, helping me with the string, ‘and it's not a unique occurrence by any means, I think of Simeon Solomon. Have you heard of him?'

‘No.'

‘Very few people have nowadays. Sixty years ago he was at least as well known as Mr Stafford. One of the most popular members of the Pre-Raphaelite school. A great friend of Swinburne and Rossetti. But he had ambitions to change his style, to begin something quite fresh, to startle the world with a new conception of life seen through the magic oil-paint of his own inspiration. So he broke away from his friends and began to paint and sketch in a new style. His money was soon exhausted, he began to drift and drink. He came to my father for help, and for a number of years my father paid him two pounds a week to keep him alive, and took the sketches in payment.'

Mr Ziesman walked with me to the door.

We still have a stock of them in the cupboard upstairs. Very soon the money had to be paid daily, otherwise he'd drink it all and be penniless for the rest of the week. He often slept on the Embankment. He went on painting right to the end, but he died in an asylum.'

‘I gather you've no wish to extend your philanthropy to Paul Stafford.'

‘Good gracious, I trust he'll not need it.'

‘No', I said. ‘ I trust not.'

III

I left it two weeks. Ludwig was still in hospital but was much better, so I went to see him there.

He said: ‘Don't show me any of them! For God's sake, I don't think they'll please me. Take them to Abrahams. Tell him I sent you. Tell him to put them in the window – three or four anyway. Put the others up inside. Make a story of it. For God's sake, you're a bit of a newspaper man, aren't you? Stafford's name is still news. Tell Abrahams to invite a few people for six o'clock Wednesday week. Champagne and biscuits. There's none of his conventional work at all, I suppose?'