The Merciless Ladies (9 page)

‘I know what you're going to say', Diana interrupted. ‘And you needn't say it. I hate to be compared to rather dirty salt water, even as a generality. Please shut up.'

‘Well …' Paul moved restlessly about the room. About him were evidences of his increasing wealth and taste – paintings by other artists he admired, some very fine ceramic ware – a long way, I thought, from the Jarrow marchers, though at one time he had been scarcely different from them. ‘ I'm off balance', he said. ‘ I've been working too hard. Or too closely. I want time to look at myself – to look at my work – to have time to think. Just a month or so's break.'

‘There are plenty of good ordinary cruises', Diana said. ‘ Fresh air, a change of company, a decent degree of comfort.'

‘And mixing with all the best tweeds? Thanks, no.'

‘Well …' Diana said shortly, ‘ the remedy's in your own hands. Don't let your present company bore you.'

Feeling that the exchange was becoming personal I said: ‘That portrait of Lady Blakeley, Paul. Is it finished? I'd like to see it.'

He stared at me as if not seeing me. ‘ Oh, that. Yes, go ahead. It's face to the wall by the window. The painting on the easel is covered and I charge you not to uncover it.'

‘OK.'

‘And', he said, and I was about to leave them, ‘you may find answers to more than one of your questions up there.'

I raised my eyebrows in inquiry but he waved his glass and would say no more. I went up to his studio. The room was very striking with its ivory-coloured walls and black velvet curtains and black carpet – designed to impress the sitter – and I could detect Olive's hand in the decor. But more surprising was the presence of an elderly man staring at one of the paintings.

He turned to give me roughly the same assessing treatment with his very direct blue eyes. A good-looking old man with white hair and a short beard. And roughened skin with a net of tiny veins about the nose. I said good evening and he answered in a rough North-country voice. The shiny blue suit, the stiff white collar, the bootlace tie; I instantly knew.

I said: ‘Paul sent me up, but he didn't tell me anyone was here.'

‘Well, yes. I'm 'ere, as you might say. Is Paul still with Mrs Marnsett?'

I nodded. He moved slowly back to one of the pictures. All his movements were ponderous: he stood squarely on strong reliable legs. The beard was becoming.

‘What d'ye make of this?' he asked.

I went up. As it happened I had been in the studio when Paul painted it a month ago. He had had a few minutes to spare before we went out together and had taken up a piece of strawboard and made a few swift lines on it in charcoal. Over it all he had painted evenly a coat of dark grey so that the thing looked like a greyish blackboard. Then he had mixed yellow ochre with a little white and, while the grey was still wet, had painted in this second colour. In a matter of three minutes something had come to life: a distorted window showing light from a derelict woodman's cottage squeezed down among tall trees which bulked about it as if to crush it out of existence. The two colours were all he had used, but the result, was grim and crooked and overpowering, a Hans Andersen fairy story which had taken the expected turning.

I said: ‘I think it's marvellous.'

He transferred his unblinking gaze to me. ‘Do you know owt about it?'

This wasn't to take me down a peg but a simple question requiring a simple answer.

‘Not much, except what I've picked up from Paul. You're his father, aren't you?'

‘'Ow d'ye know that?'

‘A likeness perhaps. My name is William Grant.'

‘Ah … So you're Bill Grant. Where he used to go and stay for 'olidays.' He put out a slow swollen hand. ‘Nay, he's nowt like me. I can't draw. Can't even paint shop wi'out dripping t'paint down my sleeve.'

‘Is this your first visit to London, Mr Stafford? I mean to see your son.'

He took a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it from a battered old pouch.

‘We've 'ad one or two differences o' late years … He's changed a lot, ' as Paul. But he's been good; paid back what I spent on 'im to the last farthing. Now 'e allows me two hundred a year. I didn't
want
'is money; first off I said nay, nay; but times are bad in the North … 'E always pays his debts, does Paul.'

Yes, I thought, even to painting the presentation for old Dr Marshall.

‘D'you know', said Mr Stafford, ‘wi' the money Paul makes me have, and me bit of capital back, I'm quite
rich
. Sometimes it makes me fair ashamed.'

‘Why ever should it?'

‘Folk around us – that's why. I help where I can but it's too big. People can scarce live. Cousin of mine in Great Harwood. Forty-one she'll be. Nay, I'm a liar: forty-two this January. Married to a mill-worker, got four kids. Mill's closed. They got to manage on thirty-two shilling a week.
And
they pay nine shilling a week rent. I help
them
. But it's hard. And they don't like being 'elped.'

‘Does Paul know?'

‘It's not for me to remind him. He pays 'is debts.'

We took a pace or two together.

‘Is wife', said Mr Stafford. ‘I never met 'is wife. What's amiss between them? Can't be right for a husband and a wife to live separate.'

‘They're both artists, Mr Stafford. They're temperamental – didn't get on.'

‘Should've found that out before they wed.' A match flickered up and down, blue smoke rose. ‘ Is it permanent?'

‘I don't know.'

‘And no children on the way?'

‘No.'

‘Children bring folk together … There's never been a divorce in our family. In the North it's looked on as a disgrace.'

He took out the pipe and examined the stem. That at least gave him satisfaction.

‘And this Mrs Marnsett. What's she after?'

‘Diana was a friend of Paul's before he married. She helped him a lot. I think they've become friendly again since he and Olive separated.'

‘Friendly?' Mr Stafford said belligerently. ‘What does friendly mean?'

I didn't answer because his guess was as good as mine. We looked at one or two of the paintings.

‘That's a fine boy', said Mr Stafford, pointing with the stem of his pipe. ‘Puts me in mind of my nephew in Morecambe.'

‘Yes …'

‘What did she do for him?'

I tried to explain something of the complicated process of getting known.

He grunted. ‘She's the wrong influence, just the same … Not that folk influence Paul much so far as I can see. ‘E goes his own way.'

There was silence.

‘Was she why Paul's marriage broke up?'

‘Not at all. I'm sure not.'

‘Paul's very close', said Mr Stafford, unblinking, as if to explain his questions. ‘He don't talk things over with me. I've to mind what I say … But he ought to have got a degree. That's what I tell him. I was disappointed. He'd be safer with a degree.'

‘I must be going', I said. ‘I'll see you again, Mr Stafford.'

‘Nay, I'm off home tomorrow.' He rubbed the palm of his hand across his beard. ‘He were always a queer lad, was Paul. Always drawing faces on the flour bags. I used to tan 'is behind.'

I shook Mr Stafford's hand and left him standing solidly where I had found him, puffing meditatively at his pipe. One felt that ideas did not come quickly to him but that when they came they stuck. I didn't bother Paul again or discover if Diana was still there, but let myself out. I had forgotten to see the portrait of Lady Blakeley after all.

The affair of Diana's second portrait, which became so notorious, started very quietly.

I had been surprised when Olive first mentioned he was doing another, but Diana's presence that day had confirmed it. Although Paul sometimes gave me the impression that he found her proprietorial attitude a bit oppressive, the ambiguous friendship continued. If they got on each other's nerves sometimes more like lovers than friends it was nobody's business but theirs. Presumably Colonel Marnsett tolerated it because it was discreet. As March advanced it became known that Paul's three paintings for the Summer Exhibition were to be a head and shoulders of Diana Marnsett, the portrait of Lady Blakeley, and one of his historical series, a painting of Maria Anne Fitzherbert.

Paul seemed in better spirits now. His paintings at the Grosvenor Gallery had attracted so much attention that he had been offered a one-man show at the Ludwig Galleries in King Street, to open in late April. Henry Ludwig was a man of prestige and usually only showed foreign artists of established reputation. Paul hoped to complete the last of his historical portraits in time for the opening. No more was heard of the yachting holiday; presumably Diana had got her way over that. Since I was not a member of the Hanover I couldn't be sure.

Paul stil strictly adhered to his rule of not allowing a sitter to see the portrait until it was completed. The events of the day in April when Diana saw hers have been related variously. Since I was not there I can claim no absolute authority for my version. Paul told me, that was all.

Before he showed her the portrait he said he explained to her that he had been breaking new ground and that she might find the result a bit startling. He was convinced, he told her, that he had succeeded in what he had set out to do; she might not necessarily
agree
with him or actually
like
his interpretation. It expressed something he had felt for some time,
not
, of course, specially about her but about portraiture in general, something he had not been able to put into a conventional work. All this she smilingly accepted as a sort of
hors d'oeuvre
to whet her expectation; she took no warning at all from his remarks.

So he lifted the cloth and she looked at it, and her face changed colour.

‘You're joking, Paul.'

‘I was never more serious in my life.'

She went nearer, he said, and stared again. Then she stared at him. She saw then he was absolutely in earnest, that there was no
real
, flattering portrait to be put up with a laugh in its place. She turned and picked up a palette knife and made for the picture.

He caught her just in time and they fought – like cat and dog, he said – for the knife. Forgetting her refined upbringing and sophisticated manners, she bit and kicked and wounded his hand before he got the knife away from her.

Then he carried her still struggling to the door of the flat and put her outside on the mat.

II

Four days later Paul received a letter from a firm of solicitors, Messrs Berriman, Smith & Berriman, informing him that they had received instructions from their client, the Hon. Mrs Brian Marnsett, to make payment for a picture commissioned by her. They begged to enclose cheque for four hundred guineas, the sum stipulated at the outset, and would be glad to acknowledge receipt of the picture at his early convenience. They were his faithfully.

Paul replied by the next post, returning the cheque and stating that no agreement had been entered into for the sale of the picture, that no price had been put on it, and that it was not at present for sale.

There followed silence.

Two days later the three paintings were parcelled up and sent in to the Academy committee. In the ordinary course of time Paul received a communication accepting two of the pictures submitted: the portraits of Lady Blakeley and the Hon. Mrs Brian Marnsett. The third the selection committee found unsuitable and returned with regrets.

It was unusual for Paul not to have all three accepted, but the painting of Mrs Fitzherbert, differing as it did so basically from contemporary portraits of the lady, might have been considered unacceptable on those grounds.

‘Good luck to them', said Paul, ‘it can go in Ludwig's instead.'

A week passed, and then he had a visit from Colonel Marnsett.

Colonel Marnsett was a small man, trimly dressed, with white hair and a short grey moustache. Everything about him suggested he was used to command, and that not just of a regiment.

‘Mr Stafford', he said. ‘I believe you have recently painted a portrait of my wife.'

Paul inclined his head. ‘ That is so.'

‘I have not seen this picture but I understand it is most objectionable.'

‘Not from an artistic standpoint.'

‘Ah. That is a matter I don't wish to go into. From my wife's point of view it is objectionable – yet she offered to buy it. You refused to sell. May I ask why?'

‘Because I wish first to exhibit it. From her comments I imagine your wife would buy it only to destroy it.'

‘But it was commissioned, Mr Stafford. If she pays the agreed price the painting is legally hers.'

‘No price was agreed, sir. If she wishes to buy it after it has been exhibited I shall be glad to sell it at something like the price you mention.'

‘Do you always take such interest in the fate of your commissioned work?'

‘No-o. But some of my work I hold in greater esteem than others. This – this portrait – it isn't flattering, I agree. But I never undertook to paint another picture just like the last. She has one, as you know. This … this was an experiment. I think it was a successful experiment. I find it very satisfactory. Others may not think so – I don't know. But I
would
like to know what they think of it before it is – destroyed.'

Colonel Marnsett prodded the carpet with his rolled umbrella. ‘Mr Stafford, you have been a friend of my wife's for some years. I don't know how you assess friendship, but my wife asserts that this portrait will make her the butt of half London. I gather she has helped you considerably in the past, with introductions, with recommendations … Perhaps we could come to some arrangement. Provided it is not shown to the public …