The Merciless Ladies

by Winston Graham

  Olive was twenty-one and Paul twenty-four. There was no cause for delay. It was going to be a grand wedding, and almost every guest was to be a potential sitter. Sir Alexander rented them a small house in Royal Avenue, and it was there that I frequently met them in the days before the wedding.

  Olive went out of her way to be nice to me, in a sisterly way, of course, as if anxious to make it clear that she had no intention of coming between Paul and his best friend; and I appreciated this; though I remember at the time being ashamed of myself for wondering if it all rang true. One day, I know, we were leaving at the same time, while Paul was staying on to lock up after a plasterer had finished. It was raining, and she offered me a lift in her little Riley.

  After we had driven for a while she said: ‘‘You’re a dear man, Bill. I sometimes think I wouldn’t have minded marrying you too.’

  I looked at her fingers on the wheel. ‘ Polygamy is not a proper subject for a would-be bride.’

  She laughed. ‘OK. I’ll spare your blushes. It was just a thought.’

  ‘Of course’, I said, ‘as best man I shall be standing next to Paul at the wedding, so perhaps we can whisper our vows on the side.’

  She let in the clutch. ‘ Let’s try.’

  The screen-wipers stopped as she accelerated sharply away, then began to move again as she half-released the pedal. I looked at her composed face with its bow lips, tightly curling hair, skin of incredible fineness. The inscrutable Puck. I’m not sure that anyone has satisfactorily explained the psychology of smallness. Because small people feel themselves ignored, they tend to become thrusters: the Napoleons of the world are made as well as born. Legends too grow round them. When, a few years later, Chancellor Dolfuss was murdered by Hitler’s thugs, few people knew enough of him to decide whether his good deeds more than balanced his ill, all they knew was that ‘little Dolfuss’ had been foully done to death, and a wave of indignation swept Europe. In her own way Olive had the same advantages, and she made the most of them.

  I said: ‘What do your parents think of the marriage?’

  ‘Disappointed.’

  They’re hiding it well.’

  ‘Oh, yes. But I was their remaining ewe lamb. Of course they weren’t too fussy. Any old duke would have done.’

  ‘Paul’s going a long way.’

  ‘And how far are you going, Bill?’

  ‘Remains to be seen.’

  ‘Not as far as you should if you stay in Paul’s shadow.’

  ‘I don’t think that applies.’

  ‘Be sure it doesn’t. Were you disappointed?’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘The wedding, of course, you silly boy.’

  I was on the point of replying as if the q uestion was meant, was I disappointed for Paul; just in time I avoided the awful bloomer.

  ‘I shall be envious on Tuesday.’

  She laughed, pleased with the answer. ‘ Diana Marnsett is furious. But really furious.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘She looked on Paul as her special protégé, her special possession. She wanted him always dancing attendance.’

  ‘I don’t think his worst enemies could ever see Paul as a dancing man.’

  ‘How far did it go between them, do you know?’

  ‘Afraid I don’t.’

  ‘Dear Bill, always so loyal.’

  ‘It’s not a question of loyalty’, I said, irritated. ‘ I’m not his keeper.’

  We stopped at a traffic policeman. ‘Light me a cigarette, will you?’

  I did this. She said: ‘ Well, if La Marnsett has any girlish fancies about keeping tags, she’ll have to think again.’

  ‘Olive’, I said. ‘Diana Marnsett was invaluable to Paul a couple of years ago. He wouldn’t have got where he is so soon without her. It’s common sense and common manners to remember that. But that’s all. That’s it. Forget the rest.’

  ‘How wise you are.’ This was not meant.

  I began to speak again, and then stopped.

  ‘What were you going to say?’

  ‘No matter.’

  We drove on to my lodgings. The car stopped and I turned up the collar of my raincoat before dashing for the steps.

  What were you going to say?’

  ‘It wouldn’t help.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘No advice is more unwelcome than the well-meant. It’s just that – knowing Paul – and wishing you well, I would say, don’t shackle him. You’ll get your own way better with a loose rein – one he’s not aware of. That way I think he’ll be very indulgent – and kind.’

  ‘Thank you, Uncle Bill’, she said, showing her pointed eye-teeth in a wide warm smile.

  I left her with a feeling of unease. She still in an odd perverse way attracted me physically – perhaps always would – and, since the Puck painting, I for ever seemed to see her in the revealing boy’s clothes. I could understand Paul’s feelings for her, his wish to use her as a model again and again, his desire to paint her naked – if she would let him. Sensually she was a presence, inescapable. But what went on in that precise, cool, feminine mind? How far was she committed? At times these last weeks I had felt the first faint prickings of dislike. Or was this just jealousy? Because I was afraid she would come between Paul and me? Of course, that must happen. But would it break my association with them altogether? Behind her warmth there was an unwarmth. Behind her openness there was calculation. Behind her friendliness there was possessiveness. How far, subjectively, was I misjudging her?

  A couple of days after this I went round to Paul’s old place and found him working on a portrait, so waited in the kitchen drinking coffee until he had done. To pass the time I looked through a bunch of newspaper reviews of the year’s Royal Academy exhibition. Paul had had his full quota again. It was becoming customary. I noticed the critics on the whole concentrated on ‘ Puck’ as the work most worthy of mention. I picked out the adjectives. ‘Brilliant.’ ‘Ingenious.’ ‘Savoury.’ ‘Enchanting.’ Who could have wished for better? Almost the only dissenting voice was again Alfred Young in the Daily Telegraph.

  ‘Mr Stafford has been the victim of a reputation too easily acquired. He does his obvious talents injustice by neglecting taste in every element in these pictures, except that brilliant sense of tonality in which he generally excels. Despite the advantage of a very striking model, his ‘‘Puck’’ is hard, the painting is metallic, the foliage is raw, there is no taste in the expression, air, or modelling.’

  I put down the cuttings and picked up a list of wedding guests. As I was glancing down it Paul came in.

  ‘Some people say children are difficult sitters, but I prefer them. They’ve so much less to hide.’

  ‘Your father’s name isn’t here’, I said. ‘Shouldn’t it be, just to plan the seating arrangements?’

  Paul helped himself to coffee. ‘I must go back in a minute: there are a few things I want to add now the boy’s gone. Father? Oh, Father’s not coming.’

  ‘Why, is he ill?’

  ‘No. I’ve not invited him. I’ve written to him, of course, to explain why.’

  ‘Write to me on the same subject’, I said.

  Paul stared into his cup, then dabbed a spot of paint off his index finger. ‘Aren’t the reasons fairly clear? He’d be like a stranded fish.’

  ‘Isn’t that for him to decide?’

  ‘I don’t think he would realize.’

  ‘He’d come to his son’s wedding, that’s all that matters, surely.’

  ‘Look, Bill.’ Paul pointed his stained finger at me. ‘At the moment that part of my life is behind me. I’m like the lady of sixty: sensitive about her age. In another ten years she’ll begin to brag about it. Well, in another ten years I shall be able to brag about my origins. Not now.’

  ‘In another ten years’, I said, ‘what difference is it going to make who was at your wedding?’

  He shrugged irritably, finished his coffee and went back into the studio. I followe
d, and sat for a while watching him add a brush-stroke here and there to the portrait of Patrick Minister.

  Suddenly he put his brush down and said: ‘ Oh, for God’s sake, Bill, don’t squat there like my nonconformist conscience! D’you think I don’t know my obligations? My father came in for a bit of money and was stupid enough to blue it all on his undeserving son. As a result I am where I am. What would be the point of his coming down now and undoing what he’s helped to build?’

  ‘Damn it’, I said, ‘you underrate even the people you mix with! Nobody cares that much. Opie came to London a rough country boy and painted the best people in the land.’

  ‘The trouble is, I’m not a rough country boy any longer.’

  ‘Nor need you be. Nobody would take more than a passing account of your father.’

  ‘Thanks’, he snapped. ‘When he comes I want them to take more than a passing account of him. Anyway, I’ll choose my own wedding guests.’

  The telephone rang and we had time to cool off. Of course I knew his anger was not because I was raising fresh arguments but only those in his own mind he had narrowly overcome. And of course I knew it was not so much his prospective clients he was sensitive about as his prospective in-laws. He knew he was marrying outside his class. This may all seem derisory in the present day, when a crude accent and an ignorance of syntax rank as a status symbol, but it was not so then.

  All the same, I thought I understood. Only later did it come to me that the thing Paul could not and would not have stood for was any patronage of his father, any snide remarks just out of his hearing, any sarcastic glances. Perhaps his was the greater wisdom, for had his father been there and the subject of any such dislikeable display, Paul would have reacted in a very downright manner; and this could have set off his relationship with Olive on the wrong foot from the start. He was in love with Olive but he rightly judged the family she came from.

  Chapter Five

  Soon after the wedding the opportunity arose for me to go out to Rome as Jeremy Winthrop’s right-hand man, and I took it. So for two years, instead of watching at close quarters the progress of Paul Stafford, I witnessed the progress of the Fascist movement and the emergence of Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini as master of Italy. The ‘ Sawdust Caesar’, as my old friend George Seldes called him. It was difficult work, trying to report objectively on a resurgence of national pride and national discipline which, so good in itself, was being welcomed throughout the world; but which had a sort of corruption at its heart. Anyway, by December ’25 our reporting of the scene, however objectively intended, had so far displeased the authotities that both Winthrop and I were ‘invited’ to leave the country, and in the new year I found myself back in London trying to pick up old threads and old friendships.

  The break-up of Paul’s marriage has been described elsewhere. Superficially, as I have said, everything was set fair. They were in love. Their tastes were the same; they were full of vitality, both night-birds, fond of life and society; they were both artists; they were both climbers. But Paul’s only real concern in life was to paint; everything else was a means to that end. Olive wanted a part in every aspect of his life and he was not willing to cede it.

  After a honeymoon in Paris they settled into Royal Avenue and things went well for six or seven months. Rifts first began to appear as she sought to influence whom he should mix with and whom he should paint. She was too demanding of his interest and he too untactful in his inattention. I sometimes wonder if possessiveness is not one of the hastiest of minor sins.

  To her great annoyance he continued to see something of his old friends – even occasionally Diana Marnsett – yet there was never any suggestion at the time, whatever Olive may have implied later, that he was unfaithful to her. Nor that their love suddenly cooled. It sputtered and sparked, irritation and attraction like two chemicals that would not coalesce or interblend.

  There would have been more chance for the marriage if he had been a lesser painter and she a better. She expected to have the run of his studio; she expected to paint there alongside him, so that they could work together, maybe have breaks for coffee and mutual admiration.

  A. H. Jennings describes one of the scenes that led to the break-up. Where his information came from I don’t know.

  ‘Paul had been working all day on a difficult portrait. The sitter was not now present but the artist knew that somewhere behind the self-conscious mask was an expression he was seeking but could not find. Unless he found it now, by himself, he knew in the morning when the lady came back he must start again. Olive had that morning been to a show by a contemporary painter at the Kalman Galleries, and over a sandwich lunch she wanted to discuss it. Her standard, like that of many amateurs, was impossibly high (for others) and she condemned everything she had seen, perhaps supposing that Paul would be pleased with her criticisms. But Paul, aware of his own difficulties and shortcomings, found himself drawn into a defence of a rival whose work he didn’t actually like.

  ‘After lunch Olive came into the studio and began painting a still-life of some peaches in a dish, and during the afternoon her occasional remarks were nagging at the outer edges of his mind, pulling him back from absorption. His answers became shorter, and presently she tightened up into an icy silence. When he stopped to make tea from the studio kettle he knew that she had finished her painting.

  ‘Throughout the two years of their marriage he had humoured her about her own work, praising where he could and turning away the point where he could not. It was unlikely that his words ever quite satisfied her, for she was used to lavish praise in her own family and among the many young men who thought her beautiful. But this afternoon, still unable to grasp the secret of his own failure, his tongue would not frame the syllables for another evasive reply. He was exasperated, tired of her demands on his nervous energy.

  ‘But perhaps whatever he said it would by then have been useless. She had seen his gaze and rightly interpreted it.

  ‘ ‘‘Well’’, she said. ‘‘So you think I’m no good. Is that it?’’

  ‘ ‘‘Not at all.’’ But his voice was empty of denial.

  ‘ ‘‘Perhaps not worthy of a place in your studio.’’

  ‘ ‘‘As my wife you’ve every right to come in here.’’

  ‘ ‘‘But not as a painter, is that it?’’

  ‘ ‘‘Look, Olive—’’

  ‘ ‘‘Not as a painter. You would like me to give up, be the little helpmeet, bringing in the food and drink for the great man.’’

  ‘ ‘‘You’re fully entitled to paint just as much as you want. But—’’

  ‘ ‘‘But what?’’

  ‘He threw down his brush. ‘‘Leave it at that.’’

  ‘But she would not. ‘‘Don’t you really feel you’re the only one entitled to be creative? Aren’t you jealous and grudging every time I pick up a palette? There can’t be two suns in one house both attracting attention – and you have to be it!’’

  ‘He considered this, but now it had to come. ‘‘All right, if we can’t go on as we are, let’s come to an understanding about it. I begrudge you nothing, Olive – certainly not the talent you’ve got. I wish for it everything you could wish yourself. But I’m tired – yes, dog tired – of trying to pretend to admire a talent you haven’t got, and never will have—’’

  ‘ ‘‘You being God, who knows all—’’

  ‘ ‘‘Of course there can be differing opinions; but not over fundamentals. You – you’ve a considerable talent for sketching – your line is always good – and once in a while a watercolour comes off because it’s almost all drawing and no colour. But so far as that goes’’ – and he gestured towards the still-life – ‘‘how can you expect me to take it seriously? I would put the ability to paint there if I could, willingly and thankfully; but I can’t. Really, Olive … I could do better with that sort of subject when I was ten. And Matisse could paint better than I ever shall if I live to be eighty. What’s the use of shirking the facts?
’’

  ‘Olive Stafford turned on her heel and left the studio. She never entered it again.’

  II

  I tend to doubt whether Paul would ever have been quite so eloquent as that, but I’m pretty sure the gist is correct. Anyway, by the time I returned they were not living together. She had moved into a small but expensive apartment in Mayfair on the generous allowance Paul made her. By now Paul had reached the fullness of his success. His income had gone up and up, and thanks to Olive his expenditure had kept pace. Not that he was frugal himself. He was a popular man in his way, a member now of two exclusive clubs, a frequent attender at the theatre, at concerts and the opera. But he was careful not to run into debt. It was almost the last sign of his frugal North-country upbringing: during the ‘tight rope’ period when he was dancing attendance on Diana Marnsett and her group, he had been acutely miserable, forever owing money, and he told me he would never let himself get into such a situation again. There was now no need. While general economic depression began to creep across the country those who made money like him were, because of the stability of prices, rich indeed.

  Absent for so long, I was able to look at him with new eyes; yet the changes were not in direction, only in degree. He had taken his new direction while under Diana Marnsett’s influence, and success had only brought a hardening and a strengthening of the drive. To be seen at the first nights of The Vortex and Saint Joan were as important to him as knowing a fair sprinkling of the fashionable audience on first-name terms. In an age when advertising had hardly begun and television was a spectre of the future, this was a way of becoming and remaining a name, in newspapers and on the pens of gossip-columnists. In the middle-Twenties too, led perhaps by Coward, it was the fashionable thing to pretend decadence – a sort of Wildean amorality – however hard and devotedly one in fact worked when one was out of the limelight.