‘This diamond point … in Amsterdam I saw some, I think. Mostly fine lettering. Remarks in Dutch.’
‘After lunch you must go to the Victoria and Albert and look at some things they’ve got there. Now try to let Olaf Hagstrom say a word or two. He’s worth listening to and he’s the best friend I’ve got, I think.’
They had reached the Barchester Hotel. Selwyn entered it with very warm feelings towards Olaf Hagstrom and was able to see a kind of halo round a huge bald head which waited for them in the vestibule. It was extremely pleasant to know that Elizabeth’s best friend was so well up in years. He got through the introduction with credit and survived a good deal of critical observation during the first fifteen minutes over olives and cocktails. His natural friendliness had never appeared to better advantage, tempered, as it was, by respect.
Hagstrom looked at his hands rather than his face. A woman, pushing past their table, shook it and a glass fell off. Selwyn caught it neatly and put it back, as he listened to an account of Linda Hagstrom’s wedding. Elizabeth was eager for news of all her Swedish friends and spoke of Stockholm as though it had once been her home. From something said, as they made a move to the dining-room, Selwyn got the impression that she might have had more than one stepfather.
In the dining-room his success was maintained. Unaware that he had been brought here to sell anything, he regarded this as Elizabeth’s party. She sat, bathed in radiance, while her two friends saw to it that she enjoyed herself. Enormous menus, spread in front of them, dazzled him with the number of things she might eat. He listened until she had made her choice, and automatically chose the same for himself.
When the talk turned to his sketches he was surprised, for he had forgotten them. He explained that the medium of glass had never occurred to him, but that he now realized the importance of translucence in most of them; it had been the missing element.
‘A pity,’ he said mournfully. ‘Glass! I could never handle stuff like that. It would break if I looked at it. Most things do.’
‘Most things perhaps,’ agreed Hagstrom, with another glance at Selwyn’s hands. ‘But tell me … have you ever, in your whole life, actually broken a glass?’
‘Oh, I must have. I break everything …’
‘Try to remember an occasion.’
He tried, without success, very much to his own surprise. His path through life had been strewn with wreckage of all sorts, but he could not remember so much as a smashed tooth-glass.
‘I should have been surprised if you had,’ said Hagstrom. ‘You may not know it, but glass is your material, I think. You would never handle it clumsily. I have seen that already. I think that you might learn very quickly.’
He then offered to buy the sketches, which Selwyn had sent to Elizabeth, and to pay for them in notes, taken then and there out of a wallet. Selwyn, who badly needed new socks and shirts, pocketed the notes hastily before this lunatic should change his mind. What, he wondered, could anybody else do with them?
‘We are needing designs of this kind very badly,’ explained Hagstrom. ‘It will not be so good, of course, as it might be: my people must use them. It will be better when you can do your own work yourself. But until you have learnt …’
That he should learn had become, at some point, a settled thing between the three of them. Elizabeth, as he discovered later, had made up her mind that he was a glass man when sitting beside the Serpentine. Hagstrom was taking a chance. For Selwyn, the vision of that reflected water-front was decisive. It could only be realized by fine lines drawn on white glass. He must, therefore, learn how to draw fine lines on white glass.
‘Where?’ he demanded. ‘How?’
Details sprang into his mind which he had not recognized before. He knew exactly how they must be. Could he ever contrive to transfer them to that limpid, transparent surface? With a tenth of his mind he listened to Hagstrom; with the rest of it he wrestled with some new problems of perspective.
A tenth of his mind was enough to tell him that he was being offered a start in the Hagstrom glass-house; he would be given every opportunity to learn his craft and would pay for it, at first, by supplying designs which could be used by wheel engravers. Should he prove as apt a pupil as Hagstrom hoped, he might soon be earning a good deal. There was no knowing, of course, how soon he would be able to engrave his own designs, but if he liked to take the chance there was but one stipulation; an option on all his work for the next ten years.
Clouds at the bottom, he thought, and said:
‘Thank you, sir. I’d like to. When?’
‘At once, if possible. I should like to take you back with me. How are you situated with this publisher?’
‘Oh, they’ll let me go any time. People who can do what I’m doing there are two a penny.’
Then his face fell. He remembered Mrs Gray. If he left before the last pages of that dictionary had gone to press she would be sunk. Tipton would certainly take over his job and Tipton would never cover up for the poor old dear. If she dropped a brick he would give the fact the widest possible publicity and would take care that it sounded like a cart-load.
‘Oh dear!’ he said. ‘It’s not as easy as I thought. I couldn’t get away for … say six weeks, to be on the safe side.’
He explained the case. Richardson would not suffer if he left tomorrow, but he did not feel able to desert Mrs Gray.
‘Six weeks?’ said Hagstrom, with a glance at Elizabeth. ‘Very well. Stay in London for six weeks and then come to us. You will not, I think, waste your time.’
‘Oh, I won’t,’ said Selwyn, with the Victoria and Albert in mind and wondering why Elizabeth had blushed.
5
In Park Lane, outside the Barchester, he reminded her that she had wished to consult him about something. She declared that this could wait; he ought now to make use of a Sunday afternoon by visiting the Victoria and Albert. He had promised Hagstrom not to waste his time. When he grew obstinate she offered a compromise: she would come with him. There was an exhibition of water-colours which she wanted to see. At half past four she would meet him in the tea-room.
‘We shall be hungry again by then,’ she said, ‘and we can talk about me while we’re eating.’
‘All right. We’ll take a taxi.’
‘No, we won’t. We’ll take a bus.’
‘I’m rich. Think of all that money he’s given me! I can treat myself to a taxi.’
‘Taxis are no treat to me. Give your Mrs Gray a ride home one night if you’re in a hurry to get rid of that money. Bus!’
‘You know, I think you’re rather bossy.’
‘Has it taken you all this time to find that out?’
Selwyn signalled to a taxi and opened the door for her. After a second’s hesitation she got into it quite meekly. Something between them seemed to solidify. They drove to the museum. She told him more about Stockholm and the Hagstrom family. The man Blaney, it appeared, was only one of a series of stepfathers. She had a little brother in Sweden of whom she had been very fond; she had not seen him for six years.
When they got to the museum he allowed himself to be dispatched to the glass gallery, although he was much tempted to assert his independence by wasting his time amongst water-colours. She might be bossy but, in this matter, she was quite right, and she had given in about the taxi very sweetly. The pleasure of forcing her to do as he wished would lose its edge if demanded too often.
He went upstairs to contemplate his own future, arranged in long ranks of cases and shelves. But he could not concentrate upon those objects. Too much was happening to him, too quickly. First Elizabeth and now this! In less than a month he had been transported to a new planet where everything was unfamiliar and unexplored. He had today pledged himself to a vocation concerning which he knew almost nothing. He had become a new person. Perhaps he had only just become a person, and had been in the past merely an assembly of ingredients.
Yet I must have been me all the time, he thought, staring vacantly at a ma
sterpiece by Laurence Whistler, or she wouldn’t have known who I was.
He felt that he was setting out, had already set out, upon a fantastic journey in search of some better place than any yet known to man. He might never find it, but go he must, since this beatitude, this comprehension of happiness which had burst upon him, carried him like an irresistible current.
At four o’clock he went down to the tea-room, having learnt nothing whatever about diamond point. Half an hour later she joined him there, deploring the fact that they had eaten too much at lunch. How could they have supposed that they would ever want tea? He insisted that they should patronize the waitress enclosure, to which she agreed, observing that he had better not be let loose with all that money and a tray.
‘So now,’ he said, as soon as they had found a table, ‘so now, do please consult me!’
She nodded, but did not immediately begin, as though considering what to say first. In the dim light of the tearoom people came and went. Trays rattled and urns hissed at a self-service counter behind a partition. For all he saw and heard of his surroundings he might have been alone with her in the Gobi desert.
‘I must get away from my mother,’ she began at last. ‘I ought to be sorry for her. I expect I shall be, when I’ve got away. It’s not all her fault. But I can do nothing for her and I can’t bear it any more.’
‘She looked very unhappy in that photograph.’
‘She is. She’s never learnt how to look after herself. Rich people have to learn that, just as much as poor people. They ought to stick together like a little nation, and only marry each other, if they want to be sure of any real love and affection. Everybody else thinks of them as nothing but a great big dollar sign, and either cadges on them, or keeps away from them for fear of cadging.’
‘How on earth did she come to marry that man?’
‘He’s the fourth. She’ll never learn. It’s partly her own fault. She doesn’t just want ordinary love and friendship. She wants something hardly anybody ever gets and if they do they get it for free. She wants to be worshipped. Like Helen of Troy. Who launched a thousand ships and never had sixpence, that I know of. My poor mother will launch ten thousand ships out of her own pocket if only somebody will worship her. She has. That’s what has happened to the Kreutzer millions.’
These millions recurred, like some sinister leitmotif, in the story which she now unfolded. There had always been, perhaps, fewer of them than was generally supposed and the recession in the 1930s had depleted them before Amanda had even begun to launch her more disastrous ships.
Colleoni had been extremely expensive. The Kreutzer millions had rebuilt his villa near Rome and restored the frescoes in his Venetian Palazzo. Neither of these could Amanda remove to the United States when she discovered that he did not really worship. He was now dead, shot in some anti-fascist demonstration at the end of the war. His daughter could remember nothing of him; the marriage had collapsed when she was three years old.
Nor was her first stepfather more than a vague memory. He was a virile American to whom Amanda, sick of European aristocrats, gave an enormous ranch stocked with costly animals. He had looked like a cowboy to eclipse all cowboys, so long as he was not on a horse. Amanda expected him to live in the saddle, when not worshipping. After nearly breaking his neck on several occasions he bowed himself out, preferring a whole skin to the Kreutzer millions.
Europe was forgiven. The Swedish stepfather appeared when Elizabeth was ten years old, and he had been much the best of poor Amanda’s bargains. In Sweden there had been five years of something like tranquil domestic life. A boy was born upon whom a considerable portion of the Kreutzer millions were settled. In return for this generosity Amanda received kindness, affection, and fidelity. They were not enough. She wanted worship. To dismiss so good a husband was not easy; his price, which she eventually had to pay, was the boy and the boy’s fortune. She relinquished both and fled to Paris, taking Elizabeth with her. She was through with marriage and said so, to the newspaper reporters, thus earning the title of the Tragic Millionairess. Elizabeth never forgave her.
In Paris more ships were launched on behalf of innumerable toadies and protégées, all of them ready to worship the Kreutzer millions. Racing stables were financed, plays were produced, an expedition was sent up the Amazon in search of a lost civilization, and another to the Himalayas in search of an orchid. There were also large donations to Moral Rearmament; these were Amanda’s defence against the accusation that she expected too much of human nature.
Elizabeth merely waited for the day when they should wake up to find themselves in the bread line. She insisted upon a good Lycée education and a course at the Sorbonne in case she should some day be obliged to support herself. Even Amanda began to do sums and to decide that a husband who could support Elizabeth might be a sensible investment.
They must, she said, remove to London if they were ever to find him. A début in Paris would be a waste of money. French families are too sharp about money and would expect unreasonably large dot. A début in New York would be ignominious. Too many people there had been laughing at Amanda for years. The English seldom laugh at anything and are unpractical about money. The house in Mount Square was taken, a much advertised ball was given and Elizabeth became a prominent Deb. She was glad to get her mother away from Paris on any terms.
The experiment paid no dividends. The English might not be sharp about money but none of them seemed to have any. Elizabeth danced through a season with penniless young men and was never obliged to vex her mother by refusing an eligible suitor. Amanda, disappointed, went to the Dublin races and came back with a fourth husband.
A new ship was launched. Sian Blaney only needed financial backing to become a film star. A remnant of the Kreutzer millions got him an impressive contract in a picture where he would have little to do save lie down, in unlikely places, with the female star in his arms. His shortcomings, as a worshipper, became apparent as soon as the picture went on the floor.
Long experience in disillusionment had given Amanda some skill in retaliation. She knew how to withdraw support at a moment, and in a manner likely to embarrass those who had exploited her. Elizabeth suspected that some such gale was blowing up now, and that Blaney might shortly find himself out on his ear. These suspicions were strengthened by her mother’s last letter which bade her quit Mount Square immediately and seek shelter with a Mrs Pinkerton, in Tite Street, to whom Amanda had been very kind twenty years ago and from whom gratitude was now expected.
‘Mrs Pinkerton happens to be dead,’ finished Elizabeth. ‘And I shouldn’t go to Tite Street if she wasn’t. But I’m leaving Mount Square. I’ve had enough. I’m going to get myself a job. And while I’m looking for one I thought perhaps I might find a home with some nice family, where I’d get board and lodging in return for helping in the house. I can cook quite well. I had lessons. The kind of family that takes a foreign student. And I thought you might know of a family like that. You’re the only person I can think of to ask. The only person I can trust. I know people who might produce a family, but they would make a tale of it and laugh at my poor mother. Do you know of anyone?’
This story had so much horrified Selwyn that he did not immediately answer her question.
‘I’d thought,’ he protested, ‘I’d imagined, that you must always have had a nice time. That you must have had a very happy life, with everybody looking after you.’
‘Oh? Why?’
‘Because … because you behave as if you had. Well, I mean … when I first saw you coming up the aisle … and when you were laughing and talking to all those people … nobody would have thought!’
‘It wouldn’t have done much good to come up the aisle screaming blue murder. Do you know of a family?’
‘Yes, I do. Some people called Benson in Edwardes Square. I think they’re exactly the kind of people you’d like. And Mrs Benson would look after you. She looks after everybody.’
He described the Benson hous
ehold with enthusiasm.
‘They certainly sound very nice,’ she said. ‘Do you go there a lot?’
‘Actually I’ve only been there once.’
‘Quite lately?’
‘Well … no. It was just after I’d come down. I’d have gone again if they’d asked me. I wish they had. I rang up Judith once or twice but I never could get her.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Elizabeth sadly, ‘we’d better not bother them. Can you think of anybody else?’
‘There’s Mrs Gray. I could ask her. She knows about you.’
‘Oh? What does she know about me?’
‘I told her about the wedding. And what you wore. And about Rabanus. And that I’ve been seeing you. And that you have a Swedish friend who makes glass.’
‘Quite a lot really! I dare say she knows more about me than you do.’
6
They fixed upon a discreet version of the case, which might satisfy Mrs Gray. The Kreutzer millions could be suppressed, nor was it necessary to mention more than one stepfather. Amanda’s prolonged absence and Blaney’s behaviour provided quite enough of a dilemma.
‘She sounds like a very sensible girl,’ said Mrs Gray approvingly. ‘I’m sure I can find a family. But we’d better meet. Then I should know better what would suit her.’
This struck Selwyn as a pleasant way of spending all that money. He took them both out in style, to dinner and to the Opera. They all enjoyed themselves very much.
Mrs Gray sought him out next day and went to the point at once.
‘Why are you going to Stockholm and leaving that girl behind?’
‘I don’t like to leave her. I must get her settled before I go.’
‘Why not marry her and take her with you?’
‘Marry her?’
‘Why not? You’re very much in love with her. That’s obvious.’
‘Oh yes. The first moment I saw her … she’s so beautiful. But that’s not to say she … I’m not …’
The Forgotten Smile Page 12