by Angus Wilson
‘I can produce another three thousand pounds almost immediately. Look Mrs Ahrendt, you’ll catch your death of cold standing here. Let me come in. Anyway I want to see Mr Ahrendt.’
‘My husband is ill. You must give us all the money. I don’t know what it is. Three thousand pounds? That’s not very much. No, you cannot come in! Three thousand, that’s not so much.’
Gladys had to push with all her weight for an entry. She felt sure the old woman was mad. She looked mad, absolutely round the bend, standing in a filthy bare hall on ragged linoleum under the dismal light of one feeble, flyblown, naked bulb, casually dismissing thousands of pounds.
‘I must see your husband.’
‘No, no, you can’t see him. You have robbed him enough, you thief!’
But now at the top of the steep flight of stairs Gladys saw Mr Ahrendt, standing motionless, staring at her. He seemed to have cut his head, the forehead was swathed in a handkerchief. Under his old overcoat a striped pyjama jacket was open at the top to show some tufts of wiry hair at the base of his neck.
‘Mr Ahrendt, please let me tell you …’
But she felt now that she couldn’t tell the story, explain her guilt.
‘Your picture is sold. It was by the artist Grünewald …’
‘I know,’ said Mr Ahrendt, ‘the Christie’s have told me so much. What did you get for it?’
‘Nearly ten thousand pounds. I’ve brought three thousand now. And the rest
‘The rest we want now, you thief!’
The old woman had taken her arm and was twisting it most painfully.
‘Don’t be absurd. I can’t produce money out of a hat on a Saturday. Can I, Mr Ahrendt?’
The old man spoke slowly – he sounded sad, but whether it was a trick of the light, Gladys could not afterwards decide, his teeth looked larger, wolfish, and his beard, far from neat, was as straggly as that awful old creature’s in the Dickens book.
‘I don’t think you can produce the money at all, Miss Matthews. I think you have robbed me. You thought, perhaps, he has been thrown out of his country, he is old and in the dustbin, the big sharks have bitten, now let the little sharks have their chance. But I know what wicked people are, Miss Matthews. What they have done to me and Käthe and to millions more. I must not accept injustice. No! I don’t want to hear any more. Bring me my money by tomorrow morning.’
He disappeared into the darkness on the landing.
Mrs Ahrendt said: ‘Get out, thief.’
She pushed Gladys out of the door.
*
This is enough of all this politics, Margaret thought, this standing up, emitting a lot of platitudes to people who despise the things I care for, or who, if they don’t, are never going to do more than sit at meetings and wish the world was free of evil. And to have involved Rupert was unforgiveable. To have made a person of talent and charm make a fool of himself – though, even with her knowledge of theatre people’s extraordinary feeble grasp of reality, she could hardly have guessed that he would have treated them to a sort of adolescent’s anthology – Shelley; ‘bliss it was in that dawn to be alive’; Milton on freedom of the press; Abraham Lincoln; and something quite inappropriate from Julius Caesar. Whoever had suggested it to him? Her cheeks flamed as she thought of it and she welcomed Aunt Alice, now perpetually in the wings, to take the centre stage. As the climax drew nearer – what should it be? murder? or more horribly, soiled nighties, or perhaps a holocaust of all Aunt A’s treasured souvenirs? Any rate, something Gothic she would permit herself at last – really the moment of Aunt A’s realization that they’d cut her off from the outside world. Once that was clear to her the ultimate outrages were infinite, and lay in her terrorized anticipation; but as this climax…. Oh, Lord, the awful Birnbaum was booming away, but Aunt Alice was more powerful … if she were to grant herself this Gothicism, it could turn out a dangerously melodramatic affair, and there were no means of tempering it with her well-known irony – for if the nieces had cut the old woman off from the world of chars and piano tuners she had effectually cut herself off in this novel from the readers who called her a new Miss Austen – yet there must be some tempering. Perhaps the pathos of Aunt A’s position, but, if softened by pathos, where was the mighty oak brought down? Should she go back and soften the old tyrant? No. O Lord, here she was back again at the failure of connexion – Aunt A, wicked and strong, Aunt A pathetic and…. Oh, damn that old bore’s pompous drone.
This chap would go on for hours, Quentin thought. At least, it would mean Reg Smalley wouldn’t get round to calling on him to speak; probably that had been the intention. ‘Spirit of creation never vanquished’ blaa, blaa, blaa; ‘invincible human imagination’ blaa, blaa, blaa. Better to hear the Comrades spout the gospel than all this liberal rubbish. Margaret and ‘the irony of history that will defeat Hitler’, Rupert and Shelley – God help us! He’d seen some of the comrades’ faces, they were paying hard for their solidarity with the intellectuals. Serve them bloody well right. He picked out a young blonde, fresh-faced girl, following the line of her neck, he let his hand take her firm breast and between his thumb and forefinger the nipple’s stalk grew hard. But no hard on. He pulled up her red woollen dress to expose her flat, cream smooth belly, but still no hard. With his arms locked together he brutally forced her legs apart so that the panties tore but – blaa, blaa, blaa. Blast all the liberals and all the other bastards who made the world the shambles it was and then bleated to prevent others from having any run, from getting a hard on. He took out a notebook and began to write: ‘“Blessed are the pure in spirit.” Well … yes, but the innocent have a lot to account for in the world today. This was never so much brought home to me as when I drove on a tour of the Teruel front with Mr Mogens Mohn, Danish representative of the Red Cross.
‘Now Mr Mogens Mohn, like most Scandinavians, was a very nice chap – high-minded, honest, broadminded, clean cut, everything you could ask of a Dane. He had a good sensible modern house, too, made mostly of glass in the woods of South Jutland, and a good sensible wife and two very pretty flaxen haired girls – I know that, because he showed me excellent photographs of all these that he had taken himself with the most up-to-date camera. But even so Mr Mogens Mohn was determined to see an atrocity. I have never known a chap so determined to see an atrocity. Not, of course, for any morbid or even propagandist reason, but in pursuit of truth, for everyone knows that liberal Scandinavians must know the full truth about everything. So there we were bumping along in our old Ford and every hundred yards or so, should we see an old woman sunning herself, or a chicken that had been run over, or an idiot boy. What do you think, my dear fellow, Mr Mogens Mohn would ask in that exasperating English accent half Etonian, half Welsh, that Scandinavians use, is that an atrocity? And I always had to assure him that it was not. But the odd thing was that when we did finally come upon an atrocity and a very nasty one …’ The odd thing was that he’d had to go behind a barn and vomit, that he could not bring himself to ask the questions that he and Mohn had devised as a method of establishing the authenticity of atrocity stories, but all the same damn Mohn’s freshfaced seriousness, damn all liberal innocence … ‘a young girl of fifteen raped, her tongue torn out, her arms cut off, her little brother slit down the belly and left to die. Mr Mogens Mohn recognized it at once, “This is an atrocity,” he said, “we must establish the truth of the matter.” And he set about it as coolly as though it were a question of faulty drainage at Odense or a badly designed play centre in Aarhus. I think his only serious grumble was that lack of tongue and arms made the girl a poor witness to establish the truth to which his readers in Copenhagen had a right as liberal Scandinavians …’
Rupert felt glad that his moment was over – glad because it was an unfamiliar audience and then he was an actor not a public speaker; but pleased, also, warm and pleased, for after the appalling delivery of all the others – dear, unhappy Mag should never be allowed to speak in public – and their no doubt clever but ugly w
ords, the audience with a rapt silence had responded (as all audiences do) to the great language of the past well spoken. Indeed with a childlike wonder that you would not get from a sophisticated theatre audience. Looking at them he saw suddenly what was wrong with the world, particularly with this politically active world of social conscience – it was starved of beauty. And now they must listen to this disagreeable, self-opinionated monster – for really it was monstrous that the writer of books that held thousands of children spellbound should be so vain. But he must listen all the same, if only to find some crumb to take back to an excited Christopher, a curious Tanya.
‘But I have spoken enough in generalities. The creative spirit, the human imagination, the ingenuity of man, these will endure. They are stronger, more real than the false realpolitik, the vulgar armed fists of maniacs and criminals. I could speak to you of atrocities, of cruel shameful persecutions and sufferings, but these you may read in your papers, or rather in some of them. I want to speak to you of something very close to myself, for in these times we are brought up against what happens to ourselves, to the realities of the world as it touches our minds and our bodies. I have lived all my life for the language of my country, the German language. For this and because of the great and living heritage that it gave me, I left behind altogether the language of my mother – Yiddish and behind this Hebrew. Perhaps now I meet a punishment, though into my stories – and it is my finest boast today – there has gone much of the great storytelling tradition of the Jewish people. And I have lived to try to use the German language so that it may sweeten the minds and – how will you say? – make big, make strong the imagination of the children, of those to whom the future world belongs. To do this has been easy for me, because I have not much care for the great world, the world you say in English of grown-ups; in that world I am stiff and not at ease, people say a vain man. So that such a man as I must talk to children. But to find the right language, the right words in our great tongue, has been a hard life time’s task. And now with the coming of our Führer, I have known two hells. The one is smaller. This hell alone is for me and for the other German artists who must leave Germany or remain silent. We must speak now as I am doing in a half tongue, in a language that is not our own. How, when Mr Rupert Matthews was so freely breathing the words of your Milton and your Shakespeare, did I not feel that? We have too our Schiller and our Lessing – but their words are unspoken today. But there will be other artists one day and Schiller’s words will be heard again. The other hell is deep and very black. To know that the language I have tried to use to give the children life of the mind is being used today, perverted, strangled, to bring to the children of my country a real and permanent death – the death of their spirit …’
So that he should not cry – for tears always came easily to him – Rupert deliberately switched off his attention. But shame replaced compassion. How could he have judged the man solely by his manner and words in a short meeting? He should have been indulgent from the start to such a … But ‘indulgence’ pulled him up. What appalling patronage! No, the truth was that the great storyteller was an odious, conceited boor. But he had his vocation, his special powers, and what Hitler had done to that vocation was odious, wicked and infinitely pitiable. To sweeten the man in order the better to resent the outrage upon him was unpardonable sentimentality. Unpardonable as his … yes, this was it … it didn’t matter what they said, Debbie or Nigel or James Agate. He should have known. But tonight he would give some thanks to Birnbaum by repairing as far as he could his patronage of Malvolio.
*
‘Dear Alf, I was so bucked and pleased to see the piece about Ringmer Development in the Evening Standard City Column. The financial chap there seems to think it’s one of the best specs of the moment and I’m sure he’s right. Well done, old dear. I know how hard you’ve worked for this, and it’ll be the beginning of the great Pritchard financial empire, I know. I’m afraid I’ve been rather jumpy lately and I apologize, but the truth is I’ve been betting much too heavily and have got myself into a bad jam. I’m an incurable optimist and I’m sure something’ll turn up but if you do hear bad news of me….’
The note would, if the worst came to the worst and they tried to question him, give him a let out. ‘My God, Inspector, if she’d only come to me earlier, I could have cleared the whole thing. But this was the first intimation I had.’ All the same she hoped he wouldn’t use the note. But never say die, if she wasn’t going to press Alf, there was no reason for not calling on Margaret or Marcus. Pride’s pride, but when you’re properly up against it…. So she called at Holland Villas where Douglas was having sherry with Spicer, the Egyptologist. He couldn’t somehow see his plump, well groomed old bore of a sister-in-law – he really hardly knew her but she almost smelt of good heartedness and bromide utterances – talking to Spicer; besides he didn’t get so much chance to see the old chap. Luckily she seemed quite unwilling to come in. She was obviously in a bit of a state – probably some trouble with that chap she lived with – but Margaret and she could talk bosoms together about that later. ‘Yes, it is important. It is important. As soon as she gets home, Douglas.’
She ought to be home, but she’s out at some stop-Hitler meeting. Do you think that sort of thing does any good?’
‘It is important, really it is, Douglas.’
He almost said, can I help. She looked – she, usually the comfortable one of Margaret’s jittery, over the edge family – so haggard and scared. But these independent business women were usually terrible prudes, she’d have a fit if he pried into her famous, rather moth-eaten love life. ‘I’ll see that she phones you as soon as she gets in.’ Going back to his study, ‘Sorry for the interruption. Did you ever know Borchardt? No, simply that there are so many questions about Tel-El-Amarna that one would have liked to put to him.’
*
Why was one so insincere? When she had said ‘rave’ she should have added that his performance sounded from the notices an atrocious sentimentalization – all that guff about a loving Malvolio. As it was – an insincerity and then a moment’s sentimental recall of the nursery days, mutual isolation in an unfamiliar milieu, her own remorse at responsibility for his making a public fool of himself – and here she was, when she should be at home writing, sitting at the theatre and preparing herself to see him make a fool of himself a second time in one day.
But ‘Madam, yond young fellow swears he will speak with you …’ the body held so stiffly, the pompous voice, the very ring of the butler’s parlour – nothing loving or sweet here – most officious with the touch of servile, and yet the speech, yes the whole scene – ‘Gentlewoman, my lady calls’ – was of an odious man who yet does his job well, loves it, and, if odious, upper servant was after all an odious rank. Upper servant…. ‘She adds moreover.’ Rupert, mashing Rupert, to make himself so odiously sexless! That was it – as in rank, so in sex, an upper servant, neither fish, flesh nor fowl and so on. How would he then tackle the lovesickness and the yellow stockings? ‘To gabble like tinkers at this time of night’ yes, of course, a busybody and a spoilsport, but that was his job, we can’t have the mistress’s sleep broken. But still, how would he wear those stockings? Oh, this was good. Oh, darling Rupert, you’ve got it. The lovesickness, of course, is as connected as the rest, an outcrop of that firm rock of consciousness of rank, of pride in his job. Oh, this was Malvolio. An odious creature, all the same, for work should be the least of life’s values, when there were beauty and love to count beside it. Or was it? She ought to be writing – that was her work. Oh God! if only she could write as he could act. And the truth was that he was silly, so silly; she could tell them that, she knew from the nursery time. He didn’t know a thing. Oh, how unfair that one could be so fine an actor and such a fool. Now for this last, the dark cell – he’d never manage that. Sir Topas, the curate: ‘out, hyperbolical friend?’ – the audience was laughing – No, it was too much; the fools to laugh, it was too cruel. And now this fool – surel
y court fools must have been sadists in those days – ‘as ever thou wilt deserve well at my hand, help me to a candle….’ That he should be brought so low as to ask for a candle – he the master of the house amenities. An apt punishment and the more odious for its aptness. ‘Believe me, I am not. I tell thee true.’ Oh, poor soul! But he’d done it, he had, for she was weeping. ‘I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you’ – there was nothing loveable there.
She sat in her stall as the others rose, and she scribbled him a note: ‘Rupert, my dear darling, it was so good! Don’t have any doubts. I thought from the crits that you had honeyed it all over, but you haven’t – he’s odious and worthy and when he’s brought low it’s unbearable and as soon as he’s up again he’s odious once more. Thank you ever so much – you’ve solved my problem. Mag. P. S. Oh that awful pointless black and white! It’s that sort of silly vulgarity that keeps intelligent people out of the theatre.’ She thought for a moment of going to see him in his dressing room, but then instead she gave the note marked ‘immediate’ to the stage door porter, for she had to hurry home to let Aunt Alice fall apart into all the various unrelated persons that she now knew bobbed up and sank down like corks in the ocean inside that old raddled body as inside all our bodies.
*
‘Mr Matthews’s sister on the telephone, Sir. She seems a little agitated, so …’
‘All right, Dempster. I am so sorry about this, Hansi.’
He wasn’t sorry at all, not at all, for Hansi, filled with Martinis and faced with a tête-à-tête, had taken refuge in flirtation. To Jack, who knew that the young man hoped to sell him paintings, such a confusion of money and sex brought an access of every sort of social guilt. By the time he returned from the telephone it would be possible to order the car and whisk the little thing off to a public restaurant.
‘Margaret?’
‘No, it’s Gladys, Mr Pohlen. I do apologize for disturbing you, but is Marcus going to be in soon?’