Nothing very much changed as he grew older. Mortifications were still his playthings. But he felt them on behalf of other people now—other people of both sexes, but particularly men. The spectacle of their brave vulnerability, the woundedness which dared never speak its name, because men were meant to be strong not weak, consumed his emotional energies. If he could have made the world a better place for every man he saw in pain he would have done so. But you can spread your altruism only so far, so D’Anton made a double-friend of every friend he had, expending more concern on them than most ever thought they stood in need of. Never mind if they took advantage of him. Indeed the ones who took advantage of him the most were the ones he most helped. For they were surely—else they would not have made such exorbitant demands—the ones in greatest psychological want of his assistance.
Between Gratan and Barnaby in this regard—though obligation shaded into love for the one, while love shaded into obligation to the other—there was not much to choose. Barnaby came from the better family and had been given the better education, but he had no gifts beyond the boyish prettiness which, for D’Anton, was the outward form of his inward loveliness of spirit—a loveliness that needed all the help it could get in a world that didn’t scruple to take advantage of innocence. Gratan had been initiated into cruelties that Barnaby could never have borne, had no education and was not by any stretch of the imagination pretty, but he had abundant physical skills and was able to earn an independent living with his body. On the surface he was not the sort of man who called out D’Anton’s sympathies. But scratch a little deeper and the lonely, sorrowing boy could be discerned. Hence those little acts of folly like the Nazi salute which in reality was no such thing. D’Anton recognised a cry for help when he heard one. And when that cry for help was seconded first by one dear friend, and then another, he had no choice but to count Gratan as one of the deserving. He would, as he told Plurabelle—and as he had proved in the matter of finding him a Jew-girl to play with—do anything in the world for him. The phrase was automatic and denoted nothing in particular. But when Gratan drooped his normally manly head and announced he was in a bit of a pickle, D’Anton knew that the hour for another sacrifice—of his time, his energies, his influence, and maybe even his wallet—was at hand.
“Let’s first of all rally your spirits,” he told the footballer. “I’m eating out tonight with Barnaby and a couple of his old school friends who are up to watch some game or other…”
“Unlikely to be Stockport County against Colwyn Bay,” Gratan said disconsolately. Even his career was ash in his mouth.
“No, I think it’s rugby. Anyway, it’s sure to be jolly.”
The word “jolly” was so alien to D’Anton’s vocabulary that even Gratan registered surprise. It was like hearing a man of God speak profanities.
“I’m not sure I’m in the mood for that,” Gratan said.
“Oh come on. Why don’t you join us for supper and you and I can discuss things in private afterwards?”
Gratan hesitated. Tonight of all nights Beatrice would be expecting him to be with her.
“If that’s not convenient…” D’Anton said.
“No, no, I’ll make it convenient.”
But he wasn’t sure how he was going to do that.
—
As it happened, D’Anton had to deal with a second pickle that evening, to which end he’d invited Barnaby—for this second pickle was his—to join him at the restaurant early.
“So tell me,” D’Anton said.
Barnaby pointed to his left hand.
D’Anton shrugged.
“Don’t you see anything missing?” Barnaby asked.
D’Anton counted his fingers. “Well they all seem to be there,” he replied.
“Ring finger,” Barnaby said.
“That’s there, too.”
“Yes, but ring isn’t.”
“Ah. Would that be the ring—?”
“Yes, that Plury bought me.”
“And you’ve lost it?”
Barnaby pulled the face that always broke D’Anton’s heart. The face of a little boy with no one to turn to. “Not exactly lost,” he said.
“Given it to a whore then?”
“Of course not. I haven’t even accidentally left it with a whore.”
D’Anton could tell that Barnaby was looking for a little praise for this show of rectitude.
“Well I don’t suppose it is any business of mine who you’ve given it to…”
“Why do you fear I’ve given it to someone?”
“Fear? Who said anything about fear?”
“Fear on Plury’s behalf, I mean,” Barnaby said, wondering if he’d presumed too far on D’Anton’s jealousy.
D’Anton looked deep into Barnaby’s indolent eyes. “Should I fear for Plury?”
“No you should not. I lost it. That’s all there is to it.”
“Then let’s hope Plury believes you when you tell her that.”
“Why shouldn’t she?”
“Because it sounds like an excuse.”
“I lost it.”
“That’s an excuse for carelessness.”
“Christ, D’Anton, get off my case. You’re as bad as she is.”
A great wave of weariness with men and women and their tawdry ring culture overcame D’Anton. He had swapped rings himself when he was younger (always tentatively, it should be said, always because he thought it was what the other person wanted), and he understood the symbolism of both the giving and the losing, but the overblown poesy of men and women swearing eternal fidelity whenever they slipped a hoop of gold around one another’s fingers, and then the commonplace accusations of betrayal whenever one of them slipped it off, as though the whole ritual had only ever been about trust and fidelity, a test that one or other party to it was bound to fail, a trap in other words, a snare as heartless as a springe, a wire loop attached to a twig to catch a rabbit—all this dismayed, depressed and disappointed him. Here was Plurabelle, an exceptional woman in every way, and yet Barney feared that the minute she discovered he had been careless of her love token—“He loves me, he loves me not”—she would turn into a fishwife.
“So why do you come to me with this, if you want me off your case?” D’Anton asked.
“I’m sorry, D’Anton, I shouldn’t have said that. Forgive me.”
D’Anton felt his friend was practising his apology to Plurabelle. He wasn’t sure if that pleased him or it didn’t. Uncomfortable, but flattered, he edged himself off the end of the imaginary bed. “So what would you have me do?” he asked gently.
“Couldn’t you say you borrowed it?”
“I? Borrowed your ring? To do what with?”
“Oh, I don’t know, to give to a whore?”
There was a moment of silence between them, relieved only by the appearance of the sommelier.
“I’m sorry,” Barnaby said again.
D’Anton let his own silence linger a little longer. “I’ll tell you what,” he suggested at last, “I’ll say I took it off you because I feared a stone was loose.”
“It didn’t have a stone. It was a plain gold band.”
D’Anton remembered: a perfect, unbroken band to symbolise their perfect, unbroken love. Well, it had been his doing. Bringing people together was his speciality. Finding for others a happiness he could not find for himself.
“In that case I’ll I say I took it off you to have it polished. I have my own polisher.”
“Did it need polishing?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Will she be able to see the difference?”
“There won’t be any difference because there won’t be any ring.”
Barnaby looked puzzled.
“You’ve lost it, remember.”
“Ah, of course. So what happens then?”
“I’ll say I lost it on the way to the polisher.”
“That’s a damn good idea. But better to say you lost it on the way back from the p
olisher.”
“What difference?”
“I want Plury to know I had it polished.”
“As you choose.”
Barnaby took D’Anton’s hands. “I’m forever in your debt.”
D’Anton’s eyes misted over. “Please don’t say that,” he said.
“All right. But can I at least promise that I’ll never ask another favour from you again?”
“I’d rather you didn’t say that either.”
“I understand,” Barnaby said, though he didn’t.
But his spirits had cleared up so markedly that he hardly looked the same person who’d walked into the restaurant with his hair wild fifteen minutes before.
He settled back in his chair and smiled at his benefactor. “Now, how’s that painting going?” he went on.
“Be patient,” D’Anton said.
“Are you telling me you haven’t persuaded the old skinflint to hand it over yet? What’s the delay? Does he want more money?”
“First let me sort the ring.”
Barnaby settled back even further in his chair. Yes, life had problems, but none that others couldn’t solve for him.
“Here we go again,” D’Anton thought when Gratan Howsome eventually joined them, looking as much like a man in a pickle as Barnaby looked like a man who had come out of one.
SIXTEEN
To go back a bit:
In such a night as this, Beatrice thought, I shouldn’t be sitting on my own looking at the moon.
Strulovitch had been right in this, if in nothing else: his daughter had not gone far. After leaving home with her boyfriend and her bags, she had gone straight to the Old Belfry to seek Plury’s protection. Gratan’s idea. They had met at Plury’s, twisted eyebeams at Plury’s, made philo-Semitic love at Plury’s, and would now shelter at Plury’s. Plury herself was away for a few days having corrective surgery to her corrective surgery, but in a phone call to Beatrice expressed her excitement and readiness to help, in a phone call to Gratan reproved his naughtiness but applauded his choice, and in a phone call to her house manager ordered the prettiest room to be made ready for the pair. Not the one she’d set aside for their personal use before, which had been pretty enough, but something more respectable and romantic. “Connubial” was the word she was looking for.
When Beatrice and Gratan arrived they found the pillows in what they were now to think of as their boudoir freshly fluffed, bridal flowers in a vase, a bottle of Perrier-Jouët Belle Epoque on one bedside table and a box of Ladurée macarons on the other. They would also have found, had they gone looking, D’Anton in demi-residence, rehanging paintings in Plury’s parlour—Plury loved to come home to D’Anton’s reconfigurations—though he was too preoccupied to see the lovers arrive. Gratan was glad of that. He wanted to break the news in stages to D’Anton, whom he looked on as a sort of guardian, and from whom he expected sympathy but not necessarily encouragement. It had been D’Anton who had originally introduced Beatrice to their little world, and it was possible he would not look kindly on Gratan’s appropriation of her. He could hear what D’Anton would say before he said it. “I didn’t bring the girl here for you to make off with, Gratan. Not everything exists for your pleasure.” A reprimand made out of affection, but a reprimand nonetheless. “Just don’t do that again,” D’Anton had warned after Gratan’s Nazi salute. He had pointed to Gratan’s head. “Use that in future.”
His manager at Stockport County had often said the same.
Of course D’Anton might have guessed what was afoot—he was a man lost in gloomy self-abstraction, but there had been enough whispering in corridors and clumsy disappearances for even him to notice. Failing that, Plury might, in her vicarious erotic excitement, already have told him. But if he still didn’t know, Gratan figured it would be best to keep him in ignorance for as long as possible, not to say what he had done exactly, and in particular not to give the person he had done it with a name. It would be more prudent to talk in generalities—she, he, the father, circumcision, stuff like that. D’Anton was a man of the world and would be able to tell him whether, in an abstract way, circumcision was something all Jewish fathers demanded of Gentiles who wanted to marry their daughters; whether they were within their legal and moral rights to do so; whether there were officers of the law who could enforce it; and whether it was likely to be painful.
Having carried Beatrice over the threshold, he had deposited her on the bed with less ceremony than she felt the occasion warranted, hurriedly explaining that he needed to nip downstairs a second.
“Where are you going?” Beatrice shouted after him, but he was already gone. “Just make sure you nip back up again,” she added to herself.
D’Anton was up a library ladder when Gratan found him. “Does that look straight to you?” he called down without looking round.
Gratan was too caught up in his own troubles to know whether a picture was straight or not but he chose the easy option and said yes.
“So,” D’Anton began when he was off the ladder. He could tell from Gratan’s flushed appearance that he had something urgent to say. It was then that Gratan had poured out the edited contents of his heart, in response to which D’Anton had invited him to the restaurant…
To go forward a bit:
“I don’t know,” Gratan said to himself as he ran back up the stairs, “whether I’m coming or going.” To Beatrice, who was standing at the window, as though awaiting his return by that route, he said, “Sorry, but I just have to slip out for a short while.”
Beatrice stared at him in disbelief.
“First you have to nip down and now you have to slip out. Anybody would think you don’t want to be with me.”
She was not remotely sentimental. She hadn’t supposed this was to be their honeymoon night. They had slept together many times already, and the evening wasn’t otherwise to be sanctified by what had gone before. It was a night to get through, that was all. But for him to be nipping down and slipping out before she’d even had time to unpack her case was not how she, or indeed how any woman, would have expected things to go.
“Of course I want to be with you,” Gratan said. He appeared hurt that she should doubt it.
“Gratan!”
“What?”
“We’ve only just got here!”
“I’m not going to be long.”
“Where have you been?”
“I can’t say.”
“Where are you going?”
“I can’t say.”
“This isn’t a good start, Gratan. Not after the day I’ve had.”
He led her to the bed and embraced her in a manner that made it possible for him to keep an eye on the time. “It hasn’t been easy for me either,” he reminded her.
“No but you’re bigger and more experienced than I am. And he isn’t your father. Please don’t go out tonight. Not tonight.”
But Gratan had his appointment with D’Anton at Ristorante Treviso to keep. He needed D’Anton’s advice—not later, not tomorrow, but now, in advance of his first night with Beatrice as runaways. It had dawned on him, in the course of the brief but fraught drive from Beatrice’s house to Plury’s, that however enraged and determined Beatrice was today, she might well feel differently about things—including him—in the morning. A father was still a father, no matter that he was a monster. And a Jewish father, from all he’d heard, even more so. He couldn’t take anything for granted. What Beatrice said was not necessarily what Beatrice thought. He was pleased with himself for these insights into a woman’s psychology. On Beatrice’s behalf, as well as his own, it was important he talk to D’Anton. Otherwise he could easily make a false move. Say something he’d regret. Do something he shouldn’t.
“Don’t ask me to tell you where I’ve been or where I’m going,” he pleaded. “Just trust me. When you know, you’ll agree I was right to go there. It’s for us.”
“It sounds as though you’re going to fetch a priest. Don’t.”
“I sw
ear I’m not,” Gratan said, putting his hand to his heart in a gesture that reminded Beatrice ever so slightly of his notorious Nazi salute.
“You haven’t got another woman already?”
“Another woman! We’ve only been here an hour.”
How long did it take, Beatrice wondered. “And you’ll be back soon?”
“I promise,” he promised, raising his arm to his chest again.
“You needn’t do that,” Beatrice said. “Just come back sober.”
“As a lord.”
“It’s as drunk as a lord. A judge is what you mean. Never mind. Just assure me you are coming back. You haven’t brought me here to leave me here?”
“Why would I do that?”
He kissed her with fierce passion. The first time he clapped eyes on her she’d been dressed as an urchin. Plury’s doing. “My little Jewboy,” Plury had called her. She looked a little like that again—more petulant than angry, more of a girl than a woman, more oriental than western, cross-bred, out of place, neither one thing nor another, a confusion to him. Was there nothing he wouldn’t do for her?
“I won’t be long,” he said.
To go back a bit:
So Beatrice, on such a night, was left alone to reflect on what she’d done.
Was it any surprise she shed a tear?
She wiped her eye and wondered if Gratan had slipped out to kill her father. Would she have minded?
And what if, in the ensuing fight, her father were to kill Gratan? Would she have minded that?
Questions, questions…
She opened the champagne, though she didn’t much like champagne, starting when it popped. Was that Gratan’s gun going off? Or her father’s? Her house was only a mile and a half away. On such nights, in the quiet of the Golden Triangle, sound travelled.
By the time I’ve finished this bottle, she thought, I will have forgotten who Gratan Howsome is. But I will not have forgotten my father.
My whole life, she thought, has been made a misery by him. She tried to remember a time when he hadn’t pursued her, dragged her out of parties, punched her boyfriends, wiped the lipstick off her face with the back of his hand, pulled her down the street by her hair while clutching at his heart, as though to threaten her with cardiac arrest. Look what you’re doing to me. You’re killing me. Though it was he—wasn’t it?—who was killing her.
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