by Roy Vickers
As a person he enjoyed a kind of oblique popularity. ‘Funny thing, but I can’t help rather liking Spengrave.’ His life was blameless, yet men tended to apologize for liking him. There was the hint of a reason in the background, unexpressed because no one knew how to express it.
There was nothing odd about him physically except that, if you were to see him for the first time sitting down, you might think that he was a large, tall man, whereas he just escaped being short. That was because he had a large, long, lean face, suggesting a scholarly monk; the mouth was long and thin-lipped, but in the eyes – wide and unusually blue – the prevailing expression was that of gentleness.
When Kenfield became a Minister, he commissioned Spengrave to paint him, but refused to accept the portrait, on the ground that it was not like him. Carron James, whose plays were about to earn him a knighthood, gave Spengrave a hundred guineas for the portrait.
‘I’m buying it, Spengrave, because it’s an excellent bit o’ work. Also because I have always hated Kenfield. Gosh, he must have felt that portrait like a whip across the face! It enables me to see him as a poor, ineffectual devil like myself. And I don’t hate him any more. D’you see what I mean?’
‘No,’ said Spengrave. ‘But your cheque is a godsend.’
‘Is it! It oughtn’t to be, to a man of your talent.’ Carron James couldn’t help rather liking the fellow. ‘If you’re hard up, why not try a sideline in caricature? I’ll give you an introduction if you like.’
With a topical caricature of the Prime Minister under his arm, Spengrave kept an appointment with the editor of a leading Opposition paper. The editor looked at the caricature. He chuckled, but the chuckle died in his throat.
‘I like that! But I can’t publish it. If you care to sell it to me personally I’ll give you a tenner for it.’
‘You can have it for nothing,’ said Spengrave, ‘if you will tell me why you won’t publish it, though you obviously like it.’
‘Your picture is true. But it tells an unbearable truth. It’s – cruel! It even pulls me into a kind of nervous sympathy with him.’
‘Thank you,’ said Spengrave. ‘The drawing is yours. I’ll send you a receipt. Good-bye!’
‘Hi! I’m not going to charge you a tenner for saying that!’
‘I am content with our bargain if you are,’ returned Spengrave and left.
Spengrave walked back to his studio, wishing he could have accepted the tenner without wounding his self-respect. Things were getting very low. In three months he would be starting the round of the pawnshops. He looked at himself in one of the long mirrors.
‘You thought you were being topical and damned witty. And you were only being cruel and killing your market. Clown!’
He snatched brush and palette and began to paint a portrait of himself – became absorbed, barely conscious that the clown-theme was predominating until, four hours later, he had finished.
He stood back, looking at his self-portrait.
‘The best thing I’ve done!’ He giggled weakly and the tears ran down his cheeks. ‘But it tells an unbearable truth. It’s cruel!’
He began to pace the studio, uncertainly, like a drunkard.
‘Carron James said much the same thing. That means I must have a streak of cruelty in me without knowing it. But the others know it. However civil people are, they never accept me as one of themselves.
‘I want to be like other men. I want to eat and drink without thought and be clean and have proper clothes. I want a woman to love me terrifically and be glad to have children with me. I want to be like other men!’
Melancholia drove him to self-pity, but intelligence warned him that if he wanted something he must fight for it. He returned to the portrait.
‘If I turn the cruelty on to myself, the others will be – “pulled into a kind of nervous sympathy” with me. That’s what he said. And then I can make them laugh or cry.’
Thus he found the formula which carried him to stardom in three months and kept him there for the rest of his life.
Chapter Three
For five years he was the star turn in the music halls, touring all the capitals that could fill a large house at good prices. Always he played the circus clown in difficulties. He used the fact that a white-faced clown is not particularly funny to a modern audience – he exposed the clown’s unfunniness with a stark brutality that shocked his audience into sympathy with the clown – a twist in the story brought release and the belly-laugh. That put the audience in his pocket. He could play on all the basic emotions. The grey-white, idiot face of the clown could flash into a disconcerting sensitiveness that gave a new tang to poltroonery.
With the coming of the talkies and the decay of the music hall, he took a theatre for himself, filling out with straight musical and dramatic acts of a high class.
He met June in the course of a visit to one of his artist friends. She was tall and blonde with regular features and regular lines, handsome rather than beautiful. Her curves were artistically correct rather than voluptuous. His glance was wholly professional.
‘Let me know when you’ve finished with that girl,’ he said in an undertone.
‘I’ve finished now, if you’ve got work for her – I owe her for three sittings. June, come and meet Mr Spengrave.’
Like many an artist’s model, June was respectable to the point of prudery, educated in genteel snobbery but in hardly anything else. She was conscientious and unmercenary at this stage of her life, and would work loyally for anyone who would affect to treat her as a lady.
Her lucky physicality gave her the appearance of a solemn young queen disguised as a housemaid. Spengrave himself designed for her a dress, of red corduroy velvet, which emancipated the regal from the domestic.
On Spengrave’s stage she was required to behave exactly as she behaved in a studio – sit stock still, not utter a word and look handsomely expressionless – The Lady Who Wouldn’t Laugh.
On the first night, she virtually killed the act. For when the twist came in the story, bringing the release, June laughed too.
‘Don’t laugh, you dreadful little fool!’ he hissed with such venom that she had no difficulty in obeying. He more or less gagged his way out of the debacle, but the act was not a success that night.
Afterwards, she came tearfully to his dressing-room.
‘I’m very sorry indeed, Mr Spengrave. No wonder you were so angry! But it was suddenly all so funny!’
‘My fault for not rehearsing you enough! Be here to-morrow at ten, and we’ll go over it again.’
He was not quite sure of her after the morning rehearsal. He gave her lunch in his suite at the top of the theatre, and afterwards asked her if she felt confident.
‘I’m still worried about that bit where you fall in the carpet the second time – the funny time, Mr Spengrave!’
‘Hm! I know you’re trying hard. Perhaps too hard. Sit in that armchair and relax all you can. Now, don’t make any effort. Just let your will gently slide into your mind and tell it you mustn’t laugh. Repeat this after me … The carpet isn’t funny … The goblet and tray isn’t funny … Nothing that he does is funny … I will never laugh again.’
He left her, went to his bedroom to rest. A couple of hours later when he returned to the living-room she was still there.
‘Ooh! I must have had a nap!’ she exclaimed. She added: ‘It’s all right now, Mr Spengrave. I’ll never laugh again.’
Chapter Four
The Lady Who Wouldn’t Laugh became one of the most popular acts. It stayed in the bill for four years – and was only taken off when June contracted pneumonia. He could fairly easily have replaced her, but she had been loyal and efficient and regular, and he felt that as a decent employer he owed her some consideration.
As a decent employer, he went to see her at the nursing home when she was convalescent, bringing her the usual gift of grapes. In four years, with other members of the company, she had toured Europe and America with him; yet he
had had hardly any personal conversation with her, knew nothing about her.
He exerted himself to draw her out, discovered that, when she forgot to be genteel, she was a simple, likeable person. He suspected that she had few friends and at his next visit asked her whether this were true.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Mr Spengrave! I get on well enough with most people, though I do keep myself to myself. Of course, there are always men of the wrong sort, but they don’t appeal to me. I’ll own up I’ve got the idea that ordinary people think me a bit queer. It makes you feel lonely, sometimes, if you know what I mean.’
Spengrave knew what she meant – knew it a hundred times better than she did. In those hours of self-revelation when he had painted his own portrait he had found a formula for commercial success; but he had found nothing else.
At his next call at the nursing home he asked her to marry him.
‘Ooh! Mr Spengrave!’ She was staggered. ‘Well, of course, I will, if you’re sure you want to!’
After a while, she said:
‘It’ll take a bit of getting used to. You see, I’ve always thought of you as not being like other men.’
He caught his breath as if she had stabbed him.
‘Ever since you were so kind to me that first time when I let you down by laughing, I’ve put you in a class apart. I thought you superior to all the men and women I’ve ever met. And I still think it. So, nach’ rally, it makes me a bit shy of you.’
‘Oh, my darling!’ He kissed her with love and overwhelming gratitude. ‘And I am shy of you, June – because you think that of me. We’ll help each other.’
So they did, for three years – with very different effects on their very different natures. June, who had been a conscientious stooge, became a conscientious wife, striving solemnly to serve him and to please him. She discovered that he liked her to look always as nice as possible, so she studied dress. When he did not require her presence she regarded her time as her own, and developed along her own lines. In a sense, she loved him – did not suspect that, in no sense, was she in love with him.
In an undreamed affluence, dormant traits in her character became active. She began to preen herself as the wife of a wealthy celebrity cultivated by High-ups, who were seeking neither money nor publicity nor introductions. Such people were outside her orbit, but at the local river-sailing club and the tennis club she was somebody.
She gathered a large circle of friends. Although she patronized them a little, they liked her. That she never laughed at their quips they took as her reminder that she was the wife of the world’s greatest clown. One youngish man, Fred Periss, tall and dark, handsome as a stage Guardsman, was particularly attracted to her.
Spengrave for his part was aware of partial failure, for which he blamed himself with secret humiliation. In the essentials of their life together she obeyed him as punctiliously as she had formerly obeyed a call to rehearsal. But there was a barrier he had never passed. If she did not stand in awe of him, she certainly held him in a kind of respectfulness that numbed spontaneity. Like a damp cloud the conviction settled on him that he was not regarded by his wife as other men were regarded by their wives.
He had not the leisure to go visiting with her. His appearances at her parties were perfunctory. He was glad for her sake that she had made so many friends, though he found them noisy and dull-witted.
One afternoon in the first week in August, when he was dozing in the drawing-room, he was startled by an unfamiliar sound. He sat bolt upright, fully awake. The sound came again, from the garden.
It was the sound of June laughing.
In his spine was an eerie tingling as a thought formed itself against his will.
‘I’ve never heard her laugh – since that night she killed the act.’
He ran into the garden, could not see her. He turned the corner by the laurel bushes and saw her in the arms of Fred Periss. She was not struggling.
‘Fred!’ Oh, why did you have to do that!’ she cried in distress.
‘Why pretend? You didn’t hate it, darling, did you!’
‘That makes it all the worse. I shall have to tell Lucien now. It wasn’t worth troubling him before.’
Spengrave slipped back to his chair in the drawing-room and picked up a book. Within a few minutes she came. She had smoothed her hair and shaken out her frock, where Periss had rumpled it.
‘Lucien, Fred Periss kissed me just now. Not a party kiss – the real sort, I think it was. I expect it was partly my fault.’
‘We needn’t lose our heads. Better ask him in here.’
‘He’s gone. Are you angry with me?’
Spengrave was thinking. He himself could crush her up and kiss her. But he could not draw from her that lovely rippling laugh – full of fun and games. Other men, of course, could make their wives laugh like that.
‘I’m not angry with you, June. It isn’t the sort of thing one can be angry about. Are you in love with him?’
She meditated her answer, tried honestly to clear her thought and failed.
‘Ooh! I don’t understand love.’
She meant it, but it was obviously untrue. She would very soon discover that she did understand love. Perhaps, thought Spengrave, there was still time for him.
‘Then let’s forget it, dear.’
‘I’m so glad you aren’t angry, Lucien. And I think I can forget it all right. I’ll try hard to think of other things.’
‘Try thinking of me!’ he said, rising nimbly from his chair.
Again came the delicious rippling sound that was her rediscovered laughter. Vibrant with happiness he put his arms round her. ‘You laugh because at last you’re happy?’ he asked.
‘I laughed because you looked so funny, jumping out of that chair – like a jack-in-the-box.’
It spoilt the kiss, ruined his moment. He was not disconsolate. There were kisses to come – ‘the real sort’, if he could thrust himself into her imagination.
She said she would like to go on the river before dinner. He brought the punt alongside, called to her when he was ready, steadied the boat with one foot on the landing stage. He watched her approaching, watched her with reawakened desire – and again she laughed:
‘Standing like that with that funny look on your face, you reminded me of something,’ she explained. ‘Can’t think what it was!’
‘Somebody’s pet poodle begging for its dinner?’ he suggested.
‘No, it wasn’t that.’ She had taken his question seriously. ‘I wish I could remember.’
In himself was a deep inner disturbance which he shrank from defining. Presently she was babbling about giving a cocktail party.
‘When will it be, dear?’
‘On the last Thursday of the month. It would be so nice if you could spare an hour or so. They would appreciate it so!’
He would give her anything, do anything for her, if only she would regard him as other men were regarded by their wives. And perhaps she would.
‘Darling, I’ll be there the whole time and I’ll do everything I can to make your party a riproaring success.’ When she had finished exclaiming, he went on: ‘I always feel I’m a bit of a wet blanket at parties. I just haven’t got the trick of sitting around and swapping backchat about sport and that sort of thing. How would they like it if I were to give them the lecture I gave at Oxford last year? We could get the props out on the lawn.’
They would adore it, she assured him. She knew that, though much of it might be above their heads, they would be flattered by his condescension.
Over dinner she was companionable, more light-hearted, more spirited than he had ever known her to be. She was expanding, he thought, opening like a rose in the sunshine of their new understanding. He held fast to that conception throughout the evening.
That night she laughed – she said – at his dressing-gown. It was a black silk dressing-gown, by no means new, which she had often seen before. Uncertain of himself and her, he sat on the edge of her bed and talke
d of anything that came into his head – became aware that she was unconscious of any strain.
‘There’s plenty of time before the party, June. Would you like us to go away for a fortnight somewhere? We might pop over to Switzerland.’
‘Well, if it’s for me I’m in no hurry to go away.’ She added: ‘I love it here.’
‘So do I!’ He touched her hand, gripped it. ‘It’s our home, yours and mine. Not a bad old place, is it? And it would be just fine if we happened to have a family. Wouldn’t it, June?’
She did not answer. Her face was hard and drawn, and he feared lest she had read into his words a reproach that she had not yet borne a child.
‘June, darling!’ He bent over her, touched her hair with his lips. ‘I only meant –’
From the back of her nostrils came the absurd noise made by a schoolboy trying not to laugh in class.
As he sprang away, she burst into open laughter. He stood at a distance from the bed, staring down at her. When she looked up at him, the laughter started afresh. He waited, standing very still, until she stopped from exhaustion.
‘Perhaps you will tell me why you laugh at me, though I think I know.’
‘I couldn’t help it!’ she gasped. ‘You, perched on the side of the bed with that dressing-gown, saying – all that! – you were so funny!’ She spluttered with the aftermath of laughter.
He strode in silence to the door.
‘Oh, Lucien, it’s not fair to be offended and angry with me! You are funny – or you wouldn’t be you – especially when you’re saying something serious. You can’t expect me to behave as if you were like other men.’
‘Yes. I thought that was why,’ he said, and left her room.
Her reasoning was slovenly, for she had forgotten that she had not thought him funny in his personal life until to-day. The man who intended to be her lover had already awakened her to full womanhood – had enabled her to see that she was in very truth married to a clown.
He went downstairs to his study, which adjoined the gymnasium, poured himself a stiff brandy. Presently, rummaging in a cabinet, he took out the portrait of himself which he had painted long ago in his Bloomsbury studio.