“Thank you very much,” said Harold.
“Good-bye,” said Dennis. “I have enjoyed this so much.”
“Good-bye,” said the man. He smiled at them, and locked the gallery door after them.
“I say, he was only keeping it open for you,” said Harold.
“That’s one of the reasons I like being what I am,” said Dennis. “People like that actually think I have power. I know I don’t. In five years in this racket, of the books I’ve praised highly, only one has gone into a second impression.”
They parked in St James’s Square and walked to White’s. Harold felt distinctly nervous as they waited for Mr Dangerfield to appear.
“Ah, Dennis,” said several people on their way in and out. He seemed to be better known than Harold had imagined.
A short man with heavy-lidded bloodshot eyes came out of the main part of the club and said, “There you are, my boy.”
“Hallo, Uncle Edward,” said Dennis. “Let me introduce you to Harold Barlow.”
“Glad you could come along,” said Dangerfield, squeezing Harold’s hand hard. But he smiled as he did it, and Harold noticed that his eyes looked quite kind, in spite of the blood they swam about in. And his face was chubby, too, which made things seem better.
They went to have a drink and Harold observed the self-consciously quiet authority with which everyone gave orders, the apparent absence of any coin less than a florin, and a distant clicking noise which puzzled him. It turned out to be people playing backgammon in a neighbouring room. After a couple of Martinis, they went upstairs to lunch. Dangerfield and Dennis had done most of the talking at the bar, about Dangerfield House and Gloucestershire people whom Harold didn’t know or, by the sound of it, want to know. But when they sat down Dangerfield turned to him and said, “I think Dennis has explained the main problem to you, hasn’t he?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Well, it’s not an easy job, you know. You mustn’t think that. It’s going to be a dull job, too, for a young man, hunting about for pictures of people he’s never heard of.”
“Come, Uncle Edward,” said Dennis, “there are a good many pictures of people in museums and art galleries who are completely unknown. ‘Portrait of a Young Man’, that sort of thing. You don’t have to know the person to enjoy a portrait. Anyway, you didn’t know any of them yourself. They’re just ancestors.”
“That’s perfectly true,” said Dangerfield. “But they are my ancestors, and they’re not this young man’s. Unless he’s very keen on pictures as pictures, he won’t find them very interesting, that’s what I’m saying.”
Dennis looked blandly at Harold, who said quickly, “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about art, sir.”
“You don’t need to for this job, Barlow. It’s simply a matter of detective work, then of business.”
“They’re of your ancestors, you say?”
“That’s right. My grandfather was something of a free spender, you know, and sold them to keep spending freely. I thought it would be nice to get them back.”
“Oh, it would.”
“Dennis tells me you work in the City, is that right?”
“Yes. At Fenway, Crocker and Broke. Of course, I’m only in a very junior capacity at the moment.”
“But good prospects, I hope?”
“Oh, yes, I hope to become a partner in a few years.”
“Good,” said Dangerfield, “very good. Capital fellows at Fenway’s. Is Jimmy Scott a friend of yours?”
“Yes, indeed. It was through him that I got into the firm. He’s a very great friend of my uncle’s. A brother-in-law, actually.”
“Not Sammy Barlow?”
“No.”
“Oh. Splendid man, Sammy Barlow. He was in my regiment during the war. D.S.O. and bar. Bravest man I’ve ever met, and now he runs a farm in Dorset. Astonishing, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps he wants a quiet life after two D.S.O.s.”
“Could be. Odd, though, the way he just upped and disappeared as soon as the war was over. Never married, either. Lives all alone in the middle of Dorset, sees no one, comes to London twice a year and gets blind drunk, then goes home again.”
“He sounds rather interesting.”
“Not really. Never could get much out of him in the mess. He always did drink a good deal, though. It’s my private opinion that he was blind drunk when he won his medals.”
“I have heard stories like that.”
“Do you drink much, Barlow?”
“Moderately, sir.”
“Hock suit you? It’s not at all bad here.”
“Thank you very much.”
“It’s been extremely hard,” said Dangerfield, as the waiter poured the wine, “to find the sort of chap I’m looking for. The trouble with you young men these days is that you’re idle. No sense of adventure. You’d rather stay home and watch television than get out on the tiles. You hardly ever read of people killing themselves falling off King’s Chapel these days. In my day we used to lose several people a year.”
“Uncle Edward,” said Dennis.
“Well, one at least. And you people these days, you’re content to stay on the ground. Mind you, I don’t say you don’t do as good a day’s work as anyone else. You do. You’re not idle that way. But you’re not as adventurous as we were. Everyone seems to be looking for a safe berth.”
“You think we’re the spoonfed generation?” said Dennis.
“No. I don’t mean that. It’s that you don’t seem to want to get on.”
“Get on where?” said Harold. Dennis looked at him reproachfully.
“I’m not sure,” said Dangerfield, slightly taken aback. “What I mean is, you’d rather not take risks.”
“But there’s no point in taking risks that don’t offer you something if they come off, is there?”
“No, that’s true.”
“Well, I don’t think people offer us the risks, so it’s not our fault if we don’t take them. What sort of risk do you have in mind?”
Dennis raised his eyebrows at the ceiling, but Dangerfield looked at Harold and said, “You may well have a point there, my boy. I dare say the opportunities, the obvious opportunities, that is, are less than they used to be.” He chewed for a bit. “What I’m thinking of is—well, chucking it all up, you know. Going to Australia. Getting out into the world and doing something, making a mark. Nowadays you all stay at home and complain.” He seemed to think this was a good way of putting it. “That sort of thing, you see.”
“But, good heavens,” said Harold, “you can’t honestly expect me to want to go to Australia, can you? I mean, would you go? From all I’ve heard it’s the world’s most boring country.”
“Ah,” said Dangerfield. “But I’m not complaining, am I?”
“Nor am I,” said Harold. But of course he was, and he knew it. He was complaining all the time. It was the pettiness of his present life, its tedious little margins, its narrowness, that got him down: in the old days people like him would have gone to Australia, certainly—to wide open spaces and all the rest of it. But how could you go there when you knew perfectly well that it was exactly like England for the most part, only worse? The pubs shut at six, dear Christ. It might be all right if you owned about ten thousand sheep and spent the time riding like Chips Rafferty over the outback, but how many immigrants ever managed to do that? If he, Harold, ever went to Australia, he would simply complain louder than ever.
What he needed, what he could not find, was something that would need intelligence, and endurance, something which would put a real strain on his abilities: something, when it came down to it, at which he could easily fail. That was what one could never get across to the Dangerfields of the world. You didn’t want pleasant escapism, you wanted something to do which was worth the doing, was worthy of your intelligence and capabilities. And if Dangerfield seriously thought being a kind of high-class travelling buyer of old pictures was the sort of thing that could test him, then Danger
field was out of his mind. Harold didn’t like Fenway’s, he didn’t like Craxton Street, he didn’t care for Peterham, he didn’t give a damn about England. But that was no reason to go on a paid holiday, traipsing across America after a lot of dreary family portraits. The moment he got back to Craxton Street, he would write to Dangerfield, apologize for having wasted his time, and say he was sorry but there had been a foolish misunderstanding, and he had never wanted the job, anyway. Which was true enough.
“Now tell me, Mr Barlow,” said Dangerfield, “are you happy with your present work?”
“No,” said Harold. “But I’m as happy at it as I’m ever likely to be happy at anything. I mean, it’s not the sort of job that gives one much opportunity for the use of imagination and intelligence and all the other things employers claim to be looking for. Most of them really just want robots.”
“I think you sound like the very chap I’m looking for,” said Dangerfield.
Perhaps it would be simpler, Harold thought, not to wait till he got back to Craxton Street before letting Dangerfield know how he felt. Besides, it would be no more than Dennis deserved to tell the truth.
“Look,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m here under false pretences, Mr Dangerfield. It would be absolutely absurd for me to abandon my career at the present time, just as it’s getting started. And I can hardly ask Fenway’s to let me take six months or so off, just to have a jaunt round America. Because that’s how it would sound to them. It sounds rather like that to me, actually. I don’t see how you can expect me to want to give up an almost certain partnership just to chase up your family portraits.”
“No risks, eh?” said Dangerfield.
“But you’re not offering me a risk. You’re offering a free holiday, with pay. And that’s very nice of you, and very kind, but what happens when the holiday’s over? I’ve had a good time, no doubt, but I’ve lost everything I’ve been boring myself blue for the last few years to obtain. That’s not taking a risk, it’s committing suicide. It would have to be a very large sum of money indeed that would make me even remotely tempted to commit suicide.”
Mr Dangerfield’s eyes glinted red with pleasure, and he mentioned a very large sum of money indeed.
But Harold couldn’t see the point, couldn’t see why he should do it—couldn’t see how he would be happier, how his faculties would be better employed, by working for Mr Dangerfield.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “And I never intended to take this job, anyway. It was Dennis’s idea to bring me, not mine to come. If I’m going to throw up everything now, it will have to be for some purpose. If you could offer me the chance to use my intelligence and imagination and everything else, really to put them to the test, then I’d leap at it. Because I’m bored. But I don’t see why I should be very much less bored looking for your pictures. I don’t want to go to America. I’ve never wanted to go there. Brazil, yes. The Congo, yes. But America is just England with a lot more money and bigger cars and a good deal fewer people per square yard, and though it would be interesting to see it, it wouldn’t be interesting enough. Do you see that?”
“I see what’s wrong with you,” said Dangerfield. “You make a great fuss and pretend to complain, but what’s really the matter with you is that you’re complacent. You like your boring cushy job, and you’re frightened to leave it. That’s your trouble.”
“No, it’s not,” said Harold. “You’ve got it all wrong. I hate my cushy job, as a matter of fact. But why should I give up a long-term cushy job, for a very short-term, if slightly cushier, one? I can’t think of a single reason.”
“I’ll give you one,” said Dangerfield. “To start with, you’ve no idea whether it will be cushy or not. The element of uncertainty ought to be attractive. And then, there’s something else. Any man who hasn’t had the sensation of stretching himself hasn’t lived. I grant you that. But there’s another thing, too. You’re too young to have been in the war. But during the war many men did things which were tantamount to attempting suicide. And for no reason that anyone could understand. You see, Barlow, war gives a man a chance to push himself, to see just how far he can go. It’s himself he’s fighting, not the enemy. To feel that sensation, as I have, of committing suicide is to know what it is to be alive. To value the fact of being alive.”
“Well, all that may be true,” said Harold. “But what has that got to do with me?”
“I’m offering someone—maybe you—the chance to know what it’s like to commit suicide, and then to start again. I can’t guarantee the job will stretch you—I’ve no idea of how easy or difficult it may prove to be. But I want someone who is prepared to use the things you say you don’t have a chance to use—imagination, intelligence, all that. I don’t want a robot. I do want someone who is prepared to risk giving up the future to live vividly in the present. Possibly at full stretch, too. But vividly, anyway, if he has the vividness in him.”
“You can’t start again if you’ve committed suicide,” said Harold. “Your offer’s like everything else today—beautifully packaged, and fundamentally disappointing. It sounds great till you examine it.”
“Well,” said Dangerfield, “I’d have thought I’d made it plain enough.”
“Oh, yes,” said Harold. “It’s plain enough, all right, and you even make it sound glamorous. But really it’s not very glamorous, you know. And in spite of all that you say, I can’t see any connection between your offer and a chance to commit suicide. Suicide’s irrevocable. This is a cushy job. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it your way. I just don’t see it like that at all.”
When they were outside again in St James’s Street, Harold said, “I’m awfully sorry, Dennis. But he annoyed me, and I simply had to tell him the truth.”
“You couldn’t have done better,” said Dennis. “He was delighted with you, I could see.”
“But I practically insulted him.”
“No, no, not at all. You don’t understand Uncle Edward. He couldn’t have been more pleased. I quite expected him to slip us both a fiver to show how much he’d enjoyed treating us to lunch. I told you it would be like that. He’s convinced that all his nephews are still schoolboys. As a matter of fact, Harold, I could do with a fiver. You don’t have one on you, do you, by any chance?”
“No.”
“Never mind. The Macaroon can often be persuaded to give credit. Let’s go and celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?”
“Your success. I bet you a fiver you go to America.”
“All right. But you’re simply giving me the money.”
“Not at all. In fact, I’m so confident that I’m going to ask you to pay me now. It will be most inconvenient to have to change it back and forth, in and out of dollars.”
“Dennis, I wish you and your uncle would get one thing absolutely clear. I am not going to America.”
“If you insist on being mean, we shall have to get credit. Come on, let’s not waste any more time.”
“Dennis, I hope you’re not under any illusion about this. I am absolutely serious.”
“You always are, Harold. It’s part of your charm.”
“But, Dennis——”
“The car is this way.”
PART TWO
One
HE WOKE EARLY that morning, and in a panic. The dream of fire had grown more and more ominous as he had put Craxton Street farther and farther behind him, and this morning it seemed as though the bed itself was ablaze, and he inextricably tangled in the sheets, the flames shooting towards his face.
The room was dazzling as he opened his eyes, and for a moment the panic took control and he began to thresh about the bed, struggling to be free. But there was no fire, only the sun already fierce through the slats of the blinds, sneaking through even the smallest gap to lay thin slivers of piercingly white light on the pillows and sheets.
He rolled away from the window, his heart still beating furiously from the nightmare. He imagined it was all to do with guilt, a
mixture of Helen and the fire in Craxton Street. He would tell himself firmly that his subconscious accused him of having been responsible in some arcane manner for the wiring of Mrs Fanshaw’s refrigerator, and that he purged this crime night after night by dreaming that he was burning to death in bed. He had, after all, been guilty enough in bed with Helen, so it all seemed to follow. But informing himself of his subconscious motives did nothing to make the nightmare go away, in fact it had grown more violent since he had been in the desert, the aridity and ferocious sunlight in the day being grotesquely reshaped at night. There must, then, be some other subconscious reason for the dream’s recurrence, and perhaps every reason one gave oneself for such phenomena was merely a cunning false trail laid by one’s wish to destroy oneself. By one’s wish to make oneself suffer, at least.
He stretched diagonally across the bed, telling himself that he would never sleep in a single bed again, that a double mattress like this was the first basic luxury of modern living. The rooms of the Magnolia Motel were painted pale green, with cream ceilings and light grey carpets. There were two double-beds, a large cupboard, a chest of drawers of cheap pine, and several bright reproductions in every room. All motels were the same, though the details altered, of course, and the prices varied. Harold liked them, he liked the way one was left alone. One simply drove up, paid one’s money, took one’s key, and that was that. In the morning one left the key in the door, and if one inadvertently took it away, all one had to do was drop it in a mail-box and its tag would see it safely home. No one bothered one. It was marvellous. America was marvellous.
Beside the bed lay a Mormon pamphlet, a Gideon Bible, and a paper-back copy of The Ambassadors with an elegant cover by Edward Corey. Harold had bought it on the advice of Dennis Moreland. “It remains,” he had said at Waterloo, where he was seeing Harold off with great gusto and an inexhaustible supply of information about America, to which he had never been, “without question the greatest single work on European-American relations.” Harold had got no further than page fifty-seven. The style was rather long-winded, he found, and besides he didn’t find much time for reading. His clothes lay scattered across the other double-bed where he had flung them the night before, tearing them off in a passion for sleep. Yesterday he had driven—how many miles was it? Five hundred and sixty something—or was that the day before? From the southern rim of the Grand Canyon, anyway, east to the Painted Desert and then up and west again into Utah, through the Zion National Monument, and on and on, breaking suddenly out of the mountains and into the desert plain, the sun dropping fast, and then Nevada and a small town in the middle of nothing, Mesquite, a strip of motels and diners and gas-stations and frame houses on Route 91, the sun setting violently in purple and red, the mountain-peaks behind him suddenly sharp against the vanishing blue-green sky. Then stars, and a quick drop in temperature. It took it out of a man, that kind of driving, and he’d been doing it for a week, for more than a week, for nine days, ever since he’d left Corpus Christi in Texas, a huge drop of sweat on the Mexican Gulf.
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