Hemlock and After

by Angus Wilson

  Terence had seen them coming and quickly wedged himself securely in the crowd that was battling for coffee and lemonade. His companion, Sherman Winter, however, advanced eagerly towards them. ‘Bernard my dear, Heaven!’ Sherman’s speech had not changed for twenty-five years. ‘And with such beauty, double Heaven! Don’t be cagey, dear, introduce!’ When Bernard said, ‘This is Sherman Winter, Eric, Eric Craddock, Sherman. I only hope you hate each other like poison,’ Sherman only laughed and said, ‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,’ in Cockney. To see him like this, thought Bernard, anyone would think he was just another routine, harmless old queen.

  Sherman was, in fact, quite fifteen years younger than Bernard and, in the right light, looked little more than thirty. He had fallen into a conventional, caricatured pansy manner when he was quite young and, finding it convenient, had never bothered to get out of it. He had more to do with his energies than to use them up on external personality. The manner, too, fitted well with his neither striking nor unpleasant pink face, his receding fair hair and willowy shape, which all passed unnoticed in the world he frequented. People judged him to have the accepted hard surface and the accepted golden, if limitedly golden, heart of his type. This, too, was convenient.

  ‘Terence,’ he said, ‘is battling at the bar. It suits him to the ground. Pure Barkers’ sales. Bless his little Kensington heart. Bernard, my dear, you look tired.’ And as Bernard was about to speak, ‘Oh I know, bitching me! Tired equals old. You must make him rest, dear,’ he said to Eric; ‘you know, feet up and forty winks. Not that I should think you’d be much good at making people rest,’ he stared Eric up and down; ‘you look a proper little fidget to me.’

  Eric, despite all he had heard from Bernard, was obviously being lulled into cosiness by Sherman’s conventionally malicious chatter. Bernard awaited uneasily the three or four brutal thrusts with which Sherman usually followed such a softening-up process when he was ‘among friends’.

  ‘My dear! what a ghastly play. I vow never to see it again every time, but back I come. I think it must be Pastor Manders, I can never resist a clerical collar. Actually I came with a purpose. My spies told me to see Oswald, and as I’m looking out for a piece we’re putting on next winter, I foolishly came. Don’t let us speak of his performance, but let us definitely register disapproval of that snug little velvet coat, so bad with a spreading waist line. My spies, as you see, are as faulty as our own dear Secret Service, but at least I can cut my Supplementary Estimates.’

  ‘I found the performance very moving,’ said Bernard, and then added, ‘I expect it reminded me of my own student days.’

  Sherman once again looked Eric up and down. ‘So that’s what it is,’ he said; ‘I thought there must be some reason for it.’ Then, moving his eye deliberately from Eric’s crew-necked sweater to his corduroy trousers, he added, ‘I never knew you’d been an art student, Bernard dear. But then you’re so versatile.’

  Bernard decided that it was best to take the remarks at their nastiest level, so he replied, ‘You get around a bit, you know.’

  ‘Comme ci, comme ça, as old Marie Lloyd must have said. But I’m not married. That’s what’s so wonderfully versatile. Don’t you think?’ he asked Eric.

  Terence, who had been unable to absent himself at the bar any longer, leaned over Sherman’s shoulder. ‘Don’t bitch,’ he said, ‘I’ve brought four orange squashes, so I hope no one wanted coffee.’

  ‘Terence Lambert, Eric Craddock,’ said Bernard. Both young men said, ‘How do you do?’ and Terence added, ‘I hope you’re hating the play as much as we are.’ Eric, looking at Terence’s carefully done black hair, perfectly cut dark suit, lilac tie and lilac cloth waistcoat, was far more frightened than he had thought he would be. It was also some comfort that he felt he wanted to giggle.

  ‘I like it all very much except Mrs Alving,’ said Eric. He suspected that a simple, little-boy voice would annoy Terence more than anything else he could produce, and, despite all Bernie’s praises of Terence, he felt quite certain that he must be the first to annoy if he was not to be annihilated.

  Terence found the reply as irritating as Eric had expected, but he was determined to be nice, for Bernard’s sake, so he merely said, ‘Oh did you? She was the only one I could bear. The others were so stark. But Bernard will have told you already that my taste has long ago been ruined by the clever-clever. It’s the price one pays for being on the social make.’ Even if this frank approach didn’t disarm little Miss Mouse, he thought, it would win Bernard’s approval.

  ‘Oh, is that what it is?’ said Sherman. ‘What did you make yesterday, dear, St John’s Wood? It must be awful hard on the poor feet, climbing as slow as that.’

  ‘Not now I’ve got you to help me,’ said Terence.

  ‘Be careful of Sherman’s brotherly hand,’ said Bernard, ‘it’s one step up and two pushes down.’

  Terence was annoyed that Bernard should follow Sherman into discussing his private problems in front of Eric. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re not really God’s answer to a prayer for guidance, seeing as what you’ve got both your hands so full of sweetness.’ Only by ending up in stage Cockney did he prevent himself from losing his temper.

  Eric, who had been silenced for a few minutes by Terence’s obvious desire to be pleasant, now felt released to come to Bernard’s defence. ‘Bernie seems to me to have as many hands as one of those Indian gods when it comes to helping,’ he said. He meant it quite sincerely, but he instinctively made it sound twice as sweet for Terence’s benefit.

  ‘Oh Lord!’ exclaimed Sherman. ‘You keep your hard centre pretty thickly sugar-coated, don’t you?’

  It was fortunate that the curtain bell sounded. They could only just manage four conventional smiles as they returned to their seats.

  *

  When Eric came in with breakfast on a tray to Bernard’s bedside the next morning, he started all over again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bernie, I still don’t see why you should have said that Terence was a nice person. Anyone can see he’s attractive, but he doesn’t even pretend to be nice.’

  ‘No,’ said Bernard; ‘I said he was intelligent and honest, and, within his rather tough code, kind, but nice I never said, and would never claim. As a matter of fact, he was trying to be as nice as he knows how last night. It was the worst of circumstances for you to meet in, and you formed the worst impression of each other. But on the whole Terence tried to behave better than you did.’

  Eric was about to protest, then he buried his face in his coffee cup. He looked up again and said, ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry. I was frightened.’

  ‘H’m,’ said Bernard doubtfully. ‘You do make things difficult for yourself, you know. If you’re not despising people at the bookshop because they’re not grand enough, you despise the people who go in for being grand because you think they look down on you.’

  ‘I’m hopeless with people, but I do think I’m getting better. All the same I sometimes wish I could just stay down with Mimi and not have to worry about it. I think I’d be happier.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Bernard, ‘I think you probably would be … With only your teddy bears and the old nursery relics to form a nice, acquiescent audience. It would, however, be a pity, I suggest.’

  Eric got up and began to tidy the room. ‘I know that’s what you say. And I agree really that you’re quite right. But there’s another side to it,’ he said, pummelling the chair cushions. ‘Really, Bernie, that Mrs Hodges gets paid to do nothing in this flat. You go on sermonizing so much about coping with life that sometimes I think you’re too busy poking moral lessons out of things to notice what really happens. Take last night’s little meeting, for instance; that’s a bit of life, if you like, but I can’t see it did anyone any good whatever. It just left a beastly taste of spite and malice.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bernard; ‘trust Sherman for that.’

  ‘He was just more honestly spiteful than the rest of us, that’s all,’ answered Eric.
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  ‘I’ve heard that before,’ said Bernard. ‘He was more honestly spiteful because he felt more spite. The rest of us wanted to behave decently, but he always manages somehow to shame everyone into being as spiteful as himself, and if they’re not, he twists it round so that they appear as if they were.’

  ‘You seem awfully frightened of him, Bernie.’

  ‘I am. I feel very ashamed of my failure to control him last night. He’s become a kind of symbol lately, he and a number of other people, for a lot of things I’m frightened of in life, chiefly because I haven’t sorted them out yet, I think. I wish I could find some rather less second-rate symbols, though. It makes me look so stupid being downed by people like that.’

  ‘I hate to see it,’ said Eric.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bernard.

  ‘I’m not sure whether you should thank me really. It is chiefly that I feel let down, being with someone important that doesn’t do his stuff.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bernard rather grimly.

  ‘Well, I don’t think you do really, because I like you for lots of other reasons much more. Only that is important. Oh dear! I wish you didn’t make me preach so much. I might just as well have made friends with one of those clergymen who make passes on trains.’

  ‘They probably moralize a great deal less and have a great deal more fun,’ said Bernard bitterly.

  *

  If Terence Lambert did not aim at being ‘nice’, neither did he aim at making his very small flat appear ‘nice’. He attempted rather to suggest that, though he had no means, no appearance of material support whatever, he did know the type of furnishing, or rather had that sense for bang-up-to-the-minute taste which, at a more affluent rung of the ladder, would have gained him more than a mere pass. There was, too, about his assemblage of bits of Baroque and Renaissance and scraps of Victoriana – some cadged, some on loan from friends with antique shops – a certain hardness of arrangement which further emphasized to the observer the qualities of mental toughness and determination by which he would ascend. He had long learnt that nothing assists success like the appearance of being one who is cut out to get it. There was usually one object, too, which suggested a démodé scheme out of harmony with the rest. It allowed the visitor to remark that progress had been made. At the moment it was a mustard carpet, last of a mustard and white ‘Regency’ set-up. ‘My dear, I know,’ he would say. ‘You can’t think how I long to get rid of it. But at the moment I simply can’t afford to.’ Perhaps most remarkable, however, was his ability to avoid the mistakes which so many of his ‘friends’ with similar ambitions made. Though like the others he was ‘clever with his hands’ and not averse to the hand-work involved in painting or varnishing, he never allowed a note of home-madeness or arty-craftiness to get into the flat, as Eric would have done. There were no homemade lampshades, no bits of Portobello Road junk cleverly tricked out; the Renaissance and Baroque were probably fakes, but proper commercial fakes, not pastiches made from silver paper, buckram, and any old iron. He never allowed sentiment in the form of photos, teddy bears, or memories of Mediterranean holidays to creep in, as Eric again would have done. And he never attempted Constance Spry flower-pieces. He knew that regular fresh flowers were beyond his means, and he rejected the ‘tattiness’ of dead mullion and withered sycamore berries.

  He earned, as yet, very little money, and that very precariously. It was essential, therefore, to spend it carefully. The greater part went on really good clothes. The smallest item, perhaps, was food. He ate out at other people’s expense as much as possible, and was perfectly happy to live on bread and marmalade, or ends of cheese, for the rest of the time. He gave two cocktail parties for a limited number in the year. Although his whole life was apparently concerned with sensual tastes – objets d’art, food and drink, clothes, travel abroad, sunbathing, and sex – he would have been perfectly happy to renounce any of these except clothes and sunbathing. The others, however, were the necessary background which his ambition demanded for his person when suitably browned and clothed. Like any other ambitious person whose work might have seemed more intrinsically interesting, it was really the day-to-day manoeuvres which absorbed his whole interest, and since, unlike ambitious barristers, trade unionists, dons, civil servants, or even social hostesses, there was no division between Terence’s private and public life, no conflicting sex or emotion; he was in many respects a most successfully integrated person.

  He produced a pot of tea and four ginger nuts for Bernard from the rather squalid kitchenette-bathroom which only friends completely in on his background were allowed to see. He hesitated before wasting four ginger biscuits, since they were going on to Evelyn Ramage’s for drinks, but, as it was very unlikely that Bernard would eat them, he decided that it was better than to risk a long lecture on the sordidness of a career which made no provision for food.

  Bernard had hardly sat down before Terence said, ‘Cut last night, duckie. You say nothing about Sherman, who is bloody, and I’ll say nothing about Miss Mouse, whose tiny head, though I’m sure unbowed, is faintly bloody too.’

  ‘No, no, fair’s fair,’ said Bernard. ‘You can’t shoot your little bit of poison and then say the war’s over. Miss Mouse’s head – and I don’t think Miss Mouse is very good really – was very much bowed before the prospect of your assault, in fact shaking with terror.’

  ‘I,’ said Terence, ‘was profiting by long years of your tuition and practising kindness and compassion. I do it now like morning exercises or those beautiful thoughts which prevent American women from ever growing old. That’s what I was doing, so there was no need for little Quake-in-his-shoes to quake at all. And as for Miss Mouse, let’s face it, Bernard, mousy’s the word. Very nice for those who like a bit of homespun, or a nice bike ride out to see the Norman Church with Devonshire Tea thrown in on the way home, but mousy. All the same, when I say very nice I mean it, and I’m very glad for you, Bernard. You can’t do without a growing mind to play sandcastles with, and you’ve got one. So let’s have no more grumbling. I want all the details of the last stages of the Vardon Hall Campaign, especially the Oxford and Cambridge bits. I know the literary-theatre world end, but all that ruthless tweed-and-pipe career-pushing and Common Room camp is a closed book. So tell me all.’ Terence lounged elegantly against the mantelpiece, while Bernard talked, but he listened with avidity, as he did to the recounting of any manoeuvres involving personalities, saying occasionally, ‘That was a wily one,’ or ‘Grand danger de mort there, I should think.’ When Bernard came to an end, ‘God! they do sound bores,’ he remarked, ‘but it would be amusing to cope with, and I’m very glad you got your way.’

  While Terence washed up, Bernard looked round the room, engaging in a favourite pastime of reconstructing in exact detail the scenes of the past…. He was gazing thoughtfully at a papier mâché screen, when Terence reappeared.

  ‘Take a good look,’ he said; ‘it’s all but the last day in the old home.’ When Bernard turned round in surprise, he added, ‘Yes, I’m moving up to Hill Street.’

  Bernard could not speak for a moment, then he gulped out, ‘Sherman’s?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Terence, ‘it stinks, I know. I’ve thought about it every way, but I simply can’t afford to be faddy, Bernard.’

  ‘You never have been,’ said Bernard, ‘but you don’t have to make for the nearest sewer. Is it money, Terence?’

  ‘Thank you, no. I do as I do. But I’ve spiwed along on my own steam as far as I can go. Oh! I know I’ve got the right contacts in a way and God knows! I go where I wouldn’t have dreamed four years ago. And I can keep myself going with a book jacket here, the jewellery and shoes for the last scene in Lakmé and an article on how to make last year’s swimsuit look like Ava Gardner’s. By the way I wish your Elizabeth liked me better. It’s such a nuisance, because she could be so useful, and I think she’s rather a poppet, if she wasn’t quite so bright. And then, of course, I can usually manage a tart’s holiday at Cannes or Ischia
. But I’m twenty-seven, Bernard, and I must get settled. I know I could do the décor in a big way far better than all the old make-do-and-mends that are at it now, but the right people don’t know it. That’s where Sherman comes in.’

  ‘Sherman,’ said Bernard, ‘will get what he wants and do nothing at all.’

  ‘Of course,’ replied Terence, ‘I know that. But he has the people I need to know at his house, and he can’t very well stop me getting to know them. I’m very much by way of making my own terms, you know. Sherman’s been pressing me to go there far longer than he likes to press. Term one, by the way, includes my seeing anyone and everyone I want, when I want.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bernard sourly.

  ‘God, you are a bore when you get on your moral dignity like that. You profess friendship and then when you have to pay the slightest price for it – and it’s only prices that wound your dignity that are prices to you – you don’t care a damn how you throw it back in my face.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Bernard, ‘I just don’t think anyone who stays long at Sherman’s will be much worth knowing. I thought, at least, that you’d learnt that that sort of open ruthlessness and cruelty were not only disgusting, but also calculated to put people off.’

  ‘I know,’ answered Terence; ‘I’ve learnt a lot from you and I’m very grateful. Five years ago I could have been made into a boring, heartless climber whom everyone ran a mile from. But, thanks to you, I have grasped that a certain fundamental decency to others is necessary if one’s to get anywhere. Maybe I like it that way better anyhow – but I prefer to think of it in terms of utility.’ Terence stubbed out his cigarette angrily. ‘Oh God!’ he said, ‘now I’m doing the golden-hearted tart. The boredom of you, Bernard. As if I couldn’t stand up to Sherman’s second-rate little act of the Fairy Evil, if I haven’t been sucked down into your sticky well of high-minded treacle.’ He looked at his watch impatiently. ‘Come on. We must go. Evelyn’s got a new inferiority – people always being late for her parties.’