A Game of Consequences

by Shelley Smith

  To the left of the picture stood a high chest upon which reposed a small bunch of pink and white flowers in a silver pot, the flowers rendered with such exquisite delicacy that they seemed to hold light just as real flowers do; though when Tom peered closely at them they disintegrated into disorganised blobs and smears of paint, as if they had been dabbed on by a careless brush. Only when he moved back did they resolve again into white pinks and a cup-shaped rose and tiny star-shaped saxifrage and the trumpets of convolvulus.

  Beside the chest stood the central figure, of a short-legged man in a black cloak and a wide-brimmed black hat turned up on one side. He was standing facing the spectator, one knee bent in its high leather boot, in his hand a dog leash. Behind him sat with stiff forelegs an enormous yellow mastiff, with a head as ugly as the man’s. It was as tall as the man, which considering it was behind him was absurd. It gave the impression that the artist had clumsily disregarded the laws of perspective, and produced in the spectator a feeling of discomfort that is common to us all when the eye lights on some unnatural disproportion.

  But the dog was the clue. The dog, and the chest — which could not have been more than two and a half feet high and upon the top of which the man’s elbow wrapped in the folds of the black cloak was resting — the reason being that the man was a dwarf.

  It was at this point that Tom’s heart began to quicken its beat. ‘It can’t be,’ he told himself, ‘it can’t be, don’t be a fool.’ The blood leaped into his face and drained as suddenly away.

  The dwarf’s black habiliments accentuated the pallor of the square disproportionately large face with its thin lips and dark aggressive stare. Tom recognised him. He had seen that sad bitter ugly face before, he could not be mistaken. He even knew his name — which was a strange thing to know about an insignificant dwarf who had died about three hundred years ago. He was known as El Primo. El Primo, the chief of dwarfs at the court of Philip IV of Spain. And the artist who had bestowed on him this kind of immortality by recording his appearance for posterity was none other than Diego da Silva Velázquez, the one and only, the inimitable, the man who had been court painter to Philip IV for forty years; and the picture within the picture, of the fair-haired child in the red dress, would be a portrait, or a reflection in a mirror, of El Infante Don Carlos, heir to the Spanish throne.

  Tom was sure of it. As sure as he’d ever been of anything. The painter’s miraculous unique style was unmistakable. It was impossible to discover how Velázquez created his effects, because the closer one approached the painting the less apparent it became. However cautiously one advanced on it, just at the very moment when one thought to discover how the effect had been achieved, the silvery diffused light in which the solid objects appeared dissolved into meaningless daubs of coloured pigment, splashed on, as by a child. Yet one had only to retreat one step, and the loose smear of red once more delineated with exquisite precision the rim of an ear, a dribble of white paint became the edge of a lace collar. The mystery remained a mystery. It was like a conjuring trick, where the skill of the hand deceives the eye.

  Tom was tremendously excited by the discovery, though he could not have said why, unless it was the pleasure of being the one to find it. Certainly he did not foresee in it any benefit to himself. He just liked to go and look at it and study it and think about it. Like a young man watching every day for a certain lovely girl to pass, adoring her, dreaming of her: Tom was in love with the picture. Certainly one can be in love with an object as easily as with a person. And it can have the same effect of making one silent and abstracted, longing to boast of the beloved but held back by a strange secretiveness.

  Perhaps it was something more than that that prevented him from speaking of it even to his wife, some deep-seated ingrained habit of the trade to give nothing away.

  Paintings by this artist were of the order of Rembrandt and Vermeer. Perhaps of greater rarity. The last Velázquez to appear on the open market had reached the phenomenal figure of two million pounds, the highest figure ever obtained for a picture. It was just a small canvas, a head of El Morro, Velázquez’ Moorish servant; whereas this painting measured roughly 4 ft. X 6 ft. and was commensurably more important.

  How could anyone fail to be affected by the dizzying realisation that one had discovered something of that order? Who could help indulging secretly in the appallingly dangerous, dangerously seductive, dream of somehow obtaining possession of it?

  It was only a dream of course — an impossible dream. Yet everything that has ever been achieved — every invention, every discovery, every crime — has had its origin in that dreaming region of the mind that we call imagination. The idea of the picture sucked at the teat of Tom’s mind avidly, night and day.

  His fits of abstraction puzzled and perturbed Kate: it was so unlike the lively, gossiping, enthusiastic man she was accustomed to. It was strange to see him staring blankly at his favourite TV comedy show without once laughing or even breaking into a smile. He was like a person hypnotised. It made her uneasy.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘You’re so quiet.’

  ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t,’ she complained with a light laugh. ‘I’m not used to it. It makes me nervous to see you so lost to the world. You seem like a stranger.’

  ‘No, it’s the same old me.’ He leaned back, gazing at the ceiling, rubbing his fingers across his brow. ‘Never mind, I’ll cease and desist forthwith.’

  ‘What’s the problem? Can’t you tell me?’

  ‘What is it ever, love, but how to make some money?’

  THREE

  It was towards the end of March — when clumps of primroses lay at the foot of trees and hedges like pools of pale sunshine, crocuses pushed golden spears through the earth, the sharp yellow-green of daffodil buds were beginning to show through their brown tissue wrapping, and a blackbird sang ceaselessly in the crab-apple — that Tom answered the telephone to hear Jeremy’s lordly drawl announcing that they were arriving the following day with some friends and would he tell the women to make up beds for eight people.

  Tom said, ‘How about food?’

  ‘Oh that’s all right, we’ll bring down some hampers from Fortnums. Better get. the place warm though, they’ll be feeling cold, I expect.’

  Who were these mysterious guests who would be feeling the cold? Tom wondered curiously, as he helped Mesdames Slaughter and Savage drag in scuttles of coal and baskets of logs. Tom, whose idea of essential food differed somewhat from Mr. Fortnum’s, toddled off to the village to procure milk, bread, eggs, butter and coffee, some potatoes and a sirloin of beef. Eight people took a lot of feeding in his opinion.

  Picking up Kate from the station, Tom said: ‘Guess what. We’re going to have a house-party this weekend. The Eskdales are bringing down some friends. That ought to be fun. Make a change anyway.’

  ‘Not for us, surely. We’re only the caretakers.’

  ‘I wasn’t proposing to burst in on them uninvited, like a Thurber couple, crying: “We come from haunts of coot and hem!” I just thought it would be interesting and rather a pleasant change to see some other human beings walking around.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘I’m just a bit tired, that’s all. You know how wan I feel by this time of day.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  The Eskdales and their guests arrived; were to be seen occasionally plunging out of the french windows in ones or twos and disappearing into the grounds; were to be heard driving off in the Jaguar and a hired car in the evenings and returning about midnight with laughter and the usual slamming of doors; but otherwise remained anonymous.

  Once Tom happened to be in the big kitchen, pinned down (verbally) by Mrs. Slaughter who stayed on and ‘did’ the luncheons and was ferociously chopping vegetables, when Aurora came charging in with some instructions. At sight of Tom, she stopped and stared, as if she’d never seen him before.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said with
his charming smile.

  ‘Why, Jim, how nice to see you again!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m living next door, remember?’

  ‘Oh, my head! What must you think of me! And I owe you for all that food you laid on. Remind me to pay you, Jim. You and your wife must come in for a drink one evening. I’m dying to meet her. But things have been unbelievably hectic.’

  ‘Can I do anything to help?’

  ‘How kind of you. No, no, they’ll all be going back to Morocco in a few days, and then we’ll have a good get-together. I know Jerry would like that.’

  ‘So should we.’

  Later to Kate, he said:

  ‘Call me Jim: Aurora does. Or did, when I saw her today.’

  ‘Who’s the Roarer?’ Biddy asked.

  ‘The Roarer, my poppet, is the name of the lady who owns this house.’

  ‘Why’s she called the Roarer?’

  ‘I suppose because that’s her name,’ her father said with an amused glint.

  ‘You’re asking for trouble, you know,’ Kate muttered.

  Tom brushed that aside, preoccupied with the news he wished to impart to Kate, which was that it seemed to be quite on the cards that the Eskdales were not intending to leave yet awhile, because Madam had asked them in to drinks after the guests had gone. ‘I hope that doesn’t mean we’re going to be given the elbow,’ Tom said in a foreboding tone, pulling a face.

  ‘Why should it?’

  ‘If they’re going to be here themselves they won’t need anyone else to keep an eye on the place, will they?’

  ‘You don’t know how long they intend to stay.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m sure they wouldn’t turn us out before we’d found somewhere to go. I shall just have to make myself so lovable and indispensable to them that they won’t be able to part with me.’

  ‘Sycophant!’

  ‘Why not?’

  Whereupon Biddy inquisitively demanded to know what sycophant meant.

  *

  It was only a few days after that that Dinah and Biddy encountered the Roarer themselves.

  It was in the afternoon. Aurora was conducting the first prospective purchasers of the season hopefully round the property. They had been taken all over the house and now were being shown round the admirably-built red-brick stables with their green cupola and clock stopped for ever at twenty past eight, when a movement, a rustle in the hayloft, caught Aurora’s ear, followed by a scuffle and a stifled giggle.

  ‘Who’s that up there?’ she called in a loud sharp tone. Answer came there none: a profound stillness reigned. ‘Come down out of it this instant, d’you hear now, or by God I’ll come up and fetch you!’ she threatened, with her foot already on the first rung of the ladder. ‘Right you are!’ And up she went, through the hole in the floor where the chaff came down, expecting to find a village lout and his girl.

  She was taken aback to be confronted by half a dozen small girls, staring at her with round and scared eyes. She said angrily:

  ‘And who the hell gave you permission to come up here?’ The children looked at one another with furtive glances. ‘Well?’

  ‘Nobody,’ ventured Dinah in a very small voice.

  ‘What are you doing here then?’

  ‘Just — playing.’

  ‘You’re trespassing. Don’t you know I could call the police and have you put in prison? And if I ever catch any of you here again, I shall. And I’ll personally tan your backsides till you can’t sit down for a week. And now, clear out Come on, I’m waiting.’

  The children crept sheepishly down, afraid even to glance at her as they passed in case she gave them a cuff. Their little legs were shaking.

  ‘Wretched little village brats,’ they heard her saying to the other grown-ups, as they scampered away.

  ‘Hoo, no wonder she’s called The Roarer!’ exclaimed Dinah when they were out of earshot.

  ‘I don’t know why she was so cross,’ said Emmeline in a voice that shook. ‘We hadn’t done anything.’

  ‘I’m going to tell Daddy,’ Dinah announced from a full heart; and burst into tears the moment she saw him, flinging herself upon him and sobbing as though her heart would break.

  Tom cheered them up in his bracing manner and soon had them giggling. But inside he was seething. Who hurt his children struck Tom at his most vulnerable point, roused in him the tiger in their defence. If it had been anyone but Aurora he would have gone storming in and created a fine old scene himself. But he had to master his feelings and remember that Aurora had the power to kick them into the street if she chose to turn nasty. He put the incident out of his mind.

  As it happened it was all resolved satisfactorily when they were invited in for drinks after the visitors had left. Tom introduced his wife and then saw the surprise on Aurora’s face as she beheld the children. ‘Are these yours?’ she cried, tipping their faces towards her like pansies to the sun. ‘But why didn’t they tell me? Great sillies, aren’t you? Of course you can play up there whenever you like, if you promise not to tumble through the floor and break your bones,’ she said, smiling down upon them and caressing Dinah’s shining hair. ‘Now we must put that bad mistake right. What do little girls like, I wonder,’ she mused, opening the red lacquer Chinese cabinet and poking a finger into the small drawers inside. She produced a miniature silver pencil and a netsuke of a tiny house with a pine tree overhanging it carved out of an inch of walnut. Just the sort of small treasures to please small persons. After all the Roarer, they decided, was very nice.

  Dinah, an affectionate child, took a great shine to Jerry. Both children were convulsed with mirth to find that Daddy’s name should be Tom and his friend’s Jerry. The joke had to be explained to the Eskdales who had never seen the cat-and-mouse animated cartoon.

  ‘It’s just about the worst example of ruthless cruelty and violence to be seen on television and the children simply adore it,’ Kate said. ‘I sometimes wonder how they can look at it without bursting into tears or at least wincing; but it only makes them shriek with laughter. It bodes ill for their future.’

  ‘But, Mummy, it’s not real,’ Biddy said on a pitying note. Grownups could be surprisingly childish. Of course she wouldn’t have liked to see Tom, the cat, bashed clean through a brick wall leaving a cat-shaped hole behind him or flattened paper-thin by a steamroller or a red-hot iron, if they’d been real live animals. It wouldn’t have been at all the same.

  But the mouse, Jerry, could be fried and put into a sandwich and still pop out as good as new. Still less would she have liked to see her own father being slammed about and his neck pulled out and twisted round like a corkscrew by his friend if he were the cat, but it made her laugh to think of them being the cat and the mouse. Only a child could not put all these feelings into coherent words. Daddy understood. She could tell by his smile. Daddy always understood. Biddy clasped her mother’s hand.

  ‘We never intended to come here at all,’ Aurora was saying. ‘If it wasn’t for that wretched earthquake we’d still be in Morocco.’

  ‘Earthquake!’

  ‘Yes, we were staying with friends in Safed, you know.’

  ‘How frightful.’ Safed had been flattened to matchsticks a month ago. ‘It must have been a terrifying experience.’

  ‘Actually we were very lucky. Our friends’ house was completely destroyed. Which was why I brought them all back here. The least we could do, since we were staying with them. But at the time we were at a night-club and were hardly aware that anything was happening. One just staggered a bit, you know, and put it down to the drink. It was quite funny. But then nothing ever happens to me. I’ve been in train-accidents, a car crash, and now an earthquake. I seem to be one of those people like Idi Amin or Hitler, who can’t be killed. I bear a charmed life. “Stick with me,” I tell my friends, “and you’ll be okay.”’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Rory, it’s unlucky,’ her husband said.

  ‘Oh pooh! Knock wood,’ s
he said, rapping her forehead. ‘Time we all had another drink … Here’s to our friends! I was so thankful to see them go, which just shows what a skunk I am. We stayed with them for three months and enjoyed it all enormously, didn’t we, Jerry? But after only three weeks here I couldn’t wait to see the back of them. I’m a rotten hostess. I’m really only fit to run a pub where I can tell people to clear out at regular intervals. I’d like that.’

  ‘You do talk rot, darling. She does talk the most awful rot. You mustn’t pay any attention. She absolutely begged them to stay. But they would go, because they were anxious to see what could be salvaged from the ruins.’

  ‘Of course I begged them to stay; but I wanted them to go.’

  ‘Shall you be staying here for a while?’ Tom ventured.

  ‘Till the place is sold, I expect. It seems sensible. If I’m here I can keep after Ellis to put rather more effort into the action. Rashly we let the flat for a year to an American film director, for what seemed at the time an enticing figure — didn’t it, Jerry? — but now looks like a bag of peanuts. And this bloody place eats money. It’s a sort of oil-well in reverse: sucking it in instead of spewing it forth. I wish my poor brother had had the sense to make a will and leave it to somebody else instead of ruining me with it.’

  Tom said consolingly:

  ‘It’ll sell eventually. Everything sells in the end. God knows we thought our little house would never go, but it did in due course.’

  ‘That’s what I tell Jerry. Somewhere there’s someone looking for a place like this.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why,’ Jeremy said on a sardonic note.