I snorted.
We retired to another room for dessert. Candlelight and port, and puerile legal anecdotes. I saw Tancred talking with the smooth lawyer, the younger Sleaven. He is certainly very close to that family.
I managed to get away at half past ten, exhausted.
3 July
I had a bad night after the dinner in the Temple. Severe pains on my way home in the taxi. The food? I wondered. But I knew it was not. When I got home I didn’t trouble Job. I looked into his room. He was asleep, on his back, his head on his arm, looking suspiciously innocent. He’s not often in the house. He’s usually in the studio annexe where he takes his friends.
At about midnight I began to feel seriously ill. The attack was bad, worse than ever before. I grew increasingly worried. I really must see Peter Webster. He’s an excellent doctor but when I consult him he gives me the impression that he rather enjoys my ailments. He says they’re always so interesting. But these attacks, I know now, are serious. However, I’m such a coward I don’t think I shall see him – not yet. Not until I must. I don’t want to know the worst, if the worst it is. It’s surely better not to know, not to have formal sentence pronounced. If these attacks signal the approaching end, it is better to go suddenly rather than waste away, poisoned by drugs – which, I understand, make your hair fall out – a humiliation I could not bear. I’d prefer to go suddenly rather than drift off into senility.
Looking back over my life, as I do now more and more frequently, I am struck by how pointless and useless it has been. I’ve made no stir in the world, even in the world of the collectors of ‘virtu’. Who will remember Francis Richmond for his two slight volumes, his minuscule success as a minor scholar and writer? Never.
4 July
I am feeling better today but I have resolved to take it more quietly for the rest of the summer. This last attack has given me a nasty turn. I ought to get away and fortuitously this afternoon I had a letter from Dolly Partiger in New York, inviting me to stay at Euston Farm at Oldhaven in New England in the first week in August. I think I shall go. I like Oldhaven, with its ‘Robber Baron’ palaces and their turn-of-the-century opulence – although the ‘cottages’, as they call the vast Edwardian mansions, have now mainly been turned into apartments. But not Euston Farm. That remains, an enclave outside the suburban quaintness of the town, an enchanting house, a little inland, set in proper grounds, unlike the meagre strips around the palaces nearer to the ocean. And I like Dolly. She’s kind – vulgar, of course, but hospitable in the way that only Americans are – and I like her house, which is comfortable in the way only American houses are. I expect she’ll have the usual stagy crowd down from New York, actors and songwriters and so on. They are always amusing and it might help Job to meet them. But I’m afraid he won’t come. He’s not very kind to me.
15 July
As I thought, Job won’t come to Oldhaven. He says he’ll be on tour. He has a small part in an Ayckbourn play. Silly boy!
Euston Farm. 6 August
I haven’t written this journal for several weeks for I had little to write about in London in July. I thought I should abandon the Season on account of my health, except for special occasions with special friends. So there has been little to record. Except that one day about a fortnight ago I had a curious sighting. It was lunchtime and I took myself to the Tate, and in a distant corner of the room with the Impressionists I saw Tancred and that gross Oscar Sleaven, once again engaged in intense conversation. Then I watched them part, Sleaven looking about him furtively as they wandered around separately, pretending to look at the pictures before they separately disappeared. How odd, I thought, to see Tancred at a gallery. Tancred was never a man for art or culture. On the other hand, a gallery or a museum is a convenient place for a discreet meeting. In my day it certainly was for lovers. But this was no lovers’ meeting. What can they be up to? The Minister and the industrialist talking so secretively?
Anyhow, here I am at Euston Farm, in my attractive room overlooking a meadow and I am enjoying my visit. I needed a change of scene, even if the scene here is a little too social for my present comfort. Clarissa Stoneley, by origin from Alabama and more recently the relict of Jimmy, the Duke of Midhurst’s younger brother, is here with her lover, a Latin who looks and probably is a gigolo from Rio, much younger than the ancient Clarissa who is certainly making an exhibition of herself. But either she doesn’t know it or doesn’t care. Apparently they are living in a suite at the Westbury in New York. The gigolo, incidentally, is barely polite to me.
None of Dolly’s usual Broadway/Los Angeles set in the party, so Job is missing nothing. Lester Chaffin arrived this morning. He’s a senator from one of the mid-west states and Dolly says he’s tipped to be the new Under-Secretary at Defence. She also told me, to my surprise, that she’s expecting Tancred tomorrow evening on his way home from some ministerial meeting in Washington. He’s only staying two days but Dolly is determined to take him to the ball at the Ivory House on Wednesday evening. I don’t know the Ivory House, the former home of the Van Mortens. It is said to be one of the marvels of Oldhaven. I shall be interested to see it decked out for a ball. At the beach I sit in my panama hat at a table under the awning amid a group of the elderly, listening to their gossip about the young while my companions drink innumerable vodkas on the rocks and I eat a tasteless salad and sip iced tea. There are some very leggy young wives, who wander into the bar after playing extremely energetic tennis, sweating and rubbing their noses – while their precocious children run around whining and getting under our feet. Clarissa says that when the parents have lunch, the children, even those aged eight or nine, meet behind the clubhouse and smoke marijuana! One young woman, a friend of Dolly’s who seemed to keep herself rather apart from the others, came and sat with us for a time. She’s a good-mannered, good-looking young woman. She told me she’s visiting an aunt who lives in Old-haven. She volunteered to get me another glass of iced tea, and went all the way to the bar and brought it to me. She tells me she has no husband. I like her.
8 August
I am completely done up from last evening. I had a bad attack, violent pain, and I was brought home soon after one o’clock by the young woman I had met at the beach in the afternoon. I was on the point, I thought, of death.
But the ball in that extraordinary, fin de siècle house had been a splendid spectacle. Enormous late-Victorian rooms, swathed in flowers specially flown from Colombia. Drink, of course, flowed but the young nowadays don’t seem to get as intoxicated as we did in my youth. Perhaps they are all on cocaine? Or heroin. The music, as always in the States, catchy and tuneful – until later in the evening when it became too noisy. I had a dance with Dolly, which was constantly interrupted by her irritating habit of greeting and embracing everyone on the dance floor. I was glad when she led me back to the table that our elderly group had commandeered. She then demanded that the band play ‘Hello, Dolly’ and danced it like a dervish with Clarissa’s gigolo, much to Clarissa’s annoyance. She made a complete exhibition of herself.
Tancred had arrived in the morning. He greeted me, as I would expect, rather coolly. At the ball he didn’t dance. He was unchanged, which was remarked upon critically. Dolly had to explain he’d flown straight from Washington and meetings with the administration, and had no dinner jacket. He did not come to the beach but spent most of the day talking with Chaffin. I suppose this was the reason he’d come; not to see Dolly, as she thought. I remembered what Kitty had said about Tancred’s drinking but I saw that he was drinking little. Kitty, I suppose, being catty – like all politicians.
At about half past midnight I had gone to the loo. There was a cord across the bottom of the great stairs in the hall to show that upstairs was out of bounds, but so taken was I by the magnificent vulgarity of this extraordinary house that I thought I’d like to see more of it. No one was about, so I unhooked the cord and went up the great staircase. I proceeded with great caution, in case any of the upstairs rooms wa
s occupied and I opened each door very quietly, so that I could peer inside. One, leading off the landing at the top of the stairs, opened on to a sitting room or library, very dimly lit with an open french window on to a veranda. I could smell the scent and indeed see the plumes of smoke from expensive Havanas and made out the backs of the heads of three men sitting and talking on the veranda. One of the voices I recognised. It was Tancred’s. I heard him saying that the Prime Minister, whom he had defended so stoutly in the House in May, was of course a complete fraud, very manipulative, playing off his ministers one against another. There followed some talk about him and then I heard an English voice, I thought it was, saying, ‘He’s had a mistress for years, someone in his constituency.’ Another said that the President should be careful. He shouldn’t treat the PM as too close a friend. He doesn’t, said an American voice. Tancred then went on to say he didn’t intend to stay long in politics. He needed money. He’d only gone into politics to get the chance of making some, either while he was a minister or after he’d left the Ministry through the connections he’d made while in government. The American voice then said quietly, ‘We must see what we can do.’
As this was said I thought of Tancred and Oscar Sleaven, but I heard a chair being pushed back on the veranda so I slipped out, closing the door silently, not feeling guilty at having eavesdropped but fearful in case I was discovered. Perhaps it was this anxiety that led to what followed next.
As I came down the stairs, I suddenly had a violent attack, piercing stabs of pain in the chest. I had to clutch the banister to prevent myself from falling. It was very hot and I began to pour with sweat. Somehow I managed to get down and I found a chair in one of the rooms off the dance floor. I was feeling very dizzy and faint, and was leaning forward, my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, when I heard a voice. I looked through my hands and saw kneeling in front of me the young woman I had met at the beach and who had brought me the iced tea. She asked if I was all right and I said yes but that I ought to go home. ‘I’m not drunk,’ I added.
‘Of course not,’ she replied and asked if she should fetch Mrs Partiger. I said no but I would be very grateful if she could help me call a taxi to take me back to Euston Farm.
‘I’ll take you,’ she replied. She took my arm, led me to the hall, sat me down and told the parking attendants to bring round her car. I suppose the servants and some of the guests who were in the hall thought I had drunk too much. Her car, when it came, was a small open tourer and the drive, with the cool air round my head, made me feel better. I said I was sorry to have taken her from the party but she said no, she was glad to leave. She said that as a child she’d often visited at Oldhaven but she preferred the winters when the place was empty. She remembered Christmases, with the houses and gardens decorated by lights and snow on the rocks. She said Dolly Partiger had been very kind to her when she was growing up. She knew most of the people at the dance but they were all much richer than she, married to Wall Street brokers. She said she lived in the Village in New York. She’d like to come to Europe next year to paint in London or Paris but she doubted she had the money.
When we got to Euston Farm she asked if she should help me to my room but I said no as I was feeling a little better. She helped me up the steps and at the front door she suddenly leant up and kissed me on the cheek. I was quite touched. I got to bed but didn’t sleep much. I thought of the young woman’s kindness. I hope she’s a good painter.
9 August
I am still not feeling at all well. I should never have gone to that dance. It was too much for me. Today I declined going with the others to the beach for lunch and stayed in my room. In the morning an elderly couple arrived, an ascetic, thin, silver-haired academic from Yale and his plump wife with legs the size of a piano. Professor and Mrs Something-or-other. He, I thought, rather sinister. Clarissa says he is Dolly’s latest, very imaginative in bed. I think Clarissa was still smarting from Dolly’s dance with her gigolo.
When the others were at the beach, the young woman called and came to my room. She asked how I was. Better, I replied and thanked her for her kindness. She said she’d like to paint me. ‘I have wanted to ever since I first saw you. You have such a distinguished head.’ I laughed. She stayed about an hour and kissed me again on the cheek when she left.
Tancred departed in the evening. I leave tomorrow, feeling more exhausted than when I came. The pains last evening were the worst I have experienced. I should not have left London. It’s been too much for me. I do believe that young woman, the painter, saved my life.
I shall be glad to get home for then I shall catch a glimpse of Job. But he never stays for long, just a night when he needs a bed. And, of course, money. I have grown very fond of the boy but he doesn’t care for me. Why should he?
Since the attack on the night of the ball I have had a premonition. I dread the journey home. When I am back in London – if I ever get back to London – I shall see my solicitor, Oliver Goodbody, about my will and put my affairs in order. I am very tired.
What an unimportant life I have led! No one will mourn me when I’m gone, no one will remember me. I shall have left not a mark on the life of a single soul. Nothing, nothing, nothing – to show that Francis Richmond ever existed.
Part Two
Chapter One
Godfrey Lacey paused at the entrance to the kitchen. He could see the back of his wife’s tousled blonde head. She was seated in a chair, feeding the baby. Once upon a time he would kiss the top of her head before he left in the morning. Not now. He was glad he didn’t have to now. She didn’t wash her hair as often as she used to. He called out, ‘I’m off.’ She said nothing, didn’t even look up, went on feeding the baby with a spoon and scraping the food from the sides of its mouth.
In the hall he pulled on his raincoat. This morning he had butterflies in his stomach – like the old days when he was practising at the Bar before going into court. Their first home had been a flat in Putney. Alice would come to the front door to see him off and wish him luck. That was during the early days, during the sex time. Now, in the terraced house in Battersea where they’d gone after the baby and he’d taken the job at the newspaper, she let him go without a word or a glance. Not that he minded. He wasn’t sure why he stayed with her. It wasn’t pity. She had only herself to blame. She’d chosen to do what she’d done with a fellow cost clerk where she worked. Not, of course, to have the baby. But that had been the result.
It was raining and putting up his umbrella he hurried down the few yards of garden path and walked rapidly to the bus stop.
He’d been up half the night marking and tagging the manuscript, preparing. Eight o’clock conference with the managing director at the office of the editor of the Sunday. When he’d got to bed in the small hours in his separate room in the small house, he’d hardly slept. Once he did, he’d dreamt of the characters he’d been reading about day and night for the past forty-eight hours.
He reached his office on the eighteenth floor in the tower block in Docklands at seven thirty. He went again through his speaking note. He’d prepared it as he had his briefs, those few, poorly marked briefs the clerk in chambers used to hand out, Legal Aid cases that wouldn’t be paid for months. Now, on the staff of the legal department at the newspaper, he didn’t have to worry so much about money. The cheque came in monthly, far more than he’d have earned if he’d stayed at the Bar.
He hadn’t really liked the Bar. He liked law, the solving of problems and the searching for precedent; but court had terrified him. So he’d taken the newspaper job, and settled for regular office work, drafting letters, dealing with complainants, negotiating personnel problems, scrutinising contracts, none of which aroused the dreadful flow of adrenalin and fear of appearing before a sarcastic judge or a magistrate with a long list and a short fuse.
Today, however, might be different. For today the conference was with the new editor of the Sunday, and the new editor, they said on the editorial floor, was abrasive, wi
th the language of the barrack room. Normally he’d have nothing to do with the editors. Dealing with them was the job of Harold Baines, the Legal Manager who’d hired him. Then, two weeks ago, Baines had had a stroke and been carted away in an ambulance. He would not be returning. Management was looking for a replacement. Godfrey knew he’d not be considered. He was too new, only three months into the job, and they’d be looking for someone with more ‘bottle’. Meanwhile the routine work in the legal department without a legal manager was heavy.
Three days ago Ralph Spenser, the Managing Director, had come to his office and dropped on to his desk a bundle of typescript nearly a foot high. ‘I want advice on whether this is safe to print,’ he said. ‘Urgent.’ Twenty-four hours later Spenser sent a message. Lacey was to give his opinion the following day at 8 a.m. in the office of the editor of the Sunday. During the day in his office and the night at home in the room next to where the baby was crying, Godfrey had been reading, marking pages and making a note.
At eight o’clock sharp he entered the Sunday editor’s office. Spenser was already there, in a chair in front of the editor’s desk. In his dark suit, he looked the accountant he was, as neat and sleek as ever, his dark hair smoothed back, his spectacles gleaming in the artificial light. The editor, even at this early hour, was smoking a small cigar. On the large desk was a bundle of typescript identical to that which Godfrey now balanced on his knee. He took a chair beside Spenser.
The Richmond Diary Page 2