‘I’m grateful to you for explaining things,’ he therefore said. ‘And I’ll come to no final decision in a hurry.’
‘That is everything we could hope for, Mr Honeybath.’ Dr Michaelis was now composed – even smooth – again. ‘And, meanwhile, I wonder whether we might now go and hunt for that room with a good northern light? Even if you don’t want it yourself, you might have a fellow-artist to whom you would wish to recommend it. And I’d like you to be assured of the sincerity with which I speak when I say how much I’d like to see Hanwell being useful to a few distinguished artists, or writers, or the like, in their later years. Not that the distinction is all that important. It’s the lifetime’s dedication to the hard labour of art that counts with me.’
Honeybath listened, and again felt himself to have rather a liking for Michaelis. The man had made an honest and not ignoble little speech. So he allowed himself to be guided through the splendid building once more, and presently the appropriate quarters were found: a great high room with perfect lighting, and with attached to it a small and secluded sitting-room having a glorious view over the park and a distant line of downs – this and a bedroom and bathroom all firmly behind the occupant’s own front door. A more nearly perfect disposition of things for a solitary artist of advancing years it would have been hard to conceive. It failed to shake Honeybath, but at least it enabled him to be abundant in civil expressions. He ended by lunching in Hanwell Court along with those of the inmates opting for public refection at this time of day. People sat at their own small tables at a well-calculated remove each from the other. You could converse with a neighbour without shouting, or without unsociability you could treat yourself as being in solitude. The fare was excellent, and there was the unobtrusive adjuvant of a capital hock.
After this, Honeybath sought out Michaelis again, took a politely non-committal farewell, and got away. The notion that he might commend the place to somebody else didn’t again enter his head. But it was to do so fatefully – indeed, fatally – in the not distant future.
7
Edwin Lightfoot was back in England. He had been back in England – and in Royal Crescent, Holland Park – for some weeks before Honeybath heard of it. The news came to him, once more, through the agency of Lightfoot’s brother-in-law, Ambrose Prout. And Prout, as on a previous occasion, was extremely worried. He entered Honeybath’s studio one morning – he virtually broke in – with the plain object of spreading despondency and alarm. At first Honeybath simply resented the irruption. He had no sitter with him, it was true, but he was engaged on the tricky if not wholly unfamiliar task of transferring to a canvas the Robes and Star of the Order of the Garter as these august habiliments were disposed in front of him, draped upon a kind of tailor’s dummy adapted for the purpose. The Star was proving particularly awkward; he had set it at an oblique angle to the picture-plane, and it was refusing to look like the resplendent gewgaw it was.
‘Melissa’s attitude worries me,’ Prout said. ‘I feel she isn’t behaving well. She ought to go back to him – and see that he gets on with his work.’
‘What has happened to the flat?’
‘The lease has gone to a car-salesman, I believe.’
‘Well, Ambrose, one can’t expect Melissa to live in that attic studio. She’d feel it to be a come-down.’
‘Or a go-up.’ Prout seemed not to find his own witticism encouraging. ‘And the point is that Edwin can’t live there either. Not what could be called living. It’s chaotic. He hasn’t a clue.’
‘I rather feared it might be like that.’ Honeybath had abandoned his palette. ‘What about that Mrs Plover? I had a notion she might rally round once Melissa had departed. It’s only about Melissa she makes really dark remarks.’
‘And I don’t blame her.’ Prout offered this unbrotherly sentiment gloomily. ‘I got on to Mrs Plover, and she went in once or twice. But the other woman offended her.’
‘The other woman?’ There was astonishment in Honeybath’s voice. ‘You don’t mean to say that Edwin has set up with a mistress?’
‘Not exactly that. An occasional professional visitor, you might say. But it seems she and Mrs Plover happened to collide. Twice, I believe. And, to quote Mrs Plover, words passed.’
‘It’s not seemly – not at Edwin’s age.’ Honeybath was genuinely dismayed by this fresh evidence of disorderly living on the part of his old friend.
‘He can afford it. Edwin could afford a seraglio, if he had a mind to it.’
‘Well, that’s something. It had occurred to me to wonder whether he and Melissa were a bit hard up. Investments gone to pot, or something like that.’
‘Not a bit of it. It’s having money that has always been Edwin’s trouble, not lacking it. I’ve told you that before, Charles. It seduced him from honest labour when he was at the top of his form. And now, if he did lose his private income, it wouldn’t be possible to sell his pictures to seaside hotels.’ This dire verdict came from Prout with dark conviction. ‘As for that studio, the public health people are likely to be on about it at any time. It stinks.’
‘Good heavens!’
‘Half-empty cans of beer and half-empty bottles of milk. And the remains of kippers and potted shrimps.’ Prout shook his head. ‘Unbelievable, isn’t it? There was always something of the epicure about Edwin. He must suffer atrociously. And he could afford to dine where he chose every night of the week! Do you think he can have gone agoraphobic?’
‘No, I don’t. I’d suppose him simply to be dispirited and out of sorts.’ Honeybath judged it sensible to discount extravagant interpretations of his friend’s disarray. ‘Perhaps being alone in Italy wasn’t a success. When he is alone, by the way, do you think he goes in for that freakish nonsense of being somebody else? It was a burglar, you remember, at the time of his bust-up with Melissa.’
‘Edwin has gone up in the world since then. The last time I saw him, he had draped himself in a sheet and was declaring he was Praxiteles. Or it may have been Zeuxis. I forget.’
‘Zeuxis seems the more probable.’ Honeybath divested himself of the smock which he affected when painting. ‘At least it isn’t madness, his putting on those turns. It amused him when he was a student.’
‘That he once did it when sane doesn’t mean that he doesn’t now do it when dotty.’ Prout seemed determined to take the darkest view of his brother-in-law’s condition. ‘I just don’t know what we can do.’
‘We can go and see him now,’ Honeybath said. ‘Both of us. I’ll call a cab.’
This brisk resolution, had Prout known it, was the product of an unflattering estimate of his reliability as a witness which Honeybath had formed of him long ago. Indeed, Honeybath didn’t really care for Prout any more than he did for his irritating sister. Prout, so far as he knew, was tolerably honest in his business dealings, but he tended to see both persons and situations reflected in the somewhat distorting mirror of his own self-interest. He might well be representing Lightfoot’s condition as more hopeless than it was merely because the painter was no longer among his more profitable clients. Didn’t he always come back to Edwin’s idleness, or presumed idleness, as a point of grievance? Viewing Prout as he thus did, it was perhaps curious that Honeybath should have so promptly insisted on having his company on this visit to Lightfoot now. But it seemed to Honeybath that, all things considered, a reconciliation between Edwin and Melissa was the best thing to go for. It was likely, at least, to put a stop to the indignity of Edwin’s fatuously entangling himself with low women. (This had shocked Honeybath very much – offending a strain of puritanical feeling in him such as artists are not popularly supposed much to indulge.) And if he was to develop some plan for bringing Edwin and Melissa together, it would be sensible to involve Melissa’s brother from the start. This was why he was now bundling Prout into a taxi.
‘Not that he can have done all that little,’ Prout said, as soon as they moved off. ‘I’ve never quite believed it. It doesn’t make sense.’
&nbs
p; ‘Ambrose, just what are you talking about?’
‘Edwin’s golden decade, of course. I read some elderly critic calling it that the other day. Mind you, it was nearer five years than ten. There’s a word for a five-year period.’
‘A quinquennium. Or a lustre.’
‘That’s it – a lustre. And when a chap is at the peak of his performance like that, it’s almost certain he’ll work like mad. That’s what I mean by saying that the scarcity of early Lightfoots doesn’t make sense. There must be more of them. Somehow or other, they’ve gone underground.’
‘Mere speculation, Ambrose.’ Honeybath spoke rather shortly, having heard this jeremiad before. It was almost an obsession of Prout’s. ‘I was fairly intimate with Edwin in those days, and it’s my impression that he found achieving that handful of masterpieces totally exhausting. Even if he’d been right down on the breadline he couldn’t have done more of them. There may be one or two in somebody’s cold storage. It’s impossible to tell. But I just don’t believe in the theory of a whole cache of them. I’ve told you so before.’
‘Only a month ago I thought I’d run one to earth.’ Prout had paid no attention to these remarks. ‘An old woman called Gutermann-Seuss. You know the name?’
‘There was an expatriate German Kunsthändler called that, I remember. He lived in Brighton.’
‘Well, this was his widow – and living in Brighton. I had it on a most reliable grapevine that she possessed one of the things. And that she was uncommonly hard up.’
‘It sounded promising, no doubt.’
‘Certainly it did – particularly as she was reported as not particularly knowledgeable in her late husband’s line of business.’
‘So that there was a good chance of driving an outrageous bargain with the old soul?’ Prout wasn’t to be blamed, Honeybath supposed, for subscribing to ethical standards which had doubtless been the late Mr Gutermann-Seuss’ as well. But this talk was distasteful, all the same. ‘But it was a mare’s nest?’
‘Absolutely. What she possessed proved to be a worthless affair on which some crook had forged Edwin’s signature. Disgraceful, wouldn’t you say? It had sent me on a fool’s errand.’
‘Too bad, Ambrose.’ Honeybath, although inclined to share Prout’s indignation from a somewhat different point of view, managed to be amused. ‘I hope you didn’t tell Edwin. It might have upset him.’
‘Of course I didn’t. The whole subject of the lustre, or whatever it’s to be called, is tabu with him. He’s a most unreasonable man, even in his moments of sanity.’
‘Too bad that your sister married him. And we have to try to get some reasonableness into him now. But we shan’t do it by badgering him. So we’ll go easy with Edwin, Ambrose. Just see if you can manage a quietly sympathetic response to anything he has to say.’ Having delivered this admonition – or rebuke – Honeybath remained silent for the remainder of the journey to Holland Park. It hadn’t after all been a good idea, he told himself, to bring Ambrose Prout along. But he could hardly turn the fellow out of the taxi now.
They reached the former abode of the Lightfoots, and Honeybath paid the fare. They entered, and passed a prosperous-looking man coming down the stairs. It was probably the car-salesman, Honeybath thought. The lizard rather than the lion. They climbed to the studio, on the door of which Prout gave an ominously impatient knock. There was no bell. And there was no answer either. Prout pushed open the door, and they went in. The place did smell. This phenomenon seemed to deliver a clear message to Honeybath. Sympathy, yes. But action as well.
The first objects Honeybath’s eye fell upon were a canvas on the easel and a palette perched on a high stool near by. Edwin had been at work. Honeybath took a second look at the canvas, and felt something like a stab of pain. No good painter had produced anything so pitiful as this since the final degeneration of Utrillo. And Edwin had never been a drunkard, let alone a drug addict. Something had recently gone very far wrong.
What had gone wrong was Edwin himself, whether in mind or body. Edwin was sitting in a corner of the studio. He was sitting on the floor. It was an unnecessary posture, since the bleak place did run to two or three reasonably serviceable-looking chairs. Edwin sat on the floor, and looked from Honeybath to Prout and from Prout to Honeybath. But he didn’t speak. He wasn’t able to speak, since he was fully occupied in soundlessly weeping.
‘Good God, the man’s mad!’ Prout cried out. ‘I knew it would happen, and here it is. Clean out of his mind.’
‘Ambrose, don’t be a fool.’ Prout, Honeybath saw, was as terrified as if he had never seen emotional distress before. But this by no means excused the indecency of his reaction. ‘Put a kettle on that gas ring, and see if you can make some tea. Edwin, my dear man, get up and come and sit here by the window. There are things to talk about. You’re not at all well, and we must get you right again.’
‘I can’t do anything. I can’t do anything at all!’ The dejected Lightfoot had got to his feet unsteadily. He pointed towards the easel. ‘Look at it,’ he said.
‘It’s what I’ve just done, and we can both give it a rest.’ As he said this Honeybath lifted the canvas from the easel, carried it to the far end of the studio, and dumped it without ceremony behind a tattered Japanese screen. His return route took him past the big table on which Lightfoot kept his drawing-board and a litter of pencils, charcoal and chalks. Lying on it were a couple of the strongly accented portrait-sketches of men that Honeybath had noticed on his last visit. These were again wet-paper affairs. And the paper was wet. The sketches were quite new – and were masterly in their kind.
‘You’ve got yourself wrong, Edwin,’ Honeybath said. He spoke as if to one entirely composed, although in fact Lightfoot could have been described as still blubbering. ‘You think you’ve lost everything, and in fact you’re only a bit browned off on oils. Inside every malerisch artist, you know, there’s a linear one screaming to be let out. And you’re giving yours a chance in those portrait heads. They’re tiptop.’
‘There’s no tea,’ Prout said.
‘Then go out and buy some, Ambrose. And a bottle of milk and a packet of cigarettes. Bestir yourself, man.’ Honeybath spoke with brisk command. If he didn’t clear up this mess, nobody else would.
‘Not true. Everything gone. I can’t even draw.’ These assertions came from Lightfoot punctuated by distressing snivels. It was useless to blink the fact that he was in a most abject state.
‘Come over here, Edwin.’ Honeybath had remained beside the table, on which he was now securing with drawing-pins a large sheet of cartridge-paper. ‘Giotto’s circle,’ he said, as Lightfoot shambled up. ‘You remember, Edwin? I could beat you sometimes, but not often. Here goes.’ He picked up a crayon, and with a single sweep of his wrist (the uninjured wrist) contrived a very tolerable approximation to a circle some ten inches in diameter. ‘Next boy,’ he said.
Lightfoot produced one large sniff, took the crayon, and obediently drew his circle. It was a perfect circle. A pair of compasses couldn’t have faulted it.
‘You win,’ Honeybath said. ‘So you can draw, can’t you?’
‘So I can.’ Lightfoot sounded surprised but entirely convinced. He appeared so satisfied for the moment, indeed, that Honeybath was taken aback. The little demonstration just concluded hadn’t really all that to do with ‘drawing’ as an artist understands the term. But he remembered that Edwin had always been a curiously suggestible type. He would believe what he was confidently told about himself, although the belief didn’t always stick. Even when he was kidding himself he was Flannel Foot or Zeuxis something of the same disposition must be at work. Honeybath was not sanguine enough to suppose that his primitive stroke of therapy had effected much. But at least Edwin now sat down, and didn’t again fall to weeping. And when Prout returned with a bottle of milk and a packet of tea he watched the production of a beverage from these simple constituents with a kind of quiescent puzzled respect.
Honeybath had to wash some cups
. There was no denying that the studio was in a most disgusting mess. Edwin had obviously persuaded himself – or been injudiciously persuaded by others – that he couldn’t do a damn thing in a domestic way, and not a damn thing was he going to do. But it was clear that the chaos around him gave him no emotional satisfaction even of the most perverse sort. He was perfectly miserable before the spectacle of the squalor he had himself created. So here was an absolute datum – and one Honeybath had really acknowledged already. There was no future for Edwin in this confounded place.
Prout didn’t contribute to any achieving of an atmosphere of repose. Having made the tea, he was prowling restlessly here and there, stirring up the dust and making disgusted noises when he trammelled his fingers in cobweb. He even opened the deep cupboards that ran under the eaves and peered inside, possibly in his obsessive pursuit of vanished Lightfoot masterpieces. This behaviour presently unsettled Lightfoot in a new way. He got to his feet again and began himself to wander round. It wasn’t aimlessly, although he was in fact making efforts that it should appear so. Honeybath, puzzled at first, became aware that there were half a dozen objects in the studio – a door-knob, a mackintosh hanging on a peg, an empty biscuit tin and the like – which Edwin was under some constraint to touch in a set order. He was trying now to achieve this without detection, and the furtive effect thus produced was at once pathetic and embarrassing. Edwin might have been a pickpocket, edging his way warily towards a prospect. Honeybath would rather have had him wholeheartedly a burglar again. But it was clear that Flannel Foot had vanished below Edwin’s imaginative horizon, probably for keeps.
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