‘Isn’t there something to fasten somewhere at the back?’
‘My hands are all clay and plaster. You’d better do it yourself. And draw that curtain,’ he replied.
But she opened her eyes wide. – ‘Why, what’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’ But it is love’s hypocrisy to ask like that what the matter is.
‘Aren’t you going to tell me how you like it? I was thinking of you when I chose it.’
His right foot gave him a twinge at which he winced. – ‘I think you’d do better to forget me for the present,’ he said between his teeth.
‘Why – John!’ She had stepped back, but she was still shining softly at him through her clothing. ‘Didn’t you want me to come today?’
‘Come whenever you like – ’ but again the twinge took him.
A blush as unannounced as that of a young girl came into her cheeks, and she turned abruptly away.
‘I shall send it back to the shop and tell them I don’t want it,’ she said, drawing the curtain. Her voice came from behind it. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what I’ve done. I’ve tried to do everything you say. I didn’t bring Mara because I know it worries you to have a lot of people about. I can’t think all this is necessary. Other people have work to do too.’
To have answered her would only have been to provoke further words, but now they came of themselves.
‘It’s all that thing you’re doing!’ He heard the rustle of tissue-paper and knew she was putting the frock back into its carton. ‘I’m going back to the shop straight away. It’s no good buying frocks for people who don’t look at them. And I thought we were friends again. I shall go where I’m wanted. I can’t believe all these competitors of yours are treating their wives like this.’
And in that the chances were that she was right, but the words that stuck with him long after she had gone were that it ‘was all that thing he was doing’.
Moulding as elaborate as that that his group would require was not his trade, but he had resolved that nothing was going to be done except under his own eye, and on the day when his clay went out of the studio he was at least able to rest his feet for a few hours. He did not trouble to change out of his blouse; he took a taxi to the moulder’s, which was no great distance away, and there, lying out on an improvised chair with his feet propped up on another, he watched the preparations for the wax. He half raised himself on one elbow when they brought in his model, his heart in his mouth for fear it should slip from the hands of the man who carried it. If anything should happen to it now! But nothing went amiss. The men knew their job better than he could teach it to them. While it was going forward there was little to look at, and there, in the moulder’s workshop, surrounded by claybins and buckets and trestles and a crowded graveyard of grimy saints and imps and gargoyles of all ages and sizes, again he fell off into a doze.
‘Looks just about all in if you ask me,’ commented an assistant whose hands and forearms dripped with plaster. ‘What he wants is somebody to look after him.’
‘He’s getting near the finish of it now.’
‘But he says he’s got to start on another job straight away.’
‘Says! He isn’t starting on any new job, not yet a bit he isn’t! I know all about them feet. I’ve had it.’
‘Yours was beer, my lad.’
‘And he’s been knocking ’em back a bit this last month and more. It beats me how he’s done his work with it all.’
‘He wouldn’t have done it without.’
‘But when they have to get stiffer and stiffer before you can get any kick out of them, that ain’t so good.’
‘Well . . . isn’t that mould about ready to come off?’ and the man with the plastered forearms dipped them in a bucket, wiped them on a piece of sacking, and proceeded to untie the rope that knotted the piece-mould firmly together.
The perfect wax that was delivered at Brydon’s studio a couple of days later was in colour a dull restful red, a boon to Brydon’s eyes after the hateful white of the plaster that, thank God, he had now looked on for the last time. But it was there only at a cost that brought his heart into his mouth every time he looked at the thing. He had not even been in the moulder’s shop when the all but fatal accident had happened. For without warning, as yet inexplicably, and through nobody’s fault or negligence, some portion of the inner roof of the workshop had waited till that very last moment, and then, with a rush of plaster and a splintering of thick glass, had come down in a thick cloud of dust. Mercifully the newly-made wax had been well out of harm’s way, but not so the gelatine mould within which it had lain and the plaster cast from which that mould had been made. These had lain deep under a barrowful of fallen débris. That – that there was now no means of replacement – was the thought that made him feel faint a dozen times a day. The premises were covered by insurance, but what would be the use of insurance to John Brydon if anything happened to that dull red waxen image now? He could only bow his head in gratitude that at least his wax had been spared. He must now guard it as he would have guarded his last hope of heaven, and it would have surprised those who thought they knew John Brydon as a man without beliefs if they could have come upon him a few minutes after he had been told what had happened – on his knees on his studio floor, not because of his throbbing feet this time, but committing his statue thenceforward into the charge of its own special angel, lest human or inanimate spite should pursue him still further.
After that came the hour when, looking at it from all angles, in all lights, with the help of slanting mirrors, from the sight-level of the turntable on which it stood, he saw that it was good. Few but he would ever know how good it was.
Others would see, a couple of years hence, under a high foreign sun, an uplifted shape against skyline and dome and palm, on a pedestal of specially quarried granite that revealed itself with every hour of the sun as if a flower opened and closed itself, but they would know nothing of that faithful service of a vision that in less than ten weeks had changed John Brydon from an erect and iron-framed man into a bent huddle, his feet swathed in dusters, longing now for nothing except that the rest should be quickly over. And now that by a miracle his wax was spared it would not be long. He had no fear that Cavani, born and inured to bronze, the last of a long line that had served fire and metal before him, would fail him. So now to the last leisurely details. He got out his penknife and reached for the oil-bottle.
And now that his wax was to die he had promised Mara that she should see it before it went. What about Winifred? Yes, Winifred too; had it not been she who had likened his toil to the labour of bearing a child in the flesh? It was this experience shared between them, and nothing that any young man from Kenya could claim a share in, that sent him to the telephone. She herself answered, and her voice was as musical as a harp. Had he really, really finished? Only a day or two more? Oh, she was glad and oh, how she was longing to see it! Then would he be coming home? Might she come up tomorrow. Should she bring Mara? The child had a slight cold, but . . . oh, very well. She would wrap her up well and put the hood of the car up. She was in bed – yes, she would say good night for him. And she hoped that he, too, would have a good sleep, for she was sure he had earned it. He heard the click as she hung up the receiver. He tried to remember what flowers would be out in his Surrey garden now.
3
His first question was about his daughter’s cold. Winifred answered lightly.
‘It’s nothing really, except that if you begin to get them at this time of the year they’re sometimes difficult to shake off. But that isn’t going to be the funeral, is it, darling?’
‘The funeral?’said John Brydon,not understanding,and she laughed.
‘All the way coming up she’s been asking about the funeral. Tell him, Mara.’
His daughter was looking at his wax. – ‘You said it had to die,’ she
said, and smiled.
‘It isn’t going to die here. It will go to the foundry for that. Cavani will see to the burying. How long has she had this cold?’
‘A couple of days. We went to a party at the Phillipsons’ and I think she caught a slight chill there. We can’t stay in the house all the time, just us two women,’ she laughed.
Mara was asking what the inscriptions on the base meant, for the stately thing now bore its stately name in three languages. One of these he could not read himself but he translated the others.
‘There are a lot of things to learn,’ said the child, and her father put his hand on her head.
‘There are. It’s all learning, and by the time you’ve learned it you’re almost too tired to want to do it. If only you could begin, Mara, young and fresh, knowing what I know – ’ and he sighed.
‘Can’t I if I’m taught?’
‘No. Only life can teach you, and by the time you’ve learned it you’re old. Was it a nice party at the Phillipsons?’
‘No,’ said the child, shortly, and then asked when Mr Cavani was going to bury the wax.
His wife had moved away and was looking at the other works that stood against the studio walls. She had seen them fifty times before, and it was difficult to see what her interest in them could be now. She paused before the Ixion, the Faun, other works, and then stood before a half-finished bust still in the clay. Apparently he had abandoned it, for it was hard and dry and fissured for lack of cloths and water. It was in fact the ‘next job’ the moulder’s assistant had spoken of.
‘Why,’ she exclaimed, stepping back, ‘that’s the Sir Henry, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he mumbled.
‘But what’s happened to it? Didn’t you cover it up? I thought it –’
‘I know,’ he muttered. ‘It was stupid of me. I’d simply so much on my mind I forgot all about it. I remembered it the other day. I shall start on it the moment I’ve finished this.’
‘Oh – ’ she said, and bit her lip and stopped.
But her tone was enough. He was to have been well paid for the Sir Henry, and at once, but he had set it aside, and for the past weeks she had been the main support of the Surrey end of their home.
‘What’s the date?’ she asked abruptly. ‘Will there be time to do another one?’
‘Just, if I start at once. What I want to know is all there, and Cavani will make a special effort with the bronze. There will be just time.’
But she had turned her back on the Sir Henry and had given herself an angry shake. She spoke with sudden asperity.
‘Well, there’s only one thing to be said about it.’
‘What’s that, Winifred?’ he asked, his heart sinking.
‘That I wish you’d told me sooner. I’m not a sculptor, but I could at least have poured an occasional jug of water over the thing. It seems to me that everything has had to stand aside for that one-in-a-thousand chance you’ve spent all these weeks over.’
‘Not one-in-a-thousand,’ he answered, suddenly more tired than he had been yet. ‘At the worst it’s one in a dozen. You may call it evens if you like. And I’m hoping for something better than that.’
‘Oh, I’ve no doubt the whole dozen of you are all hoping!’ she flashed at him with sudden scorn.
And it was as if she swept away his chance already. No dream-shape against domes and pediments for her, but only a profitable, ready-money job neglected and no time left now to do it in. Even propped up on crutches he would not be able to do it in the time. Once more she was right. She had stepped forward.
‘I really do think this is about the last straw, John,’ she said in a tremulous voice. ‘There are lots of things I’ve kept to myself because I didn’t want to upset you, but there was that bust, nearly finished and as good as paid for. How much was it? Two hundred and fifty guineas? Burying yourself week after week here I think you forget what the house and everything costs. I don’t get paid in hundreds of guineas. I pick it up a guinea or two at a time and then have to wait for it. If I’d thought for a moment you’d let the thing get into that state I’d have come up and made you finish it.’
‘I know,’ he said, passing his hand over his eyes. ‘It’s what I ought to have done. It was only fair to you. But there’s still time, and this won’t be in guineas or hundreds – it will be in thousands –’
At that she let her scorn have its way. It came out in a torrent.
‘Will be, he says! All he has to do is to shut himself up here, and never see anybody, never listen to a word of advice, but make himself a cripple and drink himself stupid and say it will be – !’
‘I know I had to drink,’ he answered in a low voice. ‘But I didn’t drink myself stupid. I drank myself something very different if you only knew. There aren’t many living sculptors whose work I don’t know, and I don’t think you’ll find one whose chances are much brighter than mine. That’s all I mean when I said “I will”. I hope and think it will.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’
His answer was so humble that it hardly seemed his. – ‘I shall still have done it and be glad.’
Suddenly the scorn left her voice. It is difficult to find a name for the thing that took its place. In it were mingled truth and falsity, the present deadlock of duty and affection, her despite of the wreck he had made of himself, her own exemplary patience, all his absence and denial. These could be seen in her face as warring ingredients can be seen fuming and annihilating one another in a test-tube. And that fragrance of her Surrey garden might cling about her, but it was no incense to that waxen thing on the stand that had come between them. What rubbish had he been telling Mara about the wax being the death, so that she talked in the car about funerals? At least it was not going to be Winifred Brydon’s death! It had made too much mischief already. The test-tube hissed and cracked as she spoke.
‘And you think it’s enough to say that even if it comes to nothing you’ll “have done it and be glad!” Who else is glad? Is Mara glad? Am I glad? Will the servants be glad if their wages aren’t paid? Mara and I, we’re just two people who’re told to stay away till you want us, and when you do it’s to run your errands and do your washing-up! And it’s different with Mara, because she’s still a child, but am I supposed to sit still like Penelope till you come back? And when you do come the place won’t be any better than a nursing-home! If those thousands were in your pocket now it wouldn’t be worth it! Just look at yourself in that glass! You tell me that if I’m good I shall have that to look at every time I come to the table! I’m not good! I’m not going to be good! Please yourself what you do! Take yourself and that thing you seem to think the world of –’
Crippled and in pain as he was he could almost certainly have stopped what came next. That he made no attempt to stop it showed how inconceivable it was to him that such a thing could be done. Nor perhaps was she herself entirely accountable. She may have told herself that if only out of instinct he would still seize her hand. But petulance, rage or whatever it was, out her hand shot. The wax stood loose and unfastened on its base, and a touch was enough. Even when he saw it totter he must have thought that some last-moment miracle would happen to save it. Then, too late, he came to violent life. He started forward. It was to die, but not that way! An age passed before he heard the dull, mile-away thud, followed by an appalling stillness. Scraping the edge of the turntable in its fall it hung for a moment over the edge of a chair-seat, and then finished its journey to the floor.
‘Mother! Look out!’
It was as well that she should do so now that the incredible thing had forced itself on his understanding. Yet he was delaying for a moment, as if to choose for himself the most delectable out of a thousand revenges. He was crouching forward almost double. The great hands at the ends of his half-extended arms were hooked to seize. His face was thrust forward, his teeth
were bared to the gums, and his nose was like the scythe on the axle of a battle-chariot. Then he sprang.
But how could a man attempt such a leap with feet as John Brydon’s were? He missed it at the very take-off. She and the child were at the door before he fell his length on the floor and lay there. After that a blackness descended on him.
He had no means of knowing whether it was day or night when at last he stirred again. His lights frequently burned the twenty-four hours through, and from where he lay no hint of daylight appeared beyond the studio blinds. But something in his head remained awake, for he was spared the anguish of remembering a little at a time. It came back to him instantaneously and whole, that half-checked push of her hand, the totter on the turntable, its disappearing over the edge, the impact on the floor. Without moving his head he knew exactly where the wreckage lay. But first things first. He must make sure of his own condition. Cautiously he tried one foot against the other to see how much they had suffered from that impossible leap he had attempted. He decided that they were not much worse than before. And all at once he found his brain working with extraordinary clearness. It directed him to the easiest way to his feet and to the telephone. Before he did anything else he must know the time and the day of the week, for how was he to know that he had not missed a day? But he had not. It was 10.32 p.m., Wednesday the fourteenth. Next he dialled a number, and almost immediately a voice replied from the other end. Yes, that was Dr Hood speaking. Come now, at once? A few more words and then a ‘Very good’; the doctor would be round in half an hour. John Brydon shuffled over to his couch, took off his blouse and the waistcoat underneath, and rolled up both his sleeves from his forearms. His brain was still working beautifully ahead, and he rolled up his sleeves for a very crafty reason. The doors had been so left that when the doctor came he could let himself in, and John Brydon had still twenty minutes or so to work out the details of his plan.
The Dead of Night Page 67