Money from Holme

by Michael Innes

  ‘Extradition.’

  ‘But surely they wouldn’t extradite you for pinching his girl for a night? I gathered that was about the size of it.’

  ‘You don’t understand. He’d say it was something quite different and absolutely criminal. And he’d be sure to get his way with those rotten chaps in Whitehall. Ushirombo has been recognized, you see, and they’re sucking up to him like mad. Wamba is still in the Commonwealth, you know. Ushirombo will be coming to Prime Ministers’ Conferences, and so on. There’s no standing up against that.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ Cheel was not dissatisfied with this further elucidation. The more scared Holme was the better. ‘So, as far as that fellow Rumbelow is concerned, we must just hope for the best. By the way, what he was saying, needless to say, was mere offensive nonsense.’

  ‘You mean you didn’t write those things about him in that paper?’

  ‘Oh, yes – I wrote them, all right.’ Cheel gave his cackle of laughter. ‘You see, Rumbelow’s been almost totally a failure. He has no talent whatever.’

  ‘I’d have thought that to be a reason for leaving him alone, rather. I’d suppose you’d keep really rude remarks for somebody who had plenty of talent and was perversely abusing it.’

  ‘I think we’d better be getting back to business.’ Cheel saw no occasion for wasting time on pitiful notions like this. It was mysterious that so stupid a person as Sebastian Holme appeared to be should have the ability to paint like an angel – if angels did paint, in their off-moments from blowing trumpets and singing hymns. Holme’s talent, in fact, was just one more instance of the general injustice of things. However, Cheel was determined that, for once, there should be a bit of fair play. ‘And our business,’ he went on, ‘is to get you painting again. You feel you can’t, so to speak, begin from dot?’

  ‘Of course I can’t. I’m me. Surely that’s clear. I can only go on from where I left off. And, in present circumstances, I could only do that, you see, more or less for my own private amusement. Which ought to be all right, I suppose. Only it isn’t. It may be shameful, but I need acknowledgement and a public.’

  ‘Open and direct acknowledgement?’

  ‘Well, what I create, I have to give to the world. Something like that. And give as Sebastian Holme.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be content simply to go on painting Holmes, and stacking them against the wall?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. And anyway, I haven’t got a wall – or quite soon I shan’t have one. So that’s no good.’

  ‘I see.’ To Cheel’s mind, the discussion was now developing very well. ‘But must it be Holme? Why not take a new name, and carry on under it from just where you are?’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Holme gave his impatient snort. ‘Everybody would say that some unknown bloody man had turned up and was doing miserable, incompetent pastiches of the late Sebastian Holme. You yourself, for instance, Cheel. I can just see you making your nasty sort of jeering fun at the untalented mug’s expense.’

  ‘I can see all that.’ Cheel’s agreement was cheerful and immediate. ‘Now, let’s put it this way. You could do with quite a lot of money?’

  ‘Of course I could. Gregory’s is running out, as I told you. And one needs the beastly stuff all the time.’

  ‘And when you die you want to leave more Sebastian Holmes behind you?’

  ‘Just that. It’s lunacy, I suppose. But just that.’

  ‘There’s nothing simpler – nothing simpler than combining these two aims.’ Cheel cackled as Holme stared at him. ‘Only you won’t, in the main, be able, as you put it, to go on from where you are. You’ll have to step back a bit. Is my meaning clear?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Well, well!’ Cheel laughed tolerantly before this obtuseness. ‘You must paint those lost pictures over again. We’ve got a catalogue. We’ve got the dimensions. You must remember pretty well what they were like. Once they exist again – don’t you see? – their provenance will be unchallengeable.’

  ‘You’re crazy, Cheel. They were destroyed–’

  ‘And a good thing, too. It wouldn’t do if they began to turn up after you’d painted them all over again.’

  Holme got up and walked about the room. He seemed to be back in one of his phases of bewilderment.

  ‘You claim to be damned smart, and then you talk nonsense. Everybody knows they were destroyed.’

  ‘It’s that that’s nonsense, my dear chap. You know they were destroyed – or think you do. Braunkopf’s stupid catalogue says they were destroyed. But not everybody. Your wife doesn’t, for instance.’

  ‘That’s just part of Hedda’s being so awful.’

  ‘Well, it’s useful, all the same. And as she appears to believe that almost anybody she sets eyes on is in some conspiracy about the things, her persuasion is bound to spread. The rumour that perhaps some of the paintings weren’t destroyed – even that none of them was destroyed – will go round. Quietly, I hope. We don’t want any crude publicity. Just a whispered word on what people are saying will be precisely right when I start unloading your re-created masterpieces on eager collectors. The Wamba catalogue, with its titles and precise dimensions, will serve to authenticate the pictures, as I said. After that, the deals will be on the basis of No Questions Asked.’

  ‘But Hedda would be sure to hear of what’s going on. And she’d claim the lot.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have a hope. Not the way I’d fix it.’ Cheel radiated modest confidence. ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘I don’t want to see.’ Holme, still prowling, gave a sulky kick at Cheel’s waste-paper basket. ‘I don’t want to produce replicas of old stuff. That’s not what I call painting, at all.’

  ‘That’s not the way to think of it.’ Cheel maintained his tolerant and kindly note – although inwardly he was wondering whether he had already come to the moment at which it would be appropriate to turn on the heat. ‘You can give yourself, my dear chap, to the absorbing task of improving on every one of them. Even to improving the composition, within bounds, since it seems unlikely that the new paintings will ever be seen by anybody who has an informed memory of the old ones.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true.’ Holme scowled irresolutely. ‘I can see myself doing that – for a time. But there’s no future in it.’

  ‘That’s what you say about your present position – and quite rightly. But just paint those pictures again, and things will be different. It’s a matter of money, in the first place. Make some money – and, actually, you can make a small fortune – and you will be able to clear out to where you please. There must be some perfectly agreeable countries that don’t have extradition treaties, or whatever they’re called, with this vindictive chap Ushirombo. Or Ushirombo may be turfed out of Wamba.’

  ‘That’s true.’ For the first time, Holme brightened. ‘One day I suppose he may.’

  ‘Meantime, what we want is quite a little money – just to fix you up and get you going. I suppose I could look around for some. But probably what’s left in Gregory’s account will serve. To rent a studio, and so on.’

  ‘A studio?’ Having taken a further and more cheerful kick at the waste-paper basket, Holme glanced around him. ‘This place will do very well. It’s got a decent light, as I said.’

  ‘This place? Well, that would be fine.’ Cheel was careful to keep any note of rash triumph out of his voice. ‘Only it’s rather cramped quarters for two, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Not for two. For one.’ Holme gave his sudden grin. ‘You clear out, Cheel. You’ve got your own permanent place somewhere else – or so you said. You can get back there when the decorating’s finished.’

  ‘All that is rather indefinite.’ Cheel spoke with dignity. ‘It will be better–’

  ‘Does anybody ever come around this place – a woman to clean, or anything like that?’ Holme kicked a puff of dust out of the carpet. ‘I shouldn’t suppose so.’

  ‘My needs are very simple.’ Cheel maintaine
d the dignified note. ‘Nobody comes here – except an occasional man about the electricity.’ He considered. ‘And the rent,’ he added.

  ‘They wouldn’t be interested in whether it’s one or another face that greets them at the door?’

  ‘Probably not, if there’s a spot in cash to hand over.’

  ‘Good. You walk out, Cheel, and I walk in.’ Holme was displaying an unexpected power of rapid decision. ‘My needs are pretty simple too. For the moment’ – he glanced consideringly at Cheel – ‘they don’t go beyond a clean pair of sheets. But for the moment, too, you can do the coming and going. You can bring in the drink and the provisions, I mean, and also the necessary stuff from the colourman. Presumably you know enough to make a more or less intelligent job of that.’

  ‘It’s conceivable,’ Cheel said with irony. ‘But I think you’d better do that yourself, all the same.’

  ‘Not if you’re hankering after an early start, Cheel. I don’t stir from this room till I’ve grown that beard again.’

  ‘Very well. And that settles it.’

  ‘Not quite, Cheel. I paint the things. You market them. We’ve got to settle our terms.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ Cheel made an easy gesture. ‘The project’s on velvet, my dear chap. So we’re not likely to quarrel there.’

  ‘We’d better not.’ Holme gave Cheel a hard look.

  ‘We’d better not,’ Cheel said, and gave Holme a hard look back.

  Part Two

  13

  Cheel drew up by the kerb – neatly, considering that it was some time since he had driven a car. For more months than he cared to remember, indeed, he had been constrained to the indignity of travel by public conveyance, and it was satisfactory to return, in this small particular, to his proper social level. The beauty of simply hiring a car was that, on a short term view, you could afford to hire a rather grand one. The bill for this one would become oppressive, say, over a six months’ period. But by that time his circumstances, which had so notably improved over the past few weeks, would have improved very much further again. Meanwhile, he attributed his early successes in his present enterprise to driving up to significant appointments in a sober Rolls-Royce.

  And from a Rolls, too, one only had to raise a beckoning finger to have the paper-seller scurrying across the pavement. The fellow wasn’t going to get out of one a halfpenny more than he would get out of the shabbiest pedestrian in the street. He tumbled over himself, nevertheless. Cheel, observing this phenomenon now, regarded it with a double satisfaction. It was alike a just tribute to his own importance and an index of the thoroughly sound state of English society. It was possible, of course, that in the dim minds of those paper-vending persons there harboured atavistic memories of toffs, swells and gov’nors who tossed you a crown or a half-sovereign while you splashed happily in the mud from their hansom cab. Nobody could scatter that sort of largess nowadays; the grim fact of penal taxation forbade it. Nevertheless the hearts of newspaper boys still beat in the right place.

  Cheel completed his transaction with a threepenny bit. What had prompted this expenditure was a scrawled poster that had caught his eye as he drove. It read:

  USHIROMBO

  FOR

  LONDON

  Cheel scanned the front page. Yes, the news from Wamba was given some prominence. The Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations had invited Professor Ushirombo to pay a visit and he would almost certainly do so. The political stability of Wamba was now such that its Prime Minister could leave the government of the country with perfect confidence to his senior ministers. Informed circles in Wamba-Wamba inclined to the view that JUMBO – the terrorist organization of the fanatical ‘Emperor’ Mkaka – had virtually disintegrated. The standard of living was advancing rapidly. During his stay in London Professor Ushirombo would meet leading industrialists and discuss with them various plans for economic development. But it was also known that – as might be expected of one with his background in education – he was particularly anxious to arrange for cultural exchanges. The Wamba Male Choir was definitely coming to Britain. It was not impossible that the Wamba State Ballet might come as well.

  Cheel read this with satisfaction. He was all for Ushirombo settling in as chief boss of the Wamba for keeps. But the paper, it seemed, had more to say. The column ended with:

  Wamba-Wamba Diary. See p. 6.

  Glancing at his watch, Cheel made to drive on. Then he remembered that he was now among those by whom others expect to be kept waiting. So he turned to p. 6. That was another thing about sitting in a car like this. The police jolly well knew to what class (or perhaps it should be called income-group) one belonged. There was no unmannerly intrusion of helmeted heads or talk about No Waiting. Here again England showed itself to be as sound as a bell.

  Wamba-Wamba Diary ran to a couple of columns. The diarist was Our African Correspondent. He seemed to like the place very much. A sub-editor had emphasized its general jollity with appropriate captions. There was Wamba Women Go Gay, which was about a pilgrim from Detroit opening a Strip-Tease Club. There was Urgent Penal Reform, from which it appeared that Professor Ushirombo was building a large new prison. There was Top Raphael for Wamba World Fair? – announcing that the Professor had some thought of borrowing the Madonna di Foligno from the Pope. And there was Nijinsky Eclipsed, a stiffly statistical bit about just how high the male dancers of the Wamba State Ballet could leap vertically in the air – and this while continuing to wave their clubs and spears vigorously above their heads. Finally there was a paragraph about an Englishman called Wutherspoon who, although formerly a pillar of the old colonial order, had become a close personal friend of Professor Ushirombo. Wutherspoon, who had lately left Wamba for England and well-earned retirement, might be expected to be a mine of information about the new Member of the Commonwealth.

  Cheel finished Wamba-Wamba Diary in a spirit of tolerant amusement. It was all to the good that the outlandish place should thus be going on the map, since it would give collectors (the most moronic of mortals) a muzzy sense that, in investing in a chunk of Wamba jungle as painted by Sebastian Holme, they were at the same time in on the ground floor of an expanding economy. The corpulent man, for instance – to whom he had owed what champagne he got at the Holme Exhibition – the corpulent man had a mind that would move in precisely that way.

  But more corpulent men were needed. Cheel stuffed away his newspaper and – before letting his car glide imperceptibly into rapid motion – soberly considered this problem. His present mission was tied up with it.

  The governing fact, of course, was that things had been going remarkably well. Sebastian Holme was indeed painting like an angel – and, for that matter, like a demon into the bargain. There was something uncanny about the manner in which, in a dingy North London attic, he could conjure up before his inward eye the minute particularities of an exotic landscape, or the precise complementaries lurking in the shadow cast by some ebony savage. And the job had absorbed him from the first, and was continuing to absorb him. Contrary to Cheel’s expectations, Holme had been simply no trouble at all. It was true that he had at first considerably inconvenienced his discoverer by insisting on appropriating his living-quarters as he had. But now, of course, Cheel was able to do considerably better for himself. This was something that Holme might quite reasonably have felt as applying to himself too. Yet nothing of the sort had happened. The odd chap seemed perfectly content with the shabby attic. Indeed – so far as Cheel’s knowledge went – he hadn’t once ventured out of it. Although he had grown his beard again, he hadn’t again in any effective way become Gregory Holme, except in the matter of having written out and handed to Cheel a single cheque representing the balance of what had lain in Gregory’s account.

  This was all beautifully as it should be. Initially, indeed, Cheel had viewed it with some alarm. Holme (although, when visited, occasionally sulky or rude) gave the effect of having disappeared as a person altogether. What inhabited Cheel’s former domain wa
s no more than a preternaturally sensitive machine for turning stretches of canvas and tubes of paint into glowing evocations of things Cheel himself had never set eyes on. It was a set-up that appeared a little too good to be true, and at first Cheel had been apprehensively on his guard against the irruption, through this dedicated artist, of what might be called the diurnal man – the man, for instance, who had married Hedda, and who had enjoyed the favours of Professor Ushirombo’s lady after having locked up the Professor himself in a place of peculiar indignity. But for weeks there had been no sign of anything of the sort. Cheel’s anxieties had therefore abated. It looked as if money from Holme was just that.

  It was the painter’s blameless industry, indeed, that was creating a problem for Cheel now. Holme’s first two re-creatings of Wamba pictures – ‘Mourning Dance with Torches’ and ‘Fishing Cats at Pool’ – had been achieved with astonishing speed. And Cheel had managed to sell them equally promptly: hence his present prosperity. It was clear that the Wamba catalogue, together with a colourful story about how just two or three of the pictures listed in it had been saved, would provide a perfectly respectable provenance for more than a score of further efforts on Holme’s part. And moreover – provided the things were unloaded quietly enough as they became available – there was no reason why the sort of prices that had been obtained by Braunkopf should not be maintained and even surpassed.

  There was, however, a real problem. Cheel’s direct access either to individuals or to institutions likely to pay the right price for a Sebastian Holme was somewhat restricted – surprisingly so, he reflected, in the light of his acknowledged eminence as a critic. It was undeniable that the unfortunate misunderstanding over the Nicolaes de Staël still hung about the fringes of people’s minds. This was awkward in itself. So was the fact that he could point to no genuine connexion with Holme during what the world thought of as Holme’s lifetime. Although it was credible, therefore, that one or two of Holme’s supposedly destroyed pictures should have come his way, suspicion would almost certainly be aroused if it became known that he appeared to enjoy a corner in the things. Some years before, and purely as a matter of disinterested intellectual pursuit, he had made a rather careful study of the conditions and mechanics of the forger’s craft in the sphere of painting. It had been his conclusion that much the most tricky part of the business was the choosing of the channel or channels by which the products were fed into the market. Anything like a bottle-neck was dangerous; except in certain very special circumstances, the things should bear the appearance of coming from here, there and everywhere.