Three Sons (Timeless Classics Collection) Page 17

  ‘It was my mother in one way, I’d been brought up in a totally different sphere. In those days class mattered more than now, it was very important. I suppose I once did think of marrying him, then I met his mother, who was quite dreadful; his home, too, was frightful, and I was young, rather silly, and I let everything terrify me. Telling it, it sounds as if I was just a horrid little snob. I don’t think I was that really.’

  ‘Just scared?’

  ‘Yes, Luke, just scared.’

  ‘I don’t see why this is the end. He has been awfully ill before, and they’ve made him better.’

  ‘Have they?’ she asked, as the car turned down the lane into Dedbury.

  James came with them to the pre-view of the exhibition. This had not been anticipated and was a shock when he suggested it, for usually he kept a long way from his youngest son’s art exhibitions. Nobody could think of any way of stopping him. It was one of those heavy afternoons with thunder in the air, and James heavier than usual. The three of them went to the big galleries with the critics crowding in, and the well-dressed women with the too pretty faces, and the models with their rather queer looks and angular figures (John had made them so popular) going in at the turnstiles.

  Luke went straight to the third room where the picture was hanging. He had hoped so much that his father wouldn’t be here when he showed it to Carolyn; now he knew that he ought to have unveiled it to her in his room. But who would have supposed that James would butt in? Usually he kept so far away.

  ‘It’s a fine piece of work,’ said a critic who passed Luke on the stairs, ‘you ought to be proud of yourself,’ and he grinned.

  There was the picture with a little knot of people before it. Nobody could mistake Carolyn in her blue frock sitting under the tree, and the knot of daisies in her lap. The sun fell on the thin filigree chain which one hand fondled. Behind her was the wall, and above her the little shrine, a tender sentimental madonna at whose rose-shod feet blew the paleness of candleflame.

  ‘But what on earth does it all mean?’ asked James irritably, ‘and why have you brought that wall from the bottom of the garden to put it behind the beech tree? You know quite well that it doesn’t belong there?’

  ‘It’s symbolical,’ said Luke.

  ‘What on earth of? It’s a great pity that you young men don’t paint decent pictures like the ones that were painted when I was a boy. Pictures that really mean something.’

  Luke looked at his father coldly. ‘I’m sorry I’m not a Landseer, or a Marcus Stone,’ he said.

  ‘I was born years after both of these; I think that Monarch of the Glen is frightful, but if you must paint pictures why not shape yourself on Watts and Holman Hunt, and the big masters? Now a picture like Hope means something.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Carolyn very slowly indeed, ‘this picture means something too?’

  Luke knew now that she understood. She realised what was meant by the woman who sat under the trees with that ghost of her girlishness, which still lingered because it had never been expended. The dream hung above her, but the enclosing wall was far nearer. The wall hemmed her in, and she knew that she would never get to the other side of it, you could see that by her eyes.

  ‘I like it very much, darling; it’s quite your best work.’

  ‘Dear Mummy!’

  ‘All the same I wish we had seen it alone together for the first time, and not with all this crowd round us.’

  ‘So do I. I ought to have shown it you when it was in my room, but had the silly idea that this was the place where you ought to come face to face with it.’

  ‘Anyway I am sure that the critics will think it is awfully good.’

  She could thrill him, just as he was ashamed to admit that his father’s indignant look with the corners of the mouth drawn down, thrilled him too by its sheer annoyance. If his father had approved, then he would have known that the picture was bad!

  He said, ‘Mummy darling, do you see the filigree chain with the sunlight on it?’

  ‘Now don’t start asking me about that yet again.’

  ‘But I am asking.’

  ‘One of these days your curiosity will go too far. You’re a queer fellow, ’Ukef’ancis,’ and she laughed.

  They mingled with the crowd, looking at the other portraits, and the still-lifes, but all the time they knew that the only one that mattered was the woman sitting under a beech tree, with the dream of a madonna above her, and the brick wall surround.

  It was the day of Marty’s first night. Whilst he was rehearsing, Hilda had gone back to the Island, which was probably a very good idea, so Carolyn said. These days Marty got moody in rehearsal; he had outgrown the youthful times when his career did not harass him; to-day it did, and every production was more difficult, seeing that he demanded a higher standard of himself from it. Hollywood had introduced him to fits of temperament, and he was now developing a tendency to indulge them.

  ‘I shan’t be able to attend,’ said James at breakfast, ‘there is a legal dinner on. I hope to be a judge soon, and it would be disastrous to forgo to-night.’

  ‘But this is Marty’s big show?’

  ‘If he will have it on at a date when I cannot hope to attend, that is hardly my fault. I can’t come. You’ll be all right with Luke.’

  ‘Yes, of course, James.’

  But James had not finished. ‘I cannot think where my sons have got this three-arts complex from. Marty an actor, Luke with his pictures; after all, Adam is the only one with a respectable career.’

  ‘I know,’ she said slowly.

  James ought to be proud of his sons, and far prouder of Luke and Marty than of Adam. Marty was a very famous actor, and likely to go a good deal further. Luke’s latest picture had put him in a prominent position, arousing high praise from the people who had a shrewd idea about it. The trouble was that James could take no interest in any career that was not cut and dried; he lived by the examination principle degrees, and leverage into dead men’s shoes. He had so pruned himself that he could now dismiss the chance of any emotional crisis coming into his life. Aware of his own frailties, he had safeguarded himself with a brick surround, that being the only method that he knew, and it had grown stronger with the years. Although he had not realised it at the time, much of his better self had been shut into that hospital mortuary with the body of little Desmond. When he had closed the door on that mortuary it had closed it upon his living self, his own warmth of feeling, his own emotion.

  Now Carolyn knew he could never be himself again.

  Luke went out into the garden, lazing on a chaise longue. He wondered how old Marty felt about it, and if they would have to endure Hilda being in the box with them. He found Hilda difficult; a good sort, and all that, and he liked her poetry, though personally he had an inhibition about Swinburne; but Hilda looked so dim that it chafed his artistic senses. Penny was different; she looked superb, but was a fool!

  He lay here trying to fog out some idea of a picture for next year’s Academy. It had got to be something really worth while, but somehow this morning he was unable to concentrate. His head whirled with colour, with little suggestions of pictures, but he could not lay hold on to anything definite. He blew smoke rings up into the throngs of midges which circled above him. He watched the heat haze on the trees in the parkland, and the cows standing there, with their tails swishing round and their wet muzzles for ever chewing. Cows were restless animals; in spite of the way they always appeared to be sitting or lying still, some part of them was always on the move. He thought enquiringly of that filigree chain at his mother’s throat, a single carved line of fine gold which reached down inside her frock and was always there. He wondered why she laughed about it.

  One of the maids came out to him looking alarmed, and running a little, like a disturbed pullet in a hen yard. ‘Her ladyship’s had a telegram. Could you please come in to her, Mr. Luke?’

  He supposed that Marty’s play had been postponed, and that Marty had telephoned fo
r help. He went across the lawn, and as he entered the house suddenly became conscious of its ominous quietness. He crossed into the little room that Carolyn always used for her own, with the view of the wood at the fringe of the lawn, and the shadows sweeping back from the grass. She was sitting in an easy chair by the empty fireplace which had a great armful of flowers standing before it. He saw her suddenly as though she herself was a picture, with a huge still-life alongside her. Her face was entirely drained of colour. She looked at him.

  ‘The Sanatorium has telegraphed.’

  ‘Arthur’s worse?’

  ‘He had another haemorrhage in the night.’

  Luke went over to her, sitting on the arm of her chair, and the scent of the still-life picture in the hearth came to him; there were scabious, which smell of honey, the ashy wood-smoke perfume of chrysanthemums mingling with them, and the ragged heliotropes. ‘Darling, he must have been almost glad when it came to it. He was so tired.’

  ‘Yet he seemed to be so hopeful that day when we went down together.’

  ‘They all are; they all are; even I am,’ thought Luke helplessly, and then quickly, as if to give himself confidence, ‘But I’m half his age and must have twice his chance. He had it in both lungs and the bowel too, I have only this one ridiculous little patch.’ Optimism swelled up in him. There was no need to be scared, he personally would be bound to scrape through; they did such wonderful things these days.

  ‘Luke, it’s Marty’s first night. I can’t fail him. You must buoy me up. Don’t let me think! I have the feeling that Marty’ll need me.’

  ‘Of course you won’t fail Marty. What would you like to do?’

  ‘I’m going to take a sleeping tablet and get a little sleep this afternoon. I know it’s awfully dull for you, but could you stay with me, Luke?’

  Of course.

  So he sat in her room whilst she slept, the heavily induced sleep that merely passed the time and puts it between the event and the moment. He sat watching Carolyn lying still; once she turned, tossing a little, and he, going quickly over to her, saw that she had drawn the little filigree chain up into her hand and was turning it over and over. On the end of it was a carved key. He knew, of course, that this was the key he had always wanted to find, the key that opened the book bound in red suede which he had seen for the first time at Polprinth. She caressed it, muttering a few incoherent words, then turning, slept again.

  He woke her at five.

  ‘Oh Luke, I almost wish that I had never woken.’

  ‘Marty needs you, Mummy.’

  ‘You always say the right thing, don’t you, darling? You know me very well.’

  He wanted her to wear the silver frock with the paillettes, but she had already chosen the serenely smooth black one, and fastened two dead white camellias to the shoulder. He wished she wouldn’t, knowing that she associated the black frock with Arthur, and now Luke did not want her to associate anything with Arthur any more. It could do no good and would only harrow her more. The idea of mourning was a beastly one, he thought as they drove Londonwards.

  ‘I’ve got a flask with me, Mummy, you may need a good stiff one!’

  ‘No, I shan’t. I’m all right.’

  He hoped that Marty would be raddled with nerves even though he wasn’t that sort, but it would take Carolyn’s mind off her grief.

  It was a horrible journey, with her sitting looking grimly before her and hardly speaking. He dropped her at the theatre, put the car into the garage and came back again; Marty’s name was in blazing electric lights over the theatre; that spelt fame, he knew. He went up into the box, but found it empty, for neither Carolyn nor Hilda were there as yet, probably back stage. Then he heard the sound of the latch and saw Carolyn coming in.

  ‘Well, and how is the little hero feeling?’ asked Luke.

  ‘He’s more nervous than I’ve ever known him. Apparently something has happened to Hilda, and she hasn’t turned up yet. I told him there was an accident to the steamer, saw something about it in the paper, but, of course, she ought to be here. I wonder if she is coming really.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s sick of it all.’

  ‘She couldn’t be! He is a very great man and he needs her at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, she’ll turn up. I wouldn’t worry.’ He drew her forward. ‘Look, it’s a grand house. Everybody’s here. He’ll get over his nerves when he sees that.’

  ‘Usually he isn’t a bit nervous. I can’t think what has happened to him to-day.’ She sat there looking over the edge of the box at the stalls now filling up. Both of them were on edge. They watched Adam and his wife making their way to their seats. Luke prayed they would stay down there and not come pushing their way up here in the interval and worrying her even more. He looked down on them. ‘Makes you long for a penny squib full of ink,’ he said drily.

  Then the curtain rolled up and at the end of ten minutes Marty came on to the stage, completely cool, without a vestige of nerves. Once they saw him glance in the direction of their box, and had the feeling that he was seeking Hilda’s outline.

  ‘He’s worried that something’s gone wrong,’ said Carolyn, ‘she must still be down in the Island with her mother.’

  ‘I wonder. One thing is certain, she’s not likely to be down there with some man. Hilda isn’t the sort to find a boy friend.’

  When the final curtain fell there was no doubt at all about the success of the play. It was likely to be running this day next year, they knew it. Adam made signs that they had a supper appointment and couldn’t get up to the box to see his mother, and Luke nodded and felt thankful. It would be bad enough having Marty on their hands if Hilda really was missing (which he couldn’t believe); they didn’t want Adam and Penny as well.

  When the theatre cleared and the lights dimmed, they went back stage to find Marty. Everybody seemed to be in a state of relieved exhilaration; the tension was eased, they could breathe again. Marty wasn’t as quick as usual, generally he was extremely active and was out almost as soon as the curtain had fallen, but to-night he seemed to be slower. They went to have their supper in a little restaurant down the street where they usually went. A small table was reserved for them in an alcove with a rose-shaded lamp, pink carnations and the champagne on ice. But none of them had much appetite, for each was saddled by his own anxiety, Luke thinking for Carolyn, Carolyn for Arthur, Marty now seriously disturbed about Hilda’s absence. It would have been better if each had gone home, but they realised this too late. The strain was telling on Carolyn, who looked terribly tired. When he got back he would slip a secconal into her tea, and make sure that she slept. Marty was fortunately so full of his own personal anxiety that he could not see beyond himself and so discover that anybody else was having trouble. He hurried through the meal, saying that he was sure that Hilda would be waiting for him, and out of common decency he’d have to get back.

  They watched him march off towards his flat.

  ‘You know, she’s left him,’ said Luke, ‘I’m darned well sure of that now! She’s hopped it.’

  Looking back on it from Switzerland, Luke saw event upon event crowding in on those last few years. Arthur had left everything that he possessed to Carolyn, and the house at Polprinth also.

  ‘We’ll go down there some time together,’ she said.

  But when they did go to Polprinth again, a year had passed, bringing a strange sequence of circumstances with it. James had become a judge early in the spring, and was pompous over it. As a judge he said that he would not be able to take any liberties with life, though what liberties he had ever taken left them agape with surprise. Adam, expecting a baby at the end of the summer, and having already made a good deal of fuss about it, was suddenly sent off to a curacy in a North country mining district. This was the last thing that he wanted. It meant that Penelope had to cancel all her arrangements and go instead to her mother’s home, and Dedbury came in for the backwash of a lot of complainings on this score.

  Marty came down. The play
was going well, he had nothing to worry about there, but he and Hilda had made the final split. At first he had felt it acutely, so much so that he couldn’t talk about it, trying to draw some tattered shroud of silence across the corpse of his dead love.

  ‘I must say that is a refined way of putting it!’ commented Luke acidly.

  Having recovered from the first shock, Marty had decided that a divorce was the thing, trotting out the old clichés about a sharp cut with the surgeon’s knife, and a clean sweep of the lost ties. James was horrified; he said that such a step would be a calamity and affect his own personal advancement considerably. At first Hilda had refused to accede to any of Marty’s pleadings, but she had ultimately agreed to accept what Marty alluded to as ‘a little pleasant collusion’. This rendered James speechless, and only after Marty had returned to London did the family come in for the full blast of his fury.

  Some weeks later the truth came out. Marty had found a glamour girl at Denham; although only twenty-two, she had managed to lose one stodgy husband (who was a cad and had divorced her, not for Marty, as Luke thought, but for a really nasty bit of work, who couldn’t marry her when it came to it, because he had other commitments). There had also been an earlier marriage on her part when too young to know any better, but he had been got rid of too.

  ‘She seems to have all the luck with her husbands,’ said Luke.

  Afterwards his mother was worried about it. She did not fancy Marty’s marriage to the girl, aptly called Marigold, and thought that it was doomed to failure.

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ said Luke, ‘but his pendulum is swinging the other way, just as Adam’s did. Adam got over the difficult phase first, Marty didn’t! That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘I never thought Marty would be such a fool. He always seemed to be the sensible one.’

  ‘It looks to me as if all men are fools when it comes to the lady in the case,’ said Luke, ‘all save myself! I’m in love with the dearest girl in the world,’ and he kissed her lightly on the hair.

  ‘That’s all very well, Luke, but there have been moments when you’ve given me qualms. What about that gipsy creature? You made love to her, and the same time somebody stole all the hens out of the pen. That was a nice sort of girl to have hanging round!’