Honeybath's Haven (9 page)

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.

These two compulsive individuals together were a bit much. Honeybath saw that it would take more than jokes about Giotto's circle to haul Edwin back into a normal frame of mind, and that the next step must be to call in medical assistance. He was wondering how best to set about this when the door opened without ceremony and Mrs Plover came into the studio. Although Mrs Plover was not one professionally qualified to deal with mental disturbance she was at least not mentally disturbed herself. Honeybath inclined, therefore, to welcome her as an ally to whom a cordial greeting was due. But for the moment Mrs Plover ignored him, being more interested in Ambrose Prout. Prout, somewhat unfortunately, was down on his hands and knees peering into the depths of a cupboard; he no doubt imagined himself to have descried something promising hidden away in it.

‘Oho!' Mrs Plover said. She had placed her arms akimbo, like some stage version of herself in low comedy. ‘Nosey Parker, is it? I seen 'im at it afore, I 'ave.' Mrs Plover was addressing Prout, much as if under the influence of Melissa's third-person-singular approach to conversation. ‘Looking for what 'e can lay 'is 'ands on, is he?' She now did turn to Honeybath. ‘And taking adwantages on the poor afflicted gentleman for his own narsty ends, whatsomever they may be. Mr Ell 'e'd be better orf wiv 'is trollop, I'd say. Not that in 'is present state Mr Ell's fit to go to bed with the cat. But at least the poor girl is arfter no more than a five-pound note. You ought to be calling in the law, Mr Haich, and that's the short and the long of it.'

Prout, thus aspersed as one detected in petty larceny, addressed his accuser loudly as a silly bitch. Honeybath, finding his grave anxieties thus suddenly implicated with an episode of unseemly farce, did for a moment actually think of the police, although domestic
fracas
like the present were distinctly not of an order with which policemen care to deal. Nor, indeed, could he reasonably call an ambulance, unless Mrs Plover did something like picking up a chair and hitting Prout over the head. Edwin, it was true, had taken to soundlessly weeping again, as a man whom the world has finally overcome. But what that seemed to call for was a family doctor with a hypodermic or a swiftly acting pill. He had no idea whether the Lightfoots ran to anybody of the sort. So he had, for the moment, only his own authority to rely on. He bundled Mrs Plover (who had certainly turned up with the best intentions) out of the studio. He wrote the name and telephone number of his own doctor on a card, and instructed Prout to go and call him up at once, explaining himself as a relation of the afflicted man. Then he settled down (if it could be called that) to keep an eye on Edwin. For the thought had come to him that poor Edwin had arrived at a point at which he might do himself some mischief.

And this proved to be a professional opinion too. By that evening the distressed painter had withdrawn into a nursing home and was secure for a time. Honeybath was enormously relieved, and even found satisfaction in the circumstance that a nervous breakdown is a perfectly respectable misfortune with nothing unseemly about it. But a long-term problem remained. It was solved, or appeared to be solved, when Edwin was persuaded, after his convalescence, to take up Honeybath's place at Hanwell Court.

 

 

MYSTERY AT HANWELL COURT

 

 

 

 

Some two years after the foregoing section of our narrative concludes, Lady Munden (leaving her seaweed to sink or swim) went to London to spend a few days in the comfortable dwelling of an old school-friend, Lady Celia Clandon. Lady Munden, although a woman of strong character, was no more than the widow of a prosperous manufacturer, whereas Lady Celia was the spinster daughter of a person in an altogether more exalted rank of society. There was here a good English reason for Lady Munden's being distinctly under Lady Celia's thumb; and there was another – equally English and equally valid – in the circumstance that Lady Celia had been Captain of Lacrosse when the future Lady Munden held only a very uncertain place in the First Twelve.

But Lady Celia, although thus athletically distinguished, also took a keen interest (as became a member of the aristocracy) in Culture at large and in the Arts in particular. This being so, and the month being June, she naturally took her guest to the Annual Exhibition promoted by the Royal Academy in a building admirably sited for those visitors who, after adequate aesthetic delectation, like to recruit themselves by taking luncheon at Claridge's or the Ritz. Still a vigorous pedestrian, Lady Celia never flinched from doing the whole show, and she paraded Lady Munden through the galleries both great and small, not even omitting those minor ones that accommodate drawings, watercolour sketches, lithographs, and architectural performances which may or may not one day make the bold advance out of two dimensions into three. It was in these circumstances that Lady Munden, already in a condition of some fatigue, was suddenly confronted with herself in a pencil sketch facetiously entitled
Kelp, Sweet Kelp: Who buys my Pretty Kelp?
There she was, habited as a kind of flower-girl from a print such as might illustrate
The Cries of Old London
, and holding up in an enticing manner a large strand of the stuff known to the learned as belonging to the
Laminariaceae
.

Lady Munden was not amused. She was, in fact, outraged – and the more so because the reaction of her august friend took the form of far too audible mirth. As Lady Celia's laughter rang out (and laughter
does
ring out if scandalously released in Burlington House) Lady Munden consulted her catalogue and discovered that the perpetrator of the outrage was one Edwin Lightfoot RA. The name struck some sort of chord, and the letters after it told her that the impertinence had not been perpetrated by some stripling, some mere tadpole of the arts. Without pausing to consult her recollection further, however, she marched off to what she took to be the appropriate desk and demanded satisfaction at once. All she learnt was that she might buy the thing for a hundred guineas, and take possession of her property at the close of the Exhibition. Lady Celia then took her downstairs to the bar, and obliged her to consume a large gin and vermouth. Under the inspiration of this she was able to recall that the atrocious Lightfoot was an eccentric little man who had been most injudiciously admitted into residence at Hanwell Court a couple of years before.

Lady Munden had thoughts of her solicitor, who was to be found in Lincoln's Inn. But her solicitor was an unsatisfactory creature, grossly complacent before the machinations of her despicable trustees, and she decided that Brigadier Luxmoore was the more promising person to tackle. The Brigadier was at least a gentleman: it was the most obtrusive of his qualifications for holding down the job of running Hanwell Court. On the following morning Lady Munden cut short her sampling of the pleasures of the town and returned to her country retreat.

Brigadier Luxmore was all sympathy. He was also all for discretion. Mr Lightfoot, he explained, was a man of somewhat unstable temperament – she must have observed this – and Dr Michaelis judged it important that he should be encouraged to potter at activities which, it appeared, he had once pursued with quite reasonable success. Artists must be permitted a certain indulgence, must they not? But in future an eye would be kept, of course, on this particular creative urge on his part. In the meantime, and since it would clearly be disagreeable to Lady Munden to have any further concern in the matter, he, the Brigadier, would himself undertake to purchase the offensive object and destroy it out of hand as soon as it came into his possession. And no expense to Lady Munden herself would be involved. He was quite certain that his directors would approve any disbursement he would have to make.

A hundred guineas is a hundred guineas. Lady Munden was considerably mollified. She even undertook not to spread the scandalous story around. By this (although she didn't say so) she didn't mean that she would withhold the disgraceful episode from her more intimate friends. And in fact she told it to Colonel Dacre and the Misses Pinchon at bridge that evening. So by the following day this highly confidential intelligence was known (in every sort of distorted form) to almost everybody at Hanwell Court.

And at least in one direction it spread beyond that. Melissa Lightfoot, having tired of the parrot, had taken up something called Deep Meditation instead – practising it alike among a small group of enlightened persons and in the solitude of a comfortable service flat to which she had withdrawn just off Victoria Street. The discipline to which she was subjecting herself, however, didn't insulate her from the world and its diurnal concerns so exclusively as to prevent her keeping tabs on her husband. Why she found this necessary wasn't clear, and indeed conflicted with the frequent vehement assurances she offered her friends that seeing the back of Edwin had acted as a kind of Release into the Infinite. Be this as it may, Melissa maintained a regular correspondence with one of the Misses Pinchon (residents in Hanwell Court so dim that absolutely nothing need be chronicled about them). It was thus that she heard of her husband's prank at the expense of Lady Munden, and she immediately passed on the news to her brother. It was still Ambrose Prout's conviction that his brother-in-law was entirely mad. The sad truth of the matter (he would confide to his intimates) was that probably no artistic genius had gone madder since Nijinsky. But this didn't prevent Prout from taking a laudable interest in Edwin's life in retirement. Was he by any chance drawing or painting in the intervals of climbing up the curtains and chewing the carpet? It was perhaps in Prout's mind that there was at least a modest market for visionary performances by deranged professional artists. And even by amateurs, provided they were sufficiently famous in some other way. Here Nijinsky turned up again. When no longer able to dance a step he had produced weird pictures any example of which produced a good price nowadays.

Possibly with these thoughts in mind, Prout made yet another of his descents upon Charles Honeybath. They must both go down to Hanwell at once. Edwin's indiscretion might well have got him into ill-favour there, in which case immediate steps ought to be taken to smooth things out.

Honeybath, although distressed by the news, wasn't too keen on a joint expedition. On the occasion of the crisis in Royal Crescent Prout's comportment towards his brother-in-law had been distinctly censurable. And Edwin, he knew, no longer suffered Prout's society at all gladly; this had become clear from Edwin's conversation on several of the frequent occasions upon which Honeybath had run down to visit his old friend himself. It seemed probable that his company was being sought on this expedition merely to assist Prout in gaining admission to the presence of his alienated relative. But despite this suspicion, Honeybath acquiesced in the proposal. It interested him to know that Edwin was continuing to produce those strange sketches. As likenesses, at least, they must still be tiptop if the absurd Lady Munden had instantly recognized herself as the Seaweed Girl of Burlington House. Edwin still had some vitality as an artist. At the back of Honeybath's mind there even lay the thought that it might be up to him to get Edwin away from Hanwell and restored to the society of his peers. He had misgivings about his own wisdom in having been the instrument of dumping Edwin in that dubious haven in the first place.

When they arrived at Hanwell Court, however, the visit didn't work out in the manner proposed. Somewhat unexpectedly, and when they were moving smoothly up the drive in the establishment's Rolls, Prout suggested a change of plan. It might upset Edwin, he said, if the two of them presented themselves simultaneously. It might put him in mind of that last painful occasion upon which the three of them had been closeted together. So he would go first, and Honeybath would follow a little later. And if Edwin proved ‘awkward' Prout would get hold of the fellow Michaelis to restore order.

Honeybath decided not to object to this new arrangement, which he put down to a kind of jealousy or possessiveness in regard to Edwin which surfaced in Prout from time to time. Moreover he resented Prout's obstinate insistence, constantly evident in his chosen terminology, that Edwin was definitely off his head. Honeybath's own impression here was that (just as in the Flannel Foot business) it amused Edwin to play mad Hamlet. But there were those who took the view that it is precisely in pretending to be mad that the Prince of Denmark's true madness consists. This is a confused idea. But then the spectacle of random and intermittent scattiness is confusing.

On the more recent of his previous visits to Hanwell Court Honeybath had concluded that Edwin was in many ways well suited by the place. He undoubtedly appreciated its material comforts. He could be quite funny about the other inmates (he had taken over ‘inmates' from his friend) in a way that showed at least an occasional sharp awareness of them. This was much to the good – for hadn't solitude become one of Edwin's principal enemies? On the other hand he could still be very restless – to a degree, indeed, which Honeybath had gathered it required the arts of Dr Michaelis to cope with. Moreover, and this was something rather new, Edwin had become curiously secretive and wary. It was almost as if he had something to hide, and as if that something in itself obscurely puzzled him. Honeybath found all this difficult to assess, and it was perhaps behind his lurking feeling that, despite the fairly even tenor of things at Hanwell hitherto, it was perhaps his duty to get Edwin away. All in all, he was conscious of a need to bring his thoughts together before this fresh encounter. So it was quite contentedly that, just as on a previous occasion, he now went off on a short procrastinating stroll through the gardens. He even decided, this time, to go a little farther afield and explore the park as well.