‘Cheel did not, indeed, as you have kindly done, suggest that I am dead. His preferred word is “moribund”. And works to which I have given many years of honest application – and to which, although of advanced age, I must of necessity give as many more as are granted to me–your friend describes as dotages unredeemed even by the genuine pathos of waning powers. What he has printed, in fact, is not criticism but insult.’
‘Dear me,’ Cheel said. ‘Quite shocking. I shall suggest a letter of apology. Would you like me to call a taxi?’
‘I should not accept an apology. I consider an apology valid only when it passes between gentlemen.’
‘Quite so. I see your point.’ Cheel had managed to reach the door. He was now courteously holding it open. ‘You might consider a libel action, I suppose. Although such things are always tricky – and expensive.’
‘As it happens, I am not a litigant. I am a duellist.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Cheel had jumped at these incredible words.
‘I remarked, sir, that I am not a litigant but a duellist. I would have the person Cheel informed that, should he to my knowledge offer me the shadow of a further impertinence on the occasion of the exhibition of my new designs, I will call him to account. Should he decline such a challenge’ – and Rumbelow tossed the newspaper on the floor and gave a flourish with his cane – ‘he may expect a thrashing. Be so good as to tell him so.’ Rumbelow strode to the door. Then he paused, turned round, and took another long look at Holme. ‘As for this young man,’ he said, ‘I am disposed to wish him better company. He seems familiar to me, as I said. I hope he is not quite so foolish as the few remarks he has offered would appear to suggest. Good afternoon to you both.’
The door banged. The outrageous old person was gone.
‘That was a pretty narrow shave, wasn’t it?’ Sebastian Holme said, as Rumbelow’s footsteps mercifully faded.
‘I should have been sorry if he had ventured upon violence. He’s an elderly man, and restraining him would have been painful.’ Cheel spoke with dignity. ‘But I can’t say I feel I’ve escaped something.’
‘Oh, you!’ Holme offered this with an indignant snort. ‘I was thinking of myself. There was a point at which it almost looked as if the chap was going to recognize me.’
‘Did you recognize
him
? Are you conscious of ever having seen him before?’
‘Well, yes –I rather feel I am. I couldn’t have put a name to him, but I do have a notion we may have met.’
‘You’re sure he
didn’t
recognize you?’
‘How can I tell?’ Holme was impatient. ‘Even if he didn’t, he may suddenly remember later on. In that case, there will be the devil to pay. I’ll have to run for it again – if I don’t want Ushirombo to get me.’
‘I’m not very clear about just that.’ Cheel sat down on a contraption that turned at night into a not very satisfactory bed. He felt extremely tired. All day he appeared to have been battling with irrational, violent and disagreeable people. If nothing were to come of all this harassment, he would feel very ill-used indeed. ‘Ushirombo and his revolution are thousands of miles away. How can he really get you, now that you’ve shown him a clean pair of heels?’
‘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 maintained 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.
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.