Set in Stone (34 page)

By the cedar, I turned back to face the house. There it stood, in its solidity and grace; welcoming, in spite of all that had taken place there; so rooted, so perfectly proportioned, that it seemed a part of the landscape. In years to come, nothing would remain of the fears, the secrets, the torment of the lives lived here; visitors would see only the grace of design, the
skill of craftsmanship, the beauty of materials, how perfectly right and harmonious the house was in every detail.

Why could Mr Farrow not have been content with this: his vision, his creation, his gift to the future?

The evening is over. Waiters collect glasses, bottles and ashtrays; the gallery owner and I retreat to his office for a final drink together.

‘Well, I think we can call it a success!’ He sinks back into a padded chair. ‘Three good sales, and that American friend of mine is keen to give you a big commission. And I could sell
The Wild Girl
ten times over, if you’d only agree. You could name your price.’

I avoid his glance. ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘She’s not for sale. You know that. I shan’t change my mind, so there’s no point in discussing it.’

‘Very well.’ He holds out his hands in a gesture of
surrender. ‘I was expecting to see your wife this evening. Was she unable to come?’

‘She will, another day. She’s bringing the twins up, some time next week. It’ll be less crowded then, less overwhelming for the girls.’

‘Fine. I shall be pleased to see them. All well, I hope?’ He refills my glass, then pauses. ‘And your son . . . ?’

I nod. ‘Much the same.’

‘Sad. Sad,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Only, what? Twenty-five or so?’

‘Twenty-three,’ I say, automatically. ‘He’s with Marianne this week. I’ll bring him home when all this is over.’

‘Good, good.’ But the conversation has faltered into awkwardness; he attempts briskness, changing the subject. ‘Well! We must get together again soon. You’ll be busy, but let me know when you’re free. Come to dinner – I’ll invite Walter Hickman, too, if we can fit it in before he goes back to Texas . . .’

Weariness tugs at me. This has become the world I inhabit, but I feel sickened by it; by all of it. By the fawning clients, their acquisitiveness, their flocking like vultures to what they assume to be valuable, their lack of real appreciation, the critics who can inflate a reputation overnight and burst it just as quickly. In my war sketches and paintings, especially the line drawings, I found honesty; I found simplicity and truth. What, now, shall I do with that? How can I go back to carrying out commissions for wealthy patrons?

And I know that I have painted my last painting.
Given my last exhibition. There is no more left in me; or, at least, what
is
left in me is not this.

I will soon be back at Fourwinds, where it all began.

This time, I travel down from London by car. I have not been here for many months. Staverton, like every town in England, shows the neglect of four years of war, and the loss of many of its menfolk. I notice several shops that have closed down, or changed hands; a brand-new war memorial stands in the market square. Beyond the town, hedges are untrimmed, ditches clogged, gates sag unrepaired. The trees are already well into their autumn flush; rooks and wood-pigeons peck over the harvested land. Who has done the harvesting? Old men and boys, it must have been – for so many of the young men are now dead in France or Belgium, and listed on the new memorial. I have seen for myself. I have seen the plain wooden crosses stacked up in readiness before a battle. I have seen the stragglers return, and I have seen how many failed to return.

Tom – Tommy! I murmur his name aloud. That simple affectionate shortening has come to stand for the ordinary soldier, the volunteer, the average young man sent willingly or unwillingly to his fate. And therefore I must suppose it fitting that our own Tommy, like so many, is lost to us, as surely as if he lay in an unknown grave in the Picardy chalklands.

At the copse of trees by the rise in the lane, I turn left for Fourwinds. Tyres crunch chalk stones; as I drive
slowly, mindful of bumps and ruts, I cannot help but recall, as I always do, the first time I came here, all those years ago: as a young and impressionable man, walking towards the house and the people who would figure so largely in my life. So long ago, it seems now – before the war. People speak of
before the war
as if it belonged in a different world; and so it did.

The car swings through the high iron gates, and the house comes into view. As always, it works its spell on me. The ache of joy and loss, deep in my chest, almost stops me from breathing.

I park the car alongside two others; slowly I get out, and stand looking at the porch, the Gothic arch, the steps up, a rambling rose which bears scarlet hips. And above, the North Wind, calm and imperturbable, in its endless surveillance of the winds that blow over the house and fall and rise again. Fourwinds stands squarely in its landscape, mellowed now, and a home once more: home to Marianne and, officially, to Thomas, who owns it.

Here she is: Marianne, running down the porch steps. ‘Sam! You’re early!’

‘Not very. Am I?’

‘Then I’m late!’ We embrace warmly; it is more than two months since we have met. I am allowed this.

‘How is Charlotte? And the twins?’ asks Marianne. ‘And how are
you
?’

‘All very well, thank you. And you? There is no need to ask – you are glowing.’ I hold her at arm’s length. Her beauty hurts me as much as it ever did; I am dazzled by her, as I have been since our first
meeting. She is almost forty, but still full of girlish energy. Her hair, which to my regret she has cropped short in the modern fashion, is wound round with an Indian scarf; she wears a long, loose, printed garment with a paint-spattered apron over it; on her feet, work-manlike boots.

She laughs. ‘I was working. I’ll show you, in a bit. Tommy’s things are packed and ready – he’s down by the stables. Shall we go and find him? Or have coffee first?’

‘Oh, Tom first. I’ve missed him.’

From the morning room I hear voices, male and female, in conversation; a gramophone plays jazz piano.

‘Just a few artist friends,’ Marianne says, glancing over her shoulder. ‘You’ll meet them at lunch.’

We take the dusty track that leads down to the stables. There are pigeons on the tiled roof; the trees are turning, green-gold in the soft light; the paddock where Guardsman and Queen Bess used to graze is now occupied by a retired riding horse, the stout cob that pulls the chaise, and a donkey. There, by the railings, Tom sits in the grass, hunched and absorbed, his back to us. The pose, the intent interest in something on the ground, are childlike, but I am looking at a grown man. The maidservant who accompanies him is seated on a stool beneath a tree, her sewing on her lap. She is a good girl called Enid, who looks after Tom whenever he is here, and knows his ways.

‘He spends hours down here with the horses and the donkey,’ Marianne tells me. ‘He takes great delight
in feeding them and grooming them, talking to them in his funny way.’

‘Hello, Tommy!’ I call out loudly, so as not to startle him with an unexpected approach.

Slowly, laboriously, he pushed himself to his feet. He comes towards me with arms held out, a beaming smile on his face; he makes incoherent sounds of pleasure as I clasp him to me.

‘How are you, Tom? Enjoying this lovely day?’ I say, though he cannot answer. I greet Enid, too, and ask how she is; but at once Tom is impatient, grasping my hand and pulling me towards the place where he was sitting, by the rails. He has a wooden pastry-board there, and some pieces of clay; he has been making models. In case I don’t understand, he points in great excitement to the animals before us, the ponies and the donkey, then to the shaped clay on the board, and I see that he has fashioned all three. I admire them, although I cannot tell, in truth, which end of each figure is head, and which is tail.

‘Gideon showed him how to do that,’ Marianne explains. ‘It was a clever idea. It gives him such pleasure.’

‘Gideon has been here?’

She smiles. ‘Last week. He called in on his way back from your exhibition. He was very complimentary – he especially liked the pen drawings.’

I nod, for Gideon has told me this himself. I think of him in the Mayfair gallery – how he stood, how he looked and looked with complete attentiveness, how calmness pooled around him. Turning back to Tom,
I try to understand the sounds he makes; I listen keenly. The doctors have said that speech may return, or it may not. He spent many months in specialist hospitals, until I became quite uneasy at the range of treatments that were being tried on him. We, his family, agreed that we should prefer to have him with us: mainly with Charlotte and myself in Alfriston, where Juliana visits frequently; sometimes here at Fourwinds, his rightful home. We do our best to keep him comfortable and amused. He seems content, even happy, apart from on the isolated occasions when he cries and whimpers and cannot be consoled. His condition has come to be known as shell-shock, and we can only be thankful that it has not afflicted him with the perpetual agitation or even terror that I have seen in others. Tom’s shell-shock seems to have had the effect of obliterating all memory of trauma. In the face that looks eagerly into mine, I see a child’s lack of self-awareness or guile, and beneath that – slipped out of focus – the features of the handsome, alert young man he used to be.

He rescued two men injured in a trench raid, bringing them back to relative safety when a shell barrage opened up. He showed no regard for his personal safety, the citation said. He showed immense coolness under fire. I think of this often.

Marianne steps close to him, taking his arm. ‘Will you come indoors with us, Tommy?’ she asks, speaking slowly and clearly, as we all do when addressing Tom. He watches her mouth, following closely, with deliberate nods of his head; he shapes his lips in imitation
of hers. She repeats the question; he seems to understand, but makes a sound of protest and pulls away. He wants to carry on with his modelling.

‘I’ll stay with him here, Miss Farrow, and bring him up in time for lunch,’ says the girl.

We tell Tom that we will see him in half an hour, and walk back up towards the house.

‘Did you see Juley in London?’ Marianne asks.

‘I did; she came to the exhibition, and she’ll stay with us next week, to be with Tom.’

‘She’s as busy as ever, I suppose. It’s no use my inviting her to stay here, for she’ll never come.’

We both understand too well why Juliana has never once returned to Fourwinds.

‘No. But you must come to Alfriston,’ I tell her, ‘and we can all be together.’

‘That might not be till Christmas – I have so much to do here. But I’ll see Juley before then. Now, come and see my work!’

Her studio is on the second floor, the room that used to be mine. The door stands open, and the room is full of light. There is no furniture in it other than one chest of drawers; the fireplace is fronted by a huge vase of leaves and berries. The room smells of oil paint and turpentine. Canvases, stretched over their frames, are stacked against the walls. Only one is on view, on her easel: unfinished, I think, though it is hard to know.

‘What do you think?’

I stand and gaze at it. I don’t pretend to understand the way Marianne works, with her broad gashes
of colour and her vivid palette, so like a child’s painting. My tutor at the Slade would have said that she has no technique; and certainly she has forgotten or ignored all I ever taught her. But what she has is a kind of innocence; she sees to the heart of things. She has gone where I cannot follow; she is one of a new breed of artist, ignoring all the rules, caring nothing for tradition. This painting is of Tommy, slumped on a bench, smiling moon-faced. Behind him is a blur of leaves and blodged fruit that I suppose are apples. The naive style, capturing his look of puzzled sweetness, is perfectly right. It is almost too painful to look at, yet there is something wonderful in it.

‘It’s him,’ I say, hearing the catch in my voice.

‘Yes! Isn’t it? I’m rather pleased.’

I decide to be pleased, too. This is the Tom we have now. I study the painting for some minutes, then move to the open window and look down to the lake, thinking of the West Wind with its face hidden for ever – or so I hope – in the mud and the silt. I wonder if a nightingale still sings there, as she did that summer? Never, since, have I heard a nightingale without recalling that chilly morning, and the two figures – one stone, one bloated flesh – that lay beneath the surface. Although Ernest Farrow’s remains are in Staverton churchyard, I cannot help thinking that
here
is his grave, here is where his hopes and desires reached both their fulfilment and their end. Marianne never speaks of him, although her work includes a series of paintings of the lake in various lights and seasons, some of which make my flesh
pimple and my skin creep at the remembered touch of those soft, hidden, slimy things.

A movement to the left of my view catches my eye; Tom, guided by Enid, is plodding towards the house, stumbling across rough grass towards the stable track. ‘No,’ says Enid, her voice carrying up to us, ‘donkeys don’t have lunch.’

What would Ernest think if he could see his ambition thus realized, and thus thwarted? Here is his son, his heir, at Fourwinds. Yet it would be a bitter blow to Ernest to know that his son’s name is now Thomas Godwin, not Thomas Farrow; and that if Tom thinks of anyone as his father, it is me. And there will be no more Farrows to continue the name. Tommy will probably outlive his Uncle Robert; and Robert Farrow’s son James lies in a grave near Vimy Ridge.

‘Let’s go down,’ says Marianne. ‘The garden is so lovely still.’

She is a mayfly, darting from one thing to another. There is something elated about her; I guess that one of the artists staying here is her new lover, and she will soon tell me, if so. I do not want to call it jealousy, this renewal of an ache that I almost relish; it would be ungracious of me to be less than content with my lot, and shamefully disloyal to Charlotte, who understands me better than I understand myself. And yet . . . I cannot stop myself from remembering my youthful passion for Marianne. That moment by the lake – the moment I have kept, and painted, and pondered, and brooded over – is constantly before me, as a tableau. I was too cautious, too circumspect.
If I had followed my feelings – if I had spoken—