Curtain Call Page 11

  Later, as Tom was about to leave for the day, he stopped at Dearden’s office and enquired about their famous customer. ‘Erskine? He comes in now and again. He bought one of those Bevan lithographs.’ Tom nodded, regretting his earlier hesitancy with renewed anguish – he could have held his own in a conversation about Bevan. ‘Matter of fact,’ continued the manager, unaware of the favour he was bestowing, ‘he asked for it to be delivered to his flat. Tomorrow morning?’

  ‘First thing,’ said Tom, his heart dancing.

  The cab had arrived at Wapping High Street, where Tom got out. He had been living in rooms above a tobacconist’s whose window display seemed not to have changed since 1918. The rent was cheap, probably with good reason. He was lying in bed one night recently when he felt something cold and scratchy ghost across his face. He sat bolt upright and turned on the light: there, on his pillow, sat a grey mouse, twitching from its recent exercise. He knew that the shop downstairs was often beleaguered by mice, but they had not infiltrated his own quarters before. Clearly this one had decided to move up in the world. He had mentioned it the next morning to his elderly landlord, who gave his head a mournful shake and said, ‘They get everywhere. It’ll be rats next.’ Tom, impressed by his fatalistic tone, had made no further complaint.

  In the tiny kitchen he shared with another lodger he opened a tin of soup and tipped it into a pan, then watched it warm over the gas ring. He was still thinking about his first encounter with Jimmy. He had arrived at his Bloomsbury mansion block that morning bright and early – too early. The porter had directed him to the first floor, but Tom’s respectful tap at the door had met no reply. After a louder knock also went unanswered he pressed the bell, which he could hear buzz within. Another long pause. Convinced that the owner was not at home he was about to withdraw when he heard a shuffling step followed by an irked ratcheting of a safety lock – and the door swung open. Jimmy stood there in a purple-and-green paisley dressing gown, his meagre strands of hair in disarray and his expression crumpled in sullen fatigue.

  ‘I do not take kindly to being roused before eleven o’clock. And I am not at home to bailiffs at any –’

  ‘Sorry. I’m just here with your, er, Bevan . . .’ Tom held up the packaged print in hopeful mollification. Jimmy frowned at him, bemused.

  ‘Ah . . . You’d better come in.’

  Tom passed down a long hallway into the living room, noting the cream carpets and the inky-blue wallpaper and wondering if those colours would have been better suited the other way round. His eye was irresistibly drawn to the wind-up gramophone and its flamboyant brass horn; all it needed was a small fox terrier cocking an ear. It was difficult to see where the new acquisition might be accommodated: almost every inch of wall space was crammed with oils and prints. Even the fireplace had been requisitioned as a niche for a small painting of the Sussex coast. Tom set the package down on a coffee table and waited while Erskine removed its coat of brown paper and string. The print, composed in muted greys and charcoals, depicted a horse sale in a yard; men in cloth caps and bowlers stood about listening to the auctioneer.

  Jimmy stared at it meditatively. ‘I used to go to sales like this, just after the war. So many horses on the market back then.’

  ‘You bought one, didn’t you?’ said Tom. ‘You wrote a piece about it.’

  ‘Good Lord, you remember that? Must have been for . . .’

  ‘The Tatler,’ supplied Tom.

  Jimmy looked at him in surprise. ‘Is this a reader I see before me?’

  ‘Yes. A devoted one. Your theatre column in the Chronicle is my first port of call. As a matter of fact,’ he added shyly, ‘I do some reviewing myself – for a little magazine called Autolycus.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  Tom, sensing he’d taken a wrong turn, reverted to a subject the critic would find congenial. ‘I’ve always thought your “About Town” articles should be collected.’

  Jimmy puckered his mouth consideringly. ‘Hmm. They are quite amusing in their way.’

  They talked a little more about theatre – or rather Jimmy talked, in his brisk magisterial tone, and without so much as a pause. Tom, overwhelmed into silence by this monologue, eventually said, ‘I’m awfully sorry, I have to get back to work.’

  ‘And I have to get back to bed,’ said Jimmy. ‘Would you mind letting yourself out?’

  Tom, abruptly dismissed, pondered this interview on his walk back to the gallery, and felt most unhappy. He had met the great critic of the age, and had failed to shine, a natural consequence of not being able to get a word in edgeways. But how could one interrupt a man such as that?

  He continued to rue his lost chance for days afterwards. But fate had decided to throw him another bone, and this time he caught it neatly in his jaws. The editor of Autolycus, unable to attend the after-show party of a new musical, had sent Tom along in his place. On entering the venue and finding no one he knew there, he mooched around for a few minutes, intending to leave once he had drunk a sufficient quantity of the free champagne. Wandering into a little anteroom he saw a familiar portly gent with an unlit cigar clamped in his mouth, patting his pockets in search of a light.

  ‘May I?’ Tom said, a match poised against the box.

  Jimmy, barely glancing at him, grunted his thanks as he fired up the cigar. Scarcely believing his luck, Tom lit a companionable cigarette of his own, and said, ‘Have you hung the Bevan yet?’

  Jimmy almost cricked his neck with a spectacular double take. ‘Do I – have we met –?’

  ‘Tom Tunner – from Dearden’s? We talked about horses.’

  His expression started to clear. ‘So we did . . . well . . . perhaps you wouldn’t mind fetching me a Scotch and soda.’

  Tom, not minding at all, hurried off. On returning, however, he felt his heart sink to see Jimmy deep in conversation with another, a gangly fellow with a slight stoop. Tom handed over the Scotch and introduced himself.

  ‘Peter Liddell,’ the fellow replied genially. ‘How d’you know Jimmy?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t –’

  ‘Delivery boy from Dearden’s,’ Jimmy explained, crushingly. ‘Also a reader of mine, you know.’

  Peter smiled knowingly. ‘Ah, then you’ll always be welcome!’

  Tom, emboldened by Peter’s friendliness, glimpsed an opportunity. ‘I was actually saying to Mr Erskine that he should collect his “About Town” pieces in a book.’

  ‘Haven’t the time, dear boy. Always bloody working.’

  ‘Yes, I know. That’s why I’d do it for you – as your secretary.’

  Jimmy responded with an archly sceptical look. ‘You – my secretary? And what qualifications d’you claim for such a post?’

  Tom, hardly believing his own nerve, said, ‘Well, I have a degree in English from King’s. I know your writing inside out . . . and I don’t mind hard work.’

  Peter nodded sagely. ‘Sounds just the ticket to me, Jim. And you’re always saying you need the help.’

  Jimmy was scrutinising him; he would become accustomed to that beady-eyed look over the years. ‘Do you write? I mean, in decent prose.’

  ‘I write theatre reviews, for a small literary magazine,’ he replied. From his blank look Jimmy had evidently forgotten their conversation in his flat the other morning.

  ‘Very well. Send me eight hundred words on a recent play – anything you like – and I’ll have a look. If your industry is any match for your impudence I imagine we should get along very nicely.’

  So it proved. Tom’s ‘test’ review was duly dispatched, and Jimmy replied the next morning to say the job was his – though not without a patronising afterthought on certain ‘amateurish’ lapses in his submitted article. He would pay him fifty-five shillings a week, scarcely an adequate wage by the standards of the day, but Tom didn’t care. He had got the job, a job finessed out of nothing but his own initiative. He was on his way.

  Having finished his soup, Tom took the stairs down to the shop below. Al
lenby, landlord and tobacconist, was hunched over his counter reading the late edition of the Standard.

  ‘Evening. Twenty Weights, please, Mr Allenby.’

  Almost without looking round the shopkeeper plucked a packet of cigarettes from the shelf. ‘He’s done another one in, I see,’ he said mysteriously.

  ‘Beg your pardon?’ said Tom.

  Allenby looked up at his tenant. ‘Blimey, what ’appened to you?’

  Tom self-consciously touched his wounded cheek. ‘Oh, I took a tumble. Nothing serious. You were saying . . .?’

  Allenby nodded at his newspaper. ‘Girl found strangled, in Bloomsbury. Police sez it’s this “Tiepin Killer” again. I dunno, with all these marches and murders, the streets round ’ere aren’t safe to walk . . . I ’ave to send the wife out for everythin’! Ha ha.’

  Tom offered a feeble laugh in echo while trying to read the story upside down. THIRD TIEPIN MURDER: GIRL NAMED. It seemed the victim’s facial injuries were so severe they had had to consult dental records in order to identify her. So much for that artist’s impression of the suspected killer. Did the police really have any clue about catching him?

  ‘Poor woman,’ he muttered under his breath.

  ‘Yeah, nasty bisniss,’ agreed the old man, before adding, ‘Lookin’ on the bright side, though – them Standards ’ave flew out today!’

  7

  AS THEY DROVE around Richmond Park the tops of the trees seemed to shimmer, ablaze in their sudden motley of green and russet and gold. The sight of them thrilled and saddened Stephen; he felt it was exactly what he had been put on earth to paint, and yet it seemed he had never done them justice. His sequence of autumnal pictures, London Pastoral I–IX, was one of the few things he’d ever taken pride in, and of course it had fallen flat with the public. They only wanted to see his portraits. He felt a sharp stab of melancholy and blew out his cheeks, as if to shoo it away.

  ‘Something the matter, darling?’ asked Cora, glancing from the passenger seat.

  He smiled and shook his head, then looked in the mirror at Freya and Rowan, muttering between themselves on the back seat. They were down from school for the weekend – Cora’s parents had invited them to lunch – and he was already wondering what new and disturbing changes had been wrought in them since they were last at home. Rowan had grown into a fusspot, airing doubts and complaints in a manner more befitting an old lady than a nine-year-old boy. On stepping off the train at Waterloo that morning the first thing he’d said was, ‘Perishing cold in that carriage.’ Stephen had sought confirmation from Freya, who had merely raised her eyes heavenwards in an impersonation of sore-tried tolerance. She was Rowan’s senior by three years, a terrifyingly serious and self-contained girl whom her brother held in a kind of baffled awe.

  ‘Is the camera back there?’ Stephen said.

  Without a word Freya held up the tan leather case, as though she were his assistant. He pulled the car over and turned to his wife, who groaned.

  ‘I’ll be two ticks – we’re in plenty of time,’ he said quickly, slinging the case over his shoulder. He got out of the car and took a few steps up the grassy verge. Behind him he heard the car door shutting; Freya had decided to accompany him. He walked on a little further, then stopped. Taking the black-and-silver Leica out of its case – it was cold to the touch – he began lining up a shot.

  ‘What picture are you taking?’ asked Freya, just behind him.

  ‘Hmm? Oh, you see that stand of trees on the hill . . . I just need to, you know, remember the shape of them.’ So saying, he peered through the viewfinder and, after a dithering pause, he clicked. ‘There. Let’s go.’

  As they turned back towards the car Freya said, ‘Are you going to paint those trees?’

  ‘I think I might.’

  With a quizzical narrowing of her eyes she said, ‘But . . . if you have a photograph of something why do a painting as well?’

  ‘That’s a very good question,’ he said, with a half-laugh. ‘I suppose – it’s nice to have both! I mean, you’re right, a photograph shows us exactly what we’ve seen: in this case, those trees. A painting, on the other hand’ – they were back at the car, and he held open the door for her to climb in – ‘well, that’s a more personal view.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Cora brightly.

  Stephen started the engine and, with a quick glance round, steered the car back onto the road. ‘Ah, Freya wants to know why we should paint when we have photographs.’

  A smile dimpled Cora’s cheek. ‘If we didn’t have painting, Daddy wouldn’t have anything to do.’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ said Stephen, feeling diminished. In the mirror he saw Freya’s brow darken in disappointment – she wasn’t being taken quite seriously. He cleared his throat. ‘The thing about painting, Freya, is that it’s not just about what we see – it’s also about what we feel. So, if I ever get round to painting those trees, I’ll be thinking of how they looked and about the moment I saw them. I’ll remember that it was the day we drove down to Granny’s with our two lovely children, home for the weekend, and how we were all in such a good mood because of the fine weather –’

  ‘I’m not in a good mood,’ said Rowan blankly.

  ‘Oh, will you shut your bloody arsehole?’ said Freya in exasperation.

  Cora gave a startled gasp. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Mr Mulhall says “bloody” all the time,’ said Freya.

  ‘I don’t care what Mr Mulhall says. It’s not language I wish to hear from a young lady.’

  ‘Is Mr Mulhall your English teacher?’ asked Stephen.

  ‘No, he teaches domestic science,’ supplied Rowan.

  ‘Oh, right. So what’s the name of the carpentry fellow?’

  ‘Stephen,’ said Cora, in a tone that indicated he was altogether missing the point.

  ‘Yes, um, Freya – it’s not nice to tell people to shut up, no matter how much we want them to. And I think using words like – well, it isn’t really on, old girl.’

  ‘And you can apologise to Rowan,’ added Cora.

  A long beat followed, then Freya said, ‘Sorry.’

  Stephen glanced at Cora, but received no supportive look in return. Tipton Hall, a grand country house in Hampshire, had recently been converted to a ‘community’ school that valued practical skills over traditional learning. Under the supervision of its liberal-minded headmaster and founder, Mr Edwin Goode, the pupils did housework, studied carpentry and tended the large vegetable garden, growing their own food; Rowan had already told them about the number of potatoes he’d picked that week. Stephen had gone along with Cora’s scheme – her own mother was quite the freethinker – and was hoping that the children had taken to it.

  He worried, though, that Mr Goode’s radical philosophy of education might be privileging the hand at the expense of the brain. Literacy, for example. Freya was not a concern on that score: her newly acquired taste for profanity aside, she had shown herself a quick learner, and at present was cracking through Barchester Towers. Rowan, however, seemed to care little for reading, and even less, to judge by his ill-formed efforts, for writing. Even the way he set down his own name in a jumble of lower- and upper-case letters struck him as faintly pathetic. He feared that the boy might not be altogether intelligent. And what about that name! How on earth had he consented to Cora’s branding the boy Rowan? Why had he not pushed for something solid and sensible, like Jack, or Fred? He couldn’t remember.

  ‘Look, there’s Granny waving!’ said Freya as Stephen parked the car. The Hamiltons, Cora’s parents, lived in an imposing Georgian terrace on Richmond Hill, with a covetable view over the Thames. Freya and Rowan clambered out of the car and raced like hounds for the front door, Freya getting there first, as she did in most contests between them.

  ‘My darlings!’ cooed Mrs Hamilton, as she bent to greet her grandchildren. ‘Brought the smashing weather with you, I see.’ She embraced Cora and offered Stephen, last throu
gh, a feathery kiss – on his lips – which rather wrong-footed him. It was the sort of thing she did. Granny Hamilton belied her name, being hale and trim and girlishly good-looking, even at sixty. He suspected that she might have enjoyed a racy youth.

  They made their way to the conservatory where a table for lunch had been laid and, on the far side, seated in a high-backed wicker chair, Mr Hamilton puffed on his pipe. He had been absorbed in The Times crossword. Older than his wife, though tall and lean like her, he met them with a slightly bemused air, as if their visit had been sprung on him at late notice. With Stephen he maintained a businesslike distance, possibly on the assumption that any duty of friendliness was his wife’s domain.

  ‘Douglas,’ Stephen said, with an ingratiating nod of respect. ‘How are you?’

  Mr Hamilton gave a little groan of disappointment. ‘Keeping busy, you know. Round of golf a day . . .’

  ‘Keeps the doctor away?’

  ‘Hardly,’ replied Mr Hamilton, frowning at this frivolity. ‘No need to ask what you’ve been doing,’ he added, with an oddly accusing look.

  Stephen was momentarily thrown. ‘Erm, I can’t imagine . . .’

  For answer Mr Hamilton picked up his Times and riffled through it, while Stephen’s heart stuttered at the abyss.