Money from Holme Read online

  For Hedda Holme was on her feet. As he scrambled out of his own chair (for his problem had made him a little tardy in the exercise of his accustomed good manners), she turned away from him and began to thread her way among the tables towards the bar. She couldn’t herself, at the moment, either see Sebastian Holme or be seen by him. But the breathing-space thus afforded was only fractional – and Cheel was doing no better than follow helplessly in Hedda’s wake. Then something came to his aid. It was no more than a start of memory: one occasioned by their relative postures as they moved. There it was: swaying, tightly skirted, delightfully challenging in its own right. Cheel put out his hand and pinched.

  This time, he pinched so hard that Hedda gave a loud yell. It was a sound that came like music to his ear, and he managed to stand his ground with a very tolerable stoicism as she whirled round on him. But the strength of her punch to his jaw surprised him, so that he quite genuinely staggered and toppled, and had little difficulty in making a thoroughly verisimilar business of upsetting a whole laden table as he fell.

  Not unnaturally, pandemonium broke loose. The little disturbance in the Da Vinci had been no more than a mere murmuring in the comparison. The majority of the remaining lunchers rose hastily, knocking over their chairs, spilling their coffee, and retreating with precipitation to the sides of the room. Hedda, unfortunately, was not retreating; with a resourcefulness he could only admire, she had equipped herself with an ugly looking weapon probably designed for the dissection of cold ham and was again advancing upon him rapidly. Hell, he reflected us he dodged, hath no fury like a woman pinched quite as hard as that. Hedda was also shouting. She was accusing him (he gathered as he dodged round a potted palm) not of sadism or indecency but of base ingratitude. It was true that she did have some small reason to be surprised. And so would anyone (he had grasped this crucial fact) who heard her plaint. What had just happened, although in certain situations (in a tube train, for instance, or even in a crowded picture gallery) it entertainingly does happen, precisely does not happen as a gentleman follows a lady with whom he has been quietly lunching in a respectable restaurant. Poor Hedda was plainly off her rocker.

  The shindy must, of course, abundantly have reached the little bar between the restaurant and the street. Both Sebastian Holme and the motor-salesmen would have been moved to take a peep in at it – and by this time Holme, having spotted Hedda, would certainly have made himself scarce. The crisis was over. Or it would be over as soon as he had successfully terminated the little fracas he was now involved with. For one of a sedentary habit Cheel was fortunately possessed of a very creditable degree of mobility. Evasive action afforded him no difficulty. At this moment, for instance, a couple of agile side-steps sufficed to interpose between Hedda and himself the person of an elderly and apparently infirm woman who could only hobble with the aid of a stick.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Cheel murmured as he dodged her. ‘My wife is liable to these delusional states. But nobody is in any danger except myself.’ He gave the infirm woman a dexterous shove further into Hedda’s path, and was thereby enabled to gain the more secure shelter of an able-bodied waiter. ‘Get it away from her,’ he said.

  The waiter – perhaps surprisingly – did just as he was told; he stepped up to the panting Hedda and took the carving-knife from her hand. He was joined by a woman who looked as if she might preside over a cloak-room, and who appeared to have a professional line in soothing noises for occasions like this. Near the door, another waiter was restraining a junior colleague, who had rashly thought to rush outside and shout for the police. Several guests were calling frigidly for their bills. And a flabby man, who was certainly the manager, was approaching Cheel with a forbidding but at the same time wary expression. Cheel took the initiative at once.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ he said, politely but with a touch of hauteur. ‘Fact is, it’s weeks since my wife had one of these turns, and I thought lunch out might buck her up. But it hasn’t answered, as you see. Have them call a cab, please. My car’s not due back for half an hour. Send me a bill, of course, for any damage. Lord Basset. Two esses, one tee. Send it to me at the House of Lords.’

  The manager gave a nod to the waiter near the door, and Cheel was heartened to hear a taxi being whistled up. At the same time he became aware that one of the guests – clearly a motor-salesman superior in the hierarchy to the two who had been drinking at the bar – had thrust himself forward in grossly vulgar curiosity. Cheel turned to him.

  ‘See you’re a physician,’ he murmured. ‘Professional interest, eh? Distressing thing. Sporadic delusions, you know.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Fantasies of petty sexual assault, and so on. Her time of life, you know.’ He turned to Hedda – who, he was delighted to see, was now reduced to weeping quietly. ‘That’s right, Ianthe?’ he said more loudly. ‘Your time of life, eh? Cheer up, old girl. No harm done.’

  He moved confidently towards the door. The first waiter and the cloak-room woman continued to flank Hedda, urging and assisting her forward. The manager, hovering in front, spoke for the first time.

  ‘We are most extremely sorry,’ he said in a loud voice, and plainly for the benefit of any of his patrons who cared to listen. ‘Extremely sorry, my lord, that her ladyship has been taken ill.’ He made Cheel a low bow, and at the same time gave him a glance of extreme malevolence. It was obvious that he had no more belief in this disastrous guest as Lord Basset (with however many tees and esses) than he had in him as the Grand Cham of Tartary. ‘Get out,’ he hissed in Cheel’s ear. ‘Try that once again and I’ll have you put where you belong. Inside, see?’ He made another low bow. ‘Good afternoon, my lady. A happier occasion, I hope. Old and valued clients. Most distressed.’ He waved imperiously to a waiter to open the door.

  They were on the pavement. Cheel’s satisfaction in his conduct of the episode was only slightly marred by the realization that (as so frequently happened) his moral character had been shockingly aspersed. It was the manager’s notion that the affair had been no more than a low put-up job, contrived between this revolting woman and himself in the interest of getting away with a free meal. Cheel glanced with distaste at Hedda – and it struck him that there was no time to lose. At any moment she might recover her accustomed nervous tone and take another swipe at him. Hastily he assisted in shoving her through the open door of the taxi – and then closed it on her with a bang.

  ‘Where to, sir?’ The driver, seeing that there was to be only one passenger, was leaning inquiringly out of his little glass compartment.

  ‘Holloway Gaol,’ Cheel hissed in his ear. ‘Main entrance.’ He pressed a pound note into the man’s hand and stood back. Watching the taxi drive off, he handed the waiter and the cloakroom woman a half-crown apiece. His lunch had cost him something, after all. He was well satisfied, all the same. He glanced at his watch, and was surprised at the time. But then – as was remarked by a Shakespearean character whom he greatly admired – pleasure and action make the hours seem short.

  8

  The afternoon was fine, and he decided to take a turn in the mild London sunshine. His living quarters, as it happened, were not at the present time commodious, and spaciousness was in consequence a sensation that he had to seek en plein air. On this occasion he decided for St James’s Park. It had frequently – he remembered – proved particularly propitious for the smooth functioning of his intellectual faculties. He was inclined, indeed, to indulge the fancy that, at either end, its vistas closed at precisely the distance most congenial to what might be called the range of his own mind. Moreover the route thither was not without sundry associative and nostalgic charms. He would pass a club from which, through a misunderstanding, he had been obliged to resign some years before, but for which he preserved nevertheless (such was the refinement of his spirit) a benign and wholly unresentful regard. He would pass another club which – again because of a stupid misunderstanding – had a couple of years later simply refused to let him in. The incident saved him a certain amo
unt of money that he hadn’t possessed. Finally he would cross the Mall. There, of course, Royalty might drive by – and Royalty so utterly royal that it would be proper to halt and turn respectfully roadwards as one swept off one’s hat. Mervyn Cheel, who was eminently well-affected to the Crown, could rely upon an encounter like this to make his day.

  The Mall, in fact, was void. St James’s Park, on the other hand was crowded enough – and in the main with persons demonstrably from the simpler classes of society. Cheel found nothing disagreeable about this, since his social tolerance was such that the spectacle of his inferiors always held something gratifying to him. He did however draw the line at sharing a bench with a prole, and his fastidiousness for a time made it difficult to call a halt to his perambulation and seat himself in meditative ease. This, since he had a good deal to meditate, was vexatious, and he was glad when he did eventually find an unencumbered resting place. It was in full sunshine, and Buckingham Palace (always referred to by Cheel as Buck House) was cheerfully in view, with the Royal Standard flying above its roof. Cheel felt as pleased by this token of the sovereign presence as if it had been a private signal instructing him to drop in there for a drink.

  But – he told himself – to work! His encounter with Hedda Holine had not – at least in any clearly analysable terms –brought him very much. Yet it had been abundantly worthwhile, since it had brought him that moment of cloudy but indubitable inspiration. How was he to clarify this? Not perhaps by taking, here and now, too anxious thought about the affair. For the higher reaches of imaginative achievement were, after all, intuitive territory. He would do best to cultivate a wise passiveness; to expose his mind, vacant and unemployed, to some seminal percolation from its own abundant inner recesses.

  Coming down Piccadilly, he had bought an early edition of some evening paper. Pursuing his design of mental relaxation, he opened it and idly scanned its columns. There was, he found – as was to be expected – a notice of the Holme exhibition at the Da Vinci. Needless to say, it was a grossly incompetent affair – but at least the scribbler had caught the trick of shouting with what was going to be the crowd. It was what journalists call a rave notice. He read it through, and found himself wondering whether Sebastian Holme himself had read it yet. He too might have bought a copy of the paper in Piccadilly – if indeed he hadn’t been too discomposed at having in such odd circumstances just avoided his wife only an hour ago.

  What was Holme doing now? What had he been doing yesterday, and what would he be doing tomorrow?

  As Cheel asked himself these questions he felt a faint tingling down the length of his spine. They were unremarkable questions, in a loose or quasi-logical concatenation, and must be called ruminative or even wool-gathering rather than of any evident penetration. Yet Cheel saw instantly that they drove to the heart of the matter. For the answer to all of them was: Damn all. Or perhaps: Eating his bloody head off. For purposes of more elegant expression it might be said that Holme was (in that phrase of Henry James’ for a nicely poised character) en disponibilité. The silly sod (and this had been Cheel’s grand, glimmering perception from the first) was crying out to be used. In a sense this was true of all human beings. It was what they were there for, and success in life was a matter of being always on the job. But Sebastian Holme’s was a very special case. It had every title to call itself a challenging case. And the challenge was one to which any man in whom there breathed the spirit of true enterprise must feel virtually a moral compulsion to respond.

  By such Enterprise – Cheel recalled the poet Spenser as declaring – many rich Regions are discovered. But that – he reflected, as he gazed once more at his sovereign’s flag flying over her palace – had been in the First Elizabethan Age. There was far too little bold and resolute seizing of opportunity in the Second. People no longer, like Drake and Raleigh and worthies of that kidney, went out after things. Britons had become degenerate. They just didn’t know when and how to grab. In his own present situation nine out of ten of his countrymen would be perfectly content to do nothing at all. Cheel felt himself blushing for them.

  But just what was to be done? First, he must track down Sebastian Holme once more. Holme must then be roused from his culpable skulking and idling, his reprehensible mutility. Whatever his motive for being dead, he must be brought alive again. Or rather, he must be brought, so to speak, half-alive. Yes – that was precisely it. And it must all be done by kindness – unless, of course, the situation, when further explored, suggested that more could be achieved by brutality. Firmly but kindly for a start, the young man must be shown how he ought to be comporting himself.

  Cheel leant back on his bench, enjoying a relaxation promoted alike by the sunshine and the consciousness of his own benevolence. The movement made him aware that he was no longer alone. A man had sat down next to him and was now reading a newspaper. It was the same newspaper that he had himself purchased. The man was reading something on one of the middle pages; it might quite well be the critical notice of the Sebastian Holme Exhibition. The man gave a grunt which could have been of contempt or impatience or irritation, and he then let the paper drop to his side. Cheel turned slightly away. He had no impulse to inspect an undistinguished and probably plebeian stranger. Even so, the paper was within his vision, as was the man’s left hand, loosely holding it. Cheel suddenly froze. There was no mistaking that scar. He had been looking at it not much more than a couple of hours ago. In all the wide world, only Sebastian Holme had precisely that at the base of his left index finger and thumb.

  For a moment the impression was overwhelming. Cheel was less conscious of the fantastic coincidence that had once more brought his quarry (which was perhaps the word) within his reach than he was of what a psychologist would have termed a purely ideated image. He saw once more the silly little screaming girl; he felt the bottle splinter as he swung it behind him; he smelt not only the reek of tobacco-smoke and alcohol but also (although this seemed fanciful) the warm blood spurting from the stupid young dauber’s hand. So powerful were these recollections that he found himself actually trying to dodge the blow which, in another second, was going to lay him out.

  Then all this faded. The plain fact was that he had enjoyed the most incredible luck. He turned and looked boldly at Sebastian Holme – only to give a strangled yelp of astonishment. The man with the scar on his hand was as clean-shaven as he himself.

  9

  Or more so. It was when he noted this – the almost unnatural smoothness of Holme’s skin – and when he received too a faint whiff as of some cosmetic preparation floating in the air, that Cheel began to master the quite uncomfortable degree of bewilderment that had assailed him. Within the hour, Holme had had himself shaved.

  ‘What have you gone and done that for?’ It was with large surprise that Cheel heard himself speak with this admirable directness. He had done so out of an urgent sense that big issues were at stake.

  ‘Gone and done what?’ As he asked this, Holme’s gaze narrowed. ‘Aren’t you that bounder Cheel?’

  ‘Yes.’ It would have been more accordant with dignity, perhaps, to qualify this reply. But Cheel was bent on business. ‘Gone and had your beard off.’

  ‘Not my beard. Somebody else’s.’

  ‘I know. Your brother Gregory’s.’

  ‘How the hell do you know that?’

  ‘Portrait of the Artist’s Brother Gregory. Lent by Gregory Holme Esq.’

  ‘Of course.’ Holme stared gloomily at Cheel. Then he seemed to remember. ‘What were you doing with my wife in that pub?’

  ‘Trying to get to the bottom of something.’

  ‘And why was there a rumpus?’

  ‘Same reply, in a manner of speaking.’ Cheel was so pleased with this witticism that he took time off for a good laugh. ‘I’d pinched her behind. She resented it. Incalculable creatures, the ladies.’

  ‘You had a nerve.’ Holme was staring at Cheel with something like respect. ‘She’s an awful woman.’

  ‘I
know.’

  ‘Why did you pinch her behind? For the hell of it?’

  ‘No. I’d done that earlier, as a matter of fact – in your show.’

  ‘In my show!’ Holme was suddenly indignant. ‘What do you mean, wasting your time assaulting people in my show? Why didn’t you look at the pictures, and not the wenches? But you always were a filthy man. Don’t I remember.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Cheel said. He saw no reason to linger over inessentials. ‘But I pinched your wife the second time as what you might call a diversionary manoeuvre. It started a row; you peered in from the bar; and then you made off. In fact, I gave you the alarm, and I hope you’re grateful. if she’d seen you she might have recognized you. I’m surprised she didn’t do so in the Da Vinci. It was half-witted, by the way, going in there today if you want people to think you’re dead.’

  ‘I couldn’t keep away. And the pictures shook me. I decided to go back later – and first I thought I’d have a quick one in that bar. When there was the rumpus, and I peered in and saw Hedda yelling like that – well, that shook me too.’

  ‘And now you’ve shaken the beard off?’

  ‘That’s just it. You know the devil of a lot. I decided! couldn’t bear it any longer.’

  ‘Being dead?’

  ‘Being dead.’

  ‘I think you ought to reconsider that.’ Cheel said this in a weighty and judicious manner. He didn’t at all like the way the thing was going. And he looked nervously round as he spoke. St James’s Park was frequented by all sorts of people, and at any moment somebody might drift along and, so to speak, welcome Holme back from the grave. ‘You mustn’t do anything rash. You owe it to yourself to consider the whole matter carefully. In fact I think we ought to go somewhere and discuss it in private.’