24: An Undefeated Visitor
NEXT day (for by this time the Press had done its work and so, I guessed, had gossip) I was dividing potential visitors into sheep and goats, those I wanted to see and those I didn’t. Among the goats, to be kept out with firmness, were those whose motives for inspecting me didn’t need much examination – such as Whitman, my back-bencher acquaintance, who was presumably anxious to see that I was safely incapacitated, or Edgar Hankins, looking for a last personal anecdote to put into one of his elegiac post-mortems.
On the other hand, Rosalind was to be welcomed and, a somewhat more surprising enquirer, Lester Ince. Rosalind entered during the morning, bearing more flowers from her husband and, after she had kissed me and sat down, spreading her own aura of Chanel.
‘Well, old thing. You don’t look too bad.’ She had never given up either the slang of her youth or the indomitable flatness of our native town.
How was she? She couldn’t grumble. And Azik? He was on one of his business trips. Still, there were compensations. What did she mean? She usually got a present when he went abroad. With lids modestly downcast, with a smile that might have been either furtive or salacious, she held out the second finger of her right hand. On it gleamed a splendid emerald.
‘What do you think that cost?’ she said, and explained, again modestly: ‘I had to know for the sake of the insurance.’
‘A good many thousand.’
‘Fifteen,’ said Rosalind, with simple triumph.
What about her daughter? No, Rosalind didn’t see much of her. The divorce would soon be through. Was Muriel intending to marry again? ‘She never tells me anything,’ Rosalind replied, hurt, aggrieved. She recaptured some of her spirit when she switched to young David. ‘He’s a different kettle of fish. He tells me everything.’
‘He won’t always, you know.’ Rosalind might be as hard as they came, a child of this world, or, in her own language, as tough as old boots; but there (as she had done already with her daughter) she could suffer as much as the rest of us.
‘Perhaps he won’t. But he’s lovely now.’
Rosalind continued, as usual not frightened of the obvious. We were all getting older. It would be nice when she was an old lady to have a handsome young man to take her out. David would be twenty-one in nine years’ time. ‘And you know as well as I do’, said Rosalind, ‘what that will make me.’
There were few square inches of Rosalind, except for her hair, which had been left to nature unassisted. Couturiers, jewellers, cosmetic-makers had worked for their money, and Azik had duly paid; yet she minded less than many people about growing old.
She also didn’t appear to mind overmuch about my misadventures. She had known me so long, she took my continued existence for granted. So far as she showed an interest, she was inclined to blame Margaret, whom she had never liked, for neglecting me.
‘You’ll have to look after yourself that’s all,’ she said. If I wanted any advice, there was always the ‘old boy’ (one of her appellations for Azik). After which, she said a brisk goodbye and departed like a small and elegant warship succeeded by a wash of scent.
That was still lingering on the air when, a couple of hours later, Lester Ince came in.
‘Who’s your girlfriend?’ he said, sniffing, a leer on his cheerful pasty face. ‘That’s not Margaret’s.’
Lester was one of those men who, solidly masculine, nevertheless were knowledgeable about all the appurtenances of femininity. It made other men more irritated with him, particularly as he seemed – incomprehensibly to them – to have his successes, including his present wife. I had been mildly surprised when I heard that he wanted to visit me. I was a good deal more surprised when he said that he had been thinking about me and had something to propose. He wasn’t really a friend: he didn’t object to me as vigorously as he did to Francis or my brother, but that wasn’t specially high praise. Perhaps he would have been just as concerned if any acquaintance had run into physical trouble. Anyway, his proposal was down to earth. He was offering me Basset for my convalescence.
Although I hadn’t the most fugitive intention of accepting (all I wanted was to be left undisturbed at home), I was touched, as one was by a bit of practical good nature: touched enough to pretend that I couldn’t make up my mind. Of course, one had to be more apolaustic than I was to be fit for Basset. That was a view which Lester sternly repudiated. Compared with many others, he reproved me, it wasn’t a big house: as the owner of Chatsworth might point out that his establishment was diminutive by the side of Blenheim.
My second line of defence was that we couldn’t help getting in their way. Lester bluffly answered that they would be leaving after Christmas anyway; they weren’t prepared to endure another English winter. I was reflecting, when I first met Lester he was living with his first wife and family in a dilapidated house in Bateman Street: if I knew anything about Cambridge temperatures, the conjugal bedroom wouldn’t get about fifty degrees most of the year, and Lester had found it satisfactory for his purposes. Now, however, he behaved like a frailer plant. He had recently acquired a place in the Bahamas. It would be very good for them, he assured me earnestly. Not only to escape the winter rigours, but because there was a danger in living in a house like Basset. They didn’t want to become like birds in a gilded cage. And they proposed to avoid that danger, I tried to ask without expression, by having their own beach in the Bahamas? Lester gazed at me, also without expression.
After I had promised to give my answer about Basset when I got out of hospital, he explained that there was another great advantage about the new regime. He could rely on getting each winter free for work; he could sit there in the sun and wouldn’t be disturbed. It was time he made a start on another book. It was going to be a long-term project. Several years, he didn’t believe in premature publication. Subject? Nathaniel Hawthorne and the New England moral climate.
When at teatime I told Margaret about that conversation, we looked at each other deadpan. He was the kind of visitor who ought to be encouraged, she said. No strain. Offhanded benevolence. But he used to be a humorist. Was all this a piece of misguided humour? If it were, I said, he deserved his fun. No, Margaret decided, she couldn’t remember, even in his unregenerate days, Lester being humorous about himself.
About six o’clock she left, and I was feeling peaceful. No more visitors that day, except my brother Martin after dinner. I went back to a novel I had been reading, a Simenon, and I put Lester’s moral discrimination out of my thoughts.
In a few minutes, a knock on the door. A peremptory double knock. Before I had said ‘come in’, Ronald Porson lurched into the room.
‘How in God’s name did you get in?’ I cried, with something less than grace. I didn’t want to be disturbed: I was irritated, I had given instructions that only those whose names were cleared should be sent up.
Porson gave one of his involuntary winks, right eyelid dropping down towards his cheek: the left side of his face twitched in sympathy. As a result, just as when first I met him, back in the early thirties, he produced an effect which was conspiratorial, friendly, and remarkably louche. As usual, he was smelling of liquor and his speech was slurred.
‘I suppose I can help myself, can’t I?’ He had already caught sight of the bottle on the chest of drawers.
‘Yes, do,’ I said without enthusiasm, and repeated: ‘How did you get in?’