Over by the window, the grey-bearded man caught his eye, shot him a narrow smile, looked down, stared up at him through his eyebrows, then looked down again: Johnny looked down quickly too, at the simple but confusing recognition that he wasn’t taking notes, and that all the while he’d been drawing he was being drawn himself. He closed his little notebook, sheathed the pencil in its spine, and tilted the last oily drop out of his glass. The man frowned and rubbed and peered again, as if the relation had acceptably cleared between them, and put in what Johnny knew were the long swoops of his hair. He couldn’t help a quick shiver under the inspection, as he turned his head.
The reading seemed to end sooner than anyone expected, after a moment there was a scatter of thoughtful applause and a few nods and murmurs of praise, as people reached for their glasses and several stood up. It wasn’t clear if Dax also expected more – as he tidied his papers he had the haunted look of someone who must adjust in ten seconds to a smaller success than he’d hoped for. Johnny picked up his parcel and came forward quickly. ‘Yes, very good, Evert,’ Freddie Green was saying, and Dax said, ‘Was it all right?’ as though he’d already forgotten it.
‘Someone should write a history of the old Club.’
‘I think Evert sort of has,’ put in Iffy, who standing up was taller than both of them, and a striking figure with her red hair and long red skirt above brown suede boots.
‘That year I was in charge, it was really rather marvellous,’ said Freddie. ‘I got Orwell later on, of course.’
‘Well, indeed,’ said Dax, ‘I was in the Army by then,’ smiling anxiously at Johnny as though his opinion was what he most wanted: ‘I hope that wasn’t too dreary for you.’
‘Oh! . . . not at all,’ said Johnny, and feeling as he said it that he might sound rude, ‘I’m afraid I didn’t know who most of the people were.’
‘Ah, no, I suppose not . . .’ said Dax.
‘Sic transit,’ said Iffy.
Johnny felt he must be clear. ‘The reason I came was to bring you this, from Mr Hendy’ – handing over his parcel crumpled at the edge now from carrying.
‘Ah, yes!’ said Freddie, as if the evening had suddenly become interesting.
Johnny bit his lip gently while Dax tore the wrapping and let it drop away when he took hold of the inner cocoon of tissue paper. ‘Mr Hendy says he’s done the best he can, but some of the damage was quite severe.’
‘Right, let’s see,’ said Dax, with a little throat-clearing at the mention of damage.
‘Oh, that’s come up nicely,’ said Freddie, as Dax discarded the tissue and held the picture under the light from the candelabra. ‘I’d quite forgotten it was that colour.’
‘What’s this?’ said the grey lady, coming up.
‘It’s the little Goyle, Jill, you may not remember, it used to hang in my study. One of the first pictures I ever bought.’ Dax turned it over – it was signed on the back ‘Goyle 36’. ‘I don’t know what Stanley did to his blacks, but they always crack up. And no doubt thirty years of coal fires and cigarette smoke had rather dulled its impact.’ To Johnny, in the shop, the wonder had been that something so modern could look already so injured and antique; though out of its frame, the original colours, covered and squashed by the off-white slip, had showed brightly round the edges, as if still wet. Now, restored, the small abstract landscape, thick blocks of black and green beneath a stripe of white, gave no hint of these indignities. ‘Well, there you are.’
Jill seemed cautiously satisfied. ‘I’m sure Ivan will be pleased,’ she said.
‘Oh . . .’ said Iffy. ‘Ivan’s not here tonight.’
‘I’ve just seen him,’ said Jill.
‘Do you know Ivan?’ said Freddie, with raised eyebrows and a wondering shake of the head, his amusing readiness to picture Johnny’s confusion.
‘Um, I shouldn’t think so,’ said Johnny. ‘Who is he . . . ?’
‘Ah, there he is!’ said Dax, warmly focusing attention away from himself. Just inside the door now was a smiling young man also in a tweed suit, talking to Herta as if she were the Queen and not just the grumpy old woman handing him a drink. He gave a hoot of laughter, then charmingly pursued an anecdote of some kind, while Herta, head on one side, looked up at him with coy signs of the approval she had firmly withheld from Johnny.
‘You don’t know him?’ Jill made sure.
‘I don’t know anyone!’ Johnny said.
‘Oh, you’ll like him,’ said Iffy, with her heavy nod.
‘We’ve all grown awfully fond of him,’ said Jill. ‘He’s Stanley Goyle’s nephew.’ Johnny wasn’t sure if this was offered as the reason for their fondness.
‘Oh, I see . . . really . . .’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Freddie, with another humorous shake of the head, ‘you won’t easily dislodge Ivan from our affections.’
Now Ivan slipped across the room towards them, neat, self-possessed, with the hunch of playful apology, dark eyes glittering in the candlelight. Johnny felt curious, relieved, and under some kind of social expectation, as in childhood, when there was someone else his own age he would have to play with. He tried not to take Ivan’s suit, not new, but smart, and worn with a waistcoat and wide red tie, as a comment on his own tight cords, bush jacket and open-neck shirt. Ivan greeted his elders with rapid nods, ‘Hello, hello . . .’ and grinned at Johnny, and shook his hand. ‘You must be Jonathan,’ he said, with a Welsh lilt and sense of meaning something more: ‘I’m Ivan.’
‘You missed a marvellous talk,’ said Freddie.
‘Oh, I know, I know, I’m sorry . . .’ said Ivan, kissing Iffy, nodding to Jill, and then kissing Dax himself on both cheeks, which caused a fleeting self-consciousness in them both.
‘Ivan’s been helping me with it,’ said Dax. ‘He knows all about it’ – looking at him, Ivan’s suit somehow mimicking the older man’s style. ‘He’s been a terrific help.’
‘Isn’t that Denis’s job?’ said Jill.
‘Oh, Denis has got his own work to see to,’ said Dax.
Jill looked round for Denis. ‘I thought you were his work,’ she said.
*
Johnny went to the lavatory, and waited politely some way from the door but not too far off to claim he was next. He was happy to escape from Ivan and then as soon as he’d left the room he was anxious to get back. Along the carpeted passageway many pictures hung, and he picked up the candlestick from the table to see them better. There was a large brown portrait photograph of a man with a bald head and a white moustache who Johnny thought might be Evert’s father; two framed cartoons of impenetrable pre-war humour; and nearest the bedroom at the end (beyond whose open door his candlelight bobbed back at him from a mirror) a red chalk drawing of a naked man, with a body-builder’s chest and ridged stomach, artily cut off at the knee and the neck, and with a high-minded blur where the cock and balls should be. He heard the loo flush just as Denis came towards him along the hallway. ‘Aha . . !’ Denis said, and stopped to peer briefly at the drawing too. ‘Ancient pornography – is there anything more sad.’