‘After tea, I will show you my paintings.’
Titus had not known his hostess for more than half an hour but he was already managing to translate her muffled rather inconsequential conversation into intelligibility.
‘Thank you, Titus,’ she said as she handed him her cup and plate, which he took and replaced on the trolley. She held her hand out to him to help her off her chaise longue, then stood a little shakily by his side. As she turned, he noticed that her blouse, at the back, did not meet where the buttons should be, but was held together by one safety pin attached to another, until they met at the opposite edge where the buttonholes were, rather like a hastily constructed bridge. She was of moderate height, and as she walked further into the room Titus saw that she had the slim legs of a girl.
She went out of the large drawing room and walked along the corridor to another door. Titus followed her, assuming that that was to be his role.
The room they entered was very different from the elegant drawing room. It had the trappings of comfort: a thick carpet, warmth, and all the ease of a dilettante studio, compared to the working-living studio of Ruth’s. Magnificent easels and equipment, Titus imagined, for the many media an artist might turn to, and all of finest quality. On the walls were framed paintings, leaving little space between. Titus knew very little about painting, but enough to realise that the paintings on the walls were slight.
‘I’m a bad painter. Yes, I know you think so too. But I love painting, Titus. You are blaming me for having all these things, while real painters can’t afford them. Don’t judge me too soon. Even if I’d been poor, I’d have been a bad painter, but at least I’m a bad painter on good materials, and I know a good painter when I see one. Herbert is worse than I am, but he has to paint to live, so there you are. I’ll show you his murals in a minute.’
Titus realised there was very little need for him to speak, or even to listen, but despite any preconceived notion he might have formed of Mrs Sempleton-Grove as a rich spoiled woman, he felt it was wrong to do so. There was a kindness in her, and he felt he had little enough to be proud of in his own behaviour towards people to start judging others.
She led Titus out of her painting room up a small flight of stairs and into a room that in earlier days might have housed servants. Even so, its proportions were elegant, but what had been made of it was less so. The background colour was white, and the murals that enclosed the room, and made it rather claustrophobic, were crudely painted. Mainly figurative, and depicting men, all young, all handsome in their different way. Titus recognised Henry in some of them, in various dancing postures.
‘Herbert thinks this is what I want, you know, Titus. He’s done some drawings of you – that’s why I wanted to meet you. He can get a likeness, but he’s crude. Only it was because I thought you looked like a man that I wanted to see you. The only men I see now aren’t. The trouble is I can see myself as I really am, and it doesn’t make getting through the day any easier. I know I make myself into a freak. I’m trying to stay young, and the more I do, the more ludicrous I look, but I won’t give up. Once, when I went into a room, everyone looked at me, but it wasn’t to laugh. Every day was an adventure. I had an ulterior motive in getting Herbert to bring you here, but having met you, I know just how wrong I was. Whoever you are, you wouldn’t rise to my bait. I’m surrounded by Henrys. They come and they go, and they take all they can while they can. Not that I’m easy. I can make life hell for them and they don’t stay long, just long enough for us to hate each other, despise each other, then another Henry comes. How would you feel about staying for a little while? You won’t have to do anything of any sort.’
‘I’m not really someone who stays anywhere long, you know,’ said Titus, almost the first sentence he had spoken since coming to Mrs Sempleton-Grove’s.
‘My dear Titus, I had already realised that. That’s what makes you so attractive. All the same, won’t you let me do a painting of you? Apart from everything else it will make Henry so annoyed. He must fancy you himself. I know he put his tongue out at me when he left the room. He always does, and he thinks I don’t know. There have been so many Henrys. He’ll go when he’s got all he thinks he can get out of me. The trouble is I know it all, but they’re the only kind of people who’ll put up with me. I don’t like being alone. It makes me think too much. Even if I’d been ten or twenty years younger, I couldn’t have seduced you. When I was a girl a middle-aged man said he loved me for what I would become, and now I’m awaiting a young man who will fall in love with me for what I was!’
Titus remained silent.
‘You beast. I won’t say goodbye, then.’
26
From Riches to Rags
AS HE LEFT the house, Titus thought of returning at once to Ruth. The pull of her warmth and love was almost bitter to him. It denied the strength of the defences he had been building for so long against any skirmishing in the region of his heart. The bastion could fall, and rebuilding would take more courage than he felt he was capable of. He averted his mind from Ruth awaiting him. He averted his mind from Dog. He could not think of the future, or of the past. The present was blank, because that was what he wanted.
Walking away from Mrs Sempleton-Grove’s house Titus let this blankness lead him. He was not really aware of the physical aspect of the streets along which he walked, the people he passed, the light diminishing, the sounds, the constant noise of traffic, a city noise, impersonal but buzzing in his head.
He walked for several hours, still unaware of the changing townscape through which he passed. It was dark by now, and he became conscious of a small hunger. In his pocket there were a few coins left from Herbert’s money and, as he came to from his blankness, he found he was standing outside a derelict house, in a street that offered little of comfort to anyone. It was only dimly lit, but Titus could see the decay of what once must have been a row of superbly proportioned houses, and he thought of his late hostess. The carcasses still had a little flesh on them and the rafters of the roof displayed themselves as cleanly picked as any animal left to the mercy of a vulture.
Toothless windows, and doors ajar on to a murky, dangerous emptiness. It took a little time for a sound to penetrate Titus’s hearing. It was not a pleasant sound, and as he became more conscious of it he distinguished rough voices, which were raised from time to time in violent dispute – blurred, whining, ugly. He was startled by the wrenching open of a door, a shrill voice, and a missile that had accompanied the voice narrowly missing his head and breaking into fragments at his feet. A dark shape followed, tottering up from what must have been the basement of the house, and walking unsteadily along the path that separated the house from the pavement. It drew nearer to Titus, who felt no fear but a certain curiosity.
‘An don’ yer com back wivout it, you dirty bastard . . .’
The figure nearly tripped on the uneven paving stones and put out its hands to steady itself. It touched Titus’s hand, which had involuntarily stretched out to protect whatever or whoever was having so much difficulty in standing upright.
He heard a deep booming ejaculation, like a foghorn in the mist, just as eerie and portentous a sound: ‘Look where yer bleedin’ goin’.’
‘Sorry, I was in the way,’ was all that Titus could think of saying.
‘’Ere, got any money?’
Titus was able to see a little, in the dim street, of what this newfound companion looked like. He was small and thickset. His clothes were layered, one on top of the other, coats and jackets, and tied up with string. There was not quite enough light to see the face under the battered hat.