“Balls!” said Ismay, whose vocabulary had not greatly changed from her student years. “Your lot simply hope that if they leave me at large I’ll lead them to people they really want. Catch me!” she said rancorously through a mouthful of whale.
“Well, that’s not what we need to talk about,” said Francis. “I gather that you have been having some sort of correspondence with your mother, who naturally has no idea what you’re up to; she thinks we ought to get together again.”
“Fat chance,” said Ismay.
“I fully agree. So what have we to talk about?”
“Money. Will you let me have some?”
“But why?”
“Because you’ve got a lot of it, that’s why.”
“Charlie used to have some. What’s happened to Charlie?”
“Charlie’s dead. Spain. Charlie was a fool.”
“Did he die for the Loyalists?”
“No, he died because he didn’t settle some gambling debts.”
“I can’t say you surprise me. Charlie never understood the grammar of money.”
“The what?”
“I am pretty good at the grammar of money. Money is one of the two or three primary loyalties. You might forgive a man for trifling with a political cause, but not with your money, especially money that Chance has sent your way. That’s why I’m not rushing to give you money now. Chance sent it to me, and I hold it in trust far more than if I had earned it by hard work.”
“Come on, Frank. Your family is rich.”
“My family are bankers; they understand the high rhetoric of money. I am simply a grammarian, as I said.”
“You want me to beg.”
“Listen, Ismay, if I am to help you, you must answer a few straight questions in a straight way and shut up about the people’s war. What’s chewing you? What’s all this underdoggery really about? Are you simply revenging yourself on your parents? Why do you hate me? I’m just as much against tyranny as you are, but I see lots of tyranny on your side. Why is a tyranny of workers any better than a tyranny of plutocrats?”
“That’s so simple-minded I won’t even discuss it. I don’t hate you; I merely despise you. Your mind works in clichés. You can’t imagine any great cause that doesn’t boil down to a personal grievance. You can’t think and you have no objectivity. The fact is, Frank, you’re simply an artist and you don’t give a sweet God-damn who rules as long as you can paint and mess about and stick spangles on an unjust society. My God, you must know what Plato had to say about artists in society?”
“The best thing about Plato was his good style. He liked inventing systems, but he was too fine an artist to trust his systems fully. Now I’ve come to hate systems. I hate your pet system, and I hate Fascism, and I hate the system that exists. But I suppose there must be some system and I’ll take any system that leaves me alone to get on with my work, and that probably means the least efficient, ramshackle, contradictory system.”
“Okay. No use talking. But what about money? I’m still your wife and the cops know it. Do you want me to have to go on the streets?”
“Ismay, you astound me! Don’t try that sentimental stuff on me. Why should I care whether you go on the streets or not?”
“You used to say you loved me.”
“A bourgeois delusion, surely?”
“What if it was? It was real to you. You haven’t forgotten how you used to work up artistic reasons for getting me to strip so that you could stare at me for hours without ever getting down to anything practical?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten that. A fine, high-minded ass I was, and a slippery little cockteaser you were, and I dare say the gods laughed fit to bust as they watched us. But time has passed since then.”
“I suppose that means you’ve found another woman.”
“For a time. An immeasurably better woman. Unforgettable.”
“I’m not going to beg, so don’t think it.”
“Then what are we doing here?”
“You want me to beg, don’t you? You shit, Frank! Like all artists and idealists, a shit at the core! Well, I won’t beg.”
“It would do no good if you did. I won’t give you a penny, Ismay. And it’s no good murmuring about cops, because you deserted me—scarpered. I’ll go on supporting Little Charlie, because the poor brat isn’t to blame for any of this, but I won’t support her like a princess, which seems to be your mother’s idea. I’ll even go on for a few more years pouring money into that ill-managed mess your father calls an estate. But I won’t give you anything.”
“Just for the interest of the thing, would you have given me money if I’d grovelled?”
“No. You tried the sentimental trick and I choked you off. Grovelling would have served you no better.”
“Will you order some more food? And drink? Not that I’m grovelling, mind you, but I am a guest.”
“And we both grew up under a system where a guest is sacred. For the moment I acknowledge that system.”
“Noblesse oblige. A motto dear to the heart of bourgeois with pretensions to high breeding.”
“I know a bit more about high breeding than I did when last we met. Thou shalt perish ere I perish. Ever hear that one? And if I fell for your beauty again—and you are still beautiful, my dear wife—I should certainly perish, and deservedly, of stupidity. I have made myself a promise: I shan’t die stupid.”
In due course the war did end. That is to say, the fighting with fire and explosives ended, and the fighting with diplomacy burst into action. The special task of what was called victory in which Francis was to play a part began to take shape. Something like peace had to be restored in the world of art, that barometer of national good and bad weather, that indefinable afflatus that a modern country must possess for its soul’s good. But that would not begin until many other things had been settled, and Francis put in for leave to make a visit to Canada on compassionate grounds. Grand’mère had indeed died in the early days of 1945, and Aunt Mary-Ben, being no longer anybody’s Right Bower, had not been long in following her. Indeed, Mary-Tess said, somewhat unfeelingly, that Grand’mère, arriving in Heaven, had needed somebody to manage eternity for her, and had rung the bell for Mary-Ben.
Francis was not surprised, or reluctant, when the family laid on him the task of going to Blairlogie and settling affairs there, and, in effect, ending the McRory family’s long connection with the place. His brother Arthur and his cousins Larry and Mick were still abroad in the services, and anyhow they were young for such work; G. V. O’Gorman (a very big man now in the world of finance) certainly could not be spared, and Sir Francis was too grand for an extended errand of that kind. Besides, Sir Francis had had a stroke, and although his condition was not grave, he tended, as his wife phrased it, to look wonky by the end of the day. After all, he was well over seventy, though nobody said quite how much “over” implied.
As for Mary-Jim (all the family had called her Jacko for years) she was now sixty-one, and although she had the ability to look the best possible for her age, her speech and behaviour were disturbing and Francis felt tenderness and affection for her, which was something other than the obligatory, forced worship he had offered her since childhood. If ever he was to speak to her about the Looner, now was the time.
“Mother: I’ve always wondered about my elder brother—Francis the First, you know. Nobody has ever said anything to me about him. Can’t you tell me anything?”
“There’s nothing to tell, darling. He was never a thriving child, and he died very young and very sadly.”
“What did he die of?”
“Oh—of whatever very tiny babies do die of. Of not living, really.”
“He had something wrong with him?”
“Mm? He just died. It was a long time ago, you know.”
“But he must have lived for at least a year. What was he like?”
“Oh, a sweet child. Why do you ask?”
“I just wondered. Odd to have a brother one’s never known.”