The Merciless Ladies by Winston Graham
‘I gather you’ve no wish to extend your philanthropy to Paul Stafford.’
‘Good gracious, I trust he’ll not need it.’
‘No’, I said. ‘ I trust not.’
III
I left it two weeks. Ludwig was still in hospital but was much better, so I went to see him there.
He said: ‘Don’t show me any of them! For God’s sake, I don’t think they’ll please me. Take them to Abrahams. Tell him I sent you. Tell him to put them in the window – three or four anyway. Put the others up inside. Make a story of it. For God’s sake, you’re a bit of a newspaper man, aren’t you? Stafford’s name is still news. Tell Abrahams to invite a few people for six o’clock Wednesday week. Champagne and biscuits. There’s none of his conventional work at all, I suppose?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Pity. Well, we’ll do our best. Get the horses to the water even if we can’t make ’em drink.’
IV
I wrote to Paul telling him what had occurred and urging him to come to town at the earliest opportunity to see Rosse. I did my stuff with the news editor, and sure enough we got an interesting and influential group to see the paintings on the Wednesday. Nothing sold; and then I was busy all the next week; and then Abrahams rang me to say the farmyard scene and another two had together gone for a hundred guineas. I knew Paul would be delighted, however much he might pretend indifference.
The following day Abrahams rang me asking me to come round to the Ludwig Galleries, as there was something he wanted to discuss with me, Mr Ludwig still being absent convalescing.
I got away late the following morning and parked in King Street. Mr Abrahams, who was a young scrawny Jew with a perpetually anxious expression, said: ‘ Mr Grant, I’m very sorry, there’s been a little hitch. A little hitch, and I didn’t like to bother Mr Ludwig. A firm of solicitors acting for Mrs Stafford – that’s his wife, I suppose? His first wife – they sent a man round to see me yesterday afternoon. They must have been snooping around. Couldn’t believe it, but I suppose they heard of the sale. It seems Mr Stafford owes his wife money under some maintenance order. Now that this picture of his is sold they’ve obtained an otder from the court – what’s it called? – did he say a garnishee order? – to restrain us from paying the cheque to him. The money goes to her, they say. They say it’s the law.’
I stared at him. I stared at the slip of paper he held in his hand. I took the paper from him and read it.
‘So that’s the law.’
‘Yes, Mr Grant, it does seem to be, doesn’t it?’
‘It’s time it was changed … Anyway’, I thought quickly, ‘ I’m working as an agent for Mr Stafford on a twenty-five per cent commission. I’m entitled to that, and no one can deny it.’
Abrahams breathed through his nose. ‘Have you – is there a written agreement?’
‘No, verbal.’
‘I’ believe verbal is legal, Mr Grant.’
‘I believe it is.’
‘I’ll see to that, then. But so far as the rest goes, we have to comply with the law.’
‘I have a painting in Stafford’s earlier style. ‘‘Head of a Parisian Girl”. But that belongs to me. Think you could sell that for me?’
‘Of course, Mt Grant. Mr Ludwig will be delighted.’
A letter from Paul the following week expressed gratitude for receipt of cheque for £17.10 and more particularly for all the other things I’d done to help. He concluded: ‘I can’t bring myself to the idea of coming to London at this stage. Remember old Clem talking of the number of hours left to him if he lived to an average age? Well, that’s how I feel at present. Pompous but true. In another year or so it may be different. So I’ve written Rosse and suggested I visit a local solicitor – local by Cumbrian standards anyway – and make the affidavits to him. Then he can send them on.’
V
The ‘Head of a Parisian Girl’ fetched £150, and I contrived with some juggling to pass this on directly to Holly to pay preliminary law costs, to settle a few minor local debts, and to leave them with a little working capital. During the six months before the court case came up I managed one further visit to Crichton and was again quite impressed. It’s not easy to have, one year, a luxury house, a smart American car, two servants, the membership of three good clubs and the best of food and wines, and the next year to be living as a semi-hermit on the edge of poverty. The change is hard if it is unavoidable: it’s infinitely more difficult as a matter of free choice. I felt it almost certain that Paul would give way to the pressure of circumstances and return to London: a few weeks of his normal portrait work would see his position re-established. But he gave no sign.
And Holly gave no sign. She could have been his Achilles’ heel, but she wasn’t.
From the second visit I brought back four of the best pieces of Paul’s ceramic ware carefully packed on the passenger’s seat; and I was able to get rid of it without Olive knowing. But that left only eight more.
And in the law’s good time, after the usual hesitation and delays, consideration was given to a variation of the permanent maintenance order by Mr Justice Pardy.
The case seemed to go on far too long. Olive’s counsel put forward the plea that a man who voluntarily and deliberately ceased to earn deserved less considerate treatment than one who had ceased to earn as a result of misfortune or ill-health. There was, he argued, a definite responsibility at law devolving upon the husband to maintain a wife, and the evasion of such a responsibility by simply sitting down and ceasing to earn was a fundamental breach of the original consent order. Also Mrs Stafford, in perfectly good faith, had incurred a number of debts while waiting for her quarterly allowance, and these must necessarily be taken into account in any readjustment.
Paul had been forced to come to London at last, and he went through a cross-examination which could have been little worse if he’d been in the criminal court. He’d got a heavy cold, and for the first time ever looked really ill.
Giving judgement, Mr Justice Pardy said he could not admit the argument put forward by the counsel for Mrs Stafford. In the kind of case under review the law did not recognize intention or capacity but only the actual figures of a man’s present earnings. The artistic question hardly entered into it. If, for instance, a prosperous merchant were to be divorced and after his divorce he were to give up his business and become a bricklayer at two pounds a week, then the law recognized his changed circumstances as a reason for a change in the maintenance order. No law on the statute book could make that bricklayer give up his new work and resume his business as a merchant merely to maintain his first wife, desirable though such maintenance might well be. A man’s present income and realizable assets were the sole bases of assessment.
And reliable evidence had been produced to show that Mr Stafford was now living with his second wife in circumstances which, if not describable as poverty, could be called very poor indeed. Mr Stafford had equal responsibility for the maintenance of himself and his second wife. Counsel for Mrs Stafford could not seriously suggest that Mr Stafford was living in such circumstances merely to deprive his first wife of her legitimate allowance. Granted his ability to earn money on the scale of hitherto, it must surely be accepted that he had chosen such circumstances for his new home under some powerful impulse far removed from petty spite.
But far be it from him, Mr Justice Pardy continued, to encourage the belief that an order for permanent maintenance could be lightly evaded. It could not too often be emphasized that the responsibility of a guilty husband remained as a permanent charge on his income, whether that income was large or small. In making an order in this court he could only take into consideration the present income of Mr Stafford together with such assets as remained to him. If, however, his income were to improve again, Mrs Stafford had only to apply in this court for a readjustment of the amount of maintenance awarded to her, which he would now fix at one hundred and fifty pounds a year.
Chapter Twenty
&
After the readjustment of the maintenance order peace might have been expected to descend on them for a while; but Paul’s bad cold developed into pneumonia as soon as he returned, and he nearly died.
A month later in convalescence he wrote: ‘Don’t come up till the weather improves, and for Pete’s sake don’t feel sorry for me. It’s all too conventional, isn’t it, the struggling genius wasting away with TB and continuing his immortal battle against a cruel and unfeeling world. Feel sorry for Holly, if you like. She somehow managed to get a nurse from Broughton, and while the wind and rain raged tempestuously through the valley for five days and nights they fought to keep the genius alive.
‘So now, apart from a cough that sounds like someone shovelling wet coal, he is alive and making rapid progress towards his usual upstanding vigour. The doctor says I’m horse-strong and will come to no harm now, except that I must take shorter walks for the time being and not actually go out when it’s snowing. Also spend less time at the easel.
‘This last is bloody exasperating, because just before I was dragged down to London I found some new colours – or maybe just a new luminosity in old colours – particularly in the ultramarines, viridian, raw umber and Naples yellow. I’m going all fancy, like, just for a change. In another month, if you can tear yourself away from the footlights, come and see the first snowdrops.’
Holly had added a PS.
‘What rubbish! I’ve picked snowdrops already.’
When eventually I went I found Paul looking much older. His thick hair was receding from his forehead, and the frontal bones of his temples and strong cheek-bones stood out through the clear brown skin. But he looked happy. Holly hadn’t changed. If it had been a horrible winter it had left no more impression than the first month of married life in fashionable London.
I thought Paul’s paintings were getting stronger, more complete and probably more saleable. I took half a dozen away with me.
A trickle of money was finding its way to him from Ludwig and one or two other friends. It was just enough to make do. But in the summer he had a sudden windfall. Three of his portraits of famous courtesans had gone to De Vere’s, the New York dealers, and nothing more had been heard of them. Now after this long time they all went to the same purchaser for a figure which worked out in sterling at a net £478 each.
It was a fortune, by later standards. As Paul said sardonically, if nothing else it took Olive off their hands for nine years.
At Holly’s birthday party held in Crichton shortly after the sale of the pictures I wondered what Jeremy Winthrop would have thought had he seen Paul now, obviously content with the new life he’d chosen, and not, it seemed, any longer the victim of that Merciless Lady of success. Perhaps a few of us, I thought, the lucky ones, can shake themselves free without coming too complete a cropper.
The party was half for Holly’s birthday and half to celebrate the fact that they were solvent again. Sir Clement and Lady Lynn were there, and Paul’s father. Paul had bought three bottles of champagne, and this was just enough to unlock tongues all round.
At the end of supper Holly gave us an impression of Sir Clement delivering a lecture to Wisconsin University when he had mislaid his notes. It was all there: she was sufficiently like her father to make the mimicry complete: the opening phrases of the lecture delivered while still searching in every available and unavailable pocket, the lecture getting under way without notes but still accompanied from time to time by a reflex groping in this pocket and that; then the hands finally getting into their proper motions, the gestures he always made slightly exaggerated, drawing an idea like a conjurer out of thin air, assembling various threads with a collective drawing up of the long fingers; the big climax larger than life, followed by the absent-minded bows to applause and the mopping of a heated brow with a handkerchief in which the notes were still tied.
Lady Lynn laughed till the tears dripped down her cheeks. Sir Clement said he had no idea his platform manner was so fascinating: this would encourage him to lecture in his own home from time to time, on the house-training of puppies and kindred subjects.
Even old Mr Stafford was more talkative than usual and sat watching the others with a good-tempered smile. Paul’s giving up all he had worked for had been something Mr Stafford could not bring himself to understand; almost a worse blow than when the youthful Paul had refused to go in for a degree. This whole episode of the removal from London with its following consequences had been a sore trial to him; but he had slowly come to have confidence in his son. Paul might do strange things but it always came out right in the end.
After supper, Ethelred, the overgrown cocker spaniel, in whom, true to Lady Lynn’s philosophy, the blood of some larger dog was clearly stirring, became overwhelmed with all the admiration he was receiving and upset the dining table with the remains of the meal still on it. Later we all played noisy card games until after midnight. Altogether it was one of those happy evenings which seem so commonplace to set down.
I had to leave early the following morning, and Paul gave me a letter for Vincent de Lisle which he said contained a cheque for a hundred pounds. ‘That time he came here he insisted on giving it to Holly – said it was a debt he owed me. Complete lie, of course. Now I’m able to return it. I’ve had one or two good friends and let’s hope this is the end of sponging on them.’
‘You never sponged on me.’
‘All the time. But with you it hasn’t been money.’
I climbed into my car. ‘I see the house down the valley has been repainted.’
Paul nodded. ‘ Someone’s taken it, we don’t know who. It’s a mistake for any man to think he can get on without at least a few good friends. And Holly’s been … well … It’s a valuable lesson in humility. In a hundred years when some bone-headed dealer is arguing whether such-and-such a picture is by me or by some other clown, they’ll scrape away a bit of paint under my signature and find the words ‘‘Also by Holly Stafford, William Grant, Vincent de Lisle etc.’’ ’
‘Remind me to ask for my ten per cent.’
‘I’m getting on, Bill’, he said. ‘You may not notice much difference between what I’m doing now and what I was doing last year, but it’s there. And it’s going to mean a lot in the end.’
II
Two months to the day from this conversation Olive issued a new Summons for Variation. She had learned of the sale of the pictures in America and wanted her fair share.
III
I decided to go and see little Olive. I owed her a call. I had no idea whether she was still living in her expensive flat, but I found she was. I wondered how it happened that she was.
I thought of ringing and decided against it. If she was in she was in.
I had a meal nearby, drinking enough to settle my thoughts, no more. I walked up the stairs to her flat, which was on the first floor, pressed the bell. If Maud opened the door I should be sure of a sour welcome.
But it was Olive herself.
She was in a peach silk dressing-gown, with a bandanna of the same colour about her bright hair. I was startled at the change in her. She was still pretty, but thinner, and her eyes were deep set, preoccupied.
I said: ‘I was passing and I saw your light. It’s been ages.’
‘I was just going to bed.’ It was not an invitation. But she stood aside to let me enter.
‘You’re early tonight.’
‘One of my headaches.’
‘D’you get them much?’
‘Enough. Go on in.’
I went into that large white living-room I knew so well but which was no longer so white, having undergone the redecoration Maud had told me about. A feature of the room tonight was that all the drawers o
‘Burglars?’ I asked.
She untied the bandanna and shook out her hair. ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning Maud. It’s her night out. I’ve missed, a few things. Now I’ve laid traps for her so if she takes anything more I shall know.’
‘Maud’s been with you for years. Would she take anything?’
‘It remains to be seen, doesn’t it?’
‘She’s so devoted. You’d have a job ever to find anyone as … good.’ I hesitated at the adjective, uncertain how to label without offence the peculiar dog-like attention of the sullen spotty Maud.
Olive sat down and crossed her legs, adjusting the dressing-gown carefully to cover them.
‘I haven’t seen you since you pulled down this new job. In fact, we’ve hardly spoken since my dear husband remarried. That was a shambles, wasn’t it? Have you been cutting me?’
‘Hardly. But you were a bit naughty over the divorce.’
‘The divine justice of it! And Diana got it in the neck too. Could it have been better arranged?’
‘Or more bitchily?’
She carefully licked her lips. ‘ If you’ve come here to read the lesson I have to tell you I’ve sold the lectern to pay my grocery bill.’
I didn’t come here for any specific purpose other than to see you. I was nearby and thought I’d like to. Do we always have this effect on each other?’
‘What effect? Sort of flint and tinder?’
‘If you like – At least they often share the same box.’
‘Well, from our one experience I don’t think we should be too happy sharing the same bed. Do you?’