Any Human Heart (21 page)

Freya loves ballet, so we went to see
Giselle
last Friday. I am a self-confessed ignoramus when it comes to dance (why is that, I wonder? Every other art form fascinates me), but I enjoyed myself — I suppose grace and elegance and lovely music are hard to resist. Freya quizzed me in the restaurant afterwards and was appalled at my ignorance. ‘What if I said I wasn’t curious about art or literature?’ she said. ‘What would you think of me then?’ I was happy to admit defeat. Happy to be sitting opposite her admitting defeat.

I’ve also opened a new bank account into which Wallace will transfer all my literary earnings. Aelthred pays us — Lottie — an allowance of £300 a year, which should be sufficient to keep our Norfolk life going. I told Lottie that I was going to be spending ‘Much more, considerably more’ time in London, but she didn’t seem to mind that much — as long as I’m home at weekends, was her only condition. I’ve used this complacency to quietly shift most of my books and paintings down to Draycott Avenue — I don’t think she’s noticed. Wallace sold my ‘Meeting with Picasso’ piece to
Life
magazine for $200.

I am paying cautious and unhurried court to Freya. I book our time together solicitously, giving plenty of notice, taking nothing for granted. She enjoys eating in restaurants and drinks as much as me. ‘I’ve avoided my usual haunts for the time being — so no Ivy, Café Royal, PrevitalI’s — I don’t want tongues wagging. We go to the cinema, to art galleries, to the theatre and ballet. Last week before the theatre we had drinks at Draycott Avenue and she admired the flat. There is a ‘young man’ at the BBC who is interested in her but I don’t think he’s any competition.

Yesterday, one of Freya’s bosses in the Talks Department had a cocktail party and she asked me along. She changed at Draycott (she looked suddenly very sophisticated in a navy blue crêpe dress and high heels) and we took a cab to his house in Highgate. His name is Turville Stevens — in his forties, but with a shock of snowy white hair. It was a warm evening and the party spilled out into the garden. For some reason the drink had gone to my head (I drank neat gin before Freya arrived to calm my nerves) and I wandered off on my own, trying to sober up. Then, as I stood in that English garden on that soft early summer night, I felt a surge of pure well-being engulf my whole body. I felt a shivering current of happiness and benevolence flow through me. I looked round and, across the lawn, saw that Freya was looking at me. This is love. This is what love can do to you. We looked at each other and the message passed between us, through our eyes. Then Turville called her name and she had to look away.

I wandered over, like an automaton, to another group of people, I thought I saw Tommy Beatty there. To my vague shock Land was amongst them. We spoke quite amiably: she told me she was going to stand for Parliament at the next election. She asked about Lottie and Lionel, what I was writing and so on, and I in turn asked her about the other Fothergills. It was strange after such intimacy to sense this coolness between us. I suppose if you ask someone to marry you and they turn you down, things can never be quite the same again — too much damage done: humankind can tolerate only so much rejection. Then, as we were talking, Freya came up and I introduced them to each other. There is no disguising these situations: I don’t know what tiny signals are given off — perhaps it’s something women sense more than men — but I was instantly aware that (a) Land knew how I felt about Freya and (b) that Freya knew that Land was a former lover of mine. The three-sided conversation was very awkward and stiff and we broke off as soon as was polite.

The other aspect of the party that pleased me was to observe how even my small literary splash still sent out ripples. Elizabeth Bowen said, a little cattily, I thought, ‘Are you enormously rich, these days?’ and I must have been asked half a dozen times when my next book was due. Turville Stevens was very complimentary about
Imaginings
and said he was sure we could do something on the wireless when
The Cosmopolitans
was published.

Freya and I left about nine and hailed a cab in the High Street. I asked her where she’d like to go to eat. ‘Draycott Avenue,’ she said.

Freya naked. Even more beautiful. Freckled on her chest and shoulders. Her hip bones jut. I don’t know why — we’re both in our twenties, after all — but I feel so much older than she. We cling to each other in my single bed. ‘We must never get a double, Logan,’ she said. ‘Never. We must always sleep in a single bed.’

She stayed the night and left for work this morning at eight. I sit in the kitchen in my dressing gown writing this on the fold-down table, the uneaten crusts of her breakfast toast on a plate before me, and my heart exults. I think of Lottie, of our life, our child, and I realize what a hideous error I made in marrying her. But the past cannot be undone. I only want to be with Freya: time away from her is time irretrievably lost.

Thorpe. This summer is going to be very difficult. Lottie has rented a house in Fowey in Cornwall for July and August. I’ve told her I have to be away in France for much of August to do research on
The Cosmopolitans,
which she accepted, but put on her grumpy face for the rest of the day. She suspects nothing, I know.

Some money worries too. We are overdrawn at the bank, and when Lottie asked for an increase in her allowance Aelthred had a quiet anxious word with me: he couldn’t understand how with my income and Lottie’s allowance a young couple (with no mortgage) could get into debt. Lottie spends without thinking, I explained, and told him that currently I was earning very little — a writer’s life, you know, either feast or famine. Of course none of my earnings go into the joint account. I urged Lottie to economize but the concept is alien to her. My royalties from
TMI
and
TGF
are modest now (though
Girl Factory
did surprisingly well in France) and the money from the film sale seemed to dwindle like snow in the sun. The Draycott flat and the expenses of my London life with Freya eat up most of what I earn through journalism and I won’t receive another lump sum until I deliver
Cosmopolitans —
about £150. Until that day arrives I’ve borrowed against that payment (through Wallace’s good offices) to fund our summer. I’m taking Freya to Biarritz.

[NOTE IN RETROSPECT. 1965. Interestingly enough, this was the first time in my life that I became worried about money and was obliged to budget. Until June of 1934, it’s fair to say that I never gave a thought as to how I — or someone else — might pay any bill presented to me.]

Lionel has croup. He seems a sickly baby. I sat him on my knee the other day and he stared at me with a baleful, sullen, unknowing eye.

Wallace says there is a job on offer as chief book reviewer on
artrevue
(yes, all one word) at £10 a month. Extra for any features I may write. Apparently my Picasso piece impressed them. It’s a pretentious, expensive magazine (supported, aptly enough, by some pretentious, millionaire philanthropist) but at least it concedes that people make art outside this little island. I accept without thinking — even though I know I must finish
Cosmopolitans
as quickly as possible. It’s an expensive business leading a double life. And after
Cosmopolitans,
what next?

Back from Fowey. Christ, what an ordeal. When we were alone as a family I could just about tolerate it but when there were guests it was insupportable. I felt I was undergoing some sort of elaborate prison sentence. Angus and Sally,
¹⁹
then Ianthe and family. Luckily I’m going to miss Aelthred and Enid. I came up to London on the earliest train and went straight to Broadcasting House to meet Freya. We went round the corner to a pub and held hands and drank gins and tonic. She can only come away for two weeks — she has to save some of her annual holiday for her father.

I go to visit Mother. There are now four sets of lodgers in Sumner Place. Mother and Encarnación occupy the ground floor and have rented out the other three, including the basement. No sight or sound of Prendergast for over a year. I made her bring out every document relating to her financial transactions. Father left her the house in Birmingham and assets of almost £15,000. Even after buying and decorating the house in Sumner Place there should have been more than enough to provide her with a handsome income for life (at least £1,000 a year) and me with the legacy Father promised. I can hear his words: ‘You will both be well provided for.’ Both. This was not just Mother’s money, it was mine as well. And taking into account the extravagances — the motor cars, the servants, my allowance — I calculate that the Crash has cost us almost everything. Prendergast, through his reckless investments in US stocks, has lost us £8,000 — a fortune — not to mention the 62nd Street apartment. I suppose I should feel anger but it’s always hard trying to imagine the loss of something you never had. At least Sumner Place is hers, however sad it is to see her sharing it with strangers, and she has enough income trickling in from the rents to look after herself. I notice an empty gin bottle in the kitchen — I will have a quiet word with Encarnación. Endless moans, needless to say, about not seeing enough of her grandson.

I’m writing this in Draycott Avenue: Freya has been living here while I’ve been away in Cornwall. There are flowers in vases, the place feels and smells clean. Our narrow little bed has fresh sheets on it. I hear Freya’s key in the lock. On Wednesday we leave for France.

Meeting at
artrevue.
I like Udo [Feuerbach, the editor], a swarthy, sophisticated German refugee who taught briefly at the Dessau Bauhaus, and I think he’s pleased with my pieces. Udo’s evaluative criteria are summed up in only two phrases: an artist, or a work of art, is either
ganz ordinär
(very ordinary) or displays
teuflische Virtuosität
(devilish virtuosity) — I’ve never heard him elaborate further. Does make judging simpler, I must say. He’s commissioned a long article on Juan Gris
²⁰
— my suggestion, and not prompted by the fact that I own a couple of charcoal drawings. Gris is very underrated — and now he’s dead the twin refulgent beams of Picasso and Braque confine him unjustifiably to the shadows. Udo also wants me to interview Picasso, if I can set it up through Ben. I warm to Udo’s Bauhaus egalitarianism. The
artrevue
office is one large room with a refectory table down the middle around which everyone — editor, secretary, designer, proofreaders and visiting writers — sits. No magazine in England would ever organize itself in this way.

I jumped off the bus on the Brompton Road and was just about to turn down Draycott Avenue when I heard someone shout my name. I looked round and saw Joseph Darker climbing out of a police car. We chatted a bit and I told him about Lottie, Lionel and the move to Norfolk and apologized for losing touch.

‘How’s the family?’ I asked.

‘We had a bit of a blow, there,’ he said, looking down. ‘Tilda died last year. Diphtheria.’

I don’t know why the news shocked me the way it did. I even staggered back a pace or two as if I’d been pushed. I remembered that diffident woman, always apologizing, now dead and gone for ever. I muttered something bland, but he could see how buffeted I’d been. We exchanged a few more words and I gave him my new address. I came home and felt genuinely saddened. I told Freya how I had reacted and she said, ‘We’re not ready for it — for people of our age to die. We think we’re safe for a while, but it’s a dream. No one’s safe.’ She ran her hands through my hair, put her arms around me and stood on my shoes. Then she hooked a leg round and through mine. It’s something she does, one of her quirks — a ‘leg-hug’ she calls it — ‘Got you,’ she would say, ‘clinging on for dear old life.’

Biarritz. Ben has taken a large villa between Biarritz and Bidart, set back about half a mile from the coast, with a big overgrown garden with many trees and a concrete swimming pool. The party consists of Ben and Sandrine, Alice and Tim Farino, me and Freya, Cyprien Dieudonné and his girlfriend, Mita, a dancer from Guadeloupe, and Geddes Brown (now one of Ben’s artists) and his friend, an Italian — also a painter — called Carlo.

Every day a picnic lunch is served beside the pool for those who are staying at the house, but we are free to come and go — to the beaches at Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Biarritz, or up into the mountains to walk.

There was a memorable moment yesterday at lunch — Geddes and Carlo were absent, and Cyprien had gone into Biarritz to get his spectacles repaired. We’d all eaten and drunk a great deal when Alice suddenly unhooked the top of her two-piece swimsuit, moved her chair into a patch of sunshine and sat there bare-breasted.

‘Are you all right, darling?’ Tim said, wholly unperturbed.

‘You know I like to do this,’ she said. ‘So much nicer to feel the breeze on your tits.’

At which point all the other women around the table looked at each other and spontaneously removed their various tops and we finished lunch with all these shapely and beautiful breasts on display. I found it quite arousing at first but after ten minutes it seemed the most natural thing in the world. I caught Freya’s eye — she was striped like a tiger from sun and shadow cast by the bamboo lattice beneath which we were sitting. She reached back behind her head to adjust a clip in her hair and I watched her breasts rise and flatten as she did so, the shadow-stripes shifting to accommodate the new contours. When the party broke up for a game of boules we slipped away to our room.

Geddes and Carlo have gone up to the mountains for a few days to paint. ‘Too much ocean light,’ Geddes said. I think he has talent — he certainly works hard — and I quite like him, a blunt and dour fellow, though I think he’s a little wary of me. He still sees Land, he told me, and implied she was having an affair with Oliver Lee.