Self Condemned (13 page)

“Where has this story found a home,” René enquired, also ignoring the drawling noise.

“In the
Ladies’ Realm
,” she told him. “But I am slithering another one into the gossip of the
Daily Telegram
.”

Meanwhile Hester glowed appreciatively, actually blushing a little.

The four had just been dining within, in the smallish room where the orchestra performs.

The party consisted exclusively of René and his brother-in-law, Victor Painter, and their wives. This party had been proposed by René, with the purpose of passing an evening with Janet, his second sister: thirty-seven, eight years junior to Mary, and ten years younger than himself. She was dark and in some ways a slenderer version of Mary, and in character much less substantial too:Victor and Janet were a pointedly youthful thirty-seven. The ten years which separated René inflated by them to twenty. Across these twenty-odd, Victor addressed his brother-in-law as from a long way off. His learning and renown served to confer upon these inflated distances a proverbial likelihood. In Victor’s manner, too, there was always something which implied that, as decade after decade passed, he automatically was destined to become the possessor of a similar learning and renown. If, at present, he was ignorant and quite unknown, this was merely owing to his youth (for the ten years he added to René’s age, he took off his own); consequently it was in fact across no less than three decades, rather than two, that he addressed his wife’s brother.

To such a harmless rearrangement of nature and adoption of a false position René would not have objected (his beard alone was a testimony to his indifference to the Zeitgeist), had it not been for his brother-in-law’s general vulgarity and distinct proclivity to “bound.”

Victor was a product of Liverpool, and the accent with which he had originally spoken was that peculiar to Lancashire: in no way inferior to BBC English certainly, but that had not been Victor’s view. He had come to London young, after a brief period as a wool clerk. It had been borne in upon him immediately that to speak as if an Old School Tie hung around his somewhat scraggy neck instead of a work-a-day necktie was essential for success. Giving proof of a certain histrionic endowment, he completely suppressed the locutions and tang of the Merseyside. He substituted the languid drawl of a Vaudeville toff.

As he strolled from one room to another of their little house, it was with so manifest an indifference to the lapse of time, that anyone could see he had been born in the top drawer, and that
Time Is Made for Slaves
was his family motto.

His brother-in-law always listened to his throaty baying tones with boredom, and found it difficult to hide his contempt for this Ersatz gentleman. There had even been a moment in Victor Painter’s life when his surname appeared to him a little compromising: and he had once considered changing it by deed poll. Did it not draw attention, quite unnecessarily, to how his ancestors had made their living? For
painter
signified, of course, a fellow on a ladder painting a front of a house. But it was not long before he learned that those privileged beings, the painters of easel pictures, invariably referred to themselves as
painters
. So he was on good terms again with his name, and even a little proud of it. He thought of Lord Leighton and of Sir Alfred Munnings, and when asked what his name was by, say, a hotel clerk, he barked proudly, “
Painter
.”

Victor by profession was the third on the notepaper of a not-very-prosperous publicity business. In this Janet assisted, in a spasmodic way. Lastly, since the nature of his job brought him into contact with a number of actors and literary people, Victor regarded himself as an inhabitant of “The Art World,” a typical attendant at the annual Three Arts Club Ball, and the kind of person the casual visitor would expect to see at the Café Royal, which he persisted in regarding as a “rendezvous of artists and models,” though it had long ceased to be that. How on earth Janet had come to marry this squalid coxcomb René could not understand: except he was obliged ruefully to agree that ten years earlier this melancholy, baying countenance may have provided the female eye with material for mild romance.

This being Victor, it may be imagined that it was in no way to be in
his
society, René had arranged this party. On the other hand it would never have occurred to Victor that René’s suggestion that they all four should meet at the Café Royal, could be for any other reason than to pass an evening with him: to secure
his
, Victor’s, opinion upon the course he had taken, in resigning his professorship, and to give him the inner low down regarding that resignation. It was, in consequence, a little puzzling to Victor that so far his opinion had not been sought, nor had any account been forthcoming of why (the
real
why) René had thrown up his job. “René is a deep dog,” he reflected. “He has got something up his sleeve!”

René’s objection to discussing anything about his resignation with the shoddy, flashy Victor was absolute: and when he saw that personage leaning over confidentially towards him, he met the intruder with a dark scowl. However,Victor proceeded, quite undeterred, to address him in a hoarse, throaty, confidential, brother-in-lawish manner (as though to say “in the family things can be told which it is perhaps undesirable to broadcast outside”).

“What, René, was the real story,” Victor asked, “behind your resignation — I mean the real motive? Did you have some bust-up or something?”

René stared at him for perhaps a minute, and then turned his back. Janet laughed. “All Victor wants to know is was there any dirty business?”

At this René turned around with not very good grace. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said to Victor. “I thought, for some reason, that you were talking to yourself.”

“No, nooo,”Victor drawled, and as he drawled astonishment could be seen changing into anger. “I am not accustomed to speak to myself.”

“No? You wish to know ... ah yes. Nothing at all is concealed.

The occurrence to which you referred has no esoteric inner story. My original statement is all there is to say.”

“I see,” Victor observed dryly. He was extremely offended. He looked down his nose, hooding his eyes and hollowing his cheeks, as he was accustomed to do with anybody whom he regarded as nearer to the bottom-dog level than himself. He had been becoming acutely conscious, as they sat in this sacred hall of fame, that this man, of whom he had always been rather afraid and cringed to, at times, was no longer the person that he had been. His status had suffered, to his mind, a catastrophic decline. It had required a sizeable interval, and almost two hours had elapsed since they met in the restaurant, for him to realize the new situation. (Upon the level, of course, which was valid for him.) With questions of
status
Victor was very familiar. As a publicity agent,
status
was a cardinal factor in the very existence of such a trade as his. And when one of his two partners passed down to him some “name” of a client on the down-grade, no longer worthy of their attention, he enjoyed saying, “Now, Mr. X., let us face it squarely, you are no longer front-page stuff!”

So with these backgrounds, when it came to the great Professor Harding turning his back on him and even giving him a bit of lip — oh then, it was time that the true state of affairs should be emphasized. After all, René was now a man out of a job, and like any other man out of a job, he had to find a new one; and in all probability it would be considerably less good than the last. Hang it all, he, poor little Victor, had a job. It might not be a very good one, but there it was; any job is better than no job. So this fine brother-in-law of his had better get off his perch. He must be made to understand that (for whatever reason — and he, Victor, was not likely to swallow the
Idealism
stuff) he is no longer a professor of history, but just some vague freelance person. He is not, even, a professor any longer.
Mister
Harding, if you please!

In his grandest manner, magnanimity in every line of his face, Victor addressed his brother-in-law, drawling drearily, “I can quite understand how you feel, old man, I should be a little testy myself if I had just got the sack! ...
You
haven’t been fired, I know.You committed suicide, so to speak, fired yourself!” (and he ha-ha-ha’ed like the crowing of a rooster on a cracked gramophone record). “You may even be in Queer Street for all I know. One does these things ... in a passion. Then one regrets it ever afterwards. When it’s a relative it comes home to one.... I am really awfully sorry; I sympathize with you most genuinely.” He sighed.“What Canada is like I do not know.They say it is a tough place.”Then he said facetiously, with a broad smile, “You may end up as a lumberjack! That would be rather fun.”

René had been looking at him with an expression of such concentrated contempt that it was a proof of how far he had sunk in Victor’s estimation that that professional valuer of reputations did not quail. Janet had been listening only half believing her ears, when suddenly, at this point, she shouted, “Victor! I wonder what you think you’re talking about?”

“Me?”Victor enquired innocently.

“Victor, you are angry! I always know ... your ears are sticking against your head. Apologize immediately for what you have just said.”

“Apologize! What on earth for?” drawled her husband in affected astonishment.

“Such a rat does not even know when he is being offensive!”

René spoke to his sister.“He is right. He has nothing to apologize for. If you marry a gutterrat you should study a little the mentality of your ... bedfellow.”

“René!” Hester’s consternation flung her forward upon the table and she clutched his arm in a foolish automatism. But now Victor’s drawl came with a sharper note, as if it were difficult for him not to go a little quicker. He still used the back of his chair to hook his arm over, and addressed himself to his wife.

“Cads who insult their sisters ...”

“Are you drunk? ...” Janet screamed at him.

“No, no more than anybody else here.What I was saying was that cads who insult their sisters are certainly unfit to wear the academic regalia” (he drawled out “regalia” with extraordinary unction). “That they should
resign
is the best thing they could do.”

The two wives were white and motionless, both staring at René’s face. As to signs that it registered the insulting epithet, the face in question showed nothing. All that the two women could see was a deeper red spreading where the beard did not cover it; and the eyes appeared to be growing more bloodshot every moment. Yet René was looking into the distance, and his head had an angle suggestive of the act of listening.

What René had actually been hearing was (
a
) the word “cad” and, at the same time, (
b
) the voices of two women behind him. They were carrying on the following conversation, not in a stage whisper, but in a loud undertone.
First woman:
“I never had an orgasm with Fred not once, and we were married ten years.Ten years! Imagine!”
Second woman:
“I don’t believe I have had more than a half-dozen with Philip and we were married in ’25 ... or was it ’26?”
First woman:
“Heavens, what is the matter with these men. Philip looks as if he ought to do better than that. He is so athletic.” (She stopped.) “Oh listen!” she hissed. “A fight! A fight! I haven’t seen a fight for ages!”
Second woman:
“My money’s on the beard!”

The dialogue of the two women had already begun before the word “cad” reached René’s ears, and that word had not sufficient authority to abolish the women’s chatter. “Cad” held its place in the foreground of René’s consciousness on equal terms with the inability of Fred to produce an orgasm.

As the two wives watched the inscrutable, angry, and inquisitive listening face — that of the brother of one and the husband of the other — they each in their different ways considered what course to take should there be a sudden explosion: Janet had decided, when the storm broke, to fling herself in front of Victor. Hester decided to call upon the waiters to rescue Victor. If René were to injure his brother-in-law on top of the story of his resignation...! She dug her nails into her hand and tears came to her eyes. She heard the woman behind René cry, “A fight! A fight!” and only just managed to hold down a scream. A waiter who, in passing, had heard the word “cad,” and saw the furious bearded mask of the
cad
, lingered to watch the explosion. As to Victor, his was the composure of a gentleman who has been called a “rat” by a “cad.” He looked down his nose and delicately flicked the ash of his cigarette upon the café floor.

To this circle of watchers René’s congested immobility looked as though it were turning to a state of chronic suspense. Meanwhile, inside the bearded head a battle raged. Many years of disciplining his choleric nature squashed the choler until it nearly split his head. The memory of his recent domestic explosion battled against his rising madness. And then Fred’s ten-years-long orgasmless efforts grew and grew at the expense of the “cad,” which shrank and shrank. After two or three seconds of this ever more violent expansion of the power of Fred, the “cad” collapsed.To the alarm and terror of everybody, Victor giving an involuntary jump, Hester clapping her hand over her mouth to repress her panic, René was convulsed with a deafening roar of laughter. He stamped and roared, amid the bewildered relaxation of the spectators.

“Can it be that he is yellow?” hissed one of the disappointed women in his rear.

Hester’s face wore an almost maniacal distorted smile. Victor was far more angry than when he had been called a rat. In his fit, René actually kicked Victor sharply on the shins, as he threw a foot out in a spasm of mad mirth. Victor withdrew his leg with dignity.

When his seizure was over, René looked at his watch, smiled at Janet, and stood up. Hester, more gracefully, not to say languishingly, followed suit.

“We must go, Janet,” he said and moved away. “Good night.

Victor,” Hester sang, as she passed the rat of the party, contriving to look limp, and livid with rage, at the same time. “Good night, Essie, my dear,” he sang back. “You must be having an awful time.