The Breaking Point (6 page)

‘I’ll give you your money all right,’ he said quickly. ‘You shall have it in advance. We shall only be away three weeks.’

She went on staring at him, and then, of all things, her eyes filled with tears and she began to cry.

‘I don’t know what I shall do,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where I am to go.’

It was a bit thick. What on earth did she mean? What should she do, and where should she go? He had promised her the money. She would just go on as she always did. Seriously, if she was going to behave like this the sooner he found himself a studio the better. The last thing in the world he wanted was for Madame Kaufman to become a drag.

‘My dear Madame Kaufman, I’m not a permanency, you know,’ he said firmly. ‘One of these days I shall be moving. Possibly this autumn. I need room to expand. I’ll let you know in advance, naturally. But it might be worth your while to put Johnnie in a nursery school and get some sort of daily job. It would really work out better for you in the end.’

He might have beaten her. She looked stunned, utterly crushed.

‘What shall I do?’ she repeated stupidly, and then, as if she still could not believe it, ‘When do you go away?’

‘Monday,’ he said, ‘to Scotland. We’ll be away three weeks.’ This last very forcibly, so that there was no mistake about it. The trouble was that she was a very unintelligent woman, he decided as he washed his hands at the kitchen sink. She made a good cup of tea and knew how to clean the brushes, but that was her limit. ‘You ought to take a holiday yourself,’ he told her cheerfully. ‘Take Johnnie for a trip down the river to Southend or somewhere.’

There was no response. Nothing but a mournful stare and a hopeless shrug.

The next day, Friday, meant the end of his working week. He cashed a cheque that morning, so that he could give her three weeks’ money in advance. And he allowed an extra five pounds for appeasement.

When he arrived at No. 8 Johnnie was tied up in his old place by the foot-scraper, at the top of the steps. She had not done this to the boy for some time. And when Fenton let himself in at the back door in the basement, as usual, there was no wireless going and the kitchen door was shut. He opened it and looked in. The door through to the bedroom was also shut.

‘Madame Kaufman . . . ?’ he called. ‘Madame Kaufman . . . ?’

She answered after a moment, her voice muffled and weak.

‘What is it?’ she said.

‘Is anything the matter?’

Another pause, and then. ‘I am not very well.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Fenton. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘No.’

Well, there it was. A try-on, of course. She never looked well, but she had not done this before.There was no attempt to prepare his tea: the tray was not even laid. He put the envelope containing the money on the kitchen table.

‘I’ve brought you your money,’ he called. ‘Twenty pounds altogether. Why don’t you go out and spend some of it? It’s a lovely afternoon. The air would do you good.’

A brisk manner was the answer to her trouble. He was not going to be blackmailed into sympathy.

He went along to the studio, whistling firmly. He found, to his shocked surprise, that everything was as he had left it the evening before. Brushes not cleaned, but lying clogged still on the messed palette. Room untouched. It really was the limit. He’d a good mind to retrieve the envelope from the kitchen table. It had been a mistake ever to have mentioned the holiday. He should have posted the money over the week-end, and enclosed a note saying he had gone to Scotland. Instead of which . . . this infuriating fit of the sulks, and neglect of her job. It was because she was a foreigner, of course. You just couldn’t trust them. They always let you down in the long run.

He returned to the kitchen with his brushes and palette, the turpentine and some rags, and made as much noise as possible running the taps and moving about, so as to let her know that he was having to do all the menial stuff himself. He clattered the teacup, too, and rattled the tin where she put the sugar. Not a sound, though, from the bedroom. Oh, damn it, he thought, let her stew . . .

Back in the studio, he pottered with the final touches to the self-portrait, but concentration was difficult. Nothing worked. The thing looked dead. She had ruined his day. Finally, an hour or more before his usual time, he decided to go home. He would not trust her to clean up, though, not after last night’s neglect. She was capable of leaving everything untouched for three weeks.

Before stacking the canvases one behind the other he stood them up, ranged them against the wall, and tried to imagine how they would look hanging in an exhibition. They hit the eye, there was no doubt about it.You couldn’t avoid them.There was something . . . well, something telling about the whole collection! He didn’t know what it was. Naturally, he couldn’t criticize his own work. But . . . that head of Madame Kaufman, for instance, the one she had said was like a fish, possibly there
was
some sort of shape to the mouth that . . . or was it the eyes, the rather full eyes? It was brilliant, though. He was sure it was brilliant. And, although unfinished, that self-portrait of a man asleep, it had significance.

He smiled in fantasy, seeing himself and Edna walking into one of those small galleries off Bond Street, himself saying casually, ‘I’m told there’s some new chap got a show on here. Very controversial. The critics can’t make out whether he’s a genius or a madman.’ And Edna, ‘It must be the first time you’ve ever been inside one of these places.’ What a sense of power, what triumph! And then, when he broke it to her, the dawn of new respect in her eyes. The realization that her husband had, after all these years, achieved fame. It was the shock of surprise that he wanted. That was it! The shock of surprise . . .

Fenton had a final glance round the familiar room. The canvases were stacked now, the easel dismantled, brushes and palette cleaned and wiped and wrapped up. If he should decide to decamp when he returned from Scotland - and he was pretty sure it was going to be the only answer, after Madame Kaufman’s idiotic behaviour - then everything was ready to move. It would only be a matter of calling a taxi, putting the gear inside, and driving off.

He shut the window and closed the door, and, carrying his usual weekly package of what he called ‘rejects’ under his arm - discarded drawings and sketches and odds and ends - went once more to the kitchen and called through the closed door of the bedroom.

‘I’m off now,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ll be better tomorrow. See you in three weeks’ time.’

He noticed that the envelope had disappeared from the kitchen table. She could not be as ill as all that.

Then he heard her moving in the bedroom, and after a moment or two the door opened a few inches and she stood there, just inside. He was shocked. She looked ghastly, her face drained of colour and her hair lank and greasy, neither combed nor brushed. She had a blanket wrapped round the lower part of her, and in spite of the hot, stuffy day, and the lack of air in the basement, was wearing a thick woollen cardigan.

‘Have you seen a doctor?’ he asked with some concern.

She shook her head.

‘I would if I were you,’ he said. ‘You don’t look well at all.’ He remembered the boy, still tied to the scraper above. ‘Shall I bring Johnnie down to you?’ he suggested.

‘Please,’ she said.

Her eyes reminded him of an animal’s eyes in pain. He felt disturbed. It was rather dreadful, going off and leaving her like this. But what could he do? He went up the basement stairs and through the deserted front hall, and opened the front door. The boy was sitting there, humped. He couldn’t have moved since Fenton had entered the house.

‘Come on, Johnnie,’ he said.‘I’ll take you below to your mother.’

The child allowed himself to be untied. He had the same sort of apathy as the woman. What a hopeless pair they were, thought Fenton; they really ought to be in somebody’s charge, in some sort of welfare home. There must be places where people like this were looked after. He carried the child downstairs and sat him in his usual chair by the kitchen table.

‘What about his tea?’ he asked.

‘I’ll get it presently,’ said Madame Kaufman.

She shuffled out of her bedroom, still wrapped in the blanket, with a package in her hands, some sort of paper parcel, tied up with string.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Some rubbish,’ she said, ‘if you would throw it away with yours. The dustmen don’t call until next week.’

He took the package from her and waited a moment, wondering what more he could do for her.

‘Well,’ he said awkwardly, ‘I feel rather bad about this. Are you sure there is nothing else you want?’

‘No,’ she said. She didn’t even call him Mr Sims. She made no effort to smile or hold out her hand. The expression in her eyes was not even reproachful. It was mute.

‘I’ll send you a postcard from Scotland,’ he said, and then patted Johnnie’s head. ‘So long,’ he added - a silly expression, and one he never normally used. Then he went out of the back door, round the corner of the house and out of the gate, and so along Boulting Street, with an oppressive feeling in his heart that he had somehow behaved badly, been lacking in sympathy, and that he ought to have taken the initiative and insisted that she see a doctor.

The September sky was overcast and the Embankment dusty, dreary. The trees in the Battersea gardens across the river had a dejected, faded, end-of-summer look. Too dull, too brown. It would be good to get away to Scotland, to breathe the clean, cold air.

He unwrapped his package and began to throw his ‘rejects’ into the river. A head of Johnnie, very poor indeed. An attempt at the cat. A canvas that had got stained with something or other and could not be used again. Over the bridge they went and away with the tide, the canvas floating like a matchbox, white and frail. It was rather sad to watch it drift from sight.

He walked back along the Embankment towards home, and then, before he turned to cross the road, realized that he was still carrying the paper parcel Madame Kaufman had given him. He had forgotten to throw it away with the rejects. He had been too occupied in watching the disappearance of his own debris.

Fenton was about to toss the parcel into the river when he noticed a policeman watching him from the opposite side of the road. He was seized with an uneasy feeling that it was against the law to dispose of litter in this way. He walked on self-consciously. After he had gone a hundred yards he glanced back over his shoulder. The policeman was still staring after him. Absurd, but it made him feel quite guilty. The strong arm of the law. He continued his walk, swinging the parcel nonchalantly, humming a little tune. To hell with the river - he would dump the parcel into one of the litter bins in Chelsea Hospital gardens.

He turned into the gardens and dropped the parcel into the first basket, on top of two or three newspapers and a pile of orange peel. No offence in that. He could see the damn fool of a bobby watching through the railings, but Fenton took good care not to show the fellow he noticed him. Anyone would think he was trying to dispose of a bomb. Then he walked swiftly home, and remembered, as he went up the stairs, that the Alhusons were coming to dinner. The routine dinner before the holiday. The thought did not bore him now as it had once. He would chat away to them both about Scotland without any sensation of being trapped and stifled. How Jack Alhuson would stare if he knew how Fenton spent his afternoons! He would not believe his ears!

‘Hullo, you’re early,’ said Edna, who was arranging the flowers in the drawing-room.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I cleared up everything at the office in good time. Thought I might make a start planning the itinerary. I’m looking forward to going north.’

‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘I was afraid you might be getting bored with Scotland year after year. But you don’t look jaded at all. You haven’t looked so well for years.’

She kissed his cheek and he kissed her back, well content. He smiled as he went to look out his maps. She did not know she had a genius for a husband.

The Alhusons had arrived and they were just sitting down to dinner when the front-door bell rang.

‘Who on earth’s that?’ exclaimed Edna. ‘Don’t say we asked someone else and have forgotten all about them.’

‘I haven’t paid the electricity bill,’ said Fenton. ‘They’ve sent round to cut us off, and we shan’t get the soufflé.’

He paused in the middle of carving the chicken, and the Alhusons laughed.

‘I’ll go,’ said Edna. ‘I daren’t disturb May in the kitchen. You know the bill of fare by now, it
is
a soufflé.’

She came back in a few moments with a half-amused, half-puzzled expression on her face. ‘It’s not the electricity man,’ she said, ‘it’s the police.’

‘The police?’ repeated Fenton.

Jack Alhuson wagged his finger. ‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘You’re for it this time, old boy.’

Fenton laid down the carving knife. ‘Seriously, Edna,’ he said, ‘what do they want?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ she replied. ‘It’s an ordinary policeman, and what I assumed to be another in plain clothes. They asked to speak to the owner of the house.’

Fenton shrugged his shoulders. ‘You carry on,’ he said to his wife. ‘I’ll see if I can get rid of them. They’ve probably come to the wrong address.’

He went out of the dining-room into the hall, but as soon as he saw the uniformed policeman his face changed. He recognized the man who had stared after him on the Embankment.

‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

The man in plain clothes took the initiative.

‘Did you happen to walk through Chelsea Hospital gardens late this afternoon, sir?’ he inquired. Both men were watching Fenton intently, and he realized that denial would be useless.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, I did.’

‘You were carrying a parcel?’