The New Sonia Wayward (23 page)

‘I’m so sorry to appear like this.’ Timmy smiled charmingly, grabbed a chair that was lying overturned beside the wall, dusted it deftly with the palm of a hand, and presented it to Susie. ‘The fact is, I’m shoving a good deal of stuff around, and this is how I have the habit of doing it.’ He turned to Petticate. ‘I couldn’t by any chance,’ he asked blandly, ‘interest you in five tons of a very tolerable Carrara marble? It would be a standby for years – whenever, I mean, aunts and uncles and so-forth passed away.’

Susie laughed unrestrainedly at this. ‘Isn’t Timmy’ – she gave his naked upper arm a skittish pat that froze Petticate’s blood – ‘just too droll?’

‘We have come, as you may guess, to call on your father.’ Petticate preserved a decent cordiality, but sought to show that he was disposed to get down to business. ‘There are sittings to arrange for the bust he is to undertake of my wife. I think you will have heard of it.’

‘Oh, yes – but of course.’ For a moment Timmy Gialletti appeared almost at a loss. ‘My father wanted to execute it very much, very much indeed. He will be’ – Timmy hesitated, and then chose a word that came plainly from the paternal vocabulary – ‘he will be desolated. But I suppose you haven’t heard the news?’

‘The news?’ Petticate was extremely disconcerted. He couldn’t square either Timmy’s words or manner with the first notion that had come into his head: namely, that the great sculptor must be dead.

‘The revolution in San Giorgio, sir. Of course you may have missed it. The splash in the papers isn’t anything very much. But it’s the supreme event of my father’s life. He’s been working for it for years.’

‘But how marvellous!’ Susie’s utterance was a gasp of admiration and joy. Her Anglo-Indian background, it appeared, was unexpectedly blended with republican fervour.

‘The old man’s been pouring money into the revolutionary underground for years. And now it’s paid off. He left for San Giorgio by air last night. The whole household – they’re mostly Italians, of course – are following today. But I’m staying behind myself. You see, I feel entirely English. And, as a matter of fact, I shall soon be marrying an English girl.’

‘I congratulate you.’ Petticate’s correct demeanour did not desert him in face of this confusing situation. ‘And your father will no doubt be – um – a moderating influence upon the rebels. Not that I use the word in any derogatory sense.’

Timmy Gialletti laughed. ‘Well, sir, they’re not rebels any longer now. There’s no doubt that the
coup
has been a complete success, and that the new men are firmly in the saddle. My father, of course, is going to be first President.’

‘But how perfectly splendid!’ Susie’s enthusiasm grew. ‘Do you think he will be willing to receive old friends? How much Ffolliot and I would
love
to dine with the President of
darling
San Giorgio! Wouldn’t we, my poppet?’

‘Oh – most certainly.’ Petticate only felt that Susie must at all costs be got away. ‘No doubt in the circumstances,’ he went on, ‘the bust your father has been so anxious to execute of Sonia will have to wait.’

‘Well, yes.’ Timmy Gialletti’s delightful features once more seemed to admit a tinge of embarrassment. ‘In fact – well, definitely. I’m terribly afraid it will seem like a broken promise. But it’s really a matter of religion – or
almost
of religion. The fact is, my father has taken a sort of vow. In thanksgiving for the deliverance of San Giorgio from a century of tyranny, and so forth. The entire energies of his life are now to be devoted to a colossal memorial to the heroes of the revolution.
Really
colossal. The marble, you know, won’t have so far to come. How I can see him making the chips fly! I expect I’ll go out and give him a hand, now and then. It’s surprisingly good exercise, when you can’t row.’

‘I’m very,
very
disappointed,’ Susie said. ‘But I always thought your father was a dear. And – shall I tell you something, Timmy? Ffolliot won’t mind, I know. I think you’re a dear, too.’

The Petticates – as it might be reasonable to call them – set off for Snigg’s Green largely in silence. Petticate himself was aware that in Susie Smith the unexpected issue of their expedition had induced a conflict of emotions. She was relieved, just as he himself was not. But she was also disappointed, as he decidedly was not. It came down, no doubt, to a difference of temperament. He, being entirely the rational and prudent man, had no relish for unnecessary risks. The necessary ones were harassing enough, in all conscience. But Miss Smith – there was no denying it – was an artist, and it had been in the great Gialletti’s studio that she had believed herself destined to bring off the supreme thing. She would rejoice in the turn she was to put on before the Accademia Minerva. But, because easier, it would be less satisfactory.

Petticate, although his own mind didn’t work at all in this way, was conscious of having – although very obscurely – certain feelings of dissatisfaction himself. It was puzzling, because his perplexed situation was really resolving itself very nicely. The Hennwifes had turned out to be no danger at all; as a menace they had unexpectedly collapsed – and without even the necessity of confronting them with the false Mrs Petticate. And now it had been much the same with Gialletti. Petticate’s horizons were clearing rapidly. And yet he wasn’t – for some reason he couldn’t fix – entirely happy about it all.

They had lunch in Oxford, where Susie had decided she must take the opportunity of seeing Marcus and Dominic. She spoke of them – she really seemed to contrive to think of them – as parts of a remote past for which she from time to time nostalgically yearned. Petticate judged this silly, and he certainly didn’t propose to accompany her to Eastmoor Road – to which her return indeed, while briefly enjoying the handsome outer trappings of Mrs Petticate, struck him as being in dubious taste. But he did feel that he deserved a good luncheon, and that he could enjoy a quiet cigar afterwards, while Miss Smith went about her tiresome occasion. He wondered how she would explain to the children’s parents the sudden and obtrusive change in her fortunes, and whether she had it in mind simply to return to her former dwelling, the richer by £500, when her present adventure was concluded.

The lunch at least was satisfactory – and would have been more so but for a certain solicitousness in Susie as to what he should eat and drink that struck him as being entirely without appropriateness to their situation. It was a quite vast relief when she left him for an hour. Not that he then ceased to be conscious of her. Though she was no longer with him in the flesh – that abounding flesh which he had to acknowledge himself positively repelled by – she remained a problem to brood over. Susie Smith had, he supposed, a suppressed maternal instinct as well as an uninhibited and cheerful acquisitive one. The combination was peculiarly disagreeable to him.

They got home by tea-time. Susie insisted on stopping in the village and going into the baker’s. Petticate, waiting impatiently in the car, could see her gossiping happily with the baker’s wife behind the counter. As far as the business of being Mrs Ffolliot Petticate was concerned, this could only be reckoned as a very minor turn. But Susie emerged from it quite cheered up. She put down a paper bag on the seat between them.

‘Crumpets for today,’ she said. ‘And muffins for tomorrow.’

Petticate received this grumpily.

‘Please yourself,’ he growled as he started up the engine. ‘At tea-time I never eat anything except shortbread biscuits.’

‘Then wait.’ Susie was out of the car again in an instant – and this time she returned quite quickly, carrying a tin. ‘From Edinburgh,’ she said. ‘I once lived there. It was with a very nice Major. And I learnt just what shortbread to ask for. Alex – that was my Major’s name – used to love it too.’

To this trivial reminiscence Petticate made no reply. He was noticing that the quality of his uneasiness had changed. Foreboding would have been the better word for it now.

It was certainly under the influence of this feeling that Petticate, after tea, and hard upon wiping the last crumbs of shortbread from his moustache, grabbed the telephone and called up Wedge. There was now, after all, only one major crisis ahead, and the sooner he got a grip on it the better. Sonia Wayward must turn up for her prize. After that – only provided that Petticate benefited from past experience to arrange matters more skilfully this time – she could vanish as a physical entity, as distinct from a creative mind, once and for all. In other words this tiresome Susie Smith could go one way, and Petticate himself with his portable typewriter would go another. The novel-writing would be a terrible bore. But, with only himself to provide for in inexpensive but agreeable parts of the world, he need not labour at his curious future livelihood too often.

After some irritating palaver with a subordinate, he got through.

‘Wedge? Petticate speaking.’

‘Oh…you.’

Petticate, although he was unable to judge this at all civil, continued to endeavour after a cordial tone.

‘I have a piece of news for you, my dear fellow. Sonia is home.’

‘Well?’

Petticate frowned over the instrument. He supposed it must be defective.

‘Can you hear me?’ he asked. ‘Shall I insist on another line? I said that Sonia is home.’

‘I can hear you perfectly well. You said that Sonia is home. What about it?’

This time, Petticate was really alarmed. There was an odd quality in Wedge’s voice that the Postmaster-General certainly wasn’t to blame for.

‘Dash it all, Wedge – that prize. The Golden Nightingale, or whatever it’s called. We can fix up the arrangements now.’

This produced no articulate reply. It did however produce a noise that Petticate found entirely perplexing.

‘What was that?’ he asked.

‘What was that? It was a howl of rage, Petticate. And now can you hear me grinding my teeth?’

‘My dear chap, stop fooling.’ Petticate said this without conviction. There was now no mistaking the fact that Wedge was in a singularly bad temper.

‘Fooling? And who the devil is fooling, if it isn’t yourself. Haven’t you heard of the revolution in San Giorgio? There won’t be any more prizes. There won’t be any more Accademia Minerva. It’s been dissolved. After all, the whole thing was just publicity for their rotten casinos and things, wasn’t it? And the new government is far too high-minded for all that.’

‘But this is outrageous!’ Petticate himself was now near to gibbering with rage. ‘Think of their new President! Gialletti himself. A man who is a great admirer of my wife’s books.’

‘Rubbish, Petticate. You mean your wife’s bones – and he’s far too busy to bother his head about them now. You don’t think that an artist like Gialletti – a thorough highbrow after your own heart – could really admire Sonia’s tripe? The idea’s just silly. And, by the way, have you any notion of how many copies of
What Youth Desires
I’ve had printed? Have you any notion of how much money I’m going to drop now that the whole stunt’s off? If it doesn’t mean bankruptcy, it means something damned near it.’

For some moments Petticate, assaulted in this way, could find no words. His mind was in a most pitiable confusion. Much of what Wedge had told him he now realized that he might reasonably have guessed at. His chief difficulty appeared to be in deciding whether the news was good or bad. On the one hand it meant a very considerable sum of money going west. But on the other hand it represented the disintegration and disappearance of the last remaining crisis in his affairs – of what was, in fact, already the sole surviving occasion of his bringing his wife spuriously back to life again. This thought did presently prompt him to speech.

‘But, look here,’ he said – and was aware of his own incoherence as he spoke. ‘Look here, Wedge – what am I to do about Sonia?’

‘
Do
about her? Good Lord, man – do as you please. Pack her off again to the Bermudas, or wherever it was. If we’re to judge by
What Youth Desires
, she does her stuff the hell of a lot better there than when living at your blessed Snigg’s Green.’ The bad temper had by no means departed from Wedge’s voice. ‘Buy her a tropic isle somewhere, and make a yearly trip in that yacht of yours to collect the latest manuscript. We’ll have to think again, by the way, about changing that sliding scale. Good-bye.’

Petticate put down the receiver, left his study, and walked like a man in a dream to the drawing-room – which was the apartment in which Susie Smith had established herself. She had cleared away the tea-things and was sitting by the fire. And she was knitting.

It was the knitting, somehow, that unnerved Petticate most. Susie might have been a
tricoteuse
, waiting to see him go rolling past on a tumbrel.

‘I’ve been talking to Wedge,’ he said. ‘The whole business in San Giorgio is off. The revolution has killed it.’

‘You mean we don’t go?’

‘Just that. Certainly we don’t go.’

‘But what a shame!’ Susie was genuinely upset. ‘All that fun of being Sonia Wayward and getting a prize from a prince gone down the drain because of a stupid revolution! I looked forward to that, I did. And you’d have loved hob-nobbing with royalties.’ Momentarily and for the first time, Susie looked thoroughly dejected. Then she brightened and laid down her knitting. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Let’s cheer ourselves up, dearie. Let’s have a party.’

‘A party?’ Petticate was merely bewildered.

‘Drinks. And just by ringing round. That’s much the nicest way. I’ll begin with Augusta.’

‘Augusta?’ To Petticate the name seemed to do no more than ring the faintest of bells.

‘Who was a Gale-Warning. Augusta Gotlop. And do you think Lady Edward would come? We’ll ask some others, and you’ll tell me all about them first. It will be our next big lark.’

Petticate had gone quite pale. ‘I must point out–’ he began.

‘But there’s one other thing – before the post goes. The advertisement for
The Times
.’

‘The advertisement for
The Times
?’ Quite unconsciously, Petticate had got out a handkerchief and was mopping his brow.