The Old Man and Me (7 page)

“Then it’s time you learned.” Something in his tone had made me turn and look at him closely, and I saw that his eyes were as grave as his voice and I understood finally that being with C. D. meant being continually under his instruction; but that it need not necessarily be meant unkindly.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“No, I mean...I mean...lime,” I said suddenly, pointing to the linden tree; and “sycamore,” I said pointing to the maple. “Now teach me about antiques,” and I smiled in sweet surrender and we tootled off in the general direction of Park Lane.

We were stopped on South Audley Street by the two gigantic elephant-sized elephants made entirely of china that filled the high windows of Goodes.

“What do you make of those?” asked C.D., calling my attention to them.

“Crazy,” I replied admiringly.

“Would you like to have them?”

“They’re what I want most.”

C. D. considered. “Only
one
I think though, don’t you?”

“Oh yes. Two’s too much.”

“We’d like to inquire about the elephants in your window,” C. D. told the startled sales clerk. “We rather fancy something for our hall. We have a very big hall and we need something to fill it. I think one of those elephants would do nicely in our front hall, wouldn’t it, my dear? Right in the centre.”

“Not perhaps the teensiest bit off centre?” I wondered.

“Dear me, no. Dead centre. Yes. Instead of a fountain.”

“Now I see. Of course, darling.”

“How much are you thinking of asking for them?” C. D. inquired.

“Why I—don’t know, sir,” said the sales clerk. The thought had clearly never entered his mind. “We don’t have many—In fact, I don’t even know if—A moment, sir. I’ll try to find out.” He edged over to the window, standing as close as possible to the enormous pieces of crockery, and strained forward peering under their huge bellies hopefully as if they might offer up the secret. When they didn’t, he wandered off.

“They come to about £3,000 each, sir,” he said returning. “But I’m afraid they’re not for sale.” He seemed greatly relieved.

“What a pity! Why not?”

“They’re being shown at the next Paris Exhibition.” The man regarded them once more with total mystification. “They’re—ah—very unusual objects aren’t they?” he added, before he put them safely out of his mind. “Perhaps something else?”

“There’s nothing else big enough,” complained C. D., letting his eyes flicker discontentedly over the tea-sets and greeting cards. “No. I had my heart set on one of these elephants.”

“In any case, I’m sure we’d only sell them as a pair,” said the clerk, who was still determined to save him from his folly.

C. D. paused before receiving inspiration; then “Perhaps we could have one copied?” he asked hopefully.

“I’ll try to find out for you, sir,” sighed the clerk and dragged himself off but returned in considerably better spirits.

“I have to disappoint you again, sir,” he said cheerfully. “They can’t make ’em up nowadays.”

“Oh?”

“Haven’t got the kilns!”

“Haven’t got the
kilns
?”

“That’s right, sir. Haven’t got the kilns.”

“Ah.”

“You see, sir, you’re going to need a pretty good-sized kiln to get one of those animals into, aren’t you? I mean to say, sir, one of your ordinary kilns isn’t going to do the trick, is it? And that’s the trouble, sir, they aren’t building kilns that
size
any more.” He’d gotten quite worked up about it.

“Well, well, mustn’t grumble,” said C. D. soothingly. “It’s the same all over nowadays, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, I expect it is. I am sorry.”

“Come along, my dear.”

“Good-day, Sir. Madam.”

“Goodbye.”

“I’m beginning to enjoy this,” I said back in the sunshine again. “What shall we try to buy next—the Tower of London?”

But C. D. only murmured softly to himself, “Always wondered what the silly things cost,” and continued majestically down the street.

The woman walking towards us was staring at us very hard. She even stopped to follow us round as we passed.

Gallantly C. D. tipped his hat. She smiled and walked on.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Haven’t the faintest idea. Thought she looked jolly pleased to know me though, what?” And he cocked a merry eyebrow in my direction. And he stepped out smartly, jauntily swinging his umbrella.

The antique fair, an Event of the Season, gets run off every year at a great gallop in one of those semi-official town houses of most elegant and ambitious proportions on Park Lane. Enter and ascend a billowing baroque staircase (imagine myself gravely on the arm of the Archduke, while a thousand violins swell into a Viennese waltz) and you will find yourself in no time standing directly in front of the Main Exhibition Room, a room stuffed
to swarming with extravagant-looking people and extravagant-looking objects—crystal, silver, china, the paintings, the tapestries, the furniture, the carpets, chandeliers...antiques, antiques, antiques. Pile upon pile, one great, enormous junk shop.

C. D. paused under the archway, breathing dedicatedly. Picture if you will a C. D. gone mad. A bull in a china shop—an aesthetic bull that is—a bull run mad on aestheticism. For if American education had struck him as eclecticism run mad he was striking me as aestheticism run mad. His eyes shone and darted about ferociously coveting all they beheld. His mouth salivated (at least he licked it several times in a kind of mopping up gesture), his hands clenched and unclenched, his brow perspired; a most unnatural fever seemed to have overtaken him. And then he got a grip on himself, marched boldly into the room, took a good look around him and relaxed. And he looked upon everything and everywhere in that old man’s way of his that struck me now as being also like that of a very young baby—so lovingly, so wonderingly. But with an avidity too, that avidity special to C. D. A hungry look cast upon each object of beauty as it flowed and filled and satisfied the innermost reaches of his soul. His eyes would seize upon the object with the impatience of youth, then—here was the difference—come to terms with it; set it down: the eyes avidly picking up each beloved object in salutation—putting it down gently in farewell. Eyes look your last! Strange old man, heartbreaking, heart-broken old man—to be so moved by the polish of wood, the curve of a chair-leg, the glint of crystal, the fade of Aubusson. As though he were missing it all already.

At last C. D. smiled, his communion over. “Well, what d’you think of it all? Splendid, isn’t it?”

“I’m remembering the Botany class Leaf Hunt. Am I going to have to learn all of this too?”

“You got fifty out of sixty,” he reminded me.

“But I was five years younger then.”

“And five years stupider, I should think,” he said crisply. “Now then, look sharply and tell me where you’d like to begin.”

“At random,” I said—or rather called after him, for his enthusiasm had already plunged him into the crush.

“What have we here?” asked C. D. gaily. We had come to a clearing, a tiny oasis in the room mysteriously empty of crowds. “‘Examples of pre-classic Indian peasant culture around 1500 to 300 B.C.’” he read from a placard hanging directly over several glass-topped tables. “I say, a Mexican collection—the ideal place to start, what? Mexico: your part of the wor—”

“Oh stop—oh please don’t say it,” I begged. “Can’t we forget for this afternoon that an ocean divides us?”

“No, but seriously do let’s take a peek anyway. We may have stumbled across something perfectly fascinating. I know next to nothing about pre-Columbian art, do you? They must be some recent excavations. This case seems to contain some excavations found along the coast from Jaleaca to Acapulco. Well we’ve heard of Acapulco anyway, haven’t we? Diego Rivera did an excellent series of sunset paintings there. I’ve got them in a book over at my place. Must show them to you. Now, these stones,” he said peering into a case, “or...ah
masks
, I see they’re calling them—votive masks—can’t think why, never mind I expect we’ll find out—are in the ‘Olmec’ style, referring to the Olmec civilization, ‘typified by the round face, the flat nose, the eyes and mouth absent or only suggested, and a sort of sulky expression...’ Hmm.” We both stared for a moment at the almost smooth and supremely uninteresting-looking stones in which not only the eyes and mouth but the sulk as well had disappeared. “Too silly, really,” C. D. finally broke out giggling. “Listen to this: ‘It has not yet been established whether the artisans were trying to depict
babies
or
jaguars
(the jaguar was believed to possess supernatural powers) hence the designation Baby-faced Jaguar Votive Masks.’ Well. That seems to be all they’ve got in any of the cases. What do you make of them?”

I replied with my own version of the votive mask, especially strong in the sulk, and he backed away, closer to sheepish than I had yet encountered him. “Not on the whole a very stimulating exhibit. Don’t think you need remember any of that, you know. After all, our purpose in educating you is to make you more interesting, not less so. On the whole I think you’d be wiser to forget it.”

(But I haven’t as you can see. I can’t. That old eclecticism.)

“Battersea, and Bilston. How charming,” exclaimed C. D., as he suddenly pounced upon a display of tiny enamel pill-boxes, picking one up for me to see. “And Chelsea,” he exclaimed again, picking up another. “But what a beautiful collection! Now here’s something useful for you. They’re all the rage these days, and as you might expect being carted off to America as fast as they can lay hands on them,” he added laying his own mitts on another.

“What’s the diff—” I started when wham! like that out of the woodwork came an ancient little gnome.

“Yes, sir? May I help you?” The suddenness of his appearance along with the gentle yet firm way he removed the whichever-it-was box from C. D.’s hand and the alertness in his eyes made us both start guiltily. And I suddenly saw us through his eyes as not exactly common pickpockets but let us say a couple of high-class shoplifters one of whose itching fingers he had stopped in the nick of time. C. D. strove to calm his fears with appropriate and expert comment, “Really fine eighteenth-century enamel,” and that sort of thing.

“I see you know a great deal about these boxes, sir,” the man conceded.

“It is the finest collection I have ever seen,” C. D. declared.

“It is the finest collection in England.” The tiny sentinel smiled, pleased; his watchfulness not abating but simply elevating us to International Spy status, a sort of Mata Hari and Charlie Chan combination, I imagined, me with my hair falling concealingly over my face as I bent to examine the boxes, C. D. bland and suave; surely the suavity of his movements betrayed Eastern origins.

“But the finest collection is said to be that of the Earl of Saxenborough?”

“This is Lord Saxenborough’s, sir,” exclaimed the little one triumphantly though not unkindly, C. D. having now disarmed him by his stroke of ignorance.

“Is it now? Ah, I didn’t notice. What a piece of luck. I’ve always wanted to see it.

“That coffee-set over at the Meissen china exhibition, I don’t believe I’ve seen one like it. I must—” C. D. broke off abruptly, his hawk-eye having ferreted it out some fifty feet away. And he drifted off sudden as a feather in the breeze.

He stood enthralled before the huge pink and gold china-set. Absurd baroque ornate, the cups were in the form of delicately sculptured blush-pink rose petals with shining gold-leaf inside. I felt my first twitch of excitement since I’d been there, my first inclination towards acquisition. I who thought I coveted nothing. The voluptuousness was stunning. On every piece of china—the cups, saucers, creamer, sugar bowl, there was so much to discover—a bee on one, a drop of dew, a bud. Flyblown petals curled delicately shaded. I held a cup in my hand.

“Too bad,” said C. D., matter-of-factly pointing to a saucer. “Too bad this one’s a replacement.”

“Oh no, sir,” the man was shocked.

“Look it up in the catalogue, I think you’ll find it’s at least a century later than the originals. See here?” He showed it to me as the man pored over the inventory. “The colour’s off—hold it up to the light. It wasn’t the carving of the petals originally, it was the painting too—see the shading. The whole feeling is different. It’s as if the man who did this one had never seen a rose: certainly had never seen it growing in a garden. The petals are regular, wooden compared with the other. Even the dewdrop is mechanical.” I was stunned for now it screamed copy. How did I miss it? “The creamer is a copy too.”

“You’re right, sir,” the clerk finally said. “Missing saucer and creamer replaced in 1860.” We looked at C. D. in admiration.

And all of a sudden there was Lady Mary Hare-Vermelli swimming towards us through the crowd.

I was still holding a cup and I dropped it. It hit my foot first and rolled on to the carpet. The attendant picked it up, examined it for damage and put it back on the table. I stepped away tactfully and that was that. But not quite; for I had partially absented myself as one does during those moments of panic and now had to check back on what else had gone on during my absence. For one thing people around me began breathing again though I had not been conscious of them having stopped, for another I discovered at least part of my vertigo to be the direct result of having dived down after the cup myself as well as the attendant, and that the slight soreness on the side of my head was due to C. D.’s
having dived down too at the same time and presumably in the same place.

And the other part of my vertigo? Lady Mary Hare-Vermelli. For there she was—a middle-aged nymphet swimming towards us as if tangled up in seaweed. I suppose that C. D. had decided that the two of us were too awkwardly placed or too chaotic in general for formal introductions; at any rate he did not attempt them so that I felt free to study Lady Mary openly as if she were an example of pre-classic Indian peasant culture or an early Meissen coffee-set. She was a flat, slender creature and the black tweed coat floating around her was of casual cut. Of even more casual cut was her hair, chewed-off, blown brown hair worn in a vague fringe. She wore vague chewed-off lipstick, a black pleated skirt, and a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. She was easily the most effective-looking woman in the room. Effective like Garbo, I mean, like Hepburn. She had, to put it mildly, her own style, and she carried it off with her own sense of Destiny, which she wore casually, like her coat and all the rest of it. Two things besides her liquid green eyes were particularly striking: her stance, with its implied equivocation of being open and eager to engage in conversation while at the same time unfortunately at the mercy of a fierce dog straining at the end of a leash, and her expression, which, even in repose, was of a blazing transcending brightness.

“One absolutely
felt
one would run into you here,” she breathed at C. D. The breathiness was of primary importance in the delivery of her utterances and this together with her odd diction and inflections produced a manner of speech which sounded to me affected to the point of affliction, contrasting strangely with the downright carelessness of her looks.

Her presence reduced C. D. to a jelly.

“We’ve come from the Saxenborough Collection,” he began.

“Billy’s beastly little boxes!” she breathed, stringing her gurgles and gasps and pants into arpeggios of nuance. “They’ve grown quite out of hand, haven’t they?”

“Grown to fetichism,” C. D. agreed, executing a graceful tack, seeing the way the wind blew.

“Oh
zac
-tly! One knows so ex-
act
-ly what one means!” Lady Mary rewarded him with a staccato of sympathetic gasps. “Whatever can have given him the queer notion of collecting such rubbish in the first place? All those Gaiety Girls, I suppose.”

“A collection of their dancing slippers would have been more to the point.” C. D., by now, was quite willing to dump the whole Saxenborough cargo overboard for his beloved. “What are you doing in town? Shall you be staying long?”

“Didn’t I glimpse you earlier today?” She side-stepped, neatly embellishing this revelation with more gurgles of high intrigue.

“I don’t think so,” he lied, thoroughly flustered.

“Surely you were lunching at the Half Moon?”

“So I was. I’d forgotten,” he backed down. “Mayn’t I see you some time? Could we have drinks tomorrow?”

“Shan’t be here, alas.”

“Tonight?” he pleaded.

“Oh dear...I don’t know...” The invisible leash had given a tug making us aware of a tiny dark young man in a positive fit of Votive-Mask sulks, glowering at us in the distance. “Sean must be back in Dublin in time. Though p’haps I...” She shot C. D. a bright disconcerting glance which for a moment included me and suddenly swam off sideways. In time for what, I kept wondering as I watched her ripples.

C. D. regained his composure with her departure. “She’s pretending to try to bring him round to meet us,” he announced calmly. “She won’t succeed of course. Oh, the affectations of a great beauty. Look at that, will you—rubbing her elbow with one hand and stroking her hair with the other.”

We looked on in silence at the gently turbulent scene progressing between Lady Mary and the youth, until, her luminous glance sweeping back over C. D. in a final arabesque of regret, she allowed the leash to give its final tug and she was off.

“What was she doing here?”

“Why, what should she be?”

“I don’t know. I thought she was supposed to be so Beat or something.”

“You wouldn’t stop her from going to a museum, would you?”

“I wouldn’t stop her from going anywhere. I just thought— Oh never mind. Who was that with her, her son?” I couldn’t resist adding.

“Her lover,” he snapped, giving me a dirty look.

And now he surveyed the room with dissatisfaction at the spoils she had left behind. He could no longer find any pleasure in it and in his irritation he launched into a series of complaints. The place was too hot and too crowded; it was badly arranged; it was impossible to find anything.

“What is the difference between Battersea and Chelsea?” I asked, trying to distract him.

“Porcelain and enamel,” he snapped closing the subject once and for all. He stared at his watch. “I have to leave soon. Anything you particularly want to see? Well is there?” he said.

No reply.

We started making our way out.

“Wait a sec.” I stopped dead in my tracks. Honey’s engagement ring was sparkling up at me from a case of jewels. I went over and examined it closely. Yes, it was Honey’s ring. Or rather its exact duplicate, even to size. I stared at it hard. Even looking at the likeness I could feel the same rage and hatred I felt towards that other ring. How ugly it was! An innocent object lying innocently in its velvet case harming no one. But it wasn’t innocent. It was evil. It was a thing of evil. It stank of corruption, sorrow, and death. The sight of it released in me the same ruthless determination to get rid of it, get it out of my sight for ever, revived in me the same scheming plots and plans to remove it from her, from me, for ever at all costs—get
him
away from her even if it meant taking him away from her myself. Seeing it there shining with evil, I felt justified; reassured that my motives, whatever they looked like from the outside, had been pure. I had been a loyal friend to Honey, had not wanted to see her hurt, had wanted only her happiness. My thoughts took a sudden plunge and I remembered startlingly another diamond ring, of many, many years before, how old was I—eleven? The one my father gave me to celebrate making his first big pile. I’d worn it to the new snobby school I was attending in New York and all the children had taunted me about it. I’d thrown it away, secretly, out of the window, thrown it away in rage and shame: “But Poppie, I lost it I tell you. I don’t
know
where.” I had to smile. What children will do! And yet I’d been right. I’d known it even then. Diamonds stank of corruption. Money, money, money...corruption, sorrow, death. The refrain rang in my head.