Monday

I

When Anthony Shelton proposed to Victoria Rawlings, and was accepted, both his friends and hers were surprised; and although they differed in much else they were agreed that the marriage was in all respects unsuitable. It was not merely, Anthony’s friends observed, that Victoria was the daughter of a fairly unsuccessful general practitioner (whose unsuccess had been sealed, a couple of years before the engagement, by his death from a lingering liver complaint) in the suburb of Barnsfield, while Anthony’s father was known to be something, and something important – though nobody quite knew what – in the City. That might, in these regrettably democratic post-war days, be ignored. Nor was it simply, as Victoria’s friends remarked, that Victoria was really awfully interested in books and writers and art and artists and all that sort of thing, whereas Anthony’s capacity for intellectual conversation was known to be strictly limited. No; the serious difference between them – the yawning gap which made their suggested marriage certain, in a mixture of metaphor, to land on the rocks – touched the question of sport in general, and in particular cricket. Victoria, her friends explained, was opposed on principle (although they might have been hard put to it to say what principle) to all games, and particularly to those played with bat and ball; and if there was one game that she regarded with more distaste than another, it was cricket. Cricket, on the other hand, had always appeared to Tony Shelton, although he was not of a religious disposition, as the prime reason for the creation of man. The thing that he remembered most clearly about his years at one of England’s most famous public schools was his bowling analysis: and although he spent three years at Oxford, at the end of which the University conferred no distinction upon him, he felt rather strongly that he had conferred a distinction on the University by taking nine wickets against Cambridge in his last year. He had come down prepared to settle to the serious business of life by playing regularly for Southshire. It was, Victoria’s and Tony’s friends agreed, obviously not a suitable marriage: and it was a mystery, besides, what Tony could possibly see in Victoria, or Victoria in Tony.

This mystery may be solved at once. What Victoria saw in Tony was abundant curling fair hair, set above a pair of disarmingly innocent china-blue eyes, remarkably wide shoulders tapering down to a slim waist and long, narrow legs. Victoria had for years proclaimed her devotion to an ideal of physical male beauty which she believed, a little vaguely, to be Grecian. This physical ideal seemed to be fulfilled by Tony’s appearance; and in intellectual matters she regarded him as clay to be shaped by the potter’s hand. It was not, of course, disagreeable to her that Tony’s father was something in the City and it is probable that she experienced a small satisfaction from the sight of Tony’s yellow Bentley drawn up outside the door of the modest home in which she lived with her mother and her brother Edward, who had assumed her father’s mantle of medical failure: but still, these were not the prime factors in her acceptance of his proposal. In the diary which she kept faithfully in violet ink and a sprawling hand, she put down a vision of herself as queen of an artistic salon, always witty and charming, always making the right remark, smoothing the rough moment with a smile or wave of the hand; and Tony Shelton was an essential element in this vision. Her mots, in this salon, were famous, and rumour whispered that many great men were madly in love with her: yet none was known to be her lover. She was faithful always to her husband, not because of his genius (not even in her diary could she transform Tony into a genius), but because of his wonderful Grecian beauty. Could it be, she wondered sometimes, that she loved Tony because he was so gratifyingly impressed by her intellect? But she put this thought firmly away from her, and decided that it was her fatal susceptibility to a beauty that was sufficiently near to that of a Grecian statue for all reasonable requirements that had joined their fates.

Anthony’s reasons for admiring Victoria were not to be found altogether in her rather unfashionably long face, her dark hair and eyebrows, her full and often-parted lips and her slightly vacant expression. Anthony did, in fact, admire Victoria’s intellect. This admiration may seem strange in one who was viewed by his friends as essentially a cricketer, and by his enemies as essentially a moron: but behind the young man’s fair, uncorrugated brow there lay, unanalysed and undetermined but still exceedingly potent, that deep sense of guilt with which many modern films, novels and treatises have familiarised us. Anthony was a victim of what, in fashionable terms, is known as a father-fixation. His mother had died at Anthony’s birth, and his first memories were of the small man with nut-brown face who was his father: who talked to him so incomprehensibly and gave him elaborate presents of fishing rods and bicycles and unreadable books; who reproved boyish tricks and jokes with a calm kindness more terrifying than any anger could have been. In the brief intervals from sporting triumphs which Anthony spent at home he came slowly to the realisation that his father adhered to a scale of values in which an ability to turn the new ball both ways or to sell the dummy played an inconsiderable part. Not by any word or gesture did Mr Shelton show a lack of interest in his son’s sporting achievements; yet Anthony was painfully conscious that he must be a disappointment to the old man who added to his immense knowledge of the world, and his ability to conduct business deals with the hard-faced men who sometimes came to their home, intellectual interests which were expressed for his son in the frequent study of booksellers’ lists and his excitement over the purchases which he sometimes made from them. When he came down from Oxford Anthony was subject to a severe emotional stress in feeling that he was not worthy of his father, and to a schizophrenic desire and distaste for his projected career as a cricketer.

Then he met Victoria – and met her, as it happened, through his father, when Mr Shelton, who was known in the district to possess a considerable library, was asked to address the Barnsfield Literary Society on “How to Collect Books”. Anthony conscientiously attended this lecture, and his attention wavered sometimes from his father’s humorous description of the circumstances which induced him to break a youthful vow that he would never buy a book which cost more than half a crown. It wavered because of the uncomfortable knowledge that a young woman at the other side of the room was gazing at him with peculiar fixity. The young woman (whose gaze had been fixed by his Greek beauty) was Victoria Rawlings; and when she talked to him over the cups of weak tea and date sandwiches, which accompanied the lecture, he was delighted to discover that she was a really well-read girl. She had written a novel – or part of a novel; she painted – or attended a School of Art; and she mentioned airily names, which impressed him, even though he heard them for the first time. He was still more impressed, and even alarmed, when she said that art was in her blood, and that her grandfather was Martin Rawlings (a name which, like the other names she mentioned, was strange to him). The effect of her conversation was enhanced by the thick dark hair which she wore cut square in a fringe, by her rich, yearning eyes and slightly-parted lips; and his enchantment was complete when Victoria expressed emphatically her disinterest in all sporting activities – a full life, she said, could be lived only in the mind.

She invited him to tea, and he met her brother Edward, who seemed rather disagreeable, and her mother, Muriel, who was certainly scatterbrained. Neither her mother nor brother seemed to Anthony to value Victoria at her true intellectual worth, and he said as much to her. She murmured the word “Philistines”, and in a heaven of self-abasement Anthony said: “But I’m a Philistine too – I’m an awful fool, you know.” Beneath the fringe, Victoria’s long face looked pensive as he gasped suddenly: “Will you marry me?” Slowly and solemnly she nodded, and then said: “Not if you continue to play cricket.” Gleefully, without the semblance of a sigh, Anthony made the sacrifice; and as he kissed her, he thought with pleasure of his father’s delight.

When he announced the engagement, however, with the nervousness that always oppressed him in dealing with his father, Mr Shelton showed no particular pleasure. He looked at his son for a moment or two without speaking, and then said: “You are very young.”

“I’m twenty-two.”

“Precisely.” Mr Shelton brought the tips of his slender fingers together. “And Miss Rawlings is a little older, I believe.”

“She’s twenty-four. But what does that matter?” Then, as his father was silent again, Anthony said, “You like her, sir, don’t you?”

“I have always found her a pleasant girl. She is perhaps a little feather-witted, but I do not regard that as a serious fault in a woman.”

“Really, sir, I don’t think you quite understand her.” Anthony was always uncomfortable when he contradicted his father. “She’s really awfully clever.”

“I have seen some of the paintings which she hangs around the house. They are execrable. I can understand the production of such work – there is an inferior artist in the humblest heart – but it shows a grave failure of taste to display it with apparent pride. That is a mark against her. Another mark, I should have thought, from your point of view, is her lack of interest in games. I doubt if she will enjoy watching you play for Southshire every summer.”

“She won’t have to,” Anthony said. “I’m giving up cricket.”

“My dear boy, you can’t be serious.” Mr Shelton looked at his son with more sign of emotion upon his nut-brown face than he had yet shown.

“I am.” Anthony shuffled his feet with shy determination. “Vicky’s shown me that it’s all a lot of rot. All those grown men hitting a ball about – why, it’s ridiculous.” He laughed unconvincingly. “Poetry and painting and music and all that – they’re the important things. And whatever you say about her paintings, I think Vicky’s an artist. It’s – it’s in the blood. Her grandfather was a poet.”

“I know. Old Martin Rawlings.” Mr Shelton said unexpectedly:

 

“I dreamed a gull whose lucent lovely wing

Knew not the savage colours of desire,

But waking found your body like a fire

And never knew nor recked a reckoning.”

 

“What’s that?”

Mr Shelton shook his head with a half-humorous pity. “You should know the works of old Martin if you want to find the way to his granddaughter’s heart. Or perhaps you shouldn’t – you seem to have done very well without the knowledge. Perhaps she favours these moderns who cut up their lines into all sorts of odd lengths. What do you know about them?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“You are fortunate.”

“But I can learn,” Anthony said eagerly.

“I’m sure you can.” Twice, like a neat cat, Mr Shelton walked up and down the library in which they were talking. Then he slapped his son on the back. “Very well, my boy. There is one thing I want to ask you, while I say good luck and God bless you.” An immense, beaming smile moved over Anthony’s handsome face, a smile that vanished with his father’s next words. “I want you to promise not to get married for a year. I know you won’t like that, but I think you owe it to me.” He spoke rather rapidly, as he saw that his son was about to interrupt. “Since your mother died, a deep responsibility has been placed upon me. I say nothing against this marriage, except that it is not the kind of alliance that I had expected or hoped for you. I am saying nothing against Miss Rawlings –”

“Vicky.”

“Vicky,” said Mr Shelton with obvious effort. “I am saying nothing against Vicky. I only ask you to wait for a year so that you are both sure of your own minds.”

Anthony’s handsome face reddened, and his fair curls shook with his effort to concentrate. “But it’s – it’s –” He drew on a not very extensive vocabulary. “It’s Victorian.”

His father stood smiling at him, a small brown man with a thin brown face creased in a smile. “What can you expect of a Victorian figure like me – almost an antique? After all, it’s not what I wanted. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. Is it a deal?”

His son smiled sheepishly. “If Vicky says so.”

“And you’re really going to give up cricket?”

“Oh yes. Poetry and painting – they’re the really important things.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mr Shelton enthusiastically, and the interview was over.

Vicky thought the old man very ridiculous, but rather sweet. “As though things could ever change for us, darling, when we’re both interested in the same things.” She looked thoughtful. “I’d quite like to get married this week.”

Anthony’s gasp was a mixture of admiration and horror. “But what about father?”

“What about him? We don’t want to be tied to anybody’s purse strings, do we?”

“Of course not,” he said uncertainly. “But – if he cut off my allowance – I don’t know what we should do. I suppose I could get a job,” he said despairingly.

“We’d manage,” said Vicky, and then: “But of course we don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

Anthony’s face brightened. “No; I shouldn’t like to hurt his feelings.”

So the two young people were engaged, although Vicky showed her emancipation from convention by saying that she did not want Anthony to buy her a ring. An intellectual gift, Anthony understood, would be acceptable – or no gift at all, for such things were irrelevant to the marriage of true minds. He visited museums and art galleries, and expressed his appreciation of what he saw there; and if he did not familiarise himself with modern poetry, he took his father’s advice as far as reading the article about Martin Rawlings in the Biographical Dictionary. Opinion was divided about this move of old Mr Shelton’s. Some people said that the best way of killing a cat was by choking it with cream, and that the old man was a very deep one, while others saw in it a reluctant acceptance of the changes that had come over the world in this post-war February of 1924, when the Prince of Wales was signalising his recognition of the existence of a Labour Government by giving its Prime Minister lunch; and Mr Howard Carter was distressing the Egyptian authorities by opening the sarcophagus in the innermost shrine of Tutankhamen’s tomb; and a Hammersmith woman and her two young children were killed by falling from the campanile of Westminster Cathedral; and the Oxford Union, at its centenary, was debating “That Civilisation has advanced since the Society first met”.

 

II

Three months later Anthony came down late to breakfast, and noticed with some irritation that his father had The Times open at the cricket page. Anthony turned to the sports page of the Daily Mail. Not only was Southshire doing badly, but the report of the day’s play was quite inadequate. He sipped his tea, and then rang the bell with unnecessary violence. “Janet,” he said, “this tea’s cold.”

Janet was a tall, thin woman with a drooping nose. “If you’d come down at the right time it would have been hot enough,” she said. “Ten o’clock’s no time for breakfast, is it, Mr Shelton?”

Anthony’s father lowered his Times a little. “Don’t be severe, Janet. My son is much disturbed by the political situation.”

“I should think so too,” said Janet. “With this Labour Government ready to murder people in their beds.”

“Last night the Government was saved from defeat by the Liberals,” said Mr Shelton. “A fact that I am sure you deplore as much as I do.”

Janet had her hand on the teapot. “And the tea’s not cold,” she said accusingly.

“Nevertheless, you heard Mr Anthony say that he would like to have a fresh pot.” His smile robbed the words of sting. When she had gone out of the room there was silence while the old man and the young man read their papers. Then Mr Shelton said, “A bad start for Southshire. Beaten by Worcester in their first match, and now Leicestershire have scored four hundred and twenty for five against them.” Anthony stuffed scrambled egg into his mouth and made no reply. “Your absence is lamented in The Times report. Listen. ‘Astill and King scored very freely and treated Travers, MacNaughton, and the other Southshire bowlers with a contempt which, we are bound to say, they deserved. It is clear that the county will sadly miss Mr A W Shelton, the talented University fast-medium bowler, who will not be giving the team his support this season.”

Janet brought in some more tea. Anthony fidgeted with a roll. His face was red. “Why do you try to make me look a fool?” he said suddenly. “You know very well I’m not interested in politics.”

The Times came down with a rustle. “Why do you act like one? You know perfectly well that you’re itching to play for Southshire. Why don’t you?”

“Because I don’t choose to.”

“Very well.” Mr Shelton had regained his customary urbanity. “I am sorry that I was mistaken about your interest in politics. It seemed to me likely that your new-found enthusiasm for art and letters might have extended to other spheres.”

Anthony was always at a disadvantage in discussion with his father, and to avoid argument he turned to the three envelopes that lay beside his plate. They were all franked with penny stamps, and on many days he would not have troubled to open them. Today he did so; and set in train a line of events that led to murder. One of the envelopes contained an offer to lend money on note of hand alone; another was a bill from a garage; the third was a catalogue of a book sale at Messrs Bernard Lintot, Booksellers, of Clark Street, W1 Conscious of his father’s eye upon him, Anthony turned the pages with a pretence of interest he did not feel, until suddenly his eye was caught by a name and an item:

 

“RAWLINGS, MARTIN. Passion and Repentance. Letts and Ableton, 1860.

“The rare first edition, seen through the press by the author, and never publicly distributed. An exceptionally fine copy, in the original parchment boards.”

 

Anthony pondered for a moment, eating his scrambled egg. Then he looked up, his face brighter than it had been for a week. “I say, Dad, you know a lot about first editions, and all that, don’t you?”

“Well?”

“What would a first edition of old Martin Rawlings’ Passion and Repentance be worth?”

“A first edition?” His father’s eyebrows were arched. “Let me see the catalogue.” He looked at it and said, “It might be worth sixty pounds, or perhaps a little more. There aren’t many copies in existence, and they rarely come up for sale. You know the history of Passion and Repentance, I suppose?” His eyes were amused under the arched brows.

“Well –” Anthony said slowly, and his father laughed.

“You should know about it. After all, old Martin was your fiancée’s grandfather – a fact of which both you and she are prone to remind me. You know that it was rather indiscreet by Victorian standards?”

Anthony nodded his head like a mandarin. “I’ve read what it says in the Biographical Dictionary.”

“The story is that Martin Rawlings wrote the poem in 1860, and published it in this little private edition. Then eight years later he decided to risk the scandal of open publication, and within a few weeks the book made him famous.”

“What’s so scandalous about the poems?” Anthony asked.

“Why don’t you read them and find out?” his father suggested, and rose to leave the breakfast table. Then he turned back, and said, “Why do you want to know their value?”

His son blushed. “Well, as a matter of fact, you know Vicky didn’t want an engagement ring and said she wanted something original. I thought, you see, that as she said the other day she hadn’t got a copy of the first edition of this book, she might like –”

“I see.” The lines of Mr Shelton’s brown face might, for a moment, have been carved out of wood. Then he smiled and said, “You might go up to seventy. After all, it will be a kind of family investment.”

It was not until his father had left the house that it occurred to Anthony to wonder why a bookseller’s catalogue should have been sent to him. He looked idly at the envelope, and saw that in fact it was addressed to R W Shelton, Esq. The letter R, carelessly written, had been interpreted by Janet as an A. His father’s name was Richard William and the catalogue had, in fact, been meant for him.

 

III

The Bentley drew up with enviable smoothness outside Messrs Lintot’s door. Inside, Anthony felt himself to be a rather conspicuous figure in his check jacket, yellow scarf and thick brown shoes. These seemed, somehow, not to be the appropriate wear for a book sale. He held the catalogue firmly in his hand and looked round with a certain bewilderment.

The atmosphere did not seem to him that of a book sale. Some twenty men, and three or four women, were sitting round a long baize-topped table. Some of the men seemed to be asleep, while others indicated their attention only by the slightest movement of their catalogues. Other men were standing round the large room, three walls of which were lined with books from floor to ceiling, and these men too seemed apathetic. Some of them, indeed, were apparently so little interested that they had turned round and were looking at the books on the shelves.

Anthony had been in the room a minute or two before he realised that the sale was in progress. Then the auctioneer, a thin man with a badly-fitting brown wig which did not match his grey moustache, murmured “Lot Number…” and his voice faded so much that Anthony could not hear the number. He tapped the shoulder of a small man standing on his left, who was wearing a bowler hat, a very tight blue suit with a red line in it, and a startling tie decorated with blue and yellow stripes. Like Anthony, this man clutched a catalogue tightly in one hand. When he turned round the man revealed a very red face which, although the room was not hot, shone with perspiration. “Whatcher want?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon,” Anthony said. “Could you tell me which lot they are selling?”

“No idea, chum,” said the man with the red face. As he turned away, Anthony saw that his catalogue was marked in blue with a big cross against Lot 85. And Lot 85 was the first edition of Passion and Repentance.

Anthony experienced a feeling of mingled annoyance and pleasure. It was disturbing to know that someone else had come to the sale apparently with the express intention of bidding for Passion and Repentance, but at the same time the thought of giving a surprise to this rude little man was positively pleasant. But surely the little man could not be a typical frequenter of book sales? While Anthony was pondering this question, a very old man just in front of him, wearing extremely tight trousers and carrying a malacca cane, leaned back and whispered, “We are now at Lot 38. Prices are low.”

“Are they indeed,” said Anthony, much encouraged. What a fine stroke if he could tell his father that he had bought this first edition for much less than the sixty or seventy pounds he had mentioned.

“It is a buyers’ market,” whispered the old man. “A first edition of Liza of Lambeth has just sold for fifteen pounds.” Anthony nodded uncomfortably. He had not the least idea whether this figure was low or high.

For the next few minutes he concentrated on watching the procedure of the sale. It was not really hard to follow. First of all, the auctioneer announced the lot by number, then the lot itself or a sample of it was passed round very quickly by an attendant for inspection, and then it was sold. The apathy of the bidders seemed to be simply a technique by which they tried to avoid notice. The lots were disposed of at great speed, very few of them taking more than a minute. Anthony noticed that a shrewd-looking young man seated at the table bought several of them, and he noticed also that the man in the blue suit did not bid at all. Just as he was wondering who the shrewd-looking young man was, the old man with tight trousers leaned towards him again and said, “That’s Foskiss. Buys everything for the ring. Doesn’t give the small men a chance.”

Anthony nodded again, without any idea what the old man meant. Bidding started for a collected edition of Henry James in the Washington Square edition and Anthony, who had no wish to possess the works of Henry James, felt an irresistible desire to bid.

“Four,” murmured the auctioneer. “Four-five, four-ten. Any advance on four-ten?”

“Five,” said Anthony with a boldness that took his own breath away, and caused half the people in the room to turn round and look at him. The auctioneer settled his wig more firmly, and the young man at the table looked up from his catalogue, on which he had been drawing elaborate arabesques. He stared hard at Anthony, and then nodded.

“Guineas,” said the auctioneer happily. “Five guineas against you, sir.”

“Six,” said Anthony, staring defiantly round the room. The young man nodded. “Guineas,” said the auctioneer.

“Seven,” said Anthony, directing his gaze this time straight at the shrewd-looking young man, who ignored him and nodded again. At ten pounds, however, the young man shrugged, murmured something to the man sitting next to him and made no further movement.

“Made you pay through the nose for it,” said the old man with enjoyment. “He’s smart, is young Foskiss.” He blew his nose loudly.

By the time he had given his name and address to the auctioneer’s clerk, Anthony was feeling less triumphant. Whatever could he do with all those books? He suddenly cheered up as he reflected that he could, of course, present them to his father. What a surprise that would give him! He had returned to his place and fallen into a kind of daydream when he suddenly heard the auctioneer say “Lot 85.” A moment later the lot was being displayed. It was carried round like a precious relic, and was revealed as a small volume with a slightly faded blue cover.

“Lot 85,” the auctioneer repeated without emotion. “What am I offered? Thirty-five, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, forty. Thank you. Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-five. Any advance on forty-five?” The shrewd-looking young man raised his catalogue. “Forty-seven. Thank you, Mr Foskiss. Forty-eight, fifty. Fifty pounds offered.” The auctioneer paused.

When should he start bidding? Anthony seemed to have heard somewhere that it was wise to delay your bid as long as possible – it had a good psychological effect. On the other hand, it would be an awful thing if the lot was knocked down suddenly to the unpleasant Foskiss. While his mind was still in this state of indecision Anthony heard himself say “Fifty-two.”

Foskiss raised his catalogue. “Fifty-three.”

“Fifty-five.”

Foskiss now spoke for the first time. “Sixty,” he said.

A five-pound raise! But that was a game that two could play. Feeling as if he were sending down a really fast one to a batsman who had just driven him for four, Anthony said, “Sixty-five.” He looked hard at Foskiss, who was creasing his catalogue pensively. A hoarse voice just beside Anthony said “Seventy.” It was the little man in the blue suit and the bowler hat. Anthony had forgotten all about him, and his marking the lot with a cross. Now the little man’s head was jutting forward, and he looked both comic and menacing.

“Seventy-one,” said Foskiss.

“Seventy-five,” said the man in the blue suit.

“Seventy-six.”

In a voice that hoarseness made almost inaudible, the man in the blue suit said, “Eighty.” The auctioneer looked expectantly at Foskiss, who shook his head sharply. His face was pink with annoyance. This was the time, Anthony thought, to strike a decisive blow. “Eighty-five,” he said. There was a murmur of interest in the room and the old man by Anthony’s side sucked in his breath with shocked surprise. The man in the blue suit stuck his head a little further forward and said, “Ninety.”

“Ninety-five,” said Anthony. He was perfectly cool, he assured himself. It was true that he was far beyond the price his father had mentioned, but surely the fact that this other man was bidding showed that the book must be worth the money? Again the auctioneer settled his wig. He seemed quite bewildered by the turn of events. “Any adv –”

“A ’undred,” said the little man. He took off his bowler hat to wipe his forehead, and revealed a bald red head.

“A hundred pounds,” breathed the auctioneer. “Any advance on a hundred pounds?”

“Guineas,” Anthony said. He had a curious feeling in his knees.

“Guineas,” said the auctioneer. He was now again in control of himself and events. He gave a grey smile to the man in the blue suit and said, “Any advance?” The man jammed his hat back on his head, folded his arms and glared at Anthony.

The auctioneer tapped decorously with his hammer. “Sold at a hundred guineas to Mr –”

“Shelton, Anthony Shelton,” Anthony announced to the world with an enormous smile. The man in the blue suit stumbled past Anthony with his head down, and went out of the sales-room. There was a buzz of conversation. The old man leaned back and said, “You certainly paid through the nose –” Anthony waved him away. He felt like a book-buyer of long standing, and the feeling was enjoyable. “You may think so,” he said.

When he went to collect the book he was made aware that his experience as a book-buyer was in fact small. It would be necessary, the auctioneer’s clerk explained, to wait a couple of days for a cheque to be cleared. Unless, of course, he liked to pay cash.

“But I haven’t got that much on me in cash.”

The clerk shrugged. “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to wait, sir.” He glanced at the clock. “The banks are still open.”

Anthony considered. Now that he had bought the book he wanted to give it to Vicky immediately. “All right. I’ll go to the bank and come back.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll see that they’re all ready for you when you return.”

“They?” Anthony said in surprise, and was embarrassed when the clerk pointed towards the pile of Henry James. “Oh yes,” he said. “No. I mean – I don’t want to take those. Just the other – the little book.”

“Just the Rawlings,” said the clerk with a look that indicated his low opinion of Anthony.

“Just the Rawlings.”

Half an hour later he returned, collected the copy of Passion and Repentance, and gave instructions for the set of Henry James to be sent to his father.

While he ate lunch at the Criterion he thought about his purchase. The more he thought about it the more convinced he was that he had made a fool of himself. He put aside the copy of Antic Hay which he had been trying to read (“It is the very latest thing,” Vicky had said. “It will be so good for you.” But he detested it), and very carefully took out the little blue book and looked at it. “A hundred guineas,” he murmured. The fact that it was guineas seemed to make it more than five pounds worse than a hundred pounds. He opened the book and began to read:

 

When my lips touched your forehead they knew guilt.

But ah! Who does not relish guilt? Beneath

Your willing flesh my spirit laid a wreath

On hope of Heaven and – how gaily – built

Its nook in hell. So when we danced, “How sweet,”

I said, “that arabesque upon your dress.”

Later I fingered each black curling tress

And knew your carcass – so much worthless meat.

Ah, bitter, fruitful, all too fruitful days!

Within the dark who knows what deeds are done

Except the Future brings all dark to light.

From youth I craved the poet’s crown of bays

And still methinks that prize might have been won –

But now past sin crawls loathsomely to light.

 

“Too much for me, this stuff,” Anthony muttered to himself. His attention wandered, and he looked at his watch. It would take three-quarters of an hour to drive out to Barnsfield in the Bentley. Vicky did not expect him until teatime, and teatime, in the Rawlings home, was five o’clock. Middlesex were playing Surrey at Lord’s. He pondered these three facts slowly as he drank his coffee. Two lines of worry creased his forehead. Surely, he argued to himself, the purchase of Passion and Repentance represented culture and devotion enough for one day? But still he felt quite broken by the weight of the decision he was making, and the knowledge that Vicky would disapprove of it. Almost mournfully, he walked out of the Criterion, and directed the Bentley’s bonnet towards Lord’s. As he drew nearer to the St John’s Wood ground, however, his spirits brightened at the prospect of seeing Hearne and Hendren. “I mustn’t be late to tea,” he thought as he drove in. “Whatever happens, I mustn’t be late to tea.”

 

IV

Victoria Rawlings’ Diary

 

At ten o’clock that Monday night Victoria Rawlings retired to her bedroom on the pretext of a raging headache. Her mother and brother were both inclined to resent this early departure: her mother because she wanted to enlist Vicky’s aid in dealing with one of the crossword puzzles that had recently appeared in the more popular newspapers, and brother Edward because she robbed him of half the audience before which he could express his worries.

Edward Rawlings was a professional worrier; or (to use a more modern term) he suffered from a deep anxiety neurosis. He worried about politics, about money, about his family and about his practice. He worried because the Liberal Party, which he supported, did not use its Parliamentary position to defeat the Labour Government; he worried because the practice which he had inherited on his father’s death showed a slight but persistent decline; he worried because his mother was an expense, and because his sister was unmarried; he worried lest his professional diagnoses should have been incorrect or his prescriptions wrongly written out. At the age of twenty-eight Edward’s hair was thinning, doubtless from worry about his own health, and his bank balance was thinning too. On that particular evening he had expressed a good deal of mental perturbation about old Mrs Browder, who suffered from indigestion – or it might be something worse. Suppose that she was right in thinking she had some severe internal trouble… Edward, Vicky reflected, grew more tiresome, and her mother more inconsequent, every day. How delightful it would be when she was married and away from both of them.

When she thought of the word marriage, Vicky sat down at an elegant but slightly rickety kidney-shaped writing desk in her small bedroom. Her mouth fell open and her expression became slightly vacant. Like her mother, Victoria Rawlings was long and slim and had dark hair, and if her mouth was a little too wide, and her eyes too far apart, for beauty, she was certainly extremely attractive. Now she sat at the writing desk in her bedroom that was ornamented by a rather odd collection of prints from the Medici Society, including two Holman Hunts and a luscious Tuke, and thought about marriage. She delved in the neck of her dress and fished up two small keys. With one of them she unlocked one drawer of the writing desk, and revealed a great red book with an imposing brass lock on it. With some difficulty, Vicky bent her swan-like neck until she could undo the brass lock with the other tiny key. The big red book was the diary in which Vicky recorded, in a manner that seemed to her vivid and lifelike, the events and reflections of her days. It was not every day that she found material worthy of record, but tonight she was almost embarrassed because she had so much of importance to tell. She took up her fountain pen with its Relief nib, turned to an open page – and paused. It was her custom to begin with some philosophical reflections before getting down to facts. What should it be tonight? Absently she scratched the tip of her nose with the nib of her pen, leaving a small violet mark on it, and then began to write in a remarkably round and unformed script:

“Certain things, dear diary, have always been a mystery to me. I have never understood how so many girls, of such different kinds, could fall in love with Lord Byron. I know, of course, that he was supposed to be awfully fascinating in his manner, and very beautiful, and that would have appealed to me, though he was fat, I believe, which I could never have endured; but the thing is that he was lame. I know it’s an awful thing to confess, but I’ve never been able to bear any kind of physical deformity. I just can’t bear to look at a cripple or anyone who’s lost an arm or leg, I’m almost sick at the smell of a hospital, and although I don’t actually faint at the sight of blood I feel as if I could. Even the smells that sometimes come out of brother Edward’s little dispensary make me feel that he must be very insensitive, or he couldn’t endure to make such vile mixtures.

“Well! I’ve always thought that this feeling was just a part of what it means to have an artistic temperament. After all, it stands to reason if you’re specially sensitive to beauty (as I am – though brother Edward is always so beastly and common about it) you’ll be specially sensitive to ugliness too. I don’t see anything to be ashamed of in that. And I’ve always said to everybody that what I love about Tony, for instance, is that he’s so beautiful. Really, it makes me tremble to look at him, with those wonderful golden curls and great shoulders and perfect figure. And I’ve always felt that anyone I fell in love with must be physically beautiful. Today, though – but I must begin at the beginning.”

Vicky looked at what she had written with her head on one side. She took great pleasure in reading the back pages of her diary, and often reflected that it was a great pity she couldn’t just read it without being put to the trouble of writing. The Relief nib skimmed over the paper.

“I went to the Barnsfield Art School this afternoon to hear a lecture from Professor Lester. They say he is very advanced and I expected somebody young and dashing and altogether revolutionary, but he was really a dry old fellow, and kept talking about something called significant form, which I couldn’t make head or tail of. I was at a loose end today because Tony had been awfully mysterious about his actions and said he wouldn’t be free until teatime. I suspected that he meant to go to a horrid cricket match – though I did him an injustice.

“But, anyway, I wasn’t in a very good temper when I left the lecture, and I was really furious when I got home and found that Mother had invited Colonel Stone and his nephew to tea. Of course, Mother had asked Colonel Stone so that she could flirt with him – really it is too awful the way she makes eyes at this retired Anglo-Indian type (positively out of Kipling), who has no finer feelings of any kind. But what made me really cross was that Mother typically had told the maid nothing about there being two extra for tea, although she knows that both brother Edward and Anthony have appetites like horses. When I got home she was sitting on a sofa reading a slushy novel and eating chocolates. How she keeps her figure with all the chocolates she eats is a mystery to me. Mother saw that I was annoyed so she told me, with a kind of horrid leer to indicate that it was news which might be specially interesting to me, that the Colonel’s nephew, who had come down to stay with him, was a writer. I received this information coldly. When I asked her his name, she said that it was Kettering – although it turned out to be Basingstoke. Not that either of them meant anything more than a railway station to me.

“I just had time to go up and change into a new dress (my rather nice green frock with a pleated skirt and really very short, but there you are, they’re getting shorter and shorter and what can you do?), and when I got down they’d arrived. The Colonel’s always said to be a bit deaf, so I bellowed good afternoon to him and he got up – a bit stiff because of his corsets – and introduced his nephew, John Basingstoke. I saw as the nephew got up to shake hands that he was tall and lean and dark, and I thought from his expression in profile that he looked rather supercilious. Then he turned his head and I got an awful shock, because there was a thick white scar marking the right side of his face. It moved in a semicircle from his ear to a point just below his mouth.

“And yet in spite of this terrible scar – just the kind of thing which generally I simply can’t endure – there was something awfully attractive about him in a sort of gloomy Byronic way. And he had a beautiful voice (I’m very sensitive to voices), rich and deep and resonant.”

Vicky put down her pen again and summoned that face to mind – unsmiling, slightly frightening, and yet somehow not repulsive.

“I sat and talked to him about books and poetry and things until Anthony arrived, really very late.”

She went over again in her mind those minutes before Anthony’s arrival, and rediscovered her own embarrassment at the ghastly floater she had made. There was her mother telling Colonel Stone about the difficulty of running a doctor’s household, tinkling a little brass bell for tea and murmuring something (on a warm day in May with the grate empty) about muffins under a silver cover, the kettle on the hob and toast made in front of the fire. There was the tea, not toast and muffins, but bread and butter and jam and little home-made cakes, coconut and plain. And there was she, saying with rather surprising timidity to this scarred young man: “Are you staying here long, Mr Basingstoke?” and he replied: “You must ask my uncle,” and went on to explain, with a frankness almost as distressing as his scar, that he was completely broke. What a strange thing to say! The queen of the salon would have an answer to it, no doubt – but what? “I hear you write,” she said, and regretted the remark as soon as it was made, especially when he responded with an unencouraging monosyllable. But having begun she must go on. “You’ll think me awfully ignorant, but – what sort of things?”

He kept the good side of his face turned towards her and said gravely, “I have published a book of poems which sold exactly sixty-five copies, and I have in the press a novel which may sell a hundred and fifty.”

She wrinkled her forehead. “But that’s not very profitable.”

“Precisely. Hence my visit to my uncle.” He seemed to feel that he had been a little abrupt, and added, “I admire your grandfather’s early poems a great deal.”

The remark fell into a pause in the conversation, and was heard by Colonel Stone. “Poetry,” he said suddenly. “Don’t let this young feller start talking about poetry to you, Miss Rawlings. Talk till the cows come home, and you can’t understand a word he says. Waste of time, poetry – don’t you think so?” He turned abruptly to Mrs Rawlings, but the question was beyond her. She poised the sugar-tongs and said archly, “Two lumps, Colonel?”

“Thank you. When I was a young man people used to write real poetry – stuff you could sing.” Sitting with upright back the Colonel chanted:

 

“Duke’s son, cook’s son, son of a belted earl,

Son of a Lambeth publican, we’re all the same today.

 

“Can’t remember any of this modern stuff like that.”

“Strong or weak, Colonel?”

The Colonel looked at the straw-coloured mixture in the cup and said with dismay, “That looks delightful, Mrs Rawlings.”

“I read a lot of poetry myself,” Vicky said.

“Do you? Keats, Shelley and the Rubá‘iyát, with a little Rupert Brooke to bring you up to date?”

What an intolerable young man! And it happened that the Rubá‘iyát was on her bedroom bookshelf (it was so sad), and that she had shed some tears over Rupert Brooke’s poems in the past. “I read the moderns.”

“Oh yes. Who are they?”

She thought desperately, but every name escaped her. “Sludge,” she said. “Arthur Sludge.” It was the name of their butcher. “I’ve enjoyed his poems very much. He’s probably too obscure for you ever to have heard of him.”

“Not at all,” he said. He turned his full face towards her, and she thought how ugly he looked. The corners of his mouth were twitching slightly. “I admire Sludge’s work very much. Such a grand sweep, hasn’t it? And such fervour. Such a gift of melody – reminiscent of Swinburne, don’t you think?” She turned scarlet and he stopped abruptly. “Do forgive me,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Not at all.” Her voice was choked, and she thought she was going to cry. She had never been so glad to see brother Edward as when he opened the door at that moment and said grumblingly that he supposed there was no tea left…

She got up, poured a cup of tea and gave him a little cake, which he ate in two mouthfuls. He took another, and brushed a crumb off his waistcoat. “I feel curiously hungry,” he said. “I hope there’s nothing wrong with me. I thought Shelton was coming to tea. Where is he?”

“How should I know?” Vicky snapped, and he looked at her in surprise. There was a cry of protesting brakes outside, and feet pounded the steps. “There he is now,” she said, and rushed outside, as much to hide her tears of humiliation as to greet him.

Her mind came back with a jerk to the diary, and she discovered that her mouth was open. All that was much too painful to put down. He had been perfectly horrid. But when Anthony arrived now…when Anthony arrived… She began to write again.

“I always get a thrill just from seeing Anthony; he really looks so much like a God walking among men, so ‘magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life’, that it’s exciting just to be with him. But today I was cross with him because he was so late for tea so I gave him a peck instead of a proper kiss, and I said something nasty about his great, clod-hopping feet. I said he’d probably been to watch cricket and he looked guilty for a moment, but it must have been just a reaction, for then he said he’d brought me an engagement present. I’ve told you, dear diary, that I said I didn’t want a ring because rings are so vulgar, and I’d asked him to think of something rather outré. Well, he had! The nicest possible thing. A copy – a first edition! – of grandfather Martin’s poems, Passion and Repentance. I looked at him and he looked back in that shy way he has, not knowing whether I’d be pleased or was still angry with him, and I couldn’t say anything, but I threw myself into his arms and gave him another kiss, a proper one this time. Oh dear diary, he is sweet, and I do love him so. It was the loveliest little book, in a faded blue cover, and I knew it must have cost a lot of money. Anthony said he’d bought it at a sale, and that was why he’d gone up to London.

“I took him in to see them all – he’d not met Colonel Stone before, or his nephew. Mother fluttered about and poured a cup of tea, and brother Edward asked hopefully if his car had broken down. Then I couldn’t resist saying that Tony had been late because he had been buying me an engagement present, and that it was a book. Brother Edward looked interested at the word ‘present’, but just grunted when he heard it was a book. Colonel Stone said that he thought jewellery would have been more appropriate. Then I told them it was a first edition of grandfather Martin’s poems. I was specially pleased because nobody in the family has got a copy of this first edition except Uncle Jack perhaps, and I was glad to be able to say it in front of this young man Basingstoke, who really had been beastly and superior, like all those Byronic types, while we’d been talking. They didn’t seem much impressed by the news. Mother said grandfather Martin’s poems weren’t altogether nice, and brother Edward dislodged a piece of cake from a tooth and said grandfather Martin was an infernal old bore. So then I turned to the Colonel’s nephew, who at least had had the grace to keep fairly quiet, and asked if he would like to see them and he smiled for the first time, really quite nicely, and said he would, very much.

“I will say that he handled the little book gently, almost reverently – I don’t think Tony liked it altogether, or him. And then, I don’t quite know why, except that he’d been so horribly superior, I asked him if he would read one of the poems, and he looked at me hard and said yes he would. He read it beautifully. This was the poem:

 

Sometimes within our fleshly bouts I knew

An angel moved in you: and then my breath

Was shortened to brief gasps and I knew death

To be our dear-beloved, our sweet and true.

But other days I tuned my rampant lyre

To all the maddest music of your stringing.

Rich blasphemies and savage lusts went winging

Up on the Pegasus of my desire.

Dear lover, sweetest sweeting, lovely coz,

What if the joy we felt was transitory?

Are not our natures animal? and one

With dogs, who feel no Godhead and no loss?

Does not our goats’ and monkeys’ sense of fun

Reveal the farceurs of the human story?

 

“There was a rather shocked silence, and then Mother said poetry always made her feel quite faint, and Colonel Stone said he still preferred Kipling to these moderns. I was just telling him that grandfather Martin was less modern than Kipling – he died in 1876 – when there was a sudden exclamation behind me. This young man Basingstoke was looking at my little book as though he couldn’t believe his eyes, and that terrible scar of his was twitching away like anything. When I asked him what was the matter, he said he thought the book of poems was a forgery!!

“Then, there was a great hubbub. Tony was furious – I think he wanted to fight Basingstoke – he doesn’t show to the best advantage, much though I love him, when the situation is at all complex. Colonel Stone kept saying, ‘’Pon my soul, never heard of such a thing.’ Mother was wailing that it couldn’t be true because everybody knew that grandfather Martin wrote the poems, though she thought they shouldn’t be read aloud. I told her not to be silly, because obviously that wasn’t what the young man meant, and Tony asked what the devil he did mean then. I think Basingstoke was rather surprised that everyone seemed so angry. He tried to back out of it and said that he shouldn’t have mentioned such a thing, and we’d better let it drop. Then brother Edward said, I must say rather sensibly, that he couldn’t just say the thing was a forgery and leave it at that, and added typically that the market value of the book must be quite high and if Tony had paid through the nose for something that was worth nothing he would want to know about it. So Basingstoke looked at me (and I must say that with the good side of his profile turned towards you he looks very romantic) and asked if I wanted him to explain. I said I did. And Tony, standing with his legs apart on the hearthrug, glaring at Basingstoke, said, ‘Let’s hear what you’ve got to say,’ rather as if the poor man were a prisoner at the bar.

“It was really very simple – but awfully interesting – and very quick of him to have noticed it. The publisher’s name on the page of the book that gives its title was Letts and Ableton, Beaulieu Street, London, and the year of publication was given too – 1860. Now, it seemed that this young man Basingstoke is writing a history of publishing in the nineteenth century, and to do that he’s investigating the history of various publishing houses, changes in their policy, the time they began and the time they ceased to publish books – if they aren’t in existence now – and so on. One of the firms he’d investigated was Letts and Ableton – he had notes on them, which he’d left out in the hall in his briefcase, and he showed them to us. They were founded in 1830, and published various books – novels, historical books and poetry mostly – but in 1857 Ableton died. Letts took in as partner a man named Willcox, and from the beginning of 1858 all publications of the firm had on them the name Letts and Willcox. At the same time the firm moved from Beaulieu Street, which was the old address of Letts and Ableton, to Dover Street. So therefore, he said, any book that had on it the name Letts and Ableton must be a forgery, in the sense that it couldn’t have been published by that firm in 1860.

“When he’d finished he looked round rather triumphantly. We all sat trying to work it out for a minute or two, and then there was a storm of objections. Mother suggested that somebody at the publishers had made a mistake, and put in the wrong name or the wrong date. Brother Edward said obviously it must be some error of that kind, and we could clear it up very simply by asking the publishers, and Basingstoke began to get rather annoyed. (When he gets annoyed the good side of his face looks very handsome.) He told us that Letts and Willcox went out of business in 1871, and no records of the business were available. And as for a mistake, he said mistakes of that kind just didn’t occur. Then he hesitated, and went on: ‘I’m rather sorry I raised this whole question, but now that I have, let me make the position clear. There’s a presumption that these poems weren’t published by Letts and Willcox, or Letts and Ableton, but were published by somebody else who just stuck the name of that firm on the book. That, if it’s true, would mean that the book must really have been printed after 1871, because nobody would have dared to use a publisher’s name in that way while the firm still existed. And that in turn, if it’s true, would mean that this book isn’t a first edition, but, from a bibliographical point of view, a comparatively worthless forgery.’

“‘If this is so obvious,’ said brother Edward, ‘why hasn’t it been found out before?’

“Then Basingstoke got more annoyed. ‘It’s not obvious,’ he said. ‘I simply happen to have some specialised knowledge on the subject, that’s all.’

“Anthony had been almost bursting for a few minutes. Now he burst. He wanted to know if Basingstoke meant to say the thing was worth nothing and he’d been swindled out of a hundred guineas? He was looking splendidly wrathful, and then he suddenly realised he’d told me what he paid for the book and went as red as a turkey, and stammered incoherently. Poor, sweet Tony!

“We all went on talking and arguing until I was sick of it. Tony was upset because he’d told me how much he paid for the book, and I think he would have liked to fight Basingstoke. And he didn’t look Byronic any more, but just puzzled and rather worried, and I didn’t mind him so much, even if he had been superior, and when he came over and muttered an apology to me and said that he was afraid he’d made himself awfully offensive, I told him he was forgiven. After all, he had a great deal of charm, and really I sometimes quite forgot about that terrible scar. Brother Edward got annoyed too, and kept saying it was a waste of good money. Colonel Stone said he disliked poetry, anyway, except Kipling, and Mother said it all made her feel rather ill. Finally, Basingstoke seemed to gather himself together, and made another long speech. ‘I know I’ve been awfully tactless,’ he said apologetically. ‘Please don’t think I’m trying to make matters worse if I make another suggestion. My publisher’ (and then he turned to me and said, with another smile, ‘Oh yes, I have a real publisher, Miss Rawlings’) ‘is a man named Stuart Henderson. He may be able to help us, because he’s a particular friend of a critic named Blackburn, who wrote an essay on your grandfather. Won’t you both come up to London with me and see him tomorrow morning?’

“Brother Edward, of course, said he certainly wouldn’t, couldn’t spare time for that sort of gadding about, and then Basingstoke turned to me – I believe he’d really planned it with me in mind all the time – and I began to feel it was all rather exciting. First of all, of course, I’d felt madly miserable, on my own account and on Tony’s, but now the idea of going up to see a publisher and engage in what I suppose is a kind of quest did seem rather exciting. And I suppose if the thing is a forgery it ought to be exposed. And he asked so very nicely. So I said yes, and then I turned to Tony, who was glowering away by the fireplace, and he said he wished he’d bought me a necklace or a brooch or something. I told him (which is perfectly true) that it was the loveliest present, anyway, but it would be exciting to see the publisher man. After all, suppose we’re on the track of something really important, international book-forgers or something like that. If there are such things, which I suppose there aren’t.”

Vicky viewed the last sentence with some disapproval, and then looked at her watch. It was nearly twelve o’clock. She had been writing and thinking for almost two hours, and her hand felt quite stiff. She carefully blotted the last page of the diary, locked it, replaced it in the drawer and locked the drawer. Then she undressed, put on a nightdress, rolled into bed and within five minutes was fast asleep. Her almost-beautiful face, with lips slightly parted, stared at the wall. Men with scars, and Greek gods, both brandishing forged marriage certificates, chased each other through her dreams.