Chapter 4 The Company He Kept
The uncomfortable subject of money preoccupied Honor.
Dutifully at her desk on Monday morning, she was trying to read a short story set in a Ramsgate insane asylum.
The writer was a woman, and Honor saw the story had merit.
But she kept rereading sentences, taking nothing in.
The thought juddering around her brain, short-circuiting all others, was this: How much would it take to be rid of Jimmy?
There was only a tiny mortgage on the house.
Perhaps the bank would lend her more. Then again, as a widow with a spotty income, she likely wouldn’t qualify for a loan.
And the house was all she had. It was her security.
How she hated having to contemplate this!
She preferred, as much as possible, to float above matters financial.
Or rather she preferred purporting to do so.
Like many acquainted equally with wealth and poverty, Honor was privately obsessed with the fate of every penny, while trying to appear blithe, absent-minded.
To do otherwise, she feared, would attract attention from the gods, who might see fit to upend her relatively comfortable circumstances.
Not that her comfort was undeserved, or unearned.
Not if one looked at it in terms of general fairness and justice. So she told herself.
“Robbie,” she said, “you liked this story, didn’t you, the one set in a loony bin?”
He looked up from his own smaller desk, diagonally opposite Honor’s. He was writing rejection letters and parceling up manuscripts to be returned, a never-ending task. “I have to say, I thought it was rather good. Derivative of Huxley, of course. But that’s no crime.”
“Tell her we’ll take it, then. I can’t seem to focus this morning, but I trust your judgment.”
“All right.” He licked and sealed an envelope, then said cautiously, “Is anything the matter?”
She smiled. “No, nothing’s the matter. I must be tired, that’s all. Oh, incidentally”—she frowned as if the idea had just occurred to her—“you haven’t noticed George and Jimmy becoming friends, have you?”
Robbie removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Friends? How do you mean?”
“Oh, you know. I thought I detected a frisson. She’s a very nice girl, our George. But she is awfully sociable.”
He hadn’t heard this euphemism before. You don’t know the half of it, he thought. “She’s never been very sociable toward me.”
“You don’t invite it, Robbie, dear boy. You’re always glowering at her, aren’t you?”
Do I glower? he wondered. He hadn’t realized. “I suppose I’ve always found girls like her a bit frightening. All that to-the-manner-born confidence. Makes me feel like a forelock-tugging member of the lower orders.”
She laughed. “You’re not exactly Jude the Obscure. Isn’t your father an archdeacon or some such? And George hasn’t a farthing to bless herself with, you know that.”
“Ah, but it’s not about money, is it? It’s about social class.”
“Nonsense. Surely in this postwar age we’re past all that? Everything’s been leveled out, or so they tell us.”
“Not according to the Labour Party. Not until the means of production are nationalized.”
Honor gave a loud, deliberate yawn. “Okay, Mr. Orwell. Whatever you say.”
“Anyway, if social class no longer exists, why can’t George make a boyfriend of Jimmy? Why would it matter?”
“I didn’t say she couldn’t. I merely asked a question.” She moved the pages she’d been reading onto a messy pile. “But what about you? Have you made a friend of him?”
“I have, actually. We’ve had some interesting talks.” He paused. “And I don’t think you should worry about him and George. He told me he was, and I quote, off women.”
“Hmm.” A likely story, she thought.
They were both silent for a few minutes, then Robbie said, “It must be a year now, mustn’t it, since George moved in. I don’t think I ever asked how you knew her.”
“Oh, I can barely recall. She was introduced via friends, you know, in the usual way. I believe I was importuned upon to rescue her from a sordid bed-sitting room. It is shocking the way some young women live today. In my youth, the idea of living by oneself would never have been countenanced. The connotations would be”—she paused, wrinkled her nose—“untoward. Things are different now, I suppose.”
In truth, Honor could summon with vivid clarity the events leading to the advent of George.
One evening, around Christmas 1951, she was leafing through The Sketch (a periodical that provided light relief from the highbrow literary business of the day) when she chanced upon a society-page photograph.
Taken at a Bond Street gallery’s private view, it was of three women in evening dress with the caption, “The Hon. Miss Georgina Mountford-Owen, Miss Emeline Spencer, and Mrs. Clarissa Smythe toast Mr. Douglas F. Manning’s dazzling new exhibition.
” Gazing at George’s smiling face, Honor succumbed to a volcanic eruption of long-repressed memories.
George looked like a lovely person, she thought.
Someone whose considerable beauty was more than skin-deep.
The implications of this—the heart-clenching, unignorable implications—seized her as though by the throat.
As she continued to examine the photograph, she became convinced of only one possible future course: She should get to know George and discover her character firsthand.
A part of her realized this was insane. At the same time, she felt she had no choice.
But how might an introduction be affected?
Mrs. Clarissa Smythe, Honor was vaguely aware, was herself an artist who taught painting at the Slade.
And The Sketch described Mr. Douglas Manning as a former student of Mrs. Smythe’s.
Honor’s tenant Sadie Havers was a Slade student—she could be her emissary!
They must throw a party. Mr. Manning and Mrs. Smythe would attend, and via quite natural conversation, Honor would lay some groundwork.
A date was set and invitations sent (Sadie, in agreeing to cohost, had no notion she was arranging her own dispossession).
As it turned out, Mrs. Smythe had a prior engagement.
It didn’t matter, because Douglas Manning proved both dupable and well placed to assist Honor in her quest. Having plied the young man with drink and compliments, Honor placed a hand on his arm and said innocently, “Super turnout at your preview. I saw the photographs in The Sketch. Were they mostly friends of yours? It all seemed very grand to me. That pretty girl Georgina, isn’t she the daughter of Lord Mountford-Owen?
I once heard a speech he gave on education reform.
Clever man. Rather fierce, I’d imagine.”
“You’d imagine right,” said Mr. Manning.
“But George is a smashing girl. She’s an artist’s model, you know.
Sits to several friends of mine. Not to me, I should add.
She has a very classic sort of beauty, not quite my line.
” This meant he found George extremely attractive and was annoyed at the predictability of his response.
Dougie Manning had a raging phobia of being ordinary, and nothing was ordinary-er than lusting after the buxom fair form of George.
So he painted dark, spidery girls with flat chests and gaunt, austere faces, whom he also forced himself to seduce.
Thus did he congratulate himself on his sophistication.
He was miffed that no critic—not a one!—had yet compared his work to Modigliani’s. Bloody philistines.
“How very interesting,” said Honor. “Surely Georgina’s papa can’t approve of these activities?”
“I daresay he doesn’t. Though I don’t believe she always takes her clothes off.
And I think the old man had practically disowned her already.
Hence her being obliged to earn her own bread.
Brave of her. She lives in a cheap bed-sitting room.
Not far from here, actually. It’s pretty seedy, poor girl. ”
“Well,” said Honor, her mind working away, “we can’t have that, can we?
” George could have Sadie’s room, she decided.
Getting rid of Sadie might take a bit of maneuvering, but it shouldn’t be too difficult.
She was engaged, Honor knew. She hadn’t planned to rush into marriage, but she’d see sense after receiving some heartfelt advice.
Honor wouldn’t like being left in the lurch, of course—it was terribly difficult to find the right sort of tenant—but Sadie’s future happiness was all that mattered.
When George came to talk to Honor about taking the room, Honor had found herself nervous.
She rabbited on about goodness knows what, while George sat serenely in a lovely striped costume, sipping tea and nodding politely at Honor’s remarks.
Afterward, Honor realized she’d failed to ask any of the questions one might under the circumstances.
That could have aroused suspicion. But she offered such cheap rent that George was unlikely to be put off.