Emma Page - In Loving Memory

‘Here you are, Princess, get stuck into that! Feast on the nourishing liver and gravy!’ Princess crouched on the floor like a devotee at prayer and began to wolf the food, managing at the same time to keep up an ecstatic purr.

Tim opened a new packet of cigarettes and surveyed the rest of his purchases. A greaseproof packet of sliced ham, a waxed carton of potato salad, a crusty French loaf, a packet of butter, a squashy bag of ripe foreign cheese and a small jar of instant coffee.

‘A feast, Princess,’ he said, jangling the few coins left in his pocket. He looked down at the cat single-mindedly disposing of the chunks of liver. ‘Make the most of it,’ he said on a wry note. ‘It may be the last you’ll get for some time.’

He went slowly over to the sink and ran water into the battered kettle, set it on the stove and lit the gas. He sighed and glanced at the top of the bureau, at the pile of bills. He plunged his hand into his pocket and drew out the meagre handful of coins, running his eye over them, calculating. Nine shillings and fourpence-ha’penny.

He crossed to the desk, unlocked the bottom drawer, thrust his hand under the jumble of papers, books, tubes of paint, and pulled out a metal cashbox. He lifted the lid and stared down at the folded notes. No need to count them, he knew how much there was. His last reserve, absolutely his last-ditch reserve. Twenty-five pounds, folded away two years ago during a brief surge of prosperity when he had actually sold three canvases in the same month. He lifted his eyes to the wall and grinned. He’d thought then that things had really begun to move his way, he’d thought hard times would never return. It was only the memory of months and years of near-starvation that had made him press the notes into the box, a permanent insurance, never needing to be touched, a gesture of remembrance towards the chaotic, rumbustious past, a salute to old times that would never come again.

But the wave of good fortune had subsided into a ripple, had died away at last. He was lucky now if he sold three canvases in a year, let alone in a month.

‘I’m at the watershed, Princess,’ he said. The cat gave her entire attention to cleaning the tin plate of all traces of gravy. Her tongue made a tiny rasping sound against the metal.

‘Do I start on my last-ditch reserve?’ Tim asked the cat. ‘Or do I stop now? Make a bonfire of the lot of it?’ He threw a look of fond contempt at the paintings, the easels, the heaps of brilliant rags. ‘Spend the money on some clothes? Go out and get a job?’ He saw himself serving in a shop, clattering a luggage trolley along a railway platform, washing up in the cavernous kitchens of some vast hotel.

‘I’m not getting any younger, Princess,’ he said sadly. ‘And that’s an indisputable fact.’ Princess gave the plate one last appreciative dab with her tongue and then retired to the cushions to deal with her fur.

The kettle spouted steam towards the ceiling. Tim laid the cash-box tenderly down on the desk and went over to the stove. Hunger stirred sharply inside him again. He made the coffee, sat down at the table and tore open the packet of ham. Half-way through his meal he remembered the evening paper thrust into the pocket of his raincoat. He glanced idly at the headlines. Student unrest, somebody robbed, a controversial speech by a junior Minister.

He scooped up the odorous cheese on to a hunk of bread, turned the page and sat up suddenly, letting the piece of bread drop from his fingers on to the brown paper bag.

Carole! By all that was holy! Carole Stewart, staring out at him from a wedding group! Men in morning dress, tall broad imposing-looking men with an air of solid wealth. Slender women in silk suits and airy hats of puffed organza, fragile girls in drifting high-waisted dresses. The bridegroom no longer in the first gay flush of youth – thirty, thirty-five perhaps – a good-looking man with a figure already bidding good-bye to slimness, an air of well-founded prosperity, of mellow country houses, a London flat with a good address.

‘Carole Stewart,’ he said aloud with a note of brooding. So this was what had become of her! He’d often wondered. There had been a good many girls in the last eight years. Tall and short, plump and slender, dark and fair, never any shortage of companions to share the sardines and the rough red wine. He could hardly remember their names, their faces, their taste in cigarettes.

But he remembered Carole. Oh yes, he remembered Carole Stewart all right. When she had swept up her belongings into a fibre suitcase, tired of hand-to-mouth living, the unruly disorder of the studio, when she’d grabbed her coat and stormed down the stairs after their final and most spectacular row, he’d wandered the streets for days, looking for her in coffee-bars, in lodging-houses, among the open-air stalls of the street markets. But he’d looked without success.

‘I’m getting out!’ she’d cried. ‘I’m going to make something of my life, I’m going to know where next week’s rent and tomorrow’s meals are coming from! You can stay here and rot, Tim Jefford, but I’m pulling out while there’s still time!’

He jerked his thoughts back from that tempestuous evening two years ago and began to read the paragraphs under the wedding-group. Some old man, Henry Mallinson, some well-heeled tycoon with a string of garages defacing the broad acres of England, had suffered some kind of heart attack. There he was, on the left of the group, at the wedding twelve months ago of his younger son, David, to Miss Carole Stewart.

Tim raised his head. So she’d embarked on a new life after all, a good life, the life of country houses unshakeably reared on a foundation of petrol pumps and motor-sales. He dropped his eyes again, seeking the address.

Whitegates, a good name for a house, a reassuring name with its implications of rolling parklands, of sinewy sons of the soil bedding out plants in the herbaceous borders.

He drank the last of his cooling coffee at a single gulp and stood up. He paced about the cluttered studio, assessing the information and its possibilities.

‘You’ve done well for yourself, Carole old girl,’ he said with affectionate admiration. Might there not be a little to spare for an old and intimate friend, might there not be a little handout – or not such a little handout – a good fat handout, in memory of old times?

He flung himself down on the sofa and screwed up his eyes in concentrated thought. Mallinson – he’d heard of the old man, he’d seen bits about him in the paper now and then. Gave money to charities, didn’t he? Fulminated sometimes about the decline in moral standards, loudly and publicly regretted the disappearance of the old virtues. Tim examined the photograph again with care, searching the lines of Henry Mallinson’s face for clues to his character.

A hard face, the face of a man with strong and rigid views, a man who would stand no nonsense, a man who liked his own way and was accustomed to getting it. A man who would lend his presence to the wedding of his younger son only if that son had seen fit to marry a girl his father approved of, a girl who would do credit to the family name.

A heart attack. Mild enough, apparently, but Mallinson was an old man, the attack might be the first of many, death might be raising the first beckoning finger. There was a large fortune to be disposed of, there would be a will, there would be the sharing out of property, of huge and glittering assets.

Tim stood up again, feeling excitement, exhilaration beginning to flow through his limbs. This was precisely the moment to pay a visit to dear Carole, exactly the moment at which she would most earnestly desire the long shadows of the past to dissolve and vanish for ever, so beautifully and rightly the moment at which she would be prepared to dip her pale and pretty hand into her well-padded wallet and pay tribute to an old and well-loved friend.