Lady with Carnations Read online

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  www.bellobooks.co.uk

  Contents

  A. J. Cronin

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A. J. Cronin

  Lady with Carnations

  Born in Cardross, Scotland, A. J. Cronin studied at the University of Glasgow. In 1916 he served as a surgeon sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteers Reserve, and at the war’s end he completed his medical studies and practiced in South Wales. He was later appointed to the Ministry of Mines, studying the medical problems of the mining industry. He moved to London and built up a successful practice in the West End. In 1931 he published his first book, Hatter’s Castle, which was compared with the work of Dickens, Hardy and Balzac, winning him critical acclaim. Other books by A. J. Cronin include: The Stars Look Down, The Citadel, Three Loves, The Green Years, Beyond This Place, and The Keys of the Kingdom.

  Chapter One

  That wet November afternoon it was the Holbein miniature which had drawn the dealers to Vernon’s, for the sale held nothing comparable in value or importance. The miniature, sent somewhat unexpectedly from Wroxon Abbey by the Kneller family, was that known popularly as Lady with Carnations, a piece both exquisite and remarkable, combining in its subject—it was a tiny portait of Mlle de Quercy, daughter of the Ambassador to Henry VIII—and its date—about 1532, shortly after Holbein’s return to London from Basel—the best manner and the finest period of the master.

  The long gallery was crowded when at exactly half-past four the miniature came up. Bidding began, with a kind of derisive courtesy, at two thousand guineas; mounted rapidly to five thousand; stopped a moment, then rushed to seven, wavered again; then rose, with that alternate rhythm which indicates the elimination of all but two powerful competitors, to the sum of nine thousand, four hundred guineas. Here it halted.

  “Nine thousand and four hundred guineas.”

  The auctioneer, occupying the high red rostrum with alert suavity, his hair precisely parted, his pearl pin neatly sheathed in his dark tie, repeated the figure persuasively while his glance remained fixed on the impassively averted face of Bernard Rubin. Yet Rubin, though the bid was now against him, seemed loath to advance upon it. Eventually, however, his hooded eye, hardly visible beneath the hard rim of his bowler hat, flickered with a kind of sour perversity, and at once the auctioneer murmured:

  “Nine thousand, five hundred guineas.”

  Immediately there came an almost imperceptible signal from the opposite side of the room.

  “Nine thousand, six hundred,” remarked the auctioneer blandly.

  “Nine thousand, seven hundred!” Rubin went forward grimly, but again the sign came up against him.

  “Nine thousand, eight hundred guineas,” declared the auctioneer, and leaned again towards Rubin.

  But this time Rubin had clearly finished, his limit already passed, his expression now stoically dissociated from the proceedings. If one thing had brought old Bernard Rubin up top in the antique trade, it was his faculty of knowing when to stop.

  “At nine thousand, eight hundred guineas,” repeated the auctioneer, his gaze sweeping the crowded room. A silence.

  “For the last time, at nine thousand, eight hundred guineas.” Another silence, portentous and final, terminated by the sharp tap of the hammer. “ Sold at nine thousand, eight hundred guineas … Miss Lorimer.”

  Katharine Lorimer rose unobtrusively from her seat at the long table and made her way towards the open double door at the end of the lofty room. Several of the dealers, stepping back politely before her passage, murmured their congratulations, but beyond a faint smile she did not seem to heed them. She would, in fact, have found it difficult to answer at that moment, for, despite the hardihood which experience had brought her, she felt her pulse throbbing painfully from the tension of those last interminable seconds. She had set her heart on the miniature, and another bid from Rubin would have beaten her.

  Descending the steps, old Bernard joined her and stumped along beside her in an enigmatic silence. His car, a black-and-silver Continental model, extremely large and costly—Bernard had not failed to inform everyone of its price—stood at the kerb outside. On the doorstep Katharine and Rubin paused, met by the sound and movement of the traffic, by the brightness and the harsh mutter of London, which made the auction room seem remote and quite unreal.

  “Not going my way?” Rubin asked, which was his manner of offering her a lift.

  It was now nearly five, and Katharine on a sudden impulse decided not to return to business but to go home. She nodded; then, caught by a waft of rain and fog, she shivered slightly and stepped quickly into the car.

  King Street was bad enough, but Piccadilly lay helpless, choked with omnibuses and taxicabs. As the car slid and stopped and slid again towards Curzon Street, Rubin’s hooded eyes beneath their marked Semitic brows were fixed on Katharine with a queer ironic shrewdness.

  “You gave too much, Miss Lorimer,” he said at length.

  “You mean too much for you, Mr Rubin?”

  Rubin laughed softly. “Maybe, maybe!” he agreed with easy opulence, pausing to admire the perfect solitaire on the little finger of his left hand. “Things must be pretty good with you when you can run so high. Eh, Miss Lorimer?”

  “Oh, not so bad.” Katharine’s tone was perfectly offhand.

  “Ah, well, that’s fine! That’s marvellous! Especially when the rest of us in the trade are feeling things so hard. No money about, no clients, nothing doing anywhere. But you—you can up and pay ten thousand for a leetle bit of Holbein. Just like that! Why, it’s almost too good to be true.”

  Katharine’s lips parted to speak, but closed again. Instead she smiled her faint reserved smile, which seemed almost to impose a greater reticence upon her, and sat back in her corner, staring straight ahead. The decision and composure which always marked her became intensified; yet, strangely, beneath this repose there lay, it seemed, a sense of quick impulsiveness held firmly in check; and in the serious darkness of her eyes there were rich points of light which lurked and trembled on the brink of vivid life. But in the main her expression was sad, and her wide forehead bore a line, as though in the past she had known moments of great difficulty and perplexity. Her features and colouring, her brown hair and warm brown eyes in the pale oval of her face, were beautiful. Her teeth were so white that they gave freshness to even her slightest smile. She was not more than thirty-five. And yet that settled gravity, that sense of self-control, her air of contemplating some remote and abstract object, made her aloof and sometimes even formidable.

  Her dress, a plain dark woollen, had clearly been chosen carelessly an
d in a hurry, and her hat, which sat a little back on her head, was inexpensive and did not match. It was apparent she had no interest in her clothes. But her shoes, handmade and of a fine leather, reflected just the faintest vanity in her slender, beautiful feet.

  “Of course,” remarked Rubin slyly, “ if you cared to take a profit, say a sure ten per cent, and all nice quick ready cash…”

  Katharine shook her head brusquely. “Thank you, Mr Rubin. But when I part with that Holbein, it’ll be for real money.”

  “Real money. It don’t exist any more. At least not here. No, no!” Rubin grinned, parodying a popular song. “ You won’t find that there here.”

  “Perhaps not,” Katharine faced him. “Now listen, Mr Rubin, and stop cracking at me. I’m taking the miniature to New York next month. And when I get there, I’m selling it to Brandt. He’s in the Argentine just now, but he’ll be back on December 12th. He’s buying the Holbein. He’s buying it from me for twenty thousand pounds.”

  “Ah, Brandt—so that’s the gamble,” Rubin reflected with a sudden access of respect. “Well, you’re a clever woman, my dear, but, on my word, if it was me, I wouldn’t take the risk!”

  “I can afford to take it,” answered Katharine pleasantly.

  “Just so.” Rubin nodded like a mandarin. “Just so, my dear, you know your own position better than I do.”

  He darted another glance towards her, winged with inquiry and a certain unwilling regard, but the blank severity into which her features again relapsed had already dismissed the subject finally. Silence fell inside the car and continued until Rubin, as if anxious to erase an awkward impression, changed the subject.

  “That little actress niece of yours, Nancy Sherwood, how’s she getting along?”

  Katharine turned at once, her face transformed, invested with a vivid interest. “First rate, Mr Rubin. She’s just become engaged.”

  “Well, well. Who’s the lucky man?”

  Katharine’s lips twitched. “ I shall know to-night. I’m invited to a party—to meet him, if you please. It’s really incredible the way things happen nowadays. Rather different from when I was young.”

  “But you are young, my dear,” interposed Rubin deftly.

  “Oh, bosh! You know what I mean. Here’s Nancy goes out to Nice for a fortnight’s rest before she starts in her new show and comes back trailing her future husband as if he were a new handbag.”

  “Well, well, things move pretty fast now,” Rubin chuckled. “But it’s the old ideas behind them all the time.”

  As the car swung into Curzon Street and came to rest opposite Katharine’s flat, Rubin took one last sly thrust at her.

  “Looks as if the Holbein might maybe come in handy after all!”

  He patted her hand as she rose to go.

  “If you don’t sell it, why not give it as a wedding present?”

  With the bland mockery buzzing in her ears, Katharine turned towards her apartment, one of a block of service superflats recently erected on this site. The air-conditioned luxury and almost baroque magnificence of the building were offensive to her taste, yet she found this spot convenient for her business, and it afforded her, moreover, that implacable necessity of her profession, a good address. A doorman admitted her and conducted her to the elevator, while another, equally braided, shot her to the sixth floor and obsequiously bowed her out.

  Though, remembering her origins and simplicity of habit, Katharine never ceased to wonder at herself in such surroundings and often, indeed, drew a secret, childish joy from the contemplation of such diverse objects as the automatic mail chutes or the flunkies’ calves, to-night her attention was otherwise engrossed. She reflected with a heavy frown on Rubin’s recent remarks, asking herself how much the old fox really knew of her financial difficulties and admitting with an unconscious sigh that although he probably knew nothing, he certainly divined the worst.

  The minute she was within her own door her expression relaxed further and became at once weary and harassed. She permitted herself to consider that she had had a dreadful day, with a worrying and unprofitable client at the start, hardly any lunch at the middle of it, and the mad adventure of the miniature at the end of it. Her head ached abominably, and her over driven body felt light and giddy. In one nervous gesture she tore off her hat and flung it, with her gloves and bag, upon the couch. Then she went into the little kitchenette to make some tea and, with a certain determination, to boil herself an egg.

  Fifteen minutes later, as she sat at the chilly little zinc bench in the tiny pantry, confronted by the empty cup and eggshell, the absurd bathos of the thing struck her. She paid four hundred pounds a year in rental for this place alone, and another six hundred for her business premises. She had just expended ten thousand upon a miniature. And her dinner had cost approximately fourpence. She laughed until tears filled her eyes, but they were bitter tears, and had she permitted them to overflow, she must have broken down and wept.

  Back in her sitting room—a quiet apartment, sparsely yet restfully furnished with a few tasteful pieces—Katharine kicked off her shoes, curled herself up in a chair, and lit a cigarette. She smoked seldom, only when she was very happy or very sad, and to-night her sense of desolation was limitless. Lately business had been damnable. The antique trade was like that; it came and went in waves. She had ridden high on the boom times like the rest of them, and now she was wallowing almost hopelessly in the slump. She was fighting, of course, and would eventually win though. Every possible economy had been effected. Though she could not escape the obligations of her leases at Curzon Street and King Street, she had laid up her car and cut her personal expenses to the bone. Yet it was hard and bitter going.

  Resolutely she refused to re-examine the intricacies of her financial position. Monday would be time enough for that, when she went down again to see Mr Farrar at the bank.

  Besides, to-night her melancholy was deeper and more personal. She felt so desperately alone. She stood, in the eyes of her relatives and friends—indeed, in the eyes of the world—for that great thing, success. Her mind flashed back to her beginnings, and she saw herself at sixteen, fresh from council school and her semi-detached home in Tulse Hill, a timid little typist with Twiss and Wardrop’s, Household Furnishing, Duck Court, High Holborn. She had been admitted to that gimcrack warehouse because her father knew one of the partners, a zealous Nonconformist like himself; yet she had trembled—despite the introduction—at Mr Twiss’s very word, and quailed at Mr Wardrop’s frown.

  Life had changed for her since then. Now she was Antika of King Street, St James’s, and Park Avenue, New York, famous for her taste and décor, a specialist in period reconstruction, in bijouterie and the fine arts, perhaps the best known woman antique dealer in the world. How had this happened? It had happened, she reflected sombrely, because she had willed it to happen, because she had set herself grimly to have a career, sacrificing everything fiercely, ruthlessly steeling that youthful timid heart to unbelievable hardships and effrontery. She had wanted at all costs to be someone. Well, it was done now. She had achieved her ambition, and oh, how hollow did she find its vanity!

  The telephone at her elbow rang. With a tired reflex, since one of the complications of her life was to be perpetually at the mercy of this instrument, she reached out for the receiver.

  It was her mother, ringing from Wimbledon, from the snug villa in which Katharine had installed her five years before.

  “You’re there, Katharine.” Even over the wire old Mrs Lorimer’s voice achieved the summation of tribulation and long-suffering neglect. “Well, I’m lucky this time, for a wonder. I never seem to get you these days when I ring up. You never seem to have a moment to speak to your poor old mother. Never, never!”

  “Didn’t I ring you last night, mother?” Katharine made the inquiry tolerantly.

  “Well, what if you did?” answered the old lady peevishly. “Hello, hello! Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, mother, I can hear you.”
/>   “That’s right, then, don’t go away. I’ve lots to say to you. Just wait a minute. I wrote it on a piece of paper. Now where’s my glasses? Bless me, I’ve got them on! Now, first of all, you’re coming down this week-end, aren’t you, with Nancy and her new young man?”

  “Yes, we’re coming.”

  “That’s right, my dear. Now listen! I want you to bring me down just a few little things: wool, sugar almonds, chocolate cake, and a nice new novel. Remember my sugar almonds especially, Katharine—you know, the kind you get me at Fortnum’s. Oh, and while I think of it, you can fetch me some anchovy paste when you’re in there, too. I like a little on my toast these winter evenings; somehow it makes tea so cosy by the fire. And listen, Katharine—are you listening, my dear? It’s three-ply grey wool I want for my new shawl, in case I didn’t mention it.”

  Katharine, listening patiently, now smiled faintly. “All right, mother. I’ll attend to your orders.”

  “Orders, indeed!” Insensibly the aged voice took on an offended note. “ You’re blaming me for asking for a few simple necessities! Really, Katharine, how you can scold your poor old mother like that passes human understanding. If your father were alive…”

  At the familiar invocation to the grave Katharine took a quick grip of herself. Hastily she said: “Come now, mother. You know I didn’t mean anything.”

  A pause.

  “You’re not cross with me?”

  “Of course not, mother.”

  “Well.” A little sigh of appeasement came over the wire. “ That’s as it should be, then. Can you hear? Hello, hello, that impudent girl at the exchange is going to cut us off again. Good-night. God bless you, my dear. And don’t forget my sugar almonds.”

  Katharine hung up the receiver with a shake of her head. Though her dear mother was more comfortable than ever she had been in her life, with her own establishment and everything she required, she had, nevertheless, a perpetual sense of being misused. She loved a grievance. Often she could be trying beyond endurance.