The Beckoning Lady Read online

  “A model.” Minnie made it clear that she was not going to be more specific. “He owns it and he’s delighted with it. He lent it to me to show. It’s some years old now.” Her snorting laugh took her by surprise again. “There really is nothing like creative work to get that kind of thing out of your system,” she observed unexpectedly and swept off across the room to the opposite wall, where a second row of hooded lights displayed Jake Bernadine’s pictures, half a dozen very small canvases and one medium-sized one.

  Mr. Campion lingered and was still frowning in an effort of recollection when he joined the others some seconds later. Minnie and Amanda were looking at the small canvases when he came up. They were very very small, some of them postcard size, and were painted with myopic thoroughness all over, in every corner and, one felt uneasily, possibly round the back. The larger picture was exactly as Westy had reported it save that the grey background was not paint at all.

  “That’s lino.” Minnie touched it gingerly with an experimental forefinger. “That’s a mercy. I was afraid he’d been painting out. If his original canvas is in existence I can get hold of it, or Emma can. Dear me, I hope that poor snail was dead . . . Why, Tonker!” Her final exclamation was in response to a ferocious tearing sound which had been released just behind her and was accompanied by delighted squeals from Rupert. The three swung round to find themselves confronted by the creator of the glübalübalum and his instrument.

  There have been many attempts to describe the glübalübalum and even the one submitted to the Patents Office was not particularly successful. As Tonker had pointed out, it was very large. It was also very simple, being in effect a very long tube with an immense horn at one end and a cork at the other. In between there were, so to speak, digressions. The newspaper which is called by its detractors the Daily Bibful had once employed a psychiatrist to explain to its readers the mechanics of their own reactions to it, but the articles were not convincing. It was only at Oxford that it was noted that the position of a person playing the glübalübalum approximated very closely to the attitude of the central figure of the Laocoon. Children, on the other hand, observed at once that its true charm was that it had obviously got out of hand.

  At the moment all three adults were laughing and Rupert was hysterical. Tonker was peering out at them from a monstrous embrace.

  “Two bladders gone,” he said. “E flat and an A. We’ll have to make up with spares from the others.”

  Mr. Campion was drawn forward. “How do you blow it?” he demanded.

  “You don’t.” Tonker was slightly breathless. “You pump it up first, see?” He turned sideways to reveal a window in the tube and by its side a slot in which nestled a perfectly ordinary bicycle pump. Through the window, a line of bladders, now a trifle flabby, were plainly visible. “Listen.” Tonker seized the mouthgrip. “Tum-ti-tee, tum-ti-squish, on my glü-bal-ü-bal-squish. Not quite good enough, is it? Don’t be silly, you ape, you’ve heard it before.”

  Mr. Campion pulled himself together. “It’s horrible,” he said. “A pornograph, Tonker.”

  “Not at all,” said Amanda seriously. “It’s very remarkable, and as far as I can see an entirely original mechanical principle. Could we take it to bits?”

  “We’ll have to,” he assured her earnestly, “tomorrow, to get the repairs done.” He paused and eyed Rupert. “Boy,” he demanded suddenly, “do you realise that if I had been your father you would have been this?”

  Rupert smiled politely but moved over to Mr. Campion, and Tonker was turning away when he caught sight of the snail picture and edged himself closer to peer at it.

  “My God, Minnie!” His explosion was sincerely furious. The hampering coils of his invention were entirely forgotten. His face became scarlet and his eyes blazed. “Yes, well, that’s simply a damned insult.” He spoke with a suppressed hatred. “I suppose you realise that, Minnie? I suppose you’re not going to subject our helpless guests. . . .?”

  “If you got out of that thing,” said Minnie with equal venom, “you could strike me. I hope you burst another bladder.”

  “Oh, all right.” Tonker tore himself out of the contraption and caught sight of Mr. Campion’s expression. “Well,” he said sheepishly, “they’re both damn silly things. Take the picture down, Minnie dear. Dear Minnie, will you?”

  “Of course I must,” she said, patting him and his glübalübalum. “Jake doesn’t want to show at all, that’s his difficulty.”

  “I do.” Tonker spoke with sudden enthusiasm, all his anger gone. “Get the secret picture, Minnie. See what they think.”

  “I’m going to.” She went off at once and they moved up to the other end of the giant table, which shone like the slide the children had made of it. The lights went on in the inner studio, and presently she reappeared carrying a canvas.

  “Now,” she said, coming down the stairs, her long gown accenting her angularity, “I’ll have that easel, Tonker.”

  He pulled it out for her and together they adjusted its position to the light. It occurred to Mr. Campion that he had always seen them like this, their heads together, up to something. At last Minnie stood back.

  “Mind you,” she said, “this is an experiment.”

  The visitors stood looking at the picture for a long time. After the first shock of surprise the eye lingered. It was a sort of meticulously executed doodle enclosed in a formal vase shape. Presumably it was a portrait of Annabelle, since the child appeared within it many times. The effect was strangely stimulating and in an indefinable way joyous. After a while Minnie laughed and took it away.

  “It’s not very commercial, is it?” she said. “But it was something I felt I wanted to say about her that I couldn’t express in any other way. It’s a purely personal picture of my own mind. Can you see at all what I meant?”

  “I can.” Mr. Campion felt oddly elated. “I don’t know why. Leave it here for a bit.”

  “No my dear, I mustn’t.” Minnie was already halfway up the staircase. “I shall only get keen on it and that really would be fatal. It’s not permitted just now. A pity, but there it is.”

  “Who won’t permit it?” demanded Mr. Campion.

  “Circumstances.” Minnie ran up the stairs and vanished into the smaller studio behind the balcony.

  “Circumstances, my boot!” said Tonker. “It’s my fault again.” He was sitting in the shabby armchair which he had pulled out from the wall the better to admire the canvas. The glübalübalum was beside him, standing upside down on the rim of the horn looking like some embarrassing optical illusion. Rupert was sprawled behind it, trying to get a trap-door, which he had found in it, undone.

  “My boot,” Tonker repeated, cocking an eye at the balcony.

  There was no response from Minnie, who had taken her secret into some further fastness, and after a pause he cast a thoughtful glance at his old friends. “It’s all part of the same silly business,” he said with uncharacteristic bitterness. “All part of the same seven-year-old row. I think Minnie’s mad and she thinks I’m dishonest, and we’re both explosive personalities. They’ll do what they’re setting out to do, you know. They’ll split us.”

  “Who is this?”

  Tonker considered and finally decided to confide. “Minnie’s horrible chums, the tax-gatherers. I told you the start of it in the other room. I made a fearsome blob over my glüb money and Minnie lost confidence in me in a big way.” He sighed. “We’re neither of us great financial brains, let’s face it. When the bad news broke we had the first real dust-up of our lives. It was a rotten present to receive, but it was also a highly irritating present to have given. Minnie didn’t altogether appreciate that point.”

  “What happened about it?” Mr. Campion sounded apprehensive. “You’ve been paying up ever since, I suppose?”

  “Minnie has,” said Tonker. “I don’t come into it. I’m a salaried worker and I keep just under sur-tax, so they filch my bit at source without my even stroking it. Minnie does the rest. Since the g
lüb fiasco she won’t have any interference from me. It’s a bit complicated because we don’t live together, you see. Never have.”

  Mr. Campion laughed. “You have in the legal sense, you idiot.”

  “We haven’t in the literal sense.” Tonker spoke with unanswerable logic. “That’s the whole tragedy. Before we were married, over twenty-five years ago, Minnie and I, being astute youngsters—we were both nineteen—perceived that all the difficulties, partings and troubles in married life arose directly—directly, mark you—from nothing more nor less than money and housekeeping. How right we were. We decided, very reasonably that we wouldn’t have any. We were both able to keep ourselves then and we have ever since. When we were young we lived near each other, and as we grew older we visited one another frequently. We’ve each got our own work to do and we don’t ask any more of marriage than the tie itself. We’ve had plenty of fights but never any real bitterness until now. And why has it happened at all? Because some silly official first decides that we’re the same person for income-tax, and then starts trying to split us because even he can see that we’re not. We don’t conform to the blue-print, so we’ve got to be altered. And they’re doing it, too. Minnie’s off her head, you know.”

  Mr. Campion glanced towards Amanda and saw that she had wandered away and was looking at the pictures again. He returned to Tonker.

  “In what way?”

  The sandy man studied the toes of his wide shoes. “Haven’t you noticed it?” he enquired at last. “She’s given herself over to them. She’s let them into her life, so that her existence is a lunatic farce. There are only two good bedrooms in this house and she’s not allowed to sleep in either of them. She employs a gardener but he’s not allowed to grow vegetables because she only paints flowers. She hates champers but she’s not allowed to drink anything else, and then only when some dreary customer is present. She has to account for all her clothes. My word, I get savage!” He grunted. “Then of course I say things, and so does she.” He frowned and cast a sidelong glance of reproach at his stupendous invention. “Normally I curb myself,” he went on presently, “but sometimes there’s too much provocation, and this last business seemed to me to be the end. I may have overstepped the mark. They’ve had everything the woman could lay her hands on, Campion: William’s bit, the silver, the Cotman, and God knows what else. And now if you please they want me. She says they want us to divorce. I did kick at that. It’s not civilised.”

  The thin man stared at him in amazement. “That’s absurd,” he said. “Not true. Minnie’s made a mistake.”

  “She hasn’t, y’know.” Tonker shot him a bleak glance. “That’s the devil of it. Minnie’s mistake seems to have been in trying to remedy my glüb error by stepping up production. That appears to be fatal. Once you do that the problem behaves like wages chasing prices, round and round and up and up until the bell rings and we all fall down. That’s the trouble. Minnie having had the wind-up and made a superhuman effort has now reached the stage where she can’t humanly hope to earn any more in a single year than she does now, and as time goes on she’s pretty certain to earn less. They see this, I suppose, and since they only want to keep their books straight—I mean, they’re not bluing the cash happily in private somewhere in a way one could almost forgive—they’ve pointed out to her that if she was single she could call a halt to the dash up the spout. That’s the frightful thing, old boy; she’s not got it wrong. She trotted up to London and took Counsel’s opinion.”

  “Minnie did?” Mr. Campion was amazed.

  “Fact.” Tonker’s eyes opened to their widest. “Without telling me. It shook me. She’s never done such a thing in her life before. She’s half American, of course. Those gals take action. They don’t sit down and wait for it. I didn’t hear a thing about it until she’d got it all thrashed out. One night she put it to me. I was taken by surprise. That’s why I reacted as I did, I suppose. Must excuse myself somehow.”

  “No Counsel advised divorce,” declared Mr. Campion with conviction.

  “The lad didn’t advise it.” Tonker was unnaturally gentle. “He simply explained the position. If Minnie sacked me she could get out of the spiral which I and my glüb got us in to. And,” he added with growing wrath, “it’s got to be a real split. No cheating by divorcing and living in sin afterwards. These Inland Revenue chaps have discretion, someone told me, to assess a man and woman living in sin as if they are married, so I don’t suppose I’d be allowed to see the old gal at all. Might take her out to tea, perhaps, if we had a bloke with O.H.M.S. on his hat sitting with us.” His anger boiled up and he bounced in his chair. “I’ve never liked officials,” he announced, “and now by God I know why.”

  “Oh Tonker, how could you!” Dame Sybil Thorndike could hardly have delivered the line with greater intensity. Minnie had appeared on the balcony like Minerva in a prologue. “You promised never to mention it again. You gave your word, you brute. No American husband . . .”

  “I am not a brute,” hissed Tonker with smothered savagery, “and don’t talk to me about America. There a wife is an income-tax asset. A fellow can count half his income as hers, not all hers as his. That’s something else they’re more sane about than we are. I don’t want to hear any more about America. I hate America and all Americans.”

  “Tonker!” Minnie was sidetracked and reproachful. “What about Paul? What about Ken, and Milton, and Isabelle? And Laura, and Mackie, and Ruth and Ned, and Lavinia? And Robbie and Howard and Mollie? And . . .”

  “They’re all right.” Tonker sounded ashamed of himself.

  “Well then.” Minnie seemed in danger of falling over the balcony. “What about Tillie, and Mary, and John? And . . .?”

  “And Wendell,” put in Tonker, who had become interested in the recital. “And Ollie, and Irving.”

  “Irving?” Minnie had become dubious. “Irving?”

  “I like Irving,” said Tonker with dignity. “Irving is a phenomenon. Irving hasn’t merely got hollow legs. The ground beneath Irving . . .” He broke off abruptly and glanced round at Rupert. “Oh, got the bladders out, have you? That’s good. Put ’em in a row. Don’t stick your fingers through them, you little chump. That’s it. It’s not such a bad toy, is it?”

  Rupert looked up at him in worship. “It’s a zinger,” he murmured, trying out the new word cautiously. “I love it.”

  Tonker was surprised into a flush of pleasure. “There you are, Minnie,” he said, “he likes it.”

  Her smile came out like sunshine. “So do I, Tonker,” she said. “Honestly, so do I.”

  For the rest of the visit they talked of nothing but the party, and when Tonker helped his guests into the station-wagon he had got back to the body-snatchers. “Burt was one of Sheikh Ben-Sabah’s influential young friends, Campion,” he remarked. “Did you know that?”

  A white light of comprehension, as vivid as a star-shell, hit the thin man squarely between the eyes and arrested him halfway into the driving seat as he saw the probable answer to the question which had brought him down to Pontisbright on the pretence of holiday-making, and had made him so chary of becoming unnecessarily involved in any other enquiry. He could hardly trust himself to speak.

  “Was he in that racket?”

  “Of course he was. It was the foundation of his fortune.” Tonker’s voice was contemptuous in the darkness. “I was one of the few who spotted him. However, he’s coming to our party. That should be good. See you tomorrow. Dog in? Good. God bless.”

  “Good-night, my dears.” Minnie slid her arm through her husband’s and they stood together, waving after the departing car.

  Amanda laughed softly as the wagon crept up the lane where moonlight dripped from the hanging grasses and the air was breathless with the scent of blossom. “They adore one another, don’t they?” she said. “Life is one long friendly fight. A permanent exhibition bout. They look a bit like the lion and the unicorn. I say, Minnie must either have a most peculiar tax-gatherer, or she’s got t
he whole thing upside down. She’s just wrong, I suppose?”

  “I sincerely hope so, or the country’s going to the dogs.” Mr. Campion spoke fervently.

  “Tonker’s rather odd, don’t you think?”

  “You noticed that, did you? I wondered. He’s unnaturally subdued. Shaken, I fancy. No wonder. It’s an alarming story. Poor old Tonker and his frightful present.”

  Amanda was not satisfied. “I think it’s something else,” she said. “Something he’s ashamed of. Something recent.”

  “It could be.” Campion spoke lightly. “Tonker does do things. He’s an uncertain animal. I don’t quite see why he came dashing home, do you? Why did he go to the boat house and not walk in on the family?”

  “Uncle Tonker came home to telephone some clowns,” said Rupert unexpectedly. “He told me so when he asked me if he could have the room, when he came out from under the bed.”

  “Goodness,” Amanda’s arms tightened about him. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “So I am.” Rupert was ecstatically happy. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Uncle Tonker was a clown? He is a zinger. I like him.”

  “I do too,” said Mr. Campion. “A prince among fat-heads. And if he did commit the glübalübalum his punishment seems to be on the heavy side.”

  He set them down at the door of the dark house, helped Choc to follow them, and drove on to the garage. As he walked back a vast black shape disengaged itself from the shadows of an arbour and the unmistakable odour of malt was mingled with the dizzy scent of stocks and tobacco flowers.

  “Wot yer.” Mr. Lugg’s voice was little more than a growl. “I’ve worn meself out for yer. Pore Charles ’as just come in. I didn’t speak to ’im. ’E’s preoccupied. We can count ’im out. I picked up something, though. My friends aren’t spilling everythink they know, but they let somethink drop. They know ’oo the corp is.”

  “Really?”

  “Yus. It ain’t discovered yet though it won’t ’arf be in the mornin’. The corp, cock, is an official of the ole Inland Rev. In other words, chum, ’e’s the Income Tax man.”