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.
He pulled open the bottom drawer of the bureau and took out a bunch of letters secured with an elastic band. Carole’s letters, written during one of their stormy separations, kept out of sentiment. He slipped off the elastic band and drew a letter from its envelope, running his eyes over the pages with satisfaction. She’d let herself go in the letters, hadn’t minced matters. Not at all the kind of letters a tycoon’s daughter-in-law would care to see produced in her elegant drawing-room.
He began to hum a little tune. All he needed now was a cover-story, a good excuse for a visit to Rockley.
The final lines of the newspaper story gave him his cue. Among his many and varied interests Mallinson apparently numbered a passion for old coins. His collection was among the finest in the country, he had made a particular speciality of Roman coins. Tim grinned with pleasure at his own ingenuity.
One good rarity, surely he could lay hold of one decent Roman coin with twenty-five pounds? One flawless specimen and he was in business as a dealer. He frowned suddenly, biting his lip in agitated thought.
He’d need money for the train-fare, money to stay somewhere near Whitegates for a day or two – the village pub perhaps? Money for some presentable clothes. How much would be left when he’d bought that coin? He hadn’t the faintest idea how much it would cost, whether anything at all would be left, whether in fact the whole twenty-five pounds might not even be enough to buy the coin, let alone leave anything over for the other expenses.
He banged his palms together. He could dispense with the notion of buying a train ticket, he could thumb a lift as he’d done countless times before. He could borrow a respectable suit from one of his cronies, beg a suitcase from another. That left only the money for the pub. How long would he need to stay in the village – what was the name? Rockley, that was it. They wouldn’t be likely to charge much in a place like that. Bed and breakfast, he could get by on that. He’d made do with one meal a day before now, with no meals a day often enough. You could stoke yourself up on a good pub breakfast with enough calories to keep you going all day.
He looked round the room, his eyes searching for saleable goods, for anything that might fetch a few shillings. The transistor radio – he could do without that. If his gamble came off he could buy himself a dozen radios. The easels, they’d fetch a bob or two. And of course the coin might only cost a few pounds, he might not have to sell anything