The Disciple

Chapter II: Providence-3

‘I am afraid that there won’t be room for them in one’s study, even if Lettice is frightfully clever. You know that it has been said that if Giacometti’s sculptures could speak they would sound just like the characters in one of her novels.’ Sir Christopher smiled. ‘I should think her books might go in the spare room, something to impress the guests,’ he said.

‘Similarly, there are quite a number of books – all warmly inscribed – by the dance critic Jefferson Birstein. Should those also go in the spare room?’

‘Yes, they should. And those books ought really to impress the guests. Jefferson is, perhaps, the only true genius one knows. Much more than just a dance critic, he’s a genuine ballet impresario; one might call him the direct heir to Diaghilev.’

‘Yes,’ John said, disconcerted to hear Dame Lettice Brompton-Corlett described as merely ‘frightfully clever’, while Jefferson Birstein was extolled a ‘true genius’. Continuing cautiously, John added, ‘And then, uh, I’ve grouped together all of these books – and there are rather a lot of them – both by and about the New Brutalist architect, Andrew Bruntisfield. They do, I must say, seem rather out of place here.’

‘No, everything to do with Andrew Bruntisfield stays right here, in my study,’ Sir Christopher said firmly. ‘He can be filed right after Brunelleschi.’

‘Yes,’ John answered meekly, dismayed by the heated competition that, he feared, might be lurking in this corner. How else could he explain Sir Christopher’s unlikely interest in this, to him, utterly repellent architect? ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘I know that you dedicated your book on Piero to Andrew Bruntisfield, back in 1965, so he must be a great friend of yours.’

‘Yes, he was – a pillar of one’s life, really.’

‘Was?’ John asked.

‘But he died last spring. Didn’t you see the obituaries? They were everywhere. Tremendously laudatory.’

‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t,’ John said, reassured by the knowledge that a possible rival for Sir Christopher’s affection was out of the way. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘he must have been rather young to have died. Wasn’t he? Not yet seventy?’

‘More like not yet sixty. In fact, he was only fifty-four when he died. He was fifteen years younger than one. Terrible waste it was, his death. All on account of those ghastly cigarettes – his one vice. He was the only person whom I’ve ever known to smoke more than Crystal. In fact, that’s how I met him.’

‘Through your brother, Crystal?’ John asked, titillated by his own use of this family nickname, which he had read of but never before dared to utter.

‘Yes, you see, just before the war, Crystal had been taken ill at Saint-Malo, where he was busy with research for his book about Chateaubriand, and, sitting in a doctor’s waiting-room there, he made friends with a hockey player from Amiens, of all places, who was so alarmed by Crystal’s condition that he escorted him personally back to London. My gratitude to him was redoubled when, after the war, this same hockey player – Gilles or Jacques, something like that – put Crystal in touch with Andrew Bruntisfield who, he said, was a brilliant undergraduate at Cambridge, reading architecture. Needless to say, Andrew was much too serious for Crystal’s fluttering tastes, and so he passed him on to one. One will never forget that first evening when he came to dine: we stayed up till dawn, delineating, in the most minute detail, the contrasting approaches to domestic architecture of Brunelleschi, Alberti and Palladio. A week later he moved in.’

‘You lived together, then, you and Andrew Bruntisfield?’ John asked, avid for background.

‘Oh, yes,’ Sir Christopher said, as if pronouncing a well-known historical fact that was too obvious to need verification.

‘I hope you don’t mind my asking?’ John said, afraid to have overstepped the unstated bounds of decorum.

‘On the contrary. It’s nice that there is someone who is interested in one’s past. Feel free to ask anything you like.’

‘Did you,’ John, emboldened by Sir Christopher’s forthcomingness, asked, ‘go on living together up until his death?’

‘Goodness, no,’ Sir Christopher said. ‘First, he lived with one for a few months, in very cramped conditions, in a flat one rented in Ladbroke Grove, just above Crystal’s. I had moved there after Mamma died, as her house in Holland Park was much too large for me on my own. Then, one took the leasehold on a very pretty, but not large, Georgian house in Bedford Gardens, and Andrew lived with me there for about two strained years. He would stay up all night, working in the dining room, and, when one came down to breakfast, one would find the table littered with paper and pens and pencils and ink – and cigarette ash absolutely everywhere! One morning, when I found him still up from the night before, I tossed a newspaper at him and said, “I think you will find a good number of advertisements in there for flats to rent.” ’

‘Just like that?’ John asked, feeling simultaneously chagrined for the victim of Sir Christopher’s ruthlessness and comforted to have his dead rival summarily dismissed.

‘Oh, but it was the kindest way.’ Sir Christopher smirked. ‘Of course, Andrew said that one was being terribly cruel, but I told him there was no other solution, no other means of salvaging our friendship. And, you see, young as he was then, he had already started to become quite successful. It was not long after that his career took off spectacularly. And he began winning all those prizes – students writing dissertations about his work and commissions flying in left and right. He was, don’t you know, colossally rich by the time he died.’

‘Really?’ John said; he wanted to ask but did not dare, pace Sir Christopher’s invitation at openness, if Andrew Bruntisfield had left him any portion of his vast wealth.

‘Of course,’ Sir Christopher said, as if sensing John’s curiosity, ‘he left everything, every last farthing, to the RIBA, as well he should have. Still, it is funny to think that, when I first met Andrew, he didn’t have a bean to his name. He’d finished at Cambridge, with a first naturally, but couldn’t formally take his degree, as his ghastly father, a dentist in South Africa, refused to pay his university fees, so I stepped in and paid them myself. And jolly good investment it was – quite the best investment one has ever made.’

‘And tell me,’ John asked leadingly, ‘do you admire his architecture?’

‘I admire his success.’ Sir Christopher smiled slyly. ‘Of course, you couldn’t pay me to live in one of his houses! All that wet-looking béton brut slathered on the walls. That was his great invention, you know, flinging about huge chunks of concrete where it was structurally unnecessary. Concrete as decoration. Those rich masochists couldn’t get enough of it.’

‘I had no idea of all that,’ John said. ‘Obviously, I’ll make room for the books, make a little – or should I say large? – Bruntisfield shelf.’

‘Good,’ Sir Christopher said contentedly.

‘And finally, uh, um, finally,’ John faltered.

‘Yes?’ Sir Christopher asked.

‘Well, I was just wondering—’ John stopped himself, lacking the courage to pose the question that had possessed him all day. But as he knew, knew all too well, that he who will not lift the veil is no true disciple at Saïs, he compelled himself to press forward and enquire about that which he most feared. ‘Wondering, um, ah, that is,’ he said, ‘about Peter Mason?’

‘What about Peter?’ Sir Christopher asked amiably.

‘I wanted to ask you about his books. I’ve unpacked quite a number of them – all on such diverse subjects, I must say. Well, I was wondering if you wanted to keep Peter Mason’s books together in your study?’

‘In one’s study? Poor Peter’s books? In one’s study!’ Sir Christopher very nearly shrieked. ‘You mean, all those pathetic little books he’s penned for that appallingly vulgar series – Style and whatever it’s called. Oh no, that wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do at all – fond as one is of him.’

‘He does seem to be rather prolific,’ John said, trying desperately to assume a bored tone of voice.

‘Oh there’s hardly a subject he won’t write on – from Buddhist temples to Bauhaus thingumajigs – except, of course, what he is meant to write on.’

‘The eighteenth century, you mean?’ John asked.

‘And Reynolds in particular. He started on him, I don’t know how many years ago – fifteen, twenty even – and he’s produced nothing but one measly little article in Apollo. And it’s not as though it’s a very difficult subject, not like the Renaissance. It is, after all, just simple English art.’

John smiled, more out of confusion than agreement.

‘Come now,’ Sir Christopher countered, ‘you must admit that there is no comparison between the two subjects. With English eighteenth-century art, most pictures are signed and dated and the documents, if not already published, are easily available and present no problem of transcription. Whereas with the Renaissance, one needs a profound grasp of historical method, wide-ranging knowledge of original sources and, above all, an eye. No, Peter ought to have finished that book years ago. Instead, he’s spent his time leading these ridiculous little tours to Japan and Thailand and Peru and every old place, when he should have been sitting at home in London and writing about Sir Joshua.’

‘Perhaps he needed the money,’ John said, surprised to find himself defending Peter Mason, for whom he felt a genuine (albeit fleeting) pang of sympathy.

‘That’s no excuse. I found job after job for him, only to have him booted out time and again. There is, I am afraid, nothing businesslike about Peter, nothing at all, but then, I suppose, that that’s part of his charm.’

‘Yes,’ John said curtly, all sympathy spent.

‘Consider the telephone! Who but Peter - Peter with all his extraordinary relations - could have arranged that?’

‘Quite. Oh, and there’s one last thing that I wanted to ask you about the books,’ John said, eager to drop the subject he had gone in search of. ‘I was wondering if I might borrow one of Joseph Leigh-Fiennes’s diaries? I see that you have several volumes.’

‘Fines, it’s pronounced Fines,’ Sir Christopher said.

‘Sorry,’ John said, blushing crimson.

‘Goodness,’ Sir Christopher said cheerfully, ‘there is no reason why you should know how to pronounce his name. I think that you must be the only American who has ever even heard of poor old Jo Leigh-Fiennes, so entirely, so provincially English, is he.’

‘Really?’ John, who regarded Sir Christopher as quintessentially English, asked bemusedly.

‘Oh, yes. One has all those volumes of his seemingly endless diary only because one is routinely sent them by the publisher, as he is forever going on about one’s family. Do feel free to borrow as many as you like, though you must remember never to take him entirely seriously. Old Jo’s writing, you know, is littered with opinions, but it is absolutely devoid of ideas.’

‘That’s strange, because, uh, not long ago I, um,’ John floundered, ‘read a review someplace, in the TLS I think, saying that he was one of the greatest diarists of all time, a sort of cross between Pepys and André Gide.’

‘Please!’ Sir Christopher guffawed. ‘I don’t think you can have read that in the TLS. Perhaps in one of those rubbishy English dailies, or maybe in that Waugh-run reactionary publication, whatever it’s called, but not in a serious paper like the TLS. To tell you the truth, I shouldn’t have thought Jo had ever read Pepys in his life, and as for Gide – well, I doubt that the silly old thing has even heard of him.’

‘Well, in that case, I mean, um,’ John stammered, ‘if you think I shouldn’t read—’

‘No, go ahead. Read as much as you like,’ Sir Christopher said. ‘I suppose old Jo might provide you with a rather interesting picture of life in London, particularly during the war, as he did make a point of meeting a great many well-known people.’

‘Maybe I’ll just have a look at the first volume, the one that begins in 1942. Now,’ John said more confidently, ‘would you like to see how I’ve set up your temporary study? You have to tell me if I’ve forgotten anything.’

Far from finding anything lacking, Sir Christopher appeared to be delighted with the arrangement that John had devised. ‘Yes, this should put one right back on track. Now I can really get on with that blasted review.’

‘Well, that was the idea.’

‘But what’s this?’ Sir Christopher asked, pointing to a receipt and a few Italian banknotes resting under a glass paperweight.

‘That’s your change. From the hose,’ he explained.

‘I don’t think we need be so precise as that,’ Sir Christopher said, scooping up the money and pressing it on John.

‘No,’ John protested, believing that, if he were not faithful in the unrighteous mammon, Sir Christopher would never commit to his trust the true riches. ‘I don’t think that would be right. Unless,’ he suddenly recanted, ‘unless, of course, there were some other household item you needed? I could pick that up with the change.’

‘Oh!’ Sir Christopher exclaimed. ‘Well, there is the soap. I told that fool Rita to get some and she came back with a rectangular hunk of mint-green-I-don’t-know-what.’

‘What kind do you want?’

‘I generally use that French soap – something and something – though it doesn’t have to be exactly the same. It’s just that it must be round – not oval, let alone rectangular – and of a pale colour and œillet-scented. Other than that, any type will do.’

‘Right,’ John said, seeing that Sir Christopher was perfectly in earnest.

‘And did she give you luncheon, that Indian?’

‘Yes, she—’ John said, vainly hoping to defend poor Rita, for, inefficient and overly excitable though he could already see that she was, he felt sorry for her and found her nervous manner and shy smile endearing.

‘Well, you see, then, how hopeless she is,’ Sir Christopher broke in. ‘I suppose that one will have to put up with her through the summer, as there’s no question of finding anyone new for August. But come September – well, I mean, could you imagine giving Dodo Delfington – you know she threatens to come back in the autumn – whatever old Rita produced for you for luncheon today?’

‘She might get better with time,’ John tried.

‘Doubt it. What’s wanted is someone like Piera.’

‘Piera?’

‘The weekend maid. She’s exactly the sort of stout, sensible Tuscan contadina who has always looked after one. You’ll see.’

John liked the idea that he would see, as it implied, at least to him, that he had a future here, but he still felt unsure about how to apply this remark in any realistic sense. After a moment, he ventured, ‘You said that Lady Charles Delfington’s coming back to Florence?’

‘You know her?’ Sir Christopher asked, looking pleased.

‘Just of her, I’m afraid,’ John said. Having also glanced at the D page in Sir Christopher’s address book this morning, he had found the name: Lady Charles (Dorothy) Delfington followed by addresses in London and Venice.

‘Yes, of course you would, as she comes from your part of the world, though I don’t think she’s been back to Newport for years.’

My part of the world! John said ruefully to himself.

‘What one will ever do about entertaining her, when she does come back, as she’s bound to do sooner or later, I simply cannot think. And then,’ Sir Christopher continued, ‘there’s Alice Varrow. She was already agitating last night about being invited to a meal. But one can always just take old Alice to a restaurant. Speaking of which, I should go and change so that we can go off to dine. I think it best if we go to Cammillo – much the most traditional restaurant left in Florence. Why don’t you look out the vodka whilst I am in my bath? I think we both rather deserve a thimbleful.’