endless night

chapter 2

It was pure chance that had brought me to the neighbourhood of

Gipsy's Acre that day. I was driving a hire car, taking some people

down from London to attend a sale, a sale not of a house but of its

contents. It was a big house just at the outskirts of the town, a

particularly ugly one. I drove an elderly couple there who were

interested, from what I could overhear of their conversation, in a

collection of papier maché, whatever papier maché was. The only

time I ever heard it mentioned before was by my mother in

connection with washing-up bowls. She'd said that a papier maché

washing-up bowl was far better than a plastic one any day! It

seemed an odd thing for rich people to want to come down and

buy a collection of the stuff.

However I stored the fact away in my mind and I thought I would

look in a dictionary or read up somewhere what papier maché

really was. Something that people thought worth while to hire a car

for, and go down to a country sale and bid for. I liked knowing

about things. I was twenty-two years of age at that time and I had

picked up a fair amount of knowledge one way and another. I knew

a good deal about cars, was a fair mechanic and a careful driver.

Once I'd worked with horses in Ireland. I nearly got entangled with

a dope gang but I got wise and quit in time. A job as a chauffeur to

a classy car hire firm isn't bad at all. Good money to be made with

tips. And not usually too strenuous. But the work itself was boring.

Once I'd gone fruit picking in summer time. That didn't pay much,

but I enjoyed myself. I'd tried a lot of things. I'd been a waiter in a

third class hotel, life guard on a summer beach, I'd sold

encyclopaedias and vacuum cleaners and a few other things. I'd

once done horticultural work in a botanical garden and had learnt

a little about flowers.

I never stuck to anything. Why should I? I'd found nearly everything

I did interesting. Some things were harder work than others but I

didn't really mind that. I'm not really lazy. I suppose what I really

am is restless.

I want to go everywhere, see everything, do everything. I want to

find something. Yes, that's it. I want to find something.

From the time I left school I wanted to find something, but I didn't

yet know what that something was going to be. It was just

something I was looking for in a vague, unsatisfied sort of way. It

was somewhere. Sooner or later I'd know all about it. It might

perhaps be a girl. I like girls, but no girl I'd met so far had been

important. You liked them all right, but then you went on to the next

one quite gladly. They were like the jobs I took. All right for a bit

and then you got fed up with them and you wanted to move on to

the next one. I'd gone from one thing to another ever since I'd left

school.

A lot of people disapproved of my way of life. I suppose they were

what you might call my well-wishers. That was because they didn't

understand the first thing about me. They wanted me to go steady

with a nice girl, save money, get married to her and then settle

down to a nice steady job. Day after day, year after year, world

without end, amen. Not for yours truly! There must be something

better than that. Not just all this tame security, the good old

welfare state limping along in its half-baked way! Surely, I thought,

in a world where man has been able to put satellites in the sky and

where men talk big about visiting the stars, there must be

something that rouses you, that makes your heart beat, that's

worth while searching all over the world to find! One day, I

remember, I was walking down Bond Street. It was during my

waiter period and I was due on duty. I'd been strolling looking at

some shoes in a shop window. Very natty they were. Like they say

in the advertisements in newspapers: 'What smart men are

wearing today' and there's usually a picture of the smart man in

question. My word, he usually looks a twerp! Used to make me

laugh, advertisements like that did.

I passed on from the shoes to the next window. It was a picture

shop. Just three pictures in the window artily arranged with a

drape of limp velvet in some neutral colour arranged over a corner

of a gilt frame. Sissy, if you know what I mean. I'm not much of a

one for Art. I dropped in to the National Gallery once out of

curiosity. Fair gave me the pip, it did. Great big shiny coloured

pictures of battles in rocky glens, or emaciated saints getting

themselves stuck with arrow. Portraits of simpering great ladies

sitting smirking in silks and velvets and lace. I decided then and

there that Art wasn't for me. But the picture I was looking at now

was somehow different. There were three pictures in the window.

One a landscape, nice bit of country for what I call everyday. One

of a woman drawn in such a funny way, so much out of proportion,

that you could hardly see she was a woman. I suppose that's what

they call art nouveau. I don't know what it was about. The third

picture was my picture. There wasn't really much to it, if you know

what I mean. It was - how can I describe it? It was kind of simple. A

lot of space in it and a few great widening circles all round each

other if you can put it that way. All in different colours, odd colours

that you wouldn't expect. And here and there, there were sketchy

bits of colour that didn't seem to mean anything. Only somehow

they did mean something! I'm no good at description. All I can say

is that one wanted terribly to go on looking at it.

I just stood there, feeling queer as though something very unusual

had happened to me. Those fancy shoes now, I'd have liked them

to wear. I mean I take quite a bit of trouble about my clothes. I like

to dress well so as to make an impression, but I never seriously

thought in my life of buying a pair of shoes in Bond Street. I know

the kind of fancy prices they ask there. Fifteen pounds a pair those

shoes might be. Hand made or something, they call it, making it

more worthwhile for some reason. Sheer waste of money that

would be. A classy line in shoes, yes, but you can pay too much for

class. I've got my head screwed on the right way.

But this picture, what would that cost, I wondered?

Suppose I were to buy that picture? You're crazy, I said to myself.

You don't go for pictures, not in a general way.

That was true enough. But I wanted this picture, I'd like it to be

mine. I'd like to be able to hang it and sit and look at it as long as I

liked and know that I owned it! Me! Buying pictures. It seemed a

crazy idea. I took a look at the picture again. Me wanting that

picture didn't make sense, and anyway I probably couldn't afford

it. Actually I was in funds at just that moment. A lucky tip on a

horse. This picture would probably cost a packet. Twenty pounds?

Twenty-five? Anyway, there would be no harm in asking. They

couldn't eat me, could they? I went in, feeling rather aggressive

and on the defensive.

The inside of the place was all very hushed and grand. There was a

sort of muted atmosphere with neutral colour walls and a velvet

settee on which you could sit and look at the pictures. A man who

looked a little like the model for the perfectly dressed man in

advertisements came and attended to me, speaking in a rather

hushed voice to match the scenery. Funnily, he didn't look superior

as they usually do in high grade Bond Street shops. He listened to

what I said and then he took the picture out of the window and

displayed it for me against a wall, holding it there for me to look at

as long as I wanted. It came to me then, in the way you sometimes

know just exactly how things are, that the same rules didn't apply

over pictures as they do about other things. Someone might come

into a place like this dressed in shabby old clothes and a frayed

shirt and turn out to be a millionaire who wanted to add to his

collection. Or he could come in looking cheap and flashy, rather

like me perhaps, but somehow or other he'd got such a yen for a

picture that he managed to get the money together by some kind

of sharp practice.

"A very fine example of the artist's work," said the man who was

holding the picture.

"How much?" I said briskly.

The answer took my breath away.

"Twenty-five thousand," he said in his gentle voice.

I'm quite good at keeping a poker face. I didn't show anything. At

least I don't think I did. He added some name that sounded foreign.

The artist's name, I suppose and that it had just come on the

market from a house in the country, where the people who lived

there had had no idea what it was. I kept my end up and sighed.

"It's a lot of money but it's worth it, I suppose," I said.

Twenty-five thousand pounds. What a laugh!

"Yes," he said and sighed. "Yes indeed." He lowered the picture

very gently and carried it back to the window.

He looked at me and smiled. "You have good taste," he said.

I felt that in some way he and I understood each other. I thanked

him and went out into Bond Street.