Portrait of a Murderer Read online

  But worse was to come. It transpired that, during the previous year or more, Brand had been living (promiscuously, said Richard. “You ought to buy a dictionary,” retorted Brand) with a woman of dubious reputation, known to the quarter as Sophy. None of the family, at all events, ever knew her other name. Taxed with the episode, Brand unconcernedly acknowledged its truth, adding that the association had terminated some months since. After this Richard scarcely tried to persuade his brother to return, and in any case Brand had no intention of doing so.

  Richard’s report to his father lacked no tone or hint that might make it effectual. But even he was alarmed at the depths and violence of the older man’s rage. It was several hours before he could be sufficiently quieted to remain seated for a quarter of an hour at a time in one chair.

  “Such profligacy,” he panted, “such depravity! And if he is like this when he is young, what are we to expect later?”—taking the rather illogical view that such conduct in an older and more experienced man, who might be expected to have learned more self-control, would be less heinous.

  “He is no son of mine,” he cried fiercely, “and he shall never again enter this house.” And proceeded to inveigh, with a pronounced biblical fervour, against these “strange women” and their partners in evil-doing.

  Richard pacified him at last, and Brand’s name was dropped. Meanwhile, he himself continued to live in Paris in strange places, and to work, when he could not sell his pictures, at employment not commonly resorted to by men of birth and education. It could not be urged, in defence of his choice of a career, that either fame or money rewarded his rather bizarre genius. He came perilously near to starvation several times during those experimental years, and then, when he seemed to have lifted himself for the moment out of the rut of anxiety and poverty, his family was shocked and enraged by his announcement that he had married the woman Sophy, and that there was already a child, a boy, born several months before the ceremony. Little news came from him thereafter. Gray refused to speak of him or to meet his wife. Brand never wrote, and it was by haphazard means that they learned of the death of the little son when he was five years old. They had no details of the days and nights of agony, the travail of spirit and flesh that Brand endured as he watched the puny child struggle for his life, the twisted limbs and tortured pinched features—of all this they never knew anything. Six months later Brand and his wife and their three small daughters left Paris for London, where Brand obtained an insignificant post as draughtsman to some obscure firm, who paid him badly and worked him dishonestly. Sophy was again pregnant, though not, said malicious neighbours, on her husband’s account this time. Brand paid no heed to rumour, nor appeared to care what his wife did. He took no interest in his surviving children, to whom he seldom spoke. The family settled in a shabby, artisan quarter of Fulham, where the slovenly Sophy, a shawl over her disordered hair, could be seen gossiping with her less reputable neighbours, and buying canned food for her family, while the house was thick with dust and the children went neglected and dirty to their compulsory school, where they were consistently miserable, and were jeered at for their torn frocks and broken shoes. Early in life, however, they had adopted a stoic philosophy. Since their neighbours seldom allowed their own children to play with the little Grays, the latter rapidly gravitated to the level of the unkempt urchins whom they saw playing in the roads and grubbing among dust-heaps and drawing wooden sticks with great rapidity along railings, maddening the more sensitive in the neighbourhood, nor did they suspect that Sophy was more than normally neglectful or abusive. Quarrels between their parents they accepted without comment, even among themselves; when Brand came in they were apt to scurry out of sight. Their mother possessed the vicious temper and uncertain ways of the slattern, and they were often beaten or underfed when one of her bouts of inexplicable ferocity attacked her, or when, as frequently, she was under the influence of drink. Sometimes they were pitied by neighbours, who thought them half starved and blue with the cold, and would invite them to sit by their fires, and give them thick slices of bread and dripping or crusts spattered with a peculiar red jam. It did not strike either Brand or Sophy as strange that their uncle should be a prominent Member of Parliament, living at Belgrave Square, and their grandfather a country gentleman of independent means. The children, of course, knew nothing of their relations.

  On the 23rd December, 1931, Gray received a letter from his younger son to the effect that he proposed to join their party for Christmas. The embargo against his presence had been lifted some years after his marriage, although Sophy never accompanied him on his visits to King’s Poplars. For this, Brand was grateful enough. His life with her in their inadequate quarters, the difficulty he experienced in escaping from her nagging tongue and her unclean ways, irked him even more than the conditions at his father’s house. Besides, he enjoyed twitting Richard on his childlessness and enraging Amy by his disregard of the household’s conventions. She counted every slice of bread and every ball of butter a visitor consumed, and it was amusing and at the same time satisfying to a man who was not accustomed to good food to irritate her as much as possible in this elementary fashion.

  Gray had returned no answer to his son’s letter, and Brand, whose finances were in a worse way than usual, went down black and fierce, and determined at all costs to put his plan into action. He could expect no sympathy from any of his relatives, since this plan involved the virtual desertion of his family in order to enable him to return to Paris and resume his work there. He proposed suggesting that Sophy and the children—the last of whom he was convinced was not his child, whatever might be said about Anne—should pay a protracted visit to King’s Poplars, and so insanely bent was he upon the successful consummation of his endeavour that he contrived to persuade himself that he was putting forward a reasonable request. He found Eustace and, later, Richard in command of the field. His efforts to see his father alone were frustrated by both of these, and also by Amy; so that it was not until the party had broken up for the night—early, on account of the morrow being Christmas Day—that he found an opportunity for approaching Adrian.

  From the outset the interview was stormy; Gray’s tone, while remaining suave, became increasingly sneering and bitter. Brand spoke fiercely and unwisely. Gray retaliated by giving his son his views on art, and the conversation closed in the manner indicated above.

  Part II

  The Journal of Hildebrand Gray

  1

  …And the extraordinary part of it is that it was nothing but an accident, much as if I’d smashed the milk-jug or dropped one of the dinner-plates. Even in my moments of panic I was able to appreciate that. It hadn’t any more significance than those trivialities. The significance lay in the consequences. And those hardly bore thinking about, in all the circumstances.

  I was so much taken aback when I saw him slip down to my feet with so little sound it might have been a ghost falling, that at first I was incapable of realising what I’d done. I just stood and stared. I couldn’t believe that he was dead. When at last I did, two things amazed me. The first was the shocking swiftness of death. A minute ago he had been standing in his favourite attitude, patronising me because I was a failure by his standards, that have always seemed to me intolerably contemptible and false, and now he lay there—and he would never, never get up again.

  I suppose it isn’t a very ordinary situation. Not many people can have murdered their father in a fit of rage; and so it may be difficult for the majority to believe that I simply couldn’t understand, couldn’t make my mind understand, that is—what had occurred. I repeated over and over again, “He’s dead. I’ve killed him. I’m a murderer. Murderers hang.” But it was no use. I couldn’t believe it, and presently, through sheer repetition, the words ceased to have any meaning at all, and became as incongruous as any casual collection of letters might, if you stared at them long enough. Even the word “murderer,” the word “hang,” meant nothing.
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br />   And the second thing that struck me was the effect that death has on people, the instantaneous, humiliating effect. I am thirty-two, but I haven’t come in contact with death much. The only other time I remember was when Hartley died in Paris, and everything was different then. He was not six years old, and he died in agony, and everything was prolonged to a nightmare extent. That wasn’t like death as I had ever conceived it. That was an anguished withering of childhood into a premature decay. There was nothing peaceful or beautiful about him as he lay in his coffin, an absurd white satin affair, with lilies of the valley round that dreadful shrivelled face. That was the sole occasion when I found myself compelled to realise that there is an agony known to men that cannot merely stir, but actually wring the heart. Even now I can’t bear people to talk to me about him, and one of the reasons why I left Paris was because I wanted to settle among people who had never seen him. He’s the one thing, besides my work, that I have cared for in my life, and he has gone out of it. It’s ironical, if you care to stop and think about it, to realise that I married Sophy solely for his sake, and now he’s vanished, and I am left with her and Margot and Eleanor and Dulcie and Anne, and the baby, whose father I most probably am not, though, of course, I can’t find out, and anyway now it has ceased to matter.

  But here there was something so shocking, so abominable about death that I stared at my father’s face in a kind of repelled fascination. I had expected something, in adult death at least, of dignity, a certain majesty and grandeur. But there was none, not a trace of heroism. Now that the corners of the mouth were no longer kept under control by the tense jaw—and it’s queer how I had never realised the desperate effort it must have cost him to preserve that aspect of nobility that made men admire him and women feel a peculiar attraction towards him—the muscles sagged to a weak peevishness; his nostrils, that had been finely modelled as a younger man, became pinched and fretful; the eyes were vacant and the whole face, in shedding its handsome scholarly asceticism, that had been so fine a mask during his life, betrayed now an astounding cupidity.

  Of course, it didn’t surprise me, any more than it would surprise Richard or Amy or—I fancy—Miles Amery, whom I have always credited with more than the usual amount of commonsense, that isn’t without its shrewd vein of cynicism. And I don’t think he was ever deceived by my father’s manner. He (my father) liked to appear a philosopher, a man of tranquil moods and reflections, and if some company in which he held shares passed its dividend, or if the shares themselves went down a point or two, he’d sulk like a child, refuse food, make the most humiliating scenes about trifles in household expenditure, curtail this or that necessity, and in general behave as though he had lost thousands of pounds.

  I looked up and saw the eyes of the first Hildebrand watching me. I was named for him, the famous prince of the Church of the early sixteenth century, whose portrait hangs in one of the recesses of the library. It’s supposed to be immensely valuable. There was another Hildebrand, too, but he was an obscure preaching friar, who took the habit and lived in a manner that we—even I, who pig it in a squalid hole in Fulham, where the ceilings are cracked and the wallpapers speckled with damp and the sanitation unspeakable—should regard as absolutely disgusting. Autres temps, autres modes. It appeared to suit him very well, and shortly after his death so many miracles were reported at his nameless grave that his beatification was accelerated, and perhaps he is now in a superior position to the Cardinal. Which exemplifies the Church’s teaching about the first and the last, and is therefore quite fitting.

  This Hildebrand who hangs in the library has the expression of a statesman, a disillusioned statesman who knows his own power and despises it. I am never wholly comfortable when I meet his eyes. But, if it comes to that, I’m never wholly at ease in that room at all. It gives you some notion of the type of man my father was that he could sit there and brood over his financial affairs without a sense of self-abasement or even of discomfort. On second thoughts, I’m not sure it isn’t the kind of room every artist should have to work in—by which I mean, should be compelled to work in. It isn’t a room where such a man could produce scamped work or be satisfied with the second-rate or even with the first-rate that came easily to him. Because it is conceivable that a time comes when the work a man does becomes devoid of effort, and then, of course, he must go forward and experiment with the impossible till that becomes attainable, too, and so on. I doubt if my father had ever experienced a shred of diffidence of that kind. He could strut pompously into that amazing room and sit for hours calculating possible gains and losses, and not even understand that he was hemmed in by the greatest wisdom, beauty, and craftsmanship of the centuries. The walls are lined with the achievements of genius; there are books there crammed with a learning that must make the greatest of all artists ashamed of his own deficiencies. And in a glass-fronted case against one wall is a collection of articles in crystal, amber, and jade so beautiful in their sincerity and perfection that they take the breath away. To say nothing of the embroideries on the chairs and the long couch that half fills the window recess. My father used to have me down there years ago when there was trouble brewing, and for the life of me I could never bring out the elaborate lie I had planned before coming downstairs. But he himself never felt any embarrassment. When I was about seventeen I realised that only two kinds of men could work in such a room—the very humble and the supremely conceited. But, brooding over, and even ashamed of, his insignificance, it did occur to me, as I saw him dead at my feet, that probably he showed here to the worst possible advantage, and might look less despicable in any other room.

  I found myself, indeed, saying aloud, “It would be bad luck for any ordinary man to die in here,” and as I spoke I heard the words for the first time, and realised what I had done. It was no longer necessary for me to repeat my formula. The position in all its peril was suddenly quite clear. The fact that I had picked up the oblong of brass, that he used as a paper-weight, with the intention of slamming it on the table to silence him at all costs, and with no idea of striking him with it, wouldn’t for an instant count in my favour. I should never make a level-headed jury understand that when a man of my father’s calibre starts talking about art, and the obligations of the individual to the community (that he doesn’t, of course, consider artists fulfil), he has to be stopped; he becomes intolerable. I felt myself tremble with that mad impotent rage children know when they recognise their powerlessness to insist on their own aspect of a position. A man who could seriously hold his views had no right to go on living; he was so much waste matter. And I have no respect for life qua life, though I have respect for any form of life that fulfils its proper function. Nor do I agree that any mass of men has the right to dictate to the individual, or to any other mass as to the nature of his or their particular function. Everything about my father was futile, his death as much as his life, and since I caused that death I share his futility. Indeed, I have never been so much ashamed of anything, without being in the least sorry. It was foolish, of course, to have married Sophy, but I can find reasons for that. There was Hartley, and I couldn’t have foreseen that he would die when he was five years old. But this was the result of a fit of blind passion, the kind of feeling that insincere and ignoble people create in me. I would have minded so much less if he had had the courage of his convictions and said, “All I care about is what I possess, what belongs to me. That’s my world.” But he had to pretend to be something much finer and nobler than he was, and that’s where he failed completely from the artistic viewpoint. But I realise as well as anyone else that you can’t talk that kind of argument to a jury.

  Remembering juries brought me back to a consideration of my position, and I was immediately enraged to think that my life, that has a certain value, should be forfeited on account of his, that was quite worthless. Not, of course, that anyone would agree with my scale of values. None of my family under this roof, not Sophy either. I doubt whether anything that ha
ppens to me will affect her. She at least makes no pretence, though I do not appear to like or admire her any better for that. I suspect that at bottom I am as completely illogical as she. I don’t allow that either she or my father has any purpose in life, and therefore they have actually no right to life at all. She has no family pride through which she can be attacked; in all the circumstances it would be unreasonable to look for it. Her own mother had as little reputation as herself, and my family has refused to recognise her existence. With the exception of Isobel, who doesn’t count and has been utterly crushed by my father and Amy, they would not have her near the house, and certainly she wouldn’t be at home here. Not that I think she would be embarrassed and humble to the servants or cringing to my relations. She’d be brazen and underbred—well, I knew she was that when I married her. It is too late in the day to whine now.

  My rage was chiefly on my own account. I had at length come to an unalterable decision, had determined to close this drab phase of my experience and return to my place in the only world where I am familiar and can do useful work; and precisely at this juncture a piece of crass stupidity was going to overset all my plans. It was intolerable to me that my father, who had consistently thwarted and disappointed every hope I ever cherished, should be able to continue that work after death, with my connivance. For if I’d flung that brass weight on to the table, as I had intended, instead of swinging round on him with a mad desire to wipe that smooth patronising sneer off his face, even he couldn’t have prevented my putting my plan into action. Somehow I’d have compelled him to help me. He had sworn he wouldn’t, but he would scarcely have allowed it to be said that his grandchildren were in guardians’ homes. In fact, I believe the law could force him to make some provision for them. I told him so.