CHAPTER
FOUR
Linda Daniels gently
replaced the telephone receiver and returned to the company of her husband, who
was sitting in the adjoining room. He
was bent over the pages of a political novel and briefly looked up at the approach
of the medium-built, dark-skinned young woman who happened to be his second
wife. She tentatively smiled through
closed lips and sat down opposite him in her customary armchair. He was anxious to learn what she had been
discussing all this time with Gwen.
"Principally her latest boyfriend," she declared, with
an ironic chuckle which momentarily exposed her brilliant white teeth.
"Oh?" Peter
Daniels was instantly intrigued. "I
didn't realize she had a new one."
"Well, she still sees Mark Taber on occasion, but
apparently not with any real enthusiasm.
And she doesn't seem to be all that keen on her latest boyfriend either,
if what she told me about him is anything to judge by."
"How did she meet him?" Peter asked.
"Apparently quite by accident outside Kenwood House in
north
"Four years?"
Peter looked as astounded as he sounded.
"Yes, but since she was deeply engaged in an affair at the
time, she didn't give him much satisfaction," Linda declared. "In fact, she was waiting for her
then-current boyfriend to meet her there, later that same afternoon. But then this guy, Matthew Pearce, suddenly
appeared out-of-the-blue and started chatting her
up."
"How curious!" Peter opined,
putting his book to one side and then leaning back in his capacious
armchair. "And didn't she like
him?"
"Well, she liked him enough to give him her address, and
not only that, but her parents' one too," said Linda. 'As she'd been obliged to spend the best part
of the afternoon by herself, just casually watching people passing to-and-fro
from a bench outside Kenwood House, she wasn't averse to a little conversation
with this fairly handsome stranger, who seemed to have taken a distinct fancy
to her. She even accompanied him back to
his nearby bedsitter, where she gave him the
aforementioned addresses and I don't know what else besides. But she got away from him in good time
anyway, evidently by telling him that she had a rendezvous with some friends,
which was partly the case. And so
nothing more was heard of this Matthew guy until he wrote to her parents'
address last month and invited her to meet him, which, curiously enough, she
decided to do, if only because her relationship with Mark had become such a
bore and she was accordingly anxious to expand her romantic horizons a
bit. She felt that Matthew, being an
artist, would be more interesting or, at any rate, less boring. The fact that he also lived in
"But what-on-earth induced him to write to her after four
bloody years!" Peter exclaimed.
"I mean, surely he ought to have forgotten about her by then,
considering they hadn't had very much to do with each other in any case?"
"Yes, so one would imagine," Linda agreed. "But you know what artists can be
like. Evidently he's a little
cracked. Either that, or he must have
been extremely hard-up and desperate enough to try anything, even contacting
someone he hadn't seen in years who was basically a stranger to him at the
time. Perhaps, on the other hand, their
brief meeting outside Kenwood House, that day, and subsequent affair made a
stronger impression on him than either we or Gwen could understand."
"Well, it certainly seems strange to me," Peter
confessed, smiling wryly.
"Be that as it may, this Matthew Pearce isn't quite as
interesting as she had hoped," Linda rejoined, "and principally
because he's too serious-minded and so involved with his art as not to be
particularly interested in her as a person.
Or so it appears on the surface. For she's now under the impression that he's somehow disappointed
in her and unable, in consequence, to take her seriously."
Patently puzzled, Peter Daniels asked: "Disappointed in
what way?"
"She doesn't quite know, though she has a feeling it's because
she isn't sufficiently on his progressive wavelength and may not be as sexually
attractive to him as he'd remembered."
Peter Daniels chuckled sarcastically. "One wonders what he could have
remembered after four frigging years!" he remarked. "If the poor fellow's disappointed in
her, it serves him bloody-well right for taking such a gamble. You wouldn't catch me inviting a woman I
hadn't seen in years to meet me for a date or whatever. No way!"
"Yes, well, we're all different," Linda smilingly assured
him. "And different we'll doubtless
remain."
"Humph! What it
really boils down to is that some people are less sane than others," Peter
bluntly declared.
Linda had to laugh.
"One of your notorious over-simplifications," she
averred. "But, seriously, Gwen
seems rather upset by the fact of Matthew's apparent disappointment in her,
despite her secret disapproval of his serious-mindedness. After all, if he severs connections with her
she'll be back to square-one again, back to occasional visits from Mark and the
desire to find someone else. Not that he
has shown any immediate desire to break with her. But she isn't altogether confident that he
won't do so before long. And she's
afraid that her parents haven't made the best of impressions on him either,
especially her father, who apparently started questioning and arguing with the
poor guy almost from the moment he first clapped eyes on him! Jealousy at first sight would appear to be
the explanation of it."
"Why did she have to invite him to meet them anyway?"
Peter remarked. "I mean, it wasn't
strictly necessary to drag him all the way up to
"No, but I suppose she thought he might think better of her
if she showed him where her parents lived and how respectable they were,"
Linda conjectured. "Make him feel
he was associating with the well-to-do, or something of the kind. You know how snobbish she can be like that,
eager to prove she comes from a solidly middle-class background and all
that. Funny really, but I suspect it's a
result of some kind of inferiority complex she suffers from, especially where
the artistically and/or intellectually perspicacious are concerned. Yet it appears that her method of ingratiation
in this regard hasn't quite paid off.
For Matthew seems not to like the place, never mind her father. He hasn't said as much, but she feels that he
has somehow clammed-up on her, withdrawn into himself
and left her stranded on the beach of his receding interest. Rather than impressing him, his visit to
their place seems rather to have depressed him."
There then ensued a short reflective silence on Peter's part
before he commented: "So that was the gist of her conversation, was
it?"
"Yes, more or less," Linda confirmed, nodding. "Not a particularly inspiring one, to
say the least! But since I phoned her, I
suppose I've only got myself to blame.
Anyway, I was interested to find out how she was getting on and what she
was doing, not having spoken to her for so long."
"You'd have found out soon enough anyway, had you waited
for the new school term to start before talking to her," Peter
averred. "I'm sure she'll tell you
all about her problems in more depth when you return to the teaching grind
again."
"I dare say so," Linda agreed, slightly offended by
her husband's lack of sympathy for Gwen.
"But that's another week away, and, in the meantime, we've been
invited over to her flat to meet Matthew."
"Oh? On which day?" Peter wanted to know, turning defensive.
"Either the Thursday or Friday of next week, depending on
his availability," Linda explained.
"She said she'd phone me on Tuesday to finalize it. For she didn't have Matthew
to-hand when I spoke to her and could only give me a provisional date in
consequence. Had I not been ill,
these past three weeks, she said she'd have invited us over to meet him before
going up to
"I entirely agree!" said Peter gruffly. "Though it might have
more significance for Gwen."
"Yes, I incline to think so too," Linda chuckled,
"especially in view of her current romantic insecurity and
incertitude. For she
seems to imagine that we'll get along well with him - me in particular."
"Not too far along, I hope," Peter snorted, throwing
back his head in a posture of feigned reproach.
"Though if he's an artist, and a so-called
progressive one at that, you ought to have something in common, since modern
art is one of your specialities."
"Was one of my specialities."
"Still is, so far as I'm concerned. At least you still paint from time to time,
don't you?"
"Only when I can do so without running
the risk of offending you with the nature of my canvases or the smell of my
paints."
"Oh, come now! I'm
not as prohibitive as all that! You
needn't wait until my back's turned before dabbling in paint. I'm not a bloody schoolmaster, you know. Nor a gaoler."
"No. But you aren't
exactly a champion of modern art, either.
You don't like to see me indulging in activities you personally take
umbrage at."
Peter Daniels emitted a heartfelt sigh. "Well, of course, I'd much rather you
did something I could relate to, like, for instance, photography," he
asserted. "Yes,
why not? Since we live together
we should do our level best to get on together, to refrain from doing things
that will cause a rift to come between us.
Now since you're my wife
..."
"I should presumably do my utmost to kow-tow to your
desires!" Linda interpolated with sarcastic relish, finishing off what she
assumed to be the gist of his statement.
"Well, that's putting it rather crudely," Peter
objected, blushing in the process.
"But you might at least do what you can to prevent unnecessary
friction. I mean, it's too vulgar, too
demeaning. My first marriage was ruined
by it, and I have no desire to encourage a repeat performance in my second one. All I ask of you is to back me up in my
professional endeavours, to offer me support in my struggle against the
decadent and feeble, the world-weary and anarchic - in short, the enemies of Western civilization! And to do that you've got
to refrain from behaving like an enemy of it yourself."
"But do you seriously believe that my paintings turn me
into an enemy of Western civilization?" Linda ejaculated on a wave of
intensely sceptical incredulity.
"Some of them do," Peter averred. "I mean, they're such a mess, dear. They're a species of anti-art, not art. One gets the impression that you simply throw
paint onto the canvas without caring where-the-hell it lands. Now I know you're not a professional
artist. But, damn it all, why waste time
behaving as though you didn't care a jot about the rules of composition and
were only interested in making a pitiful mess!"
"But what are the rules of composition?" Linda angrily
protested, losing patience with her husband's conservatism. "After all, there's no one eternal set
of sacrosanct rules, you know!"
Becoming angry, as though by contagion, with his wife's
intractability, Peter Daniels sternly countered: "Of course there is! As far as Western civilization is concerned,
there's a set of rules that apply to painting techniques whatever the generation
one happens to belong to."
"You're talking absolute rubbish and you know it!"
Linda retorted no less sternly.
"Damn you, woman, how can you be so bloody thick? I mean, if you don't keep to the rules, you
can only frigging-well break them."
"On the contrary, you can only change them," Linda asseverated
defiantly. "They're not something
static, you know. There's continuous
evolution. The rules you allude to - and
I'm far from sure which ones you have in mind - were evolved from something
earlier and have duly been superseded by rules more pertinent to the
present."
"Rules?" snorted Peter incredulously. "I can hardly believe the efforts of
most contemporary painters are governed by them!"
"Well, they are!" Linda declared. "And usually by pretty
stringent ones, too! But let's
not waste our time arguing like this, Pete.
It doesn't exactly contribute towards the harmonious relationship you're
always talking about."
"'Unnecessary friction' was the phrase I used," he
reminded her, calming down a bit, "and this is something I regard as a
certain amount of necessary friction, if only to
impress upon you the importance of avoiding the unnecessary."
"You're becoming quite irrational," Linda objected,
automatically succumbing to a degree of forced amusement at his expense. "Your distinction between the one and
the other becomes increasingly arbitrary."
She stared at him in light-hearted bewilderment a moment, then continued: "Anyway, getting back to the subject of
Gwen, I assured her that we'd be available to meet Matthew on whichever evening
she specified. So it's up to her to
confirm a date."
"Humph! I wish you hadn't done anything of the kind, since
I probably won't get on with him," Peter sullenly rejoined. "If he's avant-garde, he'll probably be too
anarchic for my tastes - assuming the word 'avant-garde' implies what I imagine
it to."
"Well, she did say he was into minimalist and
transcendentalist art, but she wouldn't enlarge on it, even when I pressed
her," Linda revealed.
"Apparently, she isn't particularly keen on the subject."
"Then I can't see that I shall be either, considering our
tastes are pretty close," said Peter, frowning. "Like me, she shies away from most of
the modern stuff."
"Yes, but it's rather unlikely that we'll be confronted by
his work at Gwen's place, isn't it?" Linda remarked. "After all, it's not his studio we'll be
going to, so there's a fairly good chance you won't have to take offence at his
work. Provided you don't inquire too
deeply into it and refrain from attacking modern art, we might get along quite
pleasantly with him."
"Bah, I shouldn't wish to get along with an ideological
enemy!" exclaimed Peter Daniels in a tone of obdurate defiance that always
suggested to Linda a degree of arrested development in her husband. "If I don't find out what kind of art he
does, I shan't know how to treat him. I
mean, I'll have to probe him to some extent, if only to get him into
perspective. And if he transpires to
being as radical as I assume, from Gwen's attitude, that he is, then I'll have
no option but to tell the bugger what I think of him and his kind and, if
necessary, bloody-well send him to
"Really, Pete, you take yourself far too seriously!"
Linda chided him.
"It's essentially my cause that I take seriously, my dear,
not myself!" her husband reminded her.
"The cause of Western civilization and all it represents. How can one not be serious where the life or
death of that
is
concerned? How can one allow it to
crumble to bits right before one's very eyes?
No, there are some of us who are too lucid to sit back and allow the
destroyers of civilization to have their barbarous way. We have to fight them, impede their
degenerate activities as much as possible.
Else all will be lost. The
libertarian trash will overrun us and we shall all perish. Don't you believe me?"
"I try to, darling, but sometimes I think you indulge in
hyperbole, exaggerating your Spenglerian pessimism to
a point where you're virtually fascist," Linda caustically opined.
"Fascist?" echoed Peter Daniels in a tone of outraged
innocence. "No,
not that! Simply
conservative."
"Maybe." And not for the first time an overwhelming
sadness descended upon Linda Daniels at the realization of the fundamental and
seemingly ineradicable incompatibility which existed between
them. She wished, at this moment, that
she had never married the man in the first place, never been gulled by his good
looks and considerable wealth into taking him for a lover. At the time, some ten months ago, she hadn't
known him long enough to be able to form a clear impression of what he was
like, nor had she been confronted by his conservative views to any appreciable
extent and, consequently, had no way of really comparing herself with him. Now, however, she was in possession of all
the information she needed to disillusion herself with their relationship, and
she felt terribly humiliated by it. Her
efforts to align herself with his beliefs were proving too much for her, and
transpired to being a source of self-betrayal with which she was becoming
increasingly dissatisfied. Sooner or
later a split would have to come, if not in her own life, then certainly with
him. It was impossible to carry-on
deceiving both him and herself indefinitely. Impossible and, what's more, morally
indefensible!
