‘Yes?’
‘Nothing, nothing.’ But as he stood on the top doorstep taking his leave from Ernest he said, ‘Tell Eleanor I shall think over her proposition. Perhaps after all I shall think it over and scrape up a little to help her out. But it’s very grim these days, you realize, and I have my poor boy. He’s a heavy expense.
‘Don’t think of it,’ said Ernest. ‘Please don’t dream.’
‘Tell Eleanor I shall do what I can.’
For about four minutes after his guest’s departure Ernest was truly puzzled by these last-minute remarks. Then he sat back in a cushiony chocolate-coloured chair and smiled all over his youthful face, which made his forehead rise in lines right up to his very white hair.
He was in Kensington within half an hour, and at the studio. He saw Eleanor in one of the dressing cubicles off the large upper dancing floor, and pirouetted beautifully to attract her attention.
She sleeked her velvet jeans over her hips, pulled the belt tight as she did always when she wanted to pull her brains together.
‘How did you get on? Anything doing?’
‘I think so,’ he said.
‘He’ll put up the money?’
‘I think so,’ he said.
‘Ernest, what charm you must have with men. I would have sworn you wouldn’t get an old bit of macaroni out of Mervyn, especially seeing I’m to benefit by it. He’s so mean as a rule. What did he say? How did you do it?’
‘Blackmail,’ Ernest said.
‘How did you do it, dear?’
‘I told you. It isn’t certain yet, of course. And yet — I’m pretty sure you’ll get the money, my dear.’
‘How did you manage it?’
‘Blackmail by mistake.’
‘What can you mean? Tell me all.’
‘I gave him lunch. I explained your difficulties. Asked for a loan. He said no. Then I asked him some other questions about something else, which he took to be a form of blackmail. Then, as he was leaving, he succumbed.’
‘What questions — the ones he thought were a blackmailing effort? —What were they?’
‘Sorry, can’t say, my dear. Something rather private.’
‘Concerning me?’ said Eleanor.
‘No, nothing at all to do with you, honestly.’
‘Nothing honestly to do with me?’
‘Honestly.’
Then she was satisfied. Ernest left her intent on her calculations, anticipating the subsidy from Mervyn Hogarth. She sat cross-legged on a curly white rug with pen and paper, adding and multiplying, as if the worries of the past had never been, as if not even yesterday had been a day of talking and thinking about bankruptcy. Before he left she said to Ernest, ‘Don’t forget to draw on expenses for the lunch.’
‘Helena?’
‘Hold the line a minute.’
‘Helena?’
‘Who’s that? Oh, it’s you, Ernest.’
‘I saw Hogarth.’
‘Already? Where?’
‘At my club. For lunch. Frightful serious little man with a Harris-tweed jacket.’
‘Ernest, you are a marvel. You will let me pay for it of course.
‘I thought you might like to know how things went. Such a glum little fellow.’
‘Tell me all. I’m on edge to know.’
‘Laurence is right. There is certainly something going on between your mother and Hogarth.’
‘He wouldn’t say, of course. But it’s something important enough to make him most unhappy, most eager to appease us. A bleak little bodikin actually. We had such unfortunate food, lamb like tree-bark, no exaggeration. He thinks we know more than we do. That’s one up for us, I feel.’
‘Certainly it is. Can you come right over, Ernest? You could take a taxi.
‘It would cost ten bob.’
‘Where are you speaking from?’
‘South Kensington underground.’
