… still it must have done you good to get away from things. I wish I were still with you. The kids are all being very good and send their love, David and Mark have some questions about God to ask you when you get back!!! Good boy about not playing Benny Himon’s game about Strether. I’m sure you’re doing the right thing. Look after yourself, podge, sometimes I want you so much I feel I could break in two. I love your ears. Love, love, love you.
yum yum yum yum yum
Barbie
x (bitey one) X (open mouth one)
Bowen meditated for a moment on whether getting away from things had done him good, and then on the propriety of this concept. Then he thought about his wife’s fondness for clauses on the pattern of “I/you/we really ought to/must see if I/you/we can’t …” They were the stylistic equivalent of her “serious talk” face and posture. He wished he had the courage to inflict on her the pain of being told about the ways she got him down. But he hadn’t and never would have. What made that certain were things like the closing phrases and interjections of her letter. No part of his nature could resist them or put reservations on what they stood for.
He looked idly through the other letters. Suddenly one of them took all his attention. He ripped it open.
Yes, it was from Baron Knowland all right. The text said that since Bowen was occupying furnished accommodation at the above address he had no security of tenure therefore agreement was at an end with effect from the last day of the month would he please find alternative accommodation as new tenants would be requiring to move in with effect from that date.
Bowen’s mouth fell ajar. Unnoticed by himself, he belched. Yeah, Knowles and Knowland; that ought to have told him. The den. The table and chair and bit of carpet in the den. Furnished accommodation. New tenants. All the Bowen possessions out in the Street. Five days to go till the end of the month. Barbara obviously can’t do anything. Right, Benjamin Hyman, this is where you come in, boy. Cable—no, too late today; first thing in the morning.
Why did he mind this sort of thing so much? Perhaps it went to prove that he was an artist. He had thought in the past that his inability to follow any but the simplest abstract argument, his lack of zeal for washing-up and taking the current baby out in its pram, had suggested the very same thing. The case was starting to build up. Perhaps Teach Him a Lesson was a good idea after all.
15
SITTING DRINKING AWAY under a tree in an important-looking thoroughfare called something like the Avenida da Liberdade, Bowen tried to feel full of fun. After all, here he was on a chair in the shade while everyone else was rushing about in the heavy morning sunshine. How did any work get done in this city? Perhaps none did. Secondly, he had access to as much drink as was good for him, or even supportably bad for him: he had six of the large clean pieces of stage money left and any number of the small dirty ones. Thirdly, he had sent his cable; nothing more to be done except hope. Fourthly, old Buckmaster was off making “a couple of business calls”. Fifthly, he was one day nearer to getting home than he had been yesterday. And a nice pole-axing lunch at one of Lisbon’s best restaurants (which he had better pay for), a little doze in the car on the way back to Buckmaster’s joint and an early retirement to bed would get him through most of today. And after that there were only four more full days until he sailed. If only he could somehow decide, just for his own satisfaction, whether Buckmaster was genuine or not. And if only, for that purpose, he could remember the significant thing he still fancied Emilia had said.
Buckmaster was now approaching with his long bounding stride, looking at everything with the delighted wonderment of a man just out of prison, or more likely a man just out of prison in a film. Bowen drank up his whisky-soda thing, of which he knew nothing except that it contained no whisky or soda and was bloody good.
“We’ll go and see Fielding’s tomb,” Buckmaster said, smiling.
“Will we? I thought we were going to have lunch.”
“Later. Lunch is late in these latitudes.”
“Shall we have a drink first?”
“Later, later. You would not, I take it, wish to visit Lisbon without spending a few minutes at Fielding’s tomb?”
“Of course not.” Fielding himself would not be in attendance to chat to visitors, but it was a bit disrespectful to him not to seem keen to go and look at his tomb when asked, and he deserved sympathetic treatment for having been dead such a hell of a long time. And he had been a good chap, too. Bowen realised he wanted to go very much. He could keep quiet about it when he got home.
“We could take a cab,” Buckmaster said, “but it seems a pity that you should not extend as much as possible your regrettably small acquaintance with Lisbon. These strips of greenery are quite delightful, are they not? Such a refreshment to the senses, and with these magnificent palms … Over there you will find a miniature cataract, all surrounded with ivy. This is the loveliest street I have ever seen, my friend.”
“Never
