‘Atrocious. I am suffering from a chronic atrophy of the purse. Ruin stares me in the face. If I don’t find someone soon who is prepared to invest in my work and thus bring in the lucre, I will be forced to give up art altogether.’
‘And what a loss that would be!’
‘You may mock, Carver, but I am entirely serious. I shall be driven to such a desperate act by want of money.’
‘What on earth would you take up in its place?’
Jardine shrugged. He picked up a brush, dipped it in one of the paints on his palette and dabbed at his canvas.
‘Who knows? Journalism, perhaps? I could work as a penny-a-liner for the papers. I have an uncle who knows Sala on the Telegraph. Perhaps he can help me.’
‘The job would destroy your soul in weeks, old man.’
‘Then I shall be obliged to sail down under and skin sheep in New South Wales for a living.’
‘The climate would not suit you. And the society there would not meet your exacting standards.’
‘Very probably not. In which case, I must marry a woman with money.’
‘Do you know any women with money?’
‘Nary a one. But I am willing to devote time to winning the acquaintance of some.’
Adam continued to watch as Jardine moved back and forth in front of his work, occasionally putting paint to canvas.
‘Was he making enquiries about me?’ he asked after a moment’s silence.
‘What’s that, old man?’ The artist’s attention had returned almost entirely to King Pellinore.
‘Did Creech ask you anything about me?’
‘Not that I can recall. Why should we have been talking about you, old chap? Your egotism grows intolerable. There are other subjects for conversation besides your good self, you know. We spoke of art. Or, rather, I did, and Sinclair-Creech had the manners and sense to listen.’
The two men fell silent. Jardine was mixing colours on his palette and Adam was raising his glass occasionally to his lips. After a few minutes, the painter heaved a great sigh of exasperation and threw his palette to the floor. He watched as it skittered towards the corner of his studio, depositing further splashes of colour on the already paint-stained boards.
‘Damn this wretch Pellinore! He continues to look far more suburban than he does medieval.’ Jardine wiped his hands on his smock. ‘I have been imprisoned in this place long enough. I must break my bonds and seek out new entertainments. You will join me in a debauch this evening?’
‘What kind of a debauch had you in mind?’ Adam asked.
‘Let us go and watch the mutton walk in the Alhambra.’
‘It is a Tuesday. It will be a poor night to visit.’
‘Gammon and spinach! Any night of the week, there are dozens of beauties in silks and satins trotting through its gallery.’
‘The kind of beauties that can be bought.’
‘Of course they can be bought. And sold. What else do you expect? Don’t be such a damned prig, Adam.’
‘I must confess to finding it a dispiriting spectacle these days, Cosmo. The women half-dressed and the men half-drunk.’
‘Ah, well, if you are not in the mood… You have to be in the mood for the mutton walk. That I will allow.’ The young painter changed the subject. ‘Do you ever meet any men from college these days?’ he asked.
‘Hardly a one. Since I returned from Salonika, I have lived a quiet and retiring life chez Gaffery. Mellor and Hickling must have learned of my presence in town. Lord knows how. But they left their cards at Doughty Street. I am ashamed to admit that I made no effort to see them. How about you?’
‘I dine with Watkins and a few others at my club from time to time. And I ran across Chevenix the other day.’
‘Chevenix? That was that wretched little tuft-hunter, wasn’t it? Forever sucking up to any man with a title to his name?’
‘That’s the man.’
‘What did he want?’
‘Nothing. He was merely loitering about at the Strand end of the Lowther Arcade when I chanced to be walking that way. Waiting for an earl or a marquess to emerge possibly. We exchanged a few words.’
‘What became of Markham, do you suppose?’ Adam sounded eager to move on from the subject of Jardine’s meeting with Chevenix.
‘He joined the Colonial Office, I believe. Probably despatched to some distant outpost of the Empire to brutalise the natives as badly as he used to brutalise poor young devils like you and me at Shrewsbury. Or to drink himself to death.’
‘He would be no great loss to society if he did so,’ Adam said.
‘His grandfather was a butcher,’ Jardine added, as if this explained everything.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Cosmo,’ Adam said, ‘my grandfather was an ostler at a York coaching inn. Are we still to be judged by what our ancestors did when George IV was on the throne?’
For a moment, the artist looked disposed to argue his case but he decided against it.
‘You are right, of course, my dear Adam,’ he said, laughing. ‘Democracy marches ever onwards and soon family will count for nothing. And yet there can be no doubt that Markham was a beast when he was a boy and he is almost certainly a beast still.’
‘On that we can agree, if nothing else.’
‘Chevenix is now at the Foreign Office.’ Jardine appeared unwilling to forget about his encounter in the Lowther Arcade. ‘You say you have not seen him of late?’
‘I have not seen him since I came down from Cambridge.’
‘That is curious. He has seen you.’
Adam said nothing.
‘In those grand new buildings in Whitehall. He was clearly wondering what on earth you were doing there: the son of some jumped-up railway builder entering the hallowed portals of the Foreign Office. He didn’t actually put it in those terms, of course, but the implication was there.’
Adam remained silent. He moved towards the easel and made a great show of peering at the canvas on it.
‘I must confess I wonder myself what you might have been doing there,’ Jardine went on. ‘I told Chevenix that he must have been mistaken but he was most convinced it was you. He said he called out to you but that you ignored him. And disappeared into one of the offices at the park end of the building with someone he didn’t recognise.’
Adam still made no reply.
‘What is all this, Adam?’ Jardine said, suddenly exasperated by his friend’s silence. ‘Was it you?’
‘Yes, it was I.’ Adam turned away from King Pellinore. ‘I saw Chevenix but I had little desire to renew acquaintance with him. I did not hear him call out to me. I am sorry if I offended him.’
‘Oh, Chevenix is not an easy man to offend. But what were you doing in Whitehall? Are you about to join the ranks of the Civil Service?’
‘No, that is not very likely.’ Adam laughed at the prospect. ‘But I have a friend there who values my opinion on events in European Turkey. On the strength of the Fields expedition, he believes me to be a greater expert on the subject than perhaps I am.’
‘So you visit the FO to put them right on the subject of cruel Turks and liberty-loving Greeks, do you? It is not a role in which I had ever envisaged you, Adam.’ The artist was clearly amused by the thought.
‘It is nothing, Cosmo. Let us talk of something else.’ Adam placed his empty whisky glass on the decanter tray. ‘I have changed my mind. Let us go to the Alhambra after all.’
As he came down the stairs, Adam was forced to suppress a long sigh of irritation when he saw who was waiting for him at their foot. Standing at the door that led to her own rooms in the house was Mrs Gaffery. She was unmistakeably intent on serious conversation with him. Adam raised his hat politely and wished her good morning with more enthusiasm than he felt. His slender hope that he might be allowed to escape without talking further with his landlady was instantly dashed.