Death at the Bar. Ngaio Marsh

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      Parish knocked his pipe out on a stone. Cubitt noticed that he was rather red in the face.

      ‘As a matter of fact,’ he muttered, ‘it’s rather awkward.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Well I’m plaguilly hard up at the moment and I’d been wondering –’

      ‘If Luke would come to the rescue?’ Parish was silent.

      ‘And in the light of this revelation,’ Cubitt added, ‘you don’t quite like to ask. Poor Seb! But what the devil do you do with your money? You ought to be rolling. You’re always in work. This play you’re in now is a record run, isn’t it, and your salary must be superb.’

      ‘That’s all jolly fine, old man, but you don’t know what it’s like in the business. My expenses are simply ghastly.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Why, because you’ve got to keep up a standard. Look at my house. It’s ruinous, but I’ve got to be able to ask the people that count to a place they’ll accept and, if possible, remember. You’ve got to look prosperous in this game, and you’ve got to entertain. My agent’s fees are hellish. My clubs cost the earth. And like a blasted fool I backed a show that flopped for thousands last May.’

      ‘What did you do that for?’

      ‘The management are friends of mine. It looked all right.’

      ‘You give money away, Seb, don’t you? I mean literally. To out-of-luck actors? Old-timers and so on?’

      ‘I may. Always think “there but for the grace of God!” It’s such a damn’ chancy business.’

      ‘Yes. No more chancy than painting, my lad.’

      ‘You don’t have to show so well if you’re an artist. People expect you to live in a peculiar way.’

      Cubitt looked at him, but said nothing.

      Parish went on defensively: ‘I’m sorry, but you know what I mean. People expect painters to be Bohemians and all that.’

      ‘There was a time,’ said Cubitt, ‘when actors were content to be Bohemians, whatever that may mean. I never know. As far as I am concerned it means going without things you want.’

      ‘But your pictures sell.’

      ‘On an average I sell six pictures a year. Their prices range from twenty pounds to two hundred. It usually works out at about four hundred. You earn that in as many weeks, don’t you?’

      ‘Yes, but –’

      ‘Oh, I’m not grumbling. I’ve got a bit of my own and I could make more, I dare say, if I took pupils or had a shot at commercial art. I’ve suited myself and it’s worked out well enough until –’

      ‘Until what?’ asked Parish.

      ‘Nothing. Let’s get on with the work, shall we? The light’s no good after about eleven.’

      Parish walked back to the rock and took up his pose. The light wind whipped his black hair from his forehead. He raised his chin and stared out over the sea. He assumed an expression of brooding dominance.

      ‘That right?’ he asked.

      ‘Pretty well. You only want a pair of tarnished epaulettes and we could call it “Elba.”’

      ‘I’ve always thought I’d like to play Napoleon.’

      ‘A fat lot you know about Napoleon.’

      Parish grinned tranquilly.

      ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’d read him up a bit if I had to. As a matter of fact Luke looks rather like him.’

      ‘The shoulders should come round,’ said Cubitt. ‘That’s more like it. Yes, Luke is rather the type.’

      He painted for a minute or two in silence, and then Parish suddenly laughed.

      ‘What’s up?’ asked Cubitt.

      ‘Here comes your girl.’

      ‘What the devil do you mean?’ demanded Cubitt angrily and looked over his shoulder. ‘Oh – I see.’

      ‘Violet,’ said Parish. ‘Who did you think it was?’

      ‘I thought you’d gone dotty. Damn the woman.’

      ‘Will she paint me too?’

      ‘Not if I know it.’

      ‘Unkind to your little Violet?’ asked Parish.

      ‘Don’t call her that.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Well damn it, she’s not very young and she’s – well, she may be a pest, but she’s by way of being a lady.’

      ‘Snob!’

      ‘Don’t be so dense, Seb. Can’t you see – oh Lord, she’s got all her gear. She is going to paint. Well, I’ve just about done for today.’

      ‘She’s waving.’

      Cubitt looked across the headland to where Miss Darragh, a droll figure against the sky, fluttered a large handkerchief.

      ‘She’s put her stuff down,’ said Parish. ‘She’s going to sketch. What is there to paint, over there?’

      ‘A peep,’ said Cubitt. ‘Now, hold hard and don’t talk. There’s a shadow under the lower lip –’

      He worked with concentration for five minutes, and then put down his palette.

      ‘That’ll do for today. We’ll pack up.’

      But when he’d hitched his pack on his shoulders and stared out to sea for some seconds, he said suddenly:

      ‘All the same, Seb, I wish you hadn’t told me.’

      II

      It was understood among the three friends that each should go his own way during the weeks they spent at Ottercombe. Watchman had played with the notion of going out in the dawn with the fishing boats. He woke before it was light and heard the tramp of heavy boots on cobble-stones and the sound of voices down on Ottercombe Steps. He told himself comfortably that here was a link with the past. For hundreds of years the Coombe men had gone down to their boats before dawn. The children of Coombe had heard them stirring, their wives had fed them and seen them go, and for centuries their voices and the sound of their footsteps had roused the village for a moment in the coldest hour of the night. Watchman let the sounds die away, snuggled luxuriously down in bed, and fell asleep.

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