A Voice Like Velvet. Martin Edwards

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      ‘It’s very kind of her, of course.’

      ‘She is very good and kind …’

      ‘I know. But there’s no need for either of you to bother about me, Mr Edwards. Thank you very much. Things will sort themselves out, I’ve no doubt.’ He added vaguely: ‘I might write a symphony.’

      Mr Edwards was horrified.

      ‘Composing?’ he said, standing. He seemed fascinated by him. ‘But I thought you wanted to carve out a career for yourself. I know you have a little money now. What’s better than to learn banking? Then you will be able to look after it.’

      ‘I loathe money and banks,’ Ernest said sadly.

      This winded him completely. He looked quite at a loss until his brain cleared with:

      ‘I must remember you are still very young.’ He seemed much happier. ‘How old are you?’

      ‘Getting on for thirty.’

      ‘Much older than you look. But nothing wrong with that age to enter a sound firm like Ponds Corporation. In fifty years—providing you work hard—you’ll probably be earning between ten and twenty pounds a week. This music phase of yours—there’s nothing wrong with it—will of course pass. Here is your letter of admission. I have already written to the bank on your behalf.’

      Thus this ancient problem was no easier for Ernest than for a multitude of others. It had come to him later, that was all. Just before he was ready for it. Income versus Art, and all the arguments about playing for safety, or playing for your beliefs and your secret faith in yourself. He could never agree with those who thought an artist could not create what he wanted to create without that frightful preliminary toss-up. Perhaps one day it would be possible for the boy who wanted to paint or write or sing or play to get on with it at once without money worries, in the same way that the would-be businessman could get on with it from the word go, and paid for it into the bargain. Until the present, the would-be creators, who had problems enough to decide if they were even sufficiently gifted, had to set out into the darkness of probable hunger and squalor, at tenderer years than thirty. It was time that Dickens’s garret was burned down and forgotten. Mr Edwards was no better and no worse than his predecessors. He put it down to Ernest’s youth and said quite sharply: ‘Take my advice and put music out of your head.’ He would have said much worse about cat-burglary.

      ‘Supposing Beethoven had done that,’ Ernest explained, flushed. ‘Or Schubert.’

      He let out a guffaw. ‘So you fancy you are Schubert?’

      ‘No,’ he said, getting bored. What ought he to do with his life? There was such a lot of it.

      ‘We all have young ideas,’ Mr Edwards said.

      ‘Did you?’ he asked.

      Mr Edwards went into the drawing-room presently, shaking his head and looking very cross. Ernest heard him telling Miss Wisdon that he had been a little rude ‘and ungrateful’, and that he was afraid he was stupid into the bargain. He admitted Ernest looked intelligent enough to grow out of it ‘in time’. When he had gone, Miss Wisdon asked him in scandalized tones if he had been ‘polite to Mr Edwards? He’s such a great man, and Chapel.’

      ‘I tried to be,’ he said. ‘But I’m older than he thinks.’

      ‘I hope you will make a better impression on Ponds Corporation, dear. You are not at all old. Thirty is nothing. For a man.’

      ‘I want to learn about music. Not about banking, Miss Wisdon,’ he decided to explain. ‘When anyone wants to learn about banking, they’re received with open arms! Everyone understands immediately. They don’t get told, oh, you must go and write a symphony, here’s a letter of introduction, you will start on Monday at two pounds a week. Then, after fifty years, if you have written enough symphonies, you may earn ten pounds a week.’

      ‘Don’t scream, dear,’ prayed Miss Wisdon, scandalized afresh. ‘You look quite flushed, I’m sure you’ve got a headache.’

      And she asked him if he needed aspirin or Enos. He chose aspirin.

      Next morning he saw Violet balanced as usual on her manure heap. He had been set to sweep in between Miss Wisdon’s row of stone frogs, by the sun-dial. Violet was wiping her tongue along a stick of liquorice and eyeing him with that kind of disfavour which was also speculative. A high wind blew her mop in an easterly direction.

      ‘Squit,’ she said.

      ‘Good morning,’ he said, by now resolved to ease his ruffled vanity by some display of manhood. ‘I wanted to speak to you.’

      She turned her back, but he noticed she didn’t run away.

      ‘Would you like to come to the pictures?’ he enquired nervously.

      ‘Seen everything,’ her back said.

      ‘Well, we could go to a theatre.’

      ‘What sort?’

      ‘Something musical, if you like.’

      ‘When?’

      ‘Saturday. Tomorrow. I’ve decided to start a job on Monday and I’ll be leaving here.’

      She swung round.

      ‘Leaving?’

      ‘Yes. I didn’t come here for always. Miss Wisdon only did it to oblige. My other house is being painted.’

      She would not commit herself, but he felt certain she would turn up, if only because he secretly prayed she wouldn’t. She ran in, and then ran back to say she had examined the papers and he could take her to the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, a twopenny bus ride, and that if she turned up, she’d meet him there in time for the first house. ‘I say if. I ought not to come out with you at all, after the way you treated me.’

      ‘It’s very kind of you.’

      ‘I wouldn’t do it for everyone.’

      ‘Well, thank you.’

      He retired to wait in dread for the following evening.

      When it came, he told Miss Wisdon he thought he would go and make sure of how to reach Ponds Corporation, so as not to be late for Monday morning, and she was very pleased, though she told him not to linger long in the West End on a Saturday night. She looked very grave about this, and so did Iris. The future seemed a dizzy and bewildering affair, and his evening with Violet offered some light relief. Perhaps it was at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, once again within sound of music, or at any rate musical noises, that he decided Ponds Corporation could not be allowed to hold him for long, if at all. Violet turned up on the tick. She looked surprisingly nice, a trifle startling, wearing a little red hat with a huge white feather jutting out of the top of it. She was for a time surprisingly shy and subdued, blushing profusely when she said: ‘Hullo, Squit!’

      ‘Good evening, Violet,’ he said, raising a felt hat bought that very morning. ‘It is most kind of you to have come.’

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