London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins

Author:Norman Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141191249
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-02-13T05:00:00+00:00

3

Mr Squales had been less wise than Mr Josser: he had attempted to argue about this afternoon. And, in the result, he had been quite right about the tears. Mrs Vizzard was so upset about the sudden cancellation of her little outing that she had broken down and told him that he didn’t really love her. But it was all over now, and she was nestling in his arms again on the straight‐back horsehair sofa. She had forgiven him. And he had forgiven her. Forgiven her, but made it plain that he was still terribly, terribly hurt by what she had said about not caring.

‘So my little kitten is happy, is she?’ he asked tenderly. ‘First we go together to the Tate to see the Blakers, and then I go on to my appointment – alone. You mustn’t be a selfish little kitten, remember.’

‘You won’t be late, will you? Not later than supper?’

She regretted the words as she said them. They were fatal, silly words. They showed how absolutely, how disastrously, she relied on him.

‘I shall be only as late as I have to be,’ he told her severely.

And that was all the promise that she could get from him. He was still a trifle cold and aloof in his manner. And remembering how unforgivably she herself had behaved she could not press him. She was lucky, she told herself, that he was even on speaking terms with her at all. Her feeling of contriteness – and gratitude – remained. And, when they finally set out arm‐in‐arm, Mrs Vizzard kept wishing every time she glanced at Mr Squales that she were a brighter and more dashing companion for such a man. But he still hadn’t told her where he was going afterwards.

The Tate Gallery was not really a success. Not so far as Mr Squales was concerned, that is. All the time he was in it, he kept wondering what he would do with it if it were his. There were obviously possibilities in those magnificent halls if only one could think of a purpose for them. The position of the gallery, of course, was against it. It was situated on the Embankment just where Westminster stopped and Chelsea hadn’t yet begun. Unless there was a collision on the river, or something, you could never collect a crowd in a place like that. Could never make a popular success of a place on a site like that.

On the other hand, it clearly need not remain the obvious failure that it was now. And no wonder it was a failure. It was the pictures themselves that were at fault – that much was apparent at a glance – and Mr Squales suspected that something had gone wrong on the buying side. There was nothing that you could rightly call an Old Master in the whole place. And a picture gallery without Old Masters was just absurd – rather like a circus without elephants. No: in the race for Rembrandts and Landseers, the Tate Gallery had simply been scooped.

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