She presumed that he had no money to spend, and she presumed that his taste equalled hers, and she got to know each room of his new house and its requirements in every detail. She thought Lamb House a perfect piece. She had wished that she could carry it home, but since she could not, then she would console herself by taking him shopping in London, showing him corners and side alleys of the antiques trade and the old furniture trade. He learned, to his surprise, that the years when she collected most of her small treasures were the years when she and her husband had almost no money, had inherited nothing, and managed on his salary and her slight private income. Her eye, she said, was sharpened by penury.
As the days grew shorter, he moved through London with her, pushing open the doors of dimly lit shops presided over by watchful dealers who knew Lady Wolseley of old, some of them remembering ancient purchases of hers, bargains she had procured and objects she had added to her collection which had seemed at the time eccentric and part of her general wilfulness. This London, its shops all lit and its streets busy and its social life at its most rich and pressing, was a world which he had already begun to miss as he prepared to retreat into the safety and solitude of provincial life. He loved the late afternoon light and the freshness of the cold and he also loved, despite all his protestations, the promise of the evening. As he walked the streets with his acquisitive companion, he studied London fondly, and then, as they stood in the old storerooms and show rooms, conducted here and there by dealers who seemed the essence of decorum and discretion as though they were selling privacy itself, he imagined his new life and his new furniture, his newly painted walls or stripped-down wood, and he felt oddly light, happy that he was merely halfway towards his goal, that Lamb House in Rye remained for the moment in the realms of imagination.
SINCE THE elevation of Lord Wolseley to his position as Commander of Her Majesty’s Forces, and since their return from Ireland in triumph, Lady Wolseley had grown more imperious with Henry, but she seemed gentle now, quite polite with the dealers. He had never known her to keep her voice down, but in the dusty old shops, as she studied the new arrivals or asked for old maps, her new obsession, to be presented to her, she seemed demure, and indeed seemed more so as the winter progressed. Nevertheless, she was full of certainty about what was worth buying and what was not, and she had a firm picture in her mind of each portion of Lamb House. He had to battle with her constantly due to her enthusiasm and her lack of patience, and on a few occasions he had to be careful to keep secret his longing for an object which she had casually dismissed.
Lady Wolseley provided him with a secret guide to London, to the hidden places from which he could fill and furnish Lamb House; she offered him also a version of London at its most densely packed, most resonantly inhabited. Each object he fingered and handled possessed a wondrous history which would never be known, suggesting England to him in all its old wealth and purpose.
In these months he worked hard, writing articles and stories, but on days when he had fulfilled his contract with himself and written his allotted number of words, keeping his Scot busy all morning, he would decide suddenly to go to the dealers again, mingle once more with the dust and the left-over objects, the untidy sold-off heritage, move from one shop to another aimlessly selecting a frame or a chair or a set of cutlery, but not buying, waiting until he was in a more decisive mood, or in the company of Lady Wolseley.
One afternoon, in the hour between four and five when the light became ambiguous and faded, he found himself in an antique shop in a Bloomsbury street which he had visited only once with Lady Wolseley. He remembered the dealer vividly for his extraordinary pair of eyes. The dealer had managed then to exert a sort of coercion on Lady Wolseley and her friend without speaking; he had succeeded in putting subtle pressures on them, managing also to throw a shadow of solemnity over the occasion by a mere glance. Henry recalled his slim light fingers, with neat nails, touching objects on his counter at moments, briefly, nervously, tenderly. He had noted Lady Wolseley’s huge resistance, silent also, to making any purchases, even though the owner had shown them some perfect pieces, including a French tapestry, small but splendid, and some old velvet brocade, with a texture which both the dealer and Lady Wolseley agreed was almost impossible to find nowadays. She bought nothing, but studied certain objects at such length that the dealer’s wise, patient gaze took on a hint of irony. Outside, she said the prices were too high, even though money had been barely mentioned, and said she believed that the owner, many years in business, should no longer be encouraged.
Henry had been thinking for some time about purchasing one object, something useless and perhaps overpriced, and certainly expensive, something that would catch his eye, an object he would want to have with him, close to him, which would have a meaning beyond its value. The French tapestry was something he thought of, the scene it depicted took its bearings from one of the Italian masters, Fra Angelico or Masaccio, and the pink threads running through the cloth had held their tone. He thought he would examine it again now, discuss it further with the dealer and perhaps decide to buy it without consulting Lady Wolseley, who, he knew, never changed her mind.
He found the door of the shop open and went into the lamp-lit interior, closing the door noiselessly behind him. It was typical, he thought, of the dealer’s strange tact to allow a customer to enter thus. The front part of the shop was narrow and cluttered, but he remembered that down some steps was a much longer room leading to a large storeroom with stairs to a loft. He idled for a while waiting for the owner to appear and then began to study a teacup which he thought might be Sèvres. Having casually examined several other objects, he walked to the back of the shop until he had a full view of the store below. There, huddled over a chaise longue, discussing its covering and testing its strength, were Lady Wolseley and the dealer. Feeling for a second like a trespasser, he moved back into the shadows and waited. He had not expected to find Lady Wolseley there and he thought it might be better if she were left in peace. This was her territory; he had not sought permission. He believed now that it would be wholly proper for him to remove himself silently and forthwith from the shop.
Just then, however, another customer opened the door and did so noisily. He was a well-dressed gentleman in early middle age who seemed to have as much trouble closing the door as he had had opening it. The dealer, when he came up the stairs, seemed to ascertain immediately that the two gentlemen had come separately and were not connected. He appeared surprised by the two arrivals, but quickly covered this up with fond recognition for Henry and something less than that for the more recent arrival. This time he seemed more clever than before, more foreign, more deeply intelligent and fine-featured; his dark eyes shone with a clever penetrating warmth. It was clear that he did not know that Henry had already observed Lady Wolseley and Henry watched him as he calculated smilingly what he should do. The dealer asked Henry if he could possibly wait for one moment and then made his way back down the steps. Henry heard words murmured below as he saw his fellow shopper take hold of an old silver bell with a carved wooden handle. He waited then for Lady Wolseley to appear, wondering what he, the intruder, could possibly say to her.
As soon as the shop owner reappeared, Henry noticed a tinge of concern in his expression. He was soon followed by Lady Wolseley at her most regal, and, he could not help feeling, at her most loud.