The Blackmailer, page 16
Harman shrugged, unappeased.
Baldwin began euphoristically to think of the fields in which he was destined to make his mark, surveying the smoky saloon as a drunken emperor might benignly watch the soldiers he was tomorrow to lead to further glories carousing after a victorious battle.
‘Have the other half,’ said Harman.
‘How simple life is,’ said Baldwin, pushing over his glass. ‘When one has faced the fact of one’s solitude. For the true solitary ambition has no limits. I feel splendid. What would you most like to see me do?’
‘God knows,’ said Harman, disapprovingly. ‘I leave it to you.’
For a moment Baldwin paused, suddenly gazing through the mists of his intoxication into a not unfamiliar abyss where loneliness and failure monstrously loomed; then looking solemnly at Harman he said with resolution: ‘Yes, leave it to me. I’ll think of something.’
‘Of course you will,’ said Charlesworth, suddenly and heartily. He had been eyeing a blonde on the other side of the room and paying no attention to the conversation, but now beerily remembered that Baldwin was a useful man to keep in with.
‘Oh shut up,’ said Baldwin.
Fisher and Miss Vanderbank were having an early lunch. They had taken sandwiches into Green Park, and Bertie had gone with them for the exercise. He scampered from group to group (it was sunny and the park was full) licking the faces of lovers and stealing the sandwiches of typists, taking the bread from the mouths of pigeons and a bar of chocolate gently but firmly from the hand of a justly enraged child. Miss Vanderbank shrieked prettily, but he ignored her. Fisher, embarrassed, had to pursue him.
‘I wonder if it won’t be me you finally marry,’ said Hanescu.
‘I don’t think so, do you?’ said Judith.
‘You ought not to remain childless—that horrible Nanny made me think of it. Motherhood would suit you. And then of course I like the idea of founding a dynasty, like all self-made men.’
‘I’m a great rejecter of experience, you know,’ said Judith. ‘Perhaps I’m wrong.’
‘The experience of Baldwin might have done you good, though not as much as it would have done him,’ said Feliks. ‘But then I don’t think you need experience. I think you knew it all when you were born. We won’t have Nanny in the house, of course. How angry the Lanes would be if we married. I’m afraid there’s a certain strata of society in which I shall never be accepted—not the highest of all, I’m all right there, but the next. Ah well, we mustn’t be morbid about the Lanes, either of us.’
‘No,’ said Judith.
‘And you could do a series on bringing up children,’ said Feliks. ‘And I daresay we could fix you up with one of the better Sunday papers. Child guidance, that’s the sort of thing.’
‘Miss Vanderbank would hate it,’ said Judith.
‘We could fix her up with Fisher,’ said Feliks. ‘A double ceremony. It would be an excuse for redecorating the office.’
‘I don’t know about that particular excuse,’ said Judith. ‘But I’m sure you’ll find another. In which case I insist on abolishing those rosebuds.’
‘You’re quite right,’ said Feliks. ‘I’ve gone off wallpaper anyway. We’ll have paint in wonderful colours. Let’s plan it. Have you got a piece of paper? I need a new desk. Substances—we must have more substances. Pink for Fisher?’
Judith smiled, comfortably assuming a familiar role.
‘Certainly not,’ she said. ‘Anyway, the whole thing sounds far too expensive.’
ALSO AVAILABLE BY ISABEL COLEGATE
STATUES IN A GARDEN
1914. The old standards are going. There is bitterness in politics, talk of civil war in Ireland.
But all this means little to Cynthia Weston, attractive wife of cabinet member Aylmer Weston, and her nephew by marriage Philip. They are caught up in the charmed, perilous toils of a mutual passion that will destroy all they hold most dear – while the shadow of war lengthens and darkens, ready to swallow their world whole.
A captivating portrait of a lost world, Statues in a Garden is a rediscovered masterpiece by one of the most important and neglected British female writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
‘Just the right mixture of doomed fun, melancholy and faintly lascivious despair’ Observer
‘Colegate’s novels offer readers clear-eyed, illuminating windows onto this now bygone world . . . Colegate has no equal . . . In shining a light on the past, Colegate also illuminates the present’ Paris Review
‘Stylish, funny, as vivid and brilliant as a painting on glass’ Daily Telegraph
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bloomsbury.com/uk/author/isabel-colegate
ORLANDO KING
Orlando King is a trilogy about a beautiful young man, raised in a remote and eccentric wilderness, arriving in 1930s London and setting the world of politics ablaze. In a time of bread riots and hunger marches, with the spectre of Fascism casting an ever lengthening shadow over Europe, Orlando glidingly cuts a swathe through the thickets of business, the corridors of politics, the pleasure gardens of the Cliveden set, acquiring wealth, adulation, a beautiful wife and a seat in Parliament. But the advent of war brings with it Orlando’s downfall; and his daughter Agatha, cloistered with him in his banishment, is left to pick through the rubble of his smoking, ruined legacy.
Elegant and muscular, powerful and razor-sharp, Orlando King is a Bildungsroman, Greek tragedy and political saga all in one; a glittering exorcism of the interwar generation’s demons to rival the work of Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark.
‘If you are curious as to why Britain is still ruled by a tiny cadre of not-very-introspective aristo-capitalists, Orlando King is essential reading’ Sunday Times
‘Colegate’s sharp-eyed trilogy about a young man on the make in 1930s London feels particularly resonant right now, given its acute take on male privilege and power’ i paper
‘An extraordinary achievement’ Frances Wilson, Times Literary Supplement
ORDER YOUR COPY:
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First published in 1958 in Great Britain by Anthony Blond; published 2014 by Valancourt Books
This edition published 2022
Copyright © Isabel Colegate, 1958, 1986
Foreword copyright © Isabel Colegate, 2014
Isabel Colegate has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers
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ISBN: PB: 978-1-5266-1554-1; EBOOK: 978-1-5266-1555-8; EPDF: 978-1-5266-5234-8
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Isabel Colegate, The Blackmailer
