Though he felt that the angry ham had scored, he thought that the next round would be his. He would now quite certainly make his poisons on the Tittups estate; he would bend all his powers to putting that through. Little Rolly was told to get busy. In the meantime, he had to break the news to Faringdon that Stubbington had rejected the Griefs, and had had the Stubba taken from them. He felt that Faringdon ought to be told this by word of mouth, so went to see him. On his way he thought of things that might be done.
“Look here, King,” he said, “the Stubbington gang have turned down the bronzes, and I’ve withdrawn the Stubba from them. But I want you to go on with Stubba. I’m going to put in my new gas-plant in a model village in the wood above my house. I want you to let me have Stubba for the centre of things. I want to put your two Griefs, one on each side of this approach on the plan. In between, I want an inspired figure. I want you to get busy on it at once. It is a fine site, and as you can see from Rolly’s drawings, the building will be pretty good. In the meantime, I’ve been to the Sculptors’ Galleries in Bond Street, and taken them for June and the first half of July. I want to have a Faringdon show there, and you’ve got to help me. We’ll have all your bronzes and studies; the Griefs’ll go in the big room; and you must let me have the drawings for the Stubba and so forth. Then, I’ve got a good chap to write you up in the catalogue; and we’ll get some good reproductions in the catalogue, too. We have time to make the catalogue a collector’s piece. You’re ripe, as old Haulover used to say. The next step with you will be a wild success. And this show is going to be the next step. Don’t think of Snipton and Stubbington. You’ll have all the capitals of the world to choose from after June.”
He put life into Faringdon by this. He put life into the direction of the show. He put life into the beginnings of his model factory. In odd moments, when he was not driving himself, he used to say: “You can’t put life into yourself.” That was true. He seemed to be dead within. A few old loyalties to artists in poverty, the symbol to him of the art-starved England he longed to change, and a few old hatreds of all that had starved his England, alone seemed to keep him going; the rest was routine.
But lest his enemies should think that they had won the battle, he contrived to buy three big pastures stretching from Spirr towards Weston Mullples. On these fields, the farthest of which was in view of the windows of
“A Buddhist Temple would be a good thing,” he thought. “That’d make ’em squirm.”
But he meant to place there some memorial to Margaret when he could decide. He thought often of the Buddhist temple, for the story of Buddha meant much to him. He thought that a big notice board on the field, where the angry-ham would see it twenty times a day, would be something to the good, so he had one placed there, with the announcement:
That made ’em squirm indeed. There were letters to the Press and anonymous letters in the post. Pob and his friends got busy at once; but Frampton had foreseen their attack. The notice-board was on iron framings and was itself treated with barbed wires and a preparation known as Tikklo. He found a few days later some very fine fragments of tweed on the wires, and learned that Pob had gone to the doctor for an irritation of the skin. Tikklo had done its work. It had made him squirm.
In the middle of May the War Memorial was unveiled in Stubbington. Frampton had not asked about its progress, but had heard that it was being done. He was very busy with his building schemes, and did not see the Memorial till it had been ten days in place. Being then in Stubbington, he went to see it. The flags had been removed and the flowers had withered; the mean design looked at its meanest; and little boys had already put their marks upon the open marble page. There were forty-five wreaths at the foot of the