Abstract
There was some vague connection to his father-in-law's businesses, about which Schwermer himself never seemed very clear, and about which I didn't really enquire. Because he adored her, he adored her from the very start, and he adored her as fervently, as blindly, as heedlessly when, not that many years after they'd married, she declared he was too impractical to live with, and left him. Or anyway set in motion the legal process that, after Schwermer's endless dithering and delays, was finally concluded a great many years later. Because he adored her; and because, it has to be said, he was terrified of running out of money. Besides it was very subtle, as I said, how his ex-father-in-law's money made its way to Schwermer, subtle, though sometimes also very cruel. The story he told was that Churchill never paid his bills, and once, when he was more than a year behind at The Gay Hussar, the proprietor, Victor Sassie, dared mention to the great man sitting at the head of a packed table of his guests that perhaps Mr. Churchill might like to pay his bill. For an hour or two the life of art became all of life, embodied, palpable, the smell and the taste.