Anthony Powell - The Kindly Ones

‘I’m not going to settle in the country for ever,’ he said, ‘just retreat for a time from the telephone.’

Moreland, dependent for most of his social life on restaurants and bars, had never been a great hand at entertaining in his own house. Accordingly, after the move, contact ceased almost entirely. That was, in any case, a decidedly eerie period in which to be living. Unlike the Stonehurst epoch, when, whatever jocular references to a German invasion might be made by persons like Bracey, war had come for most people utterly without warning-like being pushed suddenly on a winter’s day into a swirling whirlpool of ice-cold water by an acquaintance, unpredictable perhaps, but not actively homicidal — war was now materialising in slow motion. Like one of the Stonehurst ‘ghosts’, war towered by the bed when you awoke in the morning; unlike those more transient, more accommodating spectres, its tall form, so far from dissolving immediately, remained, on the contrary, a looming, menacing shape of ever greater height, ever thickening density. The grey, flickering sequences of the screen showed with increased persistence close-ups of stocky demagogues, fuming, gesticulating, stamping; oceans of raised forearms; steel-helmeted men tramping in column; armoured vehicles rumbling over the pavé of broad boulevards. Crisis was unremitting, cataclysm not long to be delayed.

Such an atmosphere was not at all favourable to writing novels, the activity which chiefly occupied my own thoughts, one that may require from time to time some more or less powerful outside stimulus in the life of a writer, but needs, in between any such disturbances, long periods of comparative calm. Besides, the ancillaries of a writer’s profession, the odd jobs that make such an existence financially surmountable, were at that period in by no means a flourishing condition. I was myself in lowish water and, what was worse, found it difficult, almost impossible, to work on a book while waiting for the starting pistol. Even Chips Lovell, who possessed relatively well-paid employment on a newspaper (contributing to a column of innocuous, almost self-respecting ‘gossip’), lived, like others in Fleet Street, in recurrent fear of being told his services were redundant.

Since Chips had married Priscilla, he had shown signs of turning into a model husband. Some people regarded him as an incurably raffish young man, but now the interest he had always taken in the affairs of his many relations became redoubled, growing almost feverish in its intensity. He attended marriages, christenings, funerals as if his life depended on it, as, indeed, to some extent it did, since he would usually introduce later into his column discreet reference to such ceremonies. The trifles Chips offered the public were on the whole inoffensive enough, sometimes even of general interest. All the same, not everyone approved of them: Isobel’s eldest sister, Frederica Budd, who, since the recent death of the Tollands’ stepmother, Lady Warminster, more than ever felt herself custodian of the family’s moral and social standards, found Chips’s ‘paragraphs’ particularly vexatious. In any case, Frederica did not much care for Chips, although she, and everyone else, had to admit that his marriage to Priscilla must be reckoned a success. The Lovells had a baby; Priscilla had become quieter, some complained a little sadder, but at the same time her looks had improved, so that now she could almost be called a ‘beauty’. Since Moreland had long since removed himself almost entirely from the kind of society in which Chips Lovell liked to move — was to some extent even professionally committed — the two couples never met. Such a meeting would certainly not have embarrassed Chips, who neither minded nor was in a position to mind about such refinements of sensibility where love affairs were concerned. Moreland on the other hand, once things were broken off with Priscilla, certainly preferred to keep out of her and her husband’s way.

Then one day, not long after ‘Munich’, when everyone’s nerves were in a thoroughly disordered state, some relieved, some more apprehensive than ever, Isobel ran across Matilda in the hairdresser’s. There was a great reunion. The end of it was that a week-end visit was arranged immediately to the Morelands’ cottage. Life was humdrum enough at that moment, even though we were living in so unstable, so harassing a period. I mean the events that took place while we were staying with the Morelands formed not only something of a landmark when looked back upon, but were also rather different from the material of which daily life was in general composed.

‘Matilda is dying for company,’ Isobel said, when she told me of their meeting.

‘How is she?’

‘Not bad. Out of a job. She says she has decided she is a terrible actress. She is going to give up the stage and take to petit point.’

‘Where exactly are they living?’

‘A few miles from Stourwater.’

‘I had no idea of that. Was it deliberate?’

‘Matilda knows the district. She was brought up there. At first I was too delicate to ask how near they were to the castle. Then Matty said Sir Magnus had actually found the cottage for them. Matty rather likes talking of her days with Sir Magnus if one is tête-à-tête. They represent, I think, the most restful moment of her life.’

‘Life with Hugh can’t be very restful.’

‘Hugh doesn’t seem to mind about being near Stourwater. Matilda said he was delighted to find a cottage so easily.’

I was not sure that I agreed in believing Moreland so indifferent to the proximity of Sir Magnus Donners. It is true that men vary in attitude towards previous husbands and lovers of their wife or mistress. As it happened, that was a favourite theme of Moreland’s. Some, at least outwardly, are to all appearance completely unconcerned with what experiences a woman may have had — and with whom — before they took her on; others never become reconciled to their forerunners. I remembered Moreland saying that Matilda’s father had kept a chemist’s shop in that part of the world. There was a story about her first having met Sir Magnus when she was organising a school play in the precincts of the castle. One side of Moreland was certainly squeamish about the matter of his wife’s former connexion with Sir Magnus, the other, tolerant, sceptical, indolent about his own life — even his emotional life — welcomed any easy solution when it came to finding somewhere to live. The cottage might be in the shadow of Stourwater, or anywhere else. It was the characteristic split personality that the arts seem specially to require, even to augment in those who practise them. Matilda, of course, knew very well the easygoing, inactive side of her husband; her grasp of that side of his character was perhaps her chief power over him. She could judge to a hair’s breadth just how much to make a convenience of having been Sir Magnus’s mistress, while stopping short of seriously upsetting Moreland’s susceptibilities on that score. Such at least, were the terms in which I myself assessed the situation. That was the background I expected to find when we stayed at the cottage. I thought that half-humorous, half-masochistic shame on Moreland’s part at thus allowing his wife to make use of a rich man who had formerly ‘kept’ her would express itself in banter, partly designed to punish himself for allowing such circumstances to arise.

As it happened, conversation had turned on Sir Magnus Donners a night or two before we were invited to the Morelands’. We were dining (at short notice, because a more ‘political’ couple had dropped out) with Isobel’s sister, Susan, married to Roddy Cutts, a Tory back-bencher. Susan greatly enjoyed giving small political dinner-parties. Roddy, hardly drinking anything himself, saw no reason to encourage the habit in others, so that wine did not exactly flow. Current affairs, however, were unrestrainedly discussed. They inhabited a hideous little mansion flat in Westminster, equipped with a ‘division bell’ for giving warning when Roddy’s vote was required in ‘the House’. Said to be rather a ‘coming man’ in the Conservative Party, he was in some disgrace with its leaders at that moment, having thrown in his lot with Churchill, Eden and the group who had abstained from voting in the ‘Munich’ division. That evening another MP, Fettiplace-Jones, was present with his wife. Fettiplace-Jones, a supporter of the Government’s policy, was at the same time too wary to cut himself off entirely from dissident members of the party. Like Roddy, his contemporary in age, he represented a northern constituency. Tall, handsome, moon-faced, with a lock of hair trained across his high forehead for the caricaturist, he seemed to require only side-whiskers and a high collar to complete the picture of a distinguished politician of the nineteenth century. His untiring professional geniality rivalled even Roddy’s remorseless charm of manner. His wife, an eager little woman with the features of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland — possibly advised by her husband not to be controversial about Czechoslovakia — spoke sagely of public health and housing. Fettiplace-Jones himself seemed to be exploring avenues of thought that suggested no basic disagreement between himself and Roddy; in short, he himself acknowledged that we must continue to prepare for the worst. When the men were left alone, Fettiplace-Jones, rightly deciding no cigars would be available, took one from his pocket and smelled it.