Anthony Powell - The Acceptance World

‘Did you come to meet Mark?’ I asked. ‘He hasn’t turned up. It is not very likely he will appear now.’

Quiggin, refusing an invitation to sit down, stood upright by the table, still enveloped in his black, shiny livery. He had unfastened the large buttons of the overcoat, which now flapped open like Bonaparte’s, revealing a dark grey jumper that covered all but the knot of a red tie. The shirt was also dark grey. His face wore the set, mask-like expression of an importunate beggar tormenting a pair of tourists seated on the perimeter of a cafe’s terrasse. I felt suddenly determined to be no longer a victim of other people’s disregard for their social obligations. I introduced Templer out of hand — an operation Quiggin had somehow prevented until that moment — explaining at the same time that I was that evening already irrevocably booked for a meal.

Quiggin showed annoyance at this downright refusal to be dislodged, simultaneously indicating his own awareness that Members had been unable to keep this appointment. It then occurred to me that Members had persuaded Quiggin to make the excuses for his own absence in person. Such an arrangement was unlikely, and would in any case not explain why Quiggin should expect me to dine with him. However, Quiggin shook his head at this suggestion, and gave a laugh expressing scorn rather than amusement. Templer watched us with interest.

‘As a matter of fact St. J. has a new secretary,’ said Quiggin slowly, through closed lips. ‘That is why Mark did not come this evening.’

‘What, has Mark been sacked?’

Quiggin was evidently not prepared to reply directly to so uncompromising an enquiry. He laughed a little, though rather more leniently than before.

‘Honourably retired, perhaps one might say.’

‘On a pension?’

‘You are very inquisitive, Nicholas.’

‘You have aroused my interest. You should be flattered.’

‘Life with St. J. never really gave Mark time for his own work.’

‘He always produced a fair amount.’

‘Too much, from one point of view,’ said Quiggin, savagely; adding in a less severe tone: ‘Mark, as you know, always insists on taking on so many things. He could not always give St. J. the attention a man of his standing quite reasonably demands. Of course, the two of them will continue to see each other. I think, in fact, Mark is going to look in once in a way to keep the library in order. After all, they are close friends, first and foremost, quite apart from whether or not Mark is St. J.’s secretary. As you probably know, there have been various difficulties from time to time. Minor ones, of course. Still, one (thing leads to another. Mark can be rather querulous when he does not get his own way.’

‘Who is taking Mark’s place?’

‘It is not exacdy a question of one person taking another’s place. Merely coping with the practical side of the job more — well — conscientiously.’

Quiggin bared his teeth, as if to excuse this descent on his own part to a certain smugness of standpoint.

‘Yourself?’

‘At first just as an experiment on both sides.’

I saw at once that in this change, if truly reported, all kind of implications were inherent. Stories had circulated in the past of jobs for which Quiggin and Members had been in competition, most of them comparatively unimportant employments in the journalistic field. This was rather larger game; because, apart from other considerations, there was the question of who was to be St. John Clarke’s heir. He was apparently alone in the world. It was not a vast fortune, perhaps, but a tidy sum. A devoted secretary might stand in a favourable position for at least a handsome bequest. Although I had never heard hints that Quiggin was anxious to replace Members in the novelist’s household, such an ambition was by no means unthinkable. In fact the change was likely to have been brought about by long intrigue rather than sudden caprice. The news was surprising, though of a kind to startle by its essential appropriateness rather than from any sense of incongruity.

Although I did not know St. John Clarke, I could not help feeling a certain pity for him, smitten down among his first editions, press cuttings, dinner invitations, and signed photographs of eminent contemporaries, a sick man of letters, fought over by Members and Quiggin.

‘That was why I wanted to have a talk about St. J.’s affairs,’ said Quiggin, continuing to speak in his more conciliatory tone. ‘There have been certain changes lately in his point of view. You probably knew that. I think you are interested in getting this introduction. I see no reason why he should not write it. But I am of the opinion that he will probably wish to approach Isbister’s painting from a rather different angle. The pictures, after all, offer a unique example of what a capitalist society produces where art is concerned. However, I see we shall have to discuss that another time.’

He stared hard at Templer as chief impediment to his plans for the evening. It was at that point that ‘the girls’ arrived; owing to this conversation, entering the room unobserved by me until they were standing beside us. I was immediately aware that I had seen Templer’s wife before. Then I remembered that he had warned me I should recognise the stylised, conventionally smiling countenance, set in blonde curls, that had formerly appeared so often, on the walls of buses and underground trains, advocating a well-known brand of toothpaste. She must have been nearly six foot in height: in spite of a rather coarse complexion, a beautiful girl by any standards.

‘It was too wonderful,’ she said, breathlessly.

She spoke to Templer, but turned almost at once in the direction of Quiggin and myself. At the sight of her, Quiggin went rather red in the face and muttered inaudible phrases conveying that they already knew one another. She replied civilly to these, though evidently without any certainty as to where that supposed meeting had taken place. She was obviously longing to talk about the film, but Quiggin was not prepared for the matter of their earlier encounter to be left vague.

‘It was years ago at a party over an antique shop,’ he insisted, ‘given by an old queen who died soon after. Mark Members introduced us.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, indifferently, ‘I haven’t seen Mark for ages.’

‘Deacon, he was called.’

‘I believe I remember.’

‘Off Charlotte Street.’

‘There were a lot of parties round there,’ she agreed.

Then I knew that something other than the toothpaste advertisements had caused Mona’s face to seem so familiar. I, too, had seen her at Mr. Deacon’s birthday party. Since then she had applied peroxide to her naturally dark hair. When Templer had spoken of his wife’s former profession I had not connected her with ‘Mona’, the artist’s model of whom Barnby, and others, used sometimes to speak. Barnby had not mentioned her for a long time.

In due course I found that Mona had abandoned that ‘artist’s’ world for commercial employments that were more lucrative. The people she met in these less pretentious circles were also no doubt on the whole more sympathetic to her, although she would never have admitted that. Certainly the impact of her earlier career as a model for painters and sculptors was never erased from her own mind. With the extraordinary adaptability of women, she had managed to alter considerably the lines of her figure, formerly a striking synthesis of projections and concavities that certainly seemed to demand immediate expression in bronze or stone. Now her body had been disciplined into a fashionable, comparatively commonplace mould. She smiled in a friendly way at Quiggin, but made no effort to help him out in his efforts to suggest that they really already knew each other.