Anthony Powell - The Acceptance World

All the while I felt horribly bored with the whole lot of them, longing to be alone once more with Jean, and yet also in some odd manner almost dreading the moment when that time should come; one of those mixed sensations so characteristic of intense emotional excitement. There is always an element of unreality, perhaps even of slight absurdity, about someone you love. It seemed to me that she was sitting in an awkward, almost melodramatic manner, half-turned towards Quiggin, while she crumbled her bread with fingers long and subtly shaped. I seemed to be looking at a picture of her, yet felt that I could easily lose control of my senses, and take her, then and there, in my arms.

‘But in these days you can’t believe in such things as astrology,’ said Quiggin. ‘Why, even apart from other considerations, the very astronomical discoveries made since the time of the ancients have negatived what was once thought about the stars.’

We had returned to the drawing-room. Already it was obvious that the afternoon must be spent indoors. The leaden, sunless sky, from which sleet was now falling with a clatter on to the frozen snow of the lawn, created in the house an atmosphere at once gloomy and sinister: a climate in itself hinting of necromancy. The electric light had to be turned on, just as if we were sitting in the lounge of the Ufford. The heavy claret drunk at luncheon prompted a desire to lie at full length on the sofa, or at least to sit well back and stretch out the legs and yawn. For a second — soft and exciting and withdrawn immediately — I felt Jean’s hand next to mine on the cushion. Quiggin lurked in the corners of the room, pretending to continue his examination of the pictures, his silence scarcely concealing the restlessness that had overtaken him. From time to time he shot out a remark, more or less barbed. He must by then have tumbled to the implications of his own status at the party. Nettled at Mrs. Erdleigh’s capture of Mona, he was probably planning how best to express his irritation openly.

‘Oh, but I do,’ said Mona, drawling out the words. ‘I think those occult things are almost always right. They are in my case, I know.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Quiggin, brushing aside this affirmation with a tolerant grin, as the mere fancy of a pretty girl, and at the same time addressing himself more directly to Stripling, at whom his first attack had certainly been aimed, ‘but you can’t believe all that — a hard-headed business man like yourself?’

‘That’s just it,’ said Stripling, ignoring, in fact probably not noticing, the sneering, disagreeable tone of Quiggin’s voice. ‘It’s just the fact that I am occupied all day long with material things that makes me realise they are not the whole of life.’

However, his eyes began to start from his head, so that he was perhaps becoming aware that Quiggin was deliberately teasing him. No doubt he was used to encountering a certain amount of dissent from his views, though opposition was probably not voiced as usual in so direct and dialectical a manner as this. Quiggin continued to smile derisively.

‘You certainly find in me no champion of the City’s methods,’ he said. ‘But at least what you call “material things” represent reality.’

‘Hardly at all.’

‘Oh, come.’

‘Money is a delusion.’

‘Not if you haven’t got any.’

‘That is just when you realise most money’s unreality.’

‘Why not get rid of yours, then?’

‘I might any day.’

‘Let me know when you decide to.’

‘You must understand the thread that runs through life,’ said Stripling, now speaking rather wildly, and looking stranger than ever. ‘It does not matter that there may be impurities and errors in one man’s method of seeking the Way. What matters is that he is seeking it — and knows there is a Way to be found.’

‘Commencement — Opposition — Equilibrium,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh in her softest voice, as if to offer Stripling some well-earned moral support. ‘You can’t get away from it— Thesis — Antithesis — Synthesis.’

‘That’s just what I mean,’ said Stripling, as if her words brought him instant relief. ‘Brahma — Vishnu — Siva.’

‘It all sounded quite Hegelian until you brought in the Indian gods,’ said Quiggin angrily.

He would no doubt have continued to argue had not a new element been introduced at this moment by Jean: an object that became immediately the focus of attention.

While this discussion had been in progress she had slipped from the room. I had been wondering how I could myself quietly escape from the others and look for her, when she returned carrying in her hand what first appeared to be a small wooden palette for oil paints. Two castors, or wheels, were attached to this heart-shaped board, the far end of which was transfixed with a lead pencil. I recalled the occasion when Sunny Farebrother had ruined so many of Stripling’s starched collars in a patent device in which he had a business interest, and I wondered whether this was something of a similar kind. However, Mrs. Erdleigh immediately recognised the significance of the toy and began to laugh a little reprovingly.

‘Planchette?’ she said. ‘You know, I really rather disapprove. I do not think Good Influences make themselves known through Planchette as a rule. And the things it writes cause such a lot of bad feeling sometimes.’

‘It really belongs to Baby,’ said Jean. ‘She heard of it somewhere and made Sir Magnus Donners get her one. She brought it round to us once when she was feeling depressed about some young man of hers. We couldn’t make it work. She forgot to take it away and I have been carrying it round — meaning to give it back to her — ever since.’

Stripling’s eyes lit up and began once more to dilate.

‘Shall we do it?’ he asked, in a voice that shook slightly. ‘Do let’s.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Erdleigh, speaking kindly, as if to a child who has proposed a game inevitably associated with the breakage of china, ‘I know trouble will come of it if we do.’

‘But for once,’ begged Stripling. ‘Don’t you think for once, Myra? It’s such a rotten afternoon.’

‘Then don’t complain afterwards that I did not warn you.’

Although I had often heard of Planchette, I had never, as it happened, seen the board in operation; and I felt some curiosity myself to discover whether its writings would indeed set down some of the surprising disclosures occasionally described by persons in the habit of playing with it. The very name was new to both the Templers. Stripling explained that the machine was placed above a piece of blank paper, upon which the pencil wrote words, when two or three persons lightly rested their fingers upon the wooden surface: castors and pencil point moving without deliberate agency. Stripling was obviously delighted to be allowed for once to indulge in this forbidden practice, in spite of Mrs. Erdleigh’s tempered disparagement. Whether her disapproval was really deep-seated, or due merely to a conviction that the game was unwise in that particular company, could only be guessed.

Quiggin was plainly annoyed; even rather insulted, at this step taken towards an actual physical attempt to invoke occult forces.

‘I thought such things had been forgotten since the court of Napoleon III,’ he said. ‘You don’t really believe it will write anything, do you?’

‘You may be surprised by the knowledge it displays of your own life, old chap,’ said Stripling, with an effort to recover the breeziness of earlier days.

‘Obviously — when someone is rigging it.’

‘It’s hardly possible to rig it, old chap. You try and write something, just using the board by yourself. You’ll find it damned difficult.’