Anthony Powell - The Acceptance World

She took Quiggin’s hand. He seemed surprised, perhaps even rather touched at the warmth with which she spoke. He replied with more feeling than was usual in his manner that he would certainly communicate with her.

‘I will let you know how St. J. is.’

‘Oh, do!

‘Without fail.’

‘Don’t forget.’

Mrs. Erdleigh, in her travelling clothes, had reverted to my first impression of her at the Ufford as priestess of some esoteric cult. Wrapped about with scarves, veils and stoles, she took my hand.

‘Have you met her yet?’ she enquired in a low voice.

‘Yes.’

‘Just as I told you?’

‘Yes.’

Mrs. Erdleigh smiled to herself. They piled into the car, Quiggin glowering in the back, hatless, but with a fairly thick overcoat. Stripling drove off briskly, sending the crisp snow in a shower from the wheels. The car disappeared into the gloomy shadows of the conifers.

We returned to the drawing-room. Templer threw himself into an armchair.

‘What a party,’ he said. ‘Poor old Jimmy really has landed something this time. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have to marry that woman. She’s like Rider Haggard’s She — She who must be obeyed.’

‘I thought she was wonderful,’ said Mona.

‘So does Jimmy,’ said Templer. ‘You know, I can see a look of Babs. Something in the way she carries herself.’

I, too, had noticed an odd, remote resemblance in Mrs. Erdleigh to his elder sister. However, Mona disagreed strongly, and they began to argue.

‘It was extraordinary all that stuff about Marx coming up,’ said Templer. ‘I suppose it was swilling about in old Quiggin’s head and somehow got released.’

‘Of course, you can never believe anything you can’t explain quite simply,’ said Mona.

‘Why should I?’ said Templer.

Tea merged into drinks. Mona’s temper grew worse. I began to feel distinctly tired. Jean had brought out some work, and was sewing. Templer yawned in his chair. I wondered why he and his wife did not get on better. It was extraordinary that he seemed to please so many girls, and yet not her.

‘It was a pretty stiff afternoon,’ he said.

‘I enjoyed it,’ said Mona. ‘It was a change.’

‘It certainly was.’

They began to discuss Planchette again; ending inevitably in argument. Mona stood up.

‘Let’s go out tonight.’

‘Where to?’

‘We could dine at Skindles.’

‘We’ve done that exactly a thousand and twenty-seven times. I’ve counted.’

‘Then the Ace of Spades.’

‘You know how I feel about the Ace of Spades after what happened to me there.’

‘But I like it.’

‘Anyway, wouldn’t it be nicer to eat in tonight? Unless Nick and Jean are mad to make a night of it.’

I had no wish to go out to dinner; Jean was noncommittal. The Templers continued to argue. Suddenly Mona burst into tears.

‘You never want to do anything I want,’ she said. ‘If I can’t go out. I shall go to bed. They can send up something on a tray. As a matter of fact I haven’t been feeling well all day.’

She turned from him, and almost ran from the room.

‘Oh, hell,’ said Templer. ‘I suppose I shall have to see about this. Help yourselves to another drink when you’re ready.’

He followed his wife through the door. Jean and I were alone. She gave me her hand, smiling, but resisting a closer embrace.

‘Tonight?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Not a good idea.’

‘I see.’

‘Sorry.’

‘When?’

‘Any time.’

‘Will you come to my flat?’

‘Of course.’

‘When?’

‘I’ve told you. Any time you like.’

‘Tuesday?’

‘No, not Tuesday.’

‘Wednesday, then?’

‘I can’t manage Wednesday either.’

‘But you said any time.’

‘Any time but Tuesday or Wednesday.’

I tried to remember what plans were already made, and which could be changed. Thursday was a tangle of engagements, hardly possible to rearrange at short notice without infinite difficulties arising. Matters must be settled quickly, because Templer might return to the room at any moment.

‘Friday?’

She looked doubtful. I thought she was going to insist on Thursday. Perhaps the idea of doing so had crossed her mind. A measure of capriciousness is, after all, natural in women; perhaps fulfils some physiological need for both sexes. A woman who loves you likes to torment you from time to time; if not actually hurt you. If her first intention had been to make further difficulties, she abandoned the idea, but at the same time she did not speak. She seemed to have no sense of the urgency of making some arrangement quickly — so that we should not lose touch with each other, and be reduced to the delay of writing letters. I suffered some agitation. This conversation was failing entirely to express my own feelings. Perhaps it seemed equally unreal to her. If so, she was unwilling, perhaps unable, to alleviate the strain. Probably women enjoy such moments, which undoubtedly convey by intensity and uncertainty a heightened awareness of their power. In spite of apparent coldness of manner her eyes were full of tears. As if we had already decided upon some definite and injudicious arrangement, she suddenly changed her approach.

‘You must be discreet,’ she said.

‘All right.’

‘But really discreet.’

‘I promise.’

‘You will?’

‘Yes.’

While talking, we had somehow come close together in a manner that made practical discussion difficult. I felt tired, rather angry, very much in love with her; on the edge of one of those outbursts of irritation so easily excited by love.

‘I’ll come to your flat on Friday,’ she said abruptly.

WHEN, in early spring, pale sunlight was flickering behind the mist above Piccadilly, the Isbister Memorial Exhibition opened on the upper floor of one of the galleries there. I was attending the private view, partly for business reasons, partly from a certain weakness for bad pictures, especially bad portraits. Such a taste is hard to justify. Perhaps the inclination is no more than a morbid curiosity to see how far the painter will give himself away. Pictures, apart from their aesthetic interest, can achieve the mysterious fascination of those enigmatic scrawls on walls, the expression of Heaven knows what psychological urge on the part of the executant; for example, the for ever anonymous drawing of Widmerpool in the cabinet at La Grenadière.

In Isbister’s work there was something of that inner madness. The deliberate naïveté with which he accepted his business men, ecclesiastics and mayors, depicted by him with all the crudeness of his accustomed application of paint to canvas, conveyed an oddly sinister effect. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Isbister set out to paint what he supposed to be the fashionable view of such people at any given moment. Thus, in his early days, a general, or the chairman of some big concern, would be represented in the respectively appropriate terms of Victorian romantic success; the former, hero of the battlefield: the latter, the industrious apprentice who has achieved his worthy ambition. But as military authority and commercial achievement became increasingly subject to political and economic denigration, Isbister, keeping up with the times, introduced a certain amount of what he judged to be satirical comment. Emphasis would be laid on the general’s red face and medals, or the industrialist’s huge desk and cigar. There would be a suggestion that all was not well with such people about. Probably Isbister was right from a financial point of view to make this change, because certainly his sitters seemed to grow no fewer. Perhaps they too felt a compulsive need for representation in contemporary idiom, even though a tawdry one. It was a kind of insurance against the attacks of people like Quiggin: a form of public apology and penance. The result was certainly curious. Indeed, often, even when there hung near-by something far worthier of regard, I found myself stealing a glance at an Isbister, dominating, by its aggressive treatment, the other pictures hanging alongside.