Anthony Powell - Temporary Kings

‘Don’t think there’s much fear I’ll be suspected,’ Jeavons said. ‘All the same, you never know what people will say behind your back.’

On arrival, Isobel had paused to talk with Rosie, who had been a former friend of Molly Jeavons. Moving through the crowd, I came on Audrey Maclintick. She announced the unforeseen fact that Moreland had advised on the Seraglio ’s production. Quite apart from his poor health, that was unexpected. Moreland had always set his face against charity performances, although there had been occasions in the past when he had been more or less forced to take part in them. Audrey Maclintick agreed their presence was unlooked for. She added that it was not at all the sort of party she was used to. She had said just the same thing when Mrs Foxe had given a party for Moreland’s Symphony, more than twenty years before. She herself was not much altered from then, even to the extent of still wearing a version, modified into a more contemporary style, of the dress which, at Mrs Foxe’s, had caused Stringham to address her as ‘Little Bo-Peep.’

‘Hugh’s name isn’t on the programme?’

‘He didn’t want it there. The word “Africa” did it. Moreland’s cracked about Africa. Always has been, always will be, I suppose. Goes off on the quiet to the British Museum to gaze on the African idols there. Mrs Stevens only had to say the money was going to Africa for Moreland to knock off all his other work, and set about the Mozart. Doesn’t matter what worry it causes me. Of course, Moreland knew Mrs Stevens in what he loves to call The Old Days, so The Old Days might have been sufficient anyway, without being clinched by Africa. Whatever I said wasn’t going to make any difference.’

Moreland, it was true, had always responded strongly to things African, rather as fountainhead of fetish and voodoo, than aspects of the African continent likely to be benefited by funds raised that night. The fascination exercised on his imagination by such incantatory cults was not unlike Bagshaw’s unquenched curiosity about the ritual and dogma of Marxism, neither believers, both enthralled. Once Moreland’s attention had been imaginatively aroused, he would find no difficulty in ignoring the fact that witchdoctors, zombies, cults of the dead, might not greatly profit from his help. Moreland himself came up at that moment Audrey Maclintick did not give him time to speak.

‘I expect you’ve seen who’s here tonight — Lady Donners. That was bound to happen. Just her sort of party. I don’t expect she wants to see me, any more than I do her. Well, I’ll leave you two together to have a talk about The Old Days, which I’ve no doubt you’ll start off on at once. Don’t let Moreland have another drink before the curtain goes up. It isn’t good for him. He ought to be in bed in any case, not mooning about at a place like this.’

She made off. So far as Moreland having another drink, she was probably right. He did not look at all well. Once, he would have been put out by such an injunction from wife, mistress, anyone else, made a great fuss about being treated as if not able to look after himself. Now, he was not at all concerned, taking the admonition as a matter of course, almost a demonstration of affection, which no doubt in a sense it was. Audrey Maclintick was said to look after him well, in what were not always easy circumstances. Moreland, too, showed signs of accepting her view that his own presence in the Stevens house required excuse.

‘Never again. Not after what I’ve been through with the Seraglio committee ladies. Valmont’s valet remarked the big difference between persuading a woman to sleep with you, which she really wants to do — though personally I’ve often found to the contrary — and inducing her to agree to something that offers no comparable satisfaction. My God, he was right

Put me

To yoking foxes, milking of he-goats,

Gathering all the leaves fall’n this autumn.

Drawing farts from dead bodies,

Mustering of ants and numbering of atoms,

There is no hell to a lady of fashion.

I don’t mean Rosie. She’s all right. It was the rest of them. They expected me to do just the very things I’ve mentioned — every one of them.’

‘You’ve been saying for years you live beyond the pleasure principle. Why boggle at ladies of fashion? Do they still exist?’

‘Believe me they do. Matty’s one now. I’ve just been having a word with her. Almost the first since we were husband and wife, beyond saying hullo, when we saw each other at the Ballet or the Opera. She seems to have supported the death of the Great Industrialist remarkably well.’

Matilda Donners was standing on the far side of the room. I had the impression Moreland had never managed to fall entirely out of love with her.

‘I got her to introduce me to Polly Duport, whom she’s talking to now. I’ve always been rather a fan. What I mean about Matty’s social manner is that, having brought Polly Duport and myself together, she then had to suggest that I do the musical settings for some film Polly Duport’s going to play the lead in. It’s made from a St John Clarke novel, if you can imagine anything more grotesque. I remember my aunt thinking me too young to read Fields of Amaranth , but it isn’t that one, and that isn’t my objection. The producer, an American called Glober, was also pressed on me by Matty. He’s that tall, bald, melodramatic character, talking to her now, looking as if he’s going to play Long John Silver in a Christmas production of Treasure Island .’

‘You’ve met Glober before.’

I recalled to Moreland the Mopsy Pontner dinner party. The effect was almost startling. The blood came rushing into his face as if he were about to have apoplexy. He began to laugh uncontrollably, quite in the old manner. Then, with an effort, he stopped. He was almost breathless, coughing hard. At the end of this near paroxysm he looked less ill, more exhausted. The information had greatly cheered him.

‘No, really, that’s too much. Am I to be suffocated by nostalgia? Will that be my end? I should not be at all surprised. I can see the headline:

musician dies of nostalgia

They’d put someone like Gossage on to the obit. “Mr Hugh Moreland — probably just Hugh Moreland these days — (writes our Music Critic), at a fashionable gathering last night — I’m sure Gossage still talks about fashionable gatherings — succumbed to an acute attack of nostalgia, a malady to which he had been a martyr for years. His best known works, etc, etc…” Are you aware, quite apart from Matty turning up here tonight, there hangs on the stairs of this very house Barnby’s drawing — in his naturalistic manner, I’m glad to say — of Norma, that little waitress at Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant? All this, and Mopsy Pontner too. I can’t bear it. I shall mount the stage, and announce that, instead of Mozart tonight, I am myself going to entertain the company with a potpourri of nostalgic melodies.’

Moreland paused. He stepped back, clasping his hands, intoned gently:

‘Dearest, our day is over,

Ended the dream divine.

You must go back to your life,

I must go back to mine.

Nothing short of some such outward expression of my own nostalgic feelings would be at all adequate. You shouldn’t have told me about Mopsy Pontner. It wasn’t the act of a friend.’

Although still laughing, Moreland, as before sometimes in such moods, had stirred himself emotionally by his own irony, his eyes filling with tears. Stevens came up to us.

‘Look, Hugh, the curtain isn’t going to rise absolutely on time. A substitute Violin was a minute or two late. The regular player went down with flu at the last moment, and a substitute had to be found at short notice. We’ve been assured he’s all right. He’s upstairs peeing at the moment, but he’ll be along when he’s finished, and start fiddling away. Don’t get worked up about the delay.’