Anthony Powell - Hearing Secret Harmonies

‘Why should Murtlock wish to meet Widmerpool?’

‘Scorpio’s plans are not often crystal clear.’

‘He can hardly hope to bring Widmerpool into his cult.’

‘There may be more material considerations. Scorpio is not unpractical in worldly matters. You have probably noticed that.’

‘You mean Widmerpool’s place might provide a convenient temporary base?’

‘That is possible.’

‘Which would make putting up with Widmerpool himself worth while?’

‘To gain mastery is also one of Scorpio’s aims.’

‘Power?’

‘The goal of the Alchemists.’

‘Perhaps a mutual attraction in those terms?’

‘We live in a world in which much remains — and must remain — unrevealed.’

Fenneau looked at his watch.

‘I think I shall have to be wending my way homeward. We have had a most pleasant talk. Ah, yes. Something else. I expect that, in your profession, a lot of books pass through your hands for which you have little or no use, review copies and the like. Books of all kinds flow into a writer’s daily life. Do please remember some of them for my Christmas bazaar. I will send you a reminder nearer the season. Let me have your address. Write it down here. Goodnight, goodnight.’

TO BE TOLD SOMETHING THAT comes as a surprise, then find everyone has known about it for ages, is no uncommon experience. The remarks on the subject of Delavacquerie and Polly Duport, dropped by the actor at the Royal Academy dinner, were a case in point. Mere chance must have been the cause of having heard nothing of this close association. It had been going on for some little time, and there appeared to be no secret about their relationship. Mention of it cropped up again, not long after, in some quite other connexion. All the same, although we continued to meet at comparatively regular intervals, Delavacquerie himself never brought up the matter. When he did so, that was about a year later than this first indication that they even knew each other.

During that year, among many other events in one’s life, two things happened that could have suggested achievement of the mutually desired meeting between Widmerpool and Murtlock. The month of both indications was roughly dated as December, by the arrival of Canon Fenneau’s reminder about books for his bazaar, and the fact that, when Greening and I ran across each other in London, we were doing our Christmas shopping. Neither event positively brought home the Widmerpool/Murtlock alliance at the time. The first of these was the bare announcement in the paper that Widmerpool, having resigned the chancellorship of the university, was to be replaced by some other more or less appropriate figure. After his various public pronouncements there seemed nothing particularly notable in Widmerpool preferring to disembarrass himself of official duties of any sort whatsoever.

Greening’s information was rather another matter. It should have given a clue. We met in the gift department of some big shop. Greening, who had been badly wounded in the Italian campaign, had a limp, but was otherwise going strong. He had been ADC to the General at the Divisional Headquarters on which we had both served in the early part of the war; later rejoined his regiment, and, it had been rumoured, died of wounds. He looked older, of course, but his habit of employing a kind of schoolboy slang that seemed to predate his own generation had not changed. He still blushed easily. He said he was a forestry consultant, married, with three children. We talked in a desultory way of the time when we had soldiered together.

‘Do you remember the DAAG at that HQ?’

‘Widmerpool?’

‘That’s the chap. Major Widmerpool. Rather a shit.’

‘Of course I remember him.’

‘He was always getting my goat, but what I thought was really bloody awful about him was the way he behaved to an old drunk called Bithel, who commanded the Mobile Laundry.’

‘I remember Bithel too.’

‘Bithel had to be shot out, the old boy had to go all right, but Widmerpool boasted in the Mess about his own efficiency in getting rid of Bithel, and how Bithel had broken down, when told he’d got to go. It may have happened, but we didn’t all want to hear about it from Widmerpool.’

‘If it’s any consolation, Widmerpool’s become very odd himself now.’

‘You know that already? I was coming on to that. He’s gone round the bend. Nothing less.’

‘You’ve seen him?’

‘I was looking at some timber — woodland off my usual beat — and was told an extraordinary story by the johnny I was dealing with. Widmerpool — it must be the same bugger, from what he said — runs a kind of — well, I don’t know what the hell to call it — sort of colony for odds and sods, not far away from the property I was inspecting. Widmerpool’s place has been going for a year or two — a kind of rest-home for layabouts — but lately things have considerably hotted up, my client said. A new lot had arrived who wore even stranger togs, and went in for even gaudier monkey-tricks. This chap talked of Widmerpool as having made himself a sort of Holy Man. Not bad going after starting as a DAAG.’

Greening, unable to paraphrase the narrative of the owner of the woodland, could produce no revelation beyond that. Nevertheless the account of Widmerpool had evidently made a strong impression on him. I don’t think the possibility of the new arrivals being Murtlock’s adherents occurred to me at the time. If that had been at all conveyed, the conclusion would have been that Murtlock had been absorbed into Widmerpool’s larger organization. In short, what Greening spoke of seemed little more than what had been initially outlined some time before by Delavacquerie’s son. Greening began to collect his parcels.

‘Well, I must go on my way rejoicing. Nice to have had a chin-wag. Best for the Festive Season. I’m determined not to eat too much plum pudding this year.’

When, Christmas over, I next saw Delavacquerie, it was well into the New Year. He gave news of Gwinnett being in London again.

‘I thought him rather standoffish when he was over here before. This time he got in touch with me at once. In his own remote way he was very friendly.’

‘Has he returned to that gruesome dump in St Pancras?’

‘I picked him up there the other day, and we lunched at the buffet at King’s Cross Station.’

‘How’s he getting on with Gothic Symbols , etc?’

‘I think it will be rather good. The Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists happen to be a subject of mine too. In fact I was able to assist in a minor way by taking him to a Jacobean play that’s rarely staged. It’s ascribed to Fletcher. The Humorous Lieutenant , not particularly gothic, nor full of mortality, but Gwinnett seemed glad to have an opportunity to see it.’

Without reading the notices very carefully, I had grasped that a play of that name was being given a limited run of a few weeks at a theatre where such productions once in a way found a home. An energetic young director (more influential in that line than Norman Chandler) had been responsible for the revival of this decidedly obscure comedy, interest in it, so Delavacquerie now said, having been to to some extent aroused by himself.

‘I once toyed with the idea of calling my own collected war poems The Humorous Lieutenant , from this play. Then I thought the title would be misunderstood, even ironically.’

‘Why was he humorous?’

‘He wasn’t, in the modern sense, not a jokey subaltern, but moody and melancholy in the Elizabethan meaning of humorous — one of your Robert Burton types. The Lieutenant had reason to be. He was suffering from a go of the pox. Having a dose made him unusually brave, fighting being less of a strain than sitting about in camp feeling like hell. One sees the point. When he was cured all the Lieutenant’s courage left him.’