Anthony Powell - Hearing Secret Harmonies

‘No weather to search for flints. I once picked up a piece of Samian ware not far from here. It’s an interesting little site. Not up to The Whispering Knights, where I was last month. That’s an altogether grander affair. Still, we have to be grateful for what we have in our own neighbourhood.’

‘Why is it called The Whispering Knights? I’ve heard the name, but never been there.’

‘During a battle some knights were standing apart, plotting against their king. A witch passed, and turned them into stone for their treachery.’

‘Perhaps a witch will be waiting at the stile, and do the same to the quarry directors. Then we’ll have a second monument up here.’

Mr Goldney did not reply. He looked rather prim, shocked at so malign a concept, or unwilling to countenance light words on the subject of folklore. Rain had possibly soaked him past the threshold of small-talk. Mr Tudor, in company with Mrs Salter, both very wet, joined us. Mr Tudor showed signs of a tempered optimism so far as to the outcome of the meeting.

‘The Advisory Committee will have to get together again, Mr Goldney. Will Thursday at the same hour suit you? There’s the correspondence with the Alkali Inspector we ought to go through again in relation to new points raised in consequence of today’s meeting.’

‘That’s all right for me, Mr Tudor, and I’d like to bring up haulage problems.’

Mrs Salter sliced at a bramble with her pruning-hook.

‘Even Mr Gollop admits haulage problems. At first he was evasive. I wouldn’t have that’

Isobel, after a final word with Mr Todman, caught us up.

‘Who was the man you were talking to on the ridge?’

‘I’ll tell you about it on the way home.’

‘You looked a very strange couple silhouetted against the skyline.’

‘We were.’

‘A bit sinister.’

‘Your instincts are correct.’

The company scattered to their cars. Mr Gauntlett, an elderly woodland sprite untroubled by rain — if anything, finding refreshment in a downpour — disappeared on foot along a green lane. The rest of us drove away. The meeting had been a success in spite of the weather. Its consequence, assisted by the findings of the Advisory Committee, and the individual activities of Mr Tudor, was that a Government Enquiry was ordered by the Ministry. To have brought that about was a step in the right direction, even if the findings of such an Enquiry must always be unpredictable. That was emphasized by Mr Gauntlett, when I met him some weeks later, out with his gun, and the labrador that had replaced Daisy.

‘Ah. We shall see what we shall see.’

He made no further reference to nocturnal horned dancers round about The Devil’s Fingers. Neither did I, though their image haunted the mind. It was not quite the scene portrayed by Poussin, even if elements of the Seasons’ dance were suggested in a perverted form; not least by Widmerpool, perhaps naked, doing the recording. From what Gwinnett had said, a battle of wills seemed to be in progress. If, having decided that material things were vain, Widmerpool had turned to the harnessing of quite other forces, it looked as if he were losing ground in rivalry with a younger man. Perhaps the contest should be thought of — if Widmerpool were Orlando — as one of Orlando’s frequent struggles with wizards. Or — since the myth was in every respect upsidedown — was Murtlock even Widmerpool’s Astolpho, playing him false?

I did not see Delavacquerie again until the early autumn. I wanted to hear his opinion about Gwinnett’s inclusion in the rites at The Devil’s Fingers. As someone belonging to a younger generation than my own, coming from a different hemisphere, a poet with practical knowledge of the business world, who possessed personal acquaintance with several of the individuals concerned in an episode that took a fairly high place for horror, as well as extravagance, Delavacquerie’s objective comment would be of interest. For one reason or another — I, too, was away for a month or more — we did not meet; nor did I hear anything further of Gwinnett himself, or his associates of that night.

When a meeting with Delavacquerie took place he announced at once that he was feeling depressed. That was not uncommon. It was usually the result of being put out about his own business routine, or simply from lack of time to ‘write’. He did not look well, poor states of health always darkening his complexion. I thought it more than possible that the trip with Polly Duport had not been a success; projected marriage decided against, or shelved. On the principle of not playing out aces at the start of the game, I did not immediately attack the subject of The Devil’s Fingers. Then Delavacquerie himself launched into an altogether unforeseen aspect of the same sequence of circumstances.

‘Look, I’m in rather a mess at the moment. Not a mess so much as a tangle. I’d like to speak about it. Do you mind? That’s more to clear my own head than to ask advice. You may be able to advise too. Can you stand my talking a lot about my own affairs?’

‘Easily.’

‘I’ll start from the beginning. That is always best. My own situation. The fact that I like it over here, but England isn’t my country. I haven’t got a country. I’m rootless. I’m not grumbling about being rootless, especially these days. It even has advantages. At the same time certain problems are raised too.’

‘You’ve spoken of all this on earlier occasions. Did going home bring it back in an acute form?’

Delavacquerie dismissed that notion with a violent gesture.

‘I know I’ve talked of all this before. It’s quite true. Perhaps I am over-obsessed by it. I am just repeating the fact as a foundation to what I am going to say, a reminder to myself that I’m never sure how much I understand people over here. Their reactions often seem to me different from my own, and from those of the people I was brought up with. Quite different. I’ve written poems about all this.’

‘I’ve read them.’

Delavacquerie stopped for a moment. He seemed to be deciding the form in which some complicated statement should be made. He began again.

‘I spoke to you once, I remember, of my son, Etienne.’

‘You said he’d had some sort of thing for our niece, Fiona, which had been broken off, probably on account of that young man, Murtlock. I’m in a position to tell you more about all that — ’

‘Hold it for the moment.’

‘My additions to the story are of a fantastic and outrageous kind.’

‘Never mind. I don’t doubt what you say. I just want to put my own case first. That is best. We’ll come to what you know later — and I’m sure it will help me to hear it, even if I’ve heard some of it already. But I was speaking of Etienne. He has been doing well. He got a scholarship, which has taken him to America. By then he had found a new girl. She’s a nice girl. It seems fairly serious. They keep up a regular correspondence.’

‘How does he like the States?’

‘All right.’

Whether or not Etienne liked the US did not seem to be the point. Delavacquerie paused again. He laughed rather uncomfortably.

‘When Fiona was about the place, with Etienne, I noticed that I was getting interested in the girl myself. It wasn’t more than that. I wasn’t in love. Not in the slightest. Just interested. You will have had sufficient experience of such things to know what I am talking about — appreciate the differentiation I draw.’

‘Of course.’

‘I examined myself carefully in that connexion at the time. I found it possible to issue an absolutely clean bill of health, temperature, pulse, blood pressure, above all heart, all quite normal. I didn’t even particularly want to sleep with her, though I might have tried to do so, had the situation been other than it was. The point I want to make is that the situation was not in the least like that of The Humorous Lieutenant , the King trying to seduce his son’s girlfriend, as soon as the son himself was out of the way.’