Anthony Powell - Soldier's Art

“Max is our lodger now,” said Moreland unexpectedly. “He may be looking in here later after his act. He’s been with E.N.S.A. entertaining the forces — by his own account enjoying a spot of entertainment himself — and has been released to do this brief season at the Madrid as a kind of rest.”

I was curious to know who was included when Moreland spoke of “our” lodger. A question on this subject might be more tactfully put after Lovell’s withdrawal. It sounded as if someone had taken Matilda’s place. Lovell spoke a word or two about the party ahead of him. He seemed unwilling to leave us.

“I’ve never been to the Madrid as a client,” said Moreland. “I once went there years ago, so to speak to the stage door, to collect Max after his act, because we were having supper together. I remember his talking about your friend Bijou Ardglass then. Wasn’t she mistress of some Balkan royalty?”

“Theodoric,” said Lovell, “but they can’t have met for years. That Scandinavian princess he married keeps Theodoric very much in order. They were both lucky to get away when they did. He’s always been very pro-British and would have been in a bad way had the Germans got him when they overran the country. There’s a small contingent of his own people over here now. They were training in France when the war came, and crossed at the time of Dunkirk. I say, I hope there’ll be something to drink to-night. The wine outlook becomes increasingly desperate since France went. One didn’t expect to have to fight a war on an occasional half-pint of bitter, and lucky if you find that. Well, it’s been nice seeing you both. I’ll keep in touch, Nick, about those various points.”

We said good-bye to him. Lovell left for the Madrid. Moreland showed signs of relief that he was no longer with us. At first I thought this was still, as it were, on account of Priscilla; or, like some people — amongst whom several of his own relations were included — he simply found Lovell’s company tedious. As it turned out, both possibilities were incorrect. Quite another matter was on Moreland’s mind. This was only revealed when I suggested it was time to order dinner. Moreland hesitated,

“Do you mind if we wait a minute or two longer?” he said. “Audrey thought she’d probably get away in time to join us for some food.”

“Audrey who?”

“Audrey Maclintick — you know her.” He spoke sharply, as if the question had been a silly one to ask.

“Maclintick’s wife — the one who went off with the violinist?”

“Yes — Maclintick’s widow, rather. I always assume everyone is familiar with the rough outlines of my own life, such as they are. I suppose, as a gallant soldier, you live rather out of the world of rank and fashion. Audrey and I are running steady now.”

“Under the same roof?”

“In my old flat. I found I could get back there, owing to the blitz and it being left empty, so took the opportunity to move in again.”

“And Max Pilgrim is your lodger?”

“Has been for some months.”

Moreland had been embarrassed by having to explain so specifically that he was now living with Mrs. Maclintick, but seemed glad this fact was made plain. There had been no avoiding a pointblank enquiry about the situation; nor was all surprise possible to conceal. He must certainly have been conscious that, to any friend not already aware he and Mrs. Maclintick had begun to see each other frequently, the news must come as an incalculable reversal of former circumstances and feelings.

“Life became rather impossible after Matilda left me,” he said. He spoke almost apologetically, at the same time seemed to find relief in expressing how the present situation had come about. The statement that life for him had become “impossible” after Matilda’s departure was easy to believe. Without Matilda, the organisation of Moreland’s day was hard to imagine. Formerly she had arranged almost all the routine of those affairs not immediately dictated by his profession. In that respect, unless she had greatly changed, Mrs. Maclintick could hardly be proving an adequate substitute. On the one or two occasions when, in the past, I had myself encountered Mrs. Maclintick, she had appeared to me, without qualification, as one of the least sympathetic of women. So far as that went, in those days she had been in the habit of showing towards Moreland himself sentiments not much short of active dislike. He had been no better disposed to her, though, as an old friend of Maclintick’s, always doing his best to keep the peace between them as husband and wife. When she had left Maclintick for Carolo, Moreland’s sympathies were certainly on Maclintick’s side. In short, this was another of war’s violent readjustments; possibly to be revealed under close investigation as more logical than might appear at first sight. Indeed, as Moreland began to expand the story, as so often happens, the unthinkable took on the authoritative tone of something that had to be.

“After Audrey bolted with Carolo, they kept company till the beginning of the war — surprising in a way, knowing them both, it went on so long. Then he left her for a girl in a repertory company. Audrey remained on her 0wn. She was working in a canteen when we ran across each other — still is. She’s coming on from there to-night.”

“I never heard a word about you and her.”

“We don’t get on too badly,” said Moreland. “I haven’t been specially well lately. That bloody lung. Audrey’s been very good about looking after me.”

He still seemed to feel further explanation, or excuse, was required; at the same time he was equally anxious not to appear dissatisfied with the new alignment.

“Maclintick doing himself in shook me up horribly,” he said. “Of course, there can be no doubt Audrey was partly to blame for that, leaving him flat as she did. All the same, she was fond of Maclintick in her way. She often talks of him. You know you get to a stage, especially in wartime, when it’s a relief to hear familiar things talked about, whatever they are, and whoever’s saying them. You don’t care what line the conversation takes apart from that. For instance, Maclintick’s unreadable book on musical theory he was writing. It was never finished by him, much less published. His last night alive, as a final gesture against the world, Maclintick tore the manuscript into small pieces and stopped up the lavatory with it. That was just before he turned the gas on. You’d be surprised how much Audrey knows about what Maclintick said in that book — on the technical side, I mean, which she’s no training in or taste for. In an odd way, I like knowing about all that. It’s almost as if Maclintick’s still about — though if he were, of course, I shouldn’t be living with Audrey. Here she is, anyway.”

Mrs. Maclintick was moving between the tables, making in our direction. She wore a three-quarter length coat over trousers, a rather notably inelegant form of female dress popular at that moment in circumstances where no formality was required. I remembered that Gypsy Jones — La Passionaria of Hendon Central, as Moreland himself had called her — had heralded in her own person the advent of this mode, when Widmerpool and I had seen her addressing a Communist anti-war meeting from a soapbox at a street corner. The clothes increased Mrs. Maclintick’s own air of being a gipsy, one in fact, rather than just in name. Moreland’s nostalgia for vagrancy was recalled, too, by her appearance, which immediately suggested telling fortunes if her palm was crossed with silver, selling clothes-pegs, or engaging in any other traditional Romany activity. By way of contrast with this physical exterior, she entirely lacked any of the ingratiating manner commonly associated with the gipsy’s role. Small, wiry, aggressive, she looked as ready as ever for a row, her bright black eyes and unsmiling countenance confronting a world from which perpetual hostility was not merely potential, but presumptive. Attack, she made clear, would be met with counter-attack. However, in spite of this embattled appearance, discouraging to anyone who had ever witnessed her having a row with Maclintick, she seemed disposed at this particular moment to make herself agreeable; more agreeable, at any rate, than on earlier occasions when we had run across each other.