Anthony Powell - Soldier's Art

“Moreland told me you would be here,” she said. “We don’t get out to this sort of place much nowadays — can’t afford it — but when we do we’re glad to meet friends.”

She spoke as if I had a trifle blatantly imposed myself on a party of their own, rather than herself converged on a meeting specially arranged between Moreland and myself. At the same time her tone was not antagonistic; indeed, by her pre-war standards, in as much as I knew them, it was positively amiable. It occurred to me she perhaps saw her association with Moreland as a kind of revenge on Maclintick, who had so greatly valued him as a friend. Now, Maclintick was underground and Moreland belonged to her. Moreland himself, whose earlier state of nerves had certainly been provoked by the prospect of having to present himself and Mrs, Maclintick as a ménage, now looked relieved, the immediate impact manoeuvred without disaster. Characteristically, he began to embark on one of those dissertations about life in which he was habitually inclined to indulge after some awkwardness had arisen. It had been just the same when he used to feel with Matilda that the ice was thin for conversational skating and would deliberately switch from the particular to the general.

“Since war prevents any serious work,” he said, “I have been trying to think out a few things. Make my lymphatic brain function a little. All part of my retreat from perfectionism. Besides, one really must hold one or two firm opinions on matters before one’s forty — a doom about to descend before any of us know where we are. I find war clears the mind in a few respects. At least that can be said for it.”

I was reminded how Stringham, too, had remarked that he was thinking things out, though it was hard to decide whether “perfectionism” played much part in Stringham’s problems. Perhaps it did. That was one explanation. In Moreland’s case, there could be no doubt Mrs. Maclintick herself was an element in this retreat. In her case, indeed, so far as Moreland was concerned, withdrawal from perfectionism had been so unphased as to constitute an operation reasonably to be designated a rout. Perhaps Mrs. Maclintick herself, even if the awareness remained undefined in her mind, felt she must be regarded as implicit in this advertised new approach — therefore some sort of protest should be made — because, although she spoke without savagery, her next words were undoubtedly a call to order.

“The war doesn’t seem to clear your mind quite enough, Moreland,” she said. “I only wish it stopped you dreaming a bit. Guess where that lost ration card of yours turned up, after I’d looked for it up hill and down dale. In the toilet. Better than nowhere, I suppose. Saved me from standing in a queue at the Town Hall for a couple of hours to get you another one — and when was I going to find time for that, I wonder.”

She might have been addressing a child. Since she herself had never given birth — had, I remembered, expressed active objection to being burdened with offspring — Moreland may to some extent have occupied a child’s role in her eyes; possibly even in her needs, something she had sought in Maclintick and never found. Moreland, so far as it went, seemed to accept this status, receiving the complaint with a laugh, though no denial of its justice.

“I must have dropped it there before fire-watching,” he said. “How bored one gets on those nights. It’s almost worse if there isn’t a raid. I began to plan a work, last time, called The Fire-watcher’s March , drums, you know, perhaps triangle and oboe. I was feeling particularly fed up that night, not just displeased with the war, or certain social or political conditions from which one suffers, but tired of the whole thing. That is one of the conceptions most difficult for stupid people to grasp. They always suppose some ponderable alteration will make the human condition more bearable. The only hope of survival is the realisation that no such thing could possibly happen.”

“Never mind what goes through your head when you’re fire-watching, Moreland,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You order some dinner. We don’t want to starve to death while you hold forth. It won’t be much when it comes, if I’m any prophet.”

These words were another reminder of going out with Moreland and Matilda, though Matilda’s remonstrance would have been less downright. The plea for food was reasonable enough. We got hold of a waiter. There was the usual business of Moreland being unable to decide, even from the limited choice available, what he wanted to eat. In due course dinner arrived. Moreland, now back on his accustomed form, discoursed about his work and people we knew. Mrs. Maclintick, grumbling about domestic difficulties, showed herself in general amenable. The evening was turning out a success. One change, however, was to be noticed in Moreland’s talk. When he dwelt on the immediate past, it was as if all that had become very distant, no longer the matter of a year or two before. For him, it was clear, a veil, a thick curtain, had fallen between “now” and “before the war.” He would suddenly become quite worked up about people we had known, parties we had been to, subjects for amusement we had experienced together, laughing at moments so violently that tears ran down his cheeks. One felt he was fairly near to other, deeper emotions, that the strength of his feelings was due to something in addition to a taste for mulling over moments in retrospect enjoyable or grotesque.

“You must admit funny things did happen in the old days,” he said. “Maclintick’s story about Dr. Trelawney and the red-haired succubus that could only talk Hebrew.”

“Oh, don’t go on about the old days so,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You make me feel a hundred. Try and live in the present for a change. For instance, it might interest you to know that a one-time girl friend of yours is about to sit down at a table over there.”

We looked in the direction she had indicated by jerking her head. It was perfectly true. Priscilla Lovell and an officer in battle-dress were being shown to a table not far from our own. The officer was Odo Stevens. For a moment they were occupied with a waiter, so that a brief suspension of time was offered to consider how best to deal with this encounter, superlatively embarrassing, certainly soon unavoidable. At first it struck me as a piece of quite undeserved, almost incredible ill chance that they should turn up like this; but, on consideration, especially in the light of what Lovell himself had told me, there was nothing specially odd about it. Probably Stevens was on leave. This was an obvious enough place to dine, though certainly not one to choose if you wanted to be discreet.

“Adulterers are always asking the courts for discretion,” Peter Templer used to say, “when, as a rule, discretion is the last thing they’ve been generous with themselves.”

If Priscilla thought her husband still stationed on the East Coast, she would of course not expect to meet him here. On the face of it, there was no reason why she should not dine with Stevens, if he happened to be passing through London. A second’s thought showed that what seemed a piece of preposterous exhibitionism only presented that appearance on account of special knowledge acquired from Lovell. All the same, if Priscilla were dining here, that meant she had cut the Bijou Ardglass party. So unpredictably do human beings behave, she might even plan to take Stevens on there later.

“Is that her husband with her?” asked Mrs. Maclintick. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him. I suppose you look on him as the man who cut you out, Moreland?”

I was surprised she knew about Moreland’s former entanglement with Priscilla. No doubt Maclintick had spoken of it in the past. As Moreland himself had remarked, she and Maclintick must, at least some of the time, have enjoyed a closer, more amicable existence together than their acquaintances inclined to suppose. The Maclinticks could even have met Moreland and Priscilla at some musical event. Anyway, Mrs. Maclintick had turned out to know Priscilla by sight, had evidently gathered scraps of her story, at least so far as Moreland was concerned. That was all. She could not also be aware of other implications disturbing to myself. So far as Mrs. Maclintick’s knowledge went, therefore, Priscilla’s presence might be regarded as merely personally displeasing, in her capacity as a former love of Moreland’s. However, so developed was Mrs. Maclintick’s taste for malice, like everyone of her kind, that she seemed to know instinctively something inimical to myself, too, was in the air. Moreland, on the other hand, having talked with Lovell only a short time before, could not fail to suspect trouble of one sort or another was on foot. Never very good at concealing his feelings, he went red again. This change of colour was no doubt chiefly caused by Mrs. Maclintick’s not too delicate reference to himself, but probably he guessed something of my own sentiments as well.