Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's

‘The Lewis gun may be sounding at the barricades earlier than some of your Laodicean friends think,’ he had announced in a rasping undertone at the climax of our controversy about Milton — or Meredith.

‘I can never remember what the Laodiceans did.’

‘They were “neither hot nor cold”.’

‘Ah.’

Such revolutionary sentiments, as I have said, were common enough then, especially in the verse of the period, on which Quiggin was an authority. However, he had seemed rather unusually annoyed that evening, so that in spite of his friendliness in the foyer of the cinema I was not at all sure what sort of a reception I should get when I arrived on his doorstep. I went by train, and found a taxi had been sent to meet me at the station. We drove a mile or two through pretty country and by the low stone wall of a large estate. Quiggin was living in a small, grey, comparatively modern house, hardly a cottage in the sense that comes immediately to the mind — the cottage in a forest inhabited by a peasant in a fairy story, or the gabled, half-timbered sort of the Christmas card by which a robin sits in the snow — but, although the building itself was bleak, the situation was pleasant enough, in fact enchanting: overlooking woods, fields and distant hills, not another house in sight.

Quiggin was in a mood to be agreeable. When he set out to please, he was rarely unable to keep the most unpromising people amused; or at least quiet. He would assume his North Country accent, together with an air of informed simplicity, that would charm all kind of unexpected persons, normally in hearty disagreement with his literary or political opinions. He was particularly accomplished at effecting a reversal of feeling in the case of those who, on introduction, had taken an immediate dislike to his face or his clothes. Probably with that end in view, he cultivated a certain irregularity of dress. For example, when he opened the door on my arrival he was wearing a dark-grey woollen garment with a zip-fastener down the front, which, in conjunction with rope-soled canvas shoes, made him look like an instructor in some unusual sport or physical exercise.

‘Come in,’ he said, ‘Mona is blonding her hair. She will be along soon.’

Mona’s hair had been black in the days when I had first set eyes on her at Mr. Deacon’s birthday party above the antique shop off Charlotte Street, but, even before she had married Templer — when her Cupid’s bow mouth was still advertising toothpaste on the hoardings — it had already taken on a metallic honey colour. She looked distinctly sluttish when at length she appeared, far less trim than when married to Templer, a reversion to the Charlotte Street period when she had been an artists’ model. However, she had not returned to the style of dress of her bohemian days, trousers and sandals or whatever was then the fashion. Instead, wearing an old black coat and skirt, an outfit not much suited to the country, she retained a kind of shabby smartness of appearance. I had not seen her for some time, and had forgotten the formal perfection of her face. Her skin was coarse, it was true, and her fixed smile recalled the days when her photograph was on the front of every London bus; yet, even admitting such defects, the detail of every feature insisted upon admiration. She was like a strapping statue, Venus conceived at a period when more than a touch of vulgarity had found its way into classical sculpture.

I could not help thinking how odd it was that, having once married Templer, she should have deserted him for Quiggin. In the general way of gossip she had the reputation of a beautiful girl not particularly attractive to men. Naturally, with looks like hers, she had been accustomed to all the outward paraphernalia of male attack; certainly at what might be called the ‘picking-up’ level. In a railway carriage, or on board ship, there had always been a man to approach her with greater or lesser delicacy; but Templer and Quiggin (my informant was Templer) were the only men to have taken her ‘seriously’. It had even been suggested (by Quiggin’s old friend and rival, Mark Members, probably without much truth) that in her early days Mona had had emotional leanings towards her own sex. Latterly, there had been no talk of that sort. Her manner usually suggested that she was interested in no one except herself; although the fact remained that she had abandoned a comfortable home, and relatively rich husband, to share Quiggin’s far from destitute, though not particularly luxurious existence.

To Templer, accustomed to easy success with women, she had perhaps represented the one absolutely first-rate example of the goods he had been for so long accustomed to handle — in the manner that a seasoned collector can afford to ignore every other point in any object he wishes to acquire provided it satisfies completely in those respects most difficult to attain. In some way, for Templer, Mona must have fulfilled that condition. Dozens of girls not very different from her were to be found in dress shops and art schools, but Templer, like a scholar who can immediately date a manuscript by the quality of the ink, or the texture of the parchment, had seen something there to crown his special collection: a perfect specimen of her kind. At least that seemed, on the face of it, the only reason why he should have married her.

To Quiggin, on the other hand, himself not particularly adept with girls, Mona must have appeared a wholly unexpected triumph, a ‘beauty’ at whom passers-by turned to gaze in the street, who had positively thrown herself at his head — leaving her ‘boring’ stockbroker husband to live with a writer and a revolutionary. Here was a situation few could fail to find flattering. It was clear from his demeanour that Quiggin still felt flattered, for, although sulky that afternoon, there seemed in general no reason to suppose that Mona regretted her past. Like Molly Jeavons, in such a different context, she appeared — so I had been told — to accept her completely changed circumstances. Her air of temporary dissatisfaction was no doubt merely the old one implying that insufficient attention was being paid to her whims. Perhaps for that reason she spoke of Templer almost at once.

‘Have you been seeing anything of Peter?’ she asked, without any self-consciousness.

‘Not for some time, as it happens.’

‘I suppose he has found a new girl?’

‘I shouldn’t wonder.’

She did not pursue the subject. It was just as if she had said: ‘Have you change for a pound?’; and, on learning that I had no silver, immediately abandoned the matter. There was no question of emotion; only a faint curiosity. That, at least, was all she allowed to appear on the surface. Quiggin, on the other hand, looked a trifle put out at this early mention of Templer’s name.

‘By the way, ducks,’ he said, ‘I forgot to tell you I tried to get the bath-lotion when I was last in London. The shop was out of it. I’ll try again next time.’

Mona compressed her lips in displeasure. Merely to have remembered to enquire for the bath-lotion she evidently considered insufficient on Quiggin’s part. She began to hum to herself.

‘You have a nice landscape here,’ I said. ‘Is there a house behind those trees? It looks as if there might be.’

‘Do you think it nice?’ said Quiggin, his previous tone of harsh geniality somewhat impaired by Mona’s mood. ‘You know these days I scarcely notice such things. Once I might have done — should have done, certainly, in my romantic period. I suppose by “nice” you mean undeveloped. Give me something a bit more practical. You can keep your picturesque features so far as I am concerned. If English agriculture was organised on a rational — I do not even say a just — basis, I dare say there might be something to be said for the view from this window. As it is, I would much rather be looking at a well-designed power station. Perhaps, as being more rural, I should say a row of silos.’