Anthony Powell - Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant

As an indirect result of Mrs Foxe’s party, relations with the Morelands were complicated by uncertainty and a little embarrassment. No one really knew what was happening between Moreland and Priscilla. They were never seen together, but it was very generally supposed some sort of a love affair was in progress between them. Rather more than usual Priscilla conveyed the impression that she did not want to be bothered with her relations; while an air of discomfort, faint but decided, pervaded the Moreland flat, indicating something was amiss there. Moreland himself had plunged into a flood of work. He took the line now that his symphony had fallen flat – to some extent, he said, deservedly – and he must repair the situation by producing something better. For the first time since the early days when I had known him, he seemed interested only in professionally musical affairs. We heard at second-hand that Matilda was to be tried out for the part of Zenocrate in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. This was confirmed by Moreland himself when I met him by chance somewhere. The extent of the gossip about Moreland and Priscilla was revealed to me one day by running into Chips Lovell travelling by Underground. Lovell had by now achieved his former ambition of getting a job on a newspaper, where he helped to write the gossip column, one of a relatively respectable order. He was in the best of form, dressed with the greatest care, retaining that boyish, innocent look that made him in different ways a success with both sexes.

‘How is Priscilla?’ he asked.

‘All right, so far as I know.’

‘I heard something about her and Hugh Moreland.’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘That they were having a walk-out together.’

‘Who said so?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘I didn’t know you knew Moreland.’

‘I don’t. Only by name.’

‘It doesn’t sound very probable, does it?’

‘I have no idea. People do these things.’

Although I liked Lovell, I saw no reason to offer help so far as his investigation of the situation of Moreland and Priscilla. As a matter of fact I had not much help to offer. In any case, Lovell, inhabiting by vocation a world of garbled rumour, was to be treated with discretion where the passing of information was concerned. I was surprised at the outspokenness with which he had mentioned the matter. His enquiry seemed stimulated by personal interest, rather than love of gossip for its own sake. I supposed he still felt faint dissatisfaction at having failed to make the mark to which he felt his good looks entitled him.

‘I always liked Priscilla,’ he said, using a rather consciously abstracted manner. ‘I must see her again one of these days.’

‘What has been happening to you, Chips?’

‘Do you remember that fellow Widmerpool you used to tell me about when we were at the film studio? His name always stuck in my mind because he managed to stay at Dogdene. I took my hat off to him for getting there. Uncle Geoffrey is by no means keen on handing out invitations. You told me there was some talk of Widmerpool marrying somebody. A Vowchurch, was it? Anyway, I ran into Widmerpool the other day and he talked about you.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Just mentioned that he knew you. Said it was sensible of you to get married. Thought it a pity you couldn’t find a regular job.’

‘But I’ve got a regular job.’

‘Not in his eyes, you haven’t. He said he feared you were a bit of a drifter with the stream.’

‘How was he otherwise?’

‘I never saw a man so put out by the Abdication,’ said Lovell. ‘It might have been Widmerpool himself who’d had to abdicate. My goodness, he had taken it to heart.’

‘What specially upset him?’

‘So far as I could gather, he had cast himself for a brilliant social career if things had worked out differently.’

‘The Beau Brummell of the new reign?’

‘Not far short of that.’

‘Where did you run across him?’

‘Widmerpool came to see me in my office. He wanted me to slip in a paragraph about certain semi-business activities of his. One of those quiet little puffs, you know, which don’t cost the advertising department anything, but warm the heart of the sales manager.’

‘Did you oblige?’

‘Not me,’ said Lovell.

By no means without a healthy touch of malice, Lovell had also a fine appreciation of the power-wielding side of his job.

‘I hear your brother-in-law, Erry Warminster, is on his way home from Spain,’ he said.

‘First I’ve heard of it.’

‘Erry’s own family are always the last to hear about his goings-on.’

‘What’s your source?’

‘The office, as usual.’

‘Is he bored with the Spanish war?’

‘He is ill – also had some sort of row with his own side.’

‘What is wrong with him?’

‘Touch of dysentery, someone said.’

‘Serious?’

‘I don’t think so.’

We parted company after arranging that Lovell should come and have a drink with us at the flat in the near future. The following day, I met Quiggin in Members’s office. He was in a sulky mood. I told him I had enjoyed his piece about St John Clarke. Praise was usually as acceptable to Quiggin as to most people. That day the remark seemed to increase his ill humour. However, he confirmed the news about Erridge.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently. ‘Of course it is true that Alfred is coming back. Don’t his family take any interest in him? They might at least have discovered that.’

‘Is he bad?’

‘It is a disagreeable complaint to have.’

‘But a whole skin otherwise. That is always something if there is a war on.’

‘Alfred is too simple a man to embroil himself in practical affairs like fighting an ideological war,’ said Quiggin severely. ‘A typical aristocratic idealist, I’m afraid. Perhaps it is just as well his health has broken down. He has never been strong, of course. He is the first to admit it. In fact he is too fond of talking about his health. As I have said before, Alf is rather like Prince Myshkin in The Idiot.’

I was surprised at Quiggin’s attitude towards Erridge’s illness. I tried to work out who Quiggin himself would be in Dostoevsky’s novel if Erridge was Prince Myshkin and Mona – presumably – Nastasya Filippovna. It was all too complicated. I could not remember the story with sufficient clarity. Quiggin spoke again.

‘I have been hearing something of Alf’s difficulties from one of our own agents just back from Barcelona,’ he said. ‘Alf seems to have shown a good deal of political obtuseness – perhaps I should say childlike innocence. He appears to have treated POUM, FAI, CNT, and UGT, as if they were all the same left-wing extension of the Labour Party. I was not surprised to hear that he was going to be arrested at the time he decided to leave Spain. If you can’t tell the difference between a Trotskyite-Communist, an Anarcho-Syndicalist, and a properly paid-up Party Member, you had better keep away from the barricades.’

‘You had, indeed.’

‘It is not fair on the workers.’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Alfred’s place was to organise in England.’

‘Why doesn’t he go back to his idea of starting a magazine?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Quiggin, in a voice that closed the subject.

Erridge was in Quiggin’s bad books; a friend who had disappointed Quiggin to a degree impossible to conceal; a man who had failed to rise to an historic occasion. I supposed that Quiggin regarded Erridge’s imminent return, however involuntary, from the Spanish war in the light of a betrayal. This seemed unreasonable on Quiggin’s part, since Erridge’s breakdown in health was, after all, occasioned by an attempt to further the cause Quiggin himself had so energetically propagated by word of mouth. Even if Erridge had not fought in the field (where Howard Cragg’s nephew had already been killed), he had taken other risks in putting his principles into practice. If it was true that he was marked down for arrest, he might have been executed behind the lines. Quiggin had staked less on his enthusiasms. However, as things turned out there was probably a different reason that afternoon for Quiggin’s displeasure on Erridge’s account.