Anthony Powell: Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant

At about the same time that Erridge left London, Moreland rang me up. Without anything being said on either side, our meetings had somehow lapsed. We had spoken together only at parties or on such occasions when other people had been around us. It was ages since we had had one of those long talks about life, or the arts, which had been such a predominant aspect of knowing Moreland in the past. On the telephone his voice sounded restrained, practical, colourless; as he himself would have said ‘the sane Englishman with his pipe’.

‘How is Matilda?’

‘Spending a good deal of time out on her own with rehearsals and so on. She is going out with some of her theatre people tonight as a matter of fact.’

‘Come and dine.’

‘I can’t. I’m involved in musical business until about ten. I said I would drop in on Maclintick then. I thought you might feel like coming too.’

‘Why?’

‘The suggestion was made to help myself out really. I agree it isn’t a very inviting prospect.’

‘Less inviting than usual? Do you remember our last visit?’

‘Well, you know what has happened?’

‘No.’

‘Maclintick’s wife has walked out on him.’

‘I hadn’t heard.’

‘With Carolo.’

‘How rash.’

‘On top of that Maclintick has lost his job.’

‘I never thought of him as having a job.’

‘He did, all the same. Now he hasn’t.’

‘Did a paper sack him?’

‘Yes. I thought we might meet at a pub, then go on to see Maclintick at his house. He just sits there working all the time. I have been talking to Gossage about Maclintick. We are a bit worried. A visit might cheer him up.’

‘I am sure he would much rather see you alone.’

‘That is just what I want to avoid.’

‘Why not take Gossage?’

‘Gossage is busy tonight. Anyway, he is too old a friend. He gets on Maclintick’s nerves.’

‘But so do I.’

‘In a different way. Besides, you don’t know anything about music. It is musical people Maclintick can’t stand.’

‘I only see Maclintick once every two years. We never hit it off particularly well even spaced out at those intervals.’

‘It is because Maclintick never sees you that I want you to come. I don’t want an embarrassing time with him téte-à-téte. I am not up to it these days. I have troubles of my own.’

‘All right. Where shall we meet?’

Moreland, from his extensive knowledge of London drinking places, named a pub in the Maclintick neighbourhood. I told Isobel what had been arranged.

‘Try and find out what is happening about Priscilla,’ she said. ‘For all we know, they may be planning to run away together too. One must look ahead.’

The Nag’s Head, the pub named by Moreland, was a place of no great attraction. I recalled it as the establishment brought to Mrs Maclintick’s mind by her husband’s uncouth behaviour at Mrs Foxe’s party. Moreland looked tired when he arrived. He said he had been trudging round London all day. I asked for further details about the Maclintick situation.

‘There are none to speak of,’ Moreland said. ‘Audrey and Carolo left together one afternoon last week. Maclintick had gone round to have a talk with his doctor about some trouble he was having with his kidneys. Not flushing out properly or something. He found a note when he returned home saying she had gone for good.’

‘And then he lost his job on top of it?’

‘He had written rather an astringent article about a concert he was covering. The paper didn’t put it in. Maclintick made a fuss. The editor suggested Maclintick might be happier writing for a periodical aiming at a narrower public. Maclintick agreed that he himself had been feeling that for some time. So they parted company.’

‘He is absolutely broke?’

‘Probably a few minor irons in the fire. I don’t know. Maclintick is not a chap who manages his business affairs very well.’

‘Is he looking for another job?’

‘He has either been working at his book or knocking them back pretty hard since all this happened – and who shall blame him?’

We set off for Maclintick’s house.

‘When is Madlda’s play coming on?’

‘They don’t seem to know exactly.’

Moreland showed no sign of wishing to pursue the subject of Madlda’s stage career. I did not press the question. I wondered whether he knew that Matilda had told me of her former marriage to Carolo. We passed once more through those shadowy, desolate squares from which darkness had driven even that small remnant of life that haunted them by day. Moreland was depressed and hardly spoke at all. The evening before us offered no prospect to stimulate cheerfulness. At last we reached Maclintick’s horrible little dwelling. There was a light upstairs. I felt at low ebb. However, when Maclintick opened the front door he appeared in better condition than I had been led to expect. He wore no collar and had not shaved for several days, but these omissions seemed deliberate badges of emancipation from the servitudes of marriage and journalism, rather than neglect provoked by grief or despair. On the contrary, the nervous tensions to which he had been subjected during the previous few days had to some extent galvanised his normally crabbed manner into a show of geniality.

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘You’ll need a drink.’

There was a really colossal reek of whiskey as we crossed the threshold.

‘How are things?’ said Moreland, sounding not very sure of himself.

‘Getting the sack keeps you young,’ said Maclintick. ‘You ought to try it, both of you. I have been able to settle down to some real work at last, now that I am quit of that bloody rag – and freer in other respects too, I might add.’

In spite of this rather aggressive equanimity displayed by Maclintick himself, an awful air of gloom hung over the house. The sitting-room was unspeakably filthy, dirty tea cups along the top of the glass-fronted bookcase, tumblers stained with beer dregs among the hideous ornaments of the mantelpiece. In the background, an atmosphere of unmade beds and unwashed dishes was dominated by an abominable, indefinable smell. As people do when landed in a position of that sort, Maclintick began at once to discuss his own predicament; quite objectively, as if the experience was remote from himself, as if – which in a sense was true – there was no earthly point in our talking of anything else but Maclintick’s personal affairs.

‘When I realised she had gone,’ he said, ‘I heaved a great sigh of relief. That was my first reaction. Later, I grasped the fact that I had to get my own supper. Found something I liked for a change – sardines and plenty of red pepper – and a stiff drink with them. Then I started turning things over in my mind. I began to think of Carolo.’

Moreland laughed uneasily. He was a person not well equipped to deal with human troubles. His temperament was without that easy, unthinking sympathy which reacts in a simple manner, indicating instinctively the right thing to say to someone desperately unhappy. He also lacked that subjective, ruthless love of presiding over other people’s affairs which often makes basically heartless people adept at offering effective consolation. ‘I never know the right moment to squeeze the bereaved’s arm at a funeral,’ he had once said. ‘Some people can judge it to a nicety.’ In short, nothing but true compassion for Maclintick’s circumstances could have brought Moreland to the house that night. It was an act of friendship of some magnitude.

‘Is Carolo in a job?’ Moreland asked.

‘Carolo taking a job seems to have touched off matters,’ said Maclintick, ‘or perhaps vice versa. He has at last decided that his genius will allow him to teach. Somewhere in the North – Midlands, I was told, his own part of the world. I can’t remember now. He spoke about it a short time before they went off together. Left without paying his rent, need I say? I wonder how he and Audrey will hit it off. I spent yesterday with a solicitor.’