Anthony Powell: Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant

‘Who is the juvenile lead?’ asked Gossage.

He smiled vigorously, at the same time removing his pince-nez to polish them, as if he did not wish Maclintick to think him unduly interested in Mr Deacon and his friend.

‘Don’t you know Norman Chandler?’ said Moreland. ‘I should have thought you would have come across him. He is an actor. Also dances a bit. Rather a hand at the saxophone.’

‘A talented young gentleman,’ said Gossage.

Moreland took another newspaper from his pocket, flattened it out on the surface of the table, and began to read a re-hash of the Croydon murder. Maclintick’s face had expressed the strongest distaste during the conversation with Chandler; now he dismissed his indignation and began to discuss the Albert Hall concert Gossage was attending that night. I caught the phrases ‘rhythmic ensemble’ and ‘dynamic and tonal balance’. Carolo sat in complete silence, from time to time tasting his vermouth without relish. Maclintick and Gossage passed on to the Delius Festival at the Queen’s Hall. All this musical ‘shop’, to which Moreland, without looking up from his paper, would intermittently contribute comment, began to make me feel rather out of it. I wished I had been less punctual. Moreland came to the end of the article and pushed the paper from him.

‘Edgar was quite cross at my turning out to know Norman,’ he said to me, speaking in a detached, friendly tone. ‘Edgar loves to build up mystery about any young man he meets. There was a lot of excitement about an “ex-convict from Devil’s Island” he met at a fancy dress party the other day dressed as a French matelot.’

He leaned forward and deftly thrust a penny into the slot of the mechanical piano, which took a second or two to digest the coin, then began to play raucously.

‘Oh, good,’ said Moreland.‘ The Missouri Waltz.’

‘Deacon is probably right in assuming some of the persons he associates with are sinister enough,’ said Maclintick sourly.

‘It is the only pleasure he has left,’ said Moreland. ‘I can’t imagine what Norman was selling. It looked like a bed-pan from the shape of the parcel.’

Gossage sniggered, incurring a frown from Maclintick.

Probably fearing Maclintick might make him a new focus of disapproval, he remarked that he must be ‘going soon’.

‘Deacon will be getting himself into trouble one of these days,’ Maclintick said, shaking his head and speaking as if he hoped the blow would fall speedily. ‘Don’t you agree, Gossage?’

‘Oh, couldn’t say, couldn’t say at all,’ said Gossage hurriedly. ‘I hardly know the man, you see. Met him once or twice at the Proms last year. Join him sometimes over a mug of ale.’

Maclintick ignored these efforts to present a more bracing picture of Mr Deacon’s activities.

‘And it won’t be the first time Deacon got into trouble,’ he said in his grim, high-pitched voice.

‘Well, I shall really have to go,’ repeated Gossage, in answer to this further rebuke, speaking as if everyone present had been urging him to stay in the Mortimer for just a few minutes longer.

‘You will read my views on Friday. I am keeping an open mind. One has to do that. Goodbye, Moreland, goodbye… Maclintick, goodbye…’

‘I must be going too,’ said Carolo unexpectedly.

He had a loud, harsh voice, and a North Country accent like Quiggin’s. Tossing back the remains of his vermouth as if to the success of a desperate venture from which he was unlikely to return with his life, he finished the dregs at a gulp, and, inclining his head slightly in farewell to the company with an unconcerned movement in keeping with this devil-may-care mood, he followed Gossage from the saloon bar.

‘Carolo wasn’t exactly a chatterbox tonight,’ said Moreland.

‘Never has much to say for himself,’ Maclintick agreed.

‘Always brooding on the old days when he was playing Sarasate up and down the country clad as Little Lord Fauntleroy.’

‘He must have been at least seventeen when he last appeared in his black velvet suit and white lace collar,’ said Moreland. ‘The coat was so tight he could hardly draw his bow across the fiddle.’

‘They say Carolo is having trouble with his girl,’ said Maclintick. ‘Makes him even gloomier than usual.’

‘Who is his girl?’ asked Moreland indifferently.

‘Quite young, I believe,’ said Maclintick. ‘Gossage was asking about her. Carolo doesn’t find it as easy to get engagements as he used – and he won’t teach.’

‘Wasn’t there talk of Mrs Andriadis helping him?’ said Moreland. ‘Arranging a performance at her house or something.’

I listened to what was being said without feeling – as I came to feel later – that I was, in one sense, part and parcel of the same community; that when people gossiped about matters like Carolo and his girl, one was listening to a morsel, if only an infinitesimal morsel, of one’s own life. However, I heard no more about Carolo at that moment, because Barnby could now be seen standing in the doorway of the saloon bar, slowly apprising himself of the company present, the problem each individual might pose. By that hour the Mortimer had begun to fill. A man with a yellowish beard and black hat was buying drinks for two girls drawn from that indeterminate territory eternally disputed between tarts and art students; three pimply young men were arguing about economics; a couple of taxi-drivers conferred with the barmaid. For several seconds Barnby stared about him, viewing the people in the Mortimer with apparent disapproval. Then, thickset, his topcoat turned up to his ears, he moved slowly forward, at the same time casting an expert, all-embracing glance at the barmaid and the two art girls. Reaching the table at last by these easy stages, he nodded to the rest of us, but did not sit down. Instead, he regarded the party closely. Such evolutions were fairly typical of Barnby’s behaviour in public; demeanour effective with most strangers, on whom he seemed ultimately to force friendliness by at first withholding himself. Later he would unfreeze. With women, that apparently negative method almost always achieved good results. It was impossible to say whether this manner of Barnby’s was unconscious or deliberate. Moreland, for example, saw in Barnby a consummate actor.

‘Ralph is the Garrick of our day,’ Moreland used to say, ‘or at least the Tree or Irving. Barnby never misses a gesture with women, not an inflection of the voice.’

The two of them, never close friends, used to see each other fairly often in those days. Moreland liked painting and held stronger views about pictures than most musicians.

‘I can see Ralph has talent,’ he said of Barnby, ‘but why use combinations of colour that make you think he is a Frenchman or a Catalan?’

‘I know nothing of music,’ Barnby had, in turn, once remarked, ‘but Hugh Moreland’s accompaniment to that film sounded to me like a lot of owls quarrelling in a bicycle factory.’

All the same, in spite of mutual criticism, they were in general pretty well disposed to one another.

‘Buy us a drink, Ralph,’ said Moreland, as Barnby stood moodily contemplating us.

‘I’m not sure I can afford that,’ said Barnby. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

‘Take a generous view,’ said Moreland, who liked being stood plenty of drinks.

After a minute or two’s meditation Barnby drew some money from his pocket, glanced at the coins in the palm of his hand, and laid some of them on the bar. Then he brought the glasses across to the table.

‘Had a look at the London Group this afternoon,’ he said.

Barnby sat down. He and Moreland began to talk of English painting. The subject evidently bored Maclintick, who seemed to like Barnby as little as he cared for Mr Deacon. Conversation moved on to painting in Paris. Finally, the idea of going to a film was abandoned. It was getting late in the evening. The programme would be too far advanced. Instead, we agreed to dine together. Maclintick went off upstairs to telephone to his wife and tell her he would not be home until later.