Anthony Powell - Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant

All the same, although he put a good face on it, Moreland looked a little cast down. No more was said on the subject until the time came to make our individual contributions to the bill. The waitress appeared again. She explained that she had omitted at an earlier stage of the meal to collect some of the money due for what we had drunk. She now presented her final account. At this point Barnby took the opportunity to allow himself certain pleasantries – these a trifle on the ponderous side, as he himself admitted later – to the effect that she was demanding money under false pretences. The waitress received these comments in good part, unbending so far as to hint that she had not levied the charge before, because, having taken one look at Barnby, she had been sure he would give a further order for drink; she had accordingly decided to wait until the account was complete. Barnby listened to this explanation gravely, making no attempt to answer in the breezy manner he had employed a few seconds earlier this imputation of possessing a bibulous appearance. Just as the girl was about to withdraw, he spoke.

‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I’m an artist – I paint people’s pictures.’

She did not look at him, or answer, but she stopped giggling, while at the same time making no attempt to move away from the table.

‘I’d like to paint you.’

She still did not speak. Her expression changed in a very slight degree, registering what might have been embarrassment or cunning.

‘Could you come and be painted by me some time?’

Barnby put the question in a quiet, almost exaggeratedly gentle voice; one I had never before heard him use.

‘Don’t know that I have time,’ she said, very coolly.

‘What about one week-end?’

‘Can’t come Sunday. Have to be here.’

‘Saturday, then?’

‘Saturday isn’t any good either.’

‘You can’t have to work all the week.’

‘Might manage a Thursday.’

‘All right, let’s make it a Thursday then.’

There was a pause. Maclintick, unable to bear the sight and sound of these negotiations, had taken a notebook from his pocket and begun a deep examination of his own affairs; making plans for the future; writing down great thoughts; perhaps even composing music. Moreland, unable to conceal his discomfort at what was taking place, started a conversation with me designed to carry further his Time-Space theories.

‘What about next Thursday?’ asked Barnby, in his most wheedling tone.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Say you will.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Come on.’

‘I suppose so, then.’

Barnby reached forward and took Maclintick’s pencil from his hand – not without protest on Maclintick’s part – and wrote something on the back of an envelope. I suppose it was just the address of his studio, but painters form the individual letters of their handwriting so carefully, so separately, that he seemed to be drawing a picture specially for her.

‘It’s above a shop,’ Barnby said.

Then, suddenly, he crumpled the envelope.

‘On second thoughts,’ he said, ‘I will come and pick you up here, if that is all right.’

‘As you like.’

She spoke indifferently, as if all had been decided long before and they had been going out together for years.

‘What time?’

She told him; the two of them made some mutual arrangement. Then they smiled at each other, again without any sense of surprise or excitement, as if long on familiar terms, and the waitress retired from the table. Barnby handed the stump of pencil back to Maclintick. We vacated the restaurant.

‘Like Glendower, Barnby,’ said Maclintick, ‘you can call spirits from the vasty deep. With Hotspur, I ask you, will they come?’

‘That’s to be seen,’ said Barnby. ‘By the way, what is her name? I forgot to ask.’

‘Norma,’ said Moreland, speaking without apology.

To complete the story, Barnby (whose personal arrangements were often vague) told me that when the day of assignation came, he arrived, owing to bad timing, three-quarters of an hour late for the appointment. The girl was still waiting for him. She came to his studio, where he began a picture of her, subsequently completing at least one oil painting and several drawings. The painting, which was in his more severe manner, he sold to Sir Magnus Donners; Sir Herbert Manasch bought one of the drawings, which were treated naturistically. Eventually, as might have been foretold, Barnby had some sort of a love affair with his model; although he always insisted she was ‘not his type’, that matters had come to a head one thundery afternoon when an overcast sky made painting impossible. Norma left Casanova’s soon after this episode. She took a job which led to her marrying a man who kept a tobacconist’s shop in Camden Town. There was no ill feeling after Barnby had done with her; keeping on good terms with his former mistresses was one of his gifts. In fact he used to visit Norma and her husband (who sometimes gave him racing tips) after they were married. Through them he found a studio in that part of London; he may even have been godfather to one of their children. All that is beside the point. The emphasis I lay upon the circumstances of this assignation at Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant is to draw attention to the extreme ease with which Barnby conducted the preliminaries of his campaign. Anyone who heard things being fixed up might have supposed Norma to have spent much of her previous life as an artist’s model; that she regarded making an engagement for a sitting as a matter of routine regulated only by aspects of her own immediate convenience. Perhaps she had; perhaps she did. In such case Barnby showed scarcely less mastery of the situation in at once assessing her potentialities in that role.

‘Of course, Ralph is a painter,’ said Moreland, afterwards. ‘He has a studio. Time, place and a respectable motive for a visit are all at his command. None of these things are to be despised where girls are concerned.’

‘Time and Space, as usual.’

‘Time and Space,’ said Moreland.

The incident was not only an illustration of Barnby’s adroitness in that field, but also an example of Moreland’s diffidence, a diffidence no doubt in part responsible for the admixture of secretiveness and exhibitionism with which he conducted his love affairs. By exhibitionism, I mean, in Moreland’s case, no more than a taste for referring obliquely from time to time to some unrevealed love that possessed him. I supposed that this habit of his explained his talk of marriage the day – five or six years after our first meeting – when we had listened together to the song of the blonde singer; especially when he refused to name the girl – or three girls – he might be considering as a wife. It was therefore a great surprise to me when his words turned out to be spoken seriously. However, I did not at first realise how serious they were; nor even when, some weeks later, more about the girl herself was revealed.

He suggested one day that we should go together to The Duchess of Malfi, which was being performed at a small theatre situated somewhat off the beaten track; one of those ventures that attempt, by introducing a few new names and effects, momentarily to dispel the tedium of dramatic routine.

‘Webster is always a favourite of mine,’ Moreland said. ‘Norman Chandler has for the moment abandoned dancing and the saxophone, and is playing Bosola.’

‘That should be enjoyable. Has he quite the weight?’

Chandler had moved a long way since the day when I had first seen him at the Mortimer, when Mr Deacon had spoken so archly of having acquired his friendship through a vegetarian holiday. Now Chandler had made some name for himself, not only as a dancer, but also as an actor; not in leading roles, but specialising in smaller, unusual parts suitable to his accomplished, but always intensely personal, style. I used to run across him occasionally with Moreland, whose passion for mechanical pianos Chandler shared; music for which they would search London.