Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 2

by Anthony Powell

  ‘Another of my woman patients,’ he went on, ‘happens to be in here. Rather a difficult case for the gynaecologist. I’ve been giving him a hand with the after-treatment – from the temperamental point of view.’

  Brandreth continued to hold Moreland with his eye, as if to make sure his attention did not wander too far afield. At the same time he took up a position closer to myself that seemed to imply appeal to me, as one probably familiar with Moreland’s straying mind, to help if necessary in preventing his escape before the time was ripe. Penning us both in, Brandreth was evidently determined to obstruct with all the forces at his command further conversation between us which, by its personal nature, might exclude himself. However, at the critical moment, just as Brandreth was beginning to speak, he was interrupted by the competition of a new, impelling force. A stoutly built man, wearing a Jaeger dressing-gown, pushed past us without ceremony, making towards a door of frosted glass in front of which we were grouped. In his manner of moving, this person gave the impression that he thought we were taking up too much room in the passage – which may have been true – and that he himself was determined to convey, if necessary by calculated discourtesy, demonstrated by his own aggressive, jerky progress, a sense of strong moral disapproval towards those who had time to waste gossiping. Brandreth had already opened his mouth, probably to make some further pronouncement about obstetrics, but now he closed it quickly, catching the man in the dressing-gown by the sleeve.

  ‘Widmerpool, my dear fellow,’ he said, ‘I want you to meet another patient of mine – one of England’s most promising young musicians.’

  Widmerpool, whose well-worn dressing-gown covered a suit of grubby pyjamas in grey and blue stripe, stopped unwillingly. Without friendliness, he rotated his body towards us. Brandreth he disregarded, staring first at Moreland, then myself, frowning hard through his thick spectacles, relaxing this severe regard a little when he recognised in me a person he knew.

  ‘Why, Nicholas,’ he said, ‘what are you doing here?’

  Like Moreland, Widmerpool too seemed aggrieved at finding me within the precincts of the nursing home.

  ‘Ha!’ said Brandreth. ‘Of course you know one another. Fellow pupils of Le Bas. Strange coincidence. I could tell you some stranger ones. We were speaking of the high incidence of abortion, my dear Widmerpool.’

  Widmerpool started violently.

  ‘Not abortion, Dr Brandreth,’ said Moreland, laughing. ‘Miscarriage – nothing against the law.’

  ‘I’m using the word,’ said Brandreth, treating our ignorance with genial amusement, ‘in the strictly medical sense that doesn’t necessarily connote anything illegal. I had been talking to Mr Moreland,’ he added, ‘about Wagner, a chronic sufferer, I understand, from some form of dermatitis, though he finally succumbed, I believe, to a cardiac lesion – unlike Schubert with his abdominal trouble. They were both, I imagine, temperamental men.’

  The fact that Widmerpool and I knew each other at least as well as Brandreth knew Widmerpool, prevented Brandreth from dominating the situation so completely as he had intended before Widmerpool’s arrival. His tone in addressing Widmerpool was at once hearty and obsequious, almost servile in its unconcealed desire to make a good impression by play with Moreland’s musical celebrity. Brandreth obviously considered Widmerpool a person of greater importance than Moreland, but also one who might be interested to come in contact with sides of life different from his own. In supposing this, Brandreth showed his acquaintance with Widmerpool to be superficial. Widmerpool remained totally unimpressed by the arts. He was even accustomed to show an open contempt for them in tête-à-tête conversation. In public, for social reasons, he had acquired the merest working knowledge to carry him through a dinner party, content with St John Clarke as a writer, Isbister as a painter.

  ‘I don’t know about those things,’ he had once said to me. ‘If I don’t know about things, they do not interest me. Even if artistic matters attracted me – which they do not – I should not allow myself to dissipate my energies on them.’

  Now, he stood staring at me as if my presence in the nursing home was an insoluble, an irritating, mystery. I explained once more that I had been visiting Isobel.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Widmerpool. ‘You married one of the Tollands, did you not, Nicholas? I was sorry not to have come to your wedding. That was some time ago . . . nearly . . . as a matter of fact, I was far too busy. I should like to give you a wedding present. You must tell me something you want, even though I was not able to turn up at the ceremony. After all, we have known each other a long time now. A little piece of silver perhaps. I will consult my mother who arranges such things. Your wife is not suffering from anything serious, I hope. I believe I once met her at her aunt’s, Lady Molly Jeavons. Perhaps it was one of her sisters.’

  The meeting had, indeed, taken place. Isobel had mentioned it. She had not cared for Widmerpool. That was one of the reasons why I had made no effort to keep in touch with him. In any case I should never have gone out of my way to seek him, knowing, as one does with certain people, that the rhythm of life would sooner or later be bound to bring us together again. However, I remembered that I owed him a meal. Guilt as to this unfulfilled obligation was strengthened by awareness that he was capable of complaining publicly that I had never invited him in return. Preferring to avoid this possibility, I decided on the spot to ask Widmerpool, before we parted company, to lunch at my club; in fact while Isobel’s convalescence gave an excuse for not bringing him to our flat.

  ‘I have been enjoying a brief rest here,’ he said. ‘An opportunity to put right a slight mischief with boils. Some tests have been made. I leave tomorrow, agog for work again.’

  ‘Isobel goes tomorrow, too. She will keep rather quiet for a week or two.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so,’ said Widmerpool, dismissing the subject.

  He turned abruptly on his heel, muttering something about ‘arranging a meeting in the near future’, at the same time making a rapid movement towards the door of frosted glass at which he had been aiming when first accosted by Brandreth.

  ‘Can you lunch with me next Tuesday – at my club?’

  Widmerpool paused for a second to give thought to this question, once more began to frown.

  ‘Tuesday? Tuesday? Let me think. I have something on Tuesday. I must have. No, perhaps I haven’t. Wait a minute. Let me look at my book. Yes . . . Yes. As it happens, I can lunch with you on Tuesday. But not before half-past one. Certainly not before one-thirty. More likely one-thirty-five.’

  Quickening his step, drawing his dressing-gown round him as if to keep himself more separate from us, he passed through the door almost at a run. His displacement immediately readjusted in Moreland’s favour Brandreth’s social posture.

  ‘To return to Wagner,’ Brandreth said, ‘you remember Wanderlust, Mr Moreland, of course you do, when Siegfried sings: “From the wood forth I wander, never to return!” – how does it go? – “Aus dem Wald fort in die Welt zieh’n: nimmer kehr’ich zurück!” Now, it always seems to me the greatest pity that in none of the productions of The Ring I have ever heard, has the deeper pessimism of these words been given full weight . . .’

  Brandreth began to make movements with his hands as if he were climbing an invisible rope. Moreland disengaged us brutally from him. We descended the stairs.

  ‘Who was the man in the dressing-gown with spectacles?’ Moreland asked, when we had reached the street.

  ‘He is called Kenneth Widmerpool. In the City. I have known him a long time.’

  ‘I can’t say I took to him,’ Moreland said. ‘But, look here, what a business married life is. I hope to goodness Matilda will be all right. There are various worrying aspects. I sometimes think I shall go off my head. Perhaps I am off it already. That would explain a lot. What are you doing tonight? I am on my way to the Maclinticks. Why not come too?’

  Without waiting for an answer, he began to recount all that had been happening to Matilda and h
imself since we had last met; various absurd experiences they had shared; how they sometimes got on each other’s nerves; why they had returned to London; where they were going to live. There had been some sort of a row with the municipal authorities at the seaside resort. Moreland held decided professional opinions; he could be obstinate. Some people, usually not the most intelligent, found working with him difficult. I heard some of his story, telling him in return how the film company for which I had been script-writing had decided against renewing my contract; that I was now appearing on the book page of a daily paper; also reviewing from time to time for the weekly of which Mark Members was assistant literary editor.

  ‘Mark recommended Dr Brandreth to us,’ Moreland said. ‘A typical piece of malice on his part. Brandreth is St John Clarke’s doctor – or was when Mark was St John Clarke’s secretary. Gossip is the passion of his life, his only true emotion – but he can also put you on the rack about music.’

  ‘Is he looking after Matilda?’

  ‘A gynaecologist does that. He is not a music-lover, thank God. Of course, a lot of women have babies. One must admit that. No doubt it will be all right. It just makes one a bit jumpy. Look here, Nick, you must come to the Maclinticks’. It would be more cheerful if there were two of us.’

  ‘Should I be welcome?’

  ‘Why not? Have you developed undesirable habits since we last met?’

  ‘I never think Maclintick much likes me.’

  ‘Likes you?’ said Moreland. ‘What egotism on your part. Of course he doesn’t like you. Maclintick doesn’t like anybody.’

  ‘He likes you.’

  ‘We have professional ties. As a matter of fact, Maclintick doesn’t really hate everyone as much as he pretends. I was being heavily humorous.’

  ‘All the same, he shows small visible pleasure in meeting most people.’

  ‘One must rise above that. It is a kindness to do so. Maclintick does not get on too well with his wife. The occasional company of friends eases the situation.’

  ‘You do make this social call sound tempting.’

  ‘If nobody ever goes there, I am afraid Maclintick will jump into the river one of these days, or hang himself with his braces after a more than usually gruelling domestic difference. You must come.’

  ‘All right. Since you present it as a matter of life and death.’

  We took a bus to Victoria, then passed on foot into a vast, desolate region of stucco streets and squares upon which a doom seemed to have fallen. The gloom was cosmic. We traversed these pavements for some distance, proceeding from haunts of seedy, grudging gentility into an area of indeterminate, but on the whole increasingly unsavoury, complexion.

  ‘Maclintick is devoted to this part of London,’ Moreland said. ‘I am not sure that I agree with him. He says his mood is for ever Pimlico. I grant that a sympathetic atmosphere is an important point in choosing a residence. It helps one’s work. All the same, tastes differ. Maclintick is always to be found in this neighbourhood, though never for long in the same place.’

  ‘He never seems very cheerful when I meet him.’

  I had run across Maclintick only a few times with Moreland since our first meeting in the Mortimer.

  ‘He is a very melancholy man,’ Moreland agreed. ‘Maclintick is very melancholy. He is disappointed, of course.’

  ‘About himself as a musician?’

  ‘That – and other things. He is always hard up. Then he has an aptitude for quarrelling with anyone who might be of use to him professionally. He is writing a great tome on musical theory which never seems to get finished.’

  ‘What is his wife like?’

  ‘Like a wife.’

  ‘Is that how you feel about marriage?’

  ‘Well, not exactly,’ said Moreland laughing. ‘But you know one does begin to understand all the music-hall jokes and comic-strips about matrimony after you have tried a spell of it yourself. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘And Mrs Maclintick is a good example?’

  ‘You will see what I mean.’

  ‘What is Maclintick’s form about women? I can never quite make out.’

  ‘I think he hates them really – only likes whores.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘At least that is what Gossage used to say.’

  ‘That’s a known type.’

  ‘All the same, Maclintick is also full of deeply romantic, hidden away sentiments about Wein, Weib und Gesang. That is his passionate, carefully concealed side. The gruffness is intended to cover all that. Maclintick is terrified of being thought sentimental. I suppose all his bottled-up feelings came to the surface when he met Audrey.’

  ‘And the prostitutes?’

  ‘He told Gossage he found them easier to converse with than respectable ladies. Of course, Gossage – you can imagine how he jumped about telling me this – was speaking of a period before Maclintick’s marriage. No reason to suppose that sort of thing takes place now.’

  ‘But if he hates women, why do you say he is so passionate?’

  ‘It just seems to have worked out that way. Audrey is one of the answers, I suppose.’

  The house, when we reached it, turned out to be a small, infinitely decayed two-storey dwelling that had seen better days; now threatened by a row of mean shops advancing from one end of the street and a fearful slum crowding up from the other. Moreland’s loyalty to his friends – in a quiet way considerable – prevented me from being fully prepared for Mrs Maclintick. That she should have come as a surprise was largely my own fault. Knowing Moreland, I ought to have gathered more from his disjointed, though on the whole decidedly cautionary, account of the Maclintick household. Besides, from the first time of meeting Maclintick – when he had gone to the telephone in the Mortimer – the matrimonial rows of the Maclinticks had been an accepted legend. However much one hears about individuals, the picture formed in the mind rarely approximates to the reality. So it was with Mrs Maclintick. I was not prepared for her in the flesh. When she opened the door to us, her formidable discontent with life swept across the threshold in scorching, blasting waves. She was a small dark woman with a touch of gipsy about her, this last possibility suggested by sallow skin and bright black eyes. Her black hair was worn in a fringe. Some men might have found her attractive. I was not among them, although at the same time not blind to the fact that she might be capable of causing trouble where men were concerned. Mrs Maclintick said nothing at the sight of us, only shrugging her shoulders. Then, standing starkly aside, as if resigned to our entry in spite of an overpowering distaste she felt for the two of us, she held the door open wide. We passed within the Maclintick threshold.

  ‘It’s Moreland – and another man.’

  Mrs Maclintick shouted, almost shrieked these words, while at the same time she twisted her head sideways and upwards towards a flight of stairs leading to a floor above, where Maclintick might be presumed to sit at work. We followed her into a sitting-room in which a purposeful banality of style had been observed; only a glass-fronted bookcase full of composers’ biographies and works of musical reference giving some indication of Maclintick’s profession.

  ‘Find somewhere to sit,’ said Mrs Maclintick, speaking as if the day, bad enough before, had been finally ruined by our arrival. ‘He will be down soon.’

  Moreland seemed no more at ease in face of this reception than myself. At the same time he was evidently used to such welcomes in that house. Apart from reddening slightly, he showed no sign of expecting anything different in the way of reception. After telling Mrs Maclintick my name, he spoke a few desultory words about the weather, then made for the bookcase. I had the impression this was his accustomed gambit on arrival in that room. Opening its glass doors, he began to examine the contents of the shelves, as if – a most unlikely proposition – he had never before had time to consider Maclintick’s library. After a minute or two, during which we all sat in silence, he extracted a volume and began to turn over its pages. At this firm treatment, which plai
nly showed he was not going to allow his hostess’s ill humour to perturb him, Mrs Maclintick unbent a little.

  ‘How is your wife, Moreland?’ she asked, after picking up and rearranging some sewing upon which she must have been engaged on our arrival. ‘She is having a baby, isn’t she?’

  ‘Any day now,’ said Moreland.

  Either he scarcely took in what she said, or did not consider her a person before whom he was prepared to display the anxiety he had earlier expressed to me on that subject, because he did not raise his eyes from the book, and, a second after she had spoken, gave one of his sudden loud bursts of laughter. This amusement was obviously caused by something he had just read. For a minute or two he continued to turn the pages, laughing to himself.

  ‘This life of Chabrier is enjoyable,’ he said, still without looking up. ‘How wonderful he must have been dressed as a bull-fighter at the fancy dress ball at Granada. What fun it all was in those days. Much gayer than we are now. Why wasn’t one a nineteenth-century composer living in Paris and hobnobbing with the Impressionist painters?’

  Mrs Maclintick made no reply to this rhetorical question, which appeared in no way to fire within her nostalgic daydreams. She was about to turn her attention, as if unwillingly, towards myself, with the air of a woman who had given Moreland a fair chance and found him wanting, when Maclintick came into the room. He was moving unhurriedly, as if he had arrived downstairs to search for something he had forgotten, and was surprised to find his wife entertaining guests. Despondency, as usual, seemed to have laid an icy grip on him. He wore bedroom slippers and was pulling at a pipe. However, he brightened a little when he saw Moreland, screwing up his eyes behind the small spectacles and beginning to nod his head as if humming gently to himself. I offered some explanation of my presence in the house, to which Maclintick muttered a brief, comparatively affirmative acknowledgement. Without saying more, he made straight for a cupboard from which he took bottles and glasses.