When Quiggin caught sight of me in the Ritz he immediately made for our table. As he moved across the white marble floor his figure seemed thicker than formerly. From being the spare, hungry personage I had known as an undergraduate he had become solid, almost stout. It was possible that Members, perhaps maliciously, perhaps as a matter of convenience to himself, had arranged for Quiggin to pick him up for dinner at an hour when our business together would be at an end. Supposing this had been planned, I was preparing to explain that Members had not turned up, when all at once Quiggin himself began to speak in his small, hard, grating North Country voice; employing a tone very definitely intended to sweep aside any question of wasting time upon the idle formalities of introduction, or indeed anything else that might postpone, even momentarily, some matter that was his duty to proclaim without delay.
‘I could not get away earlier,’ he began, peremptorily. ‘St. J. is rather seriously ill. It happened quite suddenly. Not only that, but a difficult situation has arisen. I should like to discuss things with you.’
This introductory speech was even less expected than Quiggin’s own arrival, although the tense, angry seriousness with which he had invested these words was not uncommon in his way of talking. Once I had thought this abrupt, aggressive manner came from a kind of shyness; later that theory had to be abandoned when it became clear that Quiggin’s personality expressed itself naturally in this form. I was surprised to hear him refer to St. John Clarke as ‘St. J.’, a designation appropriated to himself by Mark Members, and rarely used by others; in fact a nickname almost patented by Members as an outward sign of his own intimacy with his friend and employer.
I could not imagine why Quiggin, on that particular night, should suddenly wish that we should dine tête-à-tête. In the past we had occasionally spent an evening together after meeting at some party, always by accident rather than design. We were on quite good terms, but there was no subject involving St. John Clarke likely to require urgent discussion between us. At the university, where he had seemed a lonely, out-of-the-way figure, I had felt an odd interest in Quiggin; but our acquaintance there, such as it was, he now treated almost as a matter to live down. Perhaps that was natural as he came to invest more and more of his personality in his own literary status. At that moment, for example, his manner of speaking implied that any of his friends should be prepared to make sacrifices for an exceptional occasion like this one: a time when opportunity to be alone with him and talk seriously was freely offered.
‘Did you come to meet Mark?’ I asked. ‘He hasn’t turned up. It is not very likely he will appear now.’
Quiggin, refusing an invitation to sit down, stood upright by the table, still enveloped in his black, shiny livery. He had unfastened the large buttons of the overcoat, which now flapped open like Bonaparte’s, revealing a dark grey jumper that covered all but the knot of a red tie. The shirt was also dark grey. His face wore the set, mask-like expression of an importunate beggar tormenting a pair of tourists seated on the perimeter of a café’s terrasse. I felt suddenly determined to be no longer a victim of other people’s disregard for their social obligations. I introduced Templer out of hand—an operation Quiggin had somehow prevented until that moment—explaining at the same time that I was that evening already irrevocably booked for a meal.
Quiggin showed annoyance at this downright refusal to be dislodged, simultaneously indicating his own awareness that Members had been unable to keep this appointment. It then occurred to me that Members had persuaded Quiggin to make the excuses for his own absence in person. Such an arrangement was unlikely, and would in any case not explain why Quiggin should expect me to dine with him. However, Quiggin shook his head at this suggestion, and gave a laugh expressing scorn rather than amusement. Templer watched us with interest.
‘As a matter of fact St. J. has a new secretary,’ said Quiggin slowly, through closed lips. ‘That is why Mark did not come this evening.’
‘What, has Mark been sacked?’
Quiggin was evidently not prepared to reply directly to so uncompromising an enquiry. He laughed a little, though rather more leniently than before.
‘Honourably retired, perhaps one might say.’
‘On a pension?’
‘You are very inquisitive, Nicholas.’
‘You have aroused my interest. You should be flattered.’
‘Life with St. J. never really gave Mark time for his own work.’
‘He always produced a fair amount.’
‘Too much, from one point of view,’ said Quiggin, savagely; adding in a less severe tone: ‘Mark, as you know, always insists on taking on so many things. He could not always give St. J. the attention a man of his standing quite reasonably demands. Of course, the two of them will continue to see each other. I think, in fact, Mark is going to look in once in a way to keep the library in order. After all, they are close friends, first and foremost, quite apart from whether or not Mark is St. J.’s secretary. As you probably know, there have been various difficulties from time to time. Minor ones, of course. Still, one thing leads to another. Mark can be rather querulous when he does not get his own way.’
‘Who is taking Mark’s place?’
‘It is not exactly a question of one person taking another’s place. Merely coping with the practical side of the job more—well—conscientiously.’
Quiggin bared his teeth, as if to excuse this descent on his own part to a certain smugness of standpoint.
‘Yourself?’
‘At first just as an experiment on both sides.’
I saw at once that in this change, if truly reported, all kind of implications were inherent. Stories had circulated in the past of jobs for which Quiggin and Members had been in competition, most of them comparatively unimportant employments in the journalistic field. This was rather larger game; because, apart from other considerations, there was the question of who was to be St. John Clarke’s heir. He was apparently alone in the world. It was not a vast fortune, perhaps, but a tidy sum. A devoted secretary might stand in a favourable position for at least a handsome bequest. Although I had never heard hints that Quiggin was anxious to replace Members in the novelist’s household, such an ambition was by no means unthinkable. In fact the change was likely to have been brought about by long intrigue rather than sudden caprice. The news was surprising, though of a kind to startle by its essential appropriateness rather than from any sense of incongruity.
Although I did not know St. John Clarke, I could not help feeling a certain pity for him, smitten down among his first editions, press cuttings, dinner invitations, and signed photographs of eminent contemporaries, a sick man of letters, fought over by Members and Quiggin.
‘That was why I wanted to have a talk about St. J.’s affairs,’ said Quiggin, continuing to speak in his more conciliatory tone. ‘There have been certain changes lately in his point of view. You probably knew that. I think you are interested in getting this introduction. I see no reason why he should not write it. But I am of the opinion that he will probably wish to approach Isbister’s painting from a rather different angle. The pictures, after all, offer a unique example of what a capitalist society produces where art is concerned. However, I see we shall have to discuss that another time.’
He stared hard at Templer as chief impediment to his plans for the evening. It was at that point that ‘the girls’ arrived; owing to this conversation, entering the room unobserved by me until they were standing beside us. I was immediately aware that I had seen Templer’s wife before. Then I remembered that he had warned me I should recognise the stylised, conventionally smiling countenance, set in blonde curls, that had formerly appeared so often, on the walls of buses and underground trains, advocating a well-known brand of toothpaste. She must have been nearly six foot in height: in spite of a rather coarse complexion, a beautiful girl by any standards.
‘It was too wonderful,’ she said, breathlessly.
She spoke to Templer, but turned almost at once
in the direction of Quiggin and myself. At the sight of her, Quiggin went rather red in the face and muttered inaudible phrases conveying that they already knew one another. She replied civilly to these, though evidently without any certainty as to where that supposed meeting had taken place. She was obviously longing to talk about the film, but Quiggin was not prepared for the matter of their earlier encounter to be left vague.
‘It was years ago at a party over an antique shop,’ he insisted, ‘given by an old queen who died soon after. Mark Members introduced us.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, indifferently, ‘I haven’t seen Mark for ages.’
‘Deacon, he was called.’
‘I believe I remember.’
‘Off Charlotte Street.’
‘There were a lot of parties round there,’ she agreed.
Then I knew that something other than the toothpaste advertisements had caused Mona’s face to seem so familiar. I, too, had seen her at Mr. Deacon’s birthday party. Since then she had applied peroxide to her naturally dark hair. When Templer had spoken of his wife’s former profession I had not connected her with ‘Mona’, the artist’s model of whom Barnby, and others, used sometimes to speak. Barnby had not mentioned her for a long time.
In due course I found that Mona had abandoned that ‘artist’s’ world for commercial employments that were more lucrative. The people she met in these less pretentious circles were also no doubt on the whole more sympathetic to her, although she would never have admitted that. Certainly the impact of her earlier career as a model for painters and sculptors was never erased from her own mind. With the extraordinary adaptability of women, she had managed to alter considerably the lines of her figure, formerly a striking synthesis of projections and concavities that certainly seemed to demand immediate expression in bronze or stone. Now her body had been disciplined into a fashionable, comparatively commonplace mould. She smiled in a friendly way at Quiggin, but made no effort to help him out in his efforts to suggest that they really already knew each other.
Quiggin himself continued to stand for a time resentfully beside us, giving the impression not so much that he wished to join the Templer party, as that he hoped for an invitation to do so, which would at once be curtly refused; though whether, had the chance arisen, he would in fact have withheld his company was, of course, speculative. Mona threw him another smile, her regular rows of teeth neatly displayed between pink lips parted in a cupid’s bow: an ensemble invoking more than ever her career on the hoardings. For some reason this glance confirmed Quiggin’s intention to depart. After a final word with me to the effect that he would ring up early the following week and arrange a meeting, he nodded in an offended manner to the world in general, and tramped away across the room and down the steps. He held himself tautly upright, as if determined to avoid for ever in future such haunts of luxury and those who frequent them.
Just as he was making this move, Lady Ardglass, followed by her spruce, grey-haired admirers, at heel like a brace of well-groomed, well-bred, obedient sporting dogs, passed us on the way out. A natural blonde, Bijou Ardglass possessed a fleeting facial resemblance to Mona. She was said to have been a mannequin before her marriage. My attention had been caught momentarily by Quiggin’s words, but, even while he was speaking, I was aware of this resemblance as Lady Ardglass approached; although her smooth hair and mink made a strong contrast with Mona’s camel-hair coat and rather wild appearance. All the same there could be no doubt that the two of them possessed something in common. As the Ardglass cortège came level with us, I saw exchanged between the two of them one of those glances so characteristic of a woman catching sight of another woman who reminds her of herself: glances in which deep hatred and also a kind of passionate love seem to mingle voluptuously together for an instant of time.
Templer, at the same moment, shot out an all-embracing look, which seemed in an equally brief space to absorb Bijou Ardglass in her entirety. He appeared to do this more from force of habit than because she greatly interested him. It was a memorandum for some future date, should the need ever arise, recording qualities and defects, charms and blemishes, certainties and potentialities, both moral and physical. Jean saw Lady Ardglass too. Just as Quiggin was making his final remark to me, I was conscious that she touched her brother’s arm and muttered something to him that sounded like ‘Bob’s girl’: words at which Templer raised his eyebrows.
I did not fully take in Jean’s appearance until that moment. She was wearing a red dress with a black coat, and some kind of a scarf, folded over like a stock, emphasised the long, graceful curve of her neck. Mona’s strident personality occupied the centre of the stage, and, besides, I felt for some reason a desire to postpone our meeting. Now, as she spoke to her brother, her face assumed an expression at once mocking and resigned, which had a sweetness about it that reminded me of the days when I had thought myself in love with her. I could still feel the tension her presence always brought, but without any of that hopeless romantic longing, so characteristic of love’s very early encounters: perhaps always imperfectly recaptured in the more realistic love-making of later life. Now, I experienced a kind of resentment at the reserve which enclosed her. It suggested a form of self-love, not altogether attractive. Yet the look of irony and amusement that had come into her face when she whispered the phrase about ‘Bob’s girl’ seemed to add something unexpected and charming to her still mysterious personality.
She was taller than I remembered, and carried herself well. Her face, like her brother’s, had become a shade fuller, a change that had coarsened his appearance, while in her the sharp, almost animal look I remembered was now softened. She had not entirely lost her air of being a school-girl; though certainly, it had to be admitted, a very smartly dressed school-girl. I thought to myself, not without complacence, that I was able to appreciate her without in any way losing my head, as I might once have done. There was still a curious fascination about her grey-blue eyes, slanting a little, as it were caught tightly between soft, lazy lids and dark, luxurious lashes. Once she had reminded me of Rubens’s Chapeau de Paille. Now for some reason—though there was not much physical likeness between them—I thought of the woman smoking the hookah in Delacroix’s Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement. Perhaps there was something of the odalisque about Jean, too. She looked pale and rather tired. Any girl might excusably have appeared pale beside Mona, whose naturally high colouring had been increased by her own hand, almost as if for the stage or a cabaret performance.
‘Do you remember where we last met?’ she said, when Quiggin was gone.
‘At Stourwater.’
‘What a party.’
‘Was it awful?’
‘Some of it wasn’t very nice. Terrible rows between Baby and our host.’
‘But I thought they never had rows in public.’
‘They didn’t. That was what was so awful. Sir Magnus tremendously bland all the time and Baby absolutely bursting with bad temper.’
‘Do you ever hear from Baby Wentworth now?’
‘I had a card at Christmas. She is cloudlessly happy with her Italian.’
‘What is his profession?’
‘I don’t think I know you well enough to tell you. Perhaps after dinner.’
This, I remembered, was the way things had been at Stourwater: brisk conversation that led in the end to acres of silence. I made up my mind that this time I would not feel put out by her behaviour, whatever form it took.
‘Let’s have some food,’ said Templer, ‘I’m famished. So must you girls be, after your intellectual film.’
Afterwards, I could never recall much about that dinner in the Grill, except that the meal conveyed an atmosphere of powerful forces at work beneath the conversation. The sight of her husband’s mistress had no doubt been disturbing to Jean, who as usual spoke little. It soon became clear that the Templers’ mutual relationship was not an easy one. Different couples approach with varied technique the matrimonial vehicle’s infinitely compli
cated machinery. In the case of the Templers, their method made it hard to believe that they were really married at all. Clearly each of them was accustomed to a more temporary arrangement. Their conduct was normal enough, but they remained two entirely separate individuals, giving no indication of a life in common. This was certainly not because Templer showed any lack of interest in his wife. On the contrary, he seemed extravagantly, almost obsessively fond of her, although he teased her from time to time. In the past he had sometimes spoken of his love affairs to me, but I had never before seen him, as it were, in action. I wondered whether he habitually showed this same tremendous outward enthusiasm when pursuing more casual inclinations; or whether Mona had touched off some hitherto unkindled spark.
How far Mona herself reciprocated these feelings was less easy to guess. Possibly she was already rather bored with being a wife, and her surfeit in this respect might explain her husband’s conciliatory attitude. She spoke and acted in a manner so affected and absurd that there was something appealing about the artificiality of her gestures and conversation. She was like some savage creature, anxious to keep up appearances before members of a more highly civilised species, although at the same time keenly aware of her own superiority in cunning. There was something hard and untamed about her, probably the force that had attracted Templer and others. She seemed on good terms with Jean, who may have found her sister-in-law’s crude, violent presence emphasised to advantage her own quieter, though still undisclosed nature.
Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 1 Page 53