Sex Appeal
Ton regard et ta voix ont un je ne sais quoi . . .
D’étrange et de troublant qui me met en émoi.
Although in other respects a certain emptiness of background suggested a passage or hall, dim reflections of looking-glass set above a shelf painted white seemed to belong to a dressing-table: a piece of furniture hinting, consequently, of bedrooms. To the left, sprays of artificial flowers, red and yellow, drooped from the mouth of a large vase of which the base was invisible. This gigantic vessel assumed at first sight the proportions of a wine vat or sepulchral urn, even one of those legendary jars into which Morgiana, in the Arabian Nights, poured boiling oil severally on the Forty Thieves: a public rather than private ornament, it might be thought, decorating presumably the bedroom, if bedroom it was, of a hotel. Indeed, the style of furnishing was reminiscent of the Ufford.
Contemplating the blended tones of pink and brown framed within the postcard’s scalloped edge of gold, one could not help thinking how extraordinarily unlike ‘the real thing’ was this particular representation of a pair of lovers; indeed, how indifferently, at almost every level except the highest, the ecstasies and bitterness of love are at once conveyed in art. So much of the truth remains finally un-negotiable; in spite of the fact that most persons in love go through remarkably similar experiences. Here, in the picture, for example, implications were misleading, if not positively inaccurate. The matter was presented as all too easy, the twin flames of dual egotism reduced almost to nothing, so that there was no pain; and, for that matter, almost no pleasure. A sense of anxiety, without which the condition could scarcely be held to exist, was altogether absent.
Yet, after all, even the crude image of the postcard depicted with at least a degree of truth one side of love’s outward appearance. That had to be admitted. Some of love was like the picture. I had enacted such scenes with Jean: Templer with Mona: now Mona was enacting them with Quiggin: Barnby and Umfraville with Anne Stepney: Stringham with her sister Peggy: Peggy now in the arms of her cousin: Uncle Giles, very probably, with Mrs. Erdleigh: Mrs. Erdleigh with Jimmy Stripling: Jimmy Stripling, if it came to that, with Jean: and Duport, too.
The behaviour of the lovers in the plush armchair beside the sparse heads of those sad flowers was perfectly normal; nor could the wording of the couplet be blamed as specially far-fetched, or in some other manner indefensible. ‘D’étrange et de troublant’ were epithets, so far as they went, perfectly appropriate in their indication of those indefinable, mysterious emotions that love arouses. In themselves there was nothing incongruous in such descriptive labels. They might, indeed, be regarded as rather apt. I could hardly deny that I was at that moment experiencing something of the sort.
The mere act of a woman sitting on a man’s knee, rather than a chair, certainly suggested the Templer milieu. A memorial to Templer himself, in marble or bronze, were public demand ever to arise for so unlikely a cenotaph, might suitably take the form of a couple so grouped. For some reason—perhaps a confused memory of Le Baiser—the style of Rodin came to mind. Templer’s own point of view seemed to approximate to that earlier period of the plastic arts. Unrestrained emotion was the vogue then, treatment more in his line than some of the bleakly intellectual statuary of our own generation.
Even allowing a fairly limited concession to its character as a kind of folk perception—an eternal girl sitting on an eternal young man’s knee—the fact remained that an infinity of relevant material had been deliberately omitted from this vignette of love in action. These two supposedly good-looking persons were, in effect, going through the motions of love in such a manner as to convince others, perhaps less well equipped for the struggle than themselves, that they, too, the spectators, could be easily identified with some comparable tableau. They, too, could sit embracing on crimson chairs. Although hard to define with precision the exact point at which a breach of honesty had occurred, there could be no doubt that this performance included an element of the confidence-trick.
The night was a shade cooler now. Jean was wearing a white blouse, or sports shirt, open at the neck. Beneath it, her body trembled a little.
‘What was your dinner like?’ she asked.
‘Peter turned up.’
‘He said he would probably go there.’
I told her about Le Bas; and also about Stringham.
‘That is why I am a bit late.’
‘Did Peter mention that Bob is back in England?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that his prospects are not too bad?’
‘Yes.’
‘That may make difficulties.’
‘I know.’
‘Don’t let’s talk of them.’
‘No.’
‘Darling Nick.’
Outside, a clock struck the hour. Though ominous, things still had their enchantment. After all, as St. John Clarke was reported to have said at the Huntercombes’, ‘All blessings are mixed blessings.’ Perhaps, in spite of everything, the couple of the postcard could not be dismissed so easily. It was in their world that I seemed now to find myself.
ALSO AVAILABLE IN ARROW
Invitation to the Dance
Hilary Spurling
A Dance to the Music of Time is a literary landmark of twentieth-century writing. As the reader cavorts through the 12-volume novel alongside the narrator Nicholas Jenkins, it soon becomes apparent that he inevitably confuses dates and events, but Hilary Spurling tidies up the most minute detail into its proper place.
More than a simple glossary, Invitation to the Dance contains extensive Character, Book, Painting and Place indices, creating a magnificent database of Powell’s imagination and England’s cultural landscape. This is a masterpiece of ‘extreme ingenuity’ detailing over four hundred characters and one million words of Powell’s lively fifty-year dance of fiction and fact.
‘Hilary Spurling’s handbook triumphantly succeeds in its twofold aim of being reference-guide and bedside companion; funny and observant too, as befits the subject.’
Kingsley Amis, Observer
‘Hilary Spurling’s exhaustive analysis of the novel’s characters supplies a master-key for the reader to make a decision on these and many other points.’
Anthony Powell
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A Question of Upbringing first published in Great Britain 1951
by William Heinemann Ltd
Copyright © 1951 by Anthony Powell
A Buyer’s Market first published in Great Britain 1952
by William Heinemann Ltd
Copyright © 1952 by Anthony Powell
The Acceptance World first published in Great Britain 1955
by William Heinemann Ltd
Copyright © 1955 by Anthony Powell
The right of Anthony Powell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
This edition first published in the United Kingdom in 1997 by Mandarin and reprinted 4 times
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Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 1 Page 68