A Dance to the Music of Time: 2nd Movement

by Anthony Powell

  Gwinnett again put up his hand to his head. He looked as if he might faint. Then he seemed to recover himself. Heavy spots of rain were beginning to fall.

  ‘Did everyone in the circle achieve sexual relations with everyone else?’

  ‘If they could.’

  ‘Were they all up to it?’

  ‘Only Scorp.’

  ‘He must be a remarkable young man.’

  ‘It wasn’t for pleasure. This was an invocation. Scorp was the summoner. He said it would have been far more likely to be successful had it been four times four.’

  ‘Not Widmerpool?’

  ‘That was the quarrel.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘It had something to do with the union of opposites. I don’t know enough about the rite to say exactly what happened. Ken was gashed with a knife. That was part of the ritual, but it got out of hand. There was some sort of struggle for power. After a while Scorp and the others managed to revive Ken. By then it was too late to complete the rites. Scorp said the ceremony must be abandoned. It wasn’t easy to get Ken back over the fields, and down the hill. As well as doing the recording—it was all wrecked when he fell—he’d been concentrating the will. He’d been giving it all he had. He wasn’t left with much will to get back to the caravan.’

  ‘And they just let you take notes?’

  ‘Scorp didn’t mind that. He even urged me to.’

  Gwinnett spoke as if that permission surprised him as much as it might surprise anyone else. He took the black notebook from under his arm, and began to turn its pages. They were full of small spidery handwriting.

  ‘Listen to this. When I first went to Ken Widmerpool’s place, and met Scorp, I was reminded of something I read not long before in one of the plays by Beaumont and Fletcher I’d been studying. I couldn’t remember just what the passage said. When I got back I hunted it up, and wrote the lines down.’

  Gwinnett’s hand shook a little while he held the notebook in front of him, but he managed to read out what was written there.

  ‘Take heed! this is your mother’s scorpion,

  That carries stings ev’n in his tears, whose soul

  Is a rank poison thorough; touch not at him;

  If you do, you’re gone, if you’d twenty lives.

  I knew him for a roguish boy

  When he would poison dogs, and keep tame toads;

  He lay with his mother, and infected her,

  And now she begs i’ th’ hospital, with a patch

  Of velvet where her nose stood, like the queen of spades,

  And all her teeth in her purse. The devil and

  This fellow are so near, ’tis not yet known

  Which is the ev’ler animal.’

  ‘Scorpio Murtlock to the life.’

  ‘He did shed tears during the rite. They poured down his cheeks. That was just before he gashed Ken.’

  ‘The familiar contemporary slur of our own day gains force of imagery in additionally giving your mother a dose.’

  ‘The kid in the play was the prototype maybe. Scorp’s in the same league.’

  ‘The girl called Fiona is a niece of ours.’

  Gwinnett seemed taken aback at that. The information must have started him off on a new train of thought.

  ‘I don’t know how that nice kid got mixed up with that kind of stuff. Rusty’s another matter. She’s just a tramp.’

  He brushed some of the mud from his sleeve. He appeared to feel quite strongly on the subject of Fiona, at the same time was unwilling to say more about her. That was like him.

  ‘I have to get back. I just wanted to make a few notes on the spot. I’ve done that. They’ll be useful. How do I find where I’ve parked, Nicholas?’

  ‘We’ll go as far as the top of the hill, and have a look round. You’ll probably be able to recognize the country better from there. Why don’t you have a sleep at your pub, then come over to us for lunch?’

  ‘No, I’ll sleep for an hour or two, if I can, then get back to London. I want to write while it’s all in my mind, but I’ve got to have my books handy too.’

  He made a movement with his shoulders, and gave a sort of groan, as if that had been painful. He was not at all well. I was rather relieved that he had refused an invitation to lunch. It would not have been an easy meal to sit through. We walked up the field together in silence. Round about the circle of elder trees the grass had been heavily trodden down. Rain was descending quite hard now. Gwinnett’s story had distracted attention from the weather. The men with flags were beginning to pack up, the inspecting party massing together again, on the way back to their cars; a few hardy individuals, Mrs Salter, for instance, continuing to talk with the quarry representatives, or make notes. Gwinnett and I reached the summit of the rise.

  ‘Have a look from here.’

  The far side sloped down to the waters from which The Fingers drank, when at midnight the cock crew. The Stones would probably need an extra drink after all that had happened during the past twelve hours. I did not mention the legend of their drinking to Gwinnett. It might seem a small matter, after whatever he himself had witnessed up there. We stood side by side on the edge of the hill. Fields and hedges stretched away in front; a few scattered farms; clumps of trees; telegraph poles; a pylon; far distant bluish uplands. The roofs of the small town, where Gwinnett was staying, were just visible in rainy haze. Main roads, hard to pick out in light diminished by heavy cloud, were marked from time to time by the passage of a lorry. Gwinnett stared for some seconds towards the country spread before us, rather than looking immediately below for his recent place of ascent. He pointed.

  ‘There they are.’

  He spoke in his usual low voice, quite dispassionately. A long way off, where two hedges met at a right angle, what might be the shape of a yellow caravan stood in the corner of a field. The sight of it seemed to cheer Gwinnett a little, convince him that he had not dreamt the whole experience. Now he was able to turn his attention to the land below, from which he had first approached The Fingers. While rain continued to fall he established his bearings.

  ‘That was the path.’

  He pointed down to a sharp decline in the ground, not far from where we stood. Away below to the left, in a hollow overgrown with yet more elder, thick in thistles and ragwort, two or three abandoned cars were slowly falling to pieces. They must have been driven in there, and dumped, from a nearby grass lane. Gwinnett’s vehicle, not visible from where we stood, was somewhere beyond these. He raised his hand in farewell. I did the same.

  ‘See you in London perhaps?’

  ‘I’ll be having to work hard through the summer and fall.’

  The answer seemed to indicate a wish to be left alone. That was understandable after all the things he had by now tolerated from the presence of other people. He edged unsteadily down the incline towards the brook. Rain was pouring so hard that I did not wait to see him negotiate its breadth, shallow and muddy, but too wide to jump with convenience. Probably he waded through. That would not have added much to the general disarray of his clothing. There was a flicker of forked lightning, a clatter of thunder. The whole atmosphere quivered with fluxes of electricity, discernible running through one’s limbs. At the same time the rain itself greatly abated, diminishing to a few drops that continued to fall. The lightning flickered again, this time across the whole sky. I hurried to rejoin the rest of the party, hastening away like an army in full retreat. In the big field I noticed the ruts, where Ernie Dunch had so violently reversed the Land Rover. They were now filled with water. Mr Goldney, of the archaeological society, collar turned up, hands in pockets, appeared. He was half running, but slowed up, supposing I was looking for something.

  ‘No weather to search for flints. I once picked up a piece of Samian ware not far from here. It’s an interesting little site. Not up to The Whispering Knights, where I was last month. That’s an altogether grander affair. Still, we have to be grateful for what we have in our own neighbourhood.’
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  ‘Why is it called The Whispering Knights? I’ve heard the name, but never been there.’

  ‘During a battle some knights were standing apart, plotting against their king. A witch passed, and turned them into stone for their treachery.’

  ‘Perhaps a witch will be waiting at the stile, and do the same to the quarry directors. Then we’ll have a second monument up here.’

  Mr Goldney did not reply. He looked rather prim, shocked at so malign a concept, or unwilling to countenance light words on the subject of folklore. Rain had possibly soaked him past the threshold of small-talk. Mr Tudor, in company with Mrs Salter, both very wet, joined us. Mr Tudor showed signs of a tempered optimism so far as to the outcome of the meeting.

  ‘The Advisory Committee will have to get together again, Mr Goldney. Will Thursday at the same hour suit you? There’s the correspondence with the Alkali Inspector we ought to go through again in relation to new points raised in consequence of today’s meeting.’

  ‘That’s all right for me, Mr Tudor, and I’d like to bring up haulage problems.’

  Mrs Salter sliced at a bramble with her pruning-hook.

  ‘Even Mr Gollop admits haulage problems. At first he was evasive. I wouldn’t have that.’

  Isobel, after a final word with Mr Todman, caught us up.

  ‘Who was the man you were talking to on the ridge?’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it on the way home.’

  ‘You looked a very strange couple silhouetted against the skyline.’

  ‘We were.’

  ‘A bit sinister.’

  ‘Your instincts are correct.’

  The company scattered to their cars. Mr Gauntlett, an elderly woodland sprite untroubled by rain—if anything, finding refreshment in a downpour—disappeared on foot along a green lane. The rest of us drove away. The meeting had been a success in spite of the weather. Its consequence, assisted by the findings of the Advisory Committee, and the individual activities of Mr Tudor, was that a Government Enquiry was ordered by the Ministry. To have brought that about was a step in the right direction, even if the findings of such an Enquiry must always be unpredictable. That was emphasized by Mr Gauntlett, when I met him some weeks later, out with his gun, and the labrador that had replaced Daisy.

  ‘Ah. We shall see what we shall see.’

  He made no further reference to nocturnal horned dancers round about The Devil’s Fingers. Neither did I, though their image haunted the mind. It was not quite the scene portrayed by Poussin, even if elements of the Seasons’ dance were suggested in a perverted form; not least by Widmerpool, perhaps naked, doing the recording. From what Gwinnett had said, a battle of wills seemed to be in progress. If, having decided that material things were vain, Widmerpool had turned to the harnessing of quite other forces, it looked as if he were losing ground in rivalry with a younger man. Perhaps the contest should be thought of—if Widmerpool were Orlando—as one of Orlando’s frequent struggles with wizards. Or—since the myth was in every respect upsidedown—was Murtlock even Widmerpool’s Astolpho, playing him false?

  I did not see Delavacquerie again until the early autumn. I wanted to hear his opinion about Gwinnett’s inclusion in the rites at The Devil’s Fingers. As someone belonging to a younger generation than my own, coming from a different hemisphere, a poet with practical knowledge of the business world, who possessed personal acquaintance with several of the individuals concerned in an episode that took a fairly high place for horror, as well as extravagance, Delavacquerie’s objective comment would be of interest. For one reason or another—I, too, was away for a month or more—we did not meet; nor did I hear anything further of Gwinnett himself, or his associates of that night.

  When a meeting with Delavacquerie took place he announced at once that he was feeling depressed. That was not uncommon. It was usually the result of being put out about his own business routine, or simply from lack of time to ‘write’. He did not look well, poor states of health always darkening his complexion. I thought it more than possible that the trip with Polly Duport had not been a success; projected marriage decided against, or shelved. On the principle of not playing out aces at the start of the game, I did not immediately attack the subject of The Devil’s Fingers. Then Delavacquerie himself launched into an altogether unforeseen aspect of the same sequence of circumstances.

  ‘Look, I’m in rather a mess at the moment. Not a mess so much as a tangle. I’d like to speak about it. Do you mind? That’s more to clear my own head than to ask advice. You may be able to advise too. Can you stand my talking a lot about my own affairs?’

  ‘Easily.’

  ‘I’ll start from the beginning. That is always best. My own situation. The fact that I like it over here, but England isn’t my country. I haven’t got a country. I’m rootless. I’m not grumbling about being rootless, especially these days. It even has advantages. At the same time certain problems are raised too.’

  ‘You’ve spoken of all this on earlier occasions. Did going home bring it back in an acute form?’

  Delavacquerie dismissed that notion with a violent gesture.

  ‘I know I’ve talked of all this before. It’s quite true. Perhaps I am over-obsessed by it. I am just repeating the fact as a foundation to what I am going to say, a reminder to myself that I’m never sure how much I understand people over here. Their reactions often seem to me different from my own, and from those of the people I was brought up with. Quite different. I’ve written poems about all this.’

  ‘I’ve read them.’

  Delavacquerie stopped for a moment. He seemed to be deciding the form in which some complicated statement should be made. He began again.

  ‘I spoke to you once, I remember, of my son, Etienne.’

  ‘You said he’d had some sort of thing for our niece, Fiona, which had been broken off, probably on account of that young man, Murtlock. I’m in a position to tell you more about all that—’

  ‘Hold it for the moment.’

  ‘My additions to the story are of a fantastic and outrageous kind.’

  ‘Never mind. I don’t doubt what you say. I just want to put my own case first. That is best. We’ll come to what you know later—and I’m sure it will help me to hear it, even if I’ve heard some of it already. But I was speaking of Etienne. He has been doing well. He got a scholarship, which has taken him to America. By then he had found a new girl. She’s a nice girl. It seems fairly serious. They keep up a regular correspondence.’

  ‘How does he like the States?’

  ‘All right.’

  Whether or not Etienne liked the US did not seem to be the point. Delavacquerie paused again. He laughed rather uncomfortably.

  ‘When Fiona was about the place, with Etienne, I noticed that I was getting interested in the girl myself. It wasn’t more than that. I wasn’t in love. Not in the slightest. Just interested. You will have had sufficient experience of such things to know what I am talking about—appreciate the differentiation I draw.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I examined myself carefully in that connexion at the time. I found it possible to issue an absolutely clean bill of health, temperature, pulse, blood pressure, above all heart, all quite normal. I didn’t even particularly want to sleep with her, though I might have tried to do so, had the situation been other than it was. The point I want to make is that the situation was not in the least like that of The Humorous Lieutenant, the King trying to seduce his son’s girlfriend, as soon as the son himself was out of the way.’

  ‘No love potions lying about.’

  ‘You never know when you’re not going to drink one by mistake, but in this case I had not done so.’

  ‘May I ask a question?’

  ‘Questions might clarify my own position. I welcome them. All I wish to curtail, for the moment, is competing narrative, until I’ve finished my own.’

  ‘How was this feeling of interest in Fiona related to your other more permanent commitment?’

&nbs
p; ‘To Polly? But, of course. That is just what I meant. How shall I put it? If, as I said, the case had been other, the possibility of a temporary run around might not have been altogether ruled out. You understand what I mean?’

  ‘Keeping it quiet from Polly?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Would Fiona herself have been prepared for a temporary run around—I mean had the situation, as you put it, been quite other?’

  ‘Who can say? You never know till you try. Besides, if things had been different, they would have been totally different. That is something that perhaps only those—like ourselves—engaged in the arrangement of words fully understand. The smallest alteration in a poem, or a novel, can change its whole emphasis, whole meaning. The same is true of any given situation in life too, though few are aware of that. It was because things were as they were, that the amitié was formed. Perhaps that amitié would never have been established had we met somewhere quite fortuitously.’

  ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘Then—as I told you—Etienne’s thing with Fiona blew over. She went off with Murtlock, whether immediately, I’m not sure, but she went off. Passed entirely out of Etienne’s life, and, naturally, out of mine too. I was rather glad. For one thing I preferred what existed already to remain altogether undisturbed. It suited me. It suited my work. I forgot about Fiona. Even the interest—interest, as opposed to love—proved to have been of the most transient order.’

  I wholly accepted Delavacquerie’s picture. Everything in connexion with it carried conviction—several different varieties of conviction. I could not at all guess where his story was going to lead. Inwardly, I flattered myself that my own narration, when I was allowed to unfold it, would cap anything he could produce.

  ‘I told you, before I went away, that Gwinnett was going to see Widmerpool. That visit took place.’

  ‘I know. You haven’t heard my story yet. I’ve seen Gwinnett since he told you that.’

  ‘I myself have not seen Gwinnett, but keep your story just a moment longer. Gwinnett, in fact, seems to have disappeared, perhaps left London. Murtlock, on the other hand, has been in touch with me.’