The Kindly Ones

by Anthony Powell

  ‘Still, you are fortunate.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘With your bookish days, not, like Kenneth, in arms.’

  ‘He seems a Happy Warrior.’

  ‘It is not in his nature to remain in civil life at time of war,’ she said.

  ‘I will say good night, then.’

  ‘Good luck to you,’ she said, ‘wherever you may find yourself in these troublous times.’

  She gave me another smile of great malignance, returning immediately to her discussions about rent. Widmerpool half raised his hand in a gesture of farewell. Moreland and I left the house together.

  ‘What the hell were you doing in that place?’ he asked, as we walked up the street.

  ‘Molly Jeavons is an aunt of Isobel’s. It is a perfectly normal place for me to be. Far stranger that you yourself should turn up there.’

  ‘You’re right about that,’ Moreland said. ‘I can’t quite make out how I did. Things have been moving rather quickly with me the last few months. Who was that terrifying woman you said good-bye to?’

  ‘Mother of the man in spectacles called Widmerpool. You met him with me at a nursing home years ago.’

  ‘No recollection,’ said Moreland, ‘though he seemed familiar. His mother began on Scriabin as soon as I arrived in the house. Told me the Poème de l’Extase was her favourite musical work. I say, I’m feeling like hell. Far from de l ’extase.’

  ‘What’s been happening? I didn’t even know you’d left the country.’

  ‘The country, as it were, left me,’ said Moreland. ‘At least Matilda did, which came to much the same thing.’

  ‘How did all this come about?’

  ‘I hardly know myself.’

  ‘Has she gone off with somebody?’

  ‘Gone back to Donners.’

  The information was so grotesque that at first I could hardly take it seriously. Then I saw as a possibility that a row might have taken place and Matilda done this from pique. At certain seasons, Matilda, admittedly, had a fairly rough time living with Moreland. She might require a short spell of rich life to put her right, although (as Mrs Widmerpool could have said) wartime was hardly the moment to pursue rich life. Sir Magnus Donners, as a former lover, himself no longer young, would provide a comparatively innocuous vehicle for such a temporary interlude. The Moreland situation, regarded in these cold-blooded terms, might be undesirable certainly, at the same time not beyond hope.

  ‘I’ll tell the story when we get to the restaurant,’ said Moreland. ‘I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. Just had a few doubles.’

  We found the Scarlet Pimpernel soon after this. The place was not full. We took a table in the corner at the back of the room. At this early stage of the war, it was still possible to order a bottle of wine without undue difficulty and expense. The food, as Molly Jeavons had said, turned out better than might have been expected from the mob-caps of the waitresses and general tone of the establishment. After some soup and a glass of wine Moreland began to recover himself.

  ‘One always imagines things happen in hot blood,’ he said. ‘An ill-considered remark starts a row. Hard words follow, misunderstandings. Matters that can be put right in the end. Unfortunately life doesn’t work out like that. First of all there is no row, secondly, nothing can be put right.’

  ‘Barnby says he is always on his guard when things are going well with a woman.’

  ‘Still, your wife,’ said Moreland, ‘it’s bloody uncomfortable if things are not going well between yourself and your wife. I speak from experience. All the same, there may be something in Barnby’s view. You remember the business about me and – well – your sister-in-law, Priscilla?’

  ‘You conveyed at the time that a situation existed – then ceased to exist, or was stifled in some way.’

  I did not see why I should help Moreland out beyond a certain point. If he wanted to tell his story, he must supply the facts, not reveal one half and allow the other to be guessed.

  He had always been too fond of doing that when extracting sympathy for his emotional tangles. No one had ever known what had happened about himself and Priscilla, only that some close relationship had existed between them, which had caused a great deal of disturbance in his married life. Some explanation was required. The situation could not be pieced together merely from a series of generalisations about matrimony.

  ‘Anything you like,’ said Moreland. ‘The point is that, during that rather tricky period, Matty could not have behaved better. She was absolutely marvellous – really marvellous. It was the one thing that made the whole awfulness of life possible when …’

  He did not finish the sentence, but meant, I supposed, when the affair with Priscilla was at an end.

  ‘Why on earth, if Matty was going to leave me, didn’t she leave me then? I’ll tell you. She enjoyed the emotional strain of it all. Women are like that, the lame girl in Dostoevsky who said she didn’t want to be happy.’

  ‘How did it start?’

  ‘Matilda was in a show that opened in the provinces – Brighton or somewhere. She just wrote and said she was not returning home, would I send her things along, such as they were. She had already taken most of her clothes with her, so I presume she had already decided on leaving when she set out.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Two or three weeks.’

  ‘Is it generally known?’

  ‘Not yet, I think. Matilda is often away acting, so it is quite usual for her to be absent from home.’

  ‘And you had no warning that all was not well?’

  ‘I am the most modest man in the world when it is a question of trying to make a woman fall for me,’ said Moreland. ‘I never expect I shall bring it off. On the other hand, once she’s fallen, I can never really believe she will prefer someone else. These things are just the way vanity happens to take you.’

  ‘But where does Donners come in? She can’t have fallen for him.’

  ‘She has been going over to Stourwater fairly often., She made no secret of that. Why should she? There didn’t seem any reason to object. What could I do, anyway? You remember we all dined there that rather grim evening when everyone dressed up as the Seven Deadly Sins. I recall now, that was where I saw your friend Widmerpool before. Does he always haunt my worst moments? Anyway, Matilda’s visits to Stourwater were of that sort, nothing serious.’

  ‘Is Matilda living at Stourwater at this moment?’

  ‘No – staying in the flat of a girl she knows in London, another actress. The point is this: if I allow Matilda to divorce me, Donners will marry her.’

  ‘No.’

  Moreland laughed.

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ he said. ‘I see I have surprised you.’

  ‘You certainly have.’

  ‘It now turns out that Donners asked her to marry him before – when she was mixed up with him years ago.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘But will you let yourself be divorced?’

  ‘I’ve tried every way of getting her back,’ said Moreland. ‘She is quite firm. I don’t want to be just spiteful about it. If she is consumed with a desire to become Lady Donners, Lady Donners let her be.’

  ‘But to want to be Lady Donners is so unlike Matilda – especially as she turned down the offer in the past.’

  ‘You think it unlike her?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Not entirely. She can be tough, you know. One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.’

  ‘Have you no idea what went wrong?’

  ‘None – except, as I say, the Priscilla business. I thought that was all forgotten. Perhaps it was, and life with me was just too humdrum. Now I’ll tell you something else that may surprise you. Nothing ever took place between Priscilla and myself. We never went to bed.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t really
know,’ said Moreland slowly, ‘perhaps because there did not seem anywhere to go. That’s so often one of the problems. I’ve thought about the subject a lot. One might write a story about two lovers who have nowhere to go. They are at their wits’ end. Then they pretend they are newly married and apply to a different estate-agent every week to inspect unfurnished houses and flats. As often as not they are given the key and manage to have an hour alone together. Inventive, don’t you think? I was crazy about Priscilla. Then Maclintick committed suicide and everything was altered. I felt upset, couldn’t think about girls and all that. That was when Priscilla herself decided things had better stop. I suppose the whole business shook the boat so far as my own marriage was concerned. It seemed to recover. I thought we were getting on all right. I was wrong.’

  I was reminded of Duport telling me about Jean, although no one could have been less like Jean than Matilda, less like Moreland than Duport.

  ‘The fact is,’ said Moreland, ‘Matilda lost interest in me. With women, that situation is like a vacuum. It must be filled. They begin to look round for someone else. She decided on Donners.’

  ‘She was still pretty interested in you at the party Mrs Foxe gave for your symphony.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She talked to me about it.’

  ‘While I was getting off with Priscilla?’

  ‘More or less.’

  Moreland made a grimace.

  ‘Surely she’ll come back in the end?’ I said.

  ‘You see, I’m not absolutely certain I want Matilda back,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I feel I can’t live without her, other times, that I can’t bear the thought of having her in the house. In real life, things are much worse than as represented in books. In books, you love somebody and want them, win them or lose them. In real life, so often, you love them and don’t want them, or want them and don’t love them.’

  ‘You make it all sound difficult.’

  ‘I sometimes think all I myself require is a quiet life,’ said Moreland. ‘For some unaccountable reason it is always imagined that people like oneself want to be rackety. Of course I want some fun occasionally, but so does everyone else.’

  ‘What does Matilda want? A lot of money?’

  ‘Not in the obvious way, diamonds and things. Matilda has wanted for a long time to spread her wings. She knows at last that she will never be any good as an actress. She wants power. Plenty of power. When we were first married she arranged all my life for me. Arranged rather too much. I’m not sure she liked it when I made a small name for myself – if one may be said to have made a small name for oneself.’

  ‘She will have to play second fiddle to Sir Magnus, more even than to yourself.’

  ‘Not second fiddle as an artist – as an actress, in her case. Being an artist – to use old fashioned terminology, but what other can one use? – partakes of certain feminine characteristics, is therefore peculiarly provoking for women to live with. In some way, the more “masculine” an artist is, the worse her predicament. If he is really homosexual, or hopelessly incapable of dealing with everyday life, it is almost easier.’

  ‘I can think of plenty of examples to the contrary.’

  ‘Anyway, there will be compensations with Donners. Matilda will operate on a large scale. She will have her finger in all kind of pies.’

  ‘Still, what pies.’

  ‘Not very intellectual ones, certainly,’ said Moreland, ‘but then the minds of most women are unamusing, unoriginal, determinedly banal. Matilda is not one of the exceptions. Is it surprising one is always cuckolded by middlebrows?’

  ‘But you talk as if these matters were all concerned with the mind.’

  Moreland laughed.

  ‘I once asked Barnby if he did not find most women extraordinarily unsensual,’ he said. ‘Do you know what he answered?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He said, “I’ve never noticed.”’

  I laughed too.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Moreland, ‘had you asked Lloyd George, “Don’t you think politics rather corrupt?”, he might have made the same reply. Minor factors disappear when you are absorbed by any subject. You know, one of the things about being deserted is that it leaves you in a semi-castrated condition. You’re incapable of fixing yourself up with an alternative girl. Deserting people, on the other hand, is positively stimulating. I don’t mind betting that Matty is surrounded by admirers at this moment. Do you remember when we heard that crippled woman singing in Gerrard Street years ago:

  Whom do you lead on Rapture’s roadway, far,

  Before you agonize them in farewell?

  That’s what it comes to. But look who has just arrived.’

  Three people were sitting down at a table near the door of the restaurant. They were Mark Members, J. G. Quiggin and Anne Umfraville.

  ‘I feel better after getting all that off my chest,’ said Moreland.

  ‘Shall we go back?’

  ‘Do you think Lady Molly will have forgotten who I am?’ said Moreland. ‘It’s terribly kind of her to put me up like this, but you know what bad memories warm hearted people have.’

  I saw from that Moreland had perfectly grasped Molly Jeavons’s character. Nothing was more probable than that she would have to be reminded of the whole incident of inviting him to the house when she saw him at breakfast the following morning. Like so many persons who live disordered lives, Moreland had peculiar powers of falling on his feet, an instinctive awareness of where to look for help. That was perhaps the legacy of early poverty. He and Molly Jeavons – although she made no claims whatever to know about the arts – would understand each other. If he overstayed his welcome – with Moreland not inconceivable – she would throw him out without the smallest ill-feeling on either side.

  ‘We might have a word with the literary critics on the way out,’ said Moreland.

  ‘What happened to Anne Umfraville in the light of recent developments?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Moreland. ‘I thought she was interested in your friend Templer. I understand she was passing out of Donners’s life in any case. She must have made some new friends.’

  We paid the bill, pausing on the way out at the table by the door.

  ‘Who told you of this restaurant?’ said Quiggin. ‘I thought it was only known to Anne and myself – you have met, of course?’

  His air was somewhat proprietorial.

  ‘Anne has a flat not far from here,’ he said. ‘Mark and I have been working late there.’

  ‘What at?’

  ‘Proofs,’ said Quiggin.

  He did not explain what kind of proofs. Neither Moreland nor I inquired.

  ‘How is Matty, Hugh?’ asked Members.

  ‘On tour.’

  ‘I do adore Matilda,’ said Anne Umfraville. ‘Have you been to Stourwater lately? I have rather quarrelled with Magnus. He can be so tiresome. So pompous, you know.’

  ‘I don’t live near there any longer,’ said Moreland, ‘so we haven’t met for a month or two. Sir Magnus himself is no longer occupying the castle, of course. It has been taken over by the government, but I can’t remember for what purpose. Just as a castle, I suppose.’

  ‘What a ludicrous way this war is being run,’ said Quiggin. ‘I was talking to Howard Craggs about its inanities last night. Have you got a decent shelter where you live?’

  ‘I’m just going back there,’ said Moreland, ‘never to emerge.’

  ‘Give my love to Matty when you next see her,’ said Members.

  ‘And mine,’ said Anne Umfraville.

  We said good night.

  ‘I think people know about Matilda,’ said Moreland.

  We passed through streets lit only by a cold autumnal moon.

  ‘Have you the key?’

  Moreland found it at last. We went upstairs to the drawing-room. Jeavons was wandering about restlessly. He had abandoned his beret, now wore a mackintosh over pyjamas. His brother was in an armchair, smoking his pipe and
going through a pile of papers beside him on the floor. He would check each document, then place it on a stack the other side of his chair.

  ‘We got rid of them at last,’ said Jeavons. ‘Molly’s gone to bed. They struck a pretty hard bargain with Stanley. Still, the place seems to suit. That’s what matters. I’d rather it was Lil than me. What was dinner like?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘How was our blackout as you came up the street?’

  ‘Not a chink of light.’

  ‘Have some beer?’

  ‘I think I’ll go straight to bed, if you don’t mind,’ said Moreland. ‘I feel a bit done in.’

  I had never heard Moreland refuse a drink before. He must have been utterly exhausted. He had cheered up during dinner. Now he looked like death again.

  ‘I’ll come up with you to make sure the blackout won’t fall down,’ said Jeavons. ‘Never do to be fined as a warden.’

  ‘Good night, Nick.’

  ‘Good night.’

  They went upstairs. Stanley Jeavons threw down what was apparently the last of his papers. He took the pipe from his mouth and began to knock it out against his heel. He sighed deeply. ‘I think I’ll have a glass of beer too,’ he said. He helped himself and sat down again. ‘It’s extraordinary,’ he said, ‘how you get a hunch from a chap’s handwriting if he’s done three years for fraudulent conversion.’

  ‘In business?’

  ‘In business, too. I meant in what I’m doing now.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Reservists.’ ‘For the army?’

  ‘Sorting them out. Got a pile of their personal details here. Stacks more at the office. Brought a batch home to work on.’

  ‘Then what happens?’

  ‘Some of them get called up.’

  ‘I’m on some form of the Reserve myself.’

  ‘Which one?’

  I told him.

  ‘You’ll probably come my way in due course – or one of my colleagues’.’

  ‘Could it be speeded up?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Finding my name.’

  ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t see why not.’

  ‘You could?’

  ‘M’m.’

  ‘Fairly soon?’