‘There will be a row about that,’ said Moreland, after Maclintick had disappeared.
‘Do they quarrel?’
‘Just a bit.’
‘Where shall we dine?’ said Barnby. ‘Foppa’s?’
‘No, I lunched at Foppa’s,’ Moreland said. ‘I can’t stand Foppa’s twice in a day. It would be like going back to one’s old school. Do you know Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant? It hasn’t been open long. Let’s eat there.’
‘I am not sure my stomach is up to Chinese food,’ said Barnby. ‘I didn’t get to bed until three this morning.’
‘You can have eggs or something like that.’
‘Won’t the eggs be several hundred years old? Still, we will go there if you insist. Anything to save a restaurant argument. Where is the place?’
Maclintick returned from telephoning. He bought himself a final Irish whiskey and drank it off. Conversation with his wife had been, as Moreland predicted, acrimonious. When told our destination was Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant Maclintick made a face; but he failed to establish any rival claim in favour of somewhere he would prefer to eat, so the decision was confirmed. I asked how such a recklessly hybrid name had ever been invented.
‘There used to be the New Casanova,’ said Moreland, ‘where the cooking was Italian and the decoration French eighteenth century – some way, some considerable way, after Watteau. Further up the street was the Amoy, called by some Sam’s Chinese Restaurant. The New Casanova went into liquidation. Sam’s bought it up and moved over their pots and pans and chopsticks, so now you can eat eight treasure rice, or bamboo shoots fried with pork ribbons, under panels depicting scenes from the career of the Great Lover.’
‘What are prices like?’ asked Barnby.
‘One might almost say cheap. On Sunday there is an orchestra of three and dainty afternoon tea is served. You can even dance. Maclintick has been there, haven’t you, Maclintick?’
‘Must it be Chinese food tonight?’ said Maclintick peevishly. ‘I’ve a touch of enteritis as it is.’
‘Remember some of the waitresses are rather attractive,’ said Moreland persuasively.
‘Chinese?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Moreland, ‘English.’
He laughed a little self-consciously.
‘Bet you’ve got your eye on one,’ said Barnby.
I think Barnby made this remark as a matter of routine, either without bothering to consider the matter at all carefully, or on the safe assumption that no one would take the trouble to mention the fact that any given group of girls was above the average in looks without having singled out at least one of them for himself. That would unquestionably have been Barnby’s own procedure. Alternatively, Moreland may have spoken of Casanova’s on an earlier occasion, thereby giving Barnby reason to suspect there must be something special that attracted Moreland personally to the place. In any case, the imputation was not surprising, although Barnby’s own uninterrupted interest in the subject always made him perceptive where the question of a woman, or women, was concerned. However, Moreland went red at the enquiry. He was in one sense, easily embarrassed about any matter that touched him intimately; although, at the same time, his own mind moved too quickly for him to be placed long at a disadvantage by those who hoped to tease. In such situations he was pretty adept at turning the tables.
‘I had my eye on a girl there formerly,’ he said, ‘I admit that. It wasn’t entirely the excellent pig’s trotter soup that brought me back to Casanova’s. However, I can visit that restaurant now without a tremor – not a concupiscent thought. My pleasure in the place has become purely that of gourmet of Cathay. A triumph of self-mastery. I will point the girl out to you, Ralph.’
‘What happened?’ asked Barnby. ‘Did she leave you for the man who played the trombone?’
‘One just wasn’t a success,’ said Moreland, reddening again. ‘Anyway, I will show you the problem as it stood – no doubt as it stands. Nothing altered, so far as I know, except my own point of view. But let’s be moving. I’m famished.’
The name Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant offered one of those unequivocal blendings of disparate elements of the imagination which suggest a whole new state of mind or way of life. The idea of Casanova giving his name to a Chinese restaurant linked not only the East with the West, the present with the past, but also, more parochially, suggested by its own incongruity an immensely suitable place for all of us to have dinner that night. We arrived in two large rooms, in which most of the tables were filled. The clientèle, predominantly male and Asiatic, had a backbone of Chinese businessmen and Indian students. A few Negroes sat with very blonde white girls; a sprinkling of diners belonged to those ethnically indefinable races which colonise Soho and interbreed there. Along the walls frescoes tinted in pastel shades, executed with infinite feebleness of design, appealed to Heaven knows what nadir of aesthetic degradation. Almost as soon as we found a table, I marked down Moreland’s waitress. She was tall, very thin, fair-haired and blue-eyed, at that moment carrying a lot of glasses on a tray. The girl was certainly noticeable in her white lace cap and small frilled white apron above a black dress and black cotton stockings, the severity of this uniform, her own pale colouring, lending a curious exoticism to her appearance in these pseudo-oriental surroundings. There was an air of childlike innocence about her that could easily be deceptive. Indeed, when more closely observed, she had some of the look of a very expensive, rather wicked little doll. Moreland’s answer to Barnby’s almost immediate request to have ‘the girl we have come to see’ pointed out to him, confirmed the correctness of this guess. Barnby took one of his lingering, professional stares.
‘Rather an old man’s piece, isn’t she?’ he said. ‘Still, I see your point. Poorish legs, though.’
‘You mustn’t concentrate on legs if your interest is in waitresses,’ said Moreland. ‘The same is true of ballet dancers, I’m afraid.’
‘She looks as if she might well be a nymphomaniac,’ said Maclintick, ‘those very fair, innocent-looking girls often are. I think I mentioned that to Moreland when he brought me here before.’
Maclintick had hardly spoken since we left the Mortimer. Now he uttered these words in a tone of deep pessimism, as if, so far, he had resented every moment of the evening. He greatly disapproved of Barnby, whose inclination for women was as irksome to him as Mr Deacon’s so downright repudiation of the opposite sex. Maclintick possibly thought Barnby had a bad influence on Moreland.
‘She showed no sign of being a nympho,’ Moreland said. ‘On the contrary. I could have done with a little nymphomania – anyway at the start.’
‘What are we going to eat?’ said Barnby. ‘I can’t make head or tail of this menu.’
Maclintick and Barnby ordered something unadventurous from the dishes available; under Moreland’s guidance, I embarked upon one of the specialities of the house. Moreland’s waitress came to take our order for drinks. Although a restaurant of some size, Casanova’s had no licence, so that a member of the staff collected beer from the pub opposite, or wine from the shop round the corner. When she came up to the table the waitress gave Moreland a cold, formal smile of recognition, which freely acknowledged him as a regular customer, but suggested no more affectionate relationship. Close up, she looked, I thought, as hard as nails; I did not feel at all tempted to enter into competition. Barnby eyed her. She took no notice of him whatever, noting our orders in silence and disappearing.
‘Too thin for my taste,’ said Barnby. ‘I like a good armful.’
‘This lascivious conversation is very appropriate to the memory of the distinguished Venetian gentleman after whom the restaurant is named,’ said Maclintick harshly. ‘What a bore he must have been.’
He leant across the table, and, like an angry woodpecker, began to tap out his pipe against the side of a large Schweppes ashtray.
‘Do you suppose one would have known Casanova?’ I said.
‘Oh, but of course,’ said Moreland. ‘
In early life, Casanova played the violin – like Carolo. Casanova played in a band – I doubt if he would have been up to a solo performance. I can just imagine what he would have been like to deal with if one had been the conductor. Besides, he much fancied himself as a figure at the opera and musical parties. One would certainly have met him. At least I am sure I should.’
‘Think of having to listen to interminable stories about his girls,’ said Maclintick. ‘I could never get through Casanova’s Memoirs. Why should he be considered a great man just because he had a lot of women? Most men would have ended by being bored to death.’
‘That is why he was a great man,’ said Moreland. ‘It wasn’t the number of women he had, it was the fact that he didn’t get bored. But there are endless good things there apart from the women. Do you remember when in London he overhears someone remark: “Tommy has committed suicide and he did quite right” – to which another person replies: “On the contrary, he did a very foolish thing, for I am one of his creditors and know that he need not have made away with himself for six months”.’
Barnby and I laughed at this anecdote. Maclintick did not smile. At the same time he seemed struck by the story. He was silent for some moments. When he spoke again it was in a manner at once more serious, more friendly, than any tone he had previously employed that evening.
‘I see nothing particularly funny in their conversation,’ he said. ‘That is how I propose to behave myself when the time comes. But I agree that Tommy was a fool to misjudge his term of days. I shall not do that. I give myself at least five more years at the present rate. That should allow me time to finish my book.’
‘Still,’ said Moreland, ‘however bent one may be on the idea of eventual suicide oneself, you must admit, Maclintick, that such sentiments must have sounded odd to a man of Casanova’s joie de vivre. Anyway, professional seducers never commit suicide. They haven’t time.’
‘The notable thing about professional seducers,’ said Maclintick, now returning to his former carping tone of voice, ‘is the rot they talk when they are doing their seducing. There is not a single cliché they leave unsaid.’
‘Although by definition the most egotistical of men,’ said Moreland, ‘they naturally have to develop a certain anonymity of style to make themselves acceptable to all women. It is the case of the lowest common factor – or is it the highest common denominator? If you hope to rise to the top class in seducing, you must appeal to the majority. As the majority are not very intelligent, you must conceal your own intelligence – if you have the misfortune to possess such a thing – in order not to frighten the girls off. There is inevitably something critical, something alarming to personal vanity, in the very suggestion of intelligence in another. That is almost equally true of dealing with men, so don’t think I hold it against women. All I say is, that someone like myself ought to restrict themselves to intelligent girls who see my own good points. Unfortunately, they are rarely the sort of girls I like.’
Barnby grunted, no doubt feeling some of these strictures in part applicable to himself.
‘What do you expect to do?’ he asked. ‘Give readings from The Waste Land?’
‘Not a bad idea,’ said Moreland.
‘In my experience,’ Barnby said, ‘women like the obvious.’
‘Just what we are complaining about,’ said Maclintick, ‘the very thing.’
‘Seduction is to do and say/The banal thing in the banal way,’ said Moreland. ‘No one denies that. My own complaint is that people always talk about love affairs as if you spent the whole of your time in bed. I find most of my own emotional energy – not to say physical energy – is exhausted in making efforts to get there. Problems of Time and Space as usual.’
The relation of Time and Space, then rather fashionable, was, I found, a favourite subject of Moreland’s.
‘Surely we have long agreed the two elements are identical?’ said Maclintick. ‘This is going over old ground – perhaps I should say old hours.’
‘You must differentiate for everyday purposes, don’t you?’ urged Barnby. ‘I don’t wonder seduction seems a problem, if you get Time and Space confused.’
‘I suppose one might be said to be true to a woman in Time and unfaithful to her in Space,’ said Moreland. ‘That is what Dowson seems to have thought about Cynara – or is it just the reverse? The metaphysical position is not made wholly clear by the poet. Talking of pale lost lilies, how do you think Edgar and Norman are faring in their deal?’
‘Remember Lot’s wife,’ said Maclintick sententiously. ‘Besides, we have a cruet on the table. Here are the drinks at last, thank God. You know Pope says every woman is at heart a rake. I’d be equally prepared to postulate that every rake is at heart a woman. Don Juan – Casanova – Byron – the whole bloody lot of them.’
‘But Don Juan was not at all the same as Casanova,’ said Moreland. ‘The opera makes that quite clear. Ralph here sometimes behaves like Casanova. He isn’t in the least like Don Juan – are you, Ralph?’
I was myself not sure this assessment of Barnby’s nature was wholly accurate; but, if distinction were to be drawn between those two legendary seducers, the matter was at least arguable. Barnby himself was now showing signs of becoming rather nettled by this conversation.
‘Look here,’ he said. ‘My good name keeps on being bandied about in a most uncalled for manner. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind defining the differences between these various personages with whom I am being so freely compared. I had better be told for certain, otherwise I shall be behaving in a way that is out of character, which would never do.’
‘Don Juan merely liked power,’ said Moreland. ‘He obviously did not know what sensuality was. If he knew it at all, he hated it. Casanova, on the other hand, undoubtedly had his sensual moments, even though they may not have occurred very often. With Henriette, for example, or those threesomes with the nun, M.M. Of course, Casanova was interested in power too. No doubt he ended as a complete Narcissus, when love naturally became intolerable to him, since love involved him with another party emotionally. Every Narcissus dislikes that. None of us regards Ralph as only wanting power where a woman is concerned. We think too highly of you for that, Ralph.’
Barnby did not appear flattered by this analysis of his emotional life.
‘Thanks awfully,’ he said. ‘But, to get down to more immediate matters, how would you feel, Hugh, if I asked that waitress to sit for me? For reasons of trade, rather than power or sensuality. Of course she is bound to think I am trying to get off with her. Nothing could be further from the case – no, I assure you, Maclintick. Anyway, I don’t expect she will agree. No harm in trying, though. I just wanted to make sure you had no objection. To show how little of a Casanova I am – or is it a Don Juan?’
‘Take any step you think best,’ said Moreland laughing, although perhaps not best pleased by what Barnby had asked. ‘I have resigned all claims. I don’t quite see her in your medium, but that is obviously the painter’s own affair. If I have a passion for anyone, I prefer an academic, even pedestrian, naturalism of portraiture. It is a limitation I share with Edgar Deacon. Nothing I’d care for less than to have my girl painted by Lhote or Gleizes, however much I may admire those painters – literally – in the abstract.’
All the same, although he put a good face on it, Moreland looked a little cast down. No more was said on the subject until the time came to make our individual contributions to the bill. The waitress appeared again. She explained that she had omitted at an earlier stage of the meal to collect some of the money due for what we had drunk. She now presented her final account. At this point Barnby took the opportunity to allow himself certain pleasantries – these a trifle on the ponderous side, as he himself admitted later – to the effect that she was demanding money under false pretences. The waitress received these comments in good part, unbending so far as to hint that she had not levied the charge before, because, having taken one look at Barnby, she had been sure he would give a furt
her order for drink; she had accordingly decided to wait until the account was complete. Barnby listened to this explanation gravely, making no attempt to answer in the breezy manner he had employed a few seconds earlier this imputation of possessing a bibulous appearance. Just as the girl was about to withdraw, he spoke.
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I’m an artist – I paint people’s pictures.’
She did not look at him, or answer, but she stopped giggling, while at the same time making no attempt to move away from the table.
‘I’d like to paint you.’
She still did not speak. Her expression changed in a very slight degree, registering what might have been embarrassment or cunning.
‘Could you come and be painted by me some time?’
Barnby put the question in a quiet, almost exaggeratedly gentle voice; one I had never before heard him use.
‘Don’t know that I have time,’ she said, very coolly.
‘What about one week-end?’
‘Can’t come Sunday. Have to be here.’
‘Saturday, then?’
‘Saturday isn’t any good either.’
‘You can’t have to work all the week.’
‘Might manage a Thursday.’
‘All right, let’s make it a Thursday then.’
There was a pause. Maclintick, unable to bear the sight and sound of these negotiations, had taken a notebook from his pocket and begun a deep examination of his own affairs; making plans for the future; writing down great thoughts; perhaps even composing music. Moreland, unable to conceal his discomfort at what was taking place, started a conversation with me designed to carry further his Time-Space theories.
‘What about next Thursday?’ asked Barnby, in his most wheedling tone.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Say you will.’
‘I don’t know.’
Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 2 Page 26
