Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 2

by Anthony Powell

  ‘I remember his caricatures.’

  Stringham could not draw at all in the technical sense, but he was a master of his own particular form of graphic representation, executed in a convention of blobs and spidery lines, very effective for producing likenesses of Le Bas or the other masters at school. I could not imagine what Stringham’s ‘painting’ could be. This terminology put the activity into quite another setting.

  ‘Charles uses gouache now,’ said Mrs Foxe, speaking with that bright firmness of manner people apply especially to close relations attempting to recover from more or less disastrous mismanagement of their own lives, ‘designing theatrical costumes and that sort of thing. Norman says they are really quite good. Of course, Charles has had no training, so it is probably too late for him to do anything professionally. But the designs have originality, Norman thinks. You know Norman talks a lot about you and Isobel. He adores you both. Norman made me read one of your books. I liked it very much.’

  She looked a bit pathetic when she said that, making me feel in this respect perhaps Chandler had gone too far in his exercise of power. However, other guests coming up the stairs at our heels compelled a forward movement. Moreland, red in the face, appeared in Mrs Foxe’s immediate background. We offered our congratulations. He muttered a word or two about the horror of having a new work performed; seemed very happy about everything. We left him talking to Priscilla, herself rather pink, too, with the excitement of arrival. The party began to take more coherent shape. Mrs Foxe had, on the whole, most dutifully followed Moreland’s wishes in collecting together his old friends, rather than arranging a smart affair of her own picking and choosing. Indeed, the far end of the crimson drawing-room could almost have been a corner of the Mortimer on one of its better nights; the group collected there making one feel that at any moment the strains of the mechanical piano would suddenly burst forth. The Maclinticks, Carolo, Gossage, with several other musicians and critics known to me only by sight, were present, including a famous conductor of a generation older than Moreland’s, invited probably through acquaintance with Mrs Foxe in a social way rather than because of occasional professional contacts between Moreland and himself. This distinguished person was conversing a little loudly and self-consciously, with a great deal of gesticulation, to show there was no question of condescension from himself towards his less successful colleagues. Near this knot of musicians stood Chandler’s old friend, Max Pilgrim, trying to get a word or two out of Rupert Wise, another of Chandler’s friends – indeed, a great admiration of Chandler’s – a male dancer known for his strict morals and lack of small talk. Wise’s engagement to an equally respectable female member of the corps de ballet had recently been announced. Mrs Foxe had promised to give them a refrigerator as a wedding present.

  ‘Not colder than Rupe’s heart,’ Chandler had commented. ‘It was my suggestion. He may have a profile like Apollo, but he’s got a mind like Hampstead Garden Suburb.’

  The Huntercombes, as well as the celebrated conductor, were certainly contributed to the party by Mrs Foxe rather than by Moreland. Once – as I knew from remarks let fall by Stringham in the past – Mrs Foxe would have regarded Lady Huntercombe as dreadfully ‘slow’, and laughed at her clothes, which were usually more dramatic than fashionable. However, now that Mrs Foxe’s energies were so largely directed towards seeking ways of benefiting Chandler and his friends, Lord Huntercombe’s many activities in the art world had to be taken into account. In his capacity as trustee of more than one public gallery, Lord Huntercombe was, it was true, concerned with pictures rather than with music or the theatre. At the same time, his well recognised abilities in his own field had brought him a seat on several committees connected with other branches of the arts or activities of a generally ‘cultural’ sort. Lord Huntercombe, small and immensely neat, was indeed a man to be reckoned with. He had caught napping one of the best known Bond Street dealers in the matter of a Virgin and Child by Benozzo Gozzoli (acquired from the gallery as the work of a lesser master, later resoundingly identified), also so nicely chosen the moment to dispose of his father’s collection of English pastels that he obtained nearly twice their market value.

  Lady Huntercombe, as usual majestically dressed in a black velvet gown, wore a black ribbon round her neck clipped with an elaborate ornament in diamonds. She took a keen interest in music, more so than her husband, who liked to be able himself to excel in his own spheres of patronage, and was not musically inclined. I remembered Lady Huntercombe expressing her disappointment after Stringham’s wedding at the manner in which the choir had sung the anthem. ‘Dreadfully sharp,’ I heard her say at the reception. ‘It set my teeth on edge.’ Now she was talking to Matilda, to the accompaniment of animated and delighted shakings of her forefinger, no doubt indicative of some special pleasure she had taken in Moreland’s symphony; apparently at the same time trying to persuade Matilda – who seemed disposed to resist these advances – to accept some invitation or other similar commitment.

  Moving towards the inner room, I observed that Chandler’s small bronze of Truth Unveiled by Time, long ago bought from the Caledonian Market and rescued from Mr Deacon’s shop after his death, had now come finally to rest on the console table under the Romney. Chandler himself was standing beside the table, stirring a glass of champagne with a gold swizzle-stick borrowed from Commander Foxe. Although Chandler might hold Mrs Foxe under his sway, she, on her part, had in some degree tamed him too. His demeanour had been modified by prolonged association with her. He was no longer quite the gamin of the Mortimer.

  ‘Hullo, my dear,’ he said. ‘Fizz always gives me terrible hiccups, unless I take the bubbles away. You know Buster, of course.’

  Commander Foxe, greyer now, a shade bulkier than when I had last seen him, was at the same time, if possible, more dignified as a result of these outward marks of maturity. He retained in his dress that utter perfection of turn-out that stopped so brilliantly short of seeming no more than the trappings of a tailor’s dummy. His manner, on the other hand, had greatly changed. He had become chastened, almost humble. I could not imagine how I had ever found him alarming; although, even with this later development of geniality, there still existed a suggestion that below the surface he knew how to make himself disagreeable if need be. I mentioned where we had last met. He at once recollected, or pretended to recollect, the occasion; the essence of good manners and friendliness, almost obsequious in his desire to please.

  ‘Poor old Charles,’ he said. ‘Of course I remember you were a friend of his. Do you ever see him these days? Well, of course, nobody does much, do they? All the same, it hasn’t worked out too badly. Do you remember Miss Weedon, Amy’s secretary? Rather a formidable lady. Oh, you know all about that, do you? Yes, Molly Jeavons is an aunt of your wife’s, of course. Quite a solution for Charles in a way. It gives him the opportunity to live a quiet life for a time. Norman goes round and sees Charles sometimes, don’t you, Norman?’

  ‘I simply adore Charles,’ said Chandler, ‘but I’m rather afraid of that gorgon who looks after him – I believe you are too, Buster.’

  Buster laughed, almost achieving his savage sneer of former times. He did not like Miss Weedon. I remembered that. He was no doubt glad to have ridded the house of Stringham too. They had never got on well together.

  ‘At least Tuffy keeps Charles in order,’ Buster said. ‘If one hasn’t any self-discipline, something of the sort unfortunately has to be applied from the outside. It is a hard thing to say, but there it is. Are you in this musical racket yourself? I hear Hugh Moreland’s symphony was very fine. I couldn’t manage to get there myself, much to my regret.’

  I felt a pang of horror at the way his family now talked of Stringham: as if he had been put away from view like a person suffering from a horrible, unmentionable disease, or become some terrifying legendary figure, fearful as the Glamis monster, about whom it was appropriate to joke as dreadful to behold, but at the same time a being past serious credence. All t
he same, it was hard to know what else they could do about him, how better behave towards him. Stringham, after all, was their problem, not mine. I myself could offer no better solution than Miss Weedon; was in no position to disparage his own relations so far as their conduct towards Stringham was concerned.

  ‘They were a bit hurried in seeing our former King off the premises, weren’t they?’ said Buster, changing the subject to public events, possibly because he feared his last words might provoke musical conversation. ‘Some of one’s friends have been caught on the wrong foot about it all. Still, I expect he will have a much better time on his own in the long run. His later job was not one I should care to take on.’

  ‘My dear, you’d do it superbly,’ said Chandler. ‘I always think that when I look at that photograph of you in tropical uniform.’

  ‘No, no, nonsense, Norman,’ said Buster, not displeased at this attribution to himself of potentially royal aptitudes. ‘I should be bored to death. I can’t in the least imagine myself opening Parliament and all that sort of thing.’

  Chandler signified his absolute disagreement.

  ‘I must go off and have a word with Auntie Gossage now,’ he said, ‘or the old witch will fly off on a broomstick and complain about being cut. See you both later.’

  ‘What a wonderful chap Norman is,’ said Buster, speaking with unaccustomed warmth. ‘You know I sometimes wonder what Amy would do without him. Or me, either, for that matter. He runs the whole of our lives. He can do anything from arranging the flowers to mixing the best Tom Collins I have ever drunk. So talented in other ways too. Ever seen him act? Then, as for dancing and playing the saxophone . . . Well, I’ve never met a man like him.’

  There seemed no end to Buster’s admiration for Chandler. I did not disagree, although surprised, rather impressed, by Buster’s complete freedom from jealousy. It was not that anyone supposed that Chandler was ‘having an affair’ with Mrs Foxe – although no one can speak with certainty, as Barnby used to insist, about any two people in that connexion – but, apart from any question of physical relationship, she obviously loved Chandler, even if this might not be love of quite the usual sort. A husband, even a husband as unprejudiced as Buster, might have felt objection on personal, or merely general, grounds. Many men who outwardly resembled Buster would, on principle, have disliked a young man of Chandler’s appearance and demeanour; certainly disliked for ever seeing someone like that about the house. Either natural tolerance had developed in Buster as he had grown older, or there were other reasons why his wife’s infatuation with Chandler satisfied him; after all Matilda had alleged the pinching of her leg. Possibly Chandler kept Mrs Foxe from disturbing Buster in his own amusements. If that was the reason, Buster showed a good grace in the manner in which he followed his convenience; in itself a virtue not universally practised. Perhaps he was a little aware that he had displayed himself to me in an unexpected light.

  ‘Amy needs a good deal of looking after,’ he said. ‘I am sometimes rather busy. Get caught up in things. Business engagements and so on. Most husbands are like that, I suppose. Can’t give a wife all the attention she requires. Know what I mean?’

  This self-revelation was so unlike the Buster I remembered, that I was not sure whether to attribute the marked alteration in his bearing in some degree to changes in myself. Perhaps development in both of us had made a mutually new attitude possible. However, before Buster could particularise further on the subject of married life, a subject about which I should have liked to hear more from him, Maclintick, moving with the accustomed lurching walk he employed drunk or sober, at that moment approached us.

  ‘Any hope of getting Irish in a house like this?’ he asked me in an undertone. ‘Champagne always gives me diarrhoea. It would be just like the rich only to keep Scotch. Do you think it would be all right if I accosted one of the flunkeys? I don’t want to let Moreland down in front of his grand friends.’

  I referred to Buster this demand for Irish whiskey on Maclintick’s part.

  ‘Irish?’ said Buster briskly. ‘I believe you’ve got us there. I can’t think why we shouldn’t have any in the cellar, because I rather like the stuff myself. Plenty of Scotch, of course. I expect they told you that. Wait here. I’ll go and make some investigations.’

  ‘Who is that kind and beautiful gentleman?’ asked Maclintick acidly, not showing the least gratitude at Buster’s prompt effort to satisfy his need for Irish whiskey. ‘Is he part of the management?’

  ‘Commander Foxe.’

  ‘I am no wiser.’

  ‘Our hostess’s husband.’

  ‘I thought she was married to Chandler. He is the man I always see her with at the ballet – if you can call him a man. I suppose I have shown my usual bad manners again. I ought never to have come to a place like this. Quite against my principles. All the same, I hope Baron Scarpia will unearth a drop of Irish. Must be an unenviable position to be married to a woman like his wife.’

  His own matrimonial state seemed to me so greatly worse than Commander Foxe’s that I was surprised to find Maclintick deploring any other marriage whatever. Gossage – ‘that old witch’, as Chandler had called him – joined us before I could answer. He seemed to be enjoying the party, clasping together his fingers and agitating his hands up and down in the air.

  ‘What did you think of Moreland’s work, Maclintick?’ he asked. ‘A splendid affair, splendidly received. Simply wonderful. I rarely saw such enthusiasm. Didn’t you think so, Maclintick?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Maclintick, speaking with finality. ‘So far as reception was concerned, I thought it just missed being a disaster. The work itself was all right. I liked it.’

  Gossage was not in the least put out by the acerbity of Maclintick’s disagreement. He stood on his toes, placing the tips of his fingers together in front of him like a wedge.

  ‘You judged that, did you, Maclintick?’ he said thoughtfully, as if a whole new panorama had been set in front of him. ‘You judged that. Well, perhaps there is something in what you say. All the same, I considered it a great personal triumph for Moreland, a great triumph.’

  ‘You know as well as I do, Gossage, that it was not a triumph,’ said Maclintick, whose temper had risen suddenly. ‘We are all friends of Moreland’s – we shouldn’t have come to this bloody awful party tonight, dressed up in these clothes, if we weren’t – but it is no help to Moreland to go round saying his symphony was received as a triumph, that it is the greatest piece of music ever written, when we all know it wasn’t and it isn’t. It is a very respectable piece of work. I enjoyed it. But it wasn’t a triumph.’

  Gossage looked as if he did not at all agree with Maclintick’s strictures on Mrs Foxe’s party and the burden of wearing evening clothes, but was prepared at the same time to allow these complaints to pass, as well as any views on Moreland as a composer, in the light of his colleague’s notorious reputation for being cantankerous.

  ‘There may be opposition from some quarters,’ Gossage said. ‘I recognise that. Some of the Old Gang may get on their hind legs. A piece of music is none the worse for causing that to happen.’

  ‘I don’t see why there should be opposition,’ said Maclintick, as if he found actual physical relief in contradicting Gossage on all counts. ‘A certain amount of brick-throwing might even be a good thing. There comes a moment in the career of most artists, if they are any good, when attacks on their work take a form almost more acceptable than praise. That happens at different moments in different careers. This may turn out to be the moment with Moreland. I don’t know. I doubt it. All I know is that going round pretending the symphony is a lot of things it isn’t, does Moreland more harm than good.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Gossage, speaking now with conscious resignation, ‘we shall see what everyone says by the week-end. I liked the thing myself. It seemed to have a lot of life in it. Obvious failings, of course. All the same, I fully appreciate the points you make, Maclintick. But here is Mrs Maclintick. An
d how is Mrs Maclintick this evening?’

  Mrs Maclintick had the air of being about to make trouble. She was wearing a fluffy, pale pink dress covered with rosettes and small bows, from which her arms and neck emerged surrounded by concentric circles of frills. On her head was set a cap, medieval or pre-Raphaelite in conception, which, above dark elfin locks, swarthy skin and angry black eyes, gave her the appearance of having come to the party in fancy dress.

  ‘Do take your hands out of your pockets, Maclintick,’ she said at once. ‘You always stand about everywhere as if you were in a public bar. I don’t know what the people here must think of you. We are are not in the Nag’s Head now, you know. Try to remember not to knock your pipe out on the carpet.’

  Maclintick took no notice of his wife whatsoever. Instead, he addressed to Gossage some casual remarks about Smetana which seemed to have occurred to him at that moment. Mrs Maclintick turned to me.

  ‘I don’t expect you are any more used to this sort of party than I am,’ she said. ‘As for Maclintick, he wouldn’t have been here at all if it hadn’t been for me. I got him into those evening trousers somehow. Of course he never wants to wear evening clothes. He couldn’t find a black bow-tie at the last moment. Had to borrow a made-up one Carolo used to wear. He is tramping about in his ordinary clodhopping black shoes too.’

  Maclintick continued to ignore his wife, although he must have heard all this.

  ‘What did you think of Moreland’s symphony?’ she continued. ‘Not much of a success, Maclintick thinks. I agree with him for once.’

  Maclintick caught her words. He swung round in such a rage that for a moment I thought he was going to strike her; just as I had thought she might stick a dinner knife into him when I had been to their house. There was certainly something about her manner this evening which would almost have excused physical violence even in the circumstances of Mrs Foxe’s party.