‘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 one 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 weekend. 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. And 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.
‘I didn’t say anything of the sort, you bloody bitch,’ Maclintick said, ‘so keep your foul mouth shut and don’t go round repeating that I did, unless you want to get hurt. It is just like your spite to misrepresent me in that manner. You are always trying to make trouble between Moreland and myself, aren’t you? What I said was that the music was “not Moreland’s most adventurous” – that the critics had got used to him as an enfant terrible and therefore might underestimate the symphony’s true value. That was all. That was what I said. You know yourself that was all. You know yourself that was what I said.’
Maclintick was hoarse with fury. His hands were shaking His anger made him quite alarming.
‘Yes, Maclintick was just saying that very thing, wasn’t he?’ agreed Gossage, sniggering nervously at this display of uncontrolled rage. ‘The words were scarcely out of his mouth, Mrs Maclintick. That is exactly what he thinks.’
‘Don’t ask me what he thinks,’ said Mrs Maclintick calmly, not in the least put out of countenance by the force of her husband’s abuse. ‘He says one thing at one moment, another at another. Doesn’t know his own mind in the least. I told him he was standing about as if he was in the Nag’s Head. That is the pub near us where all the tarts go. I suppose that is where he thinks he is. It’s the place where he is most at home. Besides, if the symphony was such a success, why wasn’t Moreland better pleased? Or Matilda, for that matter? Matilda doesn’t seem at all at her best tonight. I expect these grand surroundings remind her of better days.’
‘I didn’t say the symphony was “a great success” either,’ said Maclintick, speaking now wearily, as if his outburst of anger had left him weak. ‘Anyway, what do you mean? Moreland looks all right to me. What is wrong with him? Of course, it was insane of me to express any opinion in front of a woman like you.’
‘Go on,’ said Mrs Maclintick. ‘Just go on.’
‘And what reason have you for saying Matilda isn’t pleased?’ said Maclintick. ‘I only wish I had a wife with half Matilda’s sense.’
‘Matilda didn’t seem to be showing all that sense when I was talking to her just now,’ said Mrs Maclintick, still quite undisturbed by this unpleasant interchange, indeed appearing if anything stimulated by its brutality. ‘Or to be at all pleased either. Not that I care how she speaks to me. I bet she has done things in her life I wouldn’t do for a million pounds. Let her speak to me how she likes. I’m not going to bring up her past. All I say is that she and Moreland were having words during the interval. Perhaps it was what they were talking about upset them, not the way the symphony was received. It is not for me to say.*’
Further recrimination was terminated for the moment by the butler bringing a decanter for Maclintick with Buster’s apology that no Irish whiskey was to be found in the house. Buster himself appeared a moment later, adding his own regrets for this inadequacy. I withdrew from the group, and went over to speak to Robert Tolland, who had just come into the room. Robert knew Moreland only slightly, as a notable musical figure rather than as a friend. He had probably been asked to the party at the instigation of Mrs Foxe, had perhaps dined with her to make numbers even. I had not seen him in the concert hall.
‘I expected to find you and Isobel here,’ he said. ‘I was asked at the last moment, I hardly know why. One of those curious afterthoughts which are such a feature of Amy Foxe’s entertaining. I see Priscilla is here. Did you bring her P’ ‘Priscilla dined with us. You could have come to dinner too, if we had known you were on your way to this party.’ Robert gave one of his quiet smiles. ‘Nice of you to suggest it,’ he said, ‘but there were things I had to do earlier in the evening as a matter of fact. How very attractive Mrs Moreland is. I always think so whenever I see her. What a relief that one no longer has to talk about the Abdication. Frederica is looking a lot better now that everything is settled.’
He smiled and moved away, exhaling his usual air of mild mystery. Lady Huntercombe, taking leave of Matilda with a profusion of complimentary phrases, swept after Robert. Matilda beckoned me to come and talk to her. She looked pale, seemed rather agitated, either on account of her long session with Lady Huntercombe, or perhaps because she was still feeling shaken by the strain of hearing the symphony performed.
‘Give me some more champagne, Nick,’ she said, clasping my arm. ‘It is wonderful stuff for the nerves. Are you enjoying yourself at this smart party? I hope so.’
This manner was not at all her usual one. I thought she was probably a little drunk.
‘Of course – and the symphony was a great success.’
‘Did you think so?’
‘Very much.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You are certain, Nick?’
‘Of course I am. Everything went all right. There was lots of applause. What else do you expect?’
‘Yes, it was all right, I think. Somehow I hoped for more real enthusiasm. It is a wonderful work, you know. It really is.’
‘I am sure it is.’
‘It is wonderful. But people are going to be disappointed.’
‘Does Hugh himself think that?’
‘I don’t think it worries him,’ said Madlda. ‘Not in his present state of mind.’
For some reason – from the note in her voice, a sense of trouble in the air, perhaps just from natural caution – I felt safer in not enquiring what she regarded as Moreland’s ‘present state of mind’.
‘I see your little sister-in-law, Lady Priscilla, is here,’ said Matilda.
She smiled rather in Robert’s manner, as if at some secret inner pleasure that was also a little bitter to contemplate.
‘You’ve met her with us, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘She dined with us tonight.’
‘I met her once at your flat,’ said Madlda, speaking slowly, as if that were an extraordinary thing to have happened. ‘She is very attractive. But I don’t know her as well as Hugh does.’
I suddenly felt horribly uncomfortable, as if ice-cold water were dripping very gently, very slowly down my spine, but as if, at the same time, some special circumstance prevented admission of this unaccountable fact and also forbade any attempt on my own part to suspend the process; a sensation to be recognised, I knew well, as an extension of
that earlier refusal to face facts about Moreland giving Priscilla the concert ticket. That odd feeling of excitement began to stir within me always provoked by news of other people’s adventures in love; accompanied as ever by a sense of sadness, of regret, almost jealousy, inward emotions that express, like nothing else in life, life’s irrational dissatisfactions. On the one hand, that Moreland might have fallen in love with Priscilla (and she with him) seemed immensely interesting; on the other – to speak only callously of the Morelands’ marriage and Priscilla’s inexperience (if she was inexperienced) – any such situation threatened complications of a most disturbing kind on two separate fronts of one’s own daily existence. As to immediate action, a necessary minimum was obviously represented by refraining from any mention to Matilda of the complimentary ticket. Silence on that point offered at least a solid foundation upon which to build; the simple principle that a friend’s actions, however colourless, vis-à-vis another woman, are always better unrepeated to his wife. Contemplation of this banal maxim increased the depression that had suddenly descended on me. The proposition that Moreland was having some sort of a flirtation with Priscilla sufficiently tangible to cause Matilda – even if she had had too much champagne – to draw my attention to such goings-on appeared at once ridiculous and irritating Probably Matilda’s speculations were unco-ordinated. Quite likely Moreland and Priscilla were indeed behaving foolishly. Why draw attention to that? The matter would blow over. All three persons concerned fell in my estimation. In any case, Matilda’s speculations might be wholly unfounded. Priscilla, physically speaking – socially speaking, if it came to that – was not the sort of girl Moreland usually liked. ‘Nothing is more disturbing,’ he used to say himself, ‘than one’s friends showing unexpected sexual tastes.’ Priscilla, for her part, was not in general inclined towards the life Moreland lived; had never shown any sign of liking married men, a taste some girls acquire at an early age. I thought it best to change the subject.
‘I see you asked Carolo,’ I said.
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