The kindly ones (28 page)

‘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?’

‘How old are you?’

I told him that too.

‘Health A1?’

‘I think so.’

‘School OTC?’

‘Yes.’

‘Get a Certificate A there?’

‘Yes.’

‘What arm is your choice?’

‘Infantry.’

‘Any particular regiment?’

I made a suggestion.

‘You don’t want one of the London regiments?’

‘Not specially. Why?’

‘Everyone seems to want a London regiment,’ he said. ‘Probably be able to fix you up with an out-of-the-way regiment like that.’

‘It would be kind.’

‘And you’d like to get cracking?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll see what we can do.’

‘That’s very good of you.’

‘Might take a week or two.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘Just let me write your name in my little book.’

Jeavons returned to the room.

‘That friend of yours is absolutely cooked,’ he said. ‘He’d have been happy to sleep on the floor. His blackout is all correct now, if he doesn’t interfere with it. Well, Stan, I don’t know how much Lil is going to enjoy living in a cottage with Mrs W.’

‘Lil will be all right,’ said Stanley Jeavons. ‘She can get on with all sorts.’

‘More than I can,’ said Jeavons.

Stanley Jeavons shook his head without smiling. He evidently found his brother’s life inexplicable, had no desire whatever to share its extravagances. Jeavons moved towards the table where the beer bottles stood. Suddenly he began to sing in that full, deep, unexpectedly attractive voice, so different from the croaking tones in which he ordinarily conversed:

‘There’s a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of … my dreams,
Where the night … ingale is singing
And the white moon beams.
There’s a long, long night of waiting,
Until my dreams all … come true …’

He broke off as suddenly as he had begun. Stanley Jeavons began tapping out his pipe again, perhaps to put a stop to this refrain.

‘Used to sing that while we were blanco-ing,’ said Jeavons. ‘God, how fed up I got cleaning that bloody equipment.’

‘I shall have to go home, Ted.’

‘Don’t hurry away.’

‘I must.’

‘Have some more beer.’

‘No.’

‘Come and see us soon,’ said Jeavons, ‘before we all get blown up. I’m still not satisfied with the fold of that curtain. Got the blackout on the brain. You haven’t a safety-pin about you, have you, Stan?’

Outside the moon had gone behind a bank of cloud. I went home through the gloom, exhilarated, at the same time rather afraid. Ahead lay the region beyond the white-currant bushes, where the wild country began, where armies for ever campaigned, where the Rules and Discipline of War prevailed. Another stage of life was passed, just as finally, just as irrevocably, as on that day when childhood had come so abruptly to an end at Stonehurst.