A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘I’m trying to remember.’

  ‘Have a good think,’ said Barnby, sighing. ‘I like to clear these matters up.’

  But for the moment I was unable to recall the girl’s name. I had the impression our acquaintance had been slight, and was of a year or two earlier. There had been something absurd, or laughable, in the background of the occasion when we had met.

  ‘It would be only polite to reveal her identity by now,’ Barnby said, returning the drawing to the portfolio and making a grimace.

  ‘How did it start?’

  ‘I was coming back from a week-end with the Manaschs’. She arrived in the compartment about an hour before we reached London. We began to talk about films. For some reason we got on to the French Revolution. She said she was on the side of the People.’

  ‘Dark eyes and reddish hair?’

  ‘The latter unbrushed.’

  ‘Christian name, Anne?’

  ‘There was certainly an “A” on her handkerchief. That was a clue I forgot to tell you.’

  ‘Generally untidy?’

  ‘Decidedly. As to baths, I shouldn’t think she overdid them.’

  ‘I think I can place her.’

  Don’t keep me in suspense.’

  ‘Lady Anne Stepney.’

  ‘A friend of yours?’

  ‘I sat next to her once at dinner years ago. She made the same remark about the French Revolution.’

  ‘Did she, indeed,’ said Barnby, perhaps a shade piqued at this apparently correct guess. ‘Did you follow up those liberal convictions at the time?’

  ‘On the contrary. I doubt if she would even remember my name. Her sister married Charles Stringham, whom I’ve sometimes talked of. They are getting a divorce, so I saw in the paper.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Barnby. ‘I read about it too. Stringham was the Great Industrialist’s secretary at one moment, wasn’t he? I met him with Baby and liked him. He has that very decorative mother, Mrs. Foxe, whom really I wouldn’t—’

  He became silent; then returned to the subject of the girl.

  ‘Her parents are called Bridgnorth?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘One starts these things,’ Barnby said, ‘and then the question arises: how is one to continue them? Before you know where you are, you are thoroughly entangled. That is what we all have to remember.’

  ‘We do, indeed.’

  Lying in bed in the Templers’ house, feeling more than a little unwilling to rise into a chilly world, I thought of these words of Barnby’s. There could be no doubt that I was now, as he had said, ‘thoroughly entangled’.

  Everyone came down late to breakfast that morning. Mona was in a decidedly bad temper. Her irritation was perhaps due to an inner awareness that a love affair was in the air, the precise location of which she was unable to identify; for I was fairly certain that neither of the Templers guessed anything was ‘on’ between Jean and myself. They seemed, indeed, fully occupied by the discord of their own relationship. As it happened, I found no opportunity to be alone with Jean. She seemed almost deliberately to arrange that we should always be chaperoned by one of the other two. She would once more have appeared as calm, distant, unknown to me, as when first seen, had she not twice smiled submissively, almost shyly, when our eyes met.

  Mona’s sulkiness cast a gloom over the house. Although obviously lazy and easy-going in her manner of life, she possessed also an energy and egotism that put considerable force behind this display of moodiness. Templer made more than one effort to cheer her up, from time to time becoming annoyed himself at his lack of success; when conciliation would suddenly turn to teasing. However, his continued attempts to fall in with his wife’s whims led in due course to an unexpected development in the composition of the party.

  We were sitting in a large room of nebulous character, where most of the life of the household was carried on, reading the Sunday papers, talking, and playing the gramophone. The previous night’s encounter with Quiggin had enflamed Mona’s memories of her career as an artist’s model. She began to talk of the ‘times’ she had had in various studios, and to question me about Mark Members; perhaps regretting that she had allowed this link with her past to be severed so entirely. Professionally, she had never come across such figures as Augustus John, or Epstein, trafficking chiefly with a group of the lesser academic painters; though she had known a few young men, like Members and Barnby, who frequented more ‘advanced’ circles. She had never even sat for Isbister, so she told me. All the same, that period of her life was now sufficiently far away to be clouded with romance; at least when compared in her own mind with her married circumstances.

  When I agreed that both Members and Quiggin were by then, in their different ways, quite well-known ‘young writers’, she became more than ever enthusiastic about them, insisting that she must meet Quiggin again. In fact conversation seemed to have been deliberately steered by her into these channels with that end in view. Templer, lying in an armchair with his legs stretched out in front of him, listened indifferently to her talk while he idly turned the pages of the News of the World. His wife’s experiences among ‘artists’ probably cropped up fairly often as a subject: a regular, almost legitimate method of exciting a little domestic jealousy when life at home seemed flat. Her repeated questions at last caused me to explain the change of secretary made by St. John Clarke.

  ‘But this is all too thrilling,’ she said. ‘I told you St. John Clarke was my favourite author. Can’t we get Mr. Quiggin to lunch and ask him what really has happened?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Look, Pete,’ she exclaimed noisily. ‘Do let’s ask J. G. Quiggin to lunch today. He could get a train. Nick would ring him up—you will, won’t you, darling?’

  Templer threw the News of the World on to the carpet, and, turning towards me, raised his eyebrows and nodded his head slowly up and down to indicate the fantastic lengths to which caprice could be carried by a woman.

  ‘But would Mr. Quiggin want to come?’ he asked, imitating Mona’s declamatory tone. ‘Wouldn’t he want to finish writing one of his brilliant articles?’

  ‘We could try.’

  ‘By all means, if you like. Half-past eleven on the day of the luncheon invitation is considered a bit late in the best circles, but fortunately we do not move in the best circles. I suppose there will be enough to eat. You remember Jimmy is bringing a girl friend?’

  ‘Jimmy doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘What do you think, Nick?’ she asked. ‘Would Quiggin come?’

  One of the charms of staying with the Templers had seemed the promise of brief escape from that routine of the literary world so relentlessly implied by the mere thought of Quiggin. It was the world in which I was thoroughly at home, and certainly did not wish to change for another, only for once to enjoy a week-end away from it. However, to prevent the Templers from asking Quiggin to lunch if they so desired was scarcely justifiable to anyone concerned. Besides, I was myself curious to hear further details regarding St. John Clarke; although I should have preferred by then to have heard Members’s side of the story. Apart from all that—indeed quite overriding such considerations—were my own violent feelings about Jean which had to be reduced inwardly to some manageable order.

  ‘Who is “Jimmy”?’ I asked.

  ‘Surely you remember Jimmy Stripling when you stayed with us years ago?’ said Templer. ‘My brother-in-law. At least he was until Babs divorced him. Somehow I’ve never been able to get him out of my life. Babs can demand her freedom and go her own way. For me there is no legal redress. Jimmy hangs round my neck like a millstone. I can’t even get an annulment.’

  ‘Didn’t he go in for motor racing?’

  ‘That’s the chap.’

  ‘Who disliked Sunny Farebrother so much?’

  ‘Hated his guts. Well, Jimmy is coming to lunch today and bringing some sort of a piece with him—he asked if he could. N
ot too young, I gather, so your eyes need not brighten up. I can’t remember her name. I could not refuse for old times’ sake, though he is a terrible bore is poor old Jimmy these days. He had a spill at Brooklands a year or two ago. Being shot out of his car arse-first seems to have affected his brain in some way—though you wouldn’t think there was much there to affect.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘An underwriter at Lloyd’s. It is not his business capacity so much as his private life that has seized up. He still rakes in a certain amount of dough. But he has taken up astrology and theosophy and numerology and God knows what else. Could your friend Quiggin stand that? Probably love it, wouldn’t he? The more the merrier so far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Quiggin would eat it up.’

  ‘Do ring him, then,’ said Mona.

  ‘Shall I?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Templer. ‘The telephone is next door.’

  There was no reply from Quiggin’s Bloomsbury flat, so I rang St. John Clarke’s number; on the principle that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well. The bell buzzed for some seconds, and then Quiggin’s voice sounded, gratingly, at the other end of the line. As I had supposed, he was already engaged on his new duties. At first he was very suspicious of my seeking him out at that place. These suspicions were not allayed when I explained about the invitation to lunch with the Templers.

  ‘But today?’ he said, irritably. ‘Lunch today? Why, it’s nearly lunch-time already.’

  I repeated to him Mona’s apologies for the undoubted lateness of the invitation.

  ‘But I don’t know them,’ said Quiggin. ‘Are they very rich?’

  He still sounded cross, although a certain interest was aroused in him. I referred again to his earlier meeting with Mona.

  ‘So she remembered me at Deacon’s party after all?’ he asked, rather more hopefully this time.

  ‘She has talked of nothing but that evening.’

  ‘I don’t think I ought to leave St. J.’

  ‘Is he bad?’

  ‘Better, as a matter of fact. But there ought to be someone responsible here.’

  ‘Couldn’t you get Mark?’ I asked, to tease him.

  ‘St. J. does not want to see Mark just at the moment,’ said Quiggin, in his flattest voice, ignoring any jocular implications the question might have possessed. ‘But I suppose there is really no reason why the maid should not look after him perfectly well if I went out for a few hours.’

  This sounded like weakening.

  ‘You could catch the train if you started now.’

  He was silent for a moment, evidently anxious to accept, but at the same time trying to find some excuse for making himself so easily available.

  ‘Mona reads your articles.’

  ‘She does?’

  ‘Always quoting them.’

  ‘Intelligently?’

  ‘Come and judge for yourself.’

  ‘Should I like their house?’

  ‘You’ll have the time of your life.’

  ‘I think I will,’ he said. ‘Of course I shall be met at the station?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘All right, then.’

  He replaced the receiver with a bang, as if closing an acrimonious interchange. I returned to the drawing-room. Templer was sprawling on the sofa, apparently not much interested whether Quiggin turned up or not.

  ‘He’s coming.’

  ‘Is he really?’ said Mona, shrilly. ‘How wonderful.’

  ‘Mona gets a bit bored with my friends,’ said Templer. ‘I must say I don’t blame her. Now you can sample something of another kind at lunch, sweetie.’

  ‘Well, we never see anybody interesting, sweetie,’ said Mona, putting on a stage pout. ‘He’ll at least remind me of the days when I used to meet intelligent people.’

  ‘Intelligent people?’ said Templer. ‘Come, come, darling, you aren’t being very polite to Nick. He regards himself as tremendously intelligent.’

  ‘Then we are providing some intelligent company for him,’ said Mona. ‘Your ex-brother-in-law isn’t likely to come out with anything very sparkling in the way of conversation—unless he has changed a lot since we went with him to Wimbledon.’

  ‘What do you expect at Wimbledon?’ said Templer. ‘To sit in the centre court listening to a flow of epigrams about foot-faults and forehand drives? Still, I see what you mean.’

  I remembered Jimmy Stripling chiefly on account of various practical jokes in which he had been concerned when, as a boy, I had stayed with the Templers. In this horseplay he had usually had the worst of it. He remained in my memory as a big, gruff, bad-tempered fellow, full of guilty feelings about having taken no part in the war. I had not much cared for him. I wondered how he would get on with Quiggin, who could be crushing to people he disliked. However, one of the traits possessed by Quiggin in common with his new employer was a willingness to go almost anywhere where a free meal was on offer; and this realistic approach to social life implied, inevitably, if not toleration of other people, at least a certain rough and ready technique for dealing with all sorts. I could not imagine why Mona was so anxious to see Quiggin again. At that time I failed entirely to grasp the extent to which in her eyes Quiggin represented high romance.

  ‘What happened to Babs when she parted from Jimmy Stripling?’

  ‘Married a lord,’ said Templer. ‘The family is going up in the world. But I expect she still thinks about Jimmy. After all, you couldn’t easily forget a man with breath like his.’

  Some interruption changed the subject before I was able to ask the name of Babs’s third husband. Mona went to tell the servants that there would be an additional guest. Templer followed her to look for more cigarettes. For a moment Jean and I were left alone together. I slipped my hand under her arm. She pressed down upon it, giving me a sense of being infinitely near to her; an assurance that all would be well. There is always a real and an imaginary person you are in love with; sometimes you love one best, sometimes the other. At that moment it was the real one I loved. We had scarcely time to separate and begin a formal conversation when Mona returned to the room.

  There the four of us remained until the sound came of a car churning up snow before the front door. This was Quiggin’s arrival. Being, in a way, so largely responsible for his presence at the Templers’ house, I was relieved to observe, when he entered the room, that he had cleaned himself up a bit since the previous evening. Now he was wearing a suit of cruelly blue cloth and a green knitted tie. From the start it was evident that he intended to make himself agreeable. His sharp little eyes darted round the walls, taking in the character of his hosts and their house.

  ‘I see you have an Isbister in the hall,’ he said, dryly.

  The harsh inflexion of his voice made it possible to accept this comment as a compliment, or, alternatively, a shared joke. Templer at once took the words in the latter sense.

  ‘Couldn’t get rid of it,’ he said. ‘I suppose you don’t know anybody who would make an offer? An upset price, of course. Now’s the moment.’

  ‘I’ll look about,’ said Quiggin. ‘Isbister was a typical artist-business man produced by a decaying society, don’t you think? As a matter of fact Nicholas and I have got to have a talk about Isbister in the near future.’

  He grinned at me. I hoped he was not going to raise the whole question of St. John Clarke’s introduction there and then. His tone might have meant anything or nothing, so far as his offer of help was concerned. Perhaps he really intended to suggest that he would try to sell the picture for Templer; and get a rake-off. His eyes continued to stray over the very indifferent nineteenth-century seascapes that covered the walls; hung together in patches as if put up hurriedly when the place was first occupied. No doubt that was exactly what had happened to them. In the Templers’ house by the sea they had hung in the dining-room. Before the Isbister could be discussed further, the two other guests arrived.

  The first through the door was a tal
l, rather overpowering lady, followed closely by Jimmy Stripling himself, looking much older than I had remembered him. The smoothness of the woman’s movements, as she advanced towards Mona, almost suggested that Stripling was propelling her in front of him like an automaton on castors. I knew at once that I had seen her before, but could not at first recall the occasion: one so different, as it turned out, from that of the moment.

  ‘How are you, Jimmy?’ said Templer.

  Stripling took the woman by the arm.

  ‘This is Mrs. Erdleigh,’ he said, in a rather strangled voice. ‘I have told you so much about her, you know, and here she is.’

  Mrs. Erdleigh shook hands graciously all round, much as if she were a visiting royalty. When she came to me, she took my hand in hers and smiled indulgently.

  ‘You see I was right,’ she said. ‘You did not believe me, did you? It is just a year.’

  Once more, suffocating waves of musk-like scent were distilled by her presence. By then, as a matter of fact, a month or two must have passed beyond the year that she had foretold would precede our next meeting. All the same, it was a respectable piece of prognostication. I thought it wiser to leave Uncle Giles unmentioned. If she wished to speak of him, she could always raise the subject herself. I reflected, at the same time, how often this exterior aspect of Uncle Giles’s personality must have remained ‘unmentioned’ throughout his life; especially where his relations were concerned.

  However, Mrs. Erdleigh gave the impression of knowing very well what was advisable to ‘mention’ and what inadvisable. She looked well; younger, if anything, than when I had seen her at the Ufford, and smartly dressed in a style that suggested less than before her inexorably apocalyptic role in life. In fact, her clothes of that former occasion seemed now, in contrast, garments of a semi-professional kind; vestments, as it were, appropriate to the ritual of her vocation. With Stripling under her control—as he certainly was—she could no doubt allow herself frivolously to enjoy the fashion of the moment.

  Stripling himself, on the other hand, had changed noticeably for the worse in the ten years or more gone since our former meeting. His bulk still gave the impression that he was taking up more than his fair share of the room, but the body, although big, seemed at the same time shrivelled. His hair, still parted in the middle, was grey and grizzled. Although at that time still perhaps under forty, he looked prematurely old. There was an odd, disconnected stare in his eyes, which started from his head when he spoke at all emphatically. He appeared to be thoroughly under the thumb of Mrs. Erdleigh, whose manner, kindly though firm, implied supervision of a person not wholly responsible for his own actions. Later, it was noticeable how fixedly he watched her, while in conversation he inclined to refer even the most minor matters to her arbitration. In spite of his cowed air, he was far more friendly than when we had met before, an occasion he assured me he remembered perfectly.