A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement

  The mist was lifting now, gleams of sunlight once more coming through the clouds above the waters of the Serpentine. Not unwillingly dismissing the financial side of marriage from my mind, as I walked on through the melancholy park, I thought of love, which, from the very beginning perpetually changes its shape: sometimes in the ascendant, sometimes in decline. At present we sailed in comparatively calm seas because we lived from meeting to meeting, possessing no plan for the future. Her abandonment remained; the abandonment that had so much surprised me at that first embrace, as the car skimmed the muddy surfaces of the Great West Road.

  But in love, like everything else—more than anything else—there must be bad as well as good; and by silence or some trivial remark she could inflict unexpected pain. Away from her, all activities seemed waste of time, yet sometimes just before seeing her I was aware of an odd sense of antagonism that had taken the place of the longing that had been in my heart for days before. This sense of being out of key with her sometimes survived the first minutes of our meeting. Then, all at once, tension would be relaxed; always, so it seemed to me, by some mysterious force emanating from her: intangible, invisible, yet at the same time part of a whole principle of behaviour: a deliberate act of the will by which she exercised power. At times it was almost as if she intended me to feel that unexpected accident, rather than a carefully arranged plan, had brought us together on some given occasion; or at least that I must always be prepared for such a mood. Perhaps these are inward irritations always produced by love: the acutely sensitive nerves of intimacy: the haunting fear that all may not go well.

  Still thinking of such things, I rang the bell of the ground-floor flat. It was in an old-fashioned red-brick block of buildings, situated somewhere beyond Rutland Gate, concealed among obscure turnings that seemed to lead nowhere. For some time there was no answer to the ring. I waited, peering through the frosted glass of the front door, feeling every second an eternity. Then the door opened a few inches and Jean looked out. I saw her face only for a moment. She was laughing.

  ‘Come in,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s cold.’

  As I entered the hall, closing the door behind me, she ran back along the passage. I saw that she wore nothing but a pair of slippers.

  ‘There is a fire in here,’ she called from the sitting-room.

  I hung my hat on the grotesque piece of furniture, designed for that use, that stood by the door. Then I followed her down the passage and into the room. The furniture and decoration of the flat were of an appalling banality.

  ‘Why are you wearing no clothes?’

  ‘Are you shocked?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you are.’

  ‘Surprised, rather than shocked.’

  ‘To make up for the formality of our last meeting.’

  ‘Aren’t I showing my appreciation?’

  ‘Yes, but you must not be so conventional.’

  ‘But if it had been the postman?’

  ‘I could have seen through the glass.’

  ‘He, too, perhaps.’

  ‘I had a dressing-gown handy.’

  ‘It was a kind thought, anyway.’

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘Tell me something nice.’

  ‘This style suits you.’

  ‘Not too outré?’

  ‘On the contrary.’

  ‘Is this how you like me?’

  ‘Just like this.’

  There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you. Here, at last, was some real escape from the world. The calculated anonymity of the surroundings somehow increased the sense of being alone with her. There was no sound except her sharp intake of breath. Yet love, for all the escape it offers, is closely linked with everyday things, even with the affairs of others. I knew Jean would burn with curiosity when I told her of the procession in the park. At the same time, because passion in its transcendence cannot be shared with any other element, I could not speak of what had happened until the time had come to decide where to dine.

  She was pulling on her stockings when I told her. She gave a little cry, indicating disbelief.

  ‘After all, you were the first to suggest something was “on” between them.’

  ‘But she would be insane to leave Peter.’

  We discussed this. The act of marching in a political demonstration did not, in itself, strike her as particularly unexpected in Mona. She said that Mona always longed to take part in anything that drew attention to herself. Jean was unwilling to believe that pushing St. John Clarke’s chair was the outward sign of a decisive step in joining Quiggin.

  ‘She must have done it because Peter is away. It is exactly the kind of thing that would appeal to her. Besides, it would annoy him just the right amount. A little, but not too much.’

  ‘Where is Peter?’

  ‘Spending the week-end with business friends. Mona thought them too boring to visit.’

  ‘Perhaps she was just having a day out, then. Even so, it confirms your view that Quiggin made a hit with her.’

  She pulled on the other stocking.

  ‘True, they had a splitting row just before Peter left home,’ she said. ‘You know, I almost believe you are right.’

  ‘Put a call through.’

  ‘Just to see what the form is?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Shall I?’

  She was undecided.

  ‘I think I will,’ she said at last.

  Still only partly dressed, she took up the telephone and lay on the sofa. At the other end of the line the bell rang for some little time before there was an answer. Then a voice spoke from the Templers’ house. Jean made some trivial enquiry. A short conversation followed. I saw from her face that my guess had been somewhere near the mark. She hung up the receiver.

  ‘Mona left the house yesterday, saying she did not know when she would be back. She took a fair amount of luggage and left no address. I think the Burdens believe something is up. Mrs. Burden told me Peter had rung up about something he had forgotten. She told him Mona had left unexpectedly.

  ‘She may be taking a few days off.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Jean.

  Barnby used to say: ‘All women are stimulated by the news that any wife has left any husband.’ Certainly I was aware that the emotional atmosphere in the room had changed. Perhaps I should have waited longer before telling her my story. Yet to postpone the information further was scarcely possible without appearing deliberately secretive. I have often pondered on the conversation that followed, without coming to any definite conclusion as to why things took the course they did.

  We had gone on to talk of the week-end when Quiggin had been first invited to the Templers’ house. I had remarked something to the effect that if Mona had really left for good, the subject would have been apt for one of Mrs. Erdleigh’s prophecies. In saying this I had added some more or less derogatory remark about Jimmy Stripling. Suddenly I was aware that Jean was displeased with my words. Her face took on a look of vexation. I supposed that some out-of-the-way loyalty had for some reason made her take exception to the idea of laughing at her sister’s ex-husband. I could not imagine why this should be, since Stripling was usually regarded in the Templer household as an object of almost perpetual derision.

  ‘I know he isn’t intelligent,’ she said.

  ‘Intelligence isn’t everything,’ I said, trying to pass the matter off lightly. ‘Look at the people in the Cabinet.’

  ‘You said the other day that you found it awfully difficult to get on with people who were not intelligent.’

  ‘I only meant where writing was concerned.’

  ‘It didn’t sound like that.’

  A woman’s power of imitation and adaptation make her capable of confronting you with your own arguments after even the briefest acquaintance: how much more so if a state of intimacy exists. I saw that we were about to find ourselves
in deep water. She pursed her lips and looked away. I thought she was going to cry. I could not imagine what had gone wrong and began to feel that terrible sense of exhaustion that descends, when, without cause or warning, an unavoidable, meaningless quarrel develops with someone you love. Now there seemed no way out. To lavish excessive praise on Jimmy Stripling’s intellectual attainments would not be accepted, might even sound satirical; on the other hand, to remain silent would seem to confirm my undoubtedly low opinion of his capabilities in that direction. There was also, of course, the more general implication of her remark, the suggestion of protest against a state of mind in which intellectual qualities were automatically put first. Dissent from this principle was, after all, reasonable enough, though not exactly an equitable weapon in Jean’s hands, for she, as much as anyone—so it seemed to me as her lover—was dependent, in the last resort, on people who were ‘intelligent’ in the sense in which she used the word.

  Perhaps it was foolish to pursue the point of what was to all appearances only an irritable remark. But the circumstances were of a kind when irritating remarks are particularly to be avoided. Otherwise, it would have been easier to find an excuse.

  Often enough, women love the arts and those who practice them; but they possess also a kind of jealousy of those activities. They like wit, but hate analysis. They are always prepared to fall back upon traditional rather than intellectual defensive positions. We never talked of Duport, as I have already recorded, and I scarcely knew, even then, why she had married him; but married they were. Accordingly, it seemed to me possible that what she had said possessed reference, in some oblique manner, to her husband; in the sense that adverse criticism of this kind cast a reflection upon him, and consequently upon herself. I had said nothing of Duport (who, as I was to discover years later, had a deep respect for ‘intelligence’), but the possibility was something to be taken into account.

  I was quite wrong in this surmise, and, even then, did not realise the seriousness of the situation; certainly was wholly unprepared for what happened next. A moment later, for no apparent reason, she told me she had had a love affair with Jimmy Stripling.

  ‘When?’

  ‘After Babs left him,’ she said.

  She went white, as if she might be about to faint. I was myself overcome with a horrible feeling of nausea, as if one had suddenly woken from sleep and found oneself chained to a corpse. A desire to separate myself physically from her and the place we were in was linked with an overwhelming sensation that, more than ever, I wanted her for myself. To think of her as wife of Bob Duport was bad enough, but that she should also have been mistress of Jimmy Stripling was barely endurable. Yet it was hard to know how to frame a complaint regarding that matter even to myself. She had not been ‘unfaithful’ to me. This odious thing had happened at a time when I myself had no claim whatsoever over her. I tried to tranquillise myself by considering whether a liaison with some man, otherwise possible to like or admire, would have been preferable. In the face of such an alternative, I decided Stripling was on the whole better as he was: with all the nightmarish fantasies implicit in the situation. The mystery remained why she should choose that particular moment to reveal this experience of hers, making of it a kind of defiance.

  When you are in love with someone, their life, past, present and future, becomes in a curious way part of your life; and yet, at the same time, since two separate human entities in fact remain, you merely carry your own prejudices into another person’s imagined existence; not even into their ‘real’ existence, because only they themselves can estimate what their ‘real’ existence has been. Indeed, the situation might be compared with that to be experienced in due course in the army where an officer is responsible for the conduct of troops stationed at a post too distant from him for the exercise of any effective control.

  Not only was it painful enough to think of Jean giving herself to another man; the pain was intensified by supposing—what was, of course, not possible—that Stripling must appear to her in the same terms that he appeared to me. Yet clearly she had, once, at least, looked at Stripling with quite different eyes, or such a situation could never have arisen. Therefore, seeing Stripling as a man for whom it was evidently possible to feel at the very least a passing tendresse—perhaps even love—this incident, unforgettably horrible as it seemed to me at the time, would more rationally be regarded as a mere error of judgment. In love, however, there is no rationality. Besides, that she had seen him with other eyes than mine made things worse. In such ways one is bound, inescapably, to the actions of others.

  We finished dressing in silence. By that time it was fairly late. I felt at once hungry, and without any true desire for food.

  ‘Where shall we go?’

  ‘Anywhere you like.’

  ‘But where would you like to go?’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘We could have a sandwich at Foppa’s.’

  ‘The club?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right.’

  In the street she slipped her arm through mine. I looked, and saw that she was crying a little, but I was no nearer understanding her earlier motives. The only thing clear was that some sharp change had taken place in the kaleidoscope of our connected emotions. In the pattern left by this transmutation of coloured crystals an increased intimacy had possibly emerged. Perhaps that was something she had intended.

  ‘I suppose I should not have told you.’

  ‘It would have come out sooner or later.’

  ‘But not just then.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’

  Still, in spite of it all, as we drove through dingy Soho streets, her head resting on my shoulder, I felt glad she still seemed to belong to me. Foppa’s was open. That was a relief, for there was sometimes an intermediate period when the restaurant was closed down and the club had not yet come into active being. We climbed the narrow staircase, over which brooded a peculiarly Italian smell: minestrone: salad oil: stale tobacco: perhaps a faint reminder of the lotion Foppa used on his hair.

  Barnby had first introduced me to Foppa’s club a long time before. One of the merits of the place was that no one either of us knew ever went there. It was a single room over Foppa’s Restaurant. In theory the club opened only after the restaurant had shut for the night, but in practice Foppa himself, sometimes feeling understandably bored with his customers, would retire upstairs to read the paper, or practise billiard strokes. On such occasions he was glad of company at an earlier hour than was customary. Alternatively, he would sometimes go off with his friends to another haunt of theirs, leaving a notice on the door, written in indelible pencil, saying that Foppa’s Club was temporarily closed for cleaning.

  There was a narrow window at the far end of this small, smoky apartment; a bar in one corner, and a table for the game of Russian billiards in the other. The walls were white and bare, the vermouth bottles above the little bar shining out in bright stripes of colour that seemed to form a kind of spectrum in red, white and green. These patriotic colours linked the aperitifs and liqueurs with the portrait of Victor Emmanuel II which hung over the mantelpiece. Surrounded by a wreath of laurel, the King of Sardinia and United Italy wore a wasp-waisted military frock-coat swagged with coils of yellow aiguillette. The bold treatment of his costume by the artist almost suggested a Bakst design for one of the early Russian ballets.

  If Foppa himself had grown his moustache to the same enormous length, and added an imperial to his chin, he would have looked remarkably like the re galantuomo; with just that same air of royal amusement that anyone could possibly take seriously—even for a moment—the preposterous world in which we are fated to have our being. Hanging over the elaborately gilded frame of this coloured print was the beautiful Miss Foppa’s black fez-like cap, which she possessed by virtue of belonging to some local, parochial branch of the Fascist Party; though her father was believed to be at best only a lukewarm supporter of Mussolini’s régime. Foppa had lived in London for many
years. He had even served as a cook during the war with a British light infantry regiment; but he had never taken out papers of naturalisation.

  ‘Look at me,’ he used to say, when the subject arose, ‘I am not an Englishman. You see.’

  The truth of that assertion was undeniable. Foppa was not an Englishman. He did not usually express political opinions in the presence of his customers, but he had once, quite exceptionally, indicated to me a newspaper photograph of the Duce declaiming from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia. That was as near as he had ever gone to stating his view. It was sufficient. Merely by varying in no way his habitual expression of tolerant amusement, Foppa had managed to convey his total lack of anything that could possibly be accepted as Fascist enthusiasm. All the same, I think he had no objection to his daughter’s association with that or any other party which might be in power at the moment.

  Foppa was decidedly short, always exquisitely dressed in a neat suit, blue or brown, his tiny feet encased in excruciatingly tight shoes of light tan shade. The shoes were sharply pointed and polished to form dazzling highlights. In summer he varied his footgear by sporting white brogues picked out in snakeskin. He was a great gambler, and sometimes spent his week-ends taking part in trotting races somewhere not far from London, perhaps at Green-ford in Middlesex. Hanging behind the bar was a framed photograph of himself competing in one of these trotting events, armed with a long whip, wearing a jockey cap, his small person almost hidden between the tail of his horse and the giant wheels of the sulky. The snapshot recalled a design of Degas or Guys. That was the world, æsthetically speaking, to which Foppa belonged. He was a man of great good nature and independence, who could not curb his taste for gambling for high stakes; a passion that brought him finally, I believe, into difficulties.

  Jean and I had already been to the club several times, because she liked playing Russian billiards, a game at which she was extremely proficient. Sixpence in the slot of the table brought to the surface the white balls and the red.