Without waiting for an answer, he began to recount all that had been happening to Matilda and himself since we had last met; various absurd experiences they had shared; how they sometimes got on each other’s nerves; why they had returned to London; where they were going to live. There had been some sort of a row with the municipal authorities at the seaside resort. Moreland held decided professional opinions; he could be obstinate. Some people, usually not the most intelligent, found working with him difficult. I heard some of his story, telling him in return how the film company for which I had been script-writing had decided against renewing my contract; that I was now appearing on the book page of a daily paper; also reviewing from time to time for the weekly of which Mark Members was assistant literary editor.
‘Mark recommended Dr Brandreth to us,’ Moreland said. ‘A typical piece of malice on his part. Brandreth is St John Clarke’s doctor – or was when Mark was St John Clarke’s secretary. Gossip is the passion of his life, his only true emotion – but he can also put you on the rack about music.’
‘Is he looking after Matilda?’
‘A gynaecologist does that. He is not a music-lover, thank God. Of course, a lot of women have babies. One must admit that. No doubt it will be all right. It just makes one a bit jumpy. Look here, Nick, you must come to the Maclinticks’. It would be more cheerful if there were two of us.’
‘Should I be welcome?’
‘Why not? Have you developed undesirable habits since we last met?’
‘I never think Maclintick much likes me.’
‘Likes you?’ said Moreland. ‘What egotism on your part. Of course he doesn’t like you. Maclintick doesn’t like anybody.’
‘He likes you.’
‘We have professional ties. As a matter of fact, Maclintick doesn’t really hate everyone as much as he pretends. I was being heavily humorous.’
‘All the same, he shows small visible pleasure in meeting most people.’
‘One must rise above that. It is a kindness to do so. Maclintick does not get on too well with his wife. The occasional company of friends eases the situation.’
‘You do make this social call sound tempting.’
‘If nobody ever goes there, I am afraid Maclintick will jump into the river one of these days, or hang himself with his braces after a more than usually gruelling domestic difference. You must come.’
‘All right. Since you present it as a matter of life and death.’
We took a bus to Victoria, then passed on foot into a vast, desolate region of stucco streets and squares upon which a doom seemed to have fallen. The gloom was cosmic. We traversed these pavements for some distance, proceeding from haunts of seedy, grudging gentility into an area of indeterminate, but on the whole increasingly unsavoury, complexion.
‘Maclintick is devoted to this part of London,’ Moreland said. ‘I am not sure that I agree with him. He says his mood is for ever Pimlico. I grant that a sympathetic atmosphere is an important point in choosing a residence. It helps one’s work. All the same, tastes differ. Maclintick is always to be found in this neighbourhood, though never for long in the same place.’
‘He never seems very cheerful when I meet him.’
I had run across Maclintick only a few times with Moreland since our first meeting in the Mortimer.
‘He is a very melancholy man,’ Moreland agreed. ‘Maclintick is very melancholy. He is disappointed, of course.’
‘About himself as a musician?’
‘That – and other things. He is always hard up. Then he has an aptitude for quarrelling with anyone who might be of use to him professionally. He is writing a great tome on musical theory which never seems to get finished.’
‘What is his wife like?’
‘Like a wife.’
‘Is that how you feel about marriage?’
‘Well, not exactly,’ said Moreland laughing. ‘But you know one does begin to understand all the music-hall jokes and comic-strips about matrimony after you have tried a spell of it yourself. Don’t you agree?’
‘And Mrs Maclintick is a good example?’
‘You will see what I mean.’
‘What is Maclintick’s form about women? I can never quite make out.’
‘I think he hates them really – only likes whores.’
‘Ah.’
‘At least that is what Gossage used to say.’
‘That’s a known type.’
‘All the same, Maclintick is also full of deeply romantic, hidden away sentiments about Wein, Weib und Gesang. That is his passionate, carefully concealed side. The gruffness is intended to cover all that. Maclintick is terrified of being thought sentimental. I suppose all his bottled-up feelings came to the surface when he met Audrey.’
‘And the prostitutes?’
‘He told Gossage he found them easier to converse with than respectable ladies. Of course, Gossage – you can imagine how he jumped about telling me this – was speaking of a period before Maclintick’s marriage. No reason to suppose that sort of thing takes place now.’
‘But if he hates women, why do you say he is so passionate?’
‘It just seems to have worked out that way. Audrey is one of the answers, I suppose.’
The house, when we reached it, turned out to be a small, infinitely decayed two-storey dwelling that had seen better days; now threatened by a row of mean shops advancing from one end of the street and a fearful slum crowding up from the other. Moreland’s loyalty to his friends – in a quiet: way considerable – prevented me from being fully prepared for Mrs Maclintick. That she should have come as a surprise was largely my own fault. Knowing Moreland, I ought to have gathered more from his disjointed, though on the whole decidedly cautionary, account of the Maclintick household. Besides, from the first time of meeting Maclintick – when he had gone to the telephone in the Mortimer – the matrimonial rows of the Maclinticks had been an accepted legend. However much one hears about individuals, the picture formed in the mind rarely approximates to the reality. So it was with Mrs Maclintick. I was not prepared for her in the flesh. When she opened the door to us, her formidable discontent with life swept across the threshold in scorching, blasting waves. She was a small dark woman with a touch of gipsy about her, this last possibility suggested by sallow skin and bright black eyes. Her black hair was worn in a fringe. Some men might have found her attractive. I was not among them, although at the same time not blind to the fact that she might be capable of causing trouble where men were concerned. Mrs Maclintick said nothing at the sight of us, only shrugging her shoulders. Then, standing starkly aside, as if resigned to our entry in spite of an overpowering distaste she felt for the two of us, she held the door open wide. We passed within the Maclintick threshold.
‘It’s Moreland – and another man.’
Mrs Maclintick shouted, almost shrieked these words, while at the same time she twisted her head sideways and upwards towards a flight of stairs leading to a floor above, where Maclintick might be presumed to sit at work. We followed her into a sitting-room in which a purposeful banality of style had been observed; only a glass-fronted bookcase full of composers’ biographies and works of musical reference giving some indication of Maclintick’s profession.
‘Find somewhere to sit,’ said Mrs Maclintick, speaking if the day, bad enough before, had been finally ruined by arrival. ‘He will be down soon.’
Moreland seemed no more at ease in face of this reception than myself. At the same time he was evidently used to such welcomes in that house. Apart from reddening slightly, he showed no sign of expecting anything different in the way of reception. After telling Mrs Maclintick my name, he spoke a few desultory words about the weather, then made for the bookcase. I had the impression this was his accustomed gambit on arrival in that room. Opening its glass doors, he began to examine the contents of the shelves, as if – a most unlikely proposition – he had never before had time to consider Maclintick’s library. After a minute or two, during which we a
ll sat in silence, he extracted a volume and began to turn over its pages. At this firm treatment, which plainly showed he was not going to allow his hostess’s ill humour to perturb him, Mrs Maclintick unbent a little.
‘How is your wife, Moreland?’ she asked, after picking up and rearranging some sewing upon which she must have been engaged on our arrival. ‘She is having a baby, isn’t she?’
‘Any day now,’ said Moreland.
Either he scarcely took in what she said, or did not consider her a person before whom he was prepared to display the anxiety he had earlier expressed to me on that subject, because he did not raise his eyes from the book, and, a second after she had spoken, gave one of his sudden loud bursts of laughter. This amusement was obviously caused by something he had just read. For a minute or two he continued to turn the pages, laughing to himself.
‘This life of Chabrier is enjoyable,’ he said, still without looking up. ‘How wonderful he must have been dressed as a bull-fighter at the fancy dress ball at Granada. What fun it all was in those days. Much gayer than we are now. Why wasn’t one a nineteenth-century composer living in Paris and hobnobbing with the Impressionist painters?’
Mrs Maclintick made no reply to this rhetorical question which appeared in no way to fire within her nostalgic daydreams. She was about to turn her attention, as if unwillingly, towards myself, with the air of a woman who had given Moreland a fair chance and found him wanting, when Maclintick came into the room. He was moving unhurriedly, as if he had arrived downstairs to search for something he had forgotten, and was surprised to find his wife entertaining guests. Despondency, as usual, seemed to have laid an icy grip on him. He wore bedroom slippers and was pulling at a pipe. However, he brightened a little when he saw Moreland, screwing up his eyes behind the small spectacles and beginning to nod his head as if humming gently to himself. I offered some explanation of my presence in the house, to which Maclintick muttered a brief, comparatively affirmative acknowledgement. Without saying more, he made straight for a cupboard from which he took bottles and glasses.
‘What have you been up to all day?’ asked Mrs Maclintick. ‘I thought you were going to get the man to see about the gas fire. You haven’t moved from the house as far as I know. I wish you’d stick to what you say. I could have got hold of him myself, if I’d known you weren’t going to do it.’
Maclintick did not answer. He removed the cork from a bottle, the slight ‘pop’ of its emergence appearing to embody the material of a reply to his wife, at least all the reply he intended to give.
‘I’ve been looking at this book on Chabrier,’ said Moreland. ‘What an enjoyable time he had in Spain.’
Maclintick grunted. He hummed a little. Chabrier did not appear to interest him. He poured out liberal drinks for everyone and handed them round. Then he sat down.
‘Have you become a father yet, Moreland?’ he asked.
He spoke as if he grudged having to make so formal an enquiry of so close a friend.
‘Not yet,’ said Moreland. ‘I find it rather a trial waiting. Like the minute or two before the lights go out when you are going to conduct.’
Maclintick continued to hum.
‘Can’t imagine why people want a row of kids,’ he said. ‘Life is bad enough without adding that worry to the rest of one’s other troubles.’
Being given a drink must have improved Mrs Maclintick’s temper for the moment, because she asked me if I too were married. I told her about Isobel being about to leave a nursing home.
‘Everyone seems to want babies nowadays,’ said Mrs Maclintick. ‘It’s extraordinary. Maclintick and I never cared for the idea.’
She was about to enlarge on this subject when the bell rang, at the sound of which she went off to open the front door.
‘How are you finding things now that you are back in London?’ Maclintick asked.
‘So-so,’ said Moreland. ‘Having to do a lot of hack work to keep alive.’
From the passage came sounds of disconnected talk. It was a man’s voice. Whomever Mrs Maclintick had admitted to the house, instead of joining us in the sitting-room continued downstairs to the basement, making a lot of noise with his boots on the uncarpeted stairs. Mrs Maclintick returned to her chair and the knickers she was mending. Maclintick raised his eyebrows.
‘Carolo?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What’s happened to his key?’
‘He lost it.’
‘Again?’
‘Yes.’
‘Carolo is always losing keys,’ said Maclintick. ‘He’ll have to pay for a new one himself this time. It costs a fortune keeping him in keys. I can’t remember whether I told you Carolo has come to us as a lodger, Moreland.’
‘No,’ said Moreland, ‘you didn’t. How did that happen?’
Moreland seemed surprised, for some reason not best pleased at this piece of information.
‘He was in low water,’ Maclintick said, speaking as if he were himself not specially anxious to go into detailed explanations. ‘So were we. It seemed a good idea at the time. I’m not so sure now. In fact I’ve been thinking of getting rid of him.’
‘How is he doing?’ asked Moreland. ‘Carolo is always very particular about what jobs he will take on. All that business about teaching being beneath his dignity.’
‘He says he likes time for that work of his he is always tinkering about with,’ said Maclintick. ‘I shall be very surprised if anything ever comes of it.’
‘I like Carolo here,’ said Mrs Maclintick. ‘He gives very little trouble. I don’t want to die of melancholia, never seeing a soul.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Maclintick. ‘Look at the company we have got tonight. What I can’t stick is having Carolo scratching away at the other end of the room when I am eating. Why can’t he keep the same hours as other people?’
‘You are always saying artists ought to be judged by different standards from other people,’ said Mrs Maclintick fiercely. ‘Why shouldn’t Carolo keep the hours he likes? He is an artist, isn’t he?’
‘Carolo may be an artist,’ said Maclintick, puffing out a long jet of smoke from his mouth, ‘but he is a bloody unsuccessful one nowadays. One of those talents that have dried up in my opinion. I certainly don’t see him blossoming out as a composer. Look here, you two had better stay to supper. As Audrey says, we don’t often have company. You can see Carolo then. Judge for yourselves. It is going to be one of his nights in. I can tell from the way he went down the stairs.’
‘He has got to work somewhere, hasn’t he?’ said Mrs Maclintick, whose anger appeared to be rising again after a period of relative calm. ‘His bedroom is much too cold in this weather. You use the room with a gas fire in it yourself, the only room where you can keep warm. Even then you can’t be bothered to get it repaired. Do you want Carolo to freeze to death?’
‘It’s my house, isn’t it?’
‘You say you don’t want him in the sitting-room. Why did you tell him he could work in the room off the kitchen if you don’t want him there?’
‘I am not grumbling,’ said Maclintick, ‘I am just warning these two gendemen what to expect – that is to say Carolo scribbling away at a sheet of music at one end of the room, and some cold beef and pickles at the other.’
‘Mutton,’ said Mrs Maclintick.
‘Mutton, then. We can get some beer in a jug from the local.’
‘Doesn’t Carolo ever eat himself?’ Moreland asked.
‘He often meals with us as a matter of fact,’ said Mrs Maclintick. ‘I don’t know why Maclintick should make all this fuss suddenly. It is just when Carolo has other plans that he works while we are having supper. Then he eats out later. He likes living on snacks. I tell him it’s bad for him, but he doesn’t care. What is so very extraordinary about all that?’
Her husband disregarded her.
‘Then you are both going to stay,’ he said, almost anxiously. ‘That is fixed. Where is the big jug, Audrey? I’ll get some beer
. What does everyone like? Bitter? Mild-and-bitter?’
Moreland had probably been expecting this invitation from the start, but the Maclinticks’ bickering about Carolo seemed to have put him out, so that, giving a hasty glance in my direction as if to learn whether or not I was prepared to fall in with this suggestion, he made some rambling, inconclusive answer which left the whole question in the air. Moreland was subject to fits of jumpiness of that sort; certainly the Maclinticks, between them, were enough to make anyone ill at ease. However, Maclintick now obviously regarded the matter as settled. The prospect of enjoying Moreland’s company for the rest of the evening evidently cheered him. His tone in suggesting different brews of beer sounded like a gesture of conciliation towards his wife and the world in general. I did not much look forward to supper at the Maclinticks, but there seemed no easy way out. Moreland’s earlier remarks about Maclintick’s need for occasional companionship were certainly borne out by this visit. The Maclinticks, indeed, as a married couple, gave the impression of being near the end of their tether. When, for example, Mona and Peter Templer had quarrelled – or, later, when Mona’s interlude with Quiggin had been punctuated with bad temper and sulkiness – the horror had been less acute, more amenable to adjustment, than the bleak despair of the Maclinticks’ union. Mrs Maclintick’s hatred of everything and everybody – except, apparently, Carolo, praise of whom was in any case apparently little more than a stick with which to beat Maclintick – caused mere existence in the same room with her to be disturbing. She now made for the basement, telling us she would shout in due course an invitation to descend. Simultaneously, Maclintick set off for the pub at the end of the street, taking with him a large, badly chipped china jug to hold the beer.
‘I am afraid I’ve rather let you in for this,’ said Moreland, when we were alone.
His face displayed that helpless, worried look which it would sometimes take on; occasions when Matilda, nowadays probably took charge of the situation. No doubt he found life both worrying and irksome, waiting for her to give birth, himself by this time out of the habit of living on his own.