To Templer, accustomed to easy success with women, she had perhaps represented the one absolutely first-rate example of the goods he had been for so long accustomed to handle — in the manner that a seasoned collector can afford to ignore every other point in any object he wishes to acquire provided it satisfies completely in those respects most difficult to attain. In some way, for Templer, Mona must have fulfilled that condition. Dozens of girls not very different from her were to be found in dress shops and art schools, but Templer, like a scholar who can immediately date a manuscript by the quality of the ink, or the texture of the parchment, had seen something there to crown his special collection: a perfect specimen of her kind. At least that seemed, on the face of it, the only reason why he should have married her.
To Quiggin, on the other hand, himself not particularly adept with girls, Mona must have appeared a wholly unexpected triumph, a ‘beauty’ at whom passers-by turned to gaze in the street, who had positively thrown herself at his head — leaving her ‘boring’ stockbroker husband to live with a writer and a revolutionary. Here was a situation few could fail to find flattering. It was clear from his demeanour that Quiggin still felt flattered, for, although sulky that afternoon, there seemed in general no reason to suppose that Mona regretted her past. Like Molly Jeavons, in such a different context, she appeared — so I had been told — to accept her completely changed circumstances. Her air of temporary dissatisfaction was no doubt merely the old one implying that insufficient attention was being paid to her whims. Perhaps for that reason she spoke of Templer almost at once.
‘Have you been seeing anything of Peter?’ she asked, without any self-consciousness.
‘Not for some time, as it happens.’
‘I suppose he has found a new girl?’
‘I shouldn’t wonder.’
She did not pursue the subject. It was just as if she had said: ‘Have you change for a pound?’; and, on learning that I had no silver, immediately abandoned the matter. There was no question of emotion; only a faint curiosity. That, at least, was all she allowed to appear on the surface. Quiggin, on the other hand, looked a trifle put out at this early mention of Templer’s name.
‘By the way, ducks,’ he said, ‘I forgot to tell you I tried to get the bath-lotion when I was last in London. The shop was out of it. I’ll try again next time.’
Mona compressed her lips in displeasure. Merely to have remembered to enquire for the bath-lotion she evidently considered insufficient on Quiggin’s part. She began to hum to herself.
‘You have a nice landscape here,’ I said. ‘Is there a house behind those trees? It looks as if there might be.’
‘Do you think it nice?’ said Quiggin, his previous tone of harsh geniality somewhat impaired by Mona’s mood. ‘You know these days I scarcely notice such things. Once I might have done — should have done, certainly, in my romantic period. I suppose by “nice” you mean undeveloped. Give me something a bit more practical. You can keep your picturesque features so far as I am concerned. If English agriculture was organised on a rational — I do not even say a just — basis, I dare say there might be something to be said for the view from this window. As it is, I would much rather be looking at a well-designed power station. Perhaps, as being more rural, I should say a row of silos.’
He smiled to show that he did not mean to be too severe. This was, after all, the kind of subject upon which we had often disagreed in the past. There was something about Quiggin that always reminded me of Widmerpool, but, whereas Widmerpool was devoid of all æsthetic or intellectual interests, as such, Quiggin controlled such instincts in himself according to his particular personal policy at any given moment. Widmerpool would genuinely possess no opinion as to whether the view from the cottage window was good or bad. The matter would not have the slightest interest for him. He would be concerned only with the matter of who owned the land. Perhaps that was not entirely true, for Widmerpool would have enjoyed boasting of a fine view owned by himself. Quiggin, on the other hand, was perfectly aware that there might be something to be admired in the contours of the country, but to admit admiration would be to surrender material about himself that might with more value be kept secret. His role, like Widmerpool’s was that of a man of the will, a role which adjudged that even here, in giving an opinion on the landscape, the will must be exercised.
‘No,’ he said. ‘What I like in this place, as a matter of fact, is the excellent arrangement that the bath is in the scullery. Now that is realistic. Not a lot of bourgeois nonsense about false refinement. The owner had it put there quite recently.’
‘Does he live here himself?’
Quiggin smiled at this question as if it displayed an abyss of ignorance.
‘No, he doesn’t. He keeps it for lending friends — usually people with views similar to my own — our own, I should say.’
He slipped his arm round Mona’s waist. She was not won over by this attention, disengaging his hand, and making no effort to assume the comportment of a woman gifted with keen political instincts. An extreme, uninhibited silliness had formerly been her principal characteristic. Now I had the impression she had become more aware of life, more formidable than in her Templer days.
‘Your landlord is an active Leftist too, is he?’
‘Of course.’
‘You speak as if all landlords belonged automatically to the Left.’
‘We are expected to do a bit of work for him in return for living here free,’ said Quiggin. ‘That’s human nature. But everything he wants is connected with my own political life, so I did not mind that.’
‘Who is the owner?’
‘You wouldn’t know him,’ said Quiggin, smiling with a kind of fierce kindliness. ‘He is a serious person, as a matter of fact. You would not come across him at parties. Not the sort of parties you go to, at least.’
‘How do you know the sort of parties I go to?’
‘Well, he wouldn’t go to the sort of parties I used to see you at.’
‘Why? Does he go to parties only frequented by his own sex?’
Quiggin laughed heartily at that.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Nothing of that kind. How like you to suggest something of the sort. He is just a politically conscious person who does not enjoy a lot of gallivanting about.’
‘I believe he is going to turn out to be Howard Craggs, after all this mystery you are making.’
Quiggin laughed again.
‘I still see a certain amount of Craggs,’ he admitted. ‘His firm may be launching a little scheme of mine in the near future — not a book. Craggs is politically sound, but I prefer a publishing house of more standing than Boggis & Stone for my books.’
Since Quiggin’s books remained purely hypothetical entities, it seemed reasonable enough that their publisher should exist hypothetically too. I was tempted to say as much, but thought it wiser to avoid risk of discord at this early stage. Quiggin was evidently enjoying his own efforts to stir up my curiosity regarding his landlord and benefactor.