“I’ll give you the Combined Ops number and extension.”
“I had to put Bijou off,” she said quite calmly. “I’ll get in touch with Chips to-morrow.”
“He thought you might be at the Jeavonses’.”
“Why didn’t he ring up then?”
“He hoped he was going to see you at the Madrid — make a surprise of it.”
She did not rise to that.
“The Jeavons house is more of a shambles than ever,” she said. “Eleanor Walpole-Wilson is there — Aunt Molly usen’t to like her, but they’re great buddies now — and then there are two Polish officers whose place was bombed and had nowhere to go, and a girl who’s having a baby by a Norwegian sailor.”
“Who’s having a baby by a Norwegian sailor?” asked Stevens. “No one we know, I hope.”
He had come back to the table at that moment. Such as it was, my demonstration had been made, was now, of necessity, over. There was nothing more to be said. The situation could only be accepted, until, in one field or another, further action might be required. That, at least, was so far as I myself was concerned. Recognition of this as a fact seemed unavoidable. The return of Stevens brought about a reshuffle of places, resulting in Mrs. Maclintick finding herself next him on the banquette with me on the other side of her. Priscilla and Moreland were opposite. This seating had been chiefly organised by Stevens himself, possibly with no more aim than a display of power. I congratulated him on his M.C.
“Oh, that?” he said. “Pretty hot stuff to have one of those, isn’t it? I really deserved it — we both did — for putting up with that Aldershot course when we first met. It was far more gruelling than anything expected of me later — those lectures on the German army. Christ, I dream about them. Are you at the War House or somewhere?”
“On leave — going down to the country tomorrow.”
“Hope you have as much fun on it as I’ve had on mine,” he said.
He seemed totally unaware that, among members of Priscilla’s family — myself, for example — conventional reservations might exist regarding the part he was at that moment playing; that at least they might not wish to hear rubbed in what an enjoyable time he had been having as her lover. All the same, shamelessness of any kind, perhaps rightly, always exacts a certain respect. Lovell himself was no poor hand at displaying cheek. As usual, a kind of poetic justice was observable in what was happening.
“I suppose your destination is secret?”
“Don’t quote me, but there’s been a tropical issue.”
“Middle East?”
“That’s my opinion.”
“Might be the Far East.”
“You never know. I think the other myself.”
Until then Moreland had been sitting in silence, apparently unable, or unwilling, to cope with the changed composition of the party at the table. This awkwardness with new arrivals had always been a trait of his, and probably had little or nothing to do with the comparatively unfamiliar note struck by the personality and conversation of Stevens. A couple of middle-aged music critics he had known all his life might have brought about just the same sort of temporary stoppage in Moreland’s conversation. Later, he would recover; talk them off their feet. Now, this change took place, he spoke with sudden animation.
“My God, I wish I could be transplanted to the Far East without further delay,” he said. “I’d be prepared to be like Brahms and play the piano in a brothel — even play Brahms’s own compositions in a brothel, part of the Requiem would be very suitable — if I could only be somewhere like Saigon or Bangkok, leave London and the blackout behind.”
“A naval officer I talked to on a bus the other day, just back from Hong Kong, reported life there as bloody amusing,” said Stevens. “But look, Mr. Moreland, there’s something I must tell you before we go any further. Of course, I wanted to see Nicholas again, that was why I came over, but another pretty considerable item was that I had recognised you. I saw a chance of telling you personally what a fan of yours I am. Hearing your Tone Poem Vieux Port performed at Birmingham was one of the high spots of my early life. I was about sixteen, I suppose. You’ve probably forgotten Birmingham ever had a chance of hearing it, or you yourself ever came there. I haven’t. I’ve always wanted to meet you and say how much it thrilled me.”
This was an unexpected trump card for Stevens to play. Moreland, always modest about his own works, showed permissible signs of pleasure at this sudden hearty praise from such an unexpected source. Music was an entirely new line from Stevens, so far as I knew him, until this moment. Obviously it constituted a weapon in his armoury, perhaps a formidable one. He had certainly opened up operations on an extended front since our weeks together at Aldershot. Mrs. Maclintick broke in at this point.
“Vieux Port’s the one Maclintick always liked,” she said. “He used to go on about that piece of music until I told him never to mention the thing to me again.”
“When it was performed at Birmingham, Maclintick was about the only critic who offered any praise,” said Moreland. “Even that old puss Gossage was barely civil. The rest of the critics buried my music completely and me with it. I feel now like Nero meeting in Hades the unknown mourner who strewed flowers on his grave.”
“You’re not in your grave yet, Moreland,” said Mrs. Maclintick, “nor even in Hades, though you always talk as if you were. I never knew such a morbid man.”
“I meant the grave of my works rather than my own,” said Moreland. “That’s what it looked like that year at Birmingham. Anyway, not being dead’s no argument against feeling like Nero. Quite the reverse.”
“Not much hope of a Roman orgy here,” said Stevens. “Even the food’s hard to wallow in, don’t you agree, Mrs. Maclintick?”
He turned his attention to her, in the manner of his particular brand of narcissism, determined to make a conquest, separate and individual, of everyone sitting at the table.
“From the way you talk,” he said, “you don’t sound as great a Moreland fan as you should be. Fancy saying you got tired of hearing Vieux Port praised. I’m surprised at you.”
“I’m a fan all right,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “Not half, I am. You should see him in bed in the morning before he’s shaved. You couldn’t help being a fan then.”
There was some laughter at that, in which Moreland himself joined loudly, though he would probably have preferred his relationship with Mrs. Maclintick to have been expressed less explicitly in the presence of Priscilla. At the same time, Mrs. Maclintick’s tone had been not without affection of a kind. The reply she had made, whether or not with that intention, hindered Stevens from continuing to discuss Moreland’s music more or less seriously, an object he seemed to have in view. However, this did not prevent him from increasing, if only in a routine manner, his own air of finding Mrs. Maclintick attractive, a policy that was beginning to make a good impression on her. This behaviour, however light-hearted, was perhaps displeasing to Priscilla, no doubt unwilling to admit to herself that, for Stevens, one woman was, at least up to a point, as good as another; anyway when sitting in a restaurant. She may reasonably have felt that no competition should be required of her to keep him to herself. There was, of course, no question of Stevens showing any real interest in Mrs. Maclintick, but, in circumstances prevailing, Priscilla probably regarded all his attention as belonging to herself alone. Whether or not this was the reason, she had become quite silent. Now she interrupted the conversation.
“Listen …”