A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [111]
The lack of demur on her part seemed quite in accordance with the almost somnambulistic force that had brought me into that place, and also with the torpid, dream-like atmosphere of the afternoon. At least such protests as she put forward were of so formal and artificial an order that they increased, rather than diminished, the impression that a long-established rite was to be enacted, among Staffordshire figures and papier-mâché trays, with the compelling, detached formality of nightmare. Perhaps some demand, not to be denied in its overpowering force, had occasioned simultaneously both this summons and Mrs. Wentworth’s telephone call; each product of that slow process of building up of events, as already mentioned, coming at last to a head. I was conscious of Gypsy changing her individuality, though at the same time retaining her familiar form: this illusion almost conveying the extraordinary impression that there were really three of us—perhaps even four, because I was aware that alteration had taken place within myself too—of whom the pair of active participants had been, as it were, projected from out of our normally unrelated selves.
In spite of the apparently irresistible nature of the circumstances, when regarded through the larger perspective that seemed, on reflection, to prevail—that is to say of a general subordination to an intricate design of cause and effect—I could not help admitting, in due course, the awareness of a sense of inadequacy. There was no specific suggestion that anything had, as it might be said, “gone wrong”, it was merely that any wish to remain any longer present in those surroundings had suddenly and violently decreased, if not disappeared entirely. This feeling was, in its way, a shock. Gypsy, for her part, appeared far less impressed than myself by consciousness of anything, even relatively momentous, having occurred. In fact, after the brief interval of extreme animation, her subsequent indifference, which might almost have been called torpid, was, so it seemed to me, remarkable. This imperturbability was inclined to produce an impression that, so far from knowing each other a great deal better, we had progressed scarcely at all in that direction; perhaps, become more than ever, even irretrievably, alienated. Barbara’s recurrent injunction to avoid any question of “getting sentimental” seemed, here in the embodiment of Gypsy, now carried to lengths which might legitimately be looked upon as such a principle’s logical conclusion.
This likeness to Barbara was more clearly indicated, however, than by a merely mental comparison of theory, because, while Gypsy lay upon the divan, her hands before her, looking, perhaps rather self-consciously, a little like Goya’s Maja nude—or possibly it would be nearer the mark to cite that picture’s derivative, Manet’s Olympia, which I had, as it happened, heard her mention on some former occasion—she glanced down, with satisfaction, at her own extremities.
“How brown my leg is,” she said. “Fancy sunburn lasting that long.”
Were Barbara and Gypsy really the same girl, I asked myself. There was something to be said for the theory; for I had been abruptly reminded of Barbara’s remark, uttered under the trees of Belgrave Square earlier in the year: “How blue my hand is in the moonlight.” Self-admiration apart, there could be no doubt now that they had a great deal in common. It was a concept that made me feel that, in so far as I was personally involved in matters of sentiment, the season was, romantically speaking, autumn indeed, and that