At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [44]
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