Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [42]
I circulated among the ‘Allies’, polite majors, affable colonels, the occasional urbane general, all the people who had once made up so much of daily life. Now, for some reason, there seemed little or nothing to talk about. It was no use broaching to these officers the subject of the newly founded publishing house of Quiggin & Craggs, the magazine Fission that was to embody the latest literary approach. At the same time the most superficial military topics once mutually exchanged seemed to have altered utterly overnight, everything revised, reorganized, reassembled; while – an awkward point – to approach, as a civilian, even the exterior trimmings of the military machine, when making conversation with the professional who controlled some part of it, was to risk, if not a snub, conveying an impression of curiosity either impertinent, or stemming from personal connexion with the Secret Service. While I wrestled with this problem, Jean reappeared.
‘Your wife has so kindly asked us to dine with you. It’s very hospitable, because I know how absolutely impossible it is to give dinner parties these days, not only rationing, but all sorts of other things. They are difficult enough even if you have official supplies and staff to draw on like ourselves. Carlos and I would so much have loved to come, but there has been a surprise. We have just received news from our Defence Ministry that we must go home.’
‘Already?’
‘We have to leave London almost at once. There has been a change of Government and a big reorganization.’
‘Promotion, I hope?’
‘Carlos has been given a military area in the Northern Province. It is quite unexpected and might lead to big things. There are, well, political implications. It is not just the same as being in the army here. So we have to make immediate arrangements to pack up, you see.’
She smiled.
‘I should offer congratulations as well as regrets?’
‘Of course Carlos is delighted, though he pretends not to be. He is quite ambitious. He makes very good speeches. We are both pleased really. It shows the new Government is being sensible. To tell the truth we were sent here partly to get Carlos out of the country. Now all that is changed – but the move must be done in such a hurry.’
‘How foolish of them not to have wanted such a nice man about the place.’
She laughed at that.
‘I was hoping to take Polly round a little in London. However, she is going to stay in England for a time in any case. She has ambitions to go on the stage.’
‘I haven’t seen her at your party?’
‘She’s with her father at the moment – I think you’ve met my first husband, Bob Duport?’
‘Several times – during the war among others. He’d been ill in the Middle East, and we ran across each other in Brussels.’
‘Gyppy tummy and other things left poor Bob rather a wreck. He ought to marry somebody who’d look after him properly, keep him in order too, which I never managed to do. He’s rather a weak man in some ways.’
‘Yes, poor Bob. No good being weak.’
She laughed again at this endorsement of her own estimate of Duport’s character, but at the same time without giving anything away, or to the smallest degree abandoning the determined formality of her manner. That particular laugh, the way she had of showing she entirely grasped the point of what one had said, once carried with it powerful intoxications; now – a relief to ascertain even after so long – not a split second of emotional tremor.
‘What’s he doing now?’
‘Bob? Oil. Something new for him – produced by an old friend of his called Jimmy Brent. You may have met him with my brother Peter. How I miss Peter, although we never saw much of each other.’
‘I came across Jimmy Brent in the war too.’
‘Jimmy’s a little bit awful really. He’s got very fat, and is to marry a widow with two grown-up sons. Still, he’s fixed up Bob, which is the great thing.’
To make some comment that showed I knew she had slept with Brent – by his own account, been in love with him – was tempting, but restraint prevailed.