Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell [27]
‘I expect you have heard about Erridge,’ said Robert.
‘That the Thrubworth woods will have to be sold?’
‘Well, that, of course. But I mean his latest.’
‘No?’
‘He is going out there.’
‘Where?’
Robert jerked his head in the direction of the shiny wooden cabinet from which Debussy quavered and tinkled and droned.
‘Spain.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Can you imagine.’
‘The International Brigade?’
‘I don’t know whether he will actually fight. As you know, he holds pacifist views. However, he will certainly be on the opposite side to General Franco. We can at least be sure of that. I can’t think that Erry would be any great help to any army he joined, can you?’
The news that Erridge contemplated taking a comparatively active part in the Spanish civil war came as no great surprise to me. Politically, his sympathies would naturally be engaged with the extreme Left, whether Communist or Anarchist was not known. Possibly Erridge himself had not yet decided. He had been, of course, a supporter of Blum’s ‘Popular Front’, but, within the periphery of ‘Leftism’, his shifting preferences were unpredictable; nor did he keep his relations informed on such matters. The only fact by then established was that Erridge had contributed relatively large sums of money to several of the organisations recently come into being, designed to assist the Spanish Republican forces. This news came from Quiggin, who like myself, visited from time to time the office of the weekly paper of which Mark Members was now assistant literary editor.
The fortunes of these two friends, Quiggin and Members, seemed to vary inversely. For a time Quiggin had been the more successful, supplanting Members as St John Clarke’s secretary, finding congenial odd jobs in the world of letters, running away with the beautiful Mona, battening on Erridge; but ever since Mona had, in turn, deserted Quiggin for Erridge, Quiggin had begun to undergo a period of adversity. From taking a patronising line about Members, he now – like myself – found himself professionally dependent upon his old friend for books to review. The tide, on the other hand, seemed to be flowing in favour of Members. He had secured this presentable employment, not requiring so much work that he was unable to find time to write himself; his travel book, Baroque Interlude, had been a notable success; there was talk of his marrying a rich girl, who was also not bad-looking. So far as the affair of Mona was concerned, Quiggin had ‘made it up’ with Erridge; even declaring in his cups that Erridge had done him a good turn by taking her off his hands.
‘After all,’ said Quiggin, ‘Mona has left him too. Poor Alf has nothing to congratulate himself about. He has just heaped up more guilt to carry round on his own back.’
After Erridge’s return from the Far East, he and Quiggin had met at – of all places – a party given by Mrs Andriadis, whose sole interest now, so it appeared, was the Spanish war. Common sympathy in this cause made reconciliation possible without undue abasement on Quiggin’s part, but the earlier project of founding a paper together was not revived for the moment, although Quiggin re-entered the sphere of Erridge’s patronage.
‘I correspond a certain amount with