Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell [67]
He smiled and moved away, exhaling his usual air of mild mystery. Lady Huntercombe, taking leave of Matilda with a profusion of complimentary phrases, swept after Robert. Matilda beckoned me to come and talk to her. She looked pale, seemed rather agitated, either on account of her long session with Lady Huntercombe, or perhaps because she was still feeling shaken by the strain of hearing the symphony performed.
‘Give me some more champagne, Nick,’ she said, clasping my arm. ‘It is wonderful stuff for the nerves. Are you enjoying yourself at this smart party? I hope so.’
This manner was not at all her usual one. I thought she was probably a little drunk.
‘Of course – and the symphony was a great success.’
‘Did you think so?’
‘Very much.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You are certain, Nick?’
‘Of course I am. Everything went all right. There was lots of applause. What else do you expect?’
‘Yes, it was all right, I think. Somehow I hoped for more real enthusiasm. It is a wonderful work, you know. It really is.’
‘I am sure it is.’
‘It is wonderful. But people are going to be disappointed.’
‘Does Hugh himself think that?’
‘I don’t think it worries him,’ said Madlda. ‘Not in his present state of mind.’
For some reason – from the note in her voice, a sense of trouble in the air, perhaps just from natural caution – I felt safer in not enquiring what she regarded as Moreland’s ‘present state of mind’.
‘I see your little sister-in-law, Lady Priscilla, is here,’ said Matilda.
She smiled rather in Robert’s manner, as if at some secret inner pleasure that was also a little bitter to contemplate.
‘You’ve met her with us, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘She dined with us tonight.’
‘I met her once at your flat,’ said Madlda, speaking slowly, as if that were an extraordinary thing to have happened. ‘She is very attractive. But I don’t know her as well as Hugh does.’
I suddenly felt horribly uncomfortable, as if ice-cold water were dripping very gently, very slowly down my spine, but as if, at the same time, some special circumstance prevented admission of this unaccountable fact and also forbade any attempt on my own part to suspend the process; a sensation to be recognised, I knew well, as an extension of that earlier refusal to face facts about Moreland giving Priscilla the concert ticket. That odd feeling of excitement began to stir within me always provoked by news of other people’s adventures in love; accompanied as ever by a sense of sadness, of regret, almost jealousy, inward emotions that express, like nothing else in life, life’s irrational dissatisfactions. On the one hand, that Moreland might have fallen in love with Priscilla (and she with him) seemed immensely interesting; on the other – to speak only callously of the Morelands’ marriage and Priscilla’s inexperience (if she was inexperienced) – any such situation threatened complications of a most disturbing kind on two separate fronts of one’s own daily existence. As to immediate action, a necessary minimum was obviously represented by refraining from any mention to Matilda of the complimentary ticket. Silence on that point offered at least a solid foundation upon which to build; the simple principle that a friend’s actions, however colourless, vis-à-vis another woman, are always better unrepeated to his wife. Contemplation of this banal maxim increased the depression that had suddenly descended on me. The proposition that Moreland was having some sort of a flirtation