Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell [89]
In spite of this rather aggressive equanimity displayed by Maclintick himself, an awful air of gloom hung over the house. The sitting-room was unspeakably filthy, dirty tea cups along the top of the glass-fronted bookcase, tumblers stained with beer dregs among the hideous ornaments of the mantelpiece. In the background, an atmosphere of unmade beds and unwashed dishes was dominated by an abominable, indefinable smell. As people do when landed in a position of that sort, Maclintick began at once to discuss his own predicament; quite objectively, as if the experience was remote from himself, as if – which in a sense was true – there was no earthly point in our talking of anything else but Maclintick’s personal affairs.
‘When I realised she had gone,’ he said, ‘I heaved a great sigh of relief. That was my first reaction. Later, I grasped the fact that I had to get my own supper. Found something I liked for a change – sardines and plenty of red pepper – and a stiff drink with them. Then I started turning things over in my mind. I began to think of Carolo.’
Moreland laughed uneasily. He was a person not well equipped to deal with human troubles. His temperament was without that easy, unthinking sympathy which reacts in a simple manner, indicating instinctively the right thing to say to someone desperately unhappy. He also lacked that subjective, ruthless love of presiding over other people’s affairs which often makes basically heartless people adept at offering effective consolation. ‘I never know the right moment to squeeze the bereaved’s arm at a funeral,’ he had once said. ‘Some people can judge it to a nicety.’ In short, nothing but true compassion for Maclintick’s circumstances could have brought Moreland to the house that night. It was an act of friendship of some magnitude.
‘Is Carolo in a job?’ Moreland asked.
‘Carolo taking a job seems to have touched off matters,’ said Maclintick, ‘or perhaps vice versa. He has at last decided that his genius will allow him to teach. Somewhere in the North – Midlands, I was told, his own part of the world. I can’t remember now. He spoke about it a short time before they went off together. Left without paying his rent, need I say? I wonder how he and Audrey will hit it off. I spent yesterday with a solicitor.’
‘You are getting a divorce?’
Maclintick nodded.
‘Why not,’ he said, ‘when you’ve got the chance? She might change her mind. Let me fill your glasses.’
All this talk was decidedly uncomfortable. I did not think Moreland, any more than myself, knew whether Maclintick was in fact glad to have ridded himself of his wife, or, on the contrary, was shattered by her leaving him. Either state was credible. To presume that because they were always quarrelling, Maclintick necessarily wished to be parted from her could be wholly mistaken. In the same way, it was equally difficult to know whether Maclintick was genuinely relieved at ceasing to work for the paper that had employed him until the previous week, or was, on the contrary, desperately worried at the prospect of having to look for another job. So far as the job was concerned, both states of mind probably existed simultaneously; perhaps so far as the wife was concerned too. Moreland clearly felt uncertain what line to take in his replies to Maclintick, who himself appeared to enjoy keeping secret his true feelings while he discussed the implications of his own position.
‘Did I ever tell you how I met Audrey?’ he asked suddenly.
We had been talking for a time about jobs on papers. Moreland had been pronouncing on the subject of musical journalism in particular; but sooner or later Maclintick abandoned the subject in hand, always returning to the matter of his wife. The question did not make Moreland look any happier.
‘Never,’ he said.
‘It was through Gossage,’ Maclintick said.
‘How very unexpected.’
‘There was a clerk in Gossage’s bank who was keen on Sibelius,’ said Maclintick. ‘They used to talk about music