Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell [92]
Suddenly upstairs the telephone bell began to ring. The noise came from the room where Maclintick worked. The sound was shrill, alarming, like a deliberate warning. Maclintick did not move immediately. He looked greatly disturbed. Then, without saying anything, he took a gulp from his glass and went off up the stairs. Moreland looked at me. He made a face.
‘Audrey coming back?’ he said.
‘We ought to go soon.’
‘We will.’
We could faintly hear Maclintick’s voice; the words inaudible. It sounded as if Maclintick were unable to understand what he was being asked. That was likely enough considering the amount he had drunk. A minute later he returned to the sitting-room.
‘Someone for you, Moreland,’ he said.
Moreland looked very disturbed.
‘It can’t be for me,’ he said. ‘No one knows I’m here.’
‘Some woman,’ said Maclintick.
‘Who on earth can it be?’
‘She kept on telling me I knew her,’ said Maclintick, ‘but I couldn’t get hold of the name. It was a bloody awful line. My head is buzzing about too.’
Moreland went to the stairs. Maclintick heaved himself on to the sofa. Closing his eyes, he began to breathe heavily. I felt I had had a lot to drink without much to show for it. We remained in silence. Moreland seemed to be away for centuries. When he returned to the room he was laughing.
‘It was Matilda,’ he said.
‘Didn’t sound a bit like Matilda,’ said Maclintick, without opening his eyes.
‘She said she didn’t know it was you. You sounded quite different.’
‘I’m never much good at getting a name on the bloody telephone,’ said Maclintick. ‘She said something about her being your wife now I come to think of it.’
‘Matilda forgot her key. I shall have to go back at once. She is on the doorstep.’
‘Just like a woman, that,’ said Maclintick. ‘There was always trouble about Carolo’s key.’
‘We’ll have to go.’
‘You don’t expect me to see you out, do you P Kind of you to come.’
‘You had better go to bed, Maclintick,’ said Moreland. ‘You don’t want to spend the night on the sofa.’
‘Why not?’
‘Too cold. The fire will be out soon.’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘Do move, Maclintick,’ said Moreland.
He stood looking down with hesitation at Maclintick. Moreland could be assertive about his own views, was said to be good at controlling an orchestra; he was entirely without the power of assuming authority over a friend who needed ‘managing’ after too much to drink. I remembered the scene when Widmerpool and I had put Stringham to bed after the Old Boy Dinner, and wondered whether an even odder version of that operation was to be re-enacted here. However, Maclintick rolled himself over into a sitting position, removed his spectacles, and began to rub his eyes just in the manner of my former housemaster, Le Bas, when he could not make up his mind whether or not one of his pupils was telling the truth.
‘Perhaps you are right, Moreland,’ Maclintick said.
‘Certainly I am right.’
‘I will move if you insist.’
‘I do insist.’
Then Maclintick made that harrowing remark that established throughout all eternity his relationship with Moreland.
‘I obey you, Moreland,’ he said, ‘with the proper respect of the poor interpretative hack for the true creative artist.’
Moreland and I both laughed a lot, but it was a horrible moment. Maclintick had spoken with that strange, unearthly dignity that a drunk man can suddenly assume. We left him making his way unsteadily upstairs. By a miracle there was a taxi at the other end of the street.
‘I hope Maclintick will be all right,’ said Moreland, as we drove away.
‘He is in rather a mess.’
‘I am in a mess myself,’ Moreland said. ‘You probably know about that. I won’t bore you with the complications of my own life. I hope Matty will not be in too much of a fret when I get there. What can she be thinking of, forgetting her key? Something Freudian, I suppose. I am glad we went to see Maclintick. What did you think about him?’
‘I thought he was in a bad way.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maclintick is in a bad way,’ said Moreland. ‘It is no good pretending