Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [3]
The member of the family best equipped to speak with anything like authority of Fiona, and her friends, was Isobel’s unmarried sister, Blanche Tolland, who had, in fact, rung up to ask if we were prepared to harbour a small caravan in our field for one night, its destination unspecified. The easygoing unambitious nature that had caused Blanche, in early days, to be regarded – not wholly without reason – as rather dotty, had latterly given her a certain status in dealing with a generation considerably younger than her own; Blanche’s unemphatic personality providing a diplomatic contact, an agency through which dealings could be negotiated by either side without prejudice or loss of face. This good nature, allied to a deep-seated taste for taking trouble in often uncomfortable circumstances, led to employment in an animal sanctuary, a job that had occupied Blanche for a long time by now.
‘Blanchie meets the animals on their own terms,’ said her sister, Norah, also unmarried. ‘The young people too. She really runs a sanctuary for both.’
‘Do you mean the young people think of Blanchie as an animal, or as another young person?’ asked her brother.
‘Which do you suppose, Hugo?’ said Norah sharply. ‘It’s true they might easily mistake you for an ape.’
Hugo, rather a sad figure after the death of his partner, Sam, could still arouse the mood in Norah that had caused her to observe he would ‘never find a place for himself in the contemporary world’. Working harder than ever in the antique shop, now he was on his own, Hugo’s career could be regarded, in general, as no less contemporary than anyone else’s. Sam (said to have begun life as a seaman) had remained surnameless (like Rusty) to the end, so far as most of the family were concerned. It was during this exchange in Norah’s Battersea flat that I first heard the name of Scorpio Murtlock.
‘Blanchie says Fiona’s turned over a new leaf under the influence of this new young man, Scorp Murtlock. Sober, honest, and an early riser, not to mention meditations. No hint of a drug. It’s a kind of cult. Religious almost. Harmony’s the great thing. They have a special greeting they give one another. I can’t remember the exact words. Quite impressive. They don’t wash much, but then none of the Cutts family ever did much washing.’
‘How did he come to be christened Scorp?’ I asked.
‘Short for Scorpio, his Zodiac sign.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘Blanche says attractive, but spooky.’
At this point Hugo showed unexpected knowledge.
‘I didn’t know Fiona’s latest was Scorpio Murtlock. I’ve never met him, but I used to hear about him several years ago, when he was working in the antique business. Two fellow antique dealers told me they had engaged a very charming young assistant.’
Norah was not prepared for Hugo to take over entirely in the Murtlock field.
‘Blanchie says he has a creepy side too.’
‘You can be creepy and attractive. There are different forms of creepiness, just as there are different forms of attractiveness.’
‘The antique dealers are presumably queers?’
‘Even so, that’s hardly the point. Murtlock made himself immensely useful in the business – which ranges from garden furniture to vintage cars – so useful that the owners suddenly found they were being relegated to a back place themselves. Murtlock was slowly but surely elbowing them out.’
‘Did their passion remain unsatisfied?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Unlike you, Hugo, not to be sure about that sort of thing.’
‘One of them implied he’d brought off something. That was not the rather nervy one. The nervy one complained he had begun to feel like a man bewitched. Those were his own words. The unnervy one agreed after a while that there was something uncomfortable about Murtlock. They were wondering how best to solve their problem, when Murtlock himself gave notice. He’d found someone more profitable to