Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [75]
‘Look, I’m in rather a mess at the moment. Not a mess so much as a tangle. I’d like to speak about it. Do you mind? That’s more to clear my own head than to ask advice. You may be able to advise too. Can you stand my talking a lot about my own affairs?’
‘Easily.’
‘I’ll start from the beginning. That is always best. My own situation. The fact that I like it over here, but England isn’t my country. I haven’t got a country. I’m rootless. I’m not grumbling about being rootless, especially these days. It even has advantages. At the same time certain problems are raised too.’
‘You’ve spoken of all this on earlier occasions. Did going home bring it back in an acute form?’
Delavacquerie dismissed that notion with a violent gesture.
‘I know I’ve talked of all this before. It’s quite true. Perhaps I am over-obsessed by it. I am just repeating the fact as a foundation to what I am going to say, a reminder to myself that I’m never sure how much I understand people over here. Their reactions often seem to me different from my own, and from those of the people I was brought up with. Quite different. I’ve written poems about all this.’
‘I’ve read them.’
Delavacquerie stopped for a moment. He seemed to be deciding the form in which some complicated statement should be made. He began again.
‘I spoke to you once, I remember, of my son, Etienne.’
‘You said he’d had some sort of thing for our niece, Fiona, which had been broken off, probably on account of that young man, Murtlock. I’m in a position to tell you more about all that — ’
‘Hold it for the moment.’
‘My additions to the story are of a fantastic and outrageous kind.’
‘Never mind. I don’t doubt what you say. I just want to put my own case first. That is best. We’ll come to what you know later – and I’m sure it will help me to hear it, even if I’ve heard some of it already. But I was speaking of Etienne. He has been doing well. He got a scholarship, which has taken him to America. By then he had found a new girl. She’s a nice girl. It seems fairly serious. They keep up a regular correspondence.’
‘How does he like the States?’
‘All right.’
Whether or not Etienne liked the US did not seem to be the point. Delavacquerie paused again. He laughed rather uncomfortably.
‘When Fiona was about the place, with Etienne, I noticed that I was getting interested in the girl myself. It wasn’t more than that. I wasn’t in love. Not in the slightest. Just interested. You will have had sufficient experience of such things to know what I am talking about – appreciate the differentiation I draw.’
‘Of course.’
‘I examined myself carefully in that connexion at the time. I found it possible to issue an absolutely clean bill of health, temperature, pulse, blood pressure, above all heart, all quite normal. I didn’t even particularly want to sleep with her, though I might have tried to do so, had the situation been other than it was. The point I want to make is that the situation was not in the least like that of The Humorous Lieutenant, the King trying to seduce his son’s girlfriend, as soon as the son himself was out of the way.’
‘No love potions lying about.’
‘You never know when you’re not going to drink one by mistake, but in this case I had not done so.’
‘May I ask a question?’
‘Questions might clarify my own position. I welcome them. All I wish to curtail, for the moment, is competing narrative, until I’ve finished my own.’
‘How was this feeling of interest in Fiona related to your other more permanent commitment?’
‘To Polly? But, of course. That is just what I meant. How shall I put it? If, as I said, the case had been other, the possibility of a temporary run around might not have been altogether ruled out. You understand what I mean?’
‘Keeping it quiet from Polly?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Would Fiona herself have been prepared