Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [77]
It sounded a little as if Delavacquerie was explaining all this to himself, rather than to me, establishing confidence by an opportunity of speaking his hopes aloud. He had, after all, more or less suggested that as his aim, when he broached all this.
‘Does Murtlock hope to rope you into his cult? Surely not? That would be too much.’
‘It wasn’t me he was after. It was Gwinnett.’
‘They met, I suppose, when Gwinnett went down to see Widmerpool.’
‘That hadn’t happened, when Fiona came to see me.’
‘Murtlock knew about Gwinnett already.’
‘It appears that Gwinnett has won quite a name for himself in occult circles – if that is what they should be called – by having allegedly taken part in an act of great magical significance – in modern times almost making magical history.’
‘You mean — ’
‘By release of sexual energy in literally necromantic circumstances – if we are to accept Gwinnett did that – in short, direct contact with the dead. In performing a negative expression of sex, carried to its logical conclusions, Gwinnett took part in the most inspired rite of Murtlock’s cult.’
‘I knew that, according to Murtlock doctrine, pleasure was excluded. There is no reason to suppose Gwinnett himself believed that.’
‘You are right. Such an attitude seems even to have shocked Gwinnett. At the same time he felt that, as a scholar, he should study this available form of the gothic image of mortality. I do not think Gwinnett exactly expected that the theme would be, so to speak, played back to himself by Murtlock when he paid his visit to Widmerpool. I understand that the reason for Murtlock’s interest in him was never put – the metaphor is appropriate – in cold blood. How much Gwinnett himself guessed, I do not know.’
‘You learnt all this from Fiona?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it time to tell my story yet?’
Delavacquerie laughed. He looked at me rather hard.
‘You knew some of this already – I mean in connexion with Fiona?’
‘As it happens, yes.’
He hesitated, perhaps more tormented than he would admit to himself.
‘Let me say one thing more. What I have been talking about is not quite so simple as the way I’ve told it. There is another side too. You imply that you know for a fact that Fiona was involved – physically involved – in some of these highly distasteful goings-on. Do you know more, Nicholas, than that she has been for quite a long time a member of the cult, therefore they would inevitably come her way?’
‘Yes. I do know more.’
‘Involved without love – even in the many heteroclite forms of that unhappy verb.’
‘Yes.’
‘My first thought – when Fiona came to me with Murtlock’s message that he wanted to know Gwinnett’s whereabouts – was to have nothing to do with the whole business. That was more on grounds of taste than morals. As Emily Brightman is always pointing out, they are so often hopelessly confused by unintelligent people.’
‘Murtlock knew Gwinnett was in England?’
‘He’d already found that out somehow.’
‘He finds out a lot. I’m surprised, having got so far, he hadn’t traced Gwinnett’s whereabouts.’
‘He may, in any case, have preferred a more tortuous approach. I felt it an imposition on the part of this young visionary – whatever his claims as a magician – to force his abracadabras on an American scholar, engaged over here on research of a serious kind, however idiosyncratic Gwinnett’s own sexual tastes may be. Would you agree?’
‘Besides, as you’ve said, so far as we know, Gwinnett pursues these for pleasure, rather than magical advancement.’
‘Exactly. Love and Literature should rank before Sorcery and Power. There was, however, an additional aspect. That was why I was not speaking with absolute truth when I denied that Fiona was in some degree playing her own game, when she came to see me. On the other hand, that possibility did not possess quite the flattering slant you implied.’
‘She told you in so