Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [79]
‘I see.’
That was untrue. I did not in the least see; so far as seeing might be held to imply some sort of understanding of what was really taking place. A complicated situation appeared merely to be accumulating additional complicated factors. Delavacquerie himself evidently accepted the inadequacy of this acknowledgment in relation to problems involved. He seemed to expect no more.
‘When I say we talked things over, that isn’t exactly true either. Fiona doesn’t talk things over. She’s incapable of doing that. That’s partly her trouble. One of the reasons why it was better for her to be in the flat was that it offered some hope of finding out what she was really thinking.’
He abruptly stopped speaking of Fiona.
‘Now tell me your story.’
To describe what had happened at The Devil’s Fingers, now that Fiona was living under Delavacquerie’s roof, was an altogether different affair from doing so in the manner that the story had first rehearsed itself to my mind. Then, planning its telling, there had been no reason to suppose her more than, at best, a sentimental memory; if – which might be quite mistaken – I had been right in suspecting him a little taken with her, when, in connexion with his son, Delavacquerie had first spoken Fiona’s name. Nevertheless, there was no glossing over the incident at The Devil’s Fingers. It had, in any case, been narrated by Gwinnett with his accustomed reticences, and, after all, Delavacquerie knew from Fiona herself more or less what had been happening. That was only a specific instance, though, for various reasons, an exceptional one. If he felt additional dismay on hearing of that night’s doings, he showed nothing. His chief interest was directed to the fact that Gwinnett had been present in person at the rites. This specific intervention of Gwinnett had been unknown to him. He had also supposed anything of the sort to have been, more or less as a matter of course, enacted at whatever premises Widmerpool provided.
‘How does Fiona occupy herself in London?’
‘Odd jobs.’
‘Has she gone back to her journalism?’
‘Not exactly that. She has been doing bits of research. I myself was able to put some of that in her way. She’s quite efficient.’
‘Her parents always alleged she could work hard if she liked.’
One saw that in a certain sense Fiona had worked hard placating Murtlock. Delavacquerie looked a little embarrassed again.
‘It seems that Fiona revealed some of her plans about leaving the cult to Gwinnett, when he was himself in touch with them. Gwinnett suggested that – if she managed to kick free from Murtlock – Fiona should help him in some of the seventeenth-century donkey-work with the Jacobean dramatists. I hadn’t quite realized — ’
Delavacquerie did not finish the sentence. I suppose he meant he had not grasped the extent to which Gwinnett, too, had been concerned in Fiona’s ritual activities. Evidently she herself had softpedalled the Devil’s Fingers incident, as such. He ended off a little lamely.
‘Living at my place is as convenient as any other for that sort of work.’
I expressed agreement. Delavacquerie thought for a moment.
‘I may add that having Fiona in the flat has inevitably buggered up my other arrangements.’
‘Polly Duport?’
He laughed rather unhappily, but gave no details.
6
WHEN, IN THE EARLY SPRING of the following year, an invitation arrived for the wedding of our nephew, Sebastian Cutts, to a girl called Clare Akworth, I decided at once to attend. Isobel would almost certainly have gone in any case. Considerations touched on earlier – pressures of work, pressures of indolence – could have kept me away. Negative attitudes were counteracted by an unexpected aspect of the ceremony. The reception was to take place at Stourwater. Several factors combined to explain