The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell [47]
Owing to domestic arrangements connected with getting a nurse for her child, she would not be at home until late in the afternoon. I wasted some time at the Isbister show, before walking across the park to the place where she was living. I had expected to see Quiggin at the gallery, but Sillery’s remarks indicated that he would not be there. The last time I had met him, soon after the Templer week-end, it had turned out that, in spite of the temporary reappearance of Members at St. John Clarke’s sick bed, Quiggin was still firmly established in his new position. He now seemed scarcely aware that there had ever been a time when he had not acted as the novelist’s secretary, referring to his employer’s foibles with a weary though tolerant familiarity, as if he had done the job for years. He had quickly brushed aside enquiry regarding his journey to London with Mrs. Erdleigh and Jimmy Stripling.
‘What a couple,’ he commented.
I had to admit they were extraordinary enough. Quiggin had resumed his account of St. John Clarke, his state of health and his eccentricities, the last of which were represented by his new secretary in a decidedly different light from that in which they had been displayed by Members. St. John Clarke’s every action was now expressed in Marxist terms, as if some political Circe had overnight turned the novelist into an entirely Left Wing animal. No doubt Quiggin judged it necessary to handle his new situation firmly on account of the widespread gossip regarding St. John Clarke’s change of secretary; for in circles frequented by Members and Quiggin ceaseless argument had taken place as to which of them had ‘behaved badly’.
Thinking it best from my firm’s point of view to open diplomatic relations, as it were, with the new government, I had asked if there was any hope of our receiving the Isbister introduction in the near future. Quiggin’s answer to this had been to make an affirmative gesture with his hands. I had seen Members employ the same movement, perhaps derived by both of them from St. John Clarke himself.
‘That was exactly what I wanted to discuss when I came to the Ritz,’ Quiggin had said. ‘But you insisted on going out with your wealthy friends.’
‘You must admit that I arranged for you to meet my wealthy friends, as you call them, at the first opportunity—within twenty-four hours, as a matter of fact.’
Quiggin smiled and inclined his head, as if assenting to my claim that some amends had been attempted.
‘As I have tried to explain,’ he said, ‘St. J.’s views have changed a good deal lately. Indeed, he has entirely come round to my own opinion—that the present situation cannot last much longer. We will not tolerate it. All thinking men are agreed about that. St. J. wants to do the introduction when his health gets a bit better—and he has time to spare from his political interests—but he has decided to write the Isbister foreword from a Marxist point of view.’
‘You ought to have obtained some first-hand information for him when Marx came through on Planchette.’
Quiggin frowned at this levity.
‘What rot that was,’ he said. ‘I suppose Mark and his psychoanalyst gang would explain it by one of their dissertations on the subconscious. Perhaps in that particular respect they would be right. No doubt they would add a lot of irrelevant stuff about Surrealism. But to return to Isbister’s pictures, I think they would not make