The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [36]
First, I called up the number Greening had consigned from General Liddament. The voice of Major Finn on the line was quiet and deep, persuasive yet firm. I began to tell my story. He cut me short at once, seeming already aware what was coming, another tribute to the General’s powers of transmuting thought to action. Instructions were to report later in the day to an address in Westminster. This offered breathing space. A hundred matters of one sort or another had to be negotiated before going down to the country. After speaking with Major Finn, I rang Lovell.
“Look, Nick, I never thought you’d get in touch so soon,” he said, before there was even time to suggest anything. “Owing to a new development, I’m booked for dinner to-night – first date for months – but that makes it even more important I see you. I’m caught up in work at lunch-time – only knocking off for about twenty minutes – but we can have a drink later. Can’t we meet near wherever you’re dining, as I shan’t get away till seven at the earliest.”
“The Cafe Royal – with Hugh Moreland.”
“I’ll be along as soon as I can.”
“Hugh said he’d turn up about eight.”
It seemed required to emphasise that, if Lovell stayed too long over our drink, he would encounter Moreland. This notification was in Moreland’s interest, rather than Lovell’s. Lovell had never been worried by the former closeness of Priscilla and Moreland. Priscilla might or might not have told her husband the whole affair with Moreland had been fruitless enough, had never taken physical shape; if she had, Lovell might or might not have believed her. It was doubtful whether he greatly minded either way. I myself accepted they had never been to bed, because Moreland had told me that in one of his few rather emotional outbursts. It was because Moreland was sensitive, perhaps even touchy about such matters, that he might not want to meet Lovell. Besides, if Priscilla were now behaving in a manner to cause Lovell concern, he too might well prefer to remain unreminded of a former beau of his wife’s; a man with whom he had in any case not much in common, apart from Priscilla. This turned out to be a wrong guess on my own part. Lovell showed no sign whatever of wanting to avoid Moreland. On the contrary, he was disappointed the three of us were not all dining together that evening.
“What a relief to meet someone like Hugh Moreland again,” he said. “Pity I can’t join the party. I can assure you it would be more fun than what faces me. Anyway, I’ll go into that when we meet.”
Lovell was an odd mixture of realism and romanticism; more specifically, he was, like quite a lot of people, romantic about being a realist. If, for example, the suspicion ever crossed his mind that Priscilla had married him “on the rebound,” any possible pang would have been allayed, in his philosophy, by the thought that he had in the end himself “got the girl.” He might also have argued, of course, that the operation of the rebound is unpredictable, some people thwarted in love, shifting, bodily and totally, on to another person the whole weight of a former strong emotion. Lovell was romantic, especially, in the sense of taking things at their face value – one of the qualities that made him a good journalist. It never struck him anyone could think or do anything but the perfectly obvious. This took the practical form of disinclination to believe in the reality of any matter not of a kind to be ventilated in the press. At the same time, although incapable of seeing life from an unobvious angle, Lovell was prepared, when necessary, to vary the viewpoint