The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [47]
“And Max Pilgrim is your lodger?”
“Has been for some months.”
Moreland had been embarrassed by having to explain so specifically that he was now living with Mrs. Maclintick, but seemed glad this fact was made plain. There had been no avoiding a pointblank enquiry about the situation; nor was all surprise possible to conceal. He must certainly have been conscious that, to any friend not already aware he and Mrs. Maclintick had begun to see each other frequently, the news must come as an incalculable reversal of former circumstances and feelings.
“Life became rather impossible after Matilda left me,” he said. He spoke almost apologetically, at the same time seemed to find relief in expressing how the present situation had come about. The statement that life for him had become “impossible” after Matilda’s departure was easy to believe. Without Matilda, the organisation of Moreland’s day was hard to imagine. Formerly she had arranged almost all the routine of those affairs not immediately dictated by his profession. In that respect, unless she had greatly changed, Mrs. Maclintick could hardly be proving an adequate substitute. On the one or two occasions when, in the past, I had myself encountered Mrs. Maclintick, she had appeared to me, without qualification, as one of the least sympathetic of women. So far as that went, in those days she had been in the habit of showing towards Moreland himself sentiments not much short of active dislike. He had been no better disposed to her, though, as an old friend of Maclintick’s, always doing his best to keep the peace between them as husband and wife. When she had left Maclintick for Carolo, Moreland’s sympathies were certainly on Maclintick’s side. In short, this was another of war’s violent readjustments; possibly to be revealed under close investigation as more logical than might appear at first sight. Indeed, as Moreland began to expand the story, as so often happens, the unthinkable took on the authoritative tone of something that had to be.
“After Audrey bolted with Carolo, they kept company till the beginning of the war – surprising in a way, knowing them both, it went on so long. Then he left her for a girl in a repertory company. Audrey remained on her 0wn. She was working in a canteen when we ran across each other – still is. She’s coming on from there to-night.”
“I never heard a word about you and her.”
“We don’t get on too badly,” said Moreland. “I haven’t been specially well lately. That bloody lung. Audrey’s been very good about looking after me.”
He still seemed to feel further explanation, or excuse, was required; at the same time he was equally anxious not to appear dissatisfied with the new alignment.
“Maclintick doing himself in shook me up horribly,” he said. “Of course, there can be no doubt Audrey was partly to blame for that, leaving him flat as she did. All the same, she was fond of Maclintick in her way. She often talks of him. You know you get to a stage, especially in wartime, when it’s a relief to hear familiar things talked about, whatever they are, and whoever’s saying them. You don’t care what line the conversation takes apart from that. For instance, Maclintick’s unreadable book on musical theory he was writing. It was never finished by him, much less published. His last night alive, as a final gesture against the world, Maclintick tore the manuscript into small pieces and stopped up the lavatory with it. That was just before he turned the gas on. You’d be surprised how much Audrey knows about what Maclintick said in that book – on the technical side, I mean, which she’s no training in or taste for. In an odd way, I like knowing about all that. It’s almost as if Maclintick’s still about – though if he were, of course, I shouldn’t be living with Audrey. Here she is, anyway.”
Mrs. Maclintick was moving between the tables, making in our direction. She wore a three-quarter length coat over trousers, a rather notably