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By Root 2382 0

inelegant form of female dress popular at that moment in circumstances where no formality was required. I remembered that Gypsy Jones – La Passionaria of Hendon Central, as Moreland himself had called her – had heralded in her own person the advent of this mode, when Widmerpool and I had seen her addressing a Communist anti-war meeting from a soapbox at a street corner. The clothes increased Mrs. Maclintick’s own air of being a gipsy, one in fact, rather than just in name. Moreland’s nostalgia for vagrancy was recalled, too, by her appearance, which immediately suggested telling fortunes if her palm was crossed with silver, selling clothes-pegs, or engaging in any other traditional Romany activity. By way of contrast with this physical exterior, she entirely lacked any of the ingratiating manner commonly associated with the gipsy’s role. Small, wiry, aggressive, she looked as ready as ever for a row, her bright black eyes and unsmiling countenance confronting a world from which perpetual hostility was not merely potential, but presumptive. Attack, she made clear, would be met with counter-attack. However, in spite of this embattled appearance, discouraging to anyone who had ever witnessed her having a row with Maclintick, she seemed disposed at this particular moment to make herself agreeable; more agreeable, at any rate, than on earlier occasions when we had run across each other.

“Moreland told me you would be here,” she said. “We don’t get out to this sort of place much nowadays – can’t afford it – but when we do we’re glad to meet friends.”

She spoke as if I had a trifle blatantly imposed myself on a party of their own, rather than herself converged on a meeting specially arranged between Moreland and myself. At the same time her tone was not antagonistic; indeed, by her pre-war standards, in as much as I knew them, it was positively amiable. It occurred to me she perhaps saw her association with Moreland as a kind of revenge on Maclintick, who had so greatly valued him as a friend. Now, Maclintick was underground and Moreland belonged to her. Moreland himself, whose earlier state of nerves had certainly been provoked by the prospect of having to present himself and Mrs, Maclintick as a ménage, now looked relieved, the immediate impact manoeuvred without disaster. Characteristically, he began to embark on one of those dissertations about life in which he was habitually inclined to indulge after some awkwardness had arisen. It had been just the same when he used to feel with Matilda that the ice was thin for conversational skating and would deliberately switch from the particular to the general.

“Since war prevents any serious work,” he said, “I have been trying to think out a few things. Make my lymphatic brain function a little. All part of my retreat from perfectionism. Besides, one really must hold one or two firm opinions on matters before one’s forty – a doom about to descend before any of us know where we are. I find war clears the mind in a few respects. At least that can be said for it.”

I was reminded how Stringham, too, had remarked that he was thinking things out, though it was hard to decide whether “perfectionism” played much part in Stringham’s problems. Perhaps it did. That was one explanation. In Moreland’s case, there could be no doubt Mrs. Maclintick herself was an element in this retreat. In her case, indeed, so far as Moreland was concerned, withdrawal from perfectionism had been so unphased as to constitute an operation reasonably to be designated a rout. Perhaps Mrs. Maclintick herself, even if the awareness remained undefined in her mind, felt she must be regarded as implicit in this advertised new approach – therefore some sort of protest should be made – because, although she spoke without savagery, her next words were undoubtedly a call to order.

“The war doesn’t seem to clear your mind quite enough, Moreland,” she said. “I only wish it stopped you dreaming a bit. Guess where that lost ration card of yours turned up, after I’d looked for it up hill and down dale. In the toilet. Better than