The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [52]
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Bob said that?’
‘He put it more bluntly.’
Brent laughed again, very good-naturedly. The way he set about telling the story emphasised his least tolerable side. I tried to feel objective about the whole matter by recalling one of Moreland’s favourite themes, the attraction exercised over women by men to whom they can safely feel complete superiority.
‘Are you hideous, stunted, mentally arrested, sexually maladjusted, marked with warts, gross in manner, with a cleft palate and an evil smell?’ Moreland used to say. ‘Then, oh boy, there’s a treat ahead of you. You’re all set for a promising career as a lover. There’s an absolutely ravishing girl round the corner who’ll find you irresistible. In fact her knickers are bursting into flame at this very moment at the mere thought of you.’
‘But your description does not fit in with most of the lady-killers one knows. I should have thought they tended to be decidedly good-looking, as often as not, together with a lot of other useful qualities as well.’
‘What about Henri Quatre?’
‘What about him?’
‘He was impotent and he stank. It’s in the histories. Yet he is remembered as one of the great lovers of all time.’
‘He was a king – and a good talker at that. Besides, we don’t know him personally, so it’s hard to argue about him.’
‘Think of some of the ones we do know.’
‘But it would be an awful world if no one but an Adonis, who was also an intellectual paragon and an international athlete, had a chance. It always seems to me, on the contrary, that women’s often expressed statement, that male good looks don’t interest them, is quite untrue. All things being equal, the man who looks like a tailor’s dummy stands a better chance than the man who doesn’t.’
All things never are equal,’ said Moreland, always impossible to shake in his theories, ‘though I agree that to be no intellectual strain is an advantage where the opposite sex is concerned. But you look into the matter. Remember Bottom and Titania. The Bard knew.’
Brent, so far as he had been a success with Jean, seemed to strengthen Moreland’s argument. I wondered whether I wanted to hear more. The Jean business was long over, but even when you have ceased to love someone, that does not necessarily bring an indifference to a past shared together. Besides, though love may die, vanity lives on timelessly. I knew that I must be prepared to hear things I should not like. Yet, although where unfaithfulness reigns, ignorance may be preferable to knowledge, at the same time, once knowledge is brutally born, exactitude is preferable to uncertainty. To learn at what precise moment Jean had decided to take on Brent, in preference to myself, would be more acceptable than to allow the imagination continually to range unhindered through boundless fields of disagreeable supposition. Even so, I half hoped Macfaddean would return, full of new ideas about terrain and lines of communication. However, the choice did not lie with me. The narrative rested in Brent’s own hands. Whether I wanted to listen or not, he was determined to tell his story.
‘You’d never guess,’ he said apologetically, ‘but Jean fell for me first.’
‘Talk about girls lying down for Bob Duport.’
‘Shall I tell you how it happened?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Peter Templer asked me to dine with him to meet a couple called Taylor or Porter. He could never remember which. Peter subsequently went off with Mrs Taylor, whoever she was, but that was later. He also invited his sister, Jean, to the party, and a woman called Lady McReith. I didn’t much take to the latter. We dined at the Carlton Grill.’
Brent paused. I remembered perfectly the occasion of which he spoke. One evening when we were out together, Jean had remarked she was dining with her brother the following night. The fact that the dinner party was to be at the Carlton Grill pinpointed