A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [102]
“Your friend paid,” Barnby had said. “And that was all.”
“How do you know?”
“Jones told me.”
“Is she to be believed?”
“No statement on that subject can ever be unreservedly accepted,” said Barnby. “But he has never turned up here since. Her story is that he left in a rage.”
“I don’t wonder.”
Barnby shook his head and laughed. He did not like Gypsy, nor she him, and so far as he was concerned, that was an end of the matter. I saw his point, though personally I did not share the obduracy of his views. In fact there were moments when Gypsy turned up at the shop and we seemed to get on rather well together. Her egotism was of that entirely unrestrained kind, always hard to resist when accompanied by tolerable looks, a passionate self-absorption of the crudest kind, extending almost far enough to threaten the limits of sanity: with the added attraction of unfamiliar ways and thought. Besides, there was something disarming, almost touching, about her imperfectly concealed respect for “books,” which played a considerable part in her conversation when not talking of “chalking” and other political activities. However—as Barbara might have said—there was no need to become sentimental. Gypsy usually showed herself, on the whole, more agreeable than on the first night we had met, but she could still be tiresome enough if the mood so took her.
“Jones is an excellent specimen of middle-class female education brought to its logical conclusions,” Barnby used to say. “She couldn’t be more perfect even if she had gone to the university. Her head is stuffed full of all the most pretentious nonsense you can think of, and she is incapable—but literally incapable—of thought. The upper and lower classes can sometimes keep their daughters in order—the middle classes rarely, if ever. I belong to the latter, and I know.”
I felt this judgment unnecessarily severe. Claiming, as she did, some elementary knowledge of typing and shorthand, Gypsy was temporarily employed in some unspecified capacity, next-door to Mr. Deacon’s, at the offices of the Vox Populi Press: duties alleged by Barnby to be contingent on “sleeping with Craggs,” managing director of that concern. There seemed no reason either to accept or refute this statement, for, as Mr. Deacon used to remark, not without a touch of pride in his voice: “Indiscretion is Gypsy’s creed.” There could be no doubt that she lived up to this specification, although, as a matter of fact, shared political sympathies might equally well have explained close association with Craggs, since the Press (which was, in truth, merely a small publishing business, and did not, as its name implied, print its own publications) was primarily concerned with producing books and pamphlets of an insurgent tone.
Mr. Deacon had talked a lot about his birthday party before it had taken place, discussing at great length who should, and who should not, be invited. He had determined, for some reason, that it was to be a “respectable” gathering, though no one, not even Barnby and Gypsy Jones knew where—or rather at whom—Mr. Deacon was likely to draw the line.