Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell [15]
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I’m an artist – I paint people’s pictures.’
She did not look at him, or answer, but she stopped giggling, while at the same time making no attempt to move away from the table.
‘I’d like to paint you.’
She still did not speak. Her expression changed in a very slight degree, registering what might have been embarrassment or cunning.
‘Could you come and be painted by me some time?’
Barnby put the question in a quiet, almost exaggeratedly gentle voice; one I had never before heard him use.
‘Don’t know that I have time,’ she said, very coolly.
‘What about one week-end?’
‘Can’t come Sunday. Have to be here.’
‘Saturday, then?’
‘Saturday isn’t any good either.’
‘You can’t have to work all the week.’
‘Might manage a Thursday.’
‘All right, let’s make it a Thursday then.’
There was a pause. Maclintick, unable to bear the sight and sound of these negotiations, had taken a notebook from his pocket and begun a deep examination of his own affairs; making plans for the future; writing down great thoughts; perhaps even composing music. Moreland, unable to conceal his discomfort at what was taking place, started a conversation with me designed to carry further his Time-Space theories.
‘What about next Thursday?’ asked Barnby, in his most wheedling tone.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Say you will.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Come on.’
‘I suppose so, then.’
Barnby reached forward and took Maclintick’s pencil from his hand – not without protest on Maclintick’s part – and wrote something on the back of an envelope. I suppose it was just the address of his studio, but painters form the individual letters of their handwriting so carefully, so separately, that he seemed to be drawing a picture specially for her.
‘It’s above a shop,’ Barnby said.
Then, suddenly, he crumpled the envelope.
‘On second thoughts,’ he said, ‘I will come and pick you up here, if that is all right.’
‘As you like.’
She spoke indifferently, as if all had been decided long before and they had been going out together for years.
‘What time?’
She told him; the two of them made some mutual arrangement. Then they smiled at each other, again without any sense of surprise or excitement, as if long on familiar terms, and the waitress retired from the table. Barnby handed the stump of pencil back to Maclintick. We vacated the restaurant.
‘Like Glendower, Barnby,’ said Maclintick, ‘you can call spirits from the vasty deep. With Hotspur, I ask you, will they come?’
‘That’s to be seen,’ said Barnby. ‘By the way, what is her name? I forgot to ask.’
‘Norma,’ said Moreland, speaking without apology.
To complete the story, Barnby (whose personal arrangements were often vague) told me that when the day of assignation came, he arrived, owing to bad timing, three-quarters of an hour late for the appointment. The girl was still waiting for him. She came to his studio, where he began a picture of her, subsequently completing at least one oil painting and several drawings. The painting, which was in his more severe manner, he sold to Sir Magnus Donners; Sir Herbert Manasch bought one of the drawings, which were treated naturistically. Eventually, as might have been foretold, Barnby had some sort of a love affair with his model; although he always insisted she was ‘not his type’, that matters had come to a head one thundery afternoon when an overcast sky made painting impossible. Norma left Casanova’s soon after this episode. She took a job which led to her marrying a man who kept a tobacconist