Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell [45]
‘Maclintick is devoted to this part of London,’ Moreland said. ‘I am not sure that I agree with him. He says his mood is for ever Pimlico. I grant that a sympathetic atmosphere is an important point in choosing a residence. It helps one’s work. All the same, tastes differ. Maclintick is always to be found in this neighbourhood, though never for long in the same place.’
‘He never seems very cheerful when I meet him.’
I had run across Maclintick only a few times with Moreland since our first meeting in the Mortimer.
‘He is a very melancholy man,’ Moreland agreed. ‘Maclintick is very melancholy. He is disappointed, of course.’
‘About himself as a musician?’
‘That – and other things. He is always hard up. Then he has an aptitude for quarrelling with anyone who might be of use to him professionally. He is writing a great tome on musical theory which never seems to get finished.’
‘What is his wife like?’
‘Like a wife.’
‘Is that how you feel about marriage?’
‘Well, not exactly,’ said Moreland laughing. ‘But you know one does begin to understand all the music-hall jokes and comic-strips about matrimony after you have tried a spell of it yourself. Don’t you agree?’
‘And Mrs Maclintick is a good example?’
‘You will see what I mean.’
‘What is Maclintick’s form about women? I can never quite make out.’
‘I think he hates them really – only likes whores.’
‘Ah.’
‘At least that is what Gossage used to say.’
‘That’s a known type.’
‘All the same, Maclintick is also full of deeply romantic, hidden away sentiments about Wein, Weib und Gesang. That is his passionate, carefully concealed side. The gruffness is intended to cover all that. Maclintick is terrified of being thought sentimental. I suppose all his bottled-up feelings came to the surface when he met Audrey.’
‘And the prostitutes?’
‘He told Gossage he found them easier to converse with than respectable ladies. Of course, Gossage – you can imagine how he jumped about telling me this – was speaking of a period before Maclintick’s marriage. No reason to suppose that sort of thing takes place now.’
‘But if he hates women, why do you say he is so passionate?’
‘It just seems to have worked out that way. Audrey is one of the answers, I suppose.’
The house, when we reached it, turned out to be a small, infinitely decayed two-storey dwelling that had seen better days; now threatened by a row of mean shops advancing from one end of the street and a fearful slum crowding up from the other. Moreland’s loyalty to his friends – in a quiet: way considerable – prevented me from being fully prepared for Mrs Maclintick. That she should have come as a surprise was largely my own fault. Knowing Moreland, I ought to have gathered more from his disjointed, though on the whole decidedly cautionary, account of the Maclintick household. Besides, from the first time of meeting Maclintick – when he had gone to the telephone in the Mortimer – the matrimonial rows of the Maclinticks had been an accepted legend. However much one hears about individuals, the picture formed in the mind rarely approximates to the reality. So it was with Mrs Maclintick. I was not prepared for her in the flesh. When she opened the door to us, her formidable discontent with life swept across the threshold in scorching, blasting waves. She was a small dark woman with a touch of gipsy about her, this last possibility suggested by sallow skin and bright black eyes. Her black hair was worn in a fringe. Some men might have found her attractive. I was not among them, although at the same time not blind to the fact that she might be capable of causing trouble where men were concerned. Mrs Maclintick said nothing at the sight of us, only shrugging her shoulders. Then, standing starkly aside, as if resigned to our entry in spite of an overpowering distaste she felt for the two of us, she held the door open wide. We passed within the Maclintick threshold.
‘It’s Moreland – and another man.’
Mrs Maclintick shouted, almost shrieked these words, while at the same time she twisted her head sideways and upwards towards a flight of stairs leading to a floor above, where Maclintick might be presumed to sit at work. We followed her into a sitting-room in which a purposeful banality of style had been observed; only a glass-fronted bookcase full of composers