Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell [56]
‘I thought she was rather wonderful,’ said Norah.
Moreland himself had first met his future wife at a time when Matilda’s connexion with Sir Magnus, if not completely severed, had been at least considerably relaxed. Moreland’s behaviour on this occasion had been characteristic. He had fallen deeply in love, immediately overwhelming Matilda with that combination of attention and forgetfulness which most women found so disconcerting in his addresses. For once, however, that approach worked very well. Matilda was won. There had already been some ups and downs in their relationship by the time I was allowed to meet her, but, in principle, they were satisfied enough with each other before marriage; they still seemed satisfied when we used to meet them and dine together at Foppa’s or the Strasbourg. I discounted Moreland’s casual outbursts against marriage as an institution; indeed, took his word for it that, as he used to explain, these complaints were a sign of living in a world of reality, not a palace of dreams.
‘People always treat me as if I was a kind of 1880 bohemian,’ he used to say. ‘On the contrary, I am the sane Englishman with his pipe.’
It was on one of these evenings at the Strasbourg that he announced his symphony was finished and about to be performed. Although Moreland never talked much about his own compositions, I knew he had been working on the symphony for a long time.
‘Norman’s friend, Mrs Foxe, is going to give a party for it,’ he said.
‘But how lovely,’ said Isobel. ‘Will Mrs Foxe and Norman stand at the top of the stairs, side by side, receiving the guests?’
‘I hope so,’ said Moreland. ‘An example to all of us. A fidelity extremely rare among one’s friends.’
‘Does Mrs Foxe still live in a house somewhere off Berkeley Square?’ I asked.
‘That’s it,’ said Moreland. ‘With objects like mammoth ice-cream cornets on either side of the front door for putting out the torches after you have paid off your sedan chair.’
‘I am not sure that I like parties at that house,’ said Matilda. ‘We have been there once or twice. I can stand grand parties less and less anyway.’
She was having one of her moods that night, but it was on the whole true to say that since marriage Moreland had increasingly enjoyed going to parties, especially parties like that offered by Mrs Foxe; Matilda, less and less.
‘You talk as if we spent our life in a whirl of champagne and diamonds,’ Moreland said. ‘Anyway, it won’t be as grand as all that. Mrs Foxe has promised just to ask our own sordid friends.’
‘Who,’ asked Isobel, ‘apart from us?’
‘I’d far rather go off quietly by ourselves somewhere after the thing is over and have supper with Isobel and Nick,’ Matilda said. ‘That would be much more fun.’
‘It is rather an occasion, darling,’ said Moreland, vexed at these objections. ‘After all, I am noted among composers for the smallness of my output. I don’t turn out a symphony every week like some people. A new work by me ought to be celebrated with a certain flourish – if only to encourage the composer himself.’
‘I just hate parties nowadays.’
‘There are only going to be about twenty or thirty people,’ Moreland said. ‘I know Edgar Deacon used to assure us that “the saloon, rather than the salon, is the true artist’s milieu”, but his own pictures were no great advertisement for that principle. Personally, I feel neither subservience nor resentment at the prospect of being entertained by Mrs Foxe in luxurious style.’
‘Have you ever talked to her naval husband?’ I asked.
‘There is a smooth, hearty fellow about the house sometimes,’ Moreland said. ‘A well-fed air, and likes a good mahogany-coloured whisky. I once heard him give an anguished cry when the footman began to splash in too much soda. I never knew he was her husband. He doesn’t look in the least like a husband.’
‘Of course he is her husband,’ said Matilda. ‘What an ass you are. He pinched my leg the night we were having supper with them after Turandot. That is one of the reasons I turned against the house.’
‘Darling, I’m sure he didn’t. Just your swank.’
‘I told you when we got home. I even showed you the bruise. You must have been too tight to see it.