Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [75]
‘You learnt all this from Fiona?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it time to tell my story yet?’
Delavacquerie laughed. He looked at me rather hard.
‘You knew some of this already – I mean in connexion with Fiona?’
‘As it happens, yes.’
He hesitated, perhaps more tormented than he would admit to himself.
‘Let me say one thing more. What I have been talking about is not quite so simple as the way I’ve told it. There is another side too. You imply that you know for a fact that Fiona was involved – physically involved – in some of these highly distasteful goings-on. Do you know more, Nicholas, than that she has been for quite a long time a member of the cult, therefore they would inevitably come her way?’
‘Yes. I do know more.’
‘Involved without love – even in the many heteroclite forms of that unhappy verb.’
‘Yes.’
‘My first thought – when Fiona came to me with Murtlock’s message that he wanted to know Gwinnett’s whereabouts – was to have nothing to do with the whole business. That was more on grounds of taste than morals. As Emily Brightman is always pointing out, they are so often hopelessly confused by unintelligent people.’
‘Murtlock knew Gwinnett was in England?’
‘He’d already found that out somehow.’
‘He finds out a lot. I’m surprised, having got so far, he hadn’t traced Gwinnett’s whereabouts.’
‘He may, in any case, have preferred a more tortuous approach. I felt it an imposition on the part of this young visionary – whatever his claims as a magician – to force his abracadabras on an American scholar, engaged over here on research of a serious kind, however idiosyncratic Gwinnett’s own sexual tastes may be. Would you agree?’
‘Besides, as you’ve said, so far as we know, Gwinnett pursues these for pleasure, rather than magical advancement.’
‘Exactly. Love and Literature should rank before Sorcery and Power. There was, however, an additional aspect. That was why I was not speaking with absolute truth when I denied that Fiona was in some degree playing her own game, when she came to see me. On the other hand, that possibility did not possess quite the flattering slant you implied.’
‘She told you in so many words why Murtlock wanted to meet Gwinnett?’
‘Certainly. No embarrassments at all about that. More so regarding the ulterior motive for her visit. That emerged while we were talking. The fact was that Fiona was getting tired – more than that, absolutely desperate – about the life she has been living for a long time now.’
‘That’s good news.’
‘Of course.’
Delavacquerie paused again. He did not sound quite so enthusiastic about Fiona cutting adrift from Murtlockism as might have been expected. The chronological sequence of when these things happened – Fiona come to Delavacquerie, Gwinnett gone to visit Murtlock and Widmerpool, the period between – was not very clear to me. I was also uncertain as to Delavacquerie’s present feelings about Fiona. Whatever she had said to him did not appear to have affected her doings at The Devil’s Fingers. I fully believed what Delavacquerie had described as his attitude towards Fiona as his son’s girlfriend; I believed, more or less, that he later put her from his mind; but this new Fiona incarnation remained undefined. It was quite another matter. Also there was Polly Duport in the background. More must be explained. When he spoke again it was in an altogether detached tone.
‘Fiona more or less broke down while we were talking. Even then she was unwilling to say she would give up the whole thing. This was at our first meeting.’
‘There were subsequent ones?’
‘Several. Murtlock wouldn’t accept no for an answer, so far as Gwinnett’s whereabouts were concerned.’
‘You had refused to reveal them?’
‘Yes.’
‘That showed firmness.’
‘Firmness, in any sphere, is ultimately the only thing anyone respects. Murtlock seems to have foreseen a refusal at first. Either that, or he enjoyed linking Fiona and myself in a kind of game.’
‘He would be capable of both.’
‘His instincts told him that he could force Gwinnett