The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [74]
‘Why was that?’
‘Not surprisingly, Jean had been having a bit of a run around while we were living apart,’ said Duport. ‘I suppose that was to be expected.’
I began to feel decidedly uncomfortable. So far as I knew, neither Duport, nor anyone else, had the smallest reason to guess anything of what had passed between Jean and myself. All the same, his words suggested he was aware of more than I might suppose.
‘The point turned out to be this,’ said Duport. ‘Jean only wanted to link up with me again to make things easier for herself in carrying on one of her little affairs.’
‘But how could joining up with you possibly help? Surely things were much easier when she was on her own?’
Duport did not answer that question.
‘Guess who the chap was?’ he said.
‘How could I possibly?’
‘Somebody known to you.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Seen you and him at the same time.’
Duport grinned horribly. At least I guiltily thought his grin horrible, because I supposed him to be teasing me. It was unlikely, most unlikely, that Jean had told him about ourselves, although, since she had told both of us about Stripling, such a confession could not be regarded as out of the question. Perhaps someone else, unknown to us, had passed the story on to Duport. In either case, the situation was odious. I greatly regretted having agreed to come out drinking with him, even more of having encouraged him to speak of his own troubles. My curiosity had put me in this position. I had no one but myself to blame. It was just in Duport’s character, I felt, to discompose me in this manner. If he chose to make himself unpleasant about what had happened, I was in no position to object. Things would have to be brazened out. All the same, I could not understand what he meant by saying that Jean had come back to him in order to ‘make things more convenient’. Her return to her husband, their journey together to South America, had been the moment when we had been forced finally to say good-bye to each other. Since then, I had neither seen nor heard of her.
‘Just have a shot at who it was,’ said Duport, ‘bearing in mind Jimmy Stripling as the standard of what a lover should be.’
‘Did he look like Stripling?’
I felt safe, at least, in the respect that, apart from any difference in age, no two people could look less alike than Stripling and myself.
‘Even more of a lout,’ said Duport, ‘if you can believe that.’
‘In what way?’
There was a ghastly fascination in seeing how far he would go.
‘Wetter, for one thing.’
‘I give it up.’
‘Come on.’
‘No good.’
I knew I must be red in the face. By this time we had had some more drinks, to which heightened colouring might reasonably be attributed.
‘I’ll tell you.’
I nerved myself.
‘It was another Jimmy,’ said Duport. ‘Perhaps Jimmy is just a name she likes. Call a man Jimmy and she gets hot pants at once, I shouldn’t wonder. Anyway, it was Jimmy Brent.’
‘Brent?’
At first the name conveyed nothing to me.
‘The fat slob who was in the Vauxhall when Peter drove us all into the hedge. You must remember him.’
‘I do remember him now.’
Even in retrospect, this was a frightful piece of information.
‘Jimmy Brent – always being ditched by tarts in nightclubs.’
I felt as if someone had suddenly kicked my legs from under me, so that I had landed on the other side of the room, not exactly hurt, but thoroughly ruffled, with all the breath knocked out of me.
‘Nice discovery, wasn’t it?’ said Duport.
‘Had this business with Brent been going on long?’
‘Quite a month or two. Took the place of something else, I gather. In fact there was a period when she was running both at the same time. That’s what I have good reason to believe. The point was that Brent was going to South America too. It suited Jean’s book for me to buy her ticket. We all three crossed on the same boat. Then she continued to carry on with him over there.’
‘But are you sure this is true? She can’t really have been in love with Brent.’
This naïve comment might have caught the attention of someone more interested than Duport in the emotions of other people. It was, in short, a complete give-away. No one was likely to use that phrase about a woman he scarcely knew, as I had allowed Duport to suppose about Jean and myself. As it was, he merely showed justifiable contempt for my lack of grasp, no awareness that the impact of his story had struck a shower of sparks.