‘Matilda is dying for company,’ Isobel said, when she told me of their meeting.
‘How is she?’
‘Not bad. Out of a job. She says she has decided she is a terrible actress. She is going to give up the stage and take to petit point.’
‘Where exactly are they living?’
‘A few miles from Stourwater.’
‘I had no idea of that. Was it deliberate?’
‘Matilda knows the district. She was brought up there. At first I was too delicate to ask how near they were to the castle. Then Matty said Sir Magnus had actually found the cottage for them. Matty rather likes talking of her days with Sir Magnus if one is tête-à-tête. They represent, I think, the most restful moment of her life.’
‘Life with Hugh can’t be very restful.’
‘Hugh doesn’t seem to mind about being near Stourwater. Matilda said he was delighted to find a cottage so easily.’
I was not sure that I agreed in believing Moreland so indifferent to the proximity of Sir Magnus Donners. It is true that men vary in attitude towards previous husbands and lovers of their wife or mistress. As it happened, that was a favourite theme of Moreland’s. Some, at least outwardly, are to all appearance completely unconcerned with what experiences a woman may have had — and with whom — before they took her on; others never become reconciled to their forerunners. I remembered Moreland saying that Matilda’s father had kept a chemist’s shop in that part of the world. There was a story about her first having met Sir Magnus when she was organising a school play in the precincts of the castle. One side of Moreland was certainly squeamish about the matter of his wife’s former connexion with Sir Magnus, the other, tolerant, sceptical, indolent about his own life — even his emotional life — welcomed any easy solution when it came to finding somewhere to live. The cottage might be in the shadow of Stourwater, or anywhere else. It was the characteristic split personality that the arts seem specially to require, even to augment in those who practise them. Matilda, of course, knew very well the easygoing, inactive side of her husband; her grasp of that side of his character was perhaps her chief power over him. She could judge to a hair’s breadth just how much to make a convenience of having been Sir Magnus’s mistress, while stopping short of seriously upsetting Moreland’s susceptibilities on that score. Such at least, were the terms in which I myself assessed the situation. That was the background I expected to find when we stayed at the cottage. I thought that half-humorous, half-masochistic shame on Moreland’s part at thus allowing his wife to make use of a rich man who had formerly ‘kept’ her would express itself in banter, partly designed to punish himself for allowing such circumstances to arise.
As it happened, conversation had turned on Sir Magnus Donners a night or two before we were invited to the Morelands’. We were dining (at short notice, because a more ‘political’ couple had dropped out) with Isobel’s sister, Susan, married to Roddy Cutts, a Tory back-bencher. Susan greatly enjoyed giving small political dinner-parties. Roddy, hardly drinking anything himself, saw no reason to encourage the habit in others, so that wine did not exactly flow. Current affairs, however, were unrestrainedly discussed. They inhabited a hideous little mansion flat in Westminster, equipped with a ‘division bell’ for giving warning when Roddy’s vote was required in ‘the House’. Said to be rather a ‘coming man’ in the Conservative Party, he was in some disgrace with its leaders at that moment, having thrown in his lot with Churchill, Eden and the group who had abstained from voting in the ‘Munich’ division. That evening another MP, Fettiplace-Jones, was present with his wife. Fettiplace-Jones, a supporter of the Government’s policy, was at the same time too wary to cut himself off entirely from dissident members of the party. Like Roddy, his contemporary in age, he represented a northern constituency. Tall, handsome, moon-faced, with a lock of hair trained across his high forehead for the caricaturist, he seemed to require only side-whiskers and a high collar to complete the picture of a distinguished politician of the nineteenth century. His untiring professional geniality rivalled even Roddy’s remorseless charm of manner. His wife, an eager little woman with the features of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland — possibly advised by her husband not to be controversial about Czechoslovakia — spoke sagely of public health and housing. Fettiplace-Jones himself seemed to be exploring avenues of thought that suggested no basic disagreement between himself and Roddy; in short, he himself acknowledged that we must continue to prepare for the worst. When the men were left alone, Fettiplace-Jones, rightly deciding no cigars would be available, took one from his pocket and smelled it.
‘The sole survivor,’ he said apologetically, as he made an incision. ‘Were you in the House when Attlee said that “armaments were not a policy”?’
‘Bobetty was scathing,’ said Roddy. ‘By the same token, I was talking to Duff about anti-aircraft shortages the other night.’
‘This continued opposition to conscription is going to do Labour harm in the long run,’ said Fettiplace-Jones, who no doubt wanted to avoid anything like a head-on clash, ‘even if things let up, as I hope they will.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Roddy, who was being more brusque than usual. ‘All the same, you’ll probably agree we ought to tackle problems of civil evacuation and food control.’
‘Do you know Magnus Donners?’
‘Never met him.’
‘I remember being greatly impressed by him as a boy,’ said Fettiplace-Jones. ‘I was taken to the House to hear a debate.’
He placed his hand on his forehead, grasping the errant lock, leaning back and smiling to himself, perhaps enjoyably contemplating the young Fettiplace-Jones’s first sight of the scene of his own future triumphs.
‘Not his delivery,’ he said quietly. ‘That was nothing. It was the mastery of detail. Now Donners is the sort of man to handle some of those administrative problems.’
‘Not too old?’
‘He knows the unions and gets on well with them.’
‘What does he think about the Czechs?’
‘Convinced nothing could be done short of war — at the same time not at all keen on the present situation. More of your view than mine.’
‘Is he, indeed?’ said Roddy. ‘It looked at one moment as if Donners would go to the Lords.’
‘I doubt if he ever wanted a peerage,’ said Fettiplace-Jones. ‘He has no children. My impression is that Donners is gearing his various concerns to the probability of war in spite of the settlement.’
‘Is he?’ said Roddy.
He had evidently no wish for argument with Fettiplace-Jones at that moment. The subject changed to the more general question of international guarantees.
I knew less of the political and industrial activities of Sir Magnus, than of his steady, if at times capricious, patronage of the arts. Like most rich patrons, his interests leant towards painting and music, rather than literature. Moreland described him as knowing the name of the book to be fashionably discussed at any given moment, being familiar with most of the standard authors. There Sir Magnus’s literary appreciation stopped, according to Moreland. He took no pleasure in reading. No doubt that was a wise precaution for a man of action, whose imagination must be rigorously disciplined, if the will is to remain unsapped by daydreams, painting and music being, for some reason, less deleterious than writing in that respect. I listened to Roddy and Fettiplace-Jones talking about Sir Magnus, without supposing for a moment that I should meet him again in the near future. He existed in my mind as one of those figures, dominating, no doubt, in their own remote sphere, but slightly ridiculous when seen casually at close quarters.