‘Do you feel equal to the Scarlet Pimpernel, Hugh?’
Moreland, almost past speech, nodded.
‘Give him your key, Teddy,’ said Molly Jeavons. ‘We can find him another in the morning.’
Jeavons fumbled in one of the pockets of his overall and handed a key to Moreland.
‘I’ll probably be pottering about when you come in,’ he said, ‘can’t get to sleep if I turn in early. Come back with him, Nick. We might be able to find a glass of beer for you.’
I went across the room to take leave of Widmerpool and his mother. When I came up to her, Mrs Widmerpool turned her battery of teeth upon me, smiling fiercely, like the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, her shining, ruddy countenance advancing closer as she continued to hold my hand in hers.
‘I expect you are still occupied with your literary pursuits,’ she said, taking up our conversation at precisely the point at which it had been abandoned.
‘Some journalism—’
‘This is not a happy time for book-lovers.’
‘No, indeed.’
‘Still, you are fortunate.’
‘Why?’
‘With your bookish days, not, like Kenneth, in arms.’
‘He seems a Happy Warrior.’
‘It is not in his nature to remain in civil life at time of war,’ she said.
‘I will say good night, then.’
‘Good luck to you,’ she said, ‘wherever you may find yourself in these troublous times.’
She gave me another smile of great malignance, returning immediately to her discussions about rent. Widmerpool half raised his hand in a gesture of farewell. Moreland and I left the house together.
‘What the hell were you doing in that place?’ he asked, as we walked up the street.
‘Molly Jeavons is an aunt of Isobel’s. It is a perfectly normal place for me to be. Far stranger that you yourself should turn up there.’
‘You’re right about that,’ Moreland said. ‘I can’t quite make out how I did. Things have been moving rather quickly with me the last few months. Who was that terrifying woman you said good-bye to?’
‘Mother of the man in spectacles called Widmerpool. You met him with me at a nursing home years ago.’
‘No recollection,’ said Moreland, ‘though he seemed familiar. His mother began on Scriabin as soon as I arrived in the house. Told me the Poème de l’Extase was her favourite musical work. I say, I’m feeling like hell. Far from de l ’extase.’
‘What’s been happening? I didn’t even know you’d left the country.’
‘The country, as it were, left me,’ said Moreland. ‘At least Matilda did, which came to much the same thing.’
‘How did all this come about?’
‘I hardly know myself.’
‘Has she gone off with somebody?’
‘Gone back to Donners.’
The information was so grotesque that at first I could hardly take it seriously. Then I saw as a possibility that a row might have taken place and Matilda done this from pique. At certain seasons, Matilda, admittedly, had a fairly rough time living with Moreland. She might require a short spell of rich life to put her right, although (as Mrs Widmerpool could have said) wartime was hardly the moment to pursue rich life. Sir Magnus Donners, as a former lover, himself no longer young, would provide a comparatively innocuous vehicle for such a temporary interlude. The Moreland situation, regarded in these cold-blooded terms, might be undesirable certainly, at the same time not beyond hope.
‘I’ll tell the story when we get to the restaurant,’ said Moreland. ‘I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. Just had a few doubles.’
We found the Scarlet Pimpernel soon after this. The place was not full. We took a table in the corner at the back of the room. At this early stage of the war, it was still possible to order a bottle of wine without undue difficulty and expense. The food, as Molly Jeavons had said, turned out better than might have been expected from the mob-caps of the waitresses and general tone of the establishment. After some soup and a glass of wine Moreland began to recover himself.
‘One always imagines things happen in hot blood,’ he said. ‘An ill-considered remark starts a row. Hard words follow, misunderstandings. Matters that can be put right in the end. Unfortunately life doesn’t work out like that. First of all there is no row, secondly, nothing can be put right.’
‘Barnby says he is always on his guard when things are going well with a woman.’
‘Still, your wife,’ said Moreland, ‘it’s bloody uncomfortable if things are not going well between yourself and your wife. I speak from experience. All the same, there may be something in Barnby’s view. You remember the business about me and — well — your sister-in-law, Priscilla?’
‘You conveyed at the time that a situation existed — then ceased to exist, or was stifled in some way.’
I did not see why I should help Moreland out beyond a certain point. If he wanted to tell his story, he must supply the facts, not reveal one half and allow the other to be guessed.
He had always been too fond of doing that when extracting sympathy for his emotional tangles. No one had ever known what had happened about himself and Priscilla, only that some close relationship had existed between them, which had caused a great deal of disturbance in his married life. Some explanation was required. The situation could not be pieced together merely from a series of generalisations about matrimony.
‘Anything you like,’ said Moreland. ‘The point is that, during that rather tricky period, Matty could not have behaved better. She was absolutely marvellous — really marvellous. It was the one thing that made the whole awfulness of life possible when …’
He did not finish the sentence, but meant, I supposed, when the affair with Priscilla was at an end.
‘Why on earth, if Matty was going to leave me, didn’t she leave me then? I’ll tell you. She enjoyed the emotional strain of it all. Women are like that, the lame girl in Dostoevsky who said she didn’t want to be happy.’
‘How did it start?’
‘Matilda was in a show that opened in the provinces — Brighton or somewhere. She just wrote and said she was not returning home, would I send her things along, such as they were. She had already taken most of her clothes with her, so I presume she had already decided on leaving when she set out.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Two or three weeks.’
‘Is it generally known?’
‘Not yet, I think. Matilda is often away acting, so it is quite usual for her to be absent from home.’
‘And you had no warning that all was not well?’
‘I am the most modest man in the world when it is a question of trying to make a woman fall for me,’ said Moreland. ‘I never expect I shall bring it off. On the other hand, once she’s fallen, I can never really believe she will prefer someone else. These things are just the way vanity happens to take you.’
‘But where does Donners come in? She can’t have fallen for him.’
‘She has been going over to Stourwater fairly often., She made no secret of that. Why should she? There didn’t seem any reason to object. What could I do, anyway? You remember we all dined there that rather grim evening when everyone dressed up as the Seven Deadly Sins. I recall now, that was where I saw your friend Widmerpool before. Does he always haunt my worst moments? Anyway, Matilda’s visits to Stourwater were of that sort, nothing serious.’
‘Is Matilda living at Stourwater at this moment?’
‘No — staying in the flat of a girl she knows in London, another actress. The point is this: if I allow Matilda to divorce me, Donners will marry her.’
‘No.’
Moreland laughed.