Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (14 page)

‘Mutton,’ said Mrs Maclintick.

‘Mutton, then. We can get some beer in a jug from the local.’

‘Doesn’t Carolo ever eat himself?’ Moreland asked.

‘He often meals with us as a matter of fact,’ said Mrs Maclintick. ‘I don’t know why Maclintick should make all this fuss suddenly. It is just when Carolo has other plans that he works while we are having supper. Then he eats out later. He likes living on snacks. I tell him it’s bad for him, but he doesn’t care. What is so very extraordinary about all that?’

Her husband disregarded her.

‘Then you are both going to stay,’ he said, almost anxiously. ‘That is fixed. Where is the big jug, Audrey? I’ll get some beer. What does everyone like? Bitter? Mild-and-bitter?’

Moreland had probably been expecting this invitation from the start, but the Maclinticks’ bickering about Carolo seemed to have put him out, so that, giving a hasty glance in my direction as if to learn whether or not I was prepared to fall in with this suggestion, he made some rambling, inconclusive answer which left the whole question in the air. Moreland was subject to fits of jumpiness of that sort; certainly the Maclinticks, between them, were enough to make anyone ill at ease. However, Maclintick now obviously regarded the matter as settled. The prospect of enjoying Moreland’s company for the rest of the evening evidently cheered him. His tone in suggesting different brews of beer sounded like a gesture of conciliation towards his wife and the world in general. I did not much look forward to supper at the Maclinticks, but there seemed no easy way out. Moreland’s earlier remarks about Maclintick’s need for occasional companionship were certainly borne out by this visit. The Maclinticks, indeed, as a married couple, gave the impression of being near the end of their tether. When, for example, Mona and Peter Templer had quarrelled – or, later, when Mona’s interlude with Quiggin had been punctuated with bad temper and sulkiness – the horror had been less acute, more amenable to adjustment, than the bleak despair of the Maclinticks’ union. Mrs Maclintick’s hatred of everything and everybody – except, apparently, Carolo, praise of whom was in any case apparently little more than a stick with which to beat Maclintick – caused mere existence in the same room with her to be disturbing. She now made for the basement, telling us she would shout in due course an invitation to descend. Simultaneously, Maclintick set off for the pub at the end of the street, taking with him a large, badly chipped china jug to hold the beer.

‘I am afraid I’ve rather let you in for this,’ said Moreland, when we
were alone.

His face displayed that helpless, worried look which it would sometimes take on; occasions when Matilda, nowadays probably took charge of the situation. No doubt he found life both worrying and irksome, waiting for her to give birth, himself by this time out of the habit of living on his own.

‘Is it usually like this here?’

‘Rather tougher than usual.’

We waited for some minutes in the sitting-room, Moreland returning to the life of Chabrier, while I turned over the pages of an illustrated book about opera, chiefly looking at the pictures, but thinking, too, of the curious, special humour of musicians, and also of the manner in which they write; ideas, words and phrases gushing out like water from a fountain, so utterly unlike the stiff formality of painters’ prose. After a time, Mrs Maclintick yelled from the depths that we were to join her. Almost at the same moment, Maclintick returned with the beer. We followed him downstairs to the basement. There, in a room next to the kitchen, a table was laid. We settled ourselves round it. Maclintick filled some tumblers; Mrs Maclintick began to carve the mutton. Carolo was immediately manifest. Although, architecturally speaking, divided into separate parts, the Maclinticks’ dining-room was not a large one, the table taking up most of one end. Maclintick’s objection to their lodger working while he and his wife were making a meal seemed valid enough when the circumstances revealed themselves. Carolo sat, his face to the wall, engrossed with a pile of music. He looked round when Moreland and I entered the room, at the same time giving some sort of a hurried greeting, but he did not rise, or pause from his work, for more than a second. Mrs Maclintick’s temper had improved again; now she appeared almost glad that Moreland and I had stayed.

‘Have some beetroot,’ she said. ‘It is fresh today.’

Moreland and Maclintick did not take long to penetrate into a region of musical technicality from which I was excluded by ignorance; so that while they talked, and Carolo scratched away in the corner, just as Maclintick had described, I found Mrs Maclintick thrown on my hands. In her latest mood, she turned out to have a side to her no less tense than her temper displayed on arrival, but more loquacious. In fact a flow of words began to stem from her which seemed to have been dammed up for months. No doubt Maclintick was as silent in the home as out of it, and his wife was glad of an outlet for her reflexions. Indeed, her desire to talk was now so great that it was hard to understand why we had been received in the first instance with so little warmth. Mrs Maclintick’s dissatisfaction with life had probably reached so advanced a stage that she was unable to approach any new event amiably, even when proffered temporary alleviation of her own chronic spleen. Possibly Moreland’s friendship with her husband irked her, suggesting a mental intimacy from which she was excluded, more galling in its disinterested companionship than any pursuit of other women on Maclintick’s part. She began to review her married life aloud.

‘I can’t think why Maclintick goes about looking as he does. He just won’t buy a new suit. He could easily afford one. Of course, Maclintick doesn’t care what he looks like. He takes no notice of anything I say. I suppose he is right in one way. It doesn’t matter what he looks like the way we live. I don’t know what he does care about except Irish whiskey and the Russian composers and writing that book of his. Do you think it will ever get finished? You know he has been at it for seven years. That’s as long as we’ve been married No, I’m wrong. He told me he started it before he met me. Eight or nine years, then. I tell him no one will read it when it is finished. Who wants to read a book about the theory of music, I should like to know? He says himself there is too much of that sort of thing published as it is. It is not that the man hasn’t got ability. He is bright enough in his way. It is just that he doesn’t know how to go about things. Then all these friends of his, like Moreland and you, encourage him, tell him he’s a genius, and the book will sell in thousands. What do you do? Are you a musician? A critic, I expect. I suppose you are writing a book yourself.’

‘I am not a music critic. I am writing a book.’

‘Musical?’

‘No – a novel.’

‘A novel?’ said Mrs Maclintick.

The idea of writing a novel seemed to displease her only a little less than the production of a work on musical theory.

‘What is it to be called?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Have you written any other novels?’

I told her. She shook her head, no more in the mood for literature than music. All the time she treated Maclintick as if he were not present in the flesh; and, since he and Moreland were deeply engaged with questions of pitch and rhythm, both were probably unaware of these reflections on her domestic situation.

‘And then this house. You can see for yourself it is like a pig-sty. I slave sixteen hours a day to keep it clean. No good. Might as well not attempt it. Maclintick isn’t interested in whether his house is clean or not. What I say is, why can’t we go and live in Putney? Where I want to live is never considered, of course. Maclintick likes Pimlico, so Pimlico it has to be. The place gives me the pip. Well, don’t you agree yourself? Even if we move, it has to be somewhere else in Pimlico, and the packing up is more trouble than it is worth. I should like a bit of garden. Can’t have that here. Not even a window-box. Of course Maclintick hates the sight of a flower.’

I quoted St John Clarke’s opinion that the beauty of flowers is enhanced by metropolitan surroundings. Mrs Maclintick did not reply. Her attention had been distracted by Carolo who had begun to pile his sheets of music together and stow them away in a portfolio.

‘Come and have a drink with us, Carolo, before you go,’ she said, with greater warmth than she had shown until that moment. ‘Maclintick will get some more beer. We could all do with another drop. Here is the jug, Maclintick. Don’t take all the cheese, Moreland. Leave a little for the rest of us.’

Maclintick did not look specially pleased at this suggestion of Carolo joining us at the table, but he too welcomed the idea of more beer, immediately picking up the chipped jug and once more setting off with it to the pub. A chair was drawn up for Carolo, who accepted the invitation with no more than mumbled, ungracious agreement; to which he added the statement that he would not be able to stay long. I had not set eyes on him since that night in the Mortimer. Carolo looked just the same: pale; unromantic; black wavy hair a shade longer and greasier than before. Mrs Maclintick gave him a glance that was almost affectionate.

‘Have you got to go out tonight, Carolo?’ she said. ‘There is a little mutton left.’

Carolo shook his head, looking wearily at the residue of the joint, the remains of which were not specially tempting. He seemed in a thoughtful mood, but, when Maclintick reappeared with the jug and poured him out a glass, he drank a deep draught of the beer with apparent gratification. After wiping his mouth with a handkerchief, he spoke in his harsh, North Country voice.

‘How have you been, Moreland?’ he asked.

‘Much as usual,’ said Moreland. ‘And you?’

‘Pretty middling. How’s Matilda?’

‘Having a baby,’ said Moreland flushing; and, as if he referred to speak no more for the moment about that particular subject, went on: ‘You know, in that book I was reading upstairs, Chabrier says that the Spanish fleas have their own national song – a three-four tune in F major that Berlioz introduces into the
Damnation of Faust
.’

‘The Spanish fleas must be having a splendid time nowadays,’ said Maclintick, ‘biting both sides indiscriminately.’

‘The International Brigade could certainly make a tasty dish,’ said Moreland, ‘not to mention the German and Italian “volunteers”. As a matter of fact the fleas probably prefer the Germans. More blonds.’

‘I hope to God Franco doesn’t win,’ said Mrs Maclintick, as if that possibility had at this moment just struck her.

‘Who do you want to win?’ said Maclintick gruffly. ‘The Communists?’

Up till then Maclintick had been on the whole in a better temper than usual. The arrival at the table of Carolo had unsettled him. He now showed signs of wanting to pick a quarrel with someone. His wife was clearly the easiest person present with whom to come into conflict. Biting and sucking noisily at his pipe he glared at her. It looked as if the Spanish war might be a matter of controversy of some standing between them; a source of contention as a married couple, rather than a political difference. Maclintick’s views on politics could never be foretold. Violent, changeable, unorthodox, he tended to dislike the Left as much as the Right. He had spoken very bitterly.

‘I would rather have the Communists than the Fascists,’ said Mrs Maclintick, compressing her lips.

‘Only because you think it is the done thing to be on the Left,’ said Maclintick, with an enraging smile. ‘There isn’t a middle-brow in the country who isn’t expressing the same sentiment. They should try a little practical Communism and see how they like it. You are no exception, I assure you.’

He removed his pipe from his mouth and swallowed hard. Moreland was obviously becoming uneasy at the turn things were taking. He began kicking his foot against the side of his chair.

‘I am Pinkish myself,’ he said laughing.

‘And you want the Communists?’ asked Maclintick.

‘Not necessarily.’

‘And Marxist music?’

‘I long to hear some.’

‘Shostakovich, Russia’s only reputable post-Revolution composer, not allowed to have his opera performed because the dictatorship of the proletariat finds that work musically decadent, bourgeois, formalist?’

‘I’m not defending the Soviet regime,’ said Moreland, still laughing. ‘I’m all for
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
– my favourite title. Wasn’t there a period in the Middle Ages when the Pope forbade certain chords under pain of excommunication? All I said – apropos of the war in Spain – I am Pinkish. No more, no less.’

This attempt to lighten the tension was not very successful. Maclintick leaned down and tapped his pipe against his heel. Mrs Maclintick, though silent, was white with anger.

‘What about Toscanini?’ she demanded suddenly.

‘What about him?’ said Maclintick.

‘The Fascists slapped his face.’

‘Well?’

‘I suppose you approve of that.’

‘I don’t like the Fascists any more than you do,’ said Maclintick. ‘You know that perfecdy well. It was me that Blackshirt insisted on taking to the police station in Florence, not you. You tried to truckle to him.’

’Anyway,’ said Mrs Maclintick, ‘I want the Government in Spain to win – not the Communists.’

‘How are you going to arrange that, if they do defeat Franco? As it is, the extremists have taken over on the side of “the Government”, as you call it. How are you going to arrange that the nice, liberal ones come out on top?’

‘What do you know about it?’ said his wife, speaking now with real hatred. ‘What do you know about politics?’

‘More than you.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Doubt it, then.’

There was a moment during the pause that followed this exchange of opinion when I thought she might pick up one of the battered table knives and stick it into him. All this time, Carolo had remained absolutely silent, as if unaware that anything unusual was going on round him, unaware of Spain, unaware of civil war there, unaware of Communists, unaware of Fascists, his expression registering no more than its accustomed air of endurance of the triviality of those who inhabited the world in which he unhappily found himself. Now he finished the beer, wiped his mouth again with the pocket handkerchief, and rose from the table.