A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell

It was at that stage we had been joined by Members, rather to my surprise, because, as undergraduates, Members and Quiggin had habitually spoken of each other in a far from friendly manner. Now a change of relationship seemed to have taken place, or, it would perhaps be more exact to say, appeared desired by each of them; for there was no doubt that they were prepared, at least momentarily, to be on the best of terms. The three of us talked together, at first perhaps with a certain lack of ease, and then with greater warmth than I remembered in the past.

I had, in fact, met Members with Short, who was a believer in what he called “keeping up with interesting people,” soon after I had come to live in London. This taste of Short’s, with whom I occasionally had dinner or saw a film — as we had planned to do on the night when I had cut him for the Walpole-Wilson dinner-party — resulted in running across various former acquaintances not seen regularly as a matter of course, and Members, by now of some repute as a littérateur, was one of these. To find him at Mr. Deacon’s was unexpected, however, for I had supposed Members, for some reason, to frequent literary circles of a more sedate kind, though quite why I should have thus regarded him I hardly know.

In contrast with Quiggin, Mark Members had altered considerably since his undergraduate period, when he had been known for the relative flamboyance of his dress. Him too I remembered chiefly from my first year at the university, though this was not because he had left prematurely, but rather on account of his passing into a world of local hostesses of more or less academical complexion, which I did not myself frequent. If I had considered the matter, it was to some similar layer of society in London that I should have pictured him attached: perhaps a reason for supposing him out of place at Mr. Deacon’s. Possibly these ladies, most of them hard-headed enough in their, own way, had been to some extent responsible for the almost revolutionary changes that had taken place in his appearance; for, even since our meeting with Short, Members had worked hard on his own exterior, in much the same manner that Quiggin had effected the interior modifications to which I have already referred.

There had once, for example, been at least a suggestion of side-whiskers, now wholly disappeared. The Byronic collar and loosely tied tie discarded, Members looked almost as neat round the neck as Archie Gilbert. His hair no longer hung in an uneven fringe, but was brushed severely away from his forehead at an acute angle; while he had also, by some means, ridded himself of most of his freckles, acquiring a sterner expression that might almost have been modelled on Quiggin’s. In fact, he looked a rather distinguished young man, evidently belonging to the world of letters, though essentially to the end of that world least well disposed to Bohemianism in its grosser forms. He had been brought — Mr. Deacon had finally declared himself resigned to a certain number of uninvited guests, “modern manners being what they are”—by a strapping, black-haired model called Mona, a friend of Gypsy’s belonging, so Barnby reported, to a stage of Gypsy’s life before she was known to Mr. Deacon.

Short had told me that Members did occasional work for one of the “weeklies”—the periodical, in fact, that had commented rather disparagingly on Prince Theodoric’s visit to England — and I had, indeed, read, with decided respect, some of the pieces there written by him. He had, I believed, failed to secure the “first” expected of him, by Sillery and others, at the end of his university career, but, like Bill Truscott in another sphere, he had never relinquished the reputation of being “a coming young man.” Speaking of reviews Written by Members, Short used to say: “Mark handles his material with remarkable facility,” and, not without envy, I had to agree with that judgment; for this matter of writing was beginning to occupy an increasing amount of attention in my own mind. I had even toyed with the idea of attempting myself to begin work on a novel: an act that would thereby have brought to pass the assertion made at La Grenadière, merely as a conversational pretext to supply an answer to Widmerpool, to the effect that I possessed literary ambitions.

As I have already said of Mrs. Andriadis’s party, such latitudes are entered by a door through which there is rarely if ever a return. In rather the same manner, that night at Mr. Deacon’s seemed to crystallise certain matters. Perhaps this crystallisation had something to do with the presence there of Members and Quiggin, though they themselves were in agreement as to the displeasure they both felt in the company assembled.

“You must admit,” said Members, looking round the room, “it all looks rather like that picture in the Tate of the Sea giving up the Dead that were in It. I can’t think why Mona insisted on coming.”

Quiggin concurred in finding Mr. Deacon’s guests altogether unacceptable, at the same time paying suitable commendation to the aptness of the pictorial allusion. He looked across the room to where Mona was talking to Barnby, and said: “It is a very unusual figure, isn’t it? Epstein would treat it too sentimentally, don’t you think? Something more angular is required, in the manner of Lipchitz or Zadkine.”

“She really hates men,” said Members, laughing dryly.

His amusement was no doubt directed at the impracticability of the unspoken desires of Quiggin, who, perhaps with the object of moving to ground more favourable to himself, changed the subject,

“Did I hear that you had become secretary to St. John Clarke?” he asked, in a casual voice.

Members gave his rather high laugh again. This was evidently a matter he wished to be approached delicately. He seemed to have grown taller since coming to London. His slim waist and forceful, interrogative manner rather suggested one of those strong-willed, elegant young salesmen, who lead the customer from the shop only after the intention to buy a few handkerchiefs has been transmuted into a reckless squandering on shirts, socks, and ties, of patterns to be found later fundamentally unsympathetic.

“At first I could not make up my mind whether to take it,” he admitted. “Now I am glad I decided in favour. St. J. is rather a great man in his way.”

“Of course, one could not exactly call him a very great novelist,” said Quiggin, slowly, as if deliberating the question carefully within himself. “But he is a personality, certainly, and some of his critical writing might be labelled as — well — shall we say ‘not bad’?”

“They have a certain distinction of thought, of course, in their rather old-fashioned manner.”

Members seemed relieved to concede this. He clearly felt that Quiggin, catching him in a weak position, had let him off lightly. St. John Clarke was the novelist of whom Lady Anne Stepney had spoken with approval. I had read some of his books towards the end of my time at school with great enjoyment; now I felt myself rather superior to his windy, descriptive passages, two-dimensional characterisation, and, so I had come to think, the emptiness of the writing’s inner content. I was surprised to find someone I regarded as so impregnable in the intellectual field as I supposed Members to be, saddled with a figure who could only be looked upon by those with literary pretensions of any but the crudest kind as an Old Man of the Sea; although, in one sense, the metaphor should perhaps have been reversed, as it was Members who had, as it were, climbed upon the shoulders of St. John Clarke.

I can now see his defence of St. John Clarke as an interesting example of the power of the will, for his disinclination for St. John Clarke’s works must have been at least equal to my own: possibly far in excess. As Members had made up his mind to accept what was probably a reasonable salary — though St. John Clarke was rather well known for being “difficult” about money — his attitude was undoubtedly a sagacious one; indeed, a great deal more discerning than my own, based upon decidedly romantic premises. The force of this justification certainly removed any question of Quiggin, as I had at first supposed he might, opening up some sort of critical attack on Members, based on the charge that St. John Clarke was a “bad writer.” On the contrary, Quiggin now seemed almost envious that he had not secured the post for himself.

“Of course, if I had a job like that, I should probably say something one day that wouldn’t go down,” he commented, rather bitterly. “I’ve never had the opportunity to learn the way successful people like to be treated.”

“St. J. knows your work,” said Members, with quiet emphasis. “I brought it to his attention.”

He watched Quiggin closely after saying this. Once more I wondered whether there was any truth in Sillery’s story, never verified in detail, to the effect that the two of them lived almost next-door in the same Midland town. In spite of Quiggin’s uncouth, drab appearance, and the new spruceness of Members, there could be no doubt that they had something in common. As Quiggin’s face relaxed at these complimentary words, I could almost have believed that they were cousins. Quiggin did not comment on the subject of this awareness of his own status as a writer now attributed to St. John Clarke, but, in friendly exchange, he began to question Members about his books, in process of being written or already in the press: projected works that appeared to be several in number — at least three, possibly four — consisting of poems, a novel, a critical study, together with something else, more obscure in form, the precise nature of which I have forgotten, as it never appeared.

“And you, J.G.?” asked Members, evidently not wishing to appear grudging.

“I am trying to remain one of the distinguished few who have not written a novel,” said Quiggin, lightly. “The Vox Populi may be doing a fragment of autobiography of mine in the spring. Otherwise I just keep a few notes — odds and ends I judge of interest. I suppose they will find their way into print in due course. Everything does these days.”

“No streams of consciousness, I hope,” said Members, with a touch of malignity. “But the Vox Populi isn’t much of a publishing house, is it? Will they pay a decent advance?”

“I get so sick of all the ‘fine’ typography you see about,” said Quiggin, dismissing the matter of money. “I’ve told Craggs to send it out to a jobbing printer, just as he would one of his pamphlets — print it on lavatory paper, if he likes. At least Craggs has the right political ideas.”

“I question if there is much of the commodity you mention to be found on the premises of the Vox Populi,” said Members, giving his thin, grating laugh. “But no doubt that format would ensure a certain sale. Don’t forget to send me a copy, so that I can try and say something about it somewhere.”

In leaving behind the kind of shell common to all undergraduates, indeed to most young men, they had, in one sense, taken more definite shape by each establishing conspicuously his own individual identity, thereby automatically drawing farther apart from each other. Regarded from another angle, however, Quiggin and Members had come, so it appeared, closer together by their concentration, in spite of differences of approach, upon the same, or at least very similar, aims. They could be thought of, perhaps, as representatives, if not of different cultures, at least of opposed traditions; Quiggin, a kind of abiding prototype of discontent against life, possessing at the same time certain characteristics peculiar to the period: Members, no less dissatisfied than Quiggin, but of more academic derivation, perhaps even sharing some of Mr. Deacon’s intellectual origins.

Although he had already benefited from the tenets of what was possibly a dying doctrine, Members was sharp enough to be speedily jettisoning appurtenances, already deteriorated, of an outmoded æstheticism. Quiggin, with his old clothes and astringent manner, showed a similar sense of what the immediate future intimated. This was to be a race neck-and-neck, though whether the competitors themselves were already aware of the invisible ligament binding them together in apparently eternal contrast and comparison, I do not know. Certainly the attitude that was to exist mutually between them — perhaps best described as “love-hate”—must have taken root long before anything of the sort was noticed by me. At the university their eclectic personalities had possessed, I had thought, a curious magnetism, unconnected with their potential talents. Now I was almost startled by the ease with which both of them appeared able to write books in almost any quantity; for Quiggin’s relative abnegation in that field was clearly the result of personal choice, rather than lack of subject matter, or weakness in powers of expression.

Quiggin was showing no public indication of the attempts to ingratiate himself with Gypsy suggested by her earlier remarks. On the contrary, he seemed to be spending most of his time talking business or literary gossip of the kind in which he had indulged with Members. On the whole, he restricted himself to the men present, though once or twice he hovered, apparently rather ill at ease, in the vicinity of the model, Mona, in whom Barnby was also showing a certain interest. Gypsy had taken manifest steps to clean herself up for the party. She was wearing a bright, fussy little frock that emphasised her waif-like appearance. When I noticed her at a later stage of the evening’s evolution, sitting on the knee of Howard Craggs, a tall, baldish man, in early middle age, with a voice like a radio announcer’s, rich, oily, and precise in its accents, this sight made me think again of her brush with Widmerpool, and wish for a moment that I knew more of its details. Perhaps some processes of thought-transference afforded at that moment an unexpected dispensation from Gypsy herself of further enlightenment to my curiosity.

Craggs had been making fairly free for a considerable time in a manner that certainly suggested some truth in the aspersions put forward by Barnby. However, this perseverance on his part had apparently promoted no very ardent feeling of sympathy between them, there and then, for she was looking sullen enough. Now she suddenly scrambled out of his lap, straightening her skirt, and pushed her way across the room to where I was sitting on the sofa, talking — as I had been for some time — to a bearded man interested in musical-boxes. This person’s connection with Mr. Deacon was maintained purely and simply through their common interest in the musical-box market, a fact the bearded man kept on explaining: possibly fearing that his reputation might otherwise seem cheap in my eyes. At the arrival of Gypsy, probably supposing that the party was getting too rough for a person of quiet tastes, he rose from his seat, remarking that he must be “finding Gillian and making for Hampstead.” Gypsy took the deserted place. She sat there for a second or two without speaking.

“We don’t much like each other, do we?” she said at length.

I replied, rather lamely, that, even supposing some such mutual hostility to exist between us, there was no good reason why anything of the sort should continue; and it was true that I was conscious, that evening, of finding her notably more engaging than upon earlier meetings, comparatively amicable though some of these had been.