‘I have been enjoying a brief rest here,’ he said. ‘An opportunity to put right a slight mischief with boils. Some tests have been made. I leave tomorrow, agog for work again.’

‘Isobel goes tomorrow, too. She will keep rather quiet for a week or two.’

‘Quite so, quite so,’ said Widmerpool, dismissing the subject.

He turned abruptly on his heel, muttering something about ‘arranging a meeting in the near future’, at the same time making a rapid movement towards the door of frosted glass at which he had been aiming when first accosted by Brandreth.

‘Can you lunch with me next Tuesday – at my club?’

Widmerpool paused for a second to give thought to this question, once more began to frown.

‘Tuesday? Tuesday? Let me think. I have something on Tuesday. I must have. No, perhaps I haven’t. Wait a minute. Let me look at my book. Yes… Yes. As it happens, I can lunch with you on Tuesday. But not before half-past one. Certainly not before one-thirty. More likely one-thirty-five.’

Quickening his step, drawing his dressing-gown round him as if to keep himself more separate from us, he passed through the door almost at a run. His displacement immediately readjusted in Moreland’s favour Brandreth’s social posture.

‘To return to Wagner,’ Brandreth said, ‘you remember Wanderlust, Mr Moreland, of course you do, when Siegfried sings: “From the wood forth I wander, never to return!” – how does it go? – ”Aus dem Wald fort in die Welt zieh ’n; nimmer kehr’ich zurüch!” Now, it always seems to me the greatest pity that in none of the productions of The Ring I have ever heard, has the deeper pessimism of these words been given full weight…’

Brandreth began to make movements with his hands as if he were climbing an invisible rope. Moreland disengaged us brutally from him. We descended the stairs.

‘Who was the man in the dressing-gown with spectacles?’ Moreland asked, when we had reached the street.

‘He is called Kenneth Widmerpool. In the City. I have known him a long time.’

‘I can’t say I took to him,’ Moreland said. ‘But, look here, what a business married life is. I hope to goodness Matilda will be all right. There are various worrying aspects. I sometimes think I shall go off my head. Perhaps I am off it already. That would explain a lot. What are you doing tonight? I am on my way to the Maclinticks. Why not come too?’

Without waiting for an answer, he began to recount all that had been happening to Matilda and himself since we had last met; various absurd experiences they had shared; how they sometimes got on each other’s nerves; why they had returned to London; where they were going to live. There had been some sort of a row with the municipal authorities at the seaside resort. Moreland held decided professional opinions; he could be obstinate. Some people, usually not the most intelligent, found working with him difficult. I heard some of his story, telling him in return how the film company for which I had been script-writing had decided against renewing my contract; that I was now appearing on the book page of a daily paper; also reviewing from time to time for the weekly of which Mark Members was assistant literary editor.

‘Mark recommended Dr Brandreth to us,’ Moreland said. ‘A typical piece of malice on his part. Brandreth is St John Clarke’s doctor – or was when Mark was St John Clarke’s secretary. Gossip is the passion of his life, his only true emotion – but he can also put you on the rack about music.’

‘Is he looking after Matilda?’

‘A gynaecologist does that. He is not a music-lover, thank God. Of course, a lot of women have babies. One must admit that. No doubt it will be all right. It just makes one a bit jumpy. Look here, Nick, you must come to the Maclinticks’. It would be more cheerful if there were two of us.’

‘Should I be welcome?’

‘Why not? Have you developed undesirable habits since we last met?’

‘I never think Maclintick much likes me.’

‘Likes you?’ said Moreland. ‘What egotism on your part. Of course he doesn’t like you. Maclintick doesn’t like anybody.’

‘He likes you.’

‘We have professional ties. As a matter of fact, Maclintick doesn’t really hate everyone as much as he pretends. I was being heavily humorous.’

‘All the same, he shows small visible pleasure in meeting most people.’

‘One must rise above that. It is a kindness to do so. Maclintick does not get on too well with his wife. The occasional company of friends eases the situation.’

‘You do make this social call sound tempting.’

‘If nobody ever goes there, I am afraid Maclintick will jump into the river one of these days, or hang himself with his braces after a more than usually gruelling domestic difference. You must come.’

‘All right. Since you present it as a matter of life and death.’

We took a bus to Victoria, then passed on foot into a vast, desolate region of stucco streets and squares upon which a doom seemed to have fallen. The gloom was cosmic. We traversed these pavements for some distance, proceeding from haunts of seedy, grudging gentility into an area of indeterminate, but on the whole increasingly unsavoury, complexion.

‘Maclintick is devoted to this part of London,’ Moreland said. ‘I am not sure that I agree with him. He says his mood is for ever Pimlico. I grant that a sympathetic atmosphere is an important point in choosing a residence. It helps one’s work. All the same, tastes differ. Maclintick is always to be found in this neighbourhood, though never for long in the same place.’

‘He never seems very cheerful when I meet him.’

I had run across Maclintick only a few times with Moreland since our first meeting in the Mortimer.

‘He is a very melancholy man,’ Moreland agreed. ‘Maclintick is very melancholy. He is disappointed, of course.’

‘About himself as a musician?’

‘That – and other things. He is always hard up. Then he has an aptitude for quarrelling with anyone who might be of use to him professionally. He is writing a great tome on musical theory which never seems to get finished.’

‘What is his wife like?’

‘Like a wife.’

‘Is that how you feel about marriage?’

‘Well, not exactly,’ said Moreland laughing. ‘But you know one does begin to understand all the music-hall jokes and comic-strips about matrimony after you have tried a spell of it yourself. Don’t you agree?’

‘And Mrs Maclintick is a good example?’

‘You will see what I mean.’

‘What is Maclintick’s form about women? I can never quite make out.’

‘I think he hates them really – only likes whores.’

‘Ah.’

‘At least that is what Gossage used to say.’

‘That’s a known type.’

‘All the same, Maclintick is also full of deeply romantic, hidden away sentiments about Wein, Weib und Gesang. That is his passionate, carefully concealed side. The gruffness is intended to cover all that. Maclintick is terrified of being thought sentimental. I suppose all his bottled-up feelings came to the surface when he met Audrey.’

‘And the prostitutes?’

‘He told Gossage he found them easier to converse with than respectable ladies. Of course, Gossage – you can imagine how he jumped about telling me this – was speaking of a period before Maclintick’s marriage. No reason to suppose that sort of thing takes place now.’

‘But if he hates women, why do you say he is so passionate?’

‘It just seems to have worked out that way. Audrey is one of the answers, I suppose.’

The house, when we reached it, turned out to be a small, infinitely decayed two-storey dwelling that had seen better days; now threatened by a row of mean shops advancing from one end of the street and a fearful slum crowding up from the other. Moreland’s loyalty to his friends – in a quiet: way considerable – prevented me from being fully prepared for Mrs Maclintick. That she should have come as a surprise was largely my own fault. Knowing Moreland, I ought to have gathered more from his disjointed, though on the whole decidedly cautionary, account of the Maclintick household. Besides, from the first time of meeting Maclintick – when he had gone to the telephone in the Mortimer – the matrimonial rows of the Maclinticks had been an accepted legend. However much one hears about individuals, the picture formed in the mind rarely approximates to the reality. So it was with Mrs Maclintick. I was not prepared for her in the flesh. When she opened the door to us, her formidable discontent with life swept across the threshold in scorching, blasting waves. She was a small dark woman with a touch of gipsy about her, this last possibility suggested by sallow skin and bright black eyes. Her black hair was worn in a fringe. Some men might have found her attractive. I was not among them, although at the same time not blind to the fact that she might be capable of causing trouble where men were concerned. Mrs Maclintick said nothing at the sight of us, only shrugging her shoulders. Then, standing starkly aside, as if resigned to our entry in spite of an overpowering distaste she felt for the two of us, she held the door open wide. We passed within the Maclintick threshold.