I was absolved from need to explain about Miss Weedon to Mrs Maclintick, no easy matter to embark upon, by seeing Carolo drifting towards us. A dinner jacket made him look more melancholy than ever.

‘Coming?’ he enquired.

‘Where’s Maclintick?’

‘Gone home.’

‘Full of whisky, I bet.’

‘You bet.’

‘All right.’

Stringham had made no great impression on her. She must have seen him as one of those eccentric figures naturally to be encountered in rich houses of this kind. That was probably the most judicious view of Stringham for her to take. Certainly there was no way for Mrs Maclintick to guess that a small, violent drama had been played out in front of her; nor would she have been greatly interested if some explanation of the circumstances could have been revealed. Now – in her tone to Carolo – she re-entered, body and soul, the world in which she normally lived. The two of them went off together. I began to look once more for Isobel. By the door Commander Foxe was saying goodbye to Max Pilgrim.

‘Well,’ said Commander Foxe, when he saw me, ‘that was neatly arranged, wasn’t it?’

‘What was?’

‘Persuading Charles to go home.’

‘Lucky Miss Weedon happened to look in, you mean?’

‘There was a good reason for that.’

‘Oh?’

‘I rang her up and told her to come along,’ said Commander Foxe briefly.

That answer was such a simple one that I could not imagine why I had not guessed it without having to be told.

Those very obvious tactical victories are always the victories least foreseen by the onlooker, still less the opponent. Mrs Foxe herself might feel lack of dignity in summoning Miss Weedon to remove her own son from the house; for Buster, no such delicacy obstructed the way. Indeed, this action could be seen as a beautiful revenge for much owed to Stringham in the past; the occasion, for example, when Buster and I had first met in the room next door, and Stringham, still a boy, had seemed to order Buster from the house. No doubt other old scores were to be paid off. The relationship between Commander Foxe and Miss Weedon herself was also to be considered. Like two rival powers-something about Miss Weedon lent itself to political metaphor – who temporarily abandon their covert belligerency to combine against a third, there was a brief alliance; but also, for Miss Weedon, diplomatically speaking, an element of face-losing. She had been forced to allow her rival to invoke the treaty which demanded that in certain circumstances she should invest with troops her own supposedly pacific protectorate or mandated territory. In fact there had been a victory for Commander Foxe all round. He was not disposed to minimise his triumph.

‘Pity about poor old Charles,’ he said.

‘I’ll have to say good night.’

‘Come again soon.’

‘That would be nice.’

A general movement to leave was taking place among the guests. Mrs Maclintick and Carolo had already disappeared. Gossage still remained deep in conversation with Lady Huntercombe. There was no sign of the Morelands, or of Priscilla. Isobel was talking to Chandler. We went to find our hostess and say goodbye. Mrs Foxe was listening to the famous conductor, like Gossage, unable to tear himself away from the party.

‘I do hope the Morelands enjoyed themselves,’ said Mrs Foxe. ‘It was so sad Matilda should have had a headache and had to go home. I am sure she was right to slip away. She is such a wonderful wife for someone like him. As soon as he heard she had gone, he said he must go too. Such a strain for a musician to have a new work performed. Like a first night – and Norman tells me first nights are agony.’

Mrs Foxe spoke the last word with all the feeling Chandler had put into it when he told her that. Robert joined us in taking leave.

‘It was rather sweet of Charles to look in, wasn’t it?’ said Mrs Foxe. ‘I would have asked him, of course, if I hadn’t known parties were bad for him. I saw you talking to him. How did you think he was?’

‘I hadn’t seen him for ages. He seemed just the same. We had a long talk.’

‘And you were glad to see him again?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I think he was right to go back with Tuffy. He can be rather difficult sometimes, you know.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘I do hope everyone enjoyed themselves,’ said Mrs Foxe. ‘There was a Mr Maclintick who had had rather a lot to drink by the time he left. I think he is a music critic. He was so sweet when he came to say goodbye to me. He said: “Thank you very much for asking me, Mrs Foxe. I don’t like grand parties like this one and I am not coming to another, but I appreciate your kindness in supporting Moreland as a composer.” I said I so much agreed with him about grand parties – which I simply hate – but I couldn’t imagine why he should think this was one. All the same, I said, I should arrange it quite differently if I ever gave another, and I hoped he would change his mind and come. “Well, I shan’t come,” he said. I told him I knew he would because I should ask him so nicely. He said: “I suppose you are right, and I shall.” Then he slipped down two or three steps. I do hope he gets home all right. Such a relief when people speak their minds.’

‘What’s happened to Priscilla?’ Isobel asked Robert.

‘Somebody gave her a lift.’

At that moment Lord Huntercombe broke in between us. Carrying a piece of china in his hand, he was delighted by some discovery he had just made. Mrs Foxe turned towards him.

‘Amy,’ he said, ‘are you aware that this quatrefoil cup is a forgery?’

4

IF SO TORTUOUS a comparison of mediocre talent could ever be resolved, St John Clarke was probably to be judged a ‘better’ writer than Isbister was painter. However, when St John Clarke died in the early spring, he was less well served than his contemporary in respect of obituaries. Only a few years before, Isbister had managed to capture, perhaps helped finally to expend, what was left of an older, more sententious tradition of newspaper panegyric. There were more reasons for this than the inevitably changing taste in mediocrity. The world was moving into a harassed era. At the time of St John Clarke’s last illness, the National Socialist Party of Danzig was in the headlines; foreign news more and more often causing domestic events to be passed over almost unnoticed. St John Clarke was one of these casualties. If Mark Members was to be believed, St John Clarke himself would have seen this unfair distribution of success, even posthumous success, as something in the nature of things. In what Members called ‘one of St J.’s breakfast table agonies of self-pity’, the novelist had quite openly expressed the mortification he felt in contrasting his old friend’s lot with his own.

‘Isbister was beloved of the gods, Mark,’ he had cried aloud, looking up with a haggard face from The Times of New Year’s Day and its list of awards, ‘R.A. before he was forty-five – Gold Medallist of the Paris Salon – Diploma of Honour at the International Exhibition at Amsterdam – Commander of the Papal Order of Pius IX – refused a knighthood. Think of it, Mark, a man the King would have delighted to honour. What recognition have I had compared with these?’

‘Why did Isbister refuse a knighthood?’ Members had asked.

‘To spite his wife.’

‘That was it, was it?’

‘Those photographs the Press resurrected of Morwenna standing beside him looking out to sea,’ said St John Clarke, ‘they were antediluvian – diluvian possibly. It was the Flood they were looking at, I expect. They’d been living apart for years when he died. Of course Isbister himself said he had decided worldly honours were unbefitting an artist. That didn’t prevent him from telling everyone of the offer. Absolutely everyone. He had it both ways.’

In those days Members was still anxious to soothe his employer.