At Lady Molly's

2

‘We might go straight in to lunch,’ said Widmerpool, when we met a day or two later. ‘If you so wish, you can drink a glass of pale sherry at the table. We are sometimes crowded at the luncheon hour. Incidentally, you will probably see the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Home Office at one table. He honours us with his presence most days — but I forgot. It is Sunday today, so that he may not be with us. I am afraid, now I come to think of it, that it is a long time since I went to church. I shall attend a service next week when I stay with my mother in the country.’

‘How is your mother?’

‘Better than ever. You know she literally grows younger. A wonderful woman.’

‘Does she still have the cottage near Hinton?’

‘It is a little small, but it suits us both. We could well afford something larger nowadays, but she loves it. Her roses are the admiration of the neighbourhood.’

‘You still see something of the Walpole-Wilsons and Sir Magnus Donners?’

‘The Walpole-Wilsons I have lost all touch with,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Sir Magnus is, of course, an old friend. Whatever his faults — some of which it would be foolish to disregard — he has rendered me in the past inestimable service. As it happens, he has not asked me over to Stourwater recently. I must ring him up. But come along. To lunch, to lunch.’

He spoke with that air of bustle that infected all his dealings. During the few seconds in which we talked he had managed to convey the sensation that we were physically too close together. More than once I edged away. He seemed all the time pressing at one’s elbow, like a waiter who breathes heavily over you as he irritably proffers a dish awkward to handle. Widmerpool, too, gave the impression of irritation, chronic irritation, as if he felt all the time that the remedy to alleviate his own annoyances lay in the hands of the people round him, who would yet at the same time take no step to relieve his mounting discomfort; for his manner conveyed always a suspicion that he knew only too well that things were almost as bad for those who were with him as for himself.

He swept me forward into the dining-room. The club steward, no doubt familiar with Widmerpool’s predispositions, indicated a table by the window, flanked on one side by two yellow-faced men conversing in suited, sing-song French: on the other, by an enormously fat old fellow who was opening his luncheon with dressed crab and half a bottle of hock. One of the men talking French I thought I recognised as the Balkan diplomatist seen at the Jeavonses and said to be of Prince Theodoric’s entourage.

‘Have anything you like to eat or drink,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Consult the menu here. Personally I am on a diet — a little gastric trouble — and shall restrict myself to cold tongue and a glass of water.’

He handed me the card, and I ordered all I decently could in the face of this frugality.

‘You are still — publishing — advertising ?’ he asked.

‘Was it not something of the sort?’

His manner of asking personal questions was of that kind not uncommonly to be found which is completely divorced from any interest in the answer. He was always prepared to embark on a lengthy cross-examination of almost anyone he might meet, at the termination of which — apart from such details as might chance to concern himself — he had absorbed no more about the person interrogated than he knew at the outset of the conversation. At the same time this process seemed somehow to gratify his own egotism.

‘I was in publishing. Art books. Now it is the film business.’

‘Indeed? What unusual ways you choose to earn a living. Not acting, surely?’

‘Hardly. I am on what is called the “scenario side”. I help to write that part of the programme known as the “second feature”. For every foot of American film shown in this country, a proportionate length of British film must appear. The Quota, in fact.’

‘Ah, yes, the Quota, the Quota,’ said Widmerpool, cutting short any further explanation, which would certainly have been tedious enough. ‘Well, I never expected to sit at the same table as host of a man who wrote films for the Quota. Do you like the work?’

‘Not greatly.’

‘It may lead to something better. If you are industrious, you get on. That is true of all professions, even the humblest. You will probably end up in Hollywood, or somewhere like that. But tell me, do you still see those friends of yours, Stringham and Templer?’

‘Stringham I haven’t seen since the night he got so tight, and you and I helped to put him to bed. I rang up a day or two later and found he had gone abroad. From what I hear, he is drinking enough to float a battleship. There was even a question of taking a cure.’

‘And Templer?’

‘I see him occasionally. Not for rather a long time, as it happens. You know his marriage broke up?’

‘Like Stringham’s,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Your friends do not seem very fortunate in their matrimonial ventures. I run across Templer sometimes in the City. We have even done a little business together. I was able to fix up a job for Bob Duport, that rather disreputable brother-in-law of his.’

‘So I heard.’

‘Oh, he told you, did he?’ said Widmerpool, gratified at this action of his being so widely known. ‘I believe there were various repercussions from that good turn I was able to do him. For instance, Duport was living apart from his wife. He had behaved rather badly, so people say. When he got this job, the two of them patched things up again, and she went back to him. I was glad to have been the cause of that. We all three had dinner together. Rather an odd woman. Moody, I should think. She didn’t seem particularly pleased at the reunion. Not at all grateful to me, at least.’

‘Why not?’

‘I couldn’t say. She hardly spoke a word throughout the course of an extremely good dinner at the Savoy. I may say it cost me quite a lot of money. Not that I grudge it. They are in South America now, I believe. Did you ever meet either of them?’

‘Met him once with Templer when I was an undergraduate.’

‘And her?’

‘I knew her a bit. In fact I first met her ages ago when I stayed with the Templers. Peter’s father was still alive then.’

‘Not unattractive.’

‘No.’

‘Quite elegant in her way too.’

‘Yes.’

‘Too good for Duport, I should have thought.’

‘Possibly.’

Widmerpool could not have had the smallest notion of anything that had taken place between Jean Duport and myself; but people are aware of things like this within themselves without knowing of their own awareness. In any case, conscious or unconscious, Widmerpool had the knack of treading on the corns of others. His next question seemed to show the extraordinary telepathic connection of ideas that so often takes place in the mind when anything in the nature of being in love is concerned.

‘You are not married yourself, are you, Nicholas?’

‘No.’

‘Not — like me — about to take the plunge?’

‘I haven’t properly congratulated you yet.’

Widmerpool bowed his head in acknowledgment. The movement could almost have been called gracious. He beamed across the table. At that moment the prospect of marriage seemed all he could desire.

‘I do not mind informing you that my lady mother thinks well of my choice,’ he said.

There was no answer to that beyond agreeing that Mrs. Widmerpool’s approval was gratifying. If Mrs. Haycock could face such a mother-in-law, one hurdle at least — and no minor one, so it seemed to me — had been cleared.

‘There are, of course, a few small matters my mother will expect to be satisfactorily arranged.’

‘I expect so.’

‘But Mildred will fall in with these, I am sure.’

I thought the two of them, Mrs. Widmerpool and Mrs. Haycock, were probably worthy of the other’s steel. Perhaps Widmerpool, in his heart, thought so too, for his face clouded over slightly, after the first look of deep satisfaction. He fell into silence. When pondering a matter of importance to himself, his jaws would move up and down as if consuming some immaterial substance. Although he had finished his slices of tongue, this movement now began. I guessed that he intended to pose some question, the precise form of which he could not yet decide. The men with yellow faces at the next table were talking international politics.

‘C’est incontestable, cher ami, Hitler a renonce a son intention d’engouffrer l’Autriche par une agression directe.’

‘A mon avis — et d’ailleurs je l’ai toujours dit — la France avait tort de s’opposer a I’union douaniere en ’31.’

The fat man had moved on to steak-and-kidney pudding, leeks and mashed potato, with a green salad. Widmerpool cleared his throat. Something was on his mind. He began in a sudden burst of words.

‘I had a special reason for inviting you to lunch today, Nicholas. I wanted to speak of my engagement. But it is not easy for me to explain in so many words what I desire to say.’

He spoke sententiously, breaking off abruptly. I had an uneasy feeling, unlikely as this would be, that he might be about to ask me to act as best man at his wedding. I began to think of excuses to avoid such a duty. However, it turned out he had no such intention. It seemed likely, on second thoughts, that he wanted to discuss seriously some matter regarding himself which he feared might, on ventilation, cause amusement. Certainly I found it difficult to take his engagement seriously. There is, for some reason, scarcely, any subject more difficult to treat with gravity if you are not yourself involved. Obviously two people were contemplating a step which would affect their future lives in the most powerful manner; and yet the outward appearance of the two of them, and Widmerpool’s own self-sufficiency, made it impossible to consider the matter without inner amusement.

‘Years ago I told you I was in love with Barbara Goring,’ said Widmerpool slowly.

‘I remember.’

‘Barbara is a thing of the past. I want her entirely forgotten.’

‘Why not? I shan’t stand up at your wedding and say: “This ceremony cannot continue — the bridegroom once loved another!”.’

‘Quite so, quite so,’ said Widmerpool, grunting out a laugh. ‘You are absolutely right to make a joke of it. At the same time, I thought I should mention my feelings on that subject. One cannot be too careful.’

‘And I presume you want Gipsy Jones forgotten too?’

Widmerpool flushed.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She too, of course.’

His complacency seemed to me at that time intolerable. Now, I can see he required only to discuss his own situation with someone he had known for a long period, who was at the same time not too closely associated with his current life. For that role I was peculiarly eligible. More than once before, he had told me of his emotional upheavals — it was only because of that I knew so much about Barbara Goring and Gipsy Jones — and, when a confessor has been chosen, the habit is hard to break. At the same time, his innate suspicion of everyone inhibited even his taste for talking about himself.

‘Mildred is, of course, rather older than I,’ he said.

I felt in some manner imprisoned by his own self-preoccupation. He positively forced one to agree that his own affairs were intensly important: indeed, the only existing question of any real interest. At the same time his intense egoism somehow dried up all sympathy for him. Clearly there was much about his present circumstances that made him nervous. That was, after all, natural enough for anyone contemplating marriage. Yet there seemed more here than the traditionally highly-strung state of a man who has only lately proposed and been accepted. I remembered that he had never asked Barbara Goring to marry him, because in those days he was not rich enough to marry. He read my thoughts, as people do when their intuition is sharpened by intensity of interest excited by discussing themselves.

‘She was left with a bit of money by Haycock,’ he said. ‘Though her financial affairs are in an appalling mess.’

‘I see.’

‘How long have you known Lady Molly?’

‘That was the first night I had been there.’

‘I wish I had known her in the great days,’ he said. ‘I cannot say that I greatly care for the atmosphere of her present home.’

‘You would prefer Dogdene?’

‘I believe that in many ways Dogdene was far from ideally run either,’ said Widmerpool curtly. ‘But at least it provided a suitable background for a grande dame. Mildred is a friend of the present Lady Sleaford, so that I dare say in due course I shall be able to judge how Lady Molly must have looked there.’

This manner of describing Molly Jeavons somehow affronted me, not so much from disagreement, or on account of its pretentious sound, but because I had not myself given Widmerpool credit for thus estimating her qualities, even in his own crude terms. I was, indeed, surprised that he did not dismiss her as a failure, noting at the same time his certainty of invitation to Dogdene. From what Chips Lovell used to say on that subject, I was not sure that Widmerpool might not be counting his chickens before they were hatched.

‘It is because of Dogdene, as you know yourself, that Mildred is such an old friend of Lady Molly’s. Perhaps not a very close friend, but they have known each other a long time.’

‘Yes?’

I could not guess what he was getting at.

‘In fact we first met at Lady Molly’s.’

‘I see.’

‘Mildred is — how shall I put it — a woman of the world like Lady Molly — but — well — hardly with Lady Molly’s easy-going manner of looking at things — I don’t mean that exactly — in some ways Mildred is very easy-going — but she likes her own way — and — in her own manner — takes life rather seriously—’

He suddenly began to look wretched, much as I had often seen him look as a schoolboy: lonely: awkward: unpopular: odd; no longer the self-confident business-man into which he had grown. His face now brought back the days when one used to watch him plodding off through the drizzle to undertake the long, solitary runs across the dismal fields beyond the sewage farms: runs which were to train him for teams in which he was never included. His jaws ceased to move up and down. He drank off a second glass of water.

‘Anyway, you know General and Mrs. Conyers,’ he said.

He added this rather lamely, as if he lacked strength of mind to pursue the subject upon which he hoped to embark.

‘I am going to tea with them this afternoon as it happens.’

‘Why on earth are you doing that?’

‘I haven’t seen them for a long time. We’ve known them for ages, as I told you.’

‘Oh, well, yes, I see.’

He seemed disturbed by the information. I wondered whether Mrs. Conyers had already shown herself ‘against’ the marriage. Certainly she had been worried about her sister at the Jeavons house. I had supposed the sight of Widmerpool himself to have set her worst fears at rest. Even if prepared on the whole to accept him, she may have let fall some remark that evening unintentionally wounding to his self-esteem. He was immensely touchy. However, his present uneasiness appeared to be chiefly vested in his own ignorance of how much I already knew about his future wife. evidently he could not make up his mind upon this last matter. The uncertainty irked him.

‘Then you must have heard all about Mildred?’ he persisted.

‘No, not much. I only know about Mrs. Conyers, so to speak. And I have often been told stories about their father, of course. I know hardly anything about the other sisters. Mrs. Haycock was married to an Australian, wasn’t she? I knew she had two husbands, both dead.’

‘Only that?’

Widmerpool paused, disappointed by my ignorance, or additionally suspicious; perhaps both. He may have decided that for his purposes I knew at once too much and too litde.

‘You realise,’ he said slowly, ‘that Mildred has been used to a lot of her own way — her own way of life, that is. Haycock left her — in fact even encouraged her — so it seems to me — to lead — well — a rather — rather independent sort of life. They were — as one might say — a very modern married couple.’

‘Beyond the fact that they lived on the Riviera, I know scarcely anything about them.’

‘Haycock had worked very hard all his life. He wanted some relaxation in his later days. That was understandable. They got on quite well so far as I can see.’

I began to apprehend a little of what Widmerpool was hinting. Mrs. Haycock’s outline became clearer. No doubt she had graduated from an earlier emancipation of slang and cigarettes, to a habit of life with threatening aspects for a future husband.

‘Did they have any children?’

‘Yes,’ said Widmerpool. ‘They did. Mildred has two children. That does not worry me. Not at all. Glad to start with a family.’

He said all this so aggressively that I suspected a touch of bravado. Then he paused. I was about to ask the age and sex of the children, when he began to speak hurriedly again, the words tumbling out as if he wanted to finish with this speech as quickly as possible.

‘I should not wish to appear backward in display of affection,’ he said, developing an increased speed with every phrase, ‘and, in addition to that, I don’t see why we should delay unduly the state in which we shall spend the rest of our life merely because certain legal and religious formalities take time to arrange. In short, Nicholas, you will, I am sure, agree — more especially as you seem to spend a good deal of your time with artists and film-writers and people of that sort, whose morals are proverbial — that it would be permissible on my part to suppose — once the day of the wedding has been fixed — that we might — occasionally enjoy each other’s company — say, over a week-end—’

He came to a sudden stop, looking at me rather wildly.

‘I don’t see why not.’

It was impossible to guess what he was going to say next. This was all far from anything for which I had been prepared.

‘In fact my fiancee — Mildred, that is — might even expect such a suggestion?’

‘Well, yes, from what you say.’

‘Might even regard it as usage du monde?’

‘Quite possible.’

Then Widmerpool sniggered. For some reason I was conscious of embarrassment, even of annoyance. The problem could be treated, as it were, clinically, or humorously; a combination of the two approaches was distasteful. I had the impression that the question of how he should behave worried him more on account of the figure he cut in the eyes of Mrs. Haycock than because his passion could not be curbed. However, to have released from his mind these observations had clearly been a great relief to him. Now he cheered up a little.

‘There is a further point,’ he said. ‘As my name is an uncommon one, I take it I should be called upon to provide myself with a sobriquet.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘In your own case, the difficulty would scarcely arise — so many people being called “Jenkins”.’

‘It may surprise you to hear that when I embark on clandestine week-ends, I call myself “Widmerpool”.’

Widmerpool laughed with reasonable heartiness at that fancy. All the same, the question of what name should cover the identity of Mrs. Haycock and himself when first appearing as husband and wife still worried him.

‘But what surname do you think should be employed?’ he asked in a reflective tone, speaking almost to himself.

‘“Mr. and Mrs. Smith” would have the merit of such absolute banality that it would almost draw attention to yourselves. Besides, you might be mistaken for the Jeavonses’ borrowed butler.’

Widmerpool, still pondering, ignored this facetiousness, regarding me with unseeing eyes.

‘“Mr. and the Honourable Mrs. Smith?” You might feel that more in keeping with your future wife’s rank and station. That, in any case, would strike a certain note of originality in the circumstances.’

At this suggestion, Widmerpool laughed outright. The pleasantry undoubtedly pleased him. It reminded him of the facts of his engagement, showing that I had not missed the point that, whatever her shortcomings, Mildred was the daughter of a peer. His face lighted up again.

‘I suppose it should really be quite simple,’ he said. ‘After all, the booking clerk at an hotel does not actually ask every couple if they are married.’

‘In any case, you are both going to get married.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said.

‘So there does not seem much to worry about.’

‘No, I suppose not. All the same, I do not like doing irregular things. But this time, I think I should be behaving rightly in allowing a lapse of this kind. It is expected of me.’

Gloom again descended upon him. There could be no doubt that the thought of the projected week-end worried him a great deal. I could see that he regarded its achievement, perhaps righdy, as a crisis in his life.

‘And then, where to go?’ he remarked peevishly.

‘Had you thought at all?’

‘Of course it must be a place where neither of us is recognised — I don’t want any—’

His words died away.

‘Any what?’

‘Any jokes,’ he said irritably.

‘Of course not.’

‘The seaside, do you think?’

‘Do you play any games still? Golf? You used to play golf, didn’t you? Some golfing resort?’

‘I gave up golf. No time.’

Again he looked despairing. He had devoted so much energy to achieving his present position in the world that even golf had been discarded. There was something impressive in this admission. We sat for a time in silence. The fat man was now enjoying the first taste of some apple-pie liberally covered with cream and brown sugar. The yellow-faced couple were still occupied with the situation in Central Europe.

‘La position de Dollfuss envers le parti national-socialiste autrichien serait insoutenable s’il comptait sur une gouvernement soi-disant parlemcntaire: il faut bien l’avouer.’

‘Heureusement le chancelier autrichien n’est pas accablé d’un tel handicap administratif.’

Widmerpool may have caught some of their words. In any case, he must have decided that the question of his own immediate problems had been sufficiently ventilated. He, too, began to speak of international politics; and with less pessimism than might have been expected.

‘As you probably know,’ he said, ‘my opinions have moved steadily to the left of late years. I quite see that there are aspects of Hitler’s programme to which objection may most legitimately be taken. For example, I myself possess a number of Jewish friends, some of them very able men — Jimmy Klein, for example — and I should therefore much prefer that item of the National Socialist policy to be dropped. I am, in fact, not at all sure that it will not be dropped when matters get straightened out a bit. After all, it is sometimes forgotten that the National Socialists are not only “national”, they are also “socialist”. So far as that goes, I am with them. They believe in planning. Everyone will agree that there was a great deal of the old Germany that it was right to sweep away — the Kaisers and Krupps, Hindenburgs and mediatised princes, stuff of that sort — we want to hear no more about them. Certainly not. People talk of rearming. I am glad to say the Labour Party is against it to a man — and the more enlightened Tories, too. There is far too much disregard, as it is, of the equilibrium to be maintained between the rate of production and consumption in the aggregate, without the additional interference of a crushing armaments programme. We do not want an obstacle like that in the way of the organised movement towards progressive planning in the economic world of today. People talk of non-aggression pacts between France, Belgium and ourselves. The plain consequence of any such scatter-brained military commitments would be merely to augment existing German fears of complete encirclement. No, no, none of that, please. What is much more likely to be productive is to settle things round a table. Business men of the right sort. Prominent trade unionists. Sir Magnus Donners could probably play his part. If Germany wants her former colonies, hand them back to her. What is the objection? They are no use to anyone else. Take a man like Goering. Now, it seems pretty plain to me from looking at photographs of him in the papers that he only likes swaggering about in uniforms and decorations. I expect he is a bit of a snob — most of us are at heart — well, ask him to Buckingham Palace. Show him round. What is there against giving him the Garter? After all, it is what such things are for, isn’t it? Coffee?’

‘Yes, black.’

‘You can have it downstairs. I never take coffee.’

‘Talking of uniforms, are you still a Territorial?’

‘I am still a Territorial,’ said Widmerpool, smiling with some satisfaction. ‘I hold the rank of captain. I can perfectly follow your train of thought. You suppose that because I am opposed to sabre-rattling in the direction of our Teutonic neighbours, that therefore I must be the sort of man incapable of holding his own in an officers’ mess. Let me assure you that such is not the case. Between you and me, I am by no means averse from issuing orders. An army even an amateur army — is no bad school in which to learn to command — and you must know how to command in business, my dear Nicholas, as much as in any army. Besides that, one has in a battalion opportunity for giving expression to one’s own point of view — a point of view often new to the persons I find myself among. These young bank clerks, accountants and so on, excellent Territorial officers, are naturally quite unfamiliar with the less limited world inhabited by someone like myself. I make it my business to instruct them. However, I dare say I may have to give up my Territorials when I get married. I do not know about that yet.’

At last it was time for me to go on my way.

‘So you are off to have tea with some of my future inlaws, are you?’ said Widmerpool, at the door of the club. ‘Well, you mustn’t repeat to them some of the things we have talked about. I am sure the General would be greatly shocked.’

He sniggered once again, making one of his awkward gestures of farewell that looked as if he were shaking his fist. I went down the steps feeling strangely dejected. It was a sunny afternoon and there was time to kill before the Conyers visit. I tried to persuade myself that the gloom that had descended upon me was induced by Widmerpool’s prolonged political dissertations, but in my heart I knew that its true cause was all this talk of marriage. With the age of thirty in sight a sense of guilt in relation to that subject makes itself increasingly felt. It was all very well mentally to prepare ribald jokes about Widmerpool’s honeymoon for such friends who knew him, and certainly nothing could be more grotesque than his approach to the matter in hand. That was undeniable. Yet one day, I knew, life would catch up with me too; like Widmerpool, I should be making uneasy preparations to ‘settle down’. Should I, when the time came to ‘take the plunge’, as he had called it, feel inwardly less nervous about the future than he? Should I cut a better figure? This oppression of the heart was intensified by a peculiar awareness that the time was not far distant; even though I could think of no one whose shadow fell across such a speculation.

Dismissing my own preoccupations and trying to consider Widmerpool’s position objectively, I found it of interest. For example, he was about to become brother-in-law of General Conyers, now little short of an octogenarian. I did not know whom the remaining Blaides sisters had married — one, at least, had remained single — but their husbands must all have been years senior to Widmerpool, even though they might be younger than the General. I attempted to find some parallel, however far-fetched, to link Widmerpool with General Conyers; thereby hoping to construct one of those formal designs in human behaviour which for some reason afford an obscure satisfaction to the mind: making the more apparent inconsistencies of life easier to bear. A list could be compiled. Both were accustomed to live by the will: both had decided for a time to carve out a career unburdened by a wife: both were, in very different ways, fairly successful men. There the comparison seemed to break down.

However, the family connexions of Mrs. Conyers had been thought by some to have played a part in bringing her husband to the altar; similar considerations might well be operating in the mind of Widmerpool where her sister was concerned. That would not be running contrary to his character. Alternatively, any such estimate of his motives — or the General’s — might be completely at fault. In either case, love rather than convenience might dominate action. Indeed, such evidence as I possessed of Widmerpool’s former behaviour towards women indicated a decided lack of restraint, even when passion was unsatisfied.

Then there was Mrs. Haycock herself. Why on earth — so her circumstances presented themselves to me — should she wish to marry Widmerpool? Such an inability to assess physical attraction or community of interest is, of course, common enough. Where the opposite sex is concerned, especially in reladon to marriage, the workings of the imagination, or knowledge of the individuals themselves, are overwhelmed by the subjecdve approach. Only by admitting complete ignorance from the start can some explanation sometimes slowly be built up. I wondered, for example, whether she saw in Widmerpool the solid humdrum qualities formerly apparent in her Australian husband: although no evidence whatever justified the assumption that her Australian husband had been either solid or humdrum. For all I knew, he might have been a good-for-nothing of the first water. Once again, it was possible that Mrs. Haycock herself was in love. The fact that Widmerpool seemed a grotesque figure to some who knew him provided no reason why he should not inspire love in others. I record these speculations not for their subtlety, certainly not for their generosity of feeling, but to emphasise the difficulty in understanding, even remotely, why people behave as they do.

The question of love was still apt to be associated in my own mind with thoughts of Jean; additionally so since Widmerpool had spoken of her brother, Peter Templer, and her husband, Bob Duport: even making enquiries about Jean herself. Evidently she had impressed him in some way. Could I safely assure myself that I was no longer in love with her? I had recently decided, at last with some sense of security, that life could proceed on that assumption. All the same, it was not uniformly easy to state this decision to myself with a feeling of absolute confidence; even though

I found myself dwelling less than formerly on the question of whether we could have ‘made a success of it’. For a moment the thought of her reunited to Duport had brought to the heart a touch of the red-hot pincers: a reminder of her voice saying ‘that was rather a wet kiss.’

Some people dramatise their love affairs — as I was doing at that moment — by emphasis on sentiment and sensuality; others prefer the centre of the stage to be occupied by those aspects of action and power that must also play so prominent a part in love. Adepts of the latter school try to exclude, or at least considerably to reduce, the former emotions. Barnby would rarely admit himself ‘in love’ with the women he pursued: Baby Wentworth was believed never to speak another civil word to a man after taking him as a lover. The exhibitionism of publicity is necessary to one, just as to another is a physical beauty that must be universally acknowledged. Peter Templer liked to be seen about with ‘obvious beauties’: Bijou Ardglass, to be photographed in the papers with her lover of the moment. Most individual approaches to love, however unexpected, possess a logic of their own; for only by attempting to find some rationalisation of love in the mind can its burdens easily be borne. Sentiment and power, each in their way, supply something to feed the mind, if not the heart. They are therefore elements operated often to excess by persons in temperament unable to love at all, yet at the same time unwilling to be left out of the fun, or to bear the social stigma of living emotionally uninteresting lives.

I thought of some of these things as I made my way, later that afternoon, towards Sloane Square, the neighbourhood where General and Mrs. Conyers still inhabited the flat which I had visited as a small boy. I felt, to tell the truth, rather out of practice for paying a call of this sort. I was usually away from London on Sunday, certainly unaccustomed to spend the afternoon at tea with an elderly general and his wife. Even tea at the Ufford with Uncle Giles would take place only a couple of times within a period of about three years. However, this seemed one of several hints of change that had become noticeable lately, suggesting those times when the ice-floes of life’s river are breaking up — as in that scene in Resurrection — to float down-stream, before the torrent freezes again in due course into new and deceptively durable shape.

Although I used to see the General or Mrs. Conyers once in a way when I was younger, usually with my parents at the Grand Military (the General himself had formerly done some steeplechasing) or at some point-to-point at Hawthorn Hill, the last of these meetings between us had taken place years before. The Conyers’s flat, when I arrived there, appeared considerably smaller than I remembered. Otherwise the place was unchanged. There on the bookcase was the photograph of the General with his halberd. The ’cello I could not immediately locate. The reason for this became apparent a moment or two after I had been greeted by Mrs. Conyers, when a low melancholy wailing began all at once to echo from somewhere not far off, persistent, though muffled by several doors: notes of a hidden orchestra, mysterious, even a shade unearthly, as if somewhere in the vicinity gnomes were thumbing strange instruments in a cave. Then the music swelled in volume like a street band coming level with the window, so that one felt instinctively for a coin to throw down.

‘Aylmer will be with us in a minute,’ said Mrs. Conyers. ‘He always practises until five o’clock when we are in London. As you were coming this afternoon he agreed to finish a little earlier. He is never satisfied with his execution.’

‘The piece seems familiar.’

‘Ave Maria.’

‘But, of course.’

‘When it isn’t Gounod, it is Marcello’s sonatas.

The thought of the General at his ’cello conjured up one of those Dutch genre pictures, sentimental yet at the same time impressive, not only on account of their adroit recession and delicate colour tones, but also from the deep social conviction of the painter. For some reason I could not help imagining him scraping away in the uniform of the Bodyguard, helmet resting on a carved oak chest and halberd leaning against the wall. Mrs. Conyers dismissed her husband’s cadences, no doubt only too familiar.

‘What a strange household that is of Lady Molly’s,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind telling you that I find him rather difficult. He seems to have nothing whatever to talk about. He once told me of a wonderfully cheap place to buy white cotton shirts for men. Of course, Aylmer was glad to know of the shop, only you don’t want to go on discussing it for ever. So tedious for his wife, it must be, but she doesn’t seem to mind it. All the Ardglass family are very odd. I believe you come across all kinds of people at the Jeavonses — some of them decidedly what my father used to call “rum”. Of course that was where my sister first met Mr. Widmerpool. How funny you should know him already.’

She spoke with some show of indifference, but there could be no doubt that her unconcern was simulated and that she longed to discuss the engagement exhaustively: probably hoping to hear special revelations about Widmerpool before her husband joined us.

‘I know him quite well. In fact, I have just been lunching with him.’

Mrs. Conyers was enchanted at this news.

‘Then you can really tell us what he is like,’ she said. ‘We have heard some — of course I don’t believe them — not exactly flattering accounts of him. Naturally you don’t want to listen to everything you hear, but Mildred is my youngest sister, and she does do some rather reckless things sometimes. Do describe him to me.’

At that moment tea was brought in by the maid, and, before Mrs. Conyers could further insist upon a reply, the General himself appeared. He was still limping slightly from his fall. He grasped my arm near the elbow for a second in a grip of steel, as if making a sudden arrest. Generals, as a collective rank, incline physically to be above, or below, average stature. Aylmer Conyers, notably tall, possessed in addition to his height, much natural distinction. In fact, his personality filled the room, although without active aggression. At the same time he was a man who gave the impression, rightly or wrongly, that he would stop at nothing. If he decided to kill you, he would kill you; if he thought it sufficient to knock you down, he would knock you down: if a mere reprimand was all required, he would confine himself to a reprimand. In addition to this, he patently maintained a good-humoured, well-mannered awareness of the inherent failings of human nature: the ultimate futility of all human effort. He wore an unusually thick, dark hairy suit, the coat cut long, the trousers narrow, a high stiff collar, of which the stud was revealed by the tie, and beautifully polished boots of patent leather with grey cloth tops. He looked like an infinitely accomplished actor got up to play the part that was, in fact, his own. At the same time he managed to avoid that almost too perfect elegance of outward appearance to be found in some men of his sort, especially courtiers. The hairiness of the suit did that. It suggested that a touch of rough force had been retained as a reminder of his strenuous past, like ancient, rusty armour hanging among luxurious tapestries.

‘Never get that last bit right,’ he said… Nunc et in hora mortis nostras … always a shade flat on that high note in hora …’

He slowly shook his head, at the same time lowering himself into an arm-chair, while he straightened out his left leg with both hands as if modelling a piece of delicate sculpture. Evidently it was still rather painfully stiff. After achieving the best angle for comfort, he began to conduct through the air the strokes of an imaginary baton, at the same time allowing himself to hum under his breath:

‘Tum, tumtitty, tum-te-tum

Te-tum te-titty tum-tum-te-titty, tum-te-titty

Amen, A-a-a-a-ame-e-e-en …’

Mrs. Conyers, throughout these movements and sounds, all of which she completely ignored, could scarcely wait for the maid carrying the tea-tray to leave the room.

‘Too late to learn at my age, much too late,’ said the General. ‘But I go on trying. Never mind, I’m not getting on too badly with those arrangements of Saint-Saens.’

‘Aylmer, you remember I told you Nicholas knows Mr. Widmerpool?’

‘What, this Nicholas?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know the fellow who is going to marry Mildred?’

‘Yes.’

If Mrs. Conyers had already told her husband of my acquaintance with Widmerpool, the General had entirely forgotten about that piece of information, for it now came to him as something absolutely new, and, for some reason, excruciatingly funny, causing him to fall into an absolute paroxysm of deep, throaty guffaws, like the inextinguishable laughter of the Homeric gods on high Olympus, to whose characteristic faults and merits General Conyers’s own nature probably approximated closely enough. A twinge of pain in his leg brought this laughter to an end in a fit of coughing.

‘What sort of a fellow is he?’ he asked, speaking now more seriously. ‘We haven’t heard too satisfactory an account of him, have we, Bertha? Is he a good fellow? He’ll have his hands full with Mildred, you may be sure of that. Much younger than her, isn’t he?’

‘I was at school with him. He must be about—’

‘Nonsense,’ said the General. ‘You can’t have been at school with him. You must be thinking of someone else of that name — a younger brother, I expect.’

‘He is a year or two older than me—’

‘But you couldn’t have been at school with him. No, no, you couldn’t have been at school with him.’

Mrs. Conyers, too, now shook her head in support of her husband. This claim to have been at school with Widmerpool was something not to be credited. Like most people who have known someone as a child, they were unwilling to believe that I could possibly have arrived at an age to be reasonably regarded as an adult. To have ceased, very recently, to have been an undergraduate was probably about the furthest degree of maturity either of them would easily be inclined to concede. That Widmerpool’s name could be put forward as a contemporary of myself was obviously the worst shock the General had yet sustained on the subject. His earlier attitude suggested the whole affair to be one of those ludicrous incidents inseparable from anything to do with his wife’s family; but the news that he might be about to possess an additional brother-in-law more or less of an age with myself disturbed him more than a little. He began to frown angrily. ‘I met a young fellow called Truscott last week,’ he said.

‘There was a question of his coming on to a board from which I retired the other day. He is connected with the by-products of coal and said to have a good brain. I asked him if by any chance he knew Widmerpool — without divulging the nature of my interest, of course — and he spoke with the greatest dislike of him. The greatest dislike. It turned out they had been in Donners-Brebner together at one time. Truscott said Widmerpool was a terrible fellow. Couldn’t trust him an inch. Now that may be a pack of lies. I’ve never been in the habit of listening to gossip. Haven’t got time for it. Naturally I didn’t tell Truscott that, in case it made him dry up. Thought it my duty to hear whatever he had to get off his chest. I must say he produced a whole string of crimes to be laid at Widmerpool’s door, not the least of which was to have got him — Truscott — sacked from Donners-Brebner. Now what I say is that a man who marries Mildred must be a man with a will of his own. No good marrying Mildred otherwise. Now a man with a will of his own is often a man to make enemies. I know that as well as anyone. evidently Widmerpool had made an enemy of Truscott. That isn’t necessarily anything against Widmerpool. He may be an excellent fellow in spite of that. Getting rid of Truscott may have been a piece of first-class policy. Who am I to judge? But what I do know is this. Bertha’s sister, Mildred, has been used to a lot of her own way. Do you think that Mr. Widmerpool is going to be able to manage a woman some years older than himself and used to a lot of her own way?’

I had not thought of Truscott for years. At the university he had been billed for a great career: prime minister: lord chancellor: famous poet: it was never finally decided which role he would most suitably ornament; perhaps all three. Now I remembered being told by someone or other that Widmerpool, before himself leaving the firm, had contrived to have Truscott ejected from Donners-Brebner. The General had certainly brought a crisp, military appraisal to the situation. I was wondering what to answer — since I saw no way of giving a simple reply to a subject so complicated as Widmerpool’s character — when the maid reappeared to announce another guest.

‘Lady Frederica Budd.’

The niece whose condition of unassailable rectitude had given such satisfaction to Alfred Tolland, and at the same time caused some unfriendly amusement to Molly Jeavons, was shown into the room. This crony of Mrs. Conyers, widow with several children and lady-in-waiting, was a handsome woman in her thirties. She was dressed in a manner to be described as impregnable, like a long, neat, up-to-date battle-cruiser. You felt that her clothes were certainly removed when she retired for the night, but that no intermediate adjustment, however minor, was ever required, or would, indeed, be practicable. This was the eldest of the Tolland sisters, formed physically in much the same mould as Blanche and Priscilla; though I could see no resemblance between her and her brothers as I remembered them. She kissed Mrs. Conyers. The General greeted her warmly, though with a touch of irony in his manner. I was introduced. Lady Frederica looked at me carefully, rather as if she were engaged upon an army inspection: a glance not unfriendly, but extensively searching. I could see at once that she and Molly Jeavons would not be a couple easily to agree. Then she turned towards the General.

‘How are you feeling after your fall?’ she asked.

‘A bit stiff. A bit stiff. Took a fearful toss. Nearly broke my neck. And you, Frederica?’

‘Oh, I’ve been rather well,’ she said. ‘Christmas was spoiled by two of the children developing measles. But they have recovered now. All very exhausting while it lasted.’

‘I spent Christmas Day cleaning out the kennels,’ said the General. ‘Went to Early Service. Then I got into my oldest clothes and had a thorough go at them. Had luncheon late and a good sleep after. Read a book all the evening. One of the best Christmas Days I’ve ever had.’

Frederica Tolland did not seem gready interested by this account of the General’s Christmas activities. She turned from him to Mrs. Conyers, as if she hoped for something more congenial.

‘What have you been doing, Bertha?’ she asked.

‘I went to the sales yesterday,’ said Mrs. Conyers, speaking as if that were a somewhat disagreeable duty that had been long on her mind.

‘Were you nearly trampled to death?’

‘I came away with a hat.’

‘I went earlier in the week,’ said Frederica. ‘Looking for a cheap black dress, as a matter of fact. So many royalties nearing their century, we’re bound to be in mourning again soon.’

‘Have they been working you hard?’ asked the General.

I had the impression that he might be a little jealous of Frederica, who, for her part, was evidently determined that he should not be allowed to take himself too seriously. There was just a touch of sharpness in their interchanges.

‘Nothing really lethal since the British Industries Fair,’ she said. ‘I had to throw away my best pair of shoes after that. You are lucky not to have to turn out for that sort of thing. It will finish me off one of these days.’

‘You come and carry my axe at the next levée,’ said the General. ‘Thought I was going to drop with fatigue the last time I was on duty. Then that damned fellow Ponsonby trod on my gouty toe.’

‘We saw your Uncle Alfred the other night, Frederica,’ said Mrs. Conyers.

She spoke either with a view to including me in the conversation or because habit had taught her that passages of this kind between her husband and Frederica Budd might become a shade acrimonious: perhaps merely to steer our talk back to the subject of Widmerpool.

‘He was looking well enough,’ she added.

‘Oh no, really?’ said Frederica, plainly surprised at this. ‘Where did you meet him? I thought he never went out except to things like regimental dinners. That is what he always says.’

‘At Molly Jeavons’s. I had not been there before.’

‘Of course. He goes there still, doesn’t he? What strange people he must meet at that house. What sort of a crowd did you find? I really must go and see Molly again myself some time. For some reason I never feel very anxious to go there. I think Rob was still alive when I last went to the Jeavonses’.’

These remarks, although displaying no great affection, were moderate enough, considering the tone in which Molly Jeavons herself had spoken of Frederica.

‘That was where I found Nicholas again,’ said Mrs. Conyers.

She proceeded to give some account of why they knew me. Frederica listened with attention, rather than interest, again recalling by her manner the checking of facts in the course of some official routine like going through the Customs or having one’s passport examined. Then she turned to me as if to obtain some final piece of necessary information.

‘Do you often go to the Jeavonses’?’ she asked.

The enquiry seemed to prepare the way to cross-questioning one returned from the remote interior of some little-known country after making an intensive study of the savage life existing there.

‘That was the first time. I was taken by Chips Lovell, whom I work with.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said vaguely. ‘He is some sort of a relation of Molly’s, isn’t he?’

She showed herself not at all positive about Lovell and his place in the world. This surprised me, as I had supposed she would know him, or at least know about him, pretty well. A moment later I wondered whether possibly she knew him, but pretended ignorance because she disapproved. Lovell was by no means universally liked. There were people who considered his behaviour far from impeccable. Frederica Budd might be one of these. A guarded attitude towards Lovell was only to be expected if Molly Jeavons was to be believed. At that moment the General spoke. He had been sitting in silence while we talked, quite happy silence, so it appeared, still pondering the matter of Widmerpool and his sister-in-law; or, more probably, his own rendering of Gounod and how it could be bettered. His sonorous, commanding voice, not loud, though pitched in a tone to carry across parade-ground or battle-field, echoed through the small room.

‘I like Jeavons,’ he said. ‘I only met him once, but I took to him. Lady Molly I hardly know. Her first husband, John Sleaford, was a pompous fellow. The present Sleaford — Geoffrey — I knew in South Africa. We see them from time to time. Bertha tells me Lady Molly was teasing your Uncle Alfred a lot the other night. People say she always does that. Is it true?’

The General laughed a deep ho-ho-ho laugh again, like the demon king in pantomime. He evidently enjoyed the idea of people teasing Alfred Tolland.

‘I think she may rag Uncle Alfred a bit,’ said Frederica, without emotion. ‘If he doesn’t like it, he shouldn’t go there. I expect Erridge came up for discussion too, didn’t he?’

I suspected this was said to forestall comment about Erridge on the part of the General himself. There was a distinct rivalry between them. Men of action have, in any case, a predisposition to be jealous of women, especially if the woman is young, good looking or placed in some relatively powerful position. Beauty, particularly, is a form of power of which, perhaps justly, men of action feel envious. Possibly there existed some more particular reason: the two of them conceivably representing rival factions in their connexion with the Court. I supposed from her tone and general demeanour that Frederica could hardly approve of her eldest brother’s way of life, but, unlike her uncle, was not prepared to acquiesce in all criticism of Erridge.

‘Do you know my brother, Erridge — Warminster, rather?’ she asked me, suddenly.

She smiled like someone who wishes to encourage a child who possesses information more accurate, or more interesting, than that available to grown-ups; but one who might be too shy or too intractable to impart such knowledge.

‘I used to know him by sight.’

‘He has some rather odd ideas,’ she said. ‘But I expect you heard plenty about that at Molly Jeavons’s. They have hardly anything else to talk about there. He is a real blessing to them.’

‘Oh, I think they have got plenty to talk about,’ said Mrs. Conyers. ‘Too much, in fact.’

‘I don’t deny that Erridge has more than one bee in his bonnet,’ said the General, unexpectedly. ‘But I doubt if he is such a fool as some people seem to think him. He is just what they call nowadays introverted.’

‘Oh, Erry isn’t a fool,’ said Frederica. ‘He is rather too clever in a way — and an awful nuisance as an eldest brother. There may be something to be said for his ideas. It is the way he sets about them.’

‘Is it true that he has been a tramp?’ I asked.

‘Not actually been one, I think,’ said Frederica. ‘Making a study of them, isn’t it?’

‘Is he going to write a book about it?’ asked Mrs. Conyers. ‘There have been several books of that sort lately, haven’t there? Have you read anything else interesting, Nicholas? I always expect people like you to tell me what to put down on my library list.’

‘I’ve been reading something called Orlando,’’ said the General. ‘Virginia Woolf. Ever heard of it?’

‘I read it when it first came out.’

‘What do you think of it?’

‘Rather hard to say in a word.’

‘You think so?’

‘Yes.’

He turned to Frederica.

‘Ever read Orlando?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’ve heard of it.’

‘Bertha didn’t like it,’ he said.

‘Couldn’t get on with it,’ said Mrs. Conyers, emphatically. ‘I wish St. John Clarke would write a new one. He hasn’t published a book for years. I wonder whether he is dead. I used to love his novels, especially Fields of Amaranth.’

‘Odd stuff, Orlando,’ said the General, who was not easily shifted from his subject. ‘Starts about a young man in the fifteen-hundreds. Then, about eighteen-thirty, he turns into a woman. You say you’ve read it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you like it? Yes or no?’

‘Not greatly.’

‘You didn’t?’

‘No.’

‘The woman can write, you know.’

‘Yes, I can see that. I still didn’t like it.’

The General thought again for some seconds.

‘Well, I shall read a bit more of it,’ he said, at last. ‘Don’t want to waste too much time on that sort of thing, of course. Now, psychoanalysis. Ever read anything about that? Sure you have. That was what I was on over Christmas.’

‘I’ve dipped into it from time to time. I can’t say I’m much of an expert.’

‘Been reading a lot about it lately,’ said the General. ‘Freud — Jung — haven’t much use for Adler. Something in it, you know. Tells you why you do things. All the same, I didn’t find it much help in understanding Orlando.’

Once more he fell into a state of coma. It was astonishing to me that he should have been reading about psychoanalysis, although his mental equipment was certainly in no way inferior to that of many persons who talked of such things all day long. When he had used the word ‘introverted’ I had thought that no more than repetition of a current popular term. I saw now that the subject had thoroughly engaged his attention. However, he wished to discuss it no further at that moment. Neither of the two ladies seemed to share his interest.

‘Is it true that your sister, Mildred, is going to marry again?’ asked Frederica. ‘Someone told me so the other day. They could not remember the name of the man. It hasn’t been in the papers yet, has it?’

She spoke casually. Mrs. Conyers was well prepared for the question, because she answered without hesitation, allowing no suggestion to appear of the doubts she had revealed to me only a short time earlier.

‘The engagement is supposed to be a secret,’ she said, ‘but, as everybody will hear about it quite soon, there is really no reason to deny the rumour.’

‘Then it is true?’

‘It certainly looks as if Mildred is going to marry again.’

No one, however determined to make a good story, could have derived much additional information on the subject from the manner in which Mrs. Conyers spoke, except in so far that she could not be said to show any obvious delight at the prospect of her sister taking a third husband. That was the farthest implication offered. There was not a hint of disapproval or regret; on the contrary, complete acceptance of the situation was manifest, even mild satisfaction not openly disavowed. It was impossible to withhold admiration from this façade, so effortlessly presented.

‘And he—?’

‘Nicholas, here, was at school with him,’ said Mrs. Conyers, tranquilly.

She spoke as if most people must, as a matter of course, be already aware of that circumstance; for it now seemed that, in spite of her husband’s doubts, she had finally accepted the fact that I was within a few years of Widmerpool’s age. The remark only stimulated Frederica’s curiosity.

‘Oh, do tell me what he is like,’ she said. ‘Mildred was just that amount older than me to make her rather a thrilling figure at the time when I first came “out”. She was at the Huntercombes’ once when I stayed there not long after the war. She was rather a dashing war widow and wore huge jade ear-rings, and smoked all the time and said the most hair-raising things. What is her new name to be, first of all?’

‘Widmerpool,’ I said, since the question was addressed to me.

‘Where do they come from?’ asked Mrs. Conyers, anxious to profit herself from Frederica’s interrogation.

‘Nottinghamshire, I believe.’

This reply was at worst innocuous, and might be taken, in general, to imply a worthy family background. It was also — as I understood from Widmerpool himself — in no way a departure from the truth. Fearing that I might, if pressed, be compelled ultimately to admit some hard things about Widmerpool, I felt that the least I could do for an old acquaintance in these circumstances was to suggest, however indirectly, a soothing picture of generations of Widmerpools in a rural setting; an ancient, if dilapidated, manor house: Widmerpool tombs in the churchyard: tankards of ale at The Widmerpool Arms.

‘You haven’t said what his Christian name is,’ said Frederica, apparently accepting, anyway at this stage, the regional superscription.

‘Kenneth.’

‘Brothers or sisters?’

‘No.’

I admired the thoroughness with which Frederica set to work on an enquiry of this kind, as much as I had admired Mrs. Conyers’s earlier refusal to give anything away.

‘And he is in the City?’

‘He is supposed to be rather good at making money,’ interpolated Mrs. Conyers.

She had begun to smile indulgently at Frederica’s unconcealed curiosity. Now she employed a respectful yet at the same time deprecatory tone, as if this trait of Widmerpool’s — his supposed facility for ‘making money’—was, extraordinary as this might appear, a propensity not wholly unpleasant when you became accustomed to it. At the same time she abandoned her former position of apparent neutrality, openly joining in the search. Indeed, she put the next question herself.

‘His father is dead, isn’t he?’ she said. ‘Nottinghamshire, did you say?’

‘Or Derbyshire. I don’t remember for certain.’

Widmerpool had once confided the fact that his grandfather, a business man from the Scotch Lowlands, had on marriage changed his name from ‘Geddes’; but such an additional piece of information would sound at that moment too esoteric and genealogical: otiose in its exactitude. In a different manner, to repeat Eleanor Walpole-Wilson’s remark made years before—‘Uncle George used to get his liquid manure from Mr. Widmerpool’s father’—might strike, though quite illogically, a disobliging, even objectionably facetious note. Eleanor’s ‘Uncle George’ was Lord Goring. It seemed best to omit all mention of liquid manure; simply to say that Widmerpool had known the Gorings and the Walpole-Wilsons.

‘Oh, the Walpole-Wilsons,’ said Frederica sharply, as if reminded of something she would rather forget. ‘Do you know the Walpole-Wilsons? My sister, Norah, shares a flat with Eleanor Walpole-Wilson. Do you know them?’

‘I haven’t seen Eleanor for years. Nor her parents, for that matter.’

The General now came to life again, after his long period of rumination.

‘Walpole-Wilson was that fellow in the Diplomatic Service who made such a hash of things in South America,’ he said. ‘Got unstuck for it. I met him at a City dinner once, the Mercers — or was it the Fishmongers? Had an argument over Puccini.’

‘I don’t know the Gorings,’ said Frederica, ignoring the General. ‘You mean the ones called “Lord” Goring?’

‘Yes. He is a great fruit farmer, isn’t he? He talked about fruit on the only occasions when I met him.’

‘I remember,’ she said. ‘He is.’

She had uttered the words ‘Lord Goring’ with emphasis on the title, seeming by her tone almost to suggest that all members of that particular family, male and female, might for some unaccountable reason call themselves “Lord”: at least implying that, even if she did not really suppose anything so absurd, she wished to indicate that I should have been wiser to have steered clear of the Gorings: in fact, that informed persons considered the Gorings themselves mistaken in burdening themselves with the rather ridiculous pretension of a peerage. When I came to know her better I realised that her words were intended to cast no particular slur on the Gorings; merely, since they were not personal friends of hers, to build up a safe defence in case they turned out, in her own eyes, undesirable.

‘I think Widmerpool père was mixed up with the fruit-farming side of Goring life.’

‘But look here,’ said General Conyers, suddenly emerging with terrific violence from the almost mediumistic trance in which he had sunk after the mention of Puccini. ‘The question is simply this. Can this fellow Widmerpool handle Mildred? It all turns on that. What do you think, Nicholas? You say you were at school with him. You usually know a fellow pretty well when you have been boys together. What’s your view? Give us an appreciation of the situation.’

‘But I don’t know Mrs. Haycock. I was only nine or ten when I first met her. Last night I barely spoke to her.’

There was some laughter at that, and the necessity passed for an immediate pronouncement on the subject of Widmerpool’s potentialities.

‘You must meet my sister again,’ said Mrs. Conyers, involuntarily smiling to herself, I suppose at the thought of Widmerpool as Mildred’s husband.

After that, conversation drifted. Mrs. Conyers began once more to talk of clothes and of how her daughter, Charlotte, had had a baby in Malta. The General relapsed once more into torpor, occasionally murmuring faint musical intonations that might still be ringing the changes on ‘… nunc et in hora …’ Frederica rose to go. I gave her time to get down the stairs, and then myself said goodbye. It was agreed that so long a period must not again elapse before I paid another visit. Mrs. Conyers was one of those persons who find it difficult to part company quickly, so that it was some minutes before I reached the hall of the block of flats. In front of the entrance Frederica Budd was still sitting in a small car, which was making the horrible flat sound that indicates an engine refusing to fire.

‘This wretched car won’t start,’ she shouted.

‘Can I help?’

At that moment the engine came to life.

‘Shall I give you a lift?’ she said.

‘Which way are you going?’

‘Chelsea.’

I, too, was on my way to Chelsea that evening. It was a period of my life when, in recollection, I seem often to have been standing in a cinema queue with a different girl. One such evening lay ahead of me.

‘Thank you very much.’

‘Jump in,’ she said.

Now that she had invited me into her car, and we were driving along together, her manner, momentarily relaxed while she had been pressing the self-starter, became once more impersonal and remote; as if ‘a lift’ was not considered an excuse for undue familiarity between us. When the car had refused to start she had seemed younger and less chilly: less part of the impeccable Conyers world. Now she returned to an absolutely friendly, but also utterly impregnable outpost of formality.

‘You have known Bertha and the General for a long time?’

‘Since I was a child.’

‘That was when you met Mildred?’

‘Yes.’

‘You probably know all the stories about their father, Lord Vowchurch?’

‘I’ve heard some of them.’

‘The remark he is said to have made to King Edward just after Bertha’s engagement had been announced?’

‘I don’t know that one.’

‘It was on the Squadron Lawn at Cowes. The King is supposed to have said: “Well, Vowchurch, I hear you are marrying your eldest daughter to one of my generals”, and Bertha’s father is said to have replied: “By Gad, I am, sir, and I trust he’ll teach the girl to lead out trumps, for they’ll have little enough to live on”. Edward VII was rather an erratic bridge-player, you know. Sir Thomas Lipton told me the story in broad Scotch, which made it sound funnier. Of course, the part that appealed to Sir Thomas Lipton was the fact that it took place on the Squadron Lawn.’

‘How did the King take it?’

‘I think he was probably rather cross. Of course it may not be true. But Lord Vowchurch certainly was always getting into trouble with the King. Lord Vowchurch was supposed to be referring to some special game of bridge when he had been dummy and things had gone badly wrong with King Edward’s play. You said you’d met my Uncle Alfred, didn’t you?’

‘A couple of times.’

‘And you know whom I mean by Brabazon?’

‘The Victorian dandy—“Bwab”?’

‘Yes, that one.’

‘Who said he couldn’t remember what regiment he had exchanged into — after leaving the Brigade of Guards because it was too expensive — but “they wore green facings and you got to them by Waterloo Station”?’

‘That’s him. How clever of you to know about him. Well, when Uncle Alfred was a young man, he was dining at Pratt’s, and Colonel Brabazon came in from the Marlborough Club, where he had been in the card-room when the game was being played. According to Uncle Alfred, Colonel Brabazon said: “Vowchurch expwessed weal wesentment while his Woyal Highness played the wottenest wubber of wecent seasons — nothing but we-deals and wevokes.”’

‘I had no idea your uncle had a fund of stories of that kind.’

‘He hasn’t. That is his only one. He is rather a shy man, you see, and nothing ever happens to him.’

This was all very lively; although there was at the same time always something a shade aloof about the manner in which these anecdotes were retailed. However, they carried us down the King’s Road in no time. There was, in addition, something reminiscent about the tone in which they were delivered, a faint reminder of Alfred Tolland’s own reserve and fear of intimacy. Amusing in themselves, the stories were at the same time plainly intended to establish a specific approach to life. Beneath their fluency, it was possible to detect in Frederica Budd herself, at least so far as personal rather than social life was concerned, a need for armour against strangers. Almost schooled out of existence by severe self-discipline, a faint trace of her uncle’s awkwardness still remained to be observed under the microscope. There could be no doubt that I had scored a point by knowing about ‘Bwab’.

‘I met your sister, Priscilla, at the Jeavonses the other night — only for a minute or two. Chips Lovell drove us both home.’

She did not seem much interested by that, hardly answering. I remembered, then, that she probably did not care for Lovell. However, her next words were entirely unexpected.

‘I am on my way to call on my sister, Norah, now,’ she said. ‘It seemed rather a long time since I had set eyes on her. I thought I would just look in to see that she is behaving herself. Why not come and meet her — and see Eleanor again.’

‘Just for a second. Then I shall have to move on.’

At the sound of this last statement I was aware of a faint but distinct disapproval, as if my reply had informed her quite clearly — indeed, almost grossly — that I was up to no good; yet made her at the same time realise that in a locality where so much human behaviour commanded disapprobation, minor derelictions — anyway, in a man — must, in the interest of the general picture, be disregarded. However, together with that sense of constraint that she conveyed, I was by then also aware of a second feeling: a notion that some sort of temporary alliance had been hurriedly constructed between us. I could not explain this impression to myself, though I was prepared to accept it.

By that time we had arrived before a dilapidated stucco fa£ade in a side street, a house entered by way of a creaking, unlatched door, from which most of the paint had been removed. The hall, empty except for a couple of packing-cases, gave off that stubborn musty smell characteristic of staircases leading to Chelsea flats: damp: cigarette smoke: face powder. We climbed the uncarpeted boards, ascending endlessly floor after floor, Frederica Budd taking the steps two at a time at a sharp pace. At last the attics were reached; and another battered door, upon which was fastened a brass knocker, formed in the image of the Lincoln Imp. Attached with four drawing-pins to the panel below this knocker was a piece of grubby cardboard inscribed with the names:

TOLLAND

WALPOLE-WILSON

Frederica, ignoring the claims of the Lincoln Imp, clenched her fist and banged on the door with all her force, at the same time shouting in an unexpectedly raucous voice:

‘Norah! Eleanor!’

There was a sound of someone stirring within. Then Eleanor Walpole-Wilson opened the door. She was wearing a very dirty pair of navy blue flannel trousers and smoking a stub of a cigarette. Apart from her trousers and cigarette, and also a decided air of increased confidence in herself, she had changed very little from the days when, loathing every moment of it, she used to trail round the London ball-rooms. She still wore her hair in a bun, a style which by then brought her appearance almost within measurable distance of ‘the mode’; or at least within hail of something that might, with a little good will, be supposed unconventionally chic. Square and broad-shouldered as ever, she was plainly on much better terms with herself, and with others, than formerly.

‘I’ve brought an old friend to see you,’ said Frederica.

Eleanor showed no surprise at my arrival. There was even a slight suggestion of relief that Frederica Budd had not to be entertained singly; for towards Frederica Eleanor displayed a hint of her old aggressiveness, or at least gave indication that she was on the defensive. This sense of quiet but firm opposition became more positive when we moved into the sitting-room.

‘How are you, Nicholas?’ said Eleanor. ‘Fancy your turning up here. Why, you’ve got a grey hair. Just above your ear.’

The place was horribly untidy, worse than the Jeavonses, and the furniture struck an awkward level between boudoir and studio: an ancient sofa, so big that one wondered how it could ever have been hoisted up the last flight of stairs, stood covered with chintz roses among two or three unsubstantial, faintly ‘Louis’ chairs. The walls had been distempered yellow by some amateur hand. A girl was lying prone on the ground, her skirt rucked up to her thighs, showing a strip of skin above each stocking. This was Norah Tolland. She was pasting scraps on to the surface of a coal-scuttle.

‘Hullo, Frederica,’ she said, without looking up. ‘I shan’t be a moment. I must finish this before the paste runs out.’

She continued her work for a few moments, then, wiping the paste from her hands with a red check duster, she rose from the ground, pulled her skirt down impatiently, and gave her sister a peck on the cheek. Eleanor presented me, explaining that we had known each other ‘in the old days’. Norah Tolland did not look very enthusiastic at this news, but she held out her hand. She was dark and very pale, with a narrow face like her sister’s, her expression more truculent, though also, on the whole, less firm in character. The coltishness of her sister, Priscilla, had turned in Norah to a deliberate, rather absurd masculinity. Frederica glanced round the room without attempting to conceal her distaste, as if she felt there was much to criticise, not least the odour of turpentine and stale cake.

‘I see you haven’t managed to get the window mended yet,’ she said.

Her sister did not answer, only flicking back her hair from her forehead with a sharp, angry motion.

‘Isobel is supposed to be coming in to see us some time today,’ she said, ‘with her new young man. I thought it was her when you arrived.’

‘Who is her new young man?’

‘How should I know? Some chap.’

‘I saw her last night at Hyde Park Gardens.’

‘How were they all?’ said Norah, indifferentiy. ‘Would you like a drink? I think there is some sherry left.’

Frederica shook her head, as if the idea of alcohol in any form at that moment nauseated her.

‘You?’

‘No, thank you. I must really go in a moment.’

The sherry did not sound very safe: wiser to forego it.

‘Don’t leave yet,’ said Eleanor. ‘You’ve only just arrived. We must have a word about old times. I haven’t seen the Gorings for ages. I always think of you, Nicholas, as a friend of Barbara’s.’

‘How is Barbara?’

It seemed extraordinary that I had once, like Widmerpool, thought myself in love with Barbara. Now I could hardly remember what she looked like, except that she was small and dark.

‘You know she married Johnny Pardoe?’ said Eleanor.

‘I haven’t set eyes on either of them since the wedding.’

‘Things have been a bit difficult.’

‘What?’

‘There was a baby that went wrong.’

‘Oh, dear.’

‘Then Johnny got awfully odd and melancholy after he left the Grenadiers. You remember he used to be an absolutely typical guardee, pink in the face and shouting at the top of his voice all the time, and yelling with laughter. Now he has quite changed, and mopes for hours or reads books on religion and philosophy.’

‘Johnny Pardoe?’

‘He sits in the library for weeks at a time just brooding. Never shoots now. You know how much he used to love shooting. Barbara has to run the place entirely. Poor Barbara, she has an awful time of it.’

Life jogs along, apparently in the same old way, and then suddenly your attention is drawn to some terrific change that has taken place. For example, I found myself brought up short at that moment, like a horse reined in on the brink of a precipice, at the thought of the astonishing reversal of circumstances by which Eleanor Walpole-Wilson was now in a position to feel sorry for Barbara Goring — or, as she had by then been for some years, Barbara Pardoe. The relationship between these two first cousins, like all other relationships when one is young, had seemed at that time utterly immutable; Barbara, pretty, lively, noisy, popular: Eleanor, plain, awkward, cantankerous, solitary. Barbara’s patronage of Eleanor was something that could never change. ‘Eleanor is not a bad old thing when you get to know her,’ she used to say; certainly without the faintest suspicion that within a few years Eleanor might be in a position to say: ‘Poor Barbara, she does have a time of it.’

While indulging in these rather banal reflections, I became aware that the two sisters had begun to quarrel. I had not heard the beginning of the conversation that had led to this discord, but it seemed to be concerned with their respective visits that summer to Thrubworth, their brother’s house.

‘As you know, Erry always makes these difficulties,’ Frederica was saying. ‘It is not that I myself particularly want to go there and live in ghastly discomfort for several weeks and feel frightfully depressed at seeing the place fall to pieces. I would much rather go to the seaside or abroad. But it is nice for the children to see the house, and they enjoy going down to talk to the people at the farm, and all that sort of thing. So if you are determined to go at just that moment—’

‘All right, then,’ said Norah, smiling and showing her teeth like an angry little vixen, ‘I won’t go. Nothing easier. I don’t particularly want to go to the bloody place either, but it is my home, I suppose. Some people might think that ought to be taken into consideration. I was born there. I can’t say I’ve had many happy moments there, it’s true, but I like walking by myself in the woods — and I have plenty of other ways of amusing myself there without bothering either you or Erry or anyone else.’

Eleanor caught my eye with a look to be interpreted as indicating that high words of this kind were not unexpected in the circumstances, but that we should try to quell them. However, before dissension could develop further, it was cut short abruptly by the door of the room opening. A small, gnarled, dumpy, middle-aged woman stood on the threshold. She wore horn-rimmed spectacles and her short legs were enclosed, like Eleanor’s, in blue flannel trousers — somewhat shrunk, for her largely developed thighs seemed to strain their seams — into the pockets of which her hands were deeply plunged.

‘Why, hullo, Hopkins,’ said Norah Tolland, her face suddenly clearing, and showing, for the first time since I had been in the room, some signs of pleasure. ‘What can we do for you?’

‘Hullo, girls,’ said the woman at the door.

She made no attempt to reply to Norah’s question, continuing to gaze round the room, grinning broadly, but advancing no farther beyond the threshold. She gave the impression of someone doing a turn on the stage.

‘If you take to leaving your front door on the latch,’ she said at last, ‘you’ll find a man will walk in one of these days, and then where will you be, I should like to know? By Jove, I see a man has walked in already. Well, well, well, never mind. There are a lot of them about, so I suppose you can’t keep them out all the time. What I came up for, dear, was to borrow an egg, if you’ve got such a thing. Laid one lately, either of you?’

Norah Tolland laughed.

‘This is my sister, Lady Frederica Budd,’ she said. ‘And Mr.—’

‘Jenkins,’ said Eleanor, in answer to an appeal for my name.

Eleanor was, I thought, less pleased than Norah to see the woman they called Hopkins. In fact, she seemed somewhat put out by her arrival.

‘Pleased to meet you, my dear,’ said Hopkins, holding out her hand to Frederica; ‘and you, my boy,’ she added, smirking in my direction.

‘Miss Hopkins plays the piano most nights at the Merry Thought,’ said Eleanor.

This explanation seemed aimed principally at Frederica.

‘You ought to look in one night,’ said Hopkins. ‘But come soon, because I’ve got an engagement next month to appear with Max Pilgrim at the Café de Madrid. I’ll have to make sure that old queen, Max, doesn’t hog every number. It would be just like him. He’s as vain as a peacock. Can’t trust a man not to try and steal the show anyway, even the normal ones, they’re the worst of all. Now the other thing I wanted to remind you girls about is my album. You’ve still got it. Have you thought of something nice to write in it, either of you?’

It appeared that no good idea had occurred either to Eleanor or Norah for inscription in the album.

‘I shall want it back soon,’ said Hopkins, ‘because another girl I know — such a little sweetie-pie with a little fragile face like a dear little dolly — is going to write some lovely lines in it. Shall I repeat to you what she is going to write? You will love it.’

Frederica Budd, who had been listening to all this with a slight smile, imperceptibly inclined her head, as one might when a clown enquires from his audience whether they have understood up to that point the course of the trick he is about to perform. Eleanor looked as if she did not particularly wish to hear what was offered, but regarded any demur as waste of time. Hopkins spoke the words:

‘Lips may be redder, and eyes more bright;

The face may be fairer you see tonight;

But never, love, while the stars shall shine,

Will you find a heart that is truer than mine.’

There was a pause when Hopkins came to the end of her recitation, which she had delivered with ardour. She struck an attitude, her hand on her hip.

‘Sweet, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘This friend of mine read it somewhere, and she memorised it — and so have I. I love it so much. That’s the sort of thing I want. I’ll leave the album a little longer then, girls, but remember — I shall expect something really nice when you do, both of you, think of a poem. Now what about that egg?’

Norah Tolland went into the kitchen of the flat. Hopkins stood grinning at us. No one spoke. Then Norah returned. On receiving the egg, Hopkins feigned to make it disappear up the sleeves of her shirt, the cuffs of which were joined by links of black and white enamel. Then, clenching her fist, she balanced the egg upon it at arm’s length, and marched out of the room chanting at the top of her voice:

‘Balls, Picnics and Parties,

Picnics, Parties and Balls …’

We heard the sound of her heavy, low-heeled shoes pounding the boards of the uncarpeted stairs, until at length a door slammed on a floor below, and the voice was cut off with a jerk.

‘She really plays the piano jolly well,’ said Norah.

It was a challenge, but the glove was not picked up.

‘Rather an amusing person,’ said Frederica. ‘Do you see much of her?’

‘She lives a couple of floors below,’ said Eleanor. ‘She is rather too fond of looking in at all hours.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Norah. ‘I like Heather.’

‘So you’ve made up your mind about Thrubworth?’ said Frederica, as if the merits of Hopkins were scarcely worth discussing.

I explained that I must now leave them. Frederica, at the moment of saying good-bye, spoke almost warmly; as if her conjecture that I might be a support to her had been somehow justified. Norah Tolland was curt. It was agreed that I should ring up Eleanor one of these days and come to see them again. I had the impression that my departure would be the signal for a renewed outbreak of family feuds. Anxious to avoid even their preliminary barrage, I descended the rickety, fœtid stairs, and proceeded on my way.

Later that evening, I found myself kicking my heels in one of those interminable cinema queues of which I have already spoken, paired off and stationary, as if life’s co-educational school, out in a ‘crocodile’, had come to a sudden standstill: that co-educational school of iron discipline, equally pitiless in pleasure and in pain. During the eternity of time that always precedes the termination of the ‘big picture’, I had even begun to wonder whether we should spend the rest of our days on that particular stretch of London pavement, when, at long last, just as rain had begun to fall, the portals of the auditorium burst open to void the patrons of the earlier performance. First came those scattered single figures, who, as if distraught by what they have seen and seeking to escape at whatever the cost, hurry blindly from the building, they care not how, nor where; then the long serpentine of spectators to whom expulsion into the street means no more than a need to take another decision in life; who, accordingly, postpone in the foyer any such irksome effort of the will by banding themselves into small, irregular, restless groups, sometimes static, sometimes ineffectively mobile. As the queue of which we formed a link stumbled forward towards the booking office, I discerned through the mist of faces that must dissolve before we could gain our seats, the features of J. G. Quiggin. Our eyes met. He shook his head sharply from side to side, as if to express satisfaction that we should run into each other in so opportune a manner. A moment later he was near enough to make his small, grating tones heard above the murmur of other voices.

‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you,’ he said.

‘We must meet.’

‘There were some things I wanted to talk about.’

Since we had been undergraduates together my friendship with Quiggin, moving up and down at different seasons, could have been plotted like a temperature chart. Sometimes we seemed on fairly good terms, sometimes on fairly bad terms; never with any very concrete reason for these improvements and deteriorations. However, if Quiggin thought it convenient to meet during a ‘bad’ period, he would always take steps to do so, having no false pride in this or any other aspect of his dealings with the world. After such a meeting, a ‘good’ period would set in; to be dissipated after a time by argument, disagreement or even by inanition. This periodicity of friendship and alienation had rotated, almost like the seasons of the year, until a year or two before: a time when Quiggin had ‘run away’ with Peter Templer’s wife, Mona. This act threatened to complicate more seriously any relationship that might exist between Quiggin and myself.

As things turned out, I had seen nothing either of Templer or Quiggin during the period immediately following the divorce. Templer had always been out or engaged when I had telephoned to him; and, as we had by then little left in common except having been friends at school, our intermittent meetings had entirely ceased. There was perhaps another reason why I feit unwilling to make more strenuous efforts to see him. He reminded me of Jean. That was an additional reason for allowing this course to prevail. I heard quite by chance that he had sold his Maidenhead house. It was said, whatever his inner feelings about losing Mona, that outwardly he was not taking things too hard: demonstrating a principle he had once expressed: ‘Women always think if they’ve knocked a man out, that they’ve knocked him out cold — on the contrary, he sometimes gets up again.’ However, no husband enjoys his wife leaving the house from one day to the next, especially with someone like Quiggin, in Templer’s eyes unthinkable as a rival. Quiggin, indeed, belonged to a form of life entirely separate from Templer’s, so that gossip on the subject of the divorce was exchanged within unconnected compartments; Templer’s City acquaintances on the one hand: on the other, the literary and political associates of Quiggin.

‘You are script-writing now, aren’t you?’ Quiggin asked, when we came within closer range of each other, and without any preliminary beating about the bush. ‘I want to have a talk with you about films.’

My first thought was that he hoped to get a similar job. To be a script-writer was at that period the ambition of almost everyone who could hold a pen. There was no reason why Quiggin should prove an exception to the rule. So far as I knew, he had to yet make the experiment. I noticed that he had almost discarded his North Country accent, or perhaps thought it inappropriate for use at that moment. In his university days, one of his chief social assets had been what Sillery used to call ‘Brother Quiggin’s Doric speech’. He looked well fed, and his squat form was enclosed in a bright blue suit and double-breasted waistcoat. He was hatless, such hair as remained to him carefully brushed. I had never before seen him look so spruce.

‘We’ve had a cottage lent us,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to come down for the week-end. Mona wants to see you again too.’

My first instinct was to make some excuse about weekends being difficult owing to the oppressive manner in which the film business was organised: in itself true enough. However, as it happened, an electricians’ strike had just been called at the Studio, with the result that work was likely to be suspended for at least a week or two. I was unwilling to seem to condone too easily the appropriation of an old friend’s wife; although it had to be admitted that Templer himself had never been over- squeamish about accepting, within in his own circle, such changes of partnership. Apart from such scruples, I knew enough of Quiggin to be sure that his cottage would be more than ordinarily uncomfortable. Nothing I had seen of Mona gave cause to reconsider this want of confidence in their combined domestic economy. It was generally supposed by then that they were married, although no one seemed to know for certain whether or not any ceremony had been performed.

‘Whereabouts is your cottage?’ I asked, playing for time.

The place turned out to be rather further afield than the destination of the usual week-end visit. While this conversation had been taking place, the queue had been moving forward, so that at that moment my own turn came at the booking office; simultaneously, the crowd behind Quiggin launched themselves on and outwards in a sudden violent movement that carried him bodily at their head, as if unwillingly leading a mob in a riot.

‘I’ll write the address to you,’ he bawled over his shoulder. ‘You must certainly come and stay.’

I nodded my head, fumbling with tickets and money. Almost immediately Quiggin, driven ahead by his seemingly fanatical followers, was forced through the doors and lost in the night.

‘Who was that?’ asked the girl accompanying me.

‘J. G. Quiggin.’

‘The critic?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think he has gone off rather lately.’

‘I expect he goes up and down like the rest of us.’

‘Don’t be so philosophical,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear it.’

We passed into the darkness and Man of Aran.