The Acceptance World

5

WHEN, in describing Widmerpool’s new employment, Templer had spoken of ‘the Acceptance World’, I had been struck by the phrase. Even as a technical definition, it seemed to suggest what we are all doing; not only in business, but in love, art, religion, philosophy, politics, in fact all human activities. The Acceptance World was the world in which the essential element — happiness, for example — is drawn, as it were, from an engagement to meet a bill. Sometimes the goods are delivered, even a small profit made; sometimes the goods are not delivered, and disaster follows; sometimes the goods are delivered, but the value of the currency is changed. Besides, in another sense, the whole world is the Acceptance World as one approaches thirty; at least some illusions discarded. The mere fact of still existing as a human being proved that.

I did not see Templer himself until later in the summer, when I attended the Old Boy Dinner for members of Le Bas’s house. That year the dinner was held at the Ritz. We met in one of the subterranean passages leading to the private room where we were to eat. It was a warm, rather stuffy July evening. Templer, like a Frenchman, wore a white waistcoat with his dinner-jacket, a fashion of the moment, perhaps by then already a little outmoded.

‘We always seem to meet in these gorgeous halls,’ he said.

‘We do.’

‘I expect you’ve heard that Mona bolted,’ he went on quickly. ‘Joined up with that friend of yours of the remarkable suit and strong political views.’

His voice was casual, but it had a note of obsession as if his nerves were on edge. His appearance was unchanged, possibly a little thinner.

Mona’s elopement had certainly been discussed widely. In the break-up of a marriage the world inclines to take the side of the partner with most vitality, rather than the one apparently least to blame. In the Templers’ case public opinion had turned out unexpectedly favourable to Mona, probably because Templer himself was unknown to most of the people who talked to me of the matter. Normal inaccuracies of gossip were increased by this ignorance. In one version, Mona was represented as immensely rich, ill treated by an elderly, unsuccessful stockbroker; another described Templer as unable to fulfil a husband’s role from physical dislike of women. A third account included a twenty- minute hand-to-hand struggle between the two men, at the end of which Quiggin had gained the victory: a narrative sometimes varied to a form in which Templer beat Quiggin unconscious with a shooting-stick. In a different vein was yet another story describing Templer, infatuated with his secretary, paying Quiggin a large sum to take Mona off his hands.

On the whole people are unwilling to understand even comparatively simple situations where husband and wife are concerned; indeed, a simple explanation is the last thing ever acceptable. Here, certainly, was something complicated enough, a striking reversal of what might be thought the ordinary course of events. Templer, a man undoubtedly attractive to women, loses his wife to Quiggin, a man usually ill at ease in women’s company: Mona, as Anna Karenin, directing her romantic feelings towards Karenin as a lover, rather than Vronsky as a husband. For me, the irony was emphasised by Templer being my first schoolboy friend to seem perfectly at home with the opposite sex; indeed, the first to have practical experience in that quarter. But conflict between the sexes might be compared with the engagement of boxers in which the best style is not always victorious.

‘What will they live on?’ Templer said. ‘Mona is quite an expensive luxury in her way.’

I had wondered that, too, especially in the light of an experience of a few weeks before, when sitting in the Café Royal with Barnby. In those days there was a female orchestra raised on a dais at one side of the huge room where you had drinks. They were playing In a Persian Market, and in that noisy, crowded, glaring, for some reason rather ominus atmosphere, which seemed specially designed to hear such confidences, Barnby had been telling me that matters were at an end between Anne Stepney and himself. That had not specially surprised me after the evening at Foppa’s. Barnby had reached the climax of his story when Quiggin and Mark Members passed our table, side by side, on their way to the diners’ end of the room. That was, to say the least, unexpected. They appeared to be on perfectly friendly terms with each other. When they saw us, Members had given a distant, evasive smile, but Quiggin stopped to speak. He seemed in an excellent humour.

‘How are you, Nick?’

‘All right.’

‘Mark and I are going to celebrate the completion of Unburnt Boats,’ he said. ‘It is a wonderful thing to finish a book.’

‘When is it to appear?’

‘Autumn.’

I felt sure Quiggin had stopped like this in order to make some statement that would define more clearly his own position. That would certainly be a reasonable aim on his part. I was curious to know why the two of them were friends again; also to learn what was happening about Quiggin and Mona. Such information as I possessed then had come through Jean, who knew from her brother only that they had gone abroad together. At, the same time, as a friend of Templer^’s, I did not want to appear too obviously willing to condone the fact that Quiggin had eloped with his wife.

‘Mona and I are in Sussex now,’ said Quiggin, in a voice that could almost be described as unctuous, so much did it avoid his usual harsh note. ‘We have been lent a cottage. I am just up for the night to see Mark and make final arrangements with my publisher.’

He talked as if he had been married to Mona, or at least lived with her, for years; just as, a few months earlier, he had spoken as if he had always been St. John Clarke’s secretary. It seemed hard to do anything but accept the relationship as a fait accompli. Such things have to be.

‘Can you deal with St. John Clarke from so far away?’

‘How do you mean?’

Quiggin’s face clouded, taking on an expression suggesting he had heard the name of St. John Clarke, but was quite unable to place its associations.

‘Aren’t you still his secretary?’

‘Oh, good gracious, no,’ said Quiggin, unable to repress a laugh at the idea.

‘I hadn’t heard you’d left him.’

‘But he has become a Trotskyist’

‘What form does it take?’

Quiggin laughed again. He evidently wished to show his complete agreement that the situation regarding St. John Clarke was so preposterous that only a certain degree of jocularity could carry it off. Laughter, his manner indicated, was a more civilised reaction than the savage rage that would have been the natural emotion of most right-minded persons on hearing the news for the first time.

‘The chief form,’ he said, ‘is that he consequently now requires a secretary who is also a Trotskyist’

‘Who has he got?’

‘You would not know him.’

‘Someone beyond the pale?’

‘He has found a young German to pander to him, as a matter of fact. One Guggenbühl.’

‘I have met him as a matter of fact.’

‘Have you?’ said Quiggin, without interest. ‘Then 1 should advise you to steer clear of Trotskyists in the future, if I were you.’

‘Was this very sudden?’

‘My own departure was not entirely involuntary,’ said Quiggin. ‘At first I thought the man would rise above the difficulties of my domestic situation. I — and Mona, too — did everything to assist and humour him. In the end it was no good.’

He had moved off then, at the same time gathering in Members, who had been chatting to a girl in dark glasses sitting at a neighbouring table.

‘We shall stay in the country until the divorce comes through,’ he had said over his shoulder.

The story going round was that Mona had been introduced by Quiggin to St. John Clarke as a political sympathiser. Only later had the novelist discovered the story of her close association with Quiggin. He had begun to make difficulties at once. Quiggin, seeing that circumstances prevented the continuance of his job, made a goodish bargain with St. John Clarke, and departed. Guggenbühl must have stepped into the vacuum. No one seemed to know the precise moment when he had taken Quiggin’s place; nor how matters remained regarding Mrs. Andriadis.

Like Templer, I wondered how Quiggin and Mona would make two ends meet, but these details could hardly be gone into then and there in the Ritz.

‘I suppose Quiggin keeps afloat,’ I said. ‘For one thing, he must have just had an advance for his book. Still, I don’t expect that was anything colossal.’

‘That aunt of Mona’s died the other day,’ said Templer. ‘She left Mona her savings — a thousand or so, I think.’

‘So they won’t starve.’

‘As a matter of fact I haven’t cut her allowance yet,’ he said, reddening slightly. ‘I suppose one will have to in due course.’

He paused.

‘I must say it was the hell of a surprise,’ he said. ‘We’d had plenty of rows, but I certainly never thought she would go off with a chap who looked quite so like something the cat had brought in.’

I could only laugh and agree. These things are capable of no real explanation. Mona’s behaviour was perhaps to be examined in the light of her exalted feelings for Quiggin as a literary figure. Combined with this was, no doubt, a kind of envy of her husband’s former successes with other women; for such successes with the opposite sex put him, as it were, in direct competition with herself. It is, after all, envy rather than jealousy that causes most of the trouble in married life.

‘I’ve really come here tonight to see Widmerpool,’ said Templer, as if he wished to change the subject. ‘Bob Duport is in England again. I think I told you Widmerpool might help him land on his feet.’

I felt a sense of uneasiness that he found it natural to tell me this. Jean had always insisted that her brother knew nothing of the two of us. Probably she was right; though I could never be sure that someone with such highly developed instincts where relations between the sexes were concerned could remain entirely unaware that his sister was having a love affair. On the other hand he never saw us together. No doubt, so far as Jean was concerned, he would have regarded a lover as only natural in her situation. He was an exception to the general rule that made Barnby, for example, puritanically disapproving of an irregular life in others. In any case, he probably spoke of Duport in the way people so often do in such circumstances, ignorant of the facts, yet moved by some unconscious inner process to link significant names together. All the same, I was conscious of a feeling of foreboding. I was going to see Jean that night; after the dinner was at an end.

‘I am rather hopeful things will be patched up with Jean, if Bob’s business gets into running order again,’ Templer said. ‘The whole family can’t be in a permanent state of being deserted by their husbands and wives. I gather Bob is no longer sleeping with Bijou Ardglass, which was the real cause of the trouble, I think.’

‘Prince Theodoric’s girl friend?’

‘That’s the one. Started life as a mannequin. Then married Ardglass as his second wife. When he died the title, and nearly all the money, went to a distant cousin, so she had to earn a living somehow. Still, it was inconvenient she should have picked on Bob.’

By this time we had reached the ante-room where Le Bas’s Old Boys were assembling. Le Bas himself had not yet arrived, but Whitney, Maiden, Simson, Brandreth, Ghika, and Fettiplace-Jones were standing about, sipping drinks, and chatting uneasily. All of them, except Ghika, were already showing signs of the wear and tear of life. Whitney was all but unrecognisable with a moustache; Maiden had taken to spectacles; Simson was prematurely bald; Fettiplace-Jones, who was talking to Widmerpool without much show of enjoyment, although he still looked like a distinguished undergraduate, had developed that ingratiating, almost cringing manner that some, politicians assume to avoid an appearance of thrusting themselves forward. Fettiplace-Jones had been Captain of the House when I had arrived there as a new boy and had left at the end of that term. He was now Member of Parliament for some northern constituency.

Several others came in behind Templer and myself. Soon the room became fairly crowded. Most of the new arrivals were older or younger than my own period, so that I knew them only by sight from previous dinners. As it happened, I had not attended a Le Bas dinner for some little time. I hardly knew why I was there that year, for it was exceptional for an old friend like Templer to turn up. I think I had a subdued curiosity to see if Dicky Umfraville would put in an appearance, and fulfil his promise to ‘tear the place in half’. A chance meeting with Maiden, one of the organisers had settled it, and I came. Maiden now buttonholed Templer, and, at the same moment, Fettiplace-Jones moved away from Widmerpool to speak with Simson, who was said to be doing well at the Bar. I found Widmerpool beside me.

‘Why, hullo — hullo — Nicholas—’ he said.

He glared through his thick glasses, the side pieces of which were becoming increasingly embedded in wedges of fat below his temples. At the same time he transmitted one of those skull-like smiles of conventional friendliness to be generally associated with conviviality of a political sort. He was getting steadily fatter. His dinner-jacket no longer fitted him: perhaps had never done so with much success. Yet he carried this unhappy garment with more of an air than he would have achieved in the old days; certainly with more of an air than he had ever worn the famous overcoat for which he had been notorious at school.

We had met once or twice, always by chance, during the previous few years. On each occasion he had been going abroad for the Donners-Brebner Company. ‘Doing pretty well,’ he had always remarked, when asked how things were with him. His small eyes had glistened behind his spectacles when he had said this. There was no reason to disbelieve in his success, though I suspected at the time that his job might be more splendid in his own eyes than when regarded by some City figure like Templer. However, after Templer’s more recent treatment of him, I supposed that I must be wrong in presuming exaggeration on Widmerpool’s part. Although two or three years older than myself, he could still be little more than thirty. No doubt he was ‘doing well’. With the self-confidence he had developed, he moved now with a kind of strut, a curious adaptation of that uneasy, rubber-shod tread, squeaking rhythmically down the interminable linoleum of our schooldays. I remembered how Barbara Goring (whom we had both been in love with, and now I had not thought of for years) had once poured sugar over his head at a dance. She would hardly do that today. Yet Widmerpool had never entirely overcome his innate oddness; one might almost say, his monstrosity. In that he resembled Quiggin. Perhaps it was the determination of each to live by the will alone. At any rate, you noticed Widmerpool immediately upon entering a room. That would have given him satisfaction.

‘Do you know, I nearly forgot your Christian name,’ he said, not without geniality. ‘I have so many things to remember these days. I was just telling Fettiplace-Jones about North Africa. In my opinion we should hand back Gibraltar to Spain, taking Ceuta in exchange. Fettiplace- Jones was in general agreement. He belongs to a group in Parliament particularly interested in foreign affairs. I have just come back from those parts.’

‘For Donners-Brebner?’

He nodded, puffing out his lips and assuming the appearance of a huge fish.

‘But not in the future,’ he said, breathing inward hard. ‘I’m changing my trade.’

‘I heard rumours.’

‘Of what?’

‘That you were joining the Acceptance World.’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

Widmerpool sniggered.

‘And you?’ he asked.

‘Nothing much.’

‘Still producing your art books? It was art books, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes — and I wrote a book myself.’

‘Indeed, Nicholas. What sort of a book?’

‘A novel, Kenneth.’

‘Has it been published?’

‘A few months ago.’

‘Oh.’

His ignorance of novels and what happened about them was evidently profound. That was, after all, reasonable enough. Perhaps it was just lack of interest on his part. Whatever the cause, he looked not altogether approving, and did not enquire the name of the book. However, probably feeling a moment later that his reply may have sounded a shade flat, he added: ‘Good … good,’ rather in the manner of Le Bas himself, when faced with an activity of which he was uninformed and suspicious, though at the same time unjustified in categorically forbidding.

‘As a matter of fact I am making some notes for a book myself,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Quite a different sort of book from yours, of course. So we may be authors together. Do you always come to these dinners? I have been abroad, or otherwise prevented, on a number of occasions, and thought I would see what had happened to everybody. One sometimes makes useful contacts in such ways.’

Le Bas himself arrived in the room at that moment, bursting through the door tumultuously, exactly as if he were about to surprise the party assembled there at some improper activity. It was in this explosive way that he had moved about the house at school. For a second he made me feel as if I were back again under his surveillance; and one young man, with very fair hair, whose name I did not know, went scarlet in the face at his former housemaster’s threatening impetuosity, just as if he himself had a guilty conscience.

However, Le Bas, as it turned out, was in an excellent humour. He went round the room shaking hands with everyone, making some comment to each of us, more often than not hopelessly inappropriate, showing that he had mistaken the Old Boy’s name or generation. In spite of that I was aware of a feeling of warmth towards him that I had never felt when at school; perhaps because he seemed to represent, like a landscape or building, memories of a vanished time. He had become, if not history, at least part of one’s own autobiography. In his infinitely ancient dinner- jacket and frayed tie he looked, as usual, wholly unchanged. His clothes were as old as Sillery’s, though far better cut. Tall, curiously Teutonic in appearance, still rubbing his red, seemingly chronically sore eyes, as from time to time he removed his rimless glasses, he came at last to the end of the diners, who had raggedly formed up in line round the room, as if some vestige of school discipline was reborn in them at the appearance of their housemaster. After the final handshake, he took up one of those painful, almost tortured positions habitually affected by him, this particular one seeming to indicate that he had just landed on his heels in the sand after making the long jump.

Maiden, who, as I have said, was one of the organisers of the dinner, and was in the margarine business, now began fussing, as if he thought that by his personal exertions alone would anyone get anything to eat that night. He came up to me, muttering agitatedly.

‘Another of your contemporaries accepted — Stringham,’ he said. ‘I suppose you don’t know if he is turning up? We really ought to go into dinner soon. Should we wait for him? It is really too bad of people to be late for this sort of occasion.’

He spoke as if I, or at least all my generation, were responsible for the delay. The news that Stringham might be coming to the dinner surprised me. I asked Maiden about his acceptance of the invitation.

‘He doesn’t turn up as a rule,’ Maiden explained, ‘but I ran into him the other night at the Silver Slipper and he promised to come. He said he would attend if he were sober enough by Friday. He wrote down the time and place on a menu and put it in his pocket. What do you think?’

‘I should think we had better go in.’

Maiden nodded, and screwed up his yellowish, worried face, which seemed to have taken on sympathetic colouring from the commodity he marketed. I remembered him as a small boy, perpetually preoccupied with the fear that he would be late for school or games: this tyranny of Time evidently pursuing him no less in later life. Finally, his efforts caused us to troop into the room where we were to dine. From what I had heard of Stringham recently, I thought his appearance at such a dinner extremely unlikely.

At the dinner table I found myself between Templer and a figure who always turned up at these dinners whose name I did not know: a middle-aged — even elderly, he then seemed — grey-moustached man. I had, rather half-heartedly, tried to keep a place next to me for Stringham, but gave up the idea when this person diffidently asked if he might occupy the chair. There were, in any case, some spare places at the end of the table, where Stringham could sit, if he arrived, as a certain amount of latitude always existed regarding the size of the party. It was to be presumed that the man with the grey moustache had been at Corderey’s, in the days before Le Bas took over the house; if so, he was the sole survivor from that period who ever put in an appearance. I remembered Maiden had once commented to me on the fact that one of Corderey’s Old Boys always turned up, although no one knew him. He had seemed perfectly happy before dinner, drinking a glass of sherry by himself. Hitherto, he had made no effort whatever to talk to any of the rest of the party. Le Bas had greeted him, rather unenthusiastically, with the words ‘Hullo, Tolland’; but Le Bas was so notoriously vague regarding nomenclature that this name could be accepted only after corroboration. Something about his demeanour reminded me of Uncle Giles, though this man was, of course, considerably younger. There had been a Tolland at school with me, but I had known him only by sight. I asked Templer whether he had any news of Mrs. Erdleigh and Jimmy Stripling.

‘I think she is fairly skinning Jimmy,’ he said, laughing. ‘They are still hard at it. I saw Jimmy the other day in Pimm’s.’

The time having come round for another tea at the Ufford, I myself had visited Uncle Giles fairly recently. While there I had enquired, perhaps unwisely, about Mrs. Erdleigh. The question had been prompted partly by curiosity as to what his side of the story might be, partly from an inescapable though rather morbid interest in what happened to Stripling. I should have known better than to have been surprised by the look of complete incomprehension that came over Uncle Giles’s face. It was similar technique, though put into more absolute execution, that Quiggin had used when asked about St. John Clarke. No doubt it would have been better to have left the matter of Mrs. Erdleigh alone. I should have known from the start that interrogation would be unproductive.

‘Mrs. Erdleigh?’

He had spoken not only as if he had never heard of Mrs. Erdleigh but as if even the name itself could not possibly belong to anyone he had ever encountered.

‘The lady who told our fortunes.’

‘What fortunes?’

‘When I was last here.’

‘Can’t understand what you’re driving at.’

‘I met her at tea when I last came here — Mrs. Erdleigh.’

‘Believe there was someone of that name staying here.’

‘She came in and you introduced me.’

‘Rather an actressy woman, wasn’t she? Didn’t stay very long. Always talking about her troubles, so far as I can remember. Hadn’t she been married to a Yangtze pilot, or was that another lady? There was a bit of a fuss about the bill, I believe. Interested in fortune-telling, was she? How did you discover that?’

‘She put the cards out for us.’

‘Never felt very keen about all that fortune-telling stuff,’ said Uncle Giles, not unkindly. ‘Doesn’t do the nerves any good, in my opinion. Rotten lot of people, most of them, who take it up.’

Obviously the subject was to be carried no further. Perhaps Mrs. Erdleigh, to use a favourite phrase of my uncle’s, had ‘let him down’. Evidently she herself had been removed from his life as neatly as if by a surgical operation, and, by this mysterious process of voluntary oblivion, was excluded even from his very consciousness; all done, no doubt, by an effort of will. Possibly everyone could live equally untrammelled lives with the same determination. However, this mention of Uncle Giles is by the way.

‘Jimmy is an extraordinary fellow,’ said Templer, as if pondering my question. ‘I can’t imagine why Babs married him. All the same, he is more successful with the girls than you might think.’

Before he could elaborate this theme, his train of thought, rather to my relief, was interrupted. The cause of this was the sudden arrival of Stringham. He looked horribly pale, and, although showing no obvious sign of intoxication, I suspected that he had already had a lot to drink. His eyes were glazed, and, holding himself very erect, he walked with the slow dignity of one who is not absolutely sure what is going on round him. He went straight up to the head of the table where Le Bas was sitting and apologised for his lateness — the first course was being cleared — returning down the room to occupy the spare chair beside Ghika at the other end.

‘Charles looks as if he has been hitting the martinis pretty hard,’ said Templer.

I agreed. After a consultation with the wine waiter, Stringham ordered a bottle of champagne. Since Ghika had already provided himself with a whisky and soda there was evidently no question of splitting it with his next-door neighbour. Templer commented on this to me, and laughed. He seemed to have obtained relief from having discussed the collapse of his marriage with a friend who knew something of the circumstances. He was more cheerful now and spoke of his plans for selling the house near Maidenhead. We began to talk of things that had happened at school.

‘Do you remember when Charles arranged for Le Bas to be arrested by the police?’ said Templer. ‘The Braddock alias Thorne affair.’

We were sitting too far away from Le Bas for this remark to be overheard by him. Templer looked across to where Stringham was sitting and caught his eye. He jerked his head in Le Bas’s direction and held his own wrists together as if he wore handcuffs. Stringham seemed to understand his meaning at once. His face brightened, and he made as if to catch Ghika by the collar. This action had to be explained to Ghika, and, during the interlude, Parkinson, who was on Templer’s far side, engaged him in conversation about the Test Match.

I turned to the man with the grey moustache. He seemed to be expecting an approach of some sort, because, before I had time to speak, he said:

‘I’m Tolland.’

‘You were at Corderey’s, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, I was. Seems a long time ago now.’

‘Did you stay on into Le Bas’s time?’

‘No. Just missed him.’

He was infinitely melancholy; gentle in manner, but with a suggestion of force behind this sad kindliness.

‘Was Umfraville there in your time?’

‘R. H. J. Umfraville?’

‘I think so. He’s called “Dicky”.’

Tolland gave a slow smile.

‘We overlapped,’ he admitted.

There was a pause.

‘Umfravillfe was my fag,’ said Tolland, as if drawing the fact from somewhere very deep down within him. ‘At least I believe he was. I was quite a bit higher up in the school, of course, so I don’t remember him very well.’

A terrible depression seemed to seize him at the thought of this great seniority of his to Umfraville. There was a lack of serenity about Tolland at close quarters, quite different from the manner in which he had carried off his own loneliness in a crowd. I felt rather uneasy at the thought of having to deal with him, perhaps for the rest of dinner. Whitney was on the other side and there was absolutely no hope of his lending a hand in a case of that sort.

‘Umfraville a friend of your?’ asked Tolland.

He spoke almost as if condoling with me.

‘I’ve just met him. He said he might be coming tonight.’

Tolland looked at me absently. I thought it might be better to abandon the subject of Umfraville. However, a moment or two later he himself returned to it.

‘I don’t think Umfraville will come tonight,’ he said. ‘I heard he’d just got married.’

It certainly seemed unlikely that even Umfraville would turn up for dinner at this late stage in the meal, though the reason given was unexpected, even scriptural. Tolland now seemed to regret having volunteered the information.

‘Who did he marry?’

This question discomposed him even further. He cleared his throat several times and took a gulp of claret, nearly choking himself.

‘As a matter of fact I believe she is a distant cousin of mine — perhaps not,’ he said. ‘I can never remember that sort of thing — yes, she is, though. Of course she is.’

‘Yes?’

‘One of the Bridgnorth girls — Anne, I think.’

‘Anne Stepney?’

‘Yes, yes. That’s the one. You probably know her.’

‘I do.’

‘Thought you would.’

‘But she is years younger.’

‘She is a bit younger. Yes, she is a bit younger. Quite a bit younger. And he has been married before, of course.’

‘It makes his fourth wife, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, I believe it does. His fourth wife. Pretty sure it does make his fourth.’

Tolland looked at me in absolute despair, I think not so much at the predicament in which Anne Stepney had involved herself, as at the necessity for such enormities to emerge in conversation. The news was certainly unforeseen.

‘What do the Bridgnorths think about it?’

It was perhaps heartless to press him on such a point, but, having been told something so extraordinary as this, I wanted to hear as much as possible about the circumstances. Rather unexpectedly, he seemed relieved to report on that aspect of the marriage.

‘The fellow who told me in the Guards’ Club said they were making the best of it.’

‘There was no announcement?’

‘They were married in Paris,’ said Tolland. ‘So this fellow in the Guards’ Club — or was it Arthur’s? — told me. My brother, Warminster, when he was alive, used to talk about Umfraville. I think he liked him. Perhaps he didn’t. But I think he did.’

‘I was at school with a Tolland.’

‘My nephew. Did you know his brother, Erridge? Erridge has succeeded now. Funny boy.’

Sir Gavin Walpole-Wilson had mentioned a ‘Norah Tolland’ as friend of his daughter, Eleanor. She turned out to be a niece.

‘Warminster had ten children. Big family for these days.’

We rose at that moment to drink the King’s health; and Le Bas’s. Then Le Bas stood up, gripping the table with both hands as if he proposed to overturn it. This was in preparation for the delivery of his accustomed speech, which varied hardly at all year by year. His guttural, carefully enunciated consonants echoed through the room.

‘… cannot fail to be gratifying to see so many of my former pupils here tonight … do not really know what to say to you all … certainly shall not make a long speech … these annual meetings have their importance … encourage a sense of continuity … give perhaps an opportunity of taking stock … friendship … I’ve said to some of you before … needs keeping up … probably remember, most of you, lines quoted by me on earlier occasions …

And I sat by the shelf till I lost myself,

And roamed in a crowded mist,

And heard lost voices and saw lost looks,

As I pored on an old School List.

… verses not, of course, in the modern manner … some of us do not find such appeals to sentiment very sympathetic … typically Victorian in their emphasis … all the.. rather well describe what most of us — well — at least some of us — may — feel — experience — when we meet and talk over our …’

Here Le Bas, as usual, paused; probably from the conviction that the word ‘schooldays’ had accumulated various associations in the minds of his listeners to which he was unwilling to seem to appeal. The use of hackneyed words had always been one of his preoccupations. He was, I think, dimly aware that his own bearing was somewhat clerical, and was accordingly particularly anxious to avoid the appearance of preaching a sermon. He compromised at last with ‘… other times …’ returning, almost immediately, to the poem; as if the increased asperity that the lines now assumed would purge him from the imputation of sentimentality to which he had referred. He cleared his throat harshly.

‘…You will remember how it goes later …

There were several duffers and several bores,

Whose faces I’ve half forgot,

Whom I lived among, when the world was young

And who talked no end of rot;

… of course I do not mean to suggest that there was anyone like that at my house …’

This comment always caused a certain amount of mild laughter and applause. That evening Whitney uttered some sort of a cry reminiscent of the hunting field, while Widmerpool grinned and drummed on the tablecloth with his fork, slightly shaking his head at the same time to indicate that he did not at all concur with Le Bas in supposing his former pupils entirely free from such failings.

‘… certainly nobody of that sort here tonight … but at the same time … no good pretending that all time spent at school was — entirely blissful… certainly not for a housemaster …’

There was more restrained laughter. Le Bas’s voice tailed away. In his accustomed manner he had evidently tried to steer clear of any suggestion that schooldays were the happiest period of a man’s life, but at the same time feared that by tacking too much he might become enmeshed in dangerous admissions from which escape could be difficult. This had always been one of his main anxieties as a schoolmaster. He would go some distance along a path indicated by common sense, but overcome by caution, would stop half-way and behave in an unexpected, illogical manner. Most of the conflicts between himself and individual boys could be traced to these hesitations at the last moment. Now he paused, beginning again in more rapid sentences:

‘… as I have already said … do not intend to make a long, prosy after-dinner speech … nothing more boring … in fact my intention is — as at previous dinners — to ask some of you to say a word or two about your own activities since we last met together … For example, perhaps Fettiplace-Jones might tell us something of what is going forward in the House of Commons …’

Fettiplace-Jones did not need much pressing to oblige in this request. He was on his feet almost before Le Bas had finished speaking. He was a tall, dark, rather good-looking fellow, with a lock of hair that fell from time to time over a high forehead, giving him the appearance of a Victorian statesman in early life. His maiden speech (tearing Ramsay MacDonald into shreds) had made some impression on the House, but since then there had been little if any brilliance about his subsequent parliamentary performances, though he was said to work hard in committee. India’s eventual independence was the subject he chose to tell us about, and he continued for some little time. He was followed by Simson, a keen Territorial, who asked for recruits. Widmerpool broke into Simson’s speech with more than one ‘hear, hear’. I remembered that he had told me he too was a Territorial officer. Whitney had something to say of Tanganyika. Others followed with their appointed piece. At last they came to an end. It seemed that Le Bas had exhausted the number of his former pupils from whom he might hope to extract interesting or improving comment. Stringham was sitting well back in his chair. He had, I think, actually gone to sleep.

There was a low buzz of talking. I had begun to wonder how soon the party would break up, when there came the sound of someone rising to their feet. It was Widmerpool. He was standing up in his place, looking down towards the table, as he fiddled with his glass. He gave a kind of introductory grunt.

‘You have heard something of politics and India,’ he said, speaking quickly, and not very intelligibly, in that thick, irritable voice which I remembered so well. ‘You have been asked to join the Territorial Army, an invitation I most heartily endorse. Something has been said of county cricket. We have been taken as far afield as the Congo Basin, and as near home as this very hotel, where one of us here tonight worked as a waiter while acquiring his managerial training. Now I–I myself — would like to say a word or two about my experiences in the City.’

Widmerpool stopped speaking for a moment, and took a sip of water. During dinner he had shared a bottle of Graves with Maiden. There could be no question that he was absolutely sober. Le Bas — indeed everyone present — was obviously taken aback by this sudden, uncomfortable diversion. Le Bas had never liked Widmerpool, and, since the party was given for Le Bas, and Le Bas had not asked Widmerpool to speak, this behaviour was certainly uncalled for. In fact it was unprecedented. There was, of course, no cogent reason, apart from that, why Widmerpool should not get up and talk about the life he was leading. Just as other speakers had done. Indeed, it could be argued that the general invitation to speak put forward by Le Bas required acceptance as a matter of good manners. Perhaps that was how Widmerpool looked at it, assuming that Le Bas had only led off with several individual names as an encouragement for others to take the initiative in describing their lives. All that was true. Yet, in some mysterious manner, school rules, rather than those of the outer world, governed that particular assembly. However successful Widmerpool might have become in his own eyes, he was not yet important in the eyes of those present. He remained a nonentity, perhaps even an oddity, remembered only because he had once worn the wrong sort of overcoat. His behaviour seemed all the more outrageous on account of the ease with which, at that moment on account of the special circumstances, he could force us to listen to him without protest. ‘This is terrific,’ Templer muttered. I looked across at Stringham, who had now woken up, and, having finished his bottle, was drinking brandy. He did not smile back at me, instead twisting his face into one of those extraordinary resemblances to Widmerpool at which he had always excelled. Almost immediately he resumed his natural expression, still without smiling. The effect of the grimace was so startling that I nearly laughed aloud. At the same time, something set, rather horrifying, about Stringham’s own features, put an abrupt end to this sudden spasm of amusement. This look of his even made me feel apprehension as to what Stringham himself might do next. Obviously he was intensely, if quietly, drunk. Meanwhile, Widmerpool was getting into his stride: ‘… tell you something of the inner workings of the Donners-Brebner Company,’ he was saying in a somewhat steadier voice than that in which he had begun his address. ‘There is not a man of you, I can safely say, who would not be in a stronger position to face the world if he had some past experience of employment in a big concern of that sort. However, several of you already know that I am turning my attention to rather different spheres. Indeed, I have spoken to some of you of these changes in my life when we have met in the City …’

He looked round the room and allowed his eyes to rest for a moment on Templer, smiling again that skull-like grin with which he had greeted us. ‘This is getting embarrassing,’ said Templer. I think Templer had begun to feel he had too easily allowed himself to accept Widmerpool as a serious person. It was impossible to guess what Widmerpool was going to say next. He was drunk with his own self-importance

‘… at one time these financial activities were devoted to the satisfaction of man’s greed. Now we have a rather different end in view. We have been suffering — it is true to say that we are still suffering and shall suffer for no little time — from the most devastating trade depression in our recorded history. We have been forced from the Gold Standard, so it seems to me, and others not unworthy of a public hearing, because of the insufficiency of money in the hands of consumers. Very well. I suggest to you that our contemporary anxieties are not entirely vested in the question of balance of payment, that is at least so far as current account may be concerned, and I put it to you that certain persons, who should perhaps have known better, have been responsible for unhappy, indeed catastrophic capital movements through a reckless and inadmissible lending policy.’

I had a sudden memory of Monsieur Dubuisson talking like this when Widmerpool and I had been at La Grena dière together.

‘… where our troubles began,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Now if we have a curve drawn on a piece of paper representing an average ratio of persistence, you will agree that authentic development must be demonstrated by a register alternately ascending and descending the level of our original curve of homogeneous development. Such an image, or, if you prefer it, such a geometrical figure, is dialectically implied precisely by the notion, in itself, of an average ratio of progress. No one would deny that. Now if a governmental policy of regulating domestic prices is to be arrived at in this or any other country, the moment assigned to the compilation of the index number which will establish the par of interest and prices must obviously be that at which internal economic conditions are in a condition of relative equilibrium. So far so good. I need not remind you that the universally accepted process in connexion with everyday commodities is for their production to be systematised by the relation between their market value and the practicability of producing them, a steep ascent in value in contrast with the decreased practicability of production proportionately stimulating, and a parallel descent correspondingly depressing production. All that is clear enough. The fact that the index number remains at par regardless of alterations in the comparative prices of marketable commodities included in it, necessarily expresses the unavoidable truth that ascent or descent of a specific commodity is compensated by analogous adjustments in the opposite direction in prices of residual commodities …’

How long Widmerpool would have continued to speak on these subjects, it is impossible to say. I think he had settled down in his own mind to make a lengthy speech, whether anyone else present liked it or not. Why he had decided to address the table in this manner was not clear to me. Possibly, he merely desired to rehearse aloud certain economic views of his own, expressing them before an indifferent, even comparatively hostile audience, so that he might judge what minor adjustments ought to be made when the speech was delivered on some far more important occasion. Such an action would not be out of keeping with the eccentric, dogged manner in which he ran his life. At the same time, it was also likely enough that he wanted to impress Le Bas’s Old Boys — those former schoolfellows who had so greatly disregarded him — with the fact that he was getting on in the world in spite of them; that he had already become a person to be reckoned with.

Widmerpool may not even have been conscious of this motive, feeling it only instinctively, for there could be no doubt that he now thought of his schooldays in very different terms from any that his contemporaries would have used. Indeed, such references as he had ever made to his time at school, for example when we had been in France together, always suggested that he saw himself as a boy rather above the average at work and games: that justice had never been done to his energies in either direction was on account of the unsatisfactory manner in which both these sides of life were administered by those in authority

The effect of his discourse on those sitting round the table had been mixed. Fettiplace-Jones’s long, handsome, pasty face assumed a serious, even worried expression, implying neither agreement nor disagreement with what was being said: merely a public indication that, as a Member of Parliament, he was missing nothing. It was as if he were waiting for the Whip’s notification of which way he should vote. Parkinson gave a kind of groan of boredom, which I heard distinctly, although he was separated from me by Templer. Tolland, on the other hand, leant forward as if he feared to miss a syllable. Simson looked very stern. Whitney and Brandreth had begun a whispered conversation together. Maiden, who was next to Widmerpool, was throwing anxious, almost distracted glances about him. Ghika, like Tolland, leant forward. He fixed his huge black eyes on Widmerpool, concentrating absolutely on his words, but whether with interest, or boredom of an intensity that might lead even to physical assault, it was impossible to say. Templer had sat back in his chair, clearly enjoying every phrase to the full. Stringham also expressed his appreciation, though only by the faintest smile, as if he saw all through a cloud. Then, suddenly, the scene was brought abruptly to a close.

‘Look at Le Bas,’ said Templer.

‘It’s a stroke,’ said Tolland.

Afterwards — I mean weeks or months afterwards, when I happened upon any of the party then present, or heard the incident discussed — there was facetious comment suggesting that Le Bas’s disabling attack had been directly brought about by Widmerpool’s speech. Certainly no one was in a position categorically to deny that there was no connection whatever between Widmerpool’s conduct and Le Bas’s case. Knowing Le Bas, I have no doubt that he was sitting in his chair, bitterly regretting that he was no longer in a position to order Widmerpool to sit down at once. That would have been natural enough. A sudden pang of impotent rage may even have contributed to other elements in bringing on his seizure. But that was to take rather a melodramatic view. More probably, the atmosphere of the room, full of cigar smoke and fumes of food and wine, had been too much for him. Besides, the weather had grown distinctly hotter as the night wore on. Le Bas himself had always been a great opener of windows. He would insist on plenty of fresh air on the coldest winter day at early school in any room in which he was teaching. His ordinary life had not accustomed him to gatherings of this sort, which he only had to face once a year. No doubt he had always been an abstemious man, in spite of Templer’s theory, held at school, that our housemaster was a secret drinker. That night he had possibly taken more wine than he was accustomed. He was by then getting on in years, though no more than in his sixties. The precise cause of his collapse was never known to me. These various elements probably all played a part.

Lying back in his chair, his cheeks flushed and eyes closed, one side of Le Bas’s face was slightly contorted. Fettiplace-Jones and Maiden must have taken in the situation at once, because I had scarcely turned in Le Bas’s direction before these two had picked him up and carried him into the next room. Widmerpool followed close behind them. There was some confusion when people rose from the table. I followed the rest through the door to the anteroom, where Le Bas was placed full-length on the settee. Somebody had removed his collar.

This had probably been done by Brandreth, who now took charge. Brandreth, whose father had acquired a baronetcy as an ear-specialist, was himself a doctor. He began immediately to assure everyone that Le Bas’s condition was not serious.

‘The best thing you fellows can do is to clear off home and leave the room as empty as possible,’ Brandreth said. ‘I don’t want all of you crowding round.’

Like most successful medical men in such circumstances, he spoke as if the matter had now automatically passed from the sphere of Le Bas’s indisposition to the far more important one of Brandreth’s own professional convenience. Clearly there was something to be said for following his recommendation. Brandreth seemed to be handling the matter competently, and, after a while, all but the more determined began to disappear from the room. Tolland made a final offer to help before leaving, but Brandreth snapped at him savagely and he made off; no doubt to appear again the following year. I wondered how he filled in the time between Old Boy dinners.

‘I shall have to be going, Nick,’ said Templer. ‘I have to get back to the country tonight.’

‘This dinner seems to have been rather a fiasco.’

‘Probably my fault,’ said Templer. ‘Le Bas never liked me. However, I think it was really Widmerpool this time. What’s happened to him, by the way? I never had my chat about Bob.’

Widmerpool was no longer in the room. Maiden said he had gone off to ring up the place where Le Bas was staying, and warn them what had happened. By then Le Bas was sitting up and drinking a glass of water.

‘Well, fixing old Bob up will have to wait,’ said Templer. ‘I want to do it for Jean’s sake. I’m afraid you had to listen to a lot of stuff about my matrimonial affairs tonight.’

‘What are your plans?’

‘Haven’t got any. I’ll ring up some time.’

Templer went off. I looked round for Stringham, thinking I would like a word with him before leaving. It was a long time since we had met, and I was not due to arrive at Jean’s until late. Stringham was not in the small group that remained. I supposed he had left; probably making his way to some other entertainment. There was nothing surprising in that. In any case, it was unlikely that we should have done more than exchange a few conventional sentences, even had he remained to talk for a minute or two. I knew little or nothing of how he lived since his divorce. His mother’s picture still appeared from time to time in the illustrated papers. No doubt her house in the country provided some sort of permanent background into which he could retire when desirable.

On the way out, I glanced by chance through the door leading to the room where we had dined. Stringham was still sitting in his place at the table, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. The dining-room was otherwise deserted. I went through the door and took the chair beside him.

‘Hullo, Nick.’

‘Are you going to sit here all night?’

‘Precisely the idea that occurred to me.’

‘Won’t it be rather gloomy?’

‘Not as bad as when they were all here. Shall we order another bottle?’

‘Let’s have a drink at my club.’

‘Or my flat. I don’t want to look at any more people.’

‘Where is your flat?’

‘West Halkin Street.’

‘All right. I shan’t be able to stay long.’

‘Up to no good?’

‘That’s it.’

‘I haven’t seen you for ages, Nick.’

‘Not for ages.’

‘You know my wife, Peggy, couldn’t take it. I expect you heard. Not surprising, perhaps. She has married an awfully nice chap now. Peggy is a really lucky girl now. A really charming chap. Not the most amusing man you ever met, but a really nice chap.’

‘A relation of hers, isn’t he?’

‘Quite so. A relation of hers, too. He will be already familiar with all those lovely family jokes of the Stepney family, those very amusing jokes. He will not have to have the points explained to him. When he stays at Mountfichet, he will know where all the lavatories are — if there is, indeed, more than one, a matter upon which I cannot speak with certainty. Anyway, he will not always have to be bothering the butler to direct him to where that one is — and losing his way in that awful no-man’s-land between the servants’ hall and the gun-room. What a house! Coronets on the table napkins, but no kind hearts between the sheets. He will be able to discuss important historical events with my ex-father-in-law, such as the fact that Red Eyes and Cypria dead-heated for the Cesarewitch in 1893—or was it 1894? I shall forget my own name next. He will be able to talk to my ex-mother-in-law about the time Queen Alexandra made that double entendre to her uncle. The only thing he won’t be able to do is to talk about Braque and Dufy with my ex-sister-in-law, Anne. Still, that’s a small matter. Plenty of people about to talk to girls of Braque and Dufy these days. I heard, by the way, that Anne had got a painter of her own by now, so perhaps even Braque and Dufy are things of the past. Anyway, he’s a jolly nice chap and Peggy is a very lucky girl.’

‘Anne has married Dicky Urtifraville.’

‘Not the Dicky Umfraville?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well I never.’

Even that did not make much impression on him. The fact that he had not already heard of Anne Stepney’s marriage suggested that Stringham must pass weeks at a time in a state in which he took in little or nothing of what was going on round him. That could be the only explanation of ignorance of an event with which he had such close connexions.

‘Shall we make a move?’

‘Where is Peter Templer? I saw his face — sometimes two or three of them — during that awful dinner. We might bring him along as well. Always feel a bit guilty about Peter.’

‘He has gone home.’

‘I bet he hasn’t. He’s gone after some girl. Always chasing the girls. Let’s follow him.’

‘He lives near Maidenhead.’

‘Too far. He must be mad. Is he married?’

‘His wife has just left him.’

‘There you are. Women are all the same. My wife left me. Has your wife left you, Nick?’

‘I’m not married.’

‘Lucky man. Who was Peter’s wife, as they say?’

‘A model called Mona.’

‘Sounds like the beginning of a poem. Well, I should have thought better of her. One of those long-haired painter fellows must have got her into bad habits. Leaving her husband, indeed. She oughtn’t to have left Peter. I was always very fond of Peter. It was his friends I couldn’t stand.’

‘Let’s go.’

‘Look here, do let’s have another drink. What happened to Le Bas?’

‘He is going to be taken home in an ambulance.’

‘Is he too tight to walk?’

‘He had a stroke.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘No — Brandreth is looking after him.’

‘What an awful fate. Why Brandreth?’

‘Brandreth is a doctor.’

‘Hope I’m never ill when Brandreth is about, or he might look after me. I’m not feeling too good at the moment as a matter of fact. Perhaps we’d better go, or Brandreth will start treating me too. It was Widmerpool’s speech, of course. Knocked Le Bas out. Knocked him out cold. Nearly knocked me out too. Do you remember when we got Le Bas arrested?’

‘Let’s go to your flat.’

‘West Halkin Street. Where I used to live before I was married. Surely you’ve been there.’

‘No.’

‘Ought to have asked you, Nick. Ought to have asked you. Been very remiss about things like that.’

He was extremely drunk, but his legs seemed fairly steady beneath him. We went upstairs and out into the street.

‘Taxi?’

‘No,’ said Stringham. ‘Let’s walk for a bit. I want to cool off. It was bloody hot in there. I don’t wonder Le Bas had a stroke.’

There was a rich blue sky over Piccadilly. The night was stiflingly hot. Stringham walked with almost exaggerated sobriety. It was remarkable considering the amount he had drunk.

‘Why did you have so many drinks tonight?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I do sometimes. Rather often nowadays, as a matter of fact. I felt I couldn’t face Le Bas and his Old Boys without an alcoholic basis of some sort. Yet for some inexplicable reason I wanted to go. That was why I had a few before I arrived.’

He put out his hand and touched the railings of the Green Park as we passed them.

‘You said you were not married, didn’t you, Nick?’

‘Yes.’

‘Got a nice girl?’

‘Yes.’

‘Take my advice and don’t get married.’

‘All right.’

‘What about Widmerpool. Is he married?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘I’m surprised at that. Widmerpool is the kind of man to attract a woman. A good, sensible man with no nonsense about him. In that overcoat he used to wear he would be irresistible. Quite irresistible. Do you remember that overcoat?’

‘It was before my time.’

‘It’s a frightful shame,’ said Stringham. ‘A frightful shame, the way these women go on. They are all the same. They leave me. They leave Peter. They will probably leave you. … I say, Nick, I am feeling extraordinarily odd. I think I will just sit down here for a minute or two.’

I thought he was going to collapse and took his arm. However, he settled down in a sitting position on the edge of the stone coping from which the railings rose.

‘Long, deep breaths,’ he said. ‘Those are the things.’

‘Come on, let’s try and get a cab.’

‘Can’t, old boy. I just feel too, too sleepy to get a cab.’

As it happened, there seemed to be no taxis about at that moment. In spite of what must have been the intense discomfort of where he sat, Stringham showed signs of dropping off to sleep, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the railings. It was difficult to know what to do. In this state he could hardly reach his flat on foot. If a taxi appeared, he might easily refuse to enter it. I remembered how once at school he had sat down on a staircase and refused to move, on the grounds that so many annoying things had happened that afternoon that further struggle against life was useless. This was just such another occasion. Even when sober, he possessed that complete recklessness of behaviour that belongs to certain highly strung persons. I was still looking down at him, trying to decide on the next step, when someone spoke just behind me.

‘Why is Stringham sitting there like that?’

It was Widmerpool’s thick, accusing voice. He asked the question with a note of authority that suggested his personal responsibility to see that people did not sit about in Piccadilly at night.

‘I stayed to make sure everything was done about Le Bas that should be done,’ he said. ‘I think Brandreth knows his job. I gave him my address in case of difficulties. It was a disagreeable thing to happen. The heat, I suppose. It ruined the few words I was about to say. A pity. I thought I would have a breath of fresh air after what we had been through, but the night is very warm even here in the open.’

He said all this with his usual air of immense importance.

‘The present problem is how to get Stringham to his flat.’

‘What is wrong with him? I wonder if it is the same as Le Bas. Perhaps something in the food—’

Widmerpool was always ready to feel disturbed regarding any question of health. In France he had been a great consumer of patent medicines. He looked nervously at Stringham. I saw that he feared the attack of some mysterious sickness that might soon infect himself.

‘Stringham has had about a gallon to drink.’

‘How foolish of him.’

I was about to make some reply to the effect that the speeches had needed something to wash them down with, but checked any such comment since Widmerpool’s help was obviously needed to get Stringham home, and I thought it better not to risk offending him. I therefore muttered something that implied agreement.

‘Where does he live?’

‘West Halkin Street.’

Widmerpool acted quickly. He strolled to the kerb. A cab seemed to rise out of the earth at that moment. Perhaps all action, even summoning a taxi when none is there, is basically a matter of the will. Certainly there had been no sign of a conveyance a second before. Widmerpool made a curious, pumping movement, using the whole of his arm, as if dragging down the taxi by a rope. It drew up in front of us. Widmerpool turned towards Stringham, whose eyes were still closed.

‘Take the other arm,’ he said, peremptorily.

Although he made no resistance, this intervention aroused Stringham. He began to speak very quietly:

‘Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide,

And wash my Body whence the Life has died …’

We shoved him on to the back seat, where he sat between us, still murmuring to himself:

‘… And lay me shrouded in the living leaf

By some not unfrequented garden-side …

I think that’s quite a good description of the Green Park, Nick, don’t you…. “Some not unfrequented garden-side^-’ … Wish I sat here more often … Jolly nice….’

‘Does he habitually get in this state?’ Widmerpool asked.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for years.’

‘I thought you were a close friend of his. You used to be — at school.’

‘That’s a long time ago.’

Widmerpool seemed aggrieved at the news that Stringham and I no longer saw each other regularly. Once decided in his mind on a given picture of what some aspect of life was like, he objected to any modification of the design. He possessed an absolutely rigid view of human relationships. Into this, imagination scarcely entered, and whatever was lost in grasping the niceties of character was amply offset by a simplification of practical affairs. Occasionally, it was true. I had known Widmerpool involved in situations which were extraordinary chiefly because they were entirely misunderstood, but on the whole he probably gained more than he lost by these limitations; at least in the spheres that attracted him. Stringham now lay between us, as if fast asleep.

‘Where is he working at present?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It was a good thing he left Donners-Brebner,’ said Widmerpool. ‘He was doing neither himself nor the company any good.’

‘Bill Truscott has gone, too, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ said Widmerpool, looking straight ahead of him. ‘Truscott had become very interested in the byproducts of coal and found it advantageous to make a change.’

We got Stringham out of the taxi on arrival without much difficulty and found his latchkey in a waistcoat pocket. Inside the flat, I was immediately reminded of his room at school. There were the eighteenth-century prints of the racehorses, Trimalchio and the The Pharisee; the same large, rather florid photograph of his mother: a snapshot of his father still stuck in the corner of its frame. However, the picture of ‘Boffles’ Stringham — as I now thought of him after meeting Dicky Umfraville — showed a decidedly older man than the pipe-smoking, open-shirted figure I remembered from the earlier snapshot. The elder Stringham, looking a bit haggard and wearing a tie, sat on a seat beside a small, energetic, rather brassy lady, presumably his French wife. He had evidently aged considerably. I wondered if friendship with Dicky Umfraville had had anything to do with this. Opposite these photographs was a drawing by Modigliani, and an engraving of a seventeenth-century mansion done in the style of Wenceslaus Hollar. This was Glimber, the Warringtons’ house, left to Stringham’s mother during her lifetime by her first husband. On another wall was a set of coloured prints illustrating a steeplechase ridden by monkeys mounted on dogs.

‘What are we going to do with him?’

‘Put him to bed,’ said Widmerpool, speaking as if any other action were inconceivable.

Widmerpool and I, therefore, set out to remove String ham’s clothes, get him into some pyjamas, and place him between the sheets. This was a more difficult job than might be supposed. His stiff shirt seemed riveted to him. However, we managed to get it off at last, though not without tearing it. In these final stages, Stringham himself returned to consciousness.

‘Look here,’ he said, suddenly sitting up on the bed, ‘what is happening? People seem to be treating me roughly. Am I being thrown out of somewhere? If so, where? And what have I done to deserve such treatment? I am perfectly prepared to listen to reason and admit that I was in the wrong, and pay for anything I have broken. That is provided, of course, that I was in the wrong. Nick, why are you letting this man hustle me? I seem for some reason to be in bed in the middle of the afternoon. Really, my habits get worse and worse. I am even now full of good resolutions for getting up at half-past seven every morning. But who is this man? I know his face.’

‘It’s Widmerpool. You remember Widmerpool?’

‘Remember Widmerpool…’ said Stringham. ‘Remember Widmerpool… Do I remember Widmerpool? … How could I ever forget Widmerpool? … How could anybody forget Widmerpool? …’

‘We thought you needed help, Stringham,’ said Widmerpool, in a very matter-of-fact voice. ‘So we put you to bed.’

‘You did, did you?’

Stringham lay back in the bed, looking fixedly before him. His manner was certainly odd, but his utterance was no longer confused.

‘You needed a bit of looking after,’ said Widmerpool.

‘That time is past,’ said Stringham.

He began to get out of bed.

‘No…’

Widmerpool took a step forward. He made as if to restrain Stringham from leaving the bed, holding both his stubby hands in front of him, as if warming them before a fire.

‘Look here,’ said Stringham, ‘I must be allowed to get in and out of my own bed. That is a fundamental human right. Other people’s beds may be another matter. In them, another party is concerned. But ingress and egress of one’s own bed is unassailable.’

‘Much better stay where you are,’ said Widmerpool, in a voice intended to be soothing.

‘Nick, are you a party to this?’

‘Why not call it a day?’

‘Take my advice,’ said Widmerpool. ‘We know what is best for you.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘For your own good.’

‘I haven’t got my own good at heart.’

‘We will get you anything you want.’

‘Curse your charity.’

Once more Stringham attempted to get out of the bed. He had pushed the clothes back, when Widmerpool threw himself on top of him, holding Stringham bodily there. While they struggled together, Stringham began to yell at the top of his voice.

‘So these are the famous Widmerpool good manners, are they?’ he shouted. ‘This is the celebrated Widmerpool courtesy, of which we have always heard so much. Here is the man who posed as another Lord Chesterfield. Let me go, you whited sepulchre, you serpent, you small-time Judas, coming to another man’s house in the guise of paying a social call, and then holding him down in his own bed.’

The scene was so grotesque that I began to laugh; not altogether happily, it was true, but at least as some form of nervous relief. The two of them wrestling together were pouring with sweat, especially Widmerpool, who was the stronger. He must have been quite powerful, for Stringham was fighting like a maniac. The bed creaked and rocked as if it would break beneath them. And then, quite suddenly, Stringham began laughing too. He laughed and laughed, until he could struggle no more. The combat ceased. Widmerpool stepped back. Stringham lay gasping on the pillows.

‘All right,’ he said, still shaking with laughter, ‘I’ll stay. To tell the truth, I am beginning to feel the need for a little rest myself.’

Widmerpool, whose tie had become twisted in the struggle, straightened his clothes. His dinner-jacket looked more extraordinary than ever. He was panting hard.

‘Is there anything you would like?’ he asked in a formal voice.

‘Yes,’ said Stringham, whose mood was now completely changed. ‘A couple of those little pills in the box on the left of the dressing-table. They will knock me out finally. I do dislike waking at four and thinking things over. Perhaps three of the pills would be wiser, on second thoughts. Half measures are never any good.’

He was getting sleepy again, and spoke in a flat, mechanical tone. All his excitement was over. We gave him the sleeping tablets. He took them, turned away from us, and rolled over on his side.

‘Good-night, all,’ he said.

‘Good-night, Charles.’

‘Good-night, Stringham,’ said Widmerpool, rather severely.

We perfunctorily tidied some of the mess in the immediate neighbourhood of the bed. Stringham’s clothes were piled on a chair. Then we made our way down into the street.

‘Great pity for a man to drink like that,’ said Widmerpool.

I did not answer, largely because I was thinking of other matters: chiefly of how strange a thing it was that I myself should have been engaged in a physical conflict designed to restrict Stringham’s movements: a conflict in which the moving spirit had been Widmerpool. That suggested a whole social upheaval: a positively cosmic change in life’s system. Widmerpool, once so derided by all of us, had become in some mysterious manner a person of authority. Now, in a sense, it was he who derided us; or at least his disapproval had become something far more powerful than the merely defensive weapon it had once seemed.

I remembered that we were not far from the place where formerly Widmerpool had run into Mr. Deacon and Gypsy Jones on the night of the Huntercombes’ dance. Then he had been on his way to a flat in Victoria. I asked if he still lived there with his mother.

‘Still there,’ he said. ‘Though we are always talking of moving. It has great advantages, you know. You must come and see us. You have been there in the past, haven’t you?’

‘I dined with you and your mother once.’

‘Of course. Miss Walpole-Wilson was at dinner, wasn’t she? I remember her saying afterwards that you did not seem a very serious young man.’

‘I saw her brother the other day at the Isbister Retrospective Exhibition.’

‘I do not greatly care for the company of Sir Gavin,’ said Widmerpool. ‘I dislike failure, especially failure in one holding an official position. It is letting all of us down. But — as I was saying — we shall be rather occupied with my new job for a time, so that I expect we shall not be doing much entertaining. When we have settled down, you must come and see us again.’

I was not sure if his ‘we’ was the first person plural of royalty and editors, or whether he spoke to include his mother; as if Mrs. Widmerpool were already a partner with him in his bill-broking. We said good-night, and I wished him luck in the Acceptance World. It was time to make for Jean’s. She was reaching London by a late train that evening, again lodged in the flat at the back of Rutland Gate.

On the way there I took from my pocket the postcard she had sent telling me when to arrive. I read it over, as I had already done so many times that day. There was no mistake. I should be there at the time she asked. The events of the evening seemed already fading into unreality at the prospect of seeing her once more.

The card she had sent was of French origin, in colour, showing a man and woman seated literally one on top of the other in an armchair upholstered with crimson plush. These two exchanged ardent glances. They were evidently on the best of terms, because the young man, fair, though at the same time rather Semitic of feature, was squeezing the girl’s arm just above the elbow. Wearing a suit of rich brown material, a tartan tie and a diamond ring on the third finger of his right hand, his face, as he displayed a row of dazzling teeth, reminded me of Prince Theodoric’s profile — as the Prince might have been painted by Isbister. The girl smiled back approvingly as she balanced on his knee.

‘Doesn’t she look like Mona?’ Jean had written on the back. Dark, with corkscrew curls, the girl was undeniably pretty, dressed in a pink frock, its short sleeves frilled with white, the whole garment, including the frills, covered with a pattern of small black spots. The limits of the photograph caused her legs to fade suddenly from the picture, an unexpected subordination of design created either to conceal an impression of squatness, or possibly a purely visual effect — the result of foreshortening — rather than because these lower limbs failed in the eyes of the photographer to attain a required standard of elegance. For whichever reason, the remaining free space at the foot of the postcard was sufficient to allow the title of the caption below to be printed in long, flourishing capitals:

Sex Appeal

Ton regard et ta voix ont un je ne sais quoi …

D’étrange et de troublant qui me met en émoi.

Although in other respects a certain emptiness of background suggested a passage or hall, dim reflections of looking-glass set above a shelf painted white seemed to belong to a dressing-table: a piece of furniture hinting, consequently, of bedrooms. To the left, sprays of artificial flowers, red and yellow, drooped from the mouth of a large vase of which the base was invisible. This gigantic vessel assumed at first sight the proportions of a wine vat or sepulchral urn, even one of those legendary jars into which Morgiana, in the Arabian Nights, poured boiling oil severally on the Forty Thieves: a public rather than private ornament, it might be thought, decorating presumably the bedroom, if bedroom it was, of a hotel. Indeed, the style of furnishing was reminiscent of the Ufford.

Contemplating the blended tones of pink and brown framed within the postcard’s scalloped edge of gold, one could not help thinking how extraordinarily unlike ‘the real thing’ was this particular representation of a pair of lovers; indeed, how indifferently, at almost every level except the highest, the ecstasies and bitterness of love are at once conveyed in art. So much of the truth remains finally unnegotiable; in spite of the fact that most persons in love go through remarkably similar experiences. Here, in the picture, for example, implications were misleading, if not positively inaccurate. The matter was presented as all too easy, the twin flames of dual egotism reduced almost to nothing, so that there was no pain; and, for that matter, almost no pleasure. A sense of anxiety, without which the condition could scarcely be held to exist, was altogether absent.

Yet, after all, even the crude image of the postcard depicted with at least a degree of truth one side of love’s outward appearance. That had to be admitted. Some of love was like the picture. I had enacted such scenes with Jean: Templer with Mona: now Mona was enacting them with Quiggin: Barnby and Umfraville with Anne Stepney: Stringham with her sister Peggy: Peggy now in the arms of her cousin: Uncle Giles, very probably, with Mrs. Erdleigh: Mrs. Erdleigh with Jimmy Stripling: Jimmy Stripling, if it came to that, with Jean: and Duport, too.

The behaviour of the lovers in the plush armchair beside the sparse heads of those sad flowers was perfectly normal; nor could the wording of the couplet be blamed as specially far-fetched, or in some other manner indefensible. ‘D’étrange et de troublant’ were epithets, so far as they went, perfectly appropriate in their indication of those indefinable, mysterious emotions that love arouses. In themselves there was nothing incongruous in such descriptive labels. They might, indeed, be regarded as rather apt. I could hardly deny that I was at that moment experiencing something of the sort.

The mere act of a woman sitting on a man’s knee, rather than a chair, certainly suggested the Templer milieu. A memorial to Templer himself, in marble or bronze, were public demand ever to arise for so unlikely a cenotaph, might suitably take the form of a couple so grouped. For some reason — perhaps a confused memory of Le Baiser — the style of Rodin came to mind. Templer’s own point of view seemed to approximate to that earlier period of the plastic arts. Unrestrained emotion was the vogue then, treatment more in his line than some of the bleakly intellectual statuary of our own generation.

Even allowing a fairly limited concession to its character as a kind of folk perception — an eternal girl sitting on an eternal young man’s knee — the fact remained that an infinity of relevant material had been deliberately omitted from this vignette of love in action. These two supposedly good-looking persons were, in effect, going through the motions of love in such a manner as to convince others, perhaps less well equipped for the struggle than themselves, that they, too, the spectators, could be easily identified with some comparable tableau. They, too, could sit embracing on crimson chairs. Although hard to define with precision the exact point at which a breach of honesty had occurred, there could be no doubt that this performance included an element of the confidence-trick.

The night was a shade cooler now. Jean was wearing a white blouse, or sports shirt, open at the neck. Beneath it, her body trembled a little.

‘What was your dinner like?’ she asked.

‘Peter turned up.’

‘He said he would probably go there.’

I told her about Le Bas; and also about Stringham.

‘That is why I am a bit late.’

‘Did Peter mention that Bob is back in England?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that his prospects are not too bad?’

‘Yes.’

‘That may make difficulties.’

‘I know.’

‘Don’t let’s talk of them.’

‘No.’

‘Darling Nick.’

Outside, a clock struck the hour. Though ominous, things still had their enchantment. After all, as St. John Clarke was reported to have said at the Huntercombes’, ‘All blessings are mixed blessings.’ Perhaps, in spite of everything, the couple of the postcard could not be dismissed so easily. It was in their world that I seemed now to find myself.