At Lady Molly's (25 page)

‘Of course, of course. You can’t say. I quite understand. Pity you weren’t at the last one. Nice to feel that we …’

Exact expression of what it was nice for both of us to feel either evaded him, or was too precarious a sentiment to express in words. He merely nodded his head several times. Then he made for the door. Members sighed. He was in a bad humour.

‘What on earth is this party?’ he said in a low voice. ‘Did that man say something about your being engaged?’

‘Yes. I am engaged.’

‘To whom?’

‘Isobel Tolland—over there.’

‘Congratulations,’ said Members, without any exaggerated effusiveness, as if he disapproved of any such step in principle. ‘Many congratulations. I was stuck with that appalling bore for about twenty minutes. It was impossible to get away. Is he absolutely right in the head? What a strange house this is. I met Lady Molly Jeavons quite a long time ago at the Manaschs’. She asked me to come and see her. I called once or twice, but no one answered the bell, though I rang half a dozen times—and knocked too. Then she suddenly telephoned this invitation to me yesterday. She never mendoned your name. I did not think it would be quite like this.’

‘It is often different. You never know what it is going to be.’

‘Have you met her husband?’ said Members, quite plaintively. ‘I talked to him for a while when I first arrived. He asked me if I ever played snooker. Then he introduced me to the man you found me with.’

By then Members had several jobs of a literary kind which, since he was still a bachelor, must bring him in a respectable income. His American trip was said to have been a success. He no longer wrote verse with Freudian undertones, and he had abandoned anything so extreme as Quiggin’s professional ‘communism’, in the wake of which he had for a while half-heartedly trailed. Now he tended to be associated with German literature. Kleist; Grillparzer: Stifter: those were names to be caught on the echoes of his conversadon. Latterly, he was believed to be more taken up with Kierkegaard, then a writer not widely read in this country. Members, no fool, was always a little ahead of the fashion. He was a lively talker when not oppressed, as at that moment, by a party he did not enjoy. His distinguished appearance and terse manner made him a popular spare man at intellectual dinners. ‘But one really does not want to eat amateur
paella
and drink Chelsea Médoc for ever,’ he used to say: a world into which he felt himself somewhat rudely thrust immediately after losing his job as secretary to St. John Clarke. For a time now Members had been reappearing, so it was said, in the rather more elegant of the circles frequented by the famous novelist before his conversion to Marxism. In the light of this effort to maintain and expand his social life, Members found the Jeavons house a disappointment. He had expected something more grandiose. I tried to explain the household, but was glad when he brushed this aside, because I wanted to ask if he knew further details about Erridge and Mona. Members turned almost with relief to this subject.

‘Of course I knew J.G. had got hold of Lord Warminster,’ he said impatiently. ‘Surely everyone has known that for a long time. We had dinner together before I went to America. J.G. told me about the magazine he hoped to persuade Warminster to start. I saw at once that nothing would come of it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Warminster is too much of a crank.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘No, but I know of him.’

‘How did the Mona situation arise?’

All at once Members was on his guard.

‘But there is every prospect of Warminster becoming your brother-in-law, isn’t there?’

‘Most certainly there is.’

Members laughed, not in his most friendly manner, and remained silent.

‘Come on—out with it,’ I said.

We had by then known each other for a long time. It was not an occasion to stand on ceremony, as Members was well aware. He thought for a second or two, pondering whether it would be preferable to circulate a good piece of gossip, or to tease more effectively by withholding any information he might himself possess. In the end he decided that communication of the news would be more pleasurable.

‘You know what Mona is,’ he said.

He smiled maliciously; for although, so far as I knew, there had never ‘been much’ between them, he had known Mona years before her association with Quiggin; in fact I had first set eyes on Mona in the company of Members at Mr. Deacon’s birthday party.

‘She was altogether too much for Erridge, was she?’ I asked. ‘When she struck.’

‘Erridge?’

‘For Warminster, I mean—his family call him Erridge.’

‘Yes, Mona was too much for him. I don’t think things got very far. Some sort of an assignation. J.G. found out about it. The next thing was the two of them had gone off together.’

‘How has J.G. taken it?’

‘He was full of
gêne
at first. You know she had a stranglehold on him, I am sure. Now that he has cooled down, he is really rather flattered, as well as being furious.’

‘Were they married?’

‘No.’

‘Is that certain?’

‘Absolutely.’

I should have liked to hear more, but at that moment Jeavons came up to us. He took an unfamiliar object from his coat pocket, and held it towards me.

‘A present?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That reminds me we’ll have to get you one, I suppose. Anyway, that’s Molly’s job. This is just for you to see. You might even want to buy one for yourself.’

‘What is it?’

‘Guess.’

‘I don’t like to say the word in company.’

Jeavons extended his clasped fist towards Members, who shook his head angrily and turned away.

‘For your car,’ urged Jeavons.

‘I haven’t got a car,’ said Members.

He was thoroughly cross.

‘What do you really do with it?’ I asked.

‘Fix it on to the carburettor—then you use less petrol.’

‘What’s the point?’

‘Save money, of course. Are you a bloody millionaire, or what?’

Molly drew near our group as she crossed the room to refill one of the jugs of drink. She saw what Jeavons was doing and laid a hand on his arm.

‘You’ll never sell Nicholas one of those things,’ she said. ‘Nor Mr. Members, either, I’m sure. I don’t myself think you will sell it to anyone, darling.’

She moved on.

‘It is called an atomiser,’ said Jeavons, slowly, as if he were about to lecture troops upon some mechanical device. ‘It saves thirty-three and a third consumption per mile. I don’t expect it really saves you that for a moment, as a matter of fact. Why should it? Everybody would have one otherwise. It stands to reason. Still, you never know. It might do some good. Worth trying, I suppose.’

He spoke without great conviction, gazing for a time at the object in his open palm. Then he returned it to his coat pocket, fumbling about for some time, and at last bringing out a tattered packet of Gold Flake. He nicked up one of the cigarettes with his thumb, and offered it to each of us in turn.

‘Well,’ he said to me, ‘so you are going to get married.’

Members watched him with absolute horror. Jeavons, I was sure, was wholly unaware of the poor impression he was making. Members could stand it no longer.

‘I think I must go now,’ he said. ‘I have another party I have to look in on. It was kind of Lady Molly and yourself to ask me.’

‘Not at all,’ said Jeavons. ‘Glad to see you. Come again.’

He watched Members leave the room, as if he had never before seen anyone at all like him. His cigarette remained unlighted in his mouth.

‘Odd bloke,’ he said. ‘I feel shocking this afternoon. Had too much lunch. Red in the face. Distended stomach. Self-inflicted wounds, of course.’

We talked together for a minute or two. Then Jeavons wandered off among the guests. By then General and Mrs. Conyers had arrived. I went across the room to speak to them.

They had come up from the country the day before. After making the conventional remarks about my engagement, Mrs. Conyers was removed by Molly to be introduced to some new acquaintance of hers. I was left with the General. He seemed in excellent form, although at the same time giving the impression that he was restless about something: had a problem on his mind. All at once he took me by the arm. ‘I want a word with you, Nicholas,’ he said, in his deep, though always unexpectedly mild, voice. ‘Can’t we get out of this damned, milling crowd of people for a minute or two?’

The Jeavonses’guests habitually flowed into every room in the house, so that to retire to talk, for example in Molly’s bedroom, or Jeavons’s dressing-room, would be considered not at all unusual. We moved, in fact, a short way up the stairs into a kind of boudoir of Molly’s, constricted in space and likely to attract only people who wanted to enjoy a heart-to-heart talk together: a place chiefly given over to cats, two or three of which sat in an ill-humoured group at angles to one another, stirring with disapproval at this invasion of their privacy. I had no idea what the General could wish to say, even speculating for an instant as to whether he was about to offer some piece of advice—too confidential and esoteric to risk being overheard—regarding the conduct of married life. The period of engagement is one when you are at the mercy of all who wish to proffer counsel, and experience already prepared me for the worst. The truth turned out to be more surprising.

As soon as we were alone together, the General sat down on a chair in front of the writing-table, straightening out his leg painfully. It still seemed to be giving trouble. Alone with him, I became aware of that terrible separateness which difference of age imposes between individuals. Perhaps feeling something of this burden himself, he began at first to speak of his own advancing years.

‘I’m beginning to find all this standing about at Buck House a bit of a strain,’ he said. ‘Not so young as I was. Dropped my eyeglass not so long ago in one of the anterooms at St. James’s and had to get a fellow who was standing beside me to pick it up for me. Secretary from the Soviet Embassy. Perfectly civil. Just couldn’t get down that far myself. Afraid I’d drop my axe too, if I tried. Still, although I’m getting on in life, I’ve had a good run for my money. Seen some odd things at one time or another.’

He moved his leg again, and groaned a bit. I always had the impression that he liked talking about his appearances at Court.

‘I’m a great believer in people knowing the truth,’ he said. ‘Always have been.’

Without seeing at all clearly where this maxim would lead us, I agreed that truth was best.

‘Something happened the other day,’ said the General, ‘that struck me as interesting. Damned interesting. Got on my mind a bit, especially as I had been reading about that kind of thing. Odd coincidence, I mean. The fact is, you are the only fellow I can tell.’

By that time I began to feel even a little uneasy, having no idea at all what might be coming next.

‘When you came to tea with us not so long ago, I told you I had been reading about this business of psychoanalysis. Don’t tie myself down to Freud. Jung has got some interesting stuff too. No point in an amateur like myself being dogmatic about something he knows little or nothing about. Just make a fool of yourself. Don’t you agree?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Well, a rather interesting illustration of some of the points I’d been reading about happened to come my way the other day. Care to hear about it?’

‘I should like to very much indeed.’

‘In connexion with this fellow you say you were at school with—this fellow Widmerpool—who wanted to marry my sister-in-law, Mildred.’

‘I hear the engagement is off.’

‘You knew that already?’

‘I was told so the other day.’

‘Common knowledge, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Know why it’s off?’

‘No. But I wasn’t altogether surprised.’

‘Nor was I, but it is an odd story. Not to be repeated, of course. Happened during their stay at Dogdene. Perhaps you’ve heard about that too?’

‘I knew they were going to Dogdene.’

‘Ever stopped there yourself?’

‘No. I’ve never met either of the Sleafords.’

‘I was once able to do Geoffrey Sleaford a good turn in South Africa,’ said the General. ‘He was A.D.C. to the Divisional Commander, and a more bone-headed fellow I never came across. Sleaford—or Fines, as he was then—had landed in a mess over some mislaid papers. I got him out of it. He is a stupid fellow, but always grateful. Made a point of trying out our poodle dogs at his shoots. Then Bertha knew Alice Sleaford as a girl. Went to the same dancing class. Bertha never much cared for her. Still, they get on all right now. Long and the short of it is that we stop at Dogdene from time to time. Uncomfortable place nowadays. Those parterres are very fine, of course. Alice Sleaford takes an interest in the garden. Wonderful fruit in the hot-houses. Then there is the Veronese. Geoffrey Sleaford has been advised to have it cleaned, but won’t hear of it. Young fellow called Smethyck told him. Smethyck saw our Van Troost and said it was certainly genuine. Nice things at Dogdene, some of them, but I could name half a dozen houses in England I’d rather stop at.’

None of this seemed to be getting us much further so far as Widmerpool was concerned. I waited for development. General Conyers did not intend to be hurried. I suspected that he might regard this narrative he was unfolding in so leisurely a manner as the last good story of his life; one that he did not propose to squander in the telling. That was reasonable enough.

‘I was not best pleased,’ he said, ‘when Bertha told me we had been asked to Dogdene at the same time as Mildred and her young man. I know the Sleafords don’t have many people to stop. All the same it would have been quite easy to have invited some of their veterans. Even had us there by ourselves. Just like Alice Sleaford to arrange something like that. Hasn’t much tact. All the same, I thought it would be a chance to get to know something about Widmerpool. After all, he was going to be my brother-in-law. Got to put up with your relations. Far better know the form from the beginning.’

‘I’ve been seeing Widmerpool on and off for ages,’ I said, hoping to encourage the General’s flow of comment. ‘I really know him quite well.’