Anthony Powell - The Valley of Bones

‘But what on earth is Buster, a sailor, doing at Thrubworth? I thought it was a Corps Headquarters.’

‘Thrubworth isn’t an army set-up any longer. It’s still requisitioned, but they turned the place into one of those frightfully secret inter-service organisations. Buster has dug himself in there.’

‘Are they still letting Erry and Blanche inhabit their end of the house.’

‘Don’t object, so far as I hear.’

No very considerable adjustment had been necessary when Thrubworth had been taken over by the Government at the beginning of the war. Erridge, in any case, had been living in only a small part of the mansion (seventeenth-century brick, fronted in the eighteenth century with stone), his sister, Blanche, housekeeping for him. Although the place was only twenty or thirty miles from Frederica’s village, there was little or no communication between Erridge and the rest of his family. Since the outbreak of war he had become, so Isobel told me, less occupied than formerly with the practical side of politics, increasingly devoting himself to books about the Anabaptists and revolutionary movements of the Middle Ages.

‘Buster’s a contemporary of mine,’ said Umfraville, ‘a son-of-a-bitch in the top class. I’ve never told you my life story, have I?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You’ll hear it often enough when we become brothers-in-law,’ he said, ‘so I’ll start by revealing only a little now.’

Once more I thought of Odo Stevens.

‘My father bred horses for a living,’ said Umfraville. ‘It was a precarious vocation and his ways were improvident. However, he had the presence of mind to marry the daughter of a fairly well-to-do manufacturer of machinery for the production of elastic webbing. That allowed for a margin of unprofitable deals in bloodstock. If I hadn’t learnt to ride as a boy, I don’t know where I should have been. There was some crazy idea of turning me into a land-agent. Then the war came in 1914 and I got off on my own. Found my way into one of the newly formed Guards battalions. There had been terrific expansion and they didn’t turn up their noses at me and many another like me. In fact some of my brother officers were heels such as you’ve never set eyes on. I never looked back after that. Not until I fell foul of Buster Foxe. If it hadn’t been for Buster, I might have been major-general now, commanding London District, instead of counting myself lucky to be a humble member of its Movement Control staff.’

‘You remained on after the war with a regular commission?’

‘That was it,’ said Umfraville. ‘I expect you’ve heard of a French marshal called Lyautey. Pacified North Africa and all that. Do you know what Lyautey said was the first essential of an officer? Gaiety. That was what Lyautey thought, and he knew his business. His own ideas of gaiety may not have included the charms of the fair sex, but that’s another matter. Well, how much gaiety do you find among most of the palsied crackpots you serve under? Precious little, you can take it from me. It was my intention to master a military career by taking a leaf out of Lyautey’s book — not as regards neglecting the ladies, but in other respects. First of all it worked pretty well.’

‘But what has Buster Foxe to do with Marshal Lyautey?’

‘I’m coming to that,’ said Umfraville. ‘Ever heard of a girl called Dolly Braybrook?’

‘No.’

‘Dolly was my first wife. Absolute stunner. Daughter of a fellow who’d formerly commanded the Regiment. Bloody Braybrook, her father was universally termed throughout the army, and with reason. She wouldn’t have me at first, and who should blame her. Asked her again and again. The answer was always no. Then one day she changed her mind, the way women do. That pertinacity of mine has gone now. All the same, its loss has confirmed my opinion that the older I get, the more attractive I am to women.’

‘It certainly looks like it.’

‘Formerly, there was all that business of “Not tonight, darling, because I don’t love you enough”, then “Not tonight, darling, because I love you too much” — Christ, I’ve been through the whole range of it. The nearest some women get to being faithful to their husband is making it unpleasant for their lover. However, that’s by the way. The point is that Dolly married me in the end.’

‘How long did it last?’

‘A year or two. Happy as the day’s long, at least I was. I’d been appointed adjutant too. Then Buster Foxe appeared on the horizon. He was stationed at Greenwich at the time — the Naval College. I used to play an occasional game of cards with him and other convivial souls when he came up west. What should happen but under my very nose Dolly fell in love with Buster.’

The exaggerated dramatic force employed by Umfraville in presenting his narrative made it hard to know what demeanour best to adopt in listening to the story. Tragedy might at any moment give way to farce, so that the listener had always to keep his wits about him. When I first met Umfraville I had noticed some resemblance to Buster Foxe, now revealed as that similarity companionship in early life confers on people.

‘It was just the moment when the Battalion was moving from Buckingham Gate to Windsor,’ Umfraville said. ‘I had to go with them, of course, while Dolly stayed in London, until we could find somewhere to live. I went up to see her one day. Arrived home. The atmosphere was a shade chilly. The next thing was Dolly told me she wanted a divorce.’

‘A complete surprise?’

‘Old boy, you could have knocked me down with a swizzle-stick. Always the way, of course. Nothing I could say was any good. Dolly was set on marriage to Buster. In the end I agreed. There was no way out. I suppose I might have shot Buster through the head, if I’d got close enough to him, even though it is only the size of a nut. What the hell good would that have done? Besides, I’d have run quite a chance of swinging in this country. It’s not like France, where they expect you to react strongly. So I settled down to do the gentlemanly thing, and provide evidence for Dolly to divorce me. I was quite well ahead with that when Buster found Amy Stringham, Flavia’s mama, was just as anxious to marry him as Dolly was. Now it didn’t take Buster long to work out that marriage to a lady with some very warm South African gold holdings, not to mention a life interest in her first husband Lord Warrington’s estate, stud and country mansion, would be more profitable than a wife like Dolly, one of a large family without a halfpenny to bless herself with. Mrs Stringham was a few years older than Buster, it’s true, but she was none the less a beauty. We all had to admit that.’

Umfraville paused.

‘Next thing I heard,’ he said, ‘was that Dolly had taken an overdose of sleeping pills.’

‘Divorce proceedings had started?’

‘Not so far as that they couldn’t have been put in reverse gear. I suppose Dolly thought it too late in the day to suggest return, though there’s nothing I’d have liked better.’

‘But why did that prevent you from Commanding London District?’

‘That’s a sensible question, old boy. The reason was this. I had to leave the service — abandon my gallant and glorious Regiment. I’ll explain. You see I wasn’t feeling too good after my poor wife Dolly decided to join the angels, and naturally I looked about for someone to console me. Found several, as a matter of fact. The one I liked best was a girl I met one night at the Cavendish called Joy Grant — at least that was her professional name, and a very suitable one too — so I thought I might as well marry her. Of course, there couldn’t be any question of staying in the Regiment, if I married Joy. To begin with, I should have been hard put to it to name a brother officer who hadn’t shared the same idyllic experiences as myself in that respect. I sent in my papers and made up my mind to up stumps and emigrate with my blushing bride. Thought I’d try Kenya, the great open spaces where men are men, as Charles Stringham used to say. Well, Joy and I had scarcely arrived in the hotel at Nairobi when it became abundantly clear we had made a mistake in becoming man and wife. We were already living what’s called a cat-and-dog life. In short, it wasn’t long before she went off with a fellow called Castlemallock, twice her age, who looked like an ostler suffering from a dose of clap.’