Anthony Powell - The Valley of Bones

‘The Corps School of Chemical Warfare is at a house called Castlemallock.’

‘That’s the family. They used to live there until they lost all their money a generation or two ago. Castlemallock himself, marquess or not, was a common little fellow, but what was much worse, so far as he himself was concerned, was the fact that he found he couldn’t perform with Joy in Kenya. He thought it might have something to do with the climate, the altitude, so he took her back to England to see if he could make better going there, or at least consult a competent medical man about getting a shot of something to liven him up occasionally. However, he took too long to find the right specialist, and meanwhile Joy went off with Jo Breen, the jockey, the chap who was suspended one year at Cheltenham for pulling Middlemarch. They keep a pub together now in one of those little places in the Thames Valley, and overcharge you most infamously if you ever drop in for a talk about old times.’

Umfraville paused again. He took out a cigarette case and offered it to me.

‘Now this business of wives departing was beginning to get me down,’ he said. ‘It seemed to be becoming a positive habit. This time, I thought, I’ll be the one to do the cattle rustling, so I removed from him the wife of a District Commissioner. There was no end of trouble about that. When I previously found myself in that undignified position, I’d behaved like a gent. This fellow, the husband, didn’t see things in that light at all. I found myself in a perfect rough-house.’

He lit a cigarette and sighed.

‘How did it end?’

‘We got married,’ he said, ‘but she died of enteric six months later. You see I don’t have much luck with wives. Then you were present yourself when I met little Anne Stepney at Foppa’s. You know the end of the story. That was a crazy thing to do, to marry Anne, if ever there was. Anyway, it didn’t last long. Least said, soonest mended. But now I’ve turned over a new leaf. Frederica is going to be my salvation. The model married couple. I’m going to find my way out of Movement Control, and once more set about becoming a general, just as I was before being framed by Buster. Frederica is going to make a first-class general’s wife. Don’t you agree? My God, I never dreamed I’d marry one of Hugo Warminster’s daughters, and I don’t expect he did either.’

By then, it was time for luncheon. I found myself sitting next to Flavia Wisebite. She had a quiet, rather sad manner, suggesting one of those reserved, well behaved, fairly peevish women, usually of determined character, often to be found as wives, or ex-wives, of notably dissipated men like Flitton or Wisebite. Their peevishness appears to derive not so much from a husband’s ill behaviour, as to be a trait natural to them, which attracts men of that kind. Such was mere conjecture, since I knew little or nothing of Flavia’s private life, except that Stringham had more than once implied that his sister’s matrimonial troubles were largely of her own choosing. In that she would have been, after all, not unlike himself. I asked for news of her brother.

‘Charles?’ she said. ‘He’s in a branch of the army called the RAOC — Royal Army Ordnance Corps. I expect you know about it. According to Charles, they look after clothes and boots and blankets, all that sort of thing. Is it true?’

‘Perfectly true. What rank?’

‘Private.’

‘I see.’

‘And likely to remain so, he says.’

‘He’s — all right now?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said ‘Hardly touches a drop. In fact, so cured he can even drink a glass of beer from time to time. That’s a great step. I always said it was just nerves, not real addiction.’

Familiar herself with alcoholics, she took her brother’s former state in a very matter-of-fact way; also his circumstances in the army, which did not sound very enviable. Stringham as a private in the RAOC required an effort of imagination even to picture.

‘How does Charles like it?’

‘Not much.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘He says it’s rather hell, in fact, but he was bent on getting into something. For some reason, the RAOC were the only people who seemed to want him. I think Charles is having a more uncomfortable time than Robert. You rather enjoy the I. Corps, don’t you, dear?’

‘Enjoy is rather a strong word,’ said Robert. ‘Things might be worse at Mytchett. I always like prying into other people’s business, and that’s what Field Security is for.’

Flavia Wisebite’s manner towards Robert was almost maternal. She was nearer in age to Robert than to Umfraville, but gave the impression, although so different an example of it, of belonging much more to Umfraville’s generation. Both she and Umfraville might be said to represent forms of revolt, and nothing dates people more than the standards from which they have chosen to react. Robert and Flavia’s love affair, if love affair it were, took a very different shape from Frederica’s and Umfraville’s. Robert and Flavia gave no impression that, for the moment at least, they were having the time of their lives. On the contrary, they seemed very subdued. By producing Flavia at his sister’s house, Robert was at last to some extent showing his hand, emotionally speaking, something he had never done before. Perhaps he was in love. The pressures of war were forcing action on everyone. Were his efforts to get to France part of this will to action, or an attempt to escape? The last might also be true. The telephone bell rang as we were rising from table. Frederica went to answer it. She returned to the room.

‘It’s for you, Priscilla.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Nick’s friend, Mr Stevens.’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Priscilla. ‘About the brooch.’

She went rather pink.

‘Priscilla’s made a hit,’ said Umfraville.

I asked Flavia whether she ever saw her mother’s former secretary, Miss Weedon, who had married my parents’ old acquaintance, General Conyers.

‘Oh, Tuffy,’ she said. ‘She used to be my governess, you know. Yes, I visited her only the other day. It is all going very well. The General read aloud to us an article he had written about heightened bi-sexuality in relation to early religiosity. He is now much more interested in psychoanalysis than in his ’cello playing.’

‘What does he think about the war?’

‘He believed a German offensive would start any moment then, probably in several places at once.’

‘In fact this Norwegian and Danish business was the beginning.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘It doesn’t sound as if things are going too well,’ Umfraville said, ‘I think we’ve taken some knocks.’

Priscilla returned.

‘It was about the brooch,’ she said. ‘Mr Stevens can’t do it himself, as one of the stones has come out, but he has arranged for someone he knows to mend it. He just wanted to warn me that he wouldn’t have it for me when he came to pick up Nick in the car.’

‘I said he was a very polite young man,’ remarked Frederica, giving her sister rather a cold look.

The rest of the weekend passed with the appalling rapidity of wartime leave, melting away so quickly that one seemed scarcely to have arrived before it was time to go. Dinner was a trifle gloomy on that account, conversation fragmentary, for the most part about the news that evening.

‘I wonder whether this heavy bombing is a prelude to a move in France,’ said Robert. ‘What do you think, Dicky?’

‘That will be the next thing.’

Towards the end of the meal, the telephone bell sounded.

‘Do answer it, Nick,’ said Frederica. ‘You’re nearest the door.’

She spoke from the kitchen, where she was making coffee. The telephone was installed in a lobby off the hall. I went out to it. A man’s voice asked if he were speaking to Frederica’s number.