Anthony Powell - The Kindly Ones

‘I have rather suburban taste in ladies, like everything else, Templer used to say. ‘Golf, bridge, an occasional spot of crumpet, they are all I require to savour my seasonal financial flutter.’

The fact that he could analyse his tastes in this way made Templer a little unusual, considering what those tastes were. I felt pleasure in the thought that I was going to see him again, tempered by that faint uneasiness about meeting a friend who may have changed too much during the interval of absence to make practicable any renewal of former ties.

‘We haven’t brought any evening clothes,’ I said.

‘Good God,’ said Moreland, ‘we’re not changing for Donners.’

It was a warm autumnal evening, so that we were all in the garden when Templer’s car drew up at the gate. The vehicle was of just the kind I had predicted. Templer, too, as he jumped out, seemed scarcely to have changed at all. The car was shaped like a torpedo; Templer’s clothes gave the familiar impression — as Stringham used to say — that he was ‘about to dance backwards and forwards in front of a chorus of naked ladies’. That outward appearance was the old Templer, just as he had looked at Dicky Umfraville’s nightclub four or five years before. Now, as he strode up the path with the same swagger, I saw there was a change in him. This was more than the fact that he was distinctly fatter. A coarseness of texture had always coloured his elegance. Now, that coarseness had become more than ever marked. He looked hard, even rather savage, as if he had made up his mind to endure life rather than, as formerly, to enjoy it. From the first impression that he had changed hardly at all, I reversed judgment, deciding he had changed a great deal. When he saw me he stepped back melodramatically.

‘Is it really you, Nick?’

‘What’s left.’

I introduced him to the Morelands and to Isobel.

I believe you invited me to your wedding, Nick,’ said Templer. ‘Somehow I never manage to get to weddings — it’s an effort even to reach my own.’

‘Have you been having many weddings lately, Peter?’

‘Oh, well, not for a year or two,’ said Templer, suddenly becoming more serious. ‘You knew I married again after Mona?’

‘I didn’t, as a matter of fact.’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘How shameful that we should have missed the announcement.’

‘I’m not sure that we made one,’ Templer said. ‘It was all very quiet. Hardly asked a soul. Since then — I don’t know — we’ve been living in the country. Just see a few neighbours. Betty doesn’t like going out much. She has come to Stourwater this week-end, as a matter of fact, but that’s rather exceptional. She felt jumpy for some reason about staying at home. She gets these jumpy fits from time to time. Thinks war’s going to break out all the time.’

He smiled rather uncomfortably. I felt suddenly certain that Templer’s new wife must be responsible for the change that had come over him. At the same time, I tried, quite unsuccessfully, to rationalise in my own mind what exactly this change was. Now that we were face to face and I was talking to him, it was more than ever apparent, almost horrifying. He had slowed up, become more ‘serious’, at the same time lost that understanding, sympathetic manner formerly characteristic of him, so unexpected in a person of his sort. That was my first thought. Then I wondered whether, in fact, he was even less ‘serious’ — if that were possible — determined to get as much fun out of living as he could, whatever the obstacles, whatever the cost. These dissections on my own part were rather absurd; yet there was something not far away from Templer that generated a sense of horror.

‘What a nice colour your car is,’ said Moreland.

I could see he had at once placed Templer in the category of persons he found unsympathetic. That was to be expected. Just as most of the world find it on the whole unusual that anyone should be professionally occupied with the arts, Moreland could never get used to the fact that most people — in this particular case, Templer — lead lives in which the arts play no part whatsoever. That is perhaps an exaggeration of Moreland’s attitude. All the same, he always found difficulty in accustoming himself to complete aesthetic indifference. This narrowness of vision sometimes led Moreland, with all his subtlety in some matters, to complete misunderstanding of others, especially to underestimate some of the people who came his way. On Templer’s side, the meeting had been equally lacking in fellow feeling. He had no doubt been prepared for the Morelands to look — from his point of view — a pretty extraordinary couple. From Templer’s point of view, it had to be admitted, the Morelands did look pretty extraordinary. Matilda was still wearing trousers, bright emerald green in colour, her feet in immensely thick cork-soled sandals, her hair done up on the top of her head, in the fashion of the moment, like a bird’s nest. Moreland had shaved, otherwise made no effort to tidy himself, a carelessly knotted tie slipping away from the buttonless collar of his blue shirt. Templer began to laugh, partly, I supposed, at the thought of our having met again after so long, partly, too, I felt sure, at the strange picture the Morelands presented to one unaccustomed to people like them. Templer must also have known of Matilda’s former relationship with Sir Magnus. Perhaps that was what made him laugh.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘all aboard for Stourwater and the picturesque ruins.’

We climbed into the car. The Morelands were rather silent, because there is always something a shade embarrassing about an old friend suddenly encountering another old friend, quite unknown to you. They were perhaps meditating on their own differences of opinion regarding the desirability of accepting the hospitality of Sir Magnus. Templer himself kept up a running fire of questions, as if anxious to delay the moment when he had to speak of his own life.

‘It is really too extraordinary our meeting again in this way, Nick,’ he said. ‘Though it’s just like a millionaire to make one of the persons staying with him fetch the guests for dinner, instead of using his own chauffeur, but now I’m glad Magnus was running true to form. Do you live in London?’

‘Yes — and you?’

‘We’re at Sunningdale.’

‘Isn’t that where Stringham’s mother, Mrs Foxe, has a house?’

‘Charles Stringham — I haven’t thought of him for years.’

‘Does she still live there?’

‘She does, as a matter of fact. We don’t know them. Rather too grand for us. Odd you should mention Stringham. It wasn’t quite true when I said I hadn’t thought of him for years, because, as it happened, I ran across Mrs Foxe’s naval-officer husband at a golf tournament handicap not so long ago who said something about him.’

‘Stringham was knocking it back pretty hard when I last saw him. What did Buster Foxe say? They don’t much care for each other.’

‘Don’t they? I gathered from Commander Foxe they were great pals. Now, what did he say? Gone right out of my head. No, I know — Stringham is living at Glimber, the house Mrs Foxe inherited from her first husband. It’s huge, uninhabitable, entailed, nobody wants to rent it. Stringham looks after it apparently. He has a former secretary of his mother’s to help him. It’s like being an agent, I suppose.’

‘Sounds rather grim.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Stately home, and all that. Commander Foxe said Charles liked it. Now you come to mention it, he did say something, too, about giving up the bottle. I hadn’t realised Stringham’s drinking had reached the headline category.’

‘He used to hit it fairly hard. The secretary you mention is called Miss Weedon — Tuffy to her intimates. Rather a frightening lady. She has always taken a great hand in arranging Charles’s life. In fact, she had more or less undertaken to stop his drinking at one moment. They even lived in the same flat.’