Anthony Powell - The Kindly Ones

‘Mr Duport, you’ve met, Myra,’ he said. ‘This gentleman here is the late Captain Jenkins’s nephew, bearing the same name.’

He rolled his eyes in my direction, indicating Mrs Erdleigh.

‘ Connaissez-vous la vieille souveraine du monde ,’ he said, ‘ qui marche toujours, et ne se fatigue jamais ? In this incarnation, she passes under the name of Mrs Erdleigh.’

‘Mr Jenkins and I know each other already,’ she said, with a smile.

‘I might have guessed,’ said Dr Trelawney. ‘She knows all.’

‘And your introduction was not very polite,’ said Mrs Erdleigh. ‘I am not as old as she to whom the Abbé referred.’

‘Be not offended, priestess of Isis. You have escaped far beyond the puny fingers of Time.’

She turned from him, holding out her hand to me.

‘I knew you were here,’ she said.

‘Did Albert say I was coming?’

‘It was not necessary. I know such things. Your poor uncle passed over peacefully. More peacefully than might have been expected.’

She wore a black coat with a high fur collar, a tricorne hat, also black, riding on the summit of grey curls. These had taken the place of the steep bank of dark-reddish tresses of the time when I had met her at the Ufford with Uncle Giles seven or eight years before. Then, I had imagined her nearing fifty. Lunching with the Templers eighteen months later (when she had arrived with Jimmy Stripling), I decided she was younger. Now, she was not so much aged as an entirely different woman — what my brother-in-law, Hugo Tolland, used to call (apropos of his employer, Mrs Baldwyn Hodges) a ‘blue-rinse marquise’. This new method of doing her hair, the tone and texture of which suggested a wig, together with the three-cornered hat, recalled Longhi, the Venetian ridotto. You felt Mrs Erdleigh had just removed her mask before paying this visit to Cagliostro — or, as it turned out with no great difference, to Dr Trelawney.

‘Sad that your mother-in-law, Lady Warminster, passed over too,’ said Mrs Erdleigh. ‘She had not consulted me for some years, but I foretold both her marriages. I warned her that her second husband should beware of the Eagle — symbol of the East, you know — and of the Equinox of Spring. Lord Warminster died in Kashmir at just that season.’

‘She is greatly missed in the family.’

‘Lady Warminster was a woman among women,’ said Mrs Erdleigh. ‘I shall never forget her gratitude when I revealed to her that Tuesday was the best day for the operation of revenge.’

Dr Trelawney was becoming restive, either because Mrs Erdleigh had made herself the centre of attention, or because his own ‘treatment’ had been delayed too long.

‘We think we should have our … er … pill, ha-ha,’ he said, trying to laugh, but beginning to twitch dreadfully. ‘We do not wish to cut short so pleasurable an evening. I am eternally grateful to you, gentlemen — though to name eternity is redundant, since we all perforce have our being within it — and I hope we shall meet again, if only in the place where the last are said to be first, though, for my own part, I shall not be surprised if the first are first there too.’

‘We shall have to turn in as well,’ said Duport, rising, ‘or I shall have no head for figures tomorrow.’

I thought Duport did not much care for Mrs Erdleigh, certainly disliked the fact that she and I had met before.

‘The gods brook no more procrastination,’ said Dr Trelawney, his hoarse voice rising sharply in key. ‘I am like one of those about to adore the demon under the figure of a serpent, or such as make sorceries with vervain and periwinkle, sage, mint, ash and basil …’

Mrs Erdleigh had taken off her coat and hat. She was fumbling in a large black bag she had brought with her. Dr Trelawney’s voice now reached an agonised screech.

‘… votaries of the Furies who use branches of cedar, alder, hawthorn, saffron and juniper in their sacrifices of turtle doves and sheep, who pour upon the ground libations of wine and honey …’

Mrs Erdleigh almost hustled us through the door. There was something in her hand, a small instrument that caught the light.

‘I shall be with my old friend at the last tomorrow,’ she said, opening wide her huge, misty eyes.

The door closed. There was the sound of the key turning in the lock, then, as we moved off down the passage, of water poured into a basin.

‘You see what living at the Bellevue is like,’ said Duport.

‘I’m surprised you find it boring. Have you still got The Perfumed Garden?’

‘What’s that?’

‘The book I gave you — The Arab Art of Love .’

‘Hell,’ said Duport, ‘I left it in Trelawney’s room. Well, I can get it again tomorrow, if he hasn’t peddled it by then.’

‘Good night.’

‘Good night,’ said Duport. ‘I don’t envy you having to turn out for your uncle’s funeral in the morning.’

The Bellevue mattress was a hard one. Night was disturbed by dreams. Dr Trelawney — who had shaved his head and wore RAF uniform — preached from the baroquely carved pulpit of a vast cathedral on the text that none should heed Billson’s claim to be pregnant by him of a black messiah. These and other aberrant shapes made the coming of day welcome. I rose, beyond question impaired by the drinks consumed with Duport, all the same anxious to get through my duties. Outside, the weather was sunny, all that the seaside required. Nevertheless, I wanted only to return to London. While I dressed, I wondered whether the goings-on of the night before had disturbed other residents of the hotel. When I reached the dining-room, the air of disquiet there made me think we had made more noise than I had supposed. Certainly the murmur of conversation was uneasy at the tables of the old ladies. An atmosphere of tension made itself felt at once. Duport, unexpectedly in his place, was eating a kipper, a pile of disordered newspapers lying on the floor beside him. I made some reference to the unwisdom of terminating an evening of that sort with Dr Trelawney’s brandy. Duport made a face. He ignored my comment.

‘Nice news,’ he said, ‘isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘Germany and Russia.’

‘What have they done? I haven’t seen a paper.’

‘Signed a Non-Aggression Pact with each other.’

He handed me one of the newspapers. I glanced at the headlines.

‘Cheerful situation, you will agree,’ said Duport.

‘Makes a good start to the day.’

I felt a sinking inside me as I read.

‘Molotov and Ribbentrop,’ said Duport. ‘Sound like the names of a pair of performing monkeys. Just the final touch to balls up my affairs.’

‘It will be war all right now.’

‘And Hitler will be able to buy all the chromite he wants from the Soviet.’

‘So what?’

‘It’s good-bye to my return to Turkey, whatever happens.’

‘But if there’s war, shan’t we want the stuff more than ever?’

‘Of course we shall. Even a bloody book-reviewer, or whatever you are, can see that. It doesn’t prevent Widmerpool from failing to grasp the point. The probability of war made the pre-empting of the Turkish market essential to this country.’

‘Then why not still?’

‘Buying chromite to prevent Germany from getting it, and buying it just for our own use, are not the same thing. All the chromite Germany wants will now be available from Russian sources — and a bloody long list of other important items too.’

‘I see.’

‘Donners will handle matters differently now. I shall drop out automatically. I might get another job out of him, not that one. But can you imagine Widmerpool being such a fool as to suppose the prospect of war would diminish Donners-Brebner requirements. “Cut down our commitments”, indeed.’