Anthony Powell: The Acceptance World

Jean’s name recalled the last time I had seen her at that luncheon party at Stourwater where I had been taken by the Walpole-Wilsons. I had not thought of her for ages, though some small residue of inner dissatisfaction, which survives all emotional expenditure come to nothing, now returned.

‘Jean’s having a spot of trouble with that husband of hers,’ said Templer. ‘That is why she is staying with us for the moment. She married Bob Duport, you know. He is rather a handful.’

‘So I should imagine.’

‘You don’t know him.’

‘We met when you drove us all into the ditch in your famous second-hand Vauxhall.’

‘My God,’ said Templer, laughing. ‘That was a shambles, wasn’t it? Fancy your remembering that. It must be nearly ten years ago now. The row those bloody girls made. Old Bob was in poor form that day, I remember. He thought he’d picked up a nail after a binge he’d been on a night or two before. Completely false alarm, of course.’

‘As Le Bas once said: “I can’t accept ill health as a valid excuse for ill manners.”‘

‘Bob’s not much your sort, but he’s not a bad chap when you get to know him. I was surprised you’d ever heard of him. I’ve had worse brothers-in-law, although, God knows, that’s not saying much. But Bob is difficult. Bad enough running after every girl he meets, but when he goes and loses nearly all his money on top of that, an awkward situation is immediately created.’

‘Are they living apart?’

‘Not officially. Jean is looking for a small flat in town for herself and the kid.’

‘What sex?’

‘Polly, aged three.’

‘And Duport?’

‘Gone abroad, leaving a trail of girl-friends and bad debts behind him. He is trying to put through some big stuff on the metal market. I think the two of them will make it up in due course. I used to think she was mad about him, but you can never tell with women.’

The news that Polly was to be born was the last I had heard of her mother. Little as I could imagine how Jean had brought herself to marry Duport — far less be ‘mad about him’—I had by then learnt that such often inexplicable things must simply be accepted as matters of fact. His sister’s matrimonial troubles evidently impressed Templer as vexatious, though in the circumstances probably unavoidable; certainly not a subject for prolonged discussion.

‘Talking of divorces and such things,’ he said. ‘Do you ever see Charles Stringham now?’

There had been little or no scandal connected with the break-up of Stringham’s marriage. He and Peggy Stepney had parted company without apparent reason, just as their reason for marrying had been outwardly hard to understand. They had bought a house somewhere north of the Park, but neither ever seemed to have lived there for more than a few weeks at a time, certainly seldom together. The house itself, decorated by the approved decorator of that moment, was well spoken of, but I had never been there. The marriage had simply collapsed, so people said, from inanition. I never heard it suggested that Peggy had taken a lover. Stringham, it was true, was seen about with all kinds of women, though nothing specific was alleged against him either. Soon after the decree had been made absolute, Peggy married a cousin, rather older than herself, and went to live in Yorkshire, where her husband possessed a large house, noted in books of authentically recorded ghost stories for being rather badly haunted.

‘That former wife of his — The Lady Peggy — was a good-looking piece,’ said Templer. ‘But, as you know, such grand life is not for me. I prefer simpler pleasures—

‘ “Oh, give me a man to whom naught comes amiss,

One horse or another, that country or this….”’

‘You know you’ve always hated hunting and hunting people. Anyway, whose sentiments were those?’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘chaps like you think I’m not properly educated, in spite of the efforts of Le Bas and others, and that I don’t know about beautiful poetry. You find you’re wrong. I know all sorts of little snatches. As a matter of fact I was thinking of women, really, rather than horses, and taking ‘em as you find ‘em. Not being too choosy about it as Charles has always been. Of course they are easier to take than to find, in my experience — though of course it is not gentlemanly to boast of such things. Anyway, as you know, I have given up all that now.’

At school I could remember Templer claiming that he had never read a book for pleasure in his life; and, although an occasional Edgar Wallace was certainly to be seen in his hand during the period of his last few terms, the quotation was surprising. That was a side of him not entirely unexpected, but usually kept hidden. Incidentally, it was a conversational trick acquired — perhaps consciously copied — from Stringham.

‘You remember the imitations Charles used to do of Widmerpool?’ he said. ‘I expect he is much too grand to remember Widmerpool now.’

‘I saw Widmerpool not so long ago. He is with Donners-Brebner.’

‘But not much longer,’ said Templer. ‘Widmerpool is joining the Acceptance World.’

‘What on earth is that?’

‘Well, actually he is going to become a bill-broker,’ said Templer, laughing. ‘I should have made myself clearer to one not involved in the nefarious ways of the City.’

‘What will he do?’

‘Make a lot of heavy weather. He’ll have to finish his lunch by two o’clock and spend the rest of the day wasting the time of the banks.’

‘But what is the Acceptance World?’

‘If you have goods you want to sell to a firm in Bolivia, you probably do not touch your money in the ordinary way until the stuff arrives there. Certain houses, therefore, are prepared to ‘accept’ the debt. They will advance you the money on the strength of your reputation. It is all right when the going is good, but sooner or later you are tempted to plunge. Then there is an alteration in the value of the Bolivian exchange, or a revolution, or perhaps the firm just goes bust — and you find yourself stung. That is, if you guess wrong.’

‘I see. But why is he leaving Donners-Brebner? He always told me he was such a success there and that Sir Magnus liked him so much.’

‘Widmerpool was doing all right in Donners-Brebner — in fact rather well, as you say,’ said Templer. ‘But he used to bore the pants off everyone in the combine by his intriguing. In the end he got on the nerves of Donners himself. Did you ever come across a fellow called Truscott? Widmerpool took against him, and worked away until he had got him out. Then Donners regretted it, after Truscott had been sacked, and decided Widmerpool was getting too big for his boots. He must go too. The long and the short of it is that Widmerpool is joining this firm of bill-brokers — on the understanding that a good deal of the Donners-Brebner custom follows him there.’

I had never before heard Templer speak of Widmerpool in this matter-of-fact way. At school he had disliked him, or, at best, treated him as a harmless figure of fun. Now, however, Widmerpool had clearly crystallised in Templer’s mind as an ordinary City acquaintance, to be thought of no longer as a subject for laughter, but as a normal vehicle for the transaction of business; perhaps even one particularly useful in that respect on account of former associations.

‘I was trying to get Widmerpool to lend a hand with old Bob,’ said Templer.

‘What would he do?’

‘Bob has evolved a scheme for collecting scrap metal from some place in the Balkans and shipping it home. At least that is the simplest way of explaining what he intends. Widmerpool has said he will try to arrange for Bob to have the agency for Donners-Brebner.’