Anthony Powell - Hearing Secret Harmonies

Flavia Wisebite grimaced.

‘I try not to look at them, if they come running in off a sideroad. When I see them in the distance I go off up a turning.’

‘Is Widmerpool head of the cult? *

‘How should I know? I thought he was. Didn’t he start it? As soon as Pamela married him, he began his horrible goings-on, though they weren’t quite like what he does nowadays. Why did she do it? How could she? Find the most horrible man on earth, and then marry him? She always had to have her own way. It was quite enough that everyone agreed that Widmerpool was awful, hideous, monstrous. She just wanted to show that she didn’t care in the least what anyone said. She was the same as a child. Absolutely wilful. Nobody could control her.’

No doubt there was much truth in what her mother said. I remembered Pamela Flitton, as a child bridesmaid, being sick in the font at Stringham’s wedding. One of the children had made a good deal of noise at the ceremony just attended, but nothing so drastic as that. Flavia’s daughter had always been in a class by herself from her earliest days. A girl like Fiona was no real competitor.

‘Because Pam didn’t always go for unattractive people. When she was a little girl she fell madly in love with Charles — you know the way children do — at the time he was drinking too much. The amount he drank in those days was terrible. Pam didn’t see him often because of that. Still, Charles was always fond of her, very nice to her, whenever he came to see us, which wasn’t often. Charles left Pam his things, not much, hardly anything by then. Pam never made a will, of course, so Widmerpool must have got whatever there was. The Modigliani drawing. Pam loved that. I wonder what happened to it. I suppose that awful Widmerpool sold it.’

Flavia Wisebite took a small folded pocket handkerchief from her bag. She lightly dabbed her eyes. It was the precise gesture her mother had used, another memory of Stringham’s marriage to Peggy Stepney; Peggy Klein, as she had been for years now. Mrs Foxe’s tears had been more prolonged on that occasion, lasting intermittently throughout the whole service. Flavia’s were quickly over. She returned the handkerchief to the bag. I did not know what to say. Where could one begin? Stringham’s past? Pamela’s past? Flavia’s own past? These were extensive and delicate themes to set out on; Widmerpool’s present, even less approachable. There was no need to say anything at all. Flavia Wisebite, in the manner of persons of her sort, had suddenly recovered herself. She was perfectly all right again. Now she spoke once more in her tremulous social voice.

‘Isn’t Clare Akworth a sweet girl?’

‘I don’t really know her. She looks very attractive.’

‘I’m so proud to be her godmother. He’s a charming young man too. He told me all about his computers. It was far above my head, I’m afraid. I’m sure they’ll be very happy. I never was, but I’m sure they will be. So nice to have met again.’

Smiling goodbye, she disappeared into the crowd. In its own particular way the encounter had been disturbing. I was glad it was over. One of its side effects was a sense of temporary inability to chat with other guests, most of them, unless relations, from their age unknown to me. Flavia Wisebite had diminished exuberance for seeking out members of an older generation, whom one had not seen for some time, hearing their news, listening to their troubles. In that line, Flavia Wisebite herself was enough for one day. She had also in some way infected me with her own sense of disorientation. I required time to recover. The idea suggested itself to slip away from the reception for a few minutes, find release in wandering through the corridors and galleries of the Castle. After all, that was really why I had come here. There was the dining-room, for example, draped with the tapestries of the Seven Deadly Sins, the little library or study, drawings and small oils between bookshelves, where Barnby’s portrait of the waitress from Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant had hung. A side door seemed the most convenient exit from the party. Rupert Akworth, the bride’s uncle, who had given her away, saw me about to leave.

‘The gents? Down the stairs on the left. Rather classy.’

‘Thanks.’

The Stourwater passages had by now acquired the smell common to all schools: furniture polish: disinfectant: fumes of unambitious cooking. I found the little library — now a schoolroom hung with maps — which Sir Magnus had entered with such dramatic effect that he seemed to have been watching for his guests’ arrival through a peephole in the far door (concealed with dummy books), the night we had come over with the Morelands to dinner at the Castle. One of the pictures in this room had been another Barnby, an oil sketch of the model Conchita, described by Moreland as ‘antithesis of the pavement artist’s traditional representation of a loaf of bread, captioned Easy to Draw but Hard to Get .’

After striking one or two false trails, I came at last to the dining-room of the Seven Deadly Sins. Rows of tables indicated that its function remained unchanged, though the Sins no longer exemplified their graphic warning to those who ate there. The fine chimneypiece, decorated with nymphs and satyrs — no doubt installed by Sir Magnus to harmonize with the tapestries — had been allowed to remain as adjunct to school meals. Above this hung a large reproduction of an Annigoni portrait of the Queen. Here, scene of the luncheon where I had first met Jean Templer after her marriage to Duport; later, of the great impersonation of the Sins themselves, recorded in the photographs shown by Matilda, were more pungent memories. I stood for a moment by the door, reconstructing some of these past incidents in the mind. While I was doing so, a man and a girl entered the dining-room from the far end. They were holding hands. Without abandoning this clasp, they advanced up the room. If wedding guests, like quite a few others present at the reception, neither had dressed up much for the occasion.

‘Hullo, Fiona — hullo, Russell.’

Gwinnett offered the hand that was not holding Fiona’s.

‘Hullo, Nicholas.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘You’ve heard.’

‘Yes.’

Gwinnett gave one of his rare smiles. I kissed Fiona, who accepted with good grace this tribute to her marriage. She, too, looked pleased. Her dress still swept the ground — as on the crayfishing afternoon, the last time I had actually set eyes on her — but her breast no longer bore the legend HARMONY. In her disengaged hand she carried a large straw hat trimmed with multicoloured flowers. A considerable cleaning up, positive remodelling, had taken place in Fiona’s general style. No doubt much of that was owed to Delavacquerie. Gwinnett had surmounted the sober suit of the Magnus Donners dinner with a thin strip of bow tie. His head seemed to have been newly shaved.

‘Have you both just arrived?’

‘A side door outside was open. We thought we might look around before meeting the family. Is the Castle thirteenth or early fourteenth-century? I’d say that was the date. The machicolations might be later. What’s its history?’

Gwinnett had shown architectural interests in Venice.

‘Not much history, I think. Sir Magnus Donners, who owned it, had some story about a mediaeval lord of Stourwater, whose daughter drowned herself in the moat for love of a monk.’

Halfway through the sentence I saw that tradition was one preferably to have remained unrepeated in the circumstances. Sir Magnus had narrated the tale to Prince Theodoric the day the Walpole-Wilsons had taken me to luncheon here. I added quickly that the room we were in had once contained some remarkable tapestries depicting the Seven Deadly Sins. That seemed scarcely an improvement as a topic. Fiona may have felt the same, as she enquired about the wedding.