Anthony Powell - Hearing Secret Harmonies

Flavia Wisebite appeared again at my elbow.

‘Have you seen who’s just come in?’

‘Do you mean Fiona Cutts and her former crowd?’

‘Widmerpool.’

She was overcome with indignation, her face dead white.

‘The dreadful man is wandering about the room in his loathsome clothes. What could have made them invite him? Young people will do anything these days. I’m sure it wasn’t Clare’s choice. She’s such a sweet girl. Sebastian seemed a nice young man too. Surely he can’t have asked Widmerpool? Do you think his father — who used to be an MP — had to have Widmerpool for political reasons. That’s a possibility.’

‘Widmerpool and his lot were brought in by Fiona Cutts, Sebastian’s sister.’

‘Fiona brought them? I see. Now I understand. Do you know who Fiona Cutts has just married — who my goddaughter, little Clare, is going to have for a brother-in-law? An American called Gwinnett. I don’t expect you’ve even heard of him. I have. I know a great deal about Mr Gwinnett. It’s all too dreadful to say. Dreadful. Dreadful.’

Gwinnett, in sight on the far side of the room, was talking in a comparatively animated manner to his new in-laws. Behind them, in a corner, Jeremy Warminster had made contact with one of the prettier girls of the cult, whether or not for the first time was hard to judge. The two of them seemed already on easy terms with each other. A husband and wife, introduced as Colonel and Mrs Alford-Green, came up to speak with Flavia Wisebite. Their friendship seemed to date back to very ancient days, when Flavia had still been married to Cosmo Flitton. Colonel Alford-Green was evidently a retired regular soldier. While they were talking Sir Bertram Akworth reappeared. Hailing the Alford-Greens in his loud harsh voice, he greeted Flavia, too, as one already well known to him.

‘How are you, Rosamund, how are you, Gerald? How nice to see old friends like you both, and Flavia here today. The honeymoon car broke down. All is now fixed. I’ve seen to it. No cause for panic.’

‘We thought you read the Lesson very well, Bertram.’

‘You did, Rosamund? Thank you very much. I’m glad you thought I did it all right. You know I rather pride myself on my reading. It’s a beautiful passage. A great favourite of mine. It was the one on the agenda anyway. A bit of luck. I was very glad. If I’d been asked, I’d certainly have chosen it.’

‘When are you coming up to our part of the world again, Bertram?’

‘I hope I shall one of these days. I very much hope I shall. You know how hard it is to get away. Is Reggie still joint-master?’

The question prompted a rather complicated account of some quarrel in which the local hunt had been involved for a long time. I was about to move away, when I became aware that Widmerpool was near by. In fact he was very close. He must have been wandering about in the crowd, looking for Sir Bertram. Now at last he had run him to ground. Sir Bertram had not yet seen him. He was much too engrossed with the foxhunting feuds of the Alford-Greens. Widmerpool began muttering to himself. Suddenly he spoke out.

‘Bertram.’

Use of the christian name somehow surprised me; though obviously, if the two of them had come across each other as often as Widmerpool indicated, they would be on those sort of terms, however great their mutual dislike.

‘Bertram.’

Widmerpool repeated the name. He spoke quite quietly, in an almost beseeching voice. Sir Bertram either did not hear the first appeal, or, more probably, decided that, whoever it was, he wanted to hear the end of the Alford-Greens’ story, which treated of one of those rows between foxhunting people, which have a peculiar intensity of virulence. At the second summons, Sir Bertram turned. Plainly not recognizing an old business adversary under the blue robe Widmerpool wore, he did not seem more than a trifle taken aback at what might quite reasonably have been regarded as an extraordinary spectacle of humanity. His face merely assumed an expression of rather self-consciously wry amusement; the tolerant good humour of a man of the world, who is prepared for anything in the circumstances of the moment in which he finds himself; in this case, unexpected guests invited by his granddaughter to her wedding.

Without making excessive claims for Sir Bertram’s imperturbability, or good humour, one could see that it took more than an excited elderly man, not too clean and wearing a blue robe, socially to discompose him these days. Sir Bertram had not reached the position he had in his own world without achieving a smattering of what was afoot in an essentially disparate one. This particular instance happened to be considerably more than a sharp contrast, to be neutralized by tactful ingenuity, with his own way of life. In short, Sir Bertram Akworth became suddenly aware that he was contemplating Widmerpool. No doubt he had already heard rumours of Widmerpool’s changed ways — probably associated in his mind more with treasonable contacts and equivocal financial dealings — but, a man not given to imaginative reconstructions, Sir Bertram was not altogether prepared for the reality now set before him. Enlightenment caused a series of violent emotions — deep hatred the most definable — to pass swiftly across his sallow cadaverous features; reactions gone in a split second, recovery all but instantaneous.

‘Kenneth, what are you up to?’

Sir Bertram spoke calmly. There was no time for him to say more. Instead of answering an undoubtedly rhetorical question — even if some sort of explanation were required, conventionally speaking, for thus arriving unasked at a party — Widmerpool, in terms of ritual of another kind, went straight to the point; if repentance were to be expressed in physical form. While Sir Bertram Akworth stood, eyebrows slightly raised, a rather fixed expression of humorous enquiry imposed on his features, like that of a reasonably talented amateur actor, Widmerpool, without the slightest warning, knelt before him; then bent forward, lowering his face almost to the parquet.

This description of what Widmerpool did suggests, in fact, something much more immediate, more outwardly astounding, than the act seemed at the time. I should myself have been completely at a loss to know what Widmerpool was at, if he had not expressed only a short time before his intention of making some sort of an apology about what had happened at school. Even so, when Widmerpool went down on all fours in utter self-abasement, I supposed at first that he was searching for something he had dropped on the floor. That was almost certainly the explanation that offered itself to those standing round about who witnessed the scene at close quarters. Of these last no one, so far as I knew, had ever heard of the incident from which the action stemmed. Even had they been familiar with it, the complexity of Widmerpool’s declared attitude towards social revolt, ritual sex, mystical repentance, was likely to be lost on them, as it was lost, collectively and separately, on Sir Bertram Akworth himself.

If quite other events had not at that moment intervened, Widmerpool’s innate perseverance, his unsnubbableness, might at last have made his motives clear to the object of this melodramatic self-condemnation. As things fell out, two happenings diminished the force of the act — in any case for the moment generally misunderstood — to almost nothing, altogether removing possibility of its meaning being driven home. The first of these interpolations, not more than a matter of routine, was the reappearance of bride and bridegroom, who had retired a short time before to put on their going-away clothes. This entry naturally caused a stir among the guests, distracting the attention of those even in the immediate Widmerpool area of the Great Hall. The second occurrence, individual, distressing, even more calculated in its own way to cause concentration on itself, was prefigured by a sort of low gasp from Flavia Wisebite.