Anthony Powell - Books Do Furnish a Room

What did Erridge always do? The question was capable of many answers. The wrong thing? Know he was a sick man? Fear the winter? Hope the end would be sudden? Want Alfred Tolland to reveal some special secret after his own demise? Perhaps just ‘do the unexpected’. On the whole that termination was the most probable. Alfred Tolland, this time unassisted by Isobel, may have feared that any too direct statement about what Erridge ‘did’ might sound callous, if spoken straight out. Instead of completing, he altogether abandoned the comment, this time bringing out in its entirety another concept, quite different in range.

‘I’m feeling rather ashamed.’

‘Ashamed, Uncle Alfred?’

‘Never got down here for George’s … In bed, as a matter of fact.’

‘Nothing bad, I hope, Uncle Alfred.’

‘Had a bit of — chest. Felt ashamed, all the same. Not absolutely right now, but can get about. Can’t be helped. Didn’t want to stay away when it came to the head of the family.’

He spoke as if he would have risen from the dead to reach the funeral of the head of the family. Perhaps he had. The idea was not to be too lightly dismissed. There something not wholly of this world about him. Time, for example, seemed to mean nothing. One hoped he would come soon to the point of what he had to say. Although the worst of the rain had stopped, a pervasive damp struck up from the ground and into the bones. Obviously something was on his mind. In the background Widmerpool shifted about, stamping his feet and kicking them together.

‘We’ll give you a lift back to the house, Uncle Alfred, if you want one. That’s if any of the cars will start. Some of them are rather ancient. It may be rather a squeeze.’

‘Quite forgot, quite forgot … These good people I travelled down with … shared a taxi from the station … Mr — met him at those dinners Nicholas and I … and his wife … very good looking … another couple too, Sir Somebody and Lady Something … also another old friend of Erridge’s … nice people … something they wanted to ask…’

Alfred Tolland turned towards Widmerpool, in search of help, to give words to a matter not at all easy to summarize in a few broken phrases. At least he himself found that hard, which was usual enough, even if the situation were not as ticklish as this one appeared. Widmerpool, not happy himself, was prepared at the same time to accept his cue. He began to speak in his least aggressive manner.

‘Two things, Nicholas — though I don’t expect you’re really the person to ask, sure as I am, as an old friend, you’ll be prepared to act for us as — well, as what? — intermediary, shall we say? You know already, I think, the other members of the party I came down with. J. G. Quiggin, of course — must know him as a literary bloke yourself — and as for Sir Howard and Lady Craggs, of course you remember them.’

One to admit that ‘Sir Howard and Lady Craggs’ conjured up a rather different picture from Mr Deacon’s birthday party, Gypsy lolling on Craggs’s knee, struggling to divert a too exploratory hand back to a wide area of pink thigh. If it came to that, one had one’s own reminiscences of Lady Craggs in an easy-going mood.

‘We all wanted, of course, to pay last respects to your late brother-in-law, Lord Warminster — much to my regret I never managed to meet him — but there was also something else. This seemed a golden opportunity to have a preliminary word, if possible, with the appropriate member, or members, of the family, now collected together, as to the best means of approaching certain matters arisen in consequence of Lord Warminster’s death.’

Widmerpool paused. He was relieved to have made a start on whatever he wanted to say, for clearly this was by no means the end.

‘The late Lord Warminster left certain instructions in connexion with the publishing house Sir Howard Craggs — well, we can talk about all that later. As I say, this seemed a good moment to have a tentative word with the — in short with the executors, as I understand, Mr Hugo Tolland and Lady Frederica Umfraville.’

Whatever complications now threatened were beyond conjecture. Within the family it had been generally agreed that for Erridge to leave the world without arranging some testing problem to be settled by his heirs and successors, was altogether unthinkable. The form such a problem, or problems, might take was naturally not to be anticipated. That Widmerpool should be involved in any such matters was unlooked for. His relief at having made the statement about Erridge’s dispositions, whatever they were, turned out to be due to anxiety to proceed to a far more troublesome enquiry from his own point of view.

‘Another matter, Nicholas. My wife — you know her, of course, I’d forgotten — Pamela, as I say, was overcome with faintness during the service. In fact had to leave the church. I hope no one noticed. She did so as quietly as possible. These attacks come on her at times. Largely nerves, in my opinion. It was arranged between us she should await me in the porch. She no doubt found the stone seat there too cold in her distressed state. I thought she might have taken refuge in our taxi, but the driver said, on the contrary, he saw her walking up the drive in the direction of the house.’

Widmerpool stopped speaking. His efforts to present in terms satisfactory to himself two quite separate problems, so that they merged into coherent shape, seemed to have broken down. The first question was what Craggs and Quiggin wanted from the executors, no doubt something to do with the matters of which Bagshaw had spoken; the second, which Widmerpool, judging by past experience, regarded as more important, the disappearance of his wife.

Frederica and Blanche, saying goodbye to the Alford relations to whom they had been talking, came over to have a word with their uncle. Alfred Tolland, still considerably discomposed by all that was happening round him, managed to effect a mumbled introduction of Widmerpool, who seized his opportunity, settling on Frederica. He began at once to put forward the advantages of having a preliminary talk, ‘quite informal’, about straightening out Erridge’s affairs. Frederica had hardly time to agree this would be a good idea, before he returned to the question of Pamela, certainly worrying him a lot. Frederica, a very competent person when it came to making arrangements, took these problems in her stride. Like Erridge, she was not greatly interested in individuals as such, so that Widmerpool’s desire to talk business, coupled with anxiety about his wife, were elements to be accepted at their face value. Neither aroused Frederica’s curiosity.

‘Where are these friends of yours now, Mr Widmerpool?’

‘In the church porch. They wanted to get out of the rain. They’re waiting — in fact waiting for me to obtain your permission, Lady Frederica, to come up to the house as I suggest. I really think the house is probably where my wife is too.’

This then was the crux of the matter. They all wanted to come up to the house. While that was arranged, Widmerpool had judged it best to confine them to the porch. Possibly there had been signs of mutiny. Judged as a group, they must have been just what Frederica would expect as representative friends of her brother, even though she could not guess, had no wish to examine, subtleties of their party’s composition. In her eyes Widmerpool’s conventional clothes, authoritative manner, made him a natural enough delegate of an otherwise fairly unpresentable cluster of Erridge hangers-on, a perfectly acceptable representative. Frederica and Erridge had been next to each other in age. Although living their lives in such different spheres, they were by no means without mutual understanding. The whim to leave complicated instructions after death was one with which Frederica could sympathize. Sorting out her brother’s benefactions gratified her taste for tidying up.