Anthony Powell - Books Do Furnish a Room

‘What’s he doing now?’

‘Bob? Oil. Something new for him — produced by an old friend of his called Jimmy Brent. You may have met him with my brother Peter. How I miss Peter, although we never saw much of each other.’

‘I came across Jimmy Brent in the war too.’

‘Jimmy’s a little bit awful really. He’s got very fat, and is to marry a widow with two grown-up sons. Still, he’s fixed up Bob, which is the great thing.’

To make some comment that showed I knew she had slept with Brent — by his own account, been in love with him — was tempting, but restraint prevailed. Nevertheless, recollecting that sudden hug watching a film, her whisper, ‘You make me feel so randy,’ I saw no reason why she should go scot free, escape entirely unteased.

‘How well you speak English, Madame Flores.’

‘People are always asking if I was brought up in this country.’

She laughed again in that formerly intoxicating manner. A small dark woman, wearing an enormous spray of diamonds set in the shape of rose petals trembling on a stalk, came through the crowd.

‘Rosie, how lovely to see you again. Do you know each other? Of course you do. I see Carlos is making signs that I must attend to the Moroccan colonel.’

Jean left us together. Rosie Manasch took a handful of stuffed olives from a plate, and offered one.

‘I saw you once at a meeting about Polish military hospitals. You were much occupied at the other end of the room, and I had to move on to the Titian halfway through. Besides, I didn’t know whether you’d remember me.’

The Red Cross, Allied charities, wartime activities of that sort, explained why she was at this party. It was unlikely that she had known Jean before the war, when Rosie had been married to her first husband, Jock Udall, heir apparent to the newspaper proprietor of that name, arch-enemy of Sir Magnus Donners. Rosie Manasch’s parents, inveterate givers of musical parties and buyers of modern pictures, had been patrons of both Moreland and Barnby in the past. Mark Members had made a bid to involve them in literature too, but without much success, enjoying a certain amount of their hospitality, but never bringing off anything spectacular in the way of plunder. It had been rumoured in those days that Barnby had attempted to start up some sort of a love affair with Rosie. If so, the chances were that nothing came of it. Possessing that agreeable gift of making men feel pleased with themselves by the way she talked, she was in general held to own a less sensual temperament than her appearance suggested. Quite how she accomplished this investiture of male self-satisfaction was hard to analyse, perhaps simply because, unlike some women, she preferred men that way.

Udall was shot by the SS, on recapture, after a mass escape from a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. The marriage — in the estimation of those always prepared to appraise explicitly other people’s intimate relationships — was judged to have been only moderately happy. There were no children. There was also, even the most inquisitorial conceded, no gossip about infidelities on either side, although Udall was always reported to be ‘difficult’. Quite soon after her husband’s death, Rosie married a Pole called Andreszlwsiski, a second-lieutenant, though not at all young. I never came across him at the Titian during my period of liaison duty, but his appointment there, Polish GHQ in London, sounded fairly inconsiderable even within terms of the rank. Andreszlwsiski, as it turned out, was suffering from an incurable disease. He died only a few months after the wedding. Rosie resumed her maiden name.

‘I’ve just been talking to your wife. We’d never met before, though I knew her sister Susan Tolland before she married. I hear you didn’t guess that I was the mysterious lady in the background of Fission .’

‘Was this arranged by Widmerpool?’

‘The Frog Footman? Yes, indirectly. He used to do business when he was at Donners-Brebner with my cousin James Klein. Talking of Donners-Brebner, did you go to the Donners picture sale? I can’t think why Lady Donners did not keep more of them herself. There must be quite a lot of money left in spite of death duties — though one never knows how a man like Sir Magnus Donners may have left everything.’

‘If I’d been Matilda, I’d have kept the Toulouse-Lautrec.’

‘Of course you must have known Matilda Donners when she was married to Hugh Moreland. Matilda and I don’t much like each other, though we pretend to. Do you realize that a relation of mine — Isadore Manasch — was painted by Lautrec? Isn’t that smart? A café scene, in the gallery at Albi. Isadore’s slumped on a chair in the background. The Lautrec picture’s the only thing that keeps his slim volume of Symbolist verse from complete oblivion. Isadore’s branch of the family are still embarrassed if you talk about him. He was very disreputable.’

To emphasize the awful depths of Isadore’s habits, Rosie stood on tiptoe, clasping together plump little hands that seemed subtly moulded out of pink icing sugar, then tightly caught in by invisible bands at the wrist. At forty or so, she herself was not unthinkable in terms of Lautrec’s brush, more alluring certainly than the ladies awaiting custom on the banquettes of the Rue de Moulins, though with something of their resignation. A hint of the seraglio, and its secrets, that attached to her suggested oriental costume in one of the masked ball scenes.

‘Do you ever see Hugh Moreland now? Matilda told me he’s still living with that strange woman called Maclintick. They’ve never married. Matilda says Mrs Maclintick makes him work hard.’

‘I don’t even know his address.’

That was one of the many disruptions caused by the war. Rosie returned to Fission .

‘What do you think of the Frog Footman’s beautiful wife? Did you hear what she said to that horrid girl Peggy Klein — who’s a sort of connexion, as she was once married to Charles Stringham? James had adored Peggy for years when he married her — I’ll tell you some other time. There’s the Frog Footman himself making towards us.’

Widmerpool gave Rosie a slight bow, his manner suggesting the connexion with Fission put her in a category of business colleagues to be treated circumspectly.

‘I’ve been having an interesting talk with the military attaché of one of the new Governments in Eastern Europe,’ he said. ‘He’s just arrived in London. As a matter of fact I myself have rather a special relationship with his country, as a member — indeed a founder member — of no less than two societies to cement British relations with the new regime. You remember that ineffective princeling Theodoric, I daresay.’

‘I thought him rather attractive years ago,’ said Rosie. ‘It was at Sir Magnus Donners’ castle of all places. Was the military attaché equally nice?’

‘A sturdy little fellow. Not much to say for himself, but made a good impression. I told him of my close connexions with his country. These representatives of single-party government are inclined to form a very natural distrust for the West. I flatter myself I got through to him successfully. I expect you’ve been talking about Fission . I hear you have been having sessions with our editor Bagshaw, Nicholas?’

‘He’s going to produce for me a writer called X. Trapnel, of whom he has great hopes.’

‘ Camel Ride to the Tomb ?’ said Rosie. ‘I thought it so good.’

‘I shall have to read it,’ said Widmerpool. ‘I shall indeed. I must be leaving now to attend to the affairs of the nation.’

Somebody came up at that moment to claim Rosie’s attention, so I never heard the story of what Pamela had said to Peggy Klein.