Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's

He swept me forward into the dining-room. The club steward, no doubt familiar with Widmerpool’s predispositions, indicated a table by the window, flanked on one side by two yellow-faced men conversing in suited, sing-song French: on the other, by an enormously fat old fellow who was opening his luncheon with dressed crab and half a bottle of hock. One of the men talking French I thought I recognised as the Balkan diplomatist seen at the Jeavonses and said to be of Prince Theodoric’s entourage.

‘Have anything you like to eat or drink,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Consult the menu here. Personally I am on a diet — a little gastric trouble — and shall restrict myself to cold tongue and a glass of water.’

He handed me the card, and I ordered all I decently could in the face of this frugality.

‘You are still — publishing — advertising ?’ he asked.

‘Was it not something of the sort?’

His manner of asking personal questions was of that kind not uncommonly to be found which is completely divorced from any interest in the answer. He was always prepared to embark on a lengthy cross-examination of almost anyone he might meet, at the termination of which — apart from such details as might chance to concern himself — he had absorbed no more about the person interrogated than he knew at the outset of the conversation. At the same time this process seemed somehow to gratify his own egotism.

‘I was in publishing. Art books. Now it is the film business.’

‘Indeed? What unusual ways you choose to earn a living. Not acting, surely?’

‘Hardly. I am on what is called the “scenario side”. I help to write that part of the programme known as the “second feature”. For every foot of American film shown in this country, a proportionate length of British film must appear. The Quota, in fact.’

‘Ah, yes, the Quota, the Quota,’ said Widmerpool, cutting short any further explanation, which would certainly have been tedious enough. ‘Well, I never expected to sit at the same table as host of a man who wrote films for the Quota. Do you like the work?’

‘Not greatly.’

‘It may lead to something better. If you are industrious, you get on. That is true of all professions, even the humblest. You will probably end up in Hollywood, or somewhere like that. But tell me, do you still see those friends of yours, Stringham and Templer?’

‘Stringham I haven’t seen since the night he got so tight, and you and I helped to put him to bed. I rang up a day or two later and found he had gone abroad. From what I hear, he is drinking enough to float a battleship. There was even a question of taking a cure.’

‘And Templer?’

‘I see him occasionally. Not for rather a long time, as it happens. You know his marriage broke up?’

‘Like Stringham’s,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Your friends do not seem very fortunate in their matrimonial ventures. I run across Templer sometimes in the City. We have even done a little business together. I was able to fix up a job for Bob Duport, that rather disreputable brother-in-law of his.’

‘So I heard.’

‘Oh, he told you, did he?’ said Widmerpool, gratified at this action of his being so widely known. ‘I believe there were various repercussions from that good turn I was able to do him. For instance, Duport was living apart from his wife. He had behaved rather badly, so people say. When he got this job, the two of them patched things up again, and she went back to him. I was glad to have been the cause of that. We all three had dinner together. Rather an odd woman. Moody, I should think. She didn’t seem particularly pleased at the reunion. Not at all grateful to me, at least.’

‘Why not?’

‘I couldn’t say. She hardly spoke a word throughout the course of an extremely good dinner at the Savoy. I may say it cost me quite a lot of money. Not that I grudge it. They are in South America now, I believe. Did you ever meet either of them?’

‘Met him once with Templer when I was an undergraduate.’

‘And her?’

‘I knew her a bit. In fact I first met her ages ago when I stayed with the Templers. Peter’s father was still alive then.’

‘Not unattractive.’

‘No.’

‘Quite elegant in her way too.’

‘Yes.’

‘Too good for Duport, I should have thought.’

‘Possibly.’

Widmerpool could not have had the smallest notion of anything that had taken place between Jean Duport and myself; but people are aware of things like this within themselves without knowing of their own awareness. In any case, conscious or unconscious, Widmerpool had the knack of treading on the corns of others. His next question seemed to show the extraordinary telepathic connection of ideas that so often takes place in the mind when anything in the nature of being in love is concerned.

‘You are not married yourself, are you, Nicholas?’

‘No.’

‘Not — like me — about to take the plunge?’

‘I haven’t properly congratulated you yet.’

Widmerpool bowed his head in acknowledgment. The movement could almost have been called gracious. He beamed across the table. At that moment the prospect of marriage seemed all he could desire.

‘I do not mind informing you that my lady mother thinks well of my choice,’ he said.

There was no answer to that beyond agreeing that Mrs. Widmerpool’s approval was gratifying. If Mrs. Haycock could face such a mother-in-law, one hurdle at least — and no minor one, so it seemed to me — had been cleared.

‘There are, of course, a few small matters my mother will expect to be satisfactorily arranged.’

‘I expect so.’

‘But Mildred will fall in with these, I am sure.’

I thought the two of them, Mrs. Widmerpool and Mrs. Haycock, were probably worthy of the other’s steel. Perhaps Widmerpool, in his heart, thought so too, for his face clouded over slightly, after the first look of deep satisfaction. He fell into silence. When pondering a matter of importance to himself, his jaws would move up and down as if consuming some immaterial substance. Although he had finished his slices of tongue, this movement now began. I guessed that he intended to pose some question, the precise form of which he could not yet decide. The men with yellow faces at the next table were talking international politics.

‘C’est incontestable, cher ami, Hitler a renonce a son intention d’engouffrer l’Autriche par une agression directe.’

‘A mon avis — et d’ailleurs je l’ai toujours dit — la France avait tort de s’opposer a I’union douaniere en ’31.’

The fat man had moved on to steak-and-kidney pudding, leeks and mashed potato, with a green salad. Widmerpool cleared his throat. Something was on his mind. He began in a sudden burst of words.

‘I had a special reason for inviting you to lunch today, Nicholas. I wanted to speak of my engagement. But it is not easy for me to explain in so many words what I desire to say.’

He spoke sententiously, breaking off abruptly. I had an uneasy feeling, unlikely as this would be, that he might be about to ask me to act as best man at his wedding. I began to think of excuses to avoid such a duty. However, it turned out he had no such intention. It seemed likely, on second thoughts, that he wanted to discuss seriously some matter regarding himself which he feared might, on ventilation, cause amusement. Certainly I found it difficult to take his engagement seriously. There is, for some reason, scarcely, any subject more difficult to treat with gravity if you are not yourself involved. Obviously two people were contemplating a step which would affect their future lives in the most powerful manner; and yet the outward appearance of the two of them, and Widmerpool’s own self-sufficiency, made it impossible to consider the matter without inner amusement.