Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's

‘Do you know my brother, Erridge — Warminster, rather?’ she asked me, suddenly.

She smiled like someone who wishes to encourage a child who possesses information more accurate, or more interesting, than that available to grown-ups; but one who might be too shy or too intractable to impart such knowledge.

‘I used to know him by sight.’

‘He has some rather odd ideas,’ she said. ‘But I expect you heard plenty about that at Molly Jeavons’s. They have hardly anything else to talk about there. He is a real blessing to them.’

‘Oh, I think they have got plenty to talk about,’ said Mrs. Conyers. ‘Too much, in fact.’

‘I don’t deny that Erridge has more than one bee in his bonnet,’ said the General, unexpectedly. ‘But I doubt if he is such a fool as some people seem to think him. He is just what they call nowadays introverted.’

‘Oh, Erry isn’t a fool,’ said Frederica. ‘He is rather too clever in a way — and an awful nuisance as an eldest brother. There may be something to be said for his ideas. It is the way he sets about them.’

‘Is it true that he has been a tramp?’ I asked.

‘Not actually been one, I think,’ said Frederica. ‘Making a study of them, isn’t it?’

‘Is he going to write a book about it?’ asked Mrs. Conyers. ‘There have been several books of that sort lately, haven’t there? Have you read anything else interesting, Nicholas? I always expect people like you to tell me what to put down on my library list.’

‘I’ve been reading something called Orlando ,’’ said the General. ‘Virginia Woolf. Ever heard of it?’

‘I read it when it first came out.’

‘What do you think of it?’

‘Rather hard to say in a word.’

‘You think so?’

‘Yes.’

He turned to Frederica.

‘Ever read Orlando?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’ve heard of it.’

‘Bertha didn’t like it,’ he said.

‘Couldn’t get on with it,’ said Mrs. Conyers, emphatically. ‘I wish St. John Clarke would write a new one. He hasn’t published a book for years. I wonder whether he is dead. I used to love his novels, especially Fields of Amaranth .’

‘Odd stuff, Orlando ,’ said the General, who was not easily shifted from his subject. ‘Starts about a young man in the fifteen-hundreds. Then, about eighteen-thirty, he turns into a woman. You say you’ve read it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you like it? Yes or no?’

‘Not greatly.’

‘You didn’t?’

‘No.’

‘The woman can write, you know.’

‘Yes, I can see that. I still didn’t like it.’

The General thought again for some seconds.

‘Well, I shall read a bit more of it,’ he said, at last. ‘Don’t want to waste too much time on that sort of thing, of course. Now, psychoanalysis. Ever read anything about that? Sure you have. That was what I was on over Christmas.’

‘I’ve dipped into it from time to time. I can’t say I’m much of an expert.’

‘Been reading a lot about it lately,’ said the General. ‘Freud — Jung — haven’t much use for Adler. Something in it, you know. Tells you why you do things. All the same, I didn’t find it much help in understanding Orlando.’

Once more he fell into a state of coma. It was astonishing to me that he should have been reading about psychoanalysis, although his mental equipment was certainly in no way inferior to that of many persons who talked of such things all day long. When he had used the word ‘introverted’ I had thought that no more than repetition of a current popular term. I saw now that the subject had thoroughly engaged his attention. However, he wished to discuss it no further at that moment. Neither of the two ladies seemed to share his interest.

‘Is it true that your sister, Mildred, is going to marry again?’ asked Frederica. ‘Someone told me so the other day. They could not remember the name of the man. It hasn’t been in the papers yet, has it?’

She spoke casually. Mrs. Conyers was well prepared for the question, because she answered without hesitation, allowing no suggestion to appear of the doubts she had revealed to me only a short time earlier.

‘The engagement is supposed to be a secret,’ she said, ‘but, as everybody will hear about it quite soon, there is really no reason to deny the rumour.’

‘Then it is true?’

‘It certainly looks as if Mildred is going to marry again.’

No one, however determined to make a good story, could have derived much additional information on the subject from the manner in which Mrs. Conyers spoke, except in so far that she could not be said to show any obvious delight at the prospect of her sister taking a third husband. That was the farthest implication offered. There was not a hint of disapproval or regret; on the contrary, complete acceptance of the situation was manifest, even mild satisfaction not openly disavowed. It was impossible to withhold admiration from this façade, so effortlessly presented.

‘And he—?’

‘Nicholas, here, was at school with him,’ said Mrs. Conyers, tranquilly.

She spoke as if most people must, as a matter of course, be already aware of that circumstance; for it now seemed that, in spite of her husband’s doubts, she had finally accepted the fact that I was within a few years of Widmerpool’s age. The remark only stimulated Frederica’s curiosity.

‘Oh, do tell me what he is like,’ she said. ‘Mildred was just that amount older than me to make her rather a thrilling figure at the time when I first came “out”. She was at the Huntercombes’ once when I stayed there not long after the war. She was rather a dashing war widow and wore huge jade ear-rings, and smoked all the time and said the most hair-raising things. What is her new name to be, first of all?’

‘Widmerpool,’ I said, since the question was addressed to me.

‘Where do they come from?’ asked Mrs. Conyers, anxious to profit herself from Frederica’s interrogation.

‘Nottinghamshire, I believe.’

This reply was at worst innocuous, and might be taken, in general, to imply a worthy family background. It was also — as I understood from Widmerpool himself — in no way a departure from the truth. Fearing that I might, if pressed, be compelled ultimately to admit some hard things about Widmerpool, I felt that the least I could do for an old acquaintance in these circumstances was to suggest, however indirectly, a soothing picture of generations of Widmerpools in a rural setting; an ancient, if dilapidated, manor house: Widmerpool tombs in the churchyard: tankards of ale at The Widmerpool Arms.

‘You haven’t said what his Christian name is,’ said Frederica, apparently accepting, anyway at this stage, the regional superscription.

‘Kenneth.’

‘Brothers or sisters?’

‘No.’

I admired the thoroughness with which Frederica set to work on an enquiry of this kind, as much as I had admired Mrs. Conyers’s earlier refusal to give anything away.

‘And he is in the City?’

‘He is supposed to be rather good at making money,’ interpolated Mrs. Conyers.

She had begun to smile indulgently at Frederica’s unconcealed curiosity. Now she employed a respectful yet at the same time deprecatory tone, as if this trait of Widmerpool’s — his supposed facility for ‘making money’—was, extraordinary as this might appear, a propensity not wholly unpleasant when you became accustomed to it. At the same time she abandoned her former position of apparent neutrality, openly joining in the search. Indeed, she put the next question herself.

‘His father is dead, isn’t he?’ she said. ‘Nottinghamshire, did you say?’

‘Or Derbyshire. I don’t remember for certain.’