Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's

Widmerpool had once confided the fact that his grandfather, a business man from the Scotch Lowlands, had on marriage changed his name from ‘Geddes’; but such an additional piece of information would sound at that moment too esoteric and genealogical: otiose in its exactitude. In a different manner, to repeat Eleanor Walpole-Wilson’s remark made years before—‘Uncle George used to get his liquid manure from Mr. Widmerpool’s father’—might strike, though quite illogically, a disobliging, even objectionably facetious note. Eleanor’s ‘Uncle George’ was Lord Goring. It seemed best to omit all mention of liquid manure; simply to say that Widmerpool had known the Gorings and the Walpole-Wilsons.

‘Oh, the Walpole-Wilsons,’ said Frederica sharply, as if reminded of something she would rather forget. ‘Do you know the Walpole-Wilsons? My sister, Norah, shares a flat with Eleanor Walpole-Wilson. Do you know them?’

‘I haven’t seen Eleanor for years. Nor her parents, for that matter.’

The General now came to life again, after his long period of rumination.

‘Walpole-Wilson was that fellow in the Diplomatic Service who made such a hash of things in South America,’ he said. ‘Got unstuck for it. I met him at a City dinner once, the Mercers — or was it the Fishmongers? Had an argument over Puccini.’

‘I don’t know the Gorings,’ said Frederica, ignoring the General. ‘You mean the ones called “Lord” Goring?’

‘Yes. He is a great fruit farmer, isn’t he? He talked about fruit on the only occasions when I met him.’

‘I remember,’ she said. ‘He is.’

She had uttered the words ‘Lord Goring’ with emphasis on the title, seeming by her tone almost to suggest that all members of that particular family, male and female, might for some unaccountable reason call themselves “Lord”: at least implying that, even if she did not really suppose anything so absurd, she wished to indicate that I should have been wiser to have steered clear of the Gorings: in fact, that informed persons considered the Gorings themselves mistaken in burdening themselves with the rather ridiculous pretension of a peerage. When I came to know her better I realised that her words were intended to cast no particular slur on the Gorings; merely, since they were not personal friends of hers, to build up a safe defence in case they turned out, in her own eyes, undesirable.

‘I think Widmerpool père was mixed up with the fruit-farming side of Goring life.’

‘But look here,’ said General Conyers, suddenly emerging with terrific violence from the almost mediumistic trance in which he had sunk after the mention of Puccini. ‘The question is simply this. Can this fellow Widmerpool handle Mildred? It all turns on that. What do you think, Nicholas? You say you were at school with him. You usually know a fellow pretty well when you have been boys together. What’s your view? Give us an appreciation of the situation.’

‘But I don’t know Mrs. Haycock. I was only nine or ten when I first met her. Last night I barely spoke to her.’

There was some laughter at that, and the necessity passed for an immediate pronouncement on the subject of Widmerpool’s potentialities.

‘You must meet my sister again,’ said Mrs. Conyers, involuntarily smiling to herself, I suppose at the thought of Widmerpool as Mildred’s husband.

After that, conversation drifted. Mrs. Conyers began once more to talk of clothes and of how her daughter, Charlotte, had had a baby in Malta. The General relapsed once more into torpor, occasionally murmuring faint musical intonations that might still be ringing the changes on ‘… nunc et in hora …’ Frederica rose to go. I gave her time to get down the stairs, and then myself said goodbye. It was agreed that so long a period must not again elapse before I paid another visit. Mrs. Conyers was one of those persons who find it difficult to part company quickly, so that it was some minutes before I reached the hall of the block of flats. In front of the entrance Frederica Budd was still sitting in a small car, which was making the horrible flat sound that indicates an engine refusing to fire.

‘This wretched car won’t start,’ she shouted.

‘Can I help?’

At that moment the engine came to life.

‘Shall I give you a lift?’ she said.

‘Which way are you going?’

‘Chelsea.’

I, too, was on my way to Chelsea that evening. It was a period of my life when, in recollection, I seem often to have been standing in a cinema queue with a different girl. One such evening lay ahead of me.

‘Thank you very much.’

‘Jump in,’ she said.

Now that she had invited me into her car, and we were driving along together, her manner, momentarily relaxed while she had been pressing the self-starter, became once more impersonal and remote; as if ‘a lift’ was not considered an excuse for undue familiarity between us. When the car had refused to start she had seemed younger and less chilly: less part of the impeccable Conyers world. Now she returned to an absolutely friendly, but also utterly impregnable outpost of formality.

‘You have known Bertha and the General for a long time?’

‘Since I was a child.’

‘That was when you met Mildred?’

‘Yes.’

‘You probably know all the stories about their father, Lord Vowchurch?’

‘I’ve heard some of them.’

‘The remark he is said to have made to King Edward just after Bertha’s engagement had been announced?’

‘I don’t know that one.’

‘It was on the Squadron Lawn at Cowes. The King is supposed to have said: “Well, Vowchurch, I hear you are marrying your eldest daughter to one of my generals”, and Bertha’s father is said to have replied: “By Gad, I am, sir, and I trust he’ll teach the girl to lead out trumps, for they’ll have little enough to live on”. Edward VII was rather an erratic bridge-player, you know. Sir Thomas Lipton told me the story in broad Scotch, which made it sound funnier. Of course, the part that appealed to Sir Thomas Lipton was the fact that it took place on the Squadron Lawn.’

‘How did the King take it?’

‘I think he was probably rather cross. Of course it may not be true. But Lord Vowchurch certainly was always getting into trouble with the King. Lord Vowchurch was supposed to be referring to some special game of bridge when he had been dummy and things had gone badly wrong with King Edward’s play. You said you’d met my Uncle Alfred, didn’t you?’

‘A couple of times.’

‘And you know whom I mean by Brabazon?’

‘The Victorian dandy—“Bwab”?’

‘Yes, that one.’

‘Who said he couldn’t remember what regiment he had exchanged into — after leaving the Brigade of Guards because it was too expensive — but “they wore green facings and you got to them by Waterloo Station”?’

‘That’s him. How clever of you to know about him. Well, when Uncle Alfred was a young man, he was dining at Pratt’s, and Colonel Brabazon came in from the Marlborough Club, where he had been in the card-room when the game was being played. According to Uncle Alfred, Colonel Brabazon said: “Vowchurch expwessed weal wesentment while his Woyal Highness played the wottenest wubber of wecent seasons — nothing but we-deals and wevokes.”’

‘I had no idea your uncle had a fund of stories of that kind.’

‘He hasn’t. That is his only one. He is rather a shy man, you see, and nothing ever happens to him.’

This was all very lively; although there was at the same time always something a shade aloof about the manner in which these anecdotes were retailed. However, they carried us down the King’s Road in no time. There was, in addition, something reminiscent about the tone in which they were delivered, a faint reminder of Alfred Tolland’s own reserve and fear of intimacy. Amusing in themselves, the stories were at the same time plainly intended to establish a specific approach to life. Beneath their fluency, it was possible to detect in Frederica Budd herself, at least so far as personal rather than social life was concerned, a need for armour against strangers. Almost schooled out of existence by severe self-discipline, a faint trace of her uncle’s awkwardness still remained to be observed under the microscope. There could be no doubt that I had scored a point by knowing about ‘Bwab’.