Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's

‘I met your sister, Priscilla, at the Jeavonses the other night — only for a minute or two. Chips Lovell drove us both home.’

She did not seem much interested by that, hardly answering. I remembered, then, that she probably did not care for Lovell. However, her next words were entirely unexpected.

‘I am on my way to call on my sister, Norah, now,’ she said. ‘It seemed rather a long time since I had set eyes on her. I thought I would just look in to see that she is behaving herself. Why not come and meet her — and see Eleanor again.’

‘Just for a second. Then I shall have to move on.’

At the sound of this last statement I was aware of a faint but distinct disapproval, as if my reply had informed her quite clearly — indeed, almost grossly — that I was up to no good; yet made her at the same time realise that in a locality where so much human behaviour commanded disapprobation, minor derelictions — anyway, in a man — must, in the interest of the general picture, be disregarded. However, together with that sense of constraint that she conveyed, I was by then also aware of a second feeling: a notion that some sort of temporary alliance had been hurriedly constructed between us. I could not explain this impression to myself, though I was prepared to accept it.

By that time we had arrived before a dilapidated stucco fa£ade in a side street, a house entered by way of a creaking, unlatched door, from which most of the paint had been removed. The hall, empty except for a couple of packing-cases, gave off that stubborn musty smell characteristic of staircases leading to Chelsea flats: damp: cigarette smoke: face powder. We climbed the uncarpeted boards, ascending endlessly floor after floor, Frederica Budd taking the steps two at a time at a sharp pace. At last the attics were reached; and another battered door, upon which was fastened a brass knocker, formed in the image of the Lincoln Imp. Attached with four drawing-pins to the panel below this knocker was a piece of grubby cardboard inscribed with the names:

TOLLAND

WALPOLE-WILSON

Frederica, ignoring the claims of the Lincoln Imp, clenched her fist and banged on the door with all her force, at the same time shouting in an unexpectedly raucous voice:

‘Norah! Eleanor!’

There was a sound of someone stirring within. Then Eleanor Walpole-Wilson opened the door. She was wearing a very dirty pair of navy blue flannel trousers and smoking a stub of a cigarette. Apart from her trousers and cigarette, and also a decided air of increased confidence in herself, she had changed very little from the days when, loathing every moment of it, she used to trail round the London ball-rooms. She still wore her hair in a bun, a style which by then brought her appearance almost within measurable distance of ‘the mode’; or at least within hail of something that might, with a little good will, be supposed unconventionally chic. Square and broad-shouldered as ever, she was plainly on much better terms with herself, and with others, than formerly.

‘I’ve brought an old friend to see you,’ said Frederica.

Eleanor showed no surprise at my arrival. There was even a slight suggestion of relief that Frederica Budd had not to be entertained singly; for towards Frederica Eleanor displayed a hint of her old aggressiveness, or at least gave indication that she was on the defensive. This sense of quiet but firm opposition became more positive when we moved into the sitting-room.

‘How are you, Nicholas?’ said Eleanor. ‘Fancy your turning up here. Why, you’ve got a grey hair. Just above your ear.’

The place was horribly untidy, worse than the Jeavonses, and the furniture struck an awkward level between boudoir and studio: an ancient sofa, so big that one wondered how it could ever have been hoisted up the last flight of stairs, stood covered with chintz roses among two or three unsubstantial, faintly ‘Louis’ chairs. The walls had been distempered yellow by some amateur hand. A girl was lying prone on the ground, her skirt rucked up to her thighs, showing a strip of skin above each stocking. This was Norah Tolland. She was pasting scraps on to the surface of a coal-scuttle.

‘Hullo, Frederica,’ she said, without looking up. ‘I shan’t be a moment. I must finish this before the paste runs out.’

She continued her work for a few moments, then, wiping the paste from her hands with a red check duster, she rose from the ground, pulled her skirt down impatiently, and gave her sister a peck on the cheek. Eleanor presented me, explaining that we had known each other ‘in the old days’. Norah Tolland did not look very enthusiastic at this news, but she held out her hand. She was dark and very pale, with a narrow face like her sister’s, her expression more truculent, though also, on the whole, less firm in character. The coltishness of her sister, Priscilla, had turned in Norah to a deliberate, rather absurd masculinity. Frederica glanced round the room without attempting to conceal her distaste, as if she felt there was much to criticise, not least the odour of turpentine and stale cake.

‘I see you haven’t managed to get the window mended yet,’ she said.

Her sister did not answer, only flicking back her hair from her forehead with a sharp, angry motion.

‘Isobel is supposed to be coming in to see us some time today,’ she said, ‘with her new young man. I thought it was her when you arrived.’

‘Who is her new young man?’

‘How should I know? Some chap.’

‘I saw her last night at Hyde Park Gardens.’

‘How were they all?’ said Norah, indifferentiy. ‘Would you like a drink? I think there is some sherry left.’

Frederica shook her head, as if the idea of alcohol in any form at that moment nauseated her.

‘You?’

‘No, thank you. I must really go in a moment.’

The sherry did not sound very safe: wiser to forego it.

‘Don’t leave yet,’ said Eleanor. ‘You’ve only just arrived. We must have a word about old times. I haven’t seen the Gorings for ages. I always think of you, Nicholas, as a friend of Barbara’s.’

‘How is Barbara?’

It seemed extraordinary that I had once, like Widmerpool, thought myself in love with Barbara. Now I could hardly remember what she looked like, except that she was small and dark.

‘You know she married Johnny Pardoe?’ said Eleanor.

‘I haven’t set eyes on either of them since the wedding.’

‘Things have been a bit difficult.’

‘What?’

‘There was a baby that went wrong.’

‘Oh, dear.’

‘Then Johnny got awfully odd and melancholy after he left the Grenadiers. You remember he used to be an absolutely typical guardee, pink in the face and shouting at the top of his voice all the time, and yelling with laughter. Now he has quite changed, and mopes for hours or reads books on religion and philosophy.’

‘Johnny Pardoe?’

‘He sits in the library for weeks at a time just brooding. Never shoots now. You know how much he used to love shooting. Barbara has to run the place entirely. Poor Barbara, she has an awful time of it.’

Life jogs along, apparently in the same old way, and then suddenly your attention is drawn to some terrific change that has taken place. For example, I found myself brought up short at that moment, like a horse reined in on the brink of a precipice, at the thought of the astonishing reversal of circumstances by which Eleanor Walpole-Wilson was now in a position to feel sorry for Barbara Goring — or, as she had by then been for some years, Barbara Pardoe. The relationship between these two first cousins, like all other relationships when one is young, had seemed at that time utterly immutable; Barbara, pretty, lively, noisy, popular: Eleanor, plain, awkward, cantankerous, solitary. Barbara’s patronage of Eleanor was something that could never change. ‘Eleanor is not a bad old thing when you get to know her,’ she used to say; certainly without the faintest suspicion that within a few years Eleanor might be in a position to say: ‘Poor Barbara, she does have a time of it.’