Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's

While indulging in these rather banal reflections, I became aware that the two sisters had begun to quarrel. I had not heard the beginning of the conversation that had led to this discord, but it seemed to be concerned with their respective visits that summer to Thrubworth, their brother’s house.

‘As you know, Erry always makes these difficulties,’ Frederica was saying. ‘It is not that I myself particularly want to go there and live in ghastly discomfort for several weeks and feel frightfully depressed at seeing the place fall to pieces. I would much rather go to the seaside or abroad. But it is nice for the children to see the house, and they enjoy going down to talk to the people at the farm, and all that sort of thing. So if you are determined to go at just that moment—’

‘All right, then,’ said Norah, smiling and showing her teeth like an angry little vixen, ‘I won’t go. Nothing easier. I don’t particularly want to go to the bloody place either, but it is my home, I suppose. Some people might think that ought to be taken into consideration. I was born there. I can’t say I’ve had many happy moments there, it’s true, but I like walking by myself in the woods — and I have plenty of other ways of amusing myself there without bothering either you or Erry or anyone else.’

Eleanor caught my eye with a look to be interpreted as indicating that high words of this kind were not unexpected in the circumstances, but that we should try to quell them. However, before dissension could develop further, it was cut short abruptly by the door of the room opening. A small, gnarled, dumpy, middle-aged woman stood on the threshold. She wore horn-rimmed spectacles and her short legs were enclosed, like Eleanor’s, in blue flannel trousers — somewhat shrunk, for her largely developed thighs seemed to strain their seams — into the pockets of which her hands were deeply plunged.

‘Why, hullo, Hopkins,’ said Norah Tolland, her face suddenly clearing, and showing, for the first time since I had been in the room, some signs of pleasure. ‘What can we do for you?’

‘Hullo, girls,’ said the woman at the door.

She made no attempt to reply to Norah’s question, continuing to gaze round the room, grinning broadly, but advancing no farther beyond the threshold. She gave the impression of someone doing a turn on the stage.

‘If you take to leaving your front door on the latch,’ she said at last, ‘you’ll find a man will walk in one of these days, and then where will you be, I should like to know? By Jove, I see a man has walked in already. Well, well, well, never mind. There are a lot of them about, so I suppose you can’t keep them out all the time. What I came up for, dear, was to borrow an egg, if you’ve got such a thing. Laid one lately, either of you?’

Norah Tolland laughed.

‘This is my sister, Lady Frederica Budd,’ she said. ‘And Mr.—’

‘Jenkins,’ said Eleanor, in answer to an appeal for my name.

Eleanor was, I thought, less pleased than Norah to see the woman they called Hopkins. In fact, she seemed somewhat put out by her arrival.

‘Pleased to meet you, my dear,’ said Hopkins, holding out her hand to Frederica; ‘and you, my boy,’ she added, smirking in my direction.

‘Miss Hopkins plays the piano most nights at the Merry Thought,’ said Eleanor.

This explanation seemed aimed principally at Frederica.

‘You ought to look in one night,’ said Hopkins. ‘But come soon, because I’ve got an engagement next month to appear with Max Pilgrim at the Café de Madrid. I’ll have to make sure that old queen, Max, doesn’t hog every number. It would be just like him. He’s as vain as a peacock. Can’t trust a man not to try and steal the show anyway, even the normal ones, they’re the worst of all. Now the other thing I wanted to remind you girls about is my album. You’ve still got it. Have you thought of something nice to write in it, either of you?’

It appeared that no good idea had occurred either to Eleanor or Norah for inscription in the album.

‘I shall want it back soon,’ said Hopkins, ‘because another girl I know — such a little sweetie-pie with a little fragile face like a dear little dolly — is going to write some lovely lines in it. Shall I repeat to you what she is going to write? You will love it.’

Frederica Budd, who had been listening to all this with a slight smile, imperceptibly inclined her head, as one might when a clown enquires from his audience whether they have understood up to that point the course of the trick he is about to perform. Eleanor looked as if she did not particularly wish to hear what was offered, but regarded any demur as waste of time. Hopkins spoke the words:

‘Lips may be redder, and eyes more bright;

The face may be fairer you see tonight;

But never, love, while the stars shall shine,

Will you find a heart that is truer than mine.’

There was a pause when Hopkins came to the end of her recitation, which she had delivered with ardour. She struck an attitude, her hand on her hip.

‘Sweet, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘This friend of mine read it somewhere, and she memorised it — and so have I. I love it so much. That’s the sort of thing I want. I’ll leave the album a little longer then, girls, but remember — I shall expect something really nice when you do, both of you, think of a poem. Now what about that egg?’

Norah Tolland went into the kitchen of the flat. Hopkins stood grinning at us. No one spoke. Then Norah returned. On receiving the egg, Hopkins feigned to make it disappear up the sleeves of her shirt, the cuffs of which were joined by links of black and white enamel. Then, clenching her fist, she balanced the egg upon it at arm’s length, and marched out of the room chanting at the top of her voice:

‘Balls, Picnics and Parties,

Picnics, Parties and Balls …’

We heard the sound of her heavy, low-heeled shoes pounding the boards of the uncarpeted stairs, until at length a door slammed on a floor below, and the voice was cut off with a jerk.

‘She really plays the piano jolly well,’ said Norah.

It was a challenge, but the glove was not picked up.

‘Rather an amusing person,’ said Frederica. ‘Do you see much of her?’

‘She lives a couple of floors below,’ said Eleanor. ‘She is rather too fond of looking in at all hours.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Norah. ‘I like Heather.’

‘So you’ve made up your mind about Thrubworth?’ said Frederica, as if the merits of Hopkins were scarcely worth discussing.

I explained that I must now leave them. Frederica, at the moment of saying good-bye, spoke almost warmly; as if her conjecture that I might be a support to her had been somehow justified. Norah Tolland was curt. It was agreed that I should ring up Eleanor one of these days and come to see them again. I had the impression that my departure would be the signal for a renewed outbreak of family feuds. Anxious to avoid even their preliminary barrage, I descended the rickety, fœtid stairs, and proceeded on my way.

Later that evening, I found myself kicking my heels in one of those interminable cinema queues of which I have already spoken, paired off and stationary, as if life’s co-educational school, out in a ‘crocodile’, had come to a sudden standstill: that co-educational school of iron discipline, equally pitiless in pleasure and in pain. During the eternity of time that always precedes the termination of the ‘big picture’, I had even begun to wonder whether we should spend the rest of our days on that particular stretch of London pavement, when, at long last, just as rain had begun to fall, the portals of the auditorium burst open to void the patrons of the earlier performance. First came those scattered single figures, who, as if distraught by what they have seen and seeking to escape at whatever the cost, hurry blindly from the building, they care not how, nor where; then the long serpentine of spectators to whom expulsion into the street means no more than a need to take another decision in life; who, accordingly, postpone in the foyer any such irksome effort of the will by banding themselves into small, irregular, restless groups, sometimes static, sometimes ineffectively mobile. As the queue of which we formed a link stumbled forward towards the booking office, I discerned through the mist of faces that must dissolve before we could gain our seats, the features of J. G. Quiggin. Our eyes met. He shook his head sharply from side to side, as if to express satisfaction that we should run into each other in so opportune a manner. A moment later he was near enough to make his small, grating tones heard above the murmur of other voices.