Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's

‘Oh, are you on strike?’ asked Erridge, brightening up at once, as if it were for him a rare, unexpected pleasure to find himself in such close contact with a real striker. ‘In that case you simply must come and have a meal with me.’

‘I’d love to, but it is not me on strike, I am afraid — the electricians.’

‘Oh, yes, the strike, of course, the strike,’ said Quiggin, as if he himself had organised the stoppage of work, but, in the light of his many similar responsibilities, had forgotten about its course. ‘In that case we would all like to come, Alf. It’s an early supper, as I remember.’

So far as Quiggin was concerned, it had been one of those great social defeats; and, in facing the fact squarely, he had done something to retrieve his position. Presumably he was making plans for Erridge to put up the money to install him as editor of some new, Left Wing magazine. It was perhaps reasonable that he should wish to keep their plans secret in case they should miscarry. However, now that the dinner had been decided upon, he accepted the matter philosophically. Erridge seemed to have no similar desire to discuss matters in private. He was, I think, quite unaware of Quiggin’s unwillingness to allow others to know too much of their life together. I could see, too, that he was determined not to abandon the idea that I was myself a striker.

‘But you support them by not going,’ he said. ‘Yes, come early. You might possibly like to look round the house — though there really is nothing to see there that is of the slightest interest, I’m afraid.’

He moved once more towards the door, sunk again in deep despair, perhaps at the thought of the lack of distinction of his house and its contents. Shuffling his espadrilles against the stone floor, he caught his foot in the mat, swore gently and a trifle self-consciously, as if aspiring to act as roughly as he was dressed, and left with hardly a further word. Quiggin accompanied him to the door, and shouted a farewell. Then he returned to the room in which we sat. No one spoke for a minute or two. Quiggin slowly corked up the gin bottle, and put it away in a cupboard.

‘Alf is rather sweet, isn’t he?’ said Mona.

‘Alf is a good fellow,’ agreed Quiggin, a shade sourly.

‘Where does he live?’ I asked.

‘Thrubworth Park. It is a big house heyond the trees you see from our windows.’

Quiggin had been put out by this sudden appearance of Erridge. It had been a visit for which he was unprepared: a situation he had not bargained for. Now he seemed unable to decide what line he himself should take about his friend.

‘How much do you know about him?’ he asked at last.

‘Hardly anything, except that he is said to have been a tramp. And, as I said just now, I met some of his sisters the other day.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Quiggin, impatiently. ‘I am not at all interested in the rest of his family. He never sees anything of them, anyway. A lot of social butterflies, that’s all they are. Just what you might expect. Alf is different. I don’t know what you mean by being a tramp, though. Where did you get that story? I suppose you think everyone is a tramp who wears a beard.’

‘Aren’t they? Some of his relations told me he had been experimenting in life as a tramp.’

‘Just the sort of thing they would put about,’ said Quiggin. ‘Isn’t it like people of that class? It is true he has been making some study of local condidons. I don’t think he stayed anywhere very luxurious, but he certainly didn’t sleep in casual wards.’

‘His relations suppose he did. I think they rather admire him for it.’

‘Well, they suppose wrong,’ said Quiggin. ‘Alf is a very good fellow, but I don’t know whether he is prepared to make himself as uncomfortable as that.’

‘What did he do then?’

‘Useful work collecting information about unemployment,’ Quiggin conceded. ‘Distributed pamphlets at the same time. I don’t want to belittle it in any way, but it is absurd to go round saying he was a tramp. All the same, the experience he had will be of political value to him.’

‘I think he is rather attractive,’ said Mona.

For some reason this did not seem to please Quiggin.

‘Did you ever meet a girl called Gypsy Jones?’ he said. ‘A Communist. Rather a grubby little piece. I’m not sure Alf may not be a bit keen on her. I saw them sitting together at a Popular Front meeting. All the same, he is not a man to waste time over women.’

‘What do you mean, “waste time over women”?’ said Mona. ‘Anyway, nobody could blame you for that. You think about yourself too much.’

‘I think about you too, ducks,’ said Quiggin mildly, no doubt judging it advisable to pacify her. ‘But Alf is an idealist. Rather too much of one sometimes, when it comes to getting things done. All the same, he has most of the right ideas. Shall I get that bottle out again? Supper doesn’t seem to be nearly ready.’

‘Yes, get it out,’ said Mona. ‘I can’t imagine why you put it away.’

All this was reminiscent of the Templer household before Mona left her husband. During the twenty-four hours that followed, this recollection was more than once repeated.

Quiggin, too, had begun to placate her with ‘treats’, the impending dinner with Erridge certainly grading in that class. In fact Quiggin began to talk as if he himself had arranged the invitation as an essential aspect of the weekend. Although its potentialities had been reduced for him by my inclusion, there was, I think, nothing personal in that. He would equally have objected to any other friend or acquaintance joining the party. Dinner at Thrubworth was an occasion not to be wasted, for Mona had remarked: ‘We don’t get invited every day of the week.’ I asked how long they had known Erridge.

‘In the days when I was secretary to St. John Clarke,’ said Quiggin, smiling to show how distant, how incongruous, he now regarded that period of his life. ‘St. J. went one afternoon to a bookshop in Charing Cross Road, where he wanted to cast his eye over some of Lenin’s speeches. As you know, St. J. was rather careful about money, and he had suggested I should hold the bookseller in conversation while he looked up just as much as he needed. This was at the beginning of St. J.’s conversion to Marxism. We found Alf pottering about the shop, trying to get through the afternoon. Old habits die hard, and, of course, up to the time I met him, St. J. had been a champion snob — and he wasn’t altogether cured of his liking for a high-sounding name. He often said afterwards, when we knew each other well, that I’d saved him from snobbery. I only wish I could also have saved him from Trotskyism. But that is another story. It happened that St. J. had met Alf quite a time before at the home of one of Alf’s relatives — is there a woman called Lady Molly Jeavons? There is — well, it was at her house. St. J. had a word or two with Alf in the bookshop, and, in spite of his changed view of life, forgot all about Lenin’s speeches and asked him back to tea.’

‘And you have known him ever since?’

‘Alf turned up trumps when St. J. behaved so foolishly about myself and Mona. Since then, I’ve done my best to canalise his enthusiasms.’

‘Has St. John Clarke still got his German boy as secretary?’

‘Not he,’ said Quiggin. ‘Guggenbühl is a shrewd young man, Trotskyist though he be. He has moved on to something more paying. After all, he was smart enough to see Hitler coming and clear out of Germany. I hear he is very patronising to the German refugees arriving now.’

‘He is probably a Nazi agent.’

‘My God,’ said Quiggin. ‘I wouldn’t wonder. I must talk to Mark about that when he comes back from America.’