Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's

The possibility that Mark Members and himself had been succeeded in the dynasty of St. John Clarke’s secretaries by one of Hitler’s spies greatly cheered Quiggin. He was in a good mood for the rest of the day, until it was time to start for Thrubworth. Then, as the hour approached, he became once more nervous and agitated. I had supposed that, having secured Erridge for a patron some years before, Quiggin must be used by then to his ways. The contrary seemed true; and I remembered that in his undergraduate days he used to become irritable and perturbed before a party: master of himself only after arrival. He had changed into his suit of that cruel blue colour when at last we set off across the fields.

‘What date is the house?’

‘What house?’

‘Where we are going.’

‘Oh, Thrubworth Park,’ said Quiggin, as if he had forgotten our destination. ‘Seventeenth century, I should say, much altered in the eighteenth. Alf will tell you about it. Though he doesn’t really like the place, he likes talking about it for some reason. You will hear all you want about its history.’

Passing into the wood to be seen from the windows of the cottage, we went through more fields and climbed a stile. Beyond was a deserted road, on the far side of which, set back some distance from the highway, stood an entrance — evidently not the main entrance — to a park, the walls of which I had already seen from another side on my way from the station the day before. A small, unoccupied lodge, now fallen into decay, lay beside two open, wrought-iron gates. We went through these gates, and made our way up a drive that disappeared among large trees. The park was fairly well kept, though there was an unfriended, melancholy air about the place, characteristic of large estates for which the owner feels no deep affection.

‘I hope there will be something to drink tonight,’ said Mona.

‘Is it a bit short as a rule?’ I asked.

‘Doesn’t exactly flow.’

‘Why didn’t you have a pint of gin before you came out then,’ asked Quiggin, gratingly, ‘if you can’t ever get through an evening without wanting to feel tipsy at the end of it? There always seems enough to me. Not buckets but enough.’

His nerves were still on edge.

‘All right,’ said Mona. ‘Don’t bite my head off. You grumbled yourself the last time you came here.’

‘Did I, ducks?’

He took her arm.

‘We’ll have a nice drink when we get back,’ he said, ‘if Alf should happen to be in one of his moods.’

1 felt apprehensive at the thought that Erridge might be ‘in one of his moods’. Quiggin had not mentioned these ‘moods’ before, although their nature was easy to imagine from what had been said. I wished we could continue to walk, as we were doing, through glades of oak and chestnut trees in the cool twilight, without ever reaching the house and the grim meal which now seemed to lie ahead of us. We had continued for about ten minutes when roofs came suddenly into view, a group of buildings of some dignity, though without much architectural distinction: a seventeenth-century mansion such as Quiggin had described, brick at the back and fronted in the eighteenth century with stone. The façade faced away from us across a wide stretch of lawn, since we had arrived at the side of the house amongst a network of small paths and flowerbeds, rather fussily laid out and not too well kept. Quiggin led the way through these borders, making for a projection of outbuildings and stables. We passed under an arch into a cobbled yard. Quiggin made for a small door, studded with brass nails. By the side of this door hung an iron bell-pull. He stopped short and turned towards me, looking suddenly as if he had lost heart. Then he took hold of himself and gave the bell a good jerk.

‘Does one always come in this way?’

‘The front of the house is kept shut,’ he said.

‘What happens inside?’

‘The state rooms — if that is what you call them — are closed. Alf just lives in one corner of the place.’

‘In the servants’ quarters?’

‘More or less. That is probably what they used to be.’

We waited for a long time. Quiggin appeared unwilling to ring again, but, under pressure from Mona, at last decided to repeat his wrench at the bell. There was another long pause. Then steps could be heard moving very slowly and carefully down the stairs. Inner fumbling with the door-knob took place, and the door was opened by a man-servant. I recognised Smith, the butler temporarily employed by the Jeavonses on my first visit to their house.

‘Lord Warminster?’ muttered Quiggin, interrogatively.

Smith made no answer. A kind of grimace had crossed his features when he saw Quiggin and Mona; naturally enough, he gave me no sign of recognition. Apart from this brief, indeed scarcely perceptible contraction of nose and lips — perhaps merely a nervous twitch — he expressed no further welcome. However, he stood aside to allow us to enter. We trooped in, finding ourselves in a kind of back hall where several passages met. There was an impression of oak chests, shabby bookcases full of unreadable books, mahogany dressers and other huge pieces of furniture, expelled at one time or another from the central part of the house; the walls covered with large oil paintings of schools long fallen out of fashion. Smith, as if suffering from some painful disease in the lower half of his body, strode uncertainly before us towards a narrow flight of stairs. We followed in silence. Even Mona seemed overawed by the cavernous atmosphere of gloom. Passing through corridors, and still further corridors, all lined with discredited canvases and an occasional marble bust, Smith stopped before a door. Then he turned almost savagely upon us.

‘Mr. and Mrs. Quiggin — and what other name?’

Fancy made him seem to emphasise the word ‘Mrs.’, as if he wished to cast doubt on the legal union of the two of them. Quiggin started, then mumbled my name grudgingly. Smith threw open the door, bawling out his announcement, and propelled us within.

Erridge was sitting at a desk, the upper part surmounted by a glass-fronted bookcase filled with volumes enclosed for the most part in yellow paper wrappers. He jumped up immediately we entered, removing his spectacles and stumbling forward confusedly, as if our arrival was totally unexpected. He had been writing, and the open flap of the desk was covered with letters and papers which now cascaded to the floor; where they lay in a heap for the rest of the time we were in the house. A dark wall-paper and heavy mahogany furniture, not very different in style to that exiled to the back parts of the house, made the room seem smaller than its real extent, which was in fact considerable. There were no pictures, though rectangular discoloured patches on the walls showed where frames had once hung. Over the fireplace hung a chart which I took to be the Tolland pedigree, but on closer examination proved to illustrate in descending scale some principle of economic distribution. Shelves holding more books — classics, Baedekers and a couple of bound copies of the Boy’s Own Paper —covered the far wall. At the end of the room stood a table littered with current newspapers and magazines. Another smaller table had been laid with four places for a meal.

It was clear that Erridge lived and moved and had his being in this room. I wondered whether he also spent his nights there on the sofa. Such rough and ready accommodation might easily be in keeping with his tenets: except that the sofa looked rather too comfortable to assuage at night-time his guilt for being rich. Still embarrassed, so it seemed, by the unexpectedness of our arrival, he had now begun to walk quickly up and down the room, as if to give expression and relief to the nervous tension he felt. Quiggin, his own self-possession completely restored by contact with his host — like the warm glow that comes after a plunge in cold water — must have recognised these symptoms in Erridge as normal enough. He took Mona by the arm and drew her towards the window, where the two of them stood side by side, looking down at the gardens and the park beyond. They began to discuss together some feature of the landscape.