Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's

‘Not an adventure exactly,’ said her sister. ‘And, anyway, it’s my story, not yours, Isobel. Hardly an adventure. Unless you call getting married an adventure. I suppose some people might.’ ‘Why, have you got married, Susan?’ asked Erridge.

He showed no surprise whatever, and very little interest, at the presentation of this possibility: merely mild, on the whole benevolent, approval.

‘I haven’t yet,’ said Susan, suddenly blushing deeply. ‘But I am going to.’

She was, I think, suddenly overwhelmed at the thought of marriage and all it implied. The announcement of her engagement, planned with great dash, had not been entirely carried off with the required air of indifference. I even wondered for a moment whether she was not going to cry. However, she mastered herself immediately. At the sight of her sister’s face, Isobel began to blush violently too.

‘To whom?’ asked Erridge, still completely calm. ‘I am so glad to hear the news.’

‘Roddy Cutts.’

The name clearly conveyed nothing whatever to her brother, who still smiled amiably, unable to think of anything to say.

‘There was a Lady Augusta Cutts who used to give dances when I was a young man,’ he said, at last.

He spoke as if he were at least as old as General Conyers. No doubt the days when he had occasionally gone to dances seemed by then infinitely distant: indeed, much further off, and no less historic, than the General’s cavalry charge.

‘Lady Augusta is his mother.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘She is rather a terror.’

There was a pause.

‘What does he do?’ asked Erridge, as if conscious that it might seem bad-mannered to drop the subject altogether, however much he himself hoped to move on to something more interesting.

‘I can’t tell you exactly,’ said Susan. ‘But he has something he does. I mean he doesn’t absolutely beg his bread from door to door. He looks into the Conservative Central Office once in a way too.’

Erridge’s face fell at the mention of this last establishment. Quiggin, however, came to the rescue.

‘Much as I hate the Tories,’ he said, ‘I’ve heard that Cutts is one of their few promising young men.’

Everyone, including Susan Tolland herself, was surprised by this sudden avowal on the part of Quiggin, who was showing at least as much enthusiasm on the subject of the engagement as might have been expected from Erridge himself.

‘I grant it may not be my place to say so,’ Quiggin went on, switching at the same time to a somewhat rougher delivery. ‘But you know, Alf, you really ought to celebrate rightly in a bottle of champagne. Now, don’t you think there is some bubbly left in that cellar of yours?’

This speech astonished me, not because there was anything surprising in Quiggin’s desire for champagne, but on account of a changed attitude towards his host. Erridge’s essentially ascetic type of idealism, concerned with the mass rather than the individual, and reinforced by an aristocratic, quite legitimate desire to avoid vulgar display, had no doubt moved imperceptibly into that particular sphere of parsimony defined by Lovell as ‘upper-class stinginess’. To demand champagne was deliberately to inflame such responses in Erridge. Possibly Quiggin, seeing unequivocal signs of returning sulkiness in Mona, hoped to avert that mood by this daring manoeuvre: equally, as a sheer exercise of will, he may have decided at that moment to display his power over his patron. Neither motive would be out of keeping with his character. Finally, he might have hoped merely to ingratiate himself with Susan Tolland — certainly a pretty girl — whom he possibly cast for some at present unrevealed role in his future plans. Whatever his reason, he received a very encouraging smile from her after making this proposal.

‘What a jolly good idea,’ she said. ‘As a matter of fact I was waiting for Erry to suggest it.’

Erridge was undoubtedly taken aback, although not, I think, on the ground that the suggestion came from Quiggin. Erridge did not traffic in individual psychology. It was an idea that was important to him, not its originator. The whole notion of drinking champagne because your sister was engaged was, in itself, obviously alien to him; alien both to his temperament and ideals. Champagne no doubt represented to his mind a world he had fled. Now the wine was presented as a form of rite or observance, almost, indeed, as a restorative or tonic after hearing dangerously exciting news, he seemed primarily concerned with the question whether or not any champagne remained in the house. The fact that Quiggin had put forward the proposal must at least have disposed of any fears as to whether in this manner a coarse display of his own riches might be symbolised. However, even faced with this utterly unforeseen problem, Erridge was by no means thrown off his guard. I could not help admiring the innate caution with which he seasoned his own eccentricity. Even in Erridge, some trace of that ‘realism’ was observable of which Chipps Lovell used to speak; among the rest of the Tollands, as I discovered later, a characteristic strongly developed.

‘I really cannot reply to that question offhand,’ Erridge said — and one caught a faint murmur of ancestral voices answering for the Government some awkward question raised by the Opposition—’As you know I hardly ever drink anything myself, except an occasional glass of beer — certainly never champagne. To tell the truth, I hate the stuff. We’d better ask Smith.’

Smith, as it happened, appeared at that moment with coffee. Already he showed signs of being nervously disturbed by the arrival of the girls, his hands shaking visibly as he held the tray; so much so that some of the liquid spilled from the pot.

‘Smith, is there any champagne left in the cellar?’

Erridge’s voice admitted the exceptional nature of the enquiry. He asked almost apologetically. Even so, the shock was terrific. Smith started so violently that the coffee cups rattled on the tray. It was evident that we were now concerned with some far more serious matter than the earlier pursuit of sherry. Recovering himself with an effort, Smith directed a stare of hatred at Quiggin, at once revealed by some butler’s instinct as the ultimate cause of this unprecedented demand. The colourless, unhealthy skin of his querulous face, stretched like a pale rubber mask over the bones of his features, twitched a little.

‘Champagne, m’lord?’

‘Have we got any? One bottle would do. Even a half-bottle.’

Smith’s face puckered, as if manfully attempting to force his mind to grapple with a mathematical or philosophical problem of extraordinary complexity. His bearing suggested that he had certainly before heard the word ‘champagne’ used, if only in some distant, outlandish context; that devotion to his master alone gave him some apprehension of what this question — these ravings, almost — might mean. Nothing good could come of it. This was a disastrous way to talk. That was his unspoken message so far as champagne was concerned. After a long pause, he at last shook his head.

‘I doubt if there is any champagne left, m’lord.’

‘Oh, I’m sure there is, Smith, if you go and look,’ said Susan. ‘You see it is to celebrate my engagement, Smith. I’m going to get married.’

Another twitch passed quickly, almost like a flash of lightning, over Smith’s face. I had by no means taken a fancy to him, either here or at the Jeavonses’, but it was impossible not to feel some sympathy for his predicament: forced at short notice to adapt himself to the whims of his different employers; for it was unlikely that his Thrubworth routine was anything like that at the Jeavonses’.

‘Very pleased to hear the news, m’lady,’ he said. ‘Wish you the best of luck. I expect it will be Lady Isobel’s turn soon.’