Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's

‘Why not?’

‘No government would dream of taking it on. The country wouldn’t stand for it.’

‘Of course they wouldn’t,’ said Jeavons.

‘Well?’

‘Well, we’ll just have to wait,’ said Jeavons.

‘I suppose so.’

‘Wait and see,’ said Jeavons. ‘That was what Mr. Asquith used to say. Didn’t do us much good in 1914. I expect you were too young to have been in the last show?’

I thought that enquiry rather unnecessary, not by then aware that, as one grows older, the physical appearance of those younger than oneself offers only a vague indication of their precise age. To me, ‘the Armistice’ was a distant memory of my preparatory school: to Jeavons, the order to ‘cease fire’ had happened only the other day. The possibility that I might have been ‘in the war’ seemed perfectly conceivable to him.

‘Some of it wasn’t so bad,’ he said.

‘No?’

‘Most of it perfect hell, of course. Absolute bloody hell on earth. Bloody awful. Gives me the willies even to think of it sometimes.’

‘Where were you?’

‘Joined up at Thirsk. Started off in the Green Howards. Got a commission after a bit in one of the newly-formed battalions of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment. I’d exchanged from the Duke’s into the Machine-Gun Corps when I caught it in the tummy at Le Bassée.’

‘Pretty unpleasant?’

‘Not too good. Couldn’t digest anything for ages. Can’t always now, to tell the truth. Some of those dinners Molly gives. Still, digestion is a funny thing. I once knew a chap who took a bet he could eat a cut-off-the-joint-and-two-veg at a dozen different pubs between twelve o’clock and three on the same day.’

‘Did he win his bet?’

‘The first time,’ said Jeavons, screwing up his face painfully at the thought of his friend’s ordeal, ‘someone else at the table lit a cigarette, and he was sick — I think he had got to about eight or nine by then. We all agreed he ought to have another chance. A day or two later he brought it off. Funny what people can do.’

Conversation could be carried no further because at this point ‘closing time’ was announced. Jeavons, rather to my surprise, made no effort to prolong our stay until the last possible moment. On the contrary, the barman had scarcely announced ‘Time, gendemen, please,’ when Jeavons made for the stairs. I followed him. He seemed to have a course for himself clearly mapped out. When we reached the street, he turned once more to me.

‘Going home?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Wouldn’t like to prolong this night of giddy pleasure with me for a bit?’

‘If you have any ideas.’

‘There is a place I thought of visiting tonight. A club of some sort — or a ‘bottie party’ as they seem to call it these days — that has just opened. Care to come?’

‘All right.’

‘A fellow came to see Molly some weeks ago, and gave us a card to get in any time we wanted. You know, you buy a bottle and all that. Makes you a member. Chap used to know Molly years ago. Gone the pace a bit. Now he is rather hard up and managing this hide-out.’

‘I see.’

‘Ever heard of Dicky Umfraville?’

‘Yes. In fact I met him once years ago.’

‘That’s all right then. Umfraville is running the place. Molly would never dream of going near it, of course. Thought I might go and have a look-see myself.’

‘Is Dicky Umfraville still married to Anne Stepney?’

‘Don’t think he is married to anyone at the moment,’ said Jeavons. ‘That would make his third or fourth, wouldn’t it?’

‘His fourth. She was quite young.’

‘Come to think of it, Molly did say he’d had another divorce fairly recently,’ said Jeavons. ‘Anyway, he is more than usually on the rocks at the moment. He used to stay at Dogdene when Molly’s first husband was alive. Gilded youth in those days. Not much left now. First-class rider, of course, Umfraville. Second in the National one year.’

While we talked, Jeavons had been making his way in a south-easterly direction. We continued in silence for some time, threading a path through a tangle of mean streets, past the plate-glass windows of restaurants opaque with steam.

‘I think we must be close now,’ said Jeavons, at last. ‘I know more or less where the place is, and Dicky has drawn a sort of map at the back of the card.’

By that time we were in the neighbourhood of the Trouville Restaurant, a haunt of Uncle Giles, where one night, years before, I had joined him for a meal. The entrance to the club was concealed in an alleyway, by no means easy to find. We discovered the door at last. The name of the place was inscribed upon it on a minute brass plate, as if any kind of display was to be avoided. At the end of a narrow, dimly-lit passage a villainous-looking fellow with watery eyes and a nose covered with blue veins sat behind a rickety table. On the mention of Umfraville’s name and production of the card, this Dickensian personage agreed that we might enter the precincts, after he had with his own hand laboriously inscribed our names in a book.

‘The Captain’s not in the club yet,’ he said, as he shut this volume, giving at the same time a dreadful leer like that of a very bad actor attempting to horrify a pantomime audience. ‘But I don’t expect he’ll be long now.’

‘Tell him to report to the Orderly Room when he comes,’ said Jeavons, causing the blue-nosed guardian of the door to reveal a few rotting teeth in appreciation of this military pleasantry.

The interior of the club was unimpressive. An orchestra of three, piano, drum and saxophone, were making a deafening noise in the corner of the room. A few ‘hostesses’ sat about in couples, gossiping angrily in undertones, or silently reclining in listless attitudes against the back of a chair. We seemed to be the first arrivals, not surprisingly, for it was still early in the evening for a place of this kind to show any sign of life. After a certain amount of palaver, a waiter brought us something to drink. Nothing about the club suggested that Umfraville’s fortune would be made by managing it.

‘Anyway, as I was saying,’ remarked Jeavons, who had, in fact, scarcely spoken for some considerable time, except for his negotiations with the doorkeeper and waiter. ‘As I was saying, you did have the odd spot of fun once in a while. Mostly on leave, of course. That stands to reason. Now I’ll tell you a funny story, if you’ll promise to keep it under your hat.’

‘Wild horses won’t drag it from me.’

‘I suppose it’s a story a real gent wouldn’t tell,’ said Jeavons. ‘But then I’m not a real gent.’

‘You are whetting my appetite.’

‘I don’t know why I should fix on you to hear the story,’ said Jeavons, speaking as if he had given much thought to the question of who should be his confidant in this particular matter, and at the same time taking a packet of Gold Flake from his trouser pocket and beginning to tear open the wrapping. ‘But I’ve got an idea it might amuse you. Did I see you talking to a fellow called Widmerpool at our house some little while ago — I believe it was the first night you ever came there?’

‘You did.’

I was interested to find that new arrivals at the Jeavonses’ were so accurately registered in the mind of the host.

‘Know him well?’

‘Quite well.’

‘Then I expect you know he is going to marry someone called Mildred Haycock, who was also there that night.’

‘I do.’

‘Know her too?’

‘Not really. I met her once when I was a small boy.’

‘Exactly. You were a small boy and she was already grown up. In other words, she is quite a bit older than Widmerpool.’

‘I know. She was a nurse at Dogdene when your wife was there, wasn’t she—?’