Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's

‘Wait a moment — wait a moment;’ said Jeavons. ‘Not so fast. Don’t rush ahead. That’s all part of the story.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Well, as I was saying, you did occasionally have a spot of fun in those days. Especially on leave. That’s the point. No good going too fast. Had to dodge the A.P.M., of course. Still, that’s by the way. Now I happened to get ninety-six hours’ leave at short notice when I hadn’t time to make any arrangements. Found the easiest thing was to spend the time in London. Didn’t know a soul there. Not a bloody cat. Well, after I’d had a bit of a lie-up in bed, I thought I’d go to a show. The M.O. had told me to look in on Daly’s, if I got the chance. It was a jolly good piece of advice. The Maid of the Mountains . Top-hole show. José Collins. She married into the aristocracy like myself, but that’s nothing to do with the story. I bought myself a stall, thinking I might catch a packet in the next ‘strafe’ and never sit in a theatre again. Hadn’t been there long before a large party came in and occupied the row in front of me. There were a couple of guardsmen in their grey greatcoats and some ladies in evening dress. Among this lot was a nurse — a V.A.D. — who, as I thought — and it subsequentiy proved correct — began to give me the glad eye.’

Jeavons paused to gulp his drink. He shook his head and sighed. There was a long silence. I feared this might be the termination of the story: a mere chronicle of nostalgic memory: a face seen on that one occasion, yet always remembered: a romantic dream that had remained with him all his life. I spurred him gently.

‘What did you do about it?’

‘About what?’

‘The nurse who gave you the glad eye.’

‘Oh yes, that. In the interval we managed to have a word together in the bar or somewhere. Next thing I knew, I was spending my leave with her.’

‘And this was—’

‘Mrs. Haycock — or, as she then was, the Honourable Mildred Blaides.’

Jeavons’s expression was so oracular, his tone so solemn, when he pronounced the name with the formal prefix attached, that I laughed. However, he himself remained totally serious in his demeanour. He sat there looking straight at me, as if the profound moral beauty of his own story delighted him rather than any purely anecdotal quality, romantic or banal, according to how you took it.

‘And you never saw her again from that time until the other night?’

‘Never set eyes on her. Of course, I’ve often heard Molly speak of Mildred Blaides and her goings-on, but I never knew it was the same girl. She and Molly used to meet sometimes. It so happened, for one reason or another, I was never there.’

‘Did she say anything about it the other night?’

‘Not a word. Didn’t recognise me. After all, I suppose I’ve got to take my place in what must be a pretty long list by now.’

‘You didn’t say anything yourself?’

‘Didn’t want to seem to presume on a war-time commission, so I kept mum. Besides, it’s just as well Molly shouldn’t know. If you gas about that sort of thing too much, the story is bound to get round. Silly of me to tell you, I expect. You’ll keep your trap shut, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Just thought it might interest you — especially as you know Widmerpool.’

‘It does — enormously.’

‘That’s the sort of thing that happens in a war. Happens to some chaps in peace-time too, I suppose. Not chaps like me. Haven’t the temperament. Things have changed a lot now anyway. I don’t mean people don’t sleep with each other any longer. Of course they do. More than ever, if what everyone says nowadays is true. But the whole point of view is different somehow. I expect you were too young to have seen The Bing Boys ?’

‘No, I wasn’t too young. I saw the show as a schoolboy.’

The band had momentarily ceased its hubbub. Jeavons leant forward. I thought he had something further to say which he wished to run no danger of being overheard. Instead, he suddenly began to sing, quite loud and in an unexpectedly deep and attractive voice:

‘I could say such — wonderful things to you,

There would be such — wonderful things to do.

Taking this, perhaps not unnaturally, as a kind of summons, two of the girls at a neighbouring table rose and prepared to join us, a tall, muscular blonde, not altogether unlike Mona, and a small, plump brunette, who reminded me of a girl I used to know called Rosie Manasch. (Peter Templer liked to say that you could recognise all the girls you had ever met in a chorus: like picking out your friends from a flock of sheep.) Jeavons immediately checked this threatened incursion before it could take serious form by explaining that we were waiting for the ‘rest of the party’. The girls withdrew. Jeavons condnued the song as if there had been no interruption:

‘If you were the only — girl in the world,

And I was the only boy …’

He had only just time to finish before the band broke out again in a deafening volume of sound, playing some tune of very different tempo from that sung by Jeavons.

‘People don’t think the same way any longer,’ he bawled across the table. ‘The war blew the whole bloody thing up, like tossing a Mills bomb into a dug-out. Everything’s changed about all that. Always feel rather sorry for your generation as a matter of fact, not but what we haven’t all lost our — what do you call ’em — you know — somebody used the word in our house the other night — saying much what I’m saying now? Struck me very forcibly. You know — when you’re soft enough to think things are going to be a damned sight better than they turn out to be. What’s the word?’

‘Illusions?’

‘Illusions! That’s the one. We’ve lost all our bloody illusions. Put ’em all in the League of Nations, or somewhere like that. Illusions, my God. I had a few of ’em when I started. You wouldn’t believe it. Of course, I’ve been lucky. Lucky isn’t the word, as a matter of fact. Still people always talk as if marriage was one long roll in the hay. You can take it from me, my boy. it isn’t. You’ll be surprised when you get tied up to a woman yourself. Suppose I shouldn’t say such things. Molly and I are very fond of each other in our own way. Between you and me, she’s not a great one for bed. A chap I knew in the Ordnance, who’d carried on quite a bit with the girls, told me those noisy ones seldom are. Don’t do much in that line myself nowadays, to tell the truth. Feel too cooked most of the time. Never sure the army vets got quite all those separate pieces of a toffee-apple out of my ribs. Tickles a bit sometimes. Sull, you have to step out once in a way. Go melancholy mad otherwise. Life’s a rum business, however you look at it, and — as I was saying — not having been born to all this high life, and so on, I can’t exactly complain.’

It was clear to me now that, if Molly had had her day, so too in a sense had Jeavons, even though Jeavons’s day had not been at all the same as his wife’s: few days, indeed, could have been more different. He was one of those men, themselves not particularly aggressive in their relations with the opposite sex, who are at the same time peculiarly attractive to some women; and, accordingly, liable to be appropriated at short notice. The episode of Mildred Blaides illustrated this state of affairs, which was borne out by the story of his marriage. It was unlikely that these were the only two women in the course of his life who had decided to take charge of him. I was hoping for further reminiscences (though expecting none more extraordinary than that already retailed) when Dicky Umfraville himself arrived at our table.

Wearing a dinner jacket, Umfraville was otherwise unchanged from the night we had met at Foppa’s. Trim, horsey, perfecdy at ease with himself, and everyone around him, he managed at the same time to suggest the proximity of an abyss of scandal and bankruptcy threatening at any moment to engulf himself, and anyone else unfortunate enough to be within his immediate vicinity when the crash came. The charm he exercised over people was perhaps largely due to this ability to juggle with two contrasting, apparently contradictory attributes; the one, an underlying implication of sinister, disturbing undercurrents: the other, a soothing power to reassure and entertain. These incompatible elements were always to be felt warring with each other whenever he was present. He was like an actor who suddenly appears on the stage to the accompaniment of a roll of thunder, yet utterly captivates his audience a second later, while their nerves are still on edge, by crooning a sentimental song.