Anthony Powell - At Lady Molly's

Lovell had made for a red-faced, grey-moustached, elderly man, who seemed, like Mrs. Conyers, to have been a member of the dinner-party. This person possessed a curiously old-world air, suggesting an epoch considerably more remote than the war-time span conveyed by his host’s outward appearance. Although not so old, he seemed to belong more, at least in spirit, to the vintage of General Conyers. I caught the words ‘Uncle Alfred’. Lovell called so many men uncle that one could not be sure how closely related to him, if at all, any of them might be. This uncle acknowledged Lovell’s greeting fairly curtly. There was something familiar about that red face, white moustache and muffled, uneasy manner. Then I realised that he was Tolland, that lonely, derelict character accustomed to frequent the annual Old Boy dinner of Le Bas’s house. In fact, I had myself once sat next to Tolland at one of those functions: an occasion when I had made up my mind never to attend another.

It was a surprise to find Mrs. Conyers and Tolland here, but there was no reason why they should not both be friends of Lady Molly Jeavons. Mrs. Conyers was now engaged by her hostess, and led up to a swarthy young man, also wearing a dinner-jacket, who was standing by the gramophone turning over the pages of a book of records. They all began to talk French together. At that moment my eye caught Tolland’s. He stared back, not without a certain apprehension in his look. Then he cleared his throat and advanced towards me.

‘I didn’t see you at the Le Bas dinner this year,’ he said.

He spoke with reproach, as if to mention such a breach of faith was an embarrassing duty his conscience laid upon him. In these surroundings, evidently his own ground, I felt less ability to cope with his peculiarities than at the Le Bas dinners. It seemed better to conceal the decision never to attend another one.

‘I didn’t manage to get there.’

‘It went off all right,’ said Tolland slowly, as if ghastly failure had been a matter of touch and go. ‘I always accept when the card comes round. It makes a pleasant evening. Got to keep in touch. Of course Le Bas always says that in his speech.’

Molly Jeavons, after talking for a minute or two with Mrs. Conyers and the young man with the black moustache, now rejoined Tolland and myself.

‘I couldn’t keep it up any longer,’ she said. ‘French is too exhausting. My governess said I was the worst pupil she’d ever had at the irregular verbs. All the same, I wanted to hear if there was anything new about Theodoric.’

She pointed her finger at me.

‘Is he another of your relations, Alfred?’ she asked.

Her tone suggested that potential relationship with Tolland might explain everything: why I had come to the house: why I looked as I did: why we were talking together. I attempted to reduce my appearance to something as negative as possible, so that no one might be unduly committed by the enquiry, which had thrown Tolland into an appalling access of embarrassment.

‘Really, I believe you have more relations than I have myself,’ she went on. ‘My grandfather had ninety-seven first cousins, and he was only three up on my grandmother on my mother’s side.’

‘No — no — no,’ said Tolland, hurriedly. ‘At least I don’t think we are, are we? Never know — perhaps I oughtn’t to have been so definite — quite on the cards, I suppose, as a matter of fact. Shouldn’t speak hastily about such things. Certainly got a lot of ’em. Some people might think too many, as you say, Molly. No — no — no. Perhaps you can tell better than me. Are we related? No? Thought not. Always try to keep track of ’em. Hard to manage sometimes. Go abroad and get married and get divorced and into debt, glad to see the back of ’em sometimes. But where you and I meet is at the Le Bas dinner. That’s where we meet.’

He gasped a bit after all this, as if not only breathless from speaking at such length, but also overcome with confusion at the predicament into which he had been thrown by the question. Yet, even in spite of this floundering, he seemed to feel himself on much surer ground in this house than at our previous meetings. He might be temporarily at a disadvantage here with his hostess, even on guard against attack from her (a minute or two later I found he had good reason to fear that), but at least his credentials were known and freely accepted in the Jeavons drawing-room. I was by no means sure that I felt myself equally at ease. The atmosphere of the house was not exactly restful. The other persons who made up the party were nondescript enough, but there was also the feeling that one had penetrated the outskirts of a secret society. Mrs. Conyers had seemed as subject as myself to this sense of disquiet. Perhaps it was merely that she had passed on to me her own agitation; for I was sure she was agitated about something. Lovell had certainly tried to prepare me for an unusual household, but to absorb such antecedent descriptions is never easy. Molly Jeavons’s noisy, absolutely unrestrained directness of manner was of a kind that suggested both simplicity of nature and certainty of her own position: both characteristics that can stimulate that streak of social cruelty that few lack. There could be no doubt that Tolland was showing signs of preparing himself for some onslaught. The reason for his fears soon became apparent.

‘I didn’t know you ever met anyone but your own relations, Alfred,’ she said, evidently determined to pursue that subject. ‘You always pretend to me that you never go anywhere. I only got you here tonight because you wanted to hear from her own lips Mrs. Conyers’s story about the Empress Frederick. I believe your quiet evenings at home are all make-believe and that you live a disgracefully fast life — the gayest of gay bachelors.’

Tolland denied this imputation emphatically. He did not seem in the least flattered at the suggestion that he might be, so far as social life was concerned, a dark horse. He was patently without the smallest personal vanity, open or secret, on the matter of cutting a dash in life. He came at last to the end of his protests.

‘Alfred was talking about his family all through dinner,’ said Molly Jeavons, turning once more to me. ‘You know they are all in trouble — every blessed one of them.’

‘It’s too bad of you to say that, Molly. I only asked for your advice about some of my nephews and nieces.’

Now he sounded thoroughly aggrieved, although at the same time unwilling to withdraw voluntarily from a conversation devoted to his relations.

‘What’s the matter with the Tollands this time, Aunt Molly?’ asked Lovell.

He had been making a tour of the room, ending with our group.

‘Oh, it’s Erridge again,’ she said.

She spoke as if the question were hardly worth asking.

‘What’s Erridge’s latest?’

Lovell, for his part, spoke as one expecting to hear an enjoyable piece of gossip about a character always to be relied upon to provide a good story.

‘Living as a tramp,’ said Molly Jeavons. ‘So I’m told at least. Somewhere in the Midlands. Grew a beard. He has still got it, they say. I don’t think he actually slept in casual wards. The other tramps must have had an awful time if he did. As a child he used to talk in his sleep and bawl the house down with night terrors.’

‘Is he doing that now?’ asked Lovell. ‘Being a tramp, I mean, not bawling the house down — though I shouldn’t wonder if he doesn’t have night terrors still.’

‘He is back at Thrubworth. Getting cleaned up after his adventures — as much as Erry ever gets cleaned up. Smith goes back tomorrow. I am more and more coming to think that Smith is more trouble than he is worth. It’s convenient to have a manservant in the house, but I found this morning we were completely out of gin, and I know at least two inches remained in the bottle left when we went to bed last night.’