Anthony Powell: At Lady Molly's

‘And what about Norah?’ said Molly Jeavons.

She had to repeat the question twice, for the first time Tolland made no attempt to reply. He seemed completely knocked out. The challenge was apparently unanswerable. He could only nod his head. There was no spirit left in him. To bridge the silence, I asked if it were not true that Norah Tolland shared a flat with Eleanor Walpole-Wilson.

‘She does, she does,’ cried Molly Jeavons, laughing loudly again at my question, as if I had shown myself to have missed the whole point of what was being said. ‘Do you know them? I didn’t think they ever saw any young men. I’m jolly glad to hear they do. Tell me about them. Is it true that Eleanor has been seen in a green pork-pie hat and a bow tie?’

Mrs. Conyers, escaped from the man to whom French must be talked, now joining our group, nodded her head and pursed her lips, as if to emphasise the depths to which Eleanor had fallen.

‘As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen Eleanor for years,’ I said. ‘I used to dine with them once in a way. I saw Sir Gavin Walpole-Wilson at the Isbister Retrospective Exhibition when it was on, and he said something about Norah Tolland. I’ve never met her.’

‘They look like a couple of stable-boys,’ said Molly Jeavons. ‘And talk like stable-boys, too. I hear they swear like troopers.’

From the way she spoke, I suspected she knew very little about these two young women, and was, in fact, anxious to learn more. Finding me unable to offer a closely observed report on their activities, she abandoned the subject and renewed her general attack on Tolland.

‘And then Hugo,’ she said. ‘What about Hugo?’

She spoke as if Hugo clinched every other argument. If the name of Norah had knocked Tolland out, that of Hugo reduced him to the position of an army not only defeated in the field, but also forced to join as an ally its victorious adversary.

‘I hear his clothes are — well, awful,’ he muttered, almost inaudibly.

So far as Hugo was concerned, he seemed to agree absolutely with Molly Jeavons in thinking the situation could scarcely be worse.

‘But all undergraduates are like that,’ said Mrs. Conyers, unexpectedly. ‘I mean they all wear extraordinary clothes, don’t they? They always have — and say things to try and shock people. My father used to say they were like that even in his day. I know he himself, just after he had been sent down from Oxford, said some terrible thing to Mr. Gladstone when he was introduced to him at Holland House. My father had to write and apologise, or I don’t know what would have happened. I am not sure the Ministry might not have fallen.’

‘Well,’ said Molly Jeavons, ‘I’ve known some undergraduates in my time — Jumbo, for instance, you should have seen him in his young days — but I’ve never met one who dressed like Hugo. I was talking to the Bridgnorths’ boy, John Mountfichet, when he was here the other day. He is at the same college as Hugo. He told us some things that would make your hair stand on end. They made Teddy laugh, and you know how difficult that is.’

‘Even Sillery says Hugo goes too far,’ said Lovell. ‘He drives all the other dons quite mad, of course, but I should have thought Sillery would have stuck up for him. The other undergraduates are very disapproving too. Apart from anything else, aesthetes have gone completely out of fashion at both universities these days. I told Hugo when I saw him the other day that he was hopelessly out of date.’

‘What did he say?’

‘“My dear, I love being dated . I hate all this bickering that goes on about politics. I wish I’d lived in the Twenties when people were amusing .”’

Lovell spoke the words with the mannerism he judged appropriate to such an impersonation.

‘He’ll grow out of it,’ said Mrs. Conyers, surprising me with this repeated display of toleration. ‘Lots of nice young men go through a stage of being rather silly.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ said Alfred Tolland, with a sigh.

He did not sound very confident.

‘At any rate, George is all right,’ he added a moment later.

I had the impression he was playing his last card, but that this card was a trump.

‘What is George Tolland doing now?’ I asked. ‘He was the one of the family who was my contemporary, though I never really knew him.’

‘In the Coldstream for some years,’ said Alfred Tolland. ‘Then he thought he ought to try and make some money, so he went into the City. He has done fairly well, so they say. Never know what people mean by that — but they say pretty well.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Molly Jeavons. ‘I am sure that George has done well. But what a correct young man— what a correct young man ! I don’t think I ever met a young man who was so correct. I can’t see how we are ever going to get him married, he is so correct — and even if we found a correct wife for him, I am sure they would both be much too correct to have any children. And even if they did, what frightfully correct children they would have to be.’

‘You can’t have it both ways, Molly,’ grumbled Tolland. ‘You blame some of them for misbehaving themselves. Perhaps you are right. But then you don’t approve of George because he is what you call “correct”. Can’t understand it. There is no pleasing you. It isn’t reasonable.’

‘Well, now I’ll tell you about the rest of them,’ said Molly Jeavons, turning to me. ‘Of course I really adore them all, and just say these things to make Alfred cross. There is Susan, who is showing every sign of getting engaged to a nice young man, then there is Blanche—’

‘I’ve seen Blanche, though I don’t know her.’

‘Blanche is dotty. You must know that much, if you’ve seen her. But she’s not a bad old thing.’

‘Of course not.’

Alfred Tolland showed no disposition to deny the ‘dottiness’ of his niece, Blanche.

‘Robert is a bit of a mystery. He is in some business, but I don’t know whether he will stay there. Isobel — well, she is a bit different too. I’m not sure she isn’t going to get engaged soon herself. Then there is Priscilla, who is on the point of coming out, and was to have been here tonight, but she doesn’t seem to have turned up yet.’

I made an effort to take in this bird’s-eye view of the Tollands, who now seemed to surround me on all sides after this vivid exposition of their several characters. Instinctively, I felt the greatest interest in Isobel, who was ‘different’; and also an odd feeling of regret that she might be about to become engaged in the near future. While I was brooding on this, Jeavons joined us. He stood there, scanning everyone’s face closely, as if hoping for some explanation of the matter in hand; perhaps even of life itself, so intense was his concentration: some reasonable interpretation couched in terms simple enough for a plain man to understand without undue effort. He also gave the impression of an old dog waiting to have a ball thrown to retrieve, more because that was the custom in the past than because sport or exercise was urgently required. However, no one enlightened him as to the subject under discussion, so he merely filled up my glass, and then his own. His wife and Alfred Tolland had now embarked on some detailed aspect of Tolland life, too esoteric for an outsider to follow.

‘In the film business like Chips?’ Jeavons asked, in a low husky voice, as if he had a cold coming on, or had drunk too much whisky the night before.

‘Yes.’

‘Ever met any of the stars?’

‘Not so you’d notice. I’m on the scenario side. The studio only makes English pictures for the quota. They wouldn’t be likely to employ anyone very grand in the way of an actor or actress.’