Anthony Powell - A Buyers Market

“Max Pilgrim was there.”

“The man who sings the songs?”

“He didn’t at the cremation.”

“There comes a moment when you’ve got to make a stand.”

I presumed that she had returned to the problems of her own conscience rather than to refer to Pilgrim’s restraint in having kept himself from breaking into song at the crematorium.

“Where will you stay now that the shop is coming to an end?”

“Howard says he can put me up once in a way at the Vox Populi. They’ve got a camp-bed there. He’s taking me to the party to-night.”

“What’s he going as?”

“Adam.”

“Is he arriving here in that guise?”

“We’re dining early, and going back to his place to dress up. Only I thought I must try out my costume first. As a matter of fact he is picking me up here fairly soon.”

She looked rather doubtful, and I saw that I must not overstay my welcome. There was nothing to be said for allowing time to slip by long enough for Craggs to arrive. It appeared that Gypsy was going to the country — it was to be presumed with Craggs — in the near future. We said good-bye. Later, as I made my way towards the Widmerpools’, association of ideas led inevitably to a reminder, not a specially pleasant one, of Widmerpool himself and his desires; parallel, it appeared, in their duality, with my own, and fated to be defrauded a second time. The fact that I was dining at his flat that evening in no way reduced the accentuation given by events to that sense of design already mentioned. Whatever the imperfections of the situation from which I had just emerged, matters could be considered with justice only in relation to a much larger configuration, the vast composition of which was at present — that at least was clear — by no means even nearly completed.

There is a strong disposition in youth, from which some individuals never escape, to suppose that everyone else is having a more enjoyable time than we are ourselves; and, for some reason, as I moved southwards across London, I was that evening particularly convinced that I had not yet succeeded in striking a satisfactory balance in my manner of conducting life. I could not make up my mind whether the deficiencies that seemed so stridently to exist were attributable to what had already happened that day, or to a growing certainty in my own mind that I should much prefer to be dining elsewhere. The Widmerpools — for I felt that I had already heard so much of Widmerpool’s mother that my picture of her could not be far from the truth — were the last persons on earth with whom I wished to share the later part of the evening. I suppose I could have had a meal by myself, thinking of some excuse later to explain my absence, but the will to take so decisive a step seemed to have been taken physically from me.

They lived, as Widmerpool had described, on the top floor of one of the smaller erections of flats in the neighbourhood of Westminster Cathedral. The lift, like an ominously creaking funicular, swung me up to these mountainous regions, and to a landing where light shone through frosted panes of glass. The door was opened by a depressed elderly maid, wearing cap and pince-nez, who showed me into a drawing-room, where Widmerpool was sitting alone, reading The Times . I was dimly aware of a picture called The Omnipresent hanging on one of the walls, in which three figures in bluish robes stand or kneel on the edge of a precipice. Widmerpool rose, crumpling the paper, as if he were surprised to see me, so that for a painful moment I wondered whether, by some unhappy mistake, I had arrived on the wrong night. However, a second later, he made some remark to show I was expected, and asked me to sit down, explaining that “in a minute or two” his mother would be ready.

“I am very much looking forward to your meeting my mother,” he said.

He spoke as if introduction to his mother was an experience, rather a vital one, that every serious person had, sooner or later, to undergo. I became all at once aware that this was the first occasion upon which he and I had met anywhere but on neutral ground. I think that Widmerpool, too, realised that a new relationship had immediately risen between us from the moment when I had entered the drawing-room; for he smiled in a rather embarrassed way, after making this remark about his mother, and seemed to make an effort, more conscious than any he had ever shown before, to appear agreeable. In view of the embarrassments he had spoken of when we had last met — and their apparent conclusion so far as he were concerned — I had expected to find him depressed. On the contrary, he was in unusually high spirits.

“Miss Walpole-Wilson is supping with us,” he said.

“Eleanor?”

“Oh, no,” he said, as if such a thing were unthinkable. “Her aunt. Such a knowledgeable woman.”

Before any comment were possible, Mrs. Widmerpool herself came through the door, upon the threshold of which she paused for a moment, her head a little on one side.

“Why, Mother,” said Widmerpool, speaking with approval, “you are wearing your bridge-coat.”

We shook hands, and she began to speak at once, before I could take in her appearance.

“And so you were both at Mr. Le Bas’s house at school,” she said. “I never really cared for him as a man. I expect he had his good qualities, but he never quite appreciated Kenneth.”

“He was an odd man in many ways.”

“Kenneth so rarely brings the friends of his school days here.”

I said that we had also stayed together with the same French family in Touraine; for, if I had to be regarded as a close friend of her son’s, it was at La Grenadière that I had come to know him best, rather than at school, where he had always seemed a figure almost too grotesque to take seriously.

“At the Leroys’?” she asked, as if amazed at the brilliance of my parents in having hit on the only possible household in the whole of France.

“For six weeks or so.”

She turned to Widmerpool.

“But you never told me that,” she said. “That was naughty of you!”

“Why should I?” said Widmerpool. “You didn’t know him.”

Mrs. Widmerpool clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Her large features distinctly recalled the lineaments of her son, though she had perhaps been good looking when younger. Even now she seemed no more than in her late forties, though I believe she was, in fact, older than that. However, her well-preserved appearance was in striking contrast with Widmerpool’s own somewhat decaying youth, so that the pair of them appeared almost more like contemporaries, even husband and wife, rather than mother and son. Her eyes were brighter than his, and she rolled them, expanding the pupils, in comment to any remark that might be thought at all out of the ordinary. Her double row of firm teeth were set between cheeks of brownish red, which made her a little resemble Miss Walpole-Wilson, with whom she clearly possessed something discernibly in common that explained their friendly connection. She seemed a person of determination, from whom no doubt her son derived much of his tenacity of purpose. The garment to which he referred was of flowered velvet, with a fringe, and combined many colours in its pattern.

“I hear you know the Gorings,” she said. “It seems such a pity they have allowed Barbara to run so wild. She used to be such a dear little girl. There really appears to be something a trifle queer about Lord Aberavon’s grandchildren.”

“Oh, shut up, Mother,” said Widmerpool, changing his almost amatory manner unexpectedly. “You don’t know anything about it.”

He must have felt, not entirely without reason, that his mother was on delicate ground in bringing up so early, and in such a critical spirit, the subject of Gorings and Walpole-Wilsons. Mrs. Widmerpool seemed not at all put out by the brusque form of address used by her son, continuing to express herself freely on the characteristics, in her eyes, good, bad and indifferent, of Barbara and Eleanor, adding that she understood that neither of the Goring sons were “very much of a hand at their books.” She felt perhaps that now was the time to unburden herself upon matters hardly to be pursued with the same freedom after the arrival of Miss Janet Walpole-Wilson. From her comments, I supposed that Widmerpool must have given his mother, perhaps involuntarily, some indication that the Gorings were out of favour with him; although it was impossible to guess how accurately she might be informed about her son’s former feelings for Barbara: even if she knew of them at all. It was possible that she had attributed the anxiety he had gone through with Gypsy Jones to a later aggravation of his entanglement with Barbara: in fact, the same conclusion to which I had myself first arrived, when, at Stourwater, he had spoken of the troubles that were oppressing him.