Anthony Powell - A Buyers Market

“Have you seen Miss Jones?” he asked, in his most breathless manner.

Even though I had been speaking with her so recently, I could not immediately grasp, under this style, the identity of the person sought.

“The girl we came in with,” he muttered impatiently.

“She has just gone off to a night-club.”

“Is someone taking her there?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Do you mean she has gone by herself?”

“That was what she said.”

Widmerpool seemed more fussed than ever. I could not understand his concern.

“I don’t feel she should have set off like that alone,” he said. “She had had rather a lot to drink — more than she is used to, I should imagine — and she is in some sort of difficulty, too. She was telling me about it.”

There could be no doubt at all that Widmerpool himself had been equally indiscreet in taking more champagne than usual.

“We were having rather an intimate talk together,” he went on. “And then I saw a man I had been wanting to speak to for weeks. Of course, I could have rung him up, but I preferred to wait for a chance meeting. One can often achieve so much more at such moments than at an interview. I crossed the room to have a word with him — explaining to her, as I supposed quite clearly, that I was going to return after a short business discussion — and when I came back she had vanished.”

“Too bad.”

“That was very foolish of me,” said Widmerpool, in a tone almost as if he were apologising abjectly for some grave error of taste. “Rather bad-mannered, too…

He paused, seemingly thoroughly upset: much as he had looked — I called to mind — on the day when he had witnessed Le Bas’s arrest when we had been at school together. At the moment when he spoke those words, if I could have laid claim to a more discerning state of mind, I might have taken greater notice of the overwhelming change that had momentarily come over him. As it was, I attributed his excitement simply to drink: an entirely superficial view that even brief reflection could have corrected. For example — to illustrate how little excuse there was for my own lack of grasp — I had never before, so far as I can now recollect, heard Widmerpool suggest that anything he had ever done could be classed as foolish, or bad-mannered; and even then, on that evening, I suppose I ought to have been dimly aware that Gyspy Jones must have aroused his interest fairly keenly, as it were “on the rebound” from having sugar poured over his head by Barbara.

“There really are moments when one should forget about business,” said Widmerpool. “After all, getting on isn’t everything.”

This precept, so far as I was myself concerned in those days, was one that required no specially vigorous inculcation.

“Pleasure before Business has always been my motto,” I remembered Bill Truscott stating at one of Sillery’s tea-parties when I was an undergraduate; and, although it would have been misleading to suppose that, for Truscott himself, any such label was in the least — in the smallest degree — applicable, the maxim seemed to me such a truism at the moment when I heard it quoted that I could not imagine why Truscott should seem to consider the phrase, on his part, something of an epigram or paradox. Pleasure still seemed to me a natural enough aim in life; and I certainly did not, on that night in Hill Street, appreciate at all how unusually disturbed Widmerpool must have been to have uttered aloud so profane a repudiation of his own deep-rooted system of opinion. However, he was prevented from further particularising of the factors that had impelled him to this revolutionary conclusion, by the arrival beside us of the man whose practical importance had seemed sufficient to cause abandonment of emotional preoccupations. That person had, so it appeared additional dealings to negotiate. I was interested to discover the identity of this figure who had proved, in the circumstances, so powerful a counter-attraction to the matter in hand. The disclosure was, in a quiet way, sufficiently dramatic. The “man” turned out to be Bill Truscott himself, who seemed, through another’s pursuance of his own loudly proclaimed precept, to have been, at least to some degree, temporarily victimised.

When I had last seen him, earlier in the year, at a Rothschild dance chatting with the chaperones, there could be no doubt that Truscott was still a general favourite: a “spare man” treated by everyone with respect and in quite a different, and distinctly higher, category in the hierarchy of male guests from, say, Archie Gilbert. It was, indeed, impossible to deny Truscott’s good looks, and the dignity of his wavy, youthfully grey hair and broad shoulders. All the same, the final form of his great career remained still, so far as I knew, undecided. It was not that he was showing signs of turning out less capable — certainly not less reliable — than his elders had supposed; nor, as had been evident on the night when I had seen him, was he growing any less popular with dowagers. On the contrary, many persons, if not all, continued to speak of Truscott’s brilliance almost as a matter of course, and it was generally agreed that he was contriving most successfully to retain the delicate balance required to remain a promising young man who still survived in exactly the same place — and a very good place, too — that he had taken on coming down from the university; rather than preferring to make his mark as an innovator in breaking new, and possibly unfruitful, ground in forwarding ambitions that seemed, whatever they were, fated to remain long masked from friends and admirers. At least outwardly, he had neither improved nor worsened his position, so it was said, at least, by Short, who, upon such subjects, could be relied upon to take the entirely unimaginative view of the world in general. In fact, Truscott might still be expected to make name and fortune before he was thirty, though the new decade must be perilously near, and he would have to be quick about it. The promised volume of poems (or possibly belles lettres) had never appeared; though there were still those who firmly declared that Truscott would “write something” one day. Meanwhile he was on excellent terms with most people, especially, for some reason, elderly bankers, both married and unmarried, with whom he was, almost without exception, a great favourite.

On that earlier occasion when I had seen him at the dance, Truscott, although he might excusably have forgotten our two or three meetings with Sillery in days past, had dispensed one of those exhausted, engaging smiles for which he was noted; while his eyes wandered round the ballroom “ear-marking duchesses,” as Stringham — years later — once called that wistful, haunted intensity that Truscott’s eyes took on, from time to time, among any large concourse of people that might include individuals of either sex potentially important to an ambitious young man’s career. As he came through the door at that moment, he gave his weary smile again, to show that he still remembered me, saying at the same time to Widmerpool: “You went away so quickly that I had no time to tell you that the Chief will very likely be here to-night. He is an old friend of Milly’s. Besides, I happen to know that he told Baby Wentworth he would look in — so it’s a virtual certainty.”

Truscott was still, so far as I knew, one of the secretaries of Sir Magnus Donners, to whom it was to be presumed he referred as “the Chief.” Stringham’s vagueness in speaking of his own employment had left me uncertain whether or not he and Truscott remained such close colleagues as formerly, though Sillery’s remarks certainly suggested that they were still working together.

“Well, of course, that would be splendid,” said Widmerpool slowly.

But, although unquestionably interested in the information just given him, he spoke rather forlornly. His mind seemed to be on other things: unable to concentrate fully on the comings and goings even of so portentous a figure as Sir Magnus Donners.

“He could meet you,” Truscott said dryly. “And then we could talk things over next week.”

Widmerpool, trying to collect himself, seemed still uncertain in his own mind. He smoothed down his hair, the disarrangement of which he must have observed in the mural looking-glass in front of us.

“The Chief is the most unconventional man in the world,” said Truscott, more encouragingly. “He loves informality.”

He stood there, smiling down at Widmerpool, for, although not more than an inch or two taller, he managed to give an impression of height. His thick and glossy hair had grown perceptibly more grey round the ears. I wondered how Truscott and Widmerpool had been brought together, since it was clear that arrangements projected for that night must have been the result of earlier, possibly even laborious, negotiation between them. There could be no doubt, whatever my own opinion of Widmerpool’s natural endowments, that he managed to make a decidedly good impression on people primarily interested in “getting on.” For example, neither Tompsitt nor Truscott had much in common except concentration on “the main chance,” and yet both had apparently been struck — in Tompsitt’s case, almost immediately — by some inner belief in Widmerpool’s fundamental ability. This matter of making headway in life was one to which I felt perhaps I, too, ought to devote greater consideration in future, if I were myself not to remain inextricably fixed in a monotonous, even sometimes dreary, groove.

“You don’t think I had better ring you up in the morning?” said Widmerpool, rather anxiously. “My brain is a bit confused to-night. I don’t want to make a poor impression on Sir Magnus. To tell the truth, I was thinking of going home. I don’t usually stay up as late as this.”

“All right,” said Truscott, not attempting to repress a polite smile at the idea of anyone being so weak in spirit as to limit their chances of advancement by reluctance to keep late hours. “Perhaps that might be best. Donners-Brebner, Extension 5, any time after ten o’clock “

“I don’t expect it would be much use looking for my hostess to say good-bye,” said Widmerpool, gazing about him wildly as if by now tired out. “You know, I haven’t managed to meet her properly the whole time I have been here.”

“Not the slightest use,” said Truscott, smiling again at such naïveté.

He regarded Widmerpool as if he thought — now that a decision to retire to bed had been finally taken — that the sooner Widmerpool embarked upon a good night’s rest, the better, if he were to be fit for the plans Truscott had in store for him in the near future.

“Then I’ll bid you good night,” said Widmerpool, turning to me and speaking in a voice of great exhaustion.

“Sweet dreams.”

“Tell Stringham I was sorry not to see him before I left the party.”

“I will.”

“Thank him for bringing us. It was kind. He must lunch with me in the City.”

He made his way from the room. I wondered whether or not it had indeed been kind of Stringham to bring him to the party. Kind or the reverse, I felt pretty sure that Stringham would not lunch with Widmerpool in the City. Truscott showed more surprise at Widmerpool’s mention of Stringham than he usually allowed himself, at least in public.

“Does he know Charles, then?” he asked, as Widmerpool disappeared through the door.

“We were all at the same house at school.”

“Indeed?”

“Widmerpool was a shade senior.”

“He really might be quite useful in our new politico-legal branch,” said Truscott. “Not necessarily full time — anyway at first — and the Chief always insists on hand-picking everyone himself. He’ll grow out of that rather unfortunate manner, of course.”

I thought it improbable that Widmerpool would ever change his manner at the mandate of Sir Magnus Donners, Truscott, Stringham, or anyone else, though the projected employment — an aspect of those rather mysterious business activities, so different from those of my own small firm — sounded normal enough. In fact the job, as such, did not at the time make any strong impression on me. I felt more interest in trying to learn something of Stringham’s life. This seemed an opportunity to make some inquiries.

“Oh, yes,” said Truscott, almost with enthusiasm. “Of course Charles is still with us. He can really be quite an asset at times. Such charm, you know. But I see my Chief has arrived. If you will forgive me …”

He was gone instantaneously, stepping quickly across the floor to meet, and intercept, a tallish man, who, with Mrs. Wentworth at his side, had just entered the room. At first I was uncertain whether this outwardly unemphatic figure could indeed be Sir Magnus Donners, the person addressed by Truscott being so unlike my pre-conceived idea of what might be expected from the exterior of a public character of that particular kind. Hesitation on this point was justifiable. The name of Sir Magnus Donners, both in capacity of well-known industrialist and former member of the Government (in which he had never reached Cabinet rank) attached to the imagination, almost automatically, one of those paraphrases — on the whole uncomplimentary — presented by the cartoonist; representations that serve, more or less effectually, to supply the mind on easy terms with the supposedly salient traits, personal, social, or political, of individuals or types: such delineations being naturally concerned for the most part with men, or categories of men, to be thought of as important in exercising power in one form or another.

In the first place, it was unexpected that Sir Magnus Donners should look at least ten years younger than might reasonably have been supposed; so that, although well into his middle fifties — where he stood beneath an unsatisfying picture executed in the manner of Derain — he seemed scarcely middle-aged. Clean-shaven, good-looking, rather than the reverse, possibly there was something odd, even a trifle disturbing, about the set of his mouth. Something that perhaps conveyed interior ferment kept in severe repression. Apart from that his features had been reduced, no doubt by laborious mental discipline, to a state of almost unnatural ordinariness. He possessed, however, a suggestion about him that was decidedly parsonic: a lay-reader, or clerical headmaster: even some distinguished athlete, of almost uncomfortably rigid moral convictions, of whose good work at the boys’ club in some East End settlement his own close friends were quite unaware. The complexion was of a man whose life appeared to have been lived, on the whole, out of doors. He seemed, indeed, too used to the open air to be altogether at ease in evening clothes, which were carelessly worn, as if only assumed under protest, though he shared that appearance of almost chemical cleanliness characteristic, in another form, of Archie Gilbert. At the same time, in spite of these intimations of higher things, the heavy, purposeful walk implied the professional politician. A touch of sadness about his face was not unprepossessing.

That ponderous tread was also the only faint hint of the side expressed by common gossip, for example, at Sillery’s — where Bill Truscott’s connection with Donners-Brebner made Sir Magnus’s name a relatively familiar one in the twilight world of undergraduate conversation — that is to say, of a kind of stage “profiteer” or “tycoon”: a man of Big Business and professionally strong will. Such, indeed, I had previously pictured him. Now the matter, like so many others, had to be reconsidered. Equally, he showed still less of that aspect called up by the remark once let fall by Stringham: “He is always trying to get in with my mother.” Everything about Sir Magnus seemed far too quiet and correct for any of his elements even to insinuate that there could be in his conduct, or nature, anything that might urge him to push his way into a world where welcome admission might be questionable — even deliberately withheld. Indeed, much later, when I came to hear more about him,’ there could be no doubt that whatever efforts Sir Magnus may have made to ingratiate himself with Mrs. Foxe, through her son, or otherwise — and there was reason to suppose such efforts had in truth been made — must have been accountable to one of those whims to which men of his sort are particularly subject; that is to say, desire to cut a figure somewhere outside the circle familiar to themselves; because Sir Magnus was, after all, in a position, so far as that went, to “go” pretty well anywhere he might happen to wish. The social process he elected to follow was rather like that of mountaineers who chose deliberately the sheer ascent of the cliff face; for it was true I found particular difficulty in associating him with Stringham, or, so far as I knew of them, with Stringham’s family. Widmerpool, on the other hand, though this was by the way, was a victim easily imaginable; no doubt, as I guessed, fated to-be captivated irrevocably at his pending interview by that colourless, respectable, dominating exterior of “the Chief.”