Anthony Powell - At Lady Mollys

I tried to make some apology, although at the same time feeling not greatly to blame for the way Jeavons behaved when he went out on his own. As a matter of fact, I had not been at all well myself the following day, and was inclined to blame Jeavons for having caused me to sit up so late.

‘Just as well he found Mildred Blaides to look after him,’ said Molly. ‘I always thought they had known each other for ages, but it turned out they had only met once, a long time ago. You know she was a nurse at Dogdene during the war. Lucky she didn’t turn up when Teddy was there, or she would have scalded him to death with hot-water-bottles, or something of that sort. She was the worst nurse they ever had there — or in the whole of the V.A.D., for that matter.’

Molly spoke with more than a touch of acrimony, but at the same time it was impossible to guess how much she knew, or suspected, of Jeavons’s night out; impossible, if it came to that, to know with any certainty how that night had ended, even though the nostalgic mood of Jeavons’s and Mrs. Haycock’s impetuous nature might, in unison, give a strong hint.

‘If Mildred is not careful,’ said Molly, ‘she will polish off Mr. Widmerpool before she has time to marry him. I hear he had to go home, he was feeling so ill.’

I thought the sooner the subject of that night was abandoned, the better. While we had been talking, Jeavons had listened in silence, as if he had never before heard of any of the persons under discussion, including himself. I admired his detachment. I wondered, too, whether at that very moment his head was seething with forgotten melodies, for ever stirring him to indiscretion by provoking memories of an enchanted past.

‘I can’t have all the Tollands at this party,’ Molly had said. ‘So I had better have none of them. Bound to be jealousy otherwise. Just like Erridge to go to China when one of his sisters gets engaged.’

Smith was again on duty with the Jeavonses on the day of the party. He looked haggard and more out of sorts than ever.

‘You’re late,’ he said, taking my hat. ‘It has all started upstairs. Quite a crowd of them arrived already. Hope her ladyship hasn’t invited every blessed soul she knows.’

The guests seemed, in fact, to have been chosen even more at random than usual. Certainly there had been no question either of asking people because they were already friends of Isobel or myself; still less, because Molly wanted either of us specifically to meet them. All that was most nondescript in the Jeavons entourage predominated, together with a few exceptional and reckless examples of individual oddity. I noticed that Alfred Tolland had not been included in the general prohibition against the Tolland family of my own generation. He was standing in the corner of the room, wedged behind a table, talking to — of all people — Mark Members, whom I had never before seen at the Jeavonses’, and might be supposed, in principle, beyond Molly’s normal perimeter, wide as that might stretch; or at least essentially alien to most of what it enclosed. To describe the two of them as standing looking at one another, rather than talking, would have been nearer the truth, as each apparently found equal difficulty in contributing anything to a mutual conversation. At the same time, the table cut them off from contact with other guests.

‘I know you are interested in books, Nicholas,’ said Molly. ‘So I asked a rather nice young man I met the other day. He also writes or something. You will like him. A Mr. Members.’

‘I know him of old.’

‘Go and talk to him then. I don’t think he is getting on very well with Alfred Tolland. It is a great compliment to Isobel that Alfred has come. As you know, he never goes out. At least that is what he says. I always tell him I believe he leads a double life of great wickedness. He tried to get out of coming tonight, but I told him he would never be asked to the house again if he did not turn up. Then he didn’t dare refuse. Isobel, dear, there is someone I want you to meet.’

Both Alfred Tolland and Mark Members showed relief at the arrival of a third party to break up their téte-à-téte. They had by then reached a conversational standstill. This was the first I had seen of Alfred Tolland since the announcement of my own engagement. I was aware that he could no longer be regarded merely as the embarrassed, conscience-stricken figure, vaguely familiar in the past. Now he fell automatically into place in the profusion of new relationships that follow an organic change of condition. He began at once to mutter incoherent congratulations. Members watched him with something like hatred in his beady eyes.

‘Expect you’ve heard that Erridge has gone East,’ said Alfred Tolland. ‘Just heard it myself. Not — a—bad — idea. They are in a mess there. Perhaps the best thing. Might do him a lot of good. Get experience. Good thing to get experience. Ever been East?’

‘Never.’

‘Got as far as Singapore once,’ he said.

It seemed incredible. However, there appeared to be no reason why he should invent such a thing. I said a word to Members, who stood there looking far from pleased.

‘I shall have to be going now,’ said Alfred Tolland, snatching this offer of release. ‘I expect I shall see you at the dinner next …’

‘I’m not sure yet. Don’t know what our circumstances will be.’

‘Of course, of course. You can’t say. I quite understand. Pity you weren’t at the last one. Nice to feel that we …’

Exact expression of what it was nice for both of us to feel either evaded him, or was too precarious a sentiment to express in words. He merely nodded his head several times. Then he made for the door. Members sighed. He was in a bad humour.

‘What on earth is this party?’ he said in a low voice. ‘Did that man say something about your being engaged?’

‘Yes. I am engaged.’

‘To whom?’

‘Isobel Tolland — over there.’

‘Congratulations,’ said Members, without any exaggerated effusiveness, as if he disapproved of any such step in principle. ‘Many congratulations. I was stuck with that appalling bore for about twenty minutes. It was impossible to get away. Is he absolutely right in the head? What a strange house this is. I met Lady Molly Jeavons quite a long time ago at the Manaschs’. She asked me to come and see her. I called once or twice, but no one answered the bell, though I rang half a dozen times — and knocked too. Then she suddenly telephoned this invitation to me yesterday. She never mendoned your name. I did not think it would be quite like this.’

‘It is often different. You never know what it is going to be.’

‘Have you met her husband?’ said Members, quite plaintively. ‘I talked to him for a while when I first arrived. He asked me if I ever played snooker. Then he introduced me to the man you found me with.’

By then Members had several jobs of a literary kind which, since he was still a bachelor, must bring him in a respectable income. His American trip was said to have been a success. He no longer wrote verse with Freudian undertones, and he had abandoned anything so extreme as Quiggin’s professional ‘communism’, in the wake of which he had for a while half-heartedly trailed. Now he tended to be associated with German literature. Kleist; Grillparzer: Stifter: those were names to be caught on the echoes of his conversadon. Latterly, he was believed to be more taken up with Kierkegaard, then a writer not widely read in this country. Members, no fool, was always a little ahead of the fashion. He was a lively talker when not oppressed, as at that moment, by a party he did not enjoy. His distinguished appearance and terse manner made him a popular spare man at intellectual dinners. ‘But one really does not want to eat amateur paella and drink Chelsea Médoc for ever,’ he used to say: a world into which he felt himself somewhat rudely thrust immediately after losing his job as secretary to St. John Clarke. For a time now Members had been reappearing, so it was said, in the rather more elegant of the circles frequented by the famous novelist before his conversion to Marxism. In the light of this effort to maintain and expand his social life, Members found the Jeavons house a disappointment. He had expected something more grandiose. I tried to explain the household, but was glad when he brushed this aside, because I wanted to ask if he knew further details about Erridge and Mona. Members turned almost with relief to this subject.

‘Of course I knew J.G. had got hold of Lord Warminster,’ he said impatiently. ‘Surely everyone has known that for a long time. We had dinner together before I went to America. J.G. told me about the magazine he hoped to persuade Warminster to start. I saw at once that nothing would come of it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Warminster is too much of a crank.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘No, but I know of him.’

‘How did the Mona situation arise?’

All at once Members was on his guard.

‘But there is every prospect of Warminster becoming your brother-in-law, isn’t there?’

‘Most certainly there is.’

Members laughed, not in his most friendly manner, and remained silent.

‘Come on — out with it,’ I said.

We had by then known each other for a long time. It was not an occasion to stand on ceremony, as Members was well aware. He thought for a second or two, pondering whether it would be preferable to circulate a good piece of gossip, or to tease more effectively by withholding any information he might himself possess. In the end he decided that communication of the news would be more pleasurable.

‘You know what Mona is,’ he said.

He smiled maliciously; for although, so far as I knew, there had never ‘been much’ between them, he had known Mona years before her association with Quiggin; in fact I had first set eyes on Mona in the company of Members at Mr. Deacon’s birthday party.

‘She was altogether too much for Erridge, was she?’ I asked. ‘When she struck.’

‘Erridge?’

‘For Warminster, I mean — his family call him Erridge.’

‘Yes, Mona was too much for him. I don’t think things got very far. Some sort of an assignation. J.G. found out about it. The next thing was the two of them had gone off together.’

‘How has J.G. taken it?’

‘He was full of gêne at first. You know she had a stranglehold on him, I am sure. Now that he has cooled down, he is really rather flattered, as well as being furious.’

‘Were they married?’

‘No.’

‘Is that certain?’

‘Absolutely.’

I should have liked to hear more, but at that moment Jeavons came up to us. He took an unfamiliar object from his coat pocket, and held it towards me.

‘A present?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That reminds me we’ll have to get you one, I suppose. Anyway, that’s Molly’s job. This is just for you to see. You might even want to buy one for yourself.’

‘What is it?’

‘Guess.’

‘I don’t like to say the word in company.’

Jeavons extended his clasped fist towards Members, who shook his head angrily and turned away.

‘For your car,’ urged Jeavons.

‘I haven’t got a car,’ said Members.

He was thoroughly cross.

‘What do you really do with it?’ I asked.

‘Fix it on to the carburettor — then you use less petrol.’

‘What’s the point?’

‘Save money, of course. Are you a bloody millionaire, or what?’

Molly drew near our group as she crossed the room to refill one of the jugs of drink. She saw what Jeavons was doing and laid a hand on his arm.

‘You’ll never sell Nicholas one of those things,’ she said. ‘Nor Mr. Members, either, I’m sure. I don’t myself think you will sell it to anyone, darling.’

She moved on.

‘It is called an atomiser,’ said Jeavons, slowly, as if he were about to lecture troops upon some mechanical device. ‘It saves thirty-three and a third consumption per mile. I don’t expect it really saves you that for a moment, as a matter of fact. Why should it? Everybody would have one otherwise. It stands to reason. Still, you never know. It might do some good. Worth trying, I suppose.’

He spoke without great conviction, gazing for a time at the object in his open palm. Then he returned it to his coat pocket, fumbling about for some time, and at last bringing out a tattered packet of Gold Flake. He nicked up one of the cigarettes with his thumb, and offered it to each of us in turn.

‘Well,’ he said to me, ‘so you are going to get married.’

Members watched him with absolute horror. Jeavons, I was sure, was wholly unaware of the poor impression he was making. Members could stand it no longer.

‘I think I must go now,’ he said. ‘I have another party I have to look in on. It was kind of Lady Molly and yourself to ask me.’

‘Not at all,’ said Jeavons. ‘Glad to see you. Come again.’

He watched Members leave the room, as if he had never before seen anyone at all like him. His cigarette remained unlighted in his mouth.

‘Odd bloke,’ he said. ‘I feel shocking this afternoon. Had too much lunch. Red in the face. Distended stomach. Self-inflicted wounds, of course.’

We talked together for a minute or two. Then Jeavons wandered off among the guests. By then General and Mrs. Conyers had arrived. I went across the room to speak to them.

They had come up from the country the day before. After making the conventional remarks about my engagement, Mrs. Conyers was removed by Molly to be introduced to some new acquaintance of hers. I was left with the General. He seemed in excellent form, although at the same time giving the impression that he was restless about something: had a problem on his mind. All at once he took me by the arm. ‘I want a word with you, Nicholas,’ he said, in his deep, though always unexpectedly mild, voice. ‘Can’t we get out of this damned, milling crowd of people for a minute or two?’

The Jeavonses’guests habitually flowed into every room in the house, so that to retire to talk, for example in Molly’s bedroom, or Jeavons’s dressing-room, would be considered not at all unusual. We moved, in fact, a short way up the stairs into a kind of boudoir of Molly’s, constricted in space and likely to attract only people who wanted to enjoy a heart-to-heart talk together: a place chiefly given over to cats, two or three of which sat in an ill-humoured group at angles to one another, stirring with disapproval at this invasion of their privacy. I had no idea what the General could wish to say, even speculating for an instant as to whether he was about to offer some piece of advice — too confidential and esoteric to risk being overheard — regarding the conduct of married life. The period of engagement is one when you are at the mercy of all who wish to proffer counsel, and experience already prepared me for the worst. The truth turned out to be more surprising.

As soon as we were alone together, the General sat down on a chair in front of the writing-table, straightening out his leg painfully. It still seemed to be giving trouble. Alone with him, I became aware of that terrible separateness which difference of age imposes between individuals. Perhaps feeling something of this burden himself, he began at first to speak of his own advancing years.