At Lady Mollys - Anthony Powell

‘You have known Bertha and the General for a long time?’

‘Since I was a child.’

‘That was when you met Mildred?’

‘Yes.’

‘You probably know all the stories about their father, Lord Vowchurch?’

‘I’ve heard some of them.’

‘The remark he is said to have made to King Edward just after Bertha’s engagement had been announced?’

‘I don’t know that one.’

‘It was on the Squadron Lawn at Cowes. The King is supposed to have said: “Well, Vowchurch, I hear you are marrying your eldest daughter to one of my generals”, and Bertha’s father is said to have replied: “By Gad, I am, sir, and I trust he’ll teach the girl to lead out trumps, for they’ll have little enough to live on”. Edward VII was rather an erratic bridge-player, you know. Sir Thomas Lipton told me the story in broad Scotch, which made it sound funnier. Of course, the part that appealed to Sir Thomas Lipton was the fact that it took place on the Squadron Lawn.’

‘How did the King take it?’

‘I think he was probably rather cross. Of course it may not be true. But Lord Vowchurch certainly was always getting into trouble with the King. Lord Vowchurch was supposed to be referring to some special game of bridge when he had been dummy and things had gone badly wrong with King Edward’s play. You said you’d met my Uncle Alfred, didn’t you?’

‘A couple of times.’

‘And you know whom I mean by Brabazon?’

‘The Victorian dandy—“Bwab”?’

‘Yes, that one.’

‘Who said he couldn’t remember what regiment he had exchanged into — after leaving the Brigade of Guards because it was too expensive — but “they wore green facings and you got to them by Waterloo Station”?’

‘That’s him. How clever of you to know about him. Well, when Uncle Alfred was a young man, he was dining at Pratt’s, and Colonel Brabazon came in from the Marlborough Club, where he had been in the card-room when the game was being played. According to Uncle Alfred, Colonel Brabazon said: “Vowchurch expwessed weal wesentment while his Woyal Highness played the wottenest wubber of wecent seasons — nothing but we-deals and wevokes.”’

‘I had no idea your uncle had a fund of stories of that kind.’

‘He hasn’t. That is his only one. He is rather a shy man, you see, and nothing ever happens to him.’

This was all very lively; although there was at the same time always something a shade aloof about the manner in which these anecdotes were retailed. However, they carried us down the King’s Road in no time. There was, in addition, something reminiscent about the tone in which they were delivered, a faint reminder of Alfred Tolland’s own reserve and fear of intimacy. Amusing in themselves, the stories were at the same time plainly intended to establish a specific approach to life. Beneath their fluency, it was possible to detect in Frederica Budd herself, at least so far as personal rather than social life was concerned, a need for armour against strangers. Almost schooled out of existence by severe self-discipline, a faint trace of her uncle’s awkwardness still remained to be observed under the microscope. There could be no doubt that I had scored a point by knowing about ‘Bwab’.

‘I met your sister, Priscilla, at the Jeavonses the other night — only for a minute or two. Chips Lovell drove us both home.’

She did not seem much interested by that, hardly answering. I remembered, then, that she probably did not care for Lovell. However, her next words were entirely unexpected.

‘I am on my way to call on my sister, Norah, now,’ she said. ‘It seemed rather a long time since I had set eyes on her. I thought I would just look in to see that she is behaving herself. Why not come and meet her — and see Eleanor again.’

‘Just for a second. Then I shall have to move on.’

At the sound of this last statement I was aware of a faint but distinct disapproval, as if my reply had informed her quite clearly — indeed, almost grossly — that I was up to no good; yet made her at the same time realise that in a locality where so much human behaviour commanded disapprobation, minor derelictions — anyway, in a man — must, in the interest of the general picture, be disregarded. However, together with that sense of constraint that she conveyed, I was by then also aware of a second feeling: a notion that some sort of temporary alliance had been hurriedly constructed between us. I could not explain this impression to myself, though I was prepared to accept it.

By that time we had arrived before a dilapidated stucco fa£ade in a side street, a house entered by way of a creaking, unlatched door, from which most of the paint had been removed. The hall, empty except for a couple of packing-cases, gave off that stubborn musty smell characteristic of staircases leading to Chelsea flats: damp: cigarette smoke: face powder. We climbed the uncarpeted boards, ascending endlessly floor after floor, Frederica Budd taking the steps two at a time at a sharp pace. At last the attics were reached; and another battered door, upon which was fastened a brass knocker, formed in the image of the Lincoln Imp. Attached with four drawing-pins to the panel below this knocker was a piece of grubby cardboard inscribed with the names:

TOLLAND

WALPOLE-WILSON

Frederica, ignoring the claims of the Lincoln Imp, clenched her fist and banged on the door with all her force, at the same time shouting in an unexpectedly raucous voice:

‘Norah! Eleanor!’

There was a sound of someone stirring within. Then Eleanor Walpole-Wilson opened the door. She was wearing a very dirty pair of navy blue flannel trousers and smoking a stub of a cigarette. Apart from her trousers and cigarette, and also a decided air of increased confidence in herself, she had changed very little from the days when, loathing every moment of it, she used to trail round the London ball-rooms. She still wore her hair in a bun, a style which by then brought her appearance almost within measurable distance of ‘the mode’; or at least within hail of something that might, with a little good will, be supposed unconventionally chic. Square and broad-shouldered as ever, she was plainly on much better terms with herself, and with others, than formerly.

‘I’ve brought an old friend to see you,’ said Frederica.

Eleanor showed no surprise at my arrival. There was even a slight suggestion of relief that Frederica Budd had not to be entertained singly; for towards Frederica Eleanor displayed a hint of her old aggressiveness, or at least gave indication that she was on the defensive. This sense of quiet but firm opposition became more positive when we moved into the sitting-room.

‘How are you, Nicholas?’ said Eleanor. ‘Fancy your turning up here. Why, you’ve got a grey hair. Just above your ear.’

The place was horribly untidy, worse than the Jeavonses, and the furniture struck an awkward level between boudoir and studio: an ancient sofa, so big that one wondered how it could ever have been hoisted up the last flight of stairs, stood covered with chintz roses among two or three unsubstantial, faintly ‘Louis’ chairs. The walls had been distempered yellow by some amateur hand. A girl was lying prone on the ground, her skirt rucked up to her thighs, showing a strip of skin above each stocking. This was Norah Tolland. She was pasting scraps on to the surface of a coal-scuttle.

‘Hullo, Frederica,’ she said, without looking up. ‘I shan’t be a moment. I must finish this before the paste runs out.’

She continued her work for a few moments, then, wiping the paste from her hands with a red check duster, she rose from the ground, pulled her skirt down impatiently, and gave her sister a peck on the cheek. Eleanor presented me, explaining that we had known each other ‘in the old days’. Norah Tolland did not look very enthusiastic at this news, but she held out her hand. She was dark and very pale, with a narrow face like her sister’s, her expression more truculent, though also, on the whole, less firm in character. The coltishness of her sister, Priscilla, had turned in Norah to a deliberate, rather absurd masculinity. Frederica glanced round the room without attempting to conceal her distaste, as if she felt there was much to criticise, not least the odour of turpentine and stale cake.

‘I see you haven’t managed to get the window mended yet,’ she said.

Her sister did not answer, only flicking back her hair from her forehead with a sharp, angry motion.

‘Isobel is supposed to be coming in to see us some time today,’ she said, ‘with her new young man. I thought it was her when you arrived.’

‘Who is her new young man?’

‘How should I know? Some chap.’

‘I saw her last night at Hyde Park Gardens.’

‘How were they all?’ said Norah, indifferentiy. ‘Would you like a drink? I think there is some sherry left.’

Frederica shook her head, as if the idea of alcohol in any form at that moment nauseated her.

‘You?’

‘No, thank you. I must really go in a moment.’

The sherry did not sound very safe: wiser to forego it.

‘Don’t leave yet,’ said Eleanor. ‘You’ve only just arrived. We must have a word about old times. I haven’t seen the Gorings for ages. I always think of you, Nicholas, as a friend of Barbara’s.’

‘How is Barbara?’

It seemed extraordinary that I had once, like Widmerpool, thought myself in love with Barbara. Now I could hardly remember what she looked like, except that she was small and dark.

‘You know she married Johnny Pardoe?’ said Eleanor.

‘I haven’t set eyes on either of them since the wedding.’

‘Things have been a bit difficult.’

‘What?’

‘There was a baby that went wrong.’

‘Oh, dear.’

‘Then Johnny got awfully odd and melancholy after he left the Grenadiers. You remember he used to be an absolutely typical guardee, pink in the face and shouting at the top of his voice all the time, and yelling with laughter. Now he has quite changed, and mopes for hours or reads books on religion and philosophy.’

‘Johnny Pardoe?’

‘He sits in the library for weeks at a time just brooding. Never shoots now. You know how much he used to love shooting. Barbara has to run the place entirely. Poor Barbara, she has an awful time of it.’

Life jogs along, apparently in the same old way, and then suddenly your attention is drawn to some terrific change that has taken place. For example, I found myself brought up short at that moment, like a horse reined in on the brink of a precipice, at the thought of the astonishing reversal of circumstances by which Eleanor Walpole-Wilson was now in a position to feel sorry for Barbara Goring — or, as she had by then been for some years, Barbara Pardoe. The relationship between these two first cousins, like all other relationships when one is young, had seemed at that time utterly immutable; Barbara, pretty, lively, noisy, popular: Eleanor, plain, awkward, cantankerous, solitary. Barbara’s patronage of Eleanor was something that could never change. ‘Eleanor is not a bad old thing when you get to know her,’ she used to say; certainly without the faintest suspicion that within a few years Eleanor might be in a position to say: ‘Poor Barbara, she does have a time of it.’

While indulging in these rather banal reflections, I became aware that the two sisters had begun to quarrel. I had not heard the beginning of the conversation that had led to this discord, but it seemed to be concerned with their respective visits that summer to Thrubworth, their brother’s house.

‘As you know, Erry always makes these difficulties,’ Frederica was saying. ‘It is not that I myself particularly want to go there and live in ghastly discomfort for several weeks and feel frightfully depressed at seeing the place fall to pieces. I would much rather go to the seaside or abroad. But it is nice for the children to see the house, and they enjoy going down to talk to the people at the farm, and all that sort of thing. So if you are determined to go at just that moment—’

‘All right, then,’ said Norah, smiling and showing her teeth like an angry little vixen, ‘I won’t go. Nothing easier. I don’t particularly want to go to the bloody place either, but it is my home, I suppose. Some people might think that ought to be taken into consideration. I was born there. I can’t say I’ve had many happy moments there, it’s true, but I like walking by myself in the woods — and I have plenty of other ways of amusing myself there without bothering either you or Erry or anyone else.’

Eleanor caught my eye with a look to be interpreted as indicating that high words of this kind were not unexpected in the circumstances, but that we should try to quell them. However, before dissension could develop further, it was cut short abruptly by the door of the room opening. A small, gnarled, dumpy, middle-aged woman stood on the threshold. She wore horn-rimmed spectacles and her short legs were enclosed, like Eleanor’s, in blue flannel trousers — somewhat shrunk, for her largely developed thighs seemed to strain their seams — into the pockets of which her hands were deeply plunged.

‘Why, hullo, Hopkins,’ said Norah Tolland, her face suddenly clearing, and showing, for the first time since I had been in the room, some signs of pleasure. ‘What can we do for you?’

‘Hullo, girls,’ said the woman at the door.

She made no attempt to reply to Norah’s question, continuing to gaze round the room, grinning broadly, but advancing no farther beyond the threshold. She gave the impression of someone doing a turn on the stage.

‘If you take to leaving your front door on the latch,’ she said at last, ‘you’ll find a man will walk in one of these days, and then where will you be, I should like to know? By Jove, I see a man has walked in already. Well, well, well, never mind. There are a lot of them about, so I suppose you can’t keep them out all the time. What I came up for, dear, was to borrow an egg, if you’ve got such a thing. Laid one lately, either of you?’

Norah Tolland laughed.

‘This is my sister, Lady Frederica Budd,’ she said. ‘And Mr.—’

‘Jenkins,’ said Eleanor, in answer to an appeal for my name.

Eleanor was, I thought, less pleased than Norah to see the woman they called Hopkins. In fact, she seemed somewhat put out by her arrival.

‘Pleased to meet you, my dear,’ said Hopkins, holding out her hand to Frederica; ‘and you, my boy,’ she added, smirking in my direction.

‘Miss Hopkins plays the piano most nights at the Merry Thought,’ said Eleanor.

This explanation seemed aimed principally at Frederica.

‘You ought to look in one night,’ said Hopkins. ‘But come soon, because I’ve got an engagement next month to appear with Max Pilgrim at the Café de Madrid. I’ll have to make sure that old queen, Max, doesn’t hog every number. It would be just like him. He’s as vain as a peacock. Can’t trust a man not to try and steal the show anyway, even the normal ones, they’re the worst of all. Now the other thing I wanted to remind you girls about is my album. You’ve still got it. Have you thought of something nice to write in it, either of you?’