A Buyer's Market (31 page)

Miss Walpole-Wilson’s manner that evening seemed intended to notify the possession of some important piece of news to be divulged at a suitable moment. She had, indeed, the same air as Widmerpool: one, that is to say, suggesting that she was unusually pleased with herself. We talked for a time, until the meal was despondently announced by the decrepit house-parlourmaid, who, a minute or two later, after we had sat down to cold food in a neighbouring room, hurried plates and dishes round the table with reckless speed, as if she feared that death—with which the day seemed still associated in my mind—would intervene to terminate her labours. There was a bottle of white wine. I asked Miss Walpole-Wilson whether she had been seeing much of Eleanor.

“Eleanor and I are going for a sea trip together,” she said. “A banana boat to Guatemala.”

“Rather wise to get her away from her family for a bit,” said Mrs. Widmerpool, making a grimace.

“Her father is full of old-fashioned ideas,” said Miss Walpole-Wilson, “and he won’t be laughed out of them.”

“Eleanor will enjoy the free life of the sea,” Mrs. Widmerpool agreed.

“Of course she will,” said Miss Walpole-Wilson; and, pausing for a brief second to give impetus to her question, added: “You have heard, I expect, about Barbara?”

It was clear from the way she spoke that she felt safe in assuming that none of us could possibly have heard already whatever her news might be. I thought, though the supposition may have been entirely mistaken, that for an instant she fixed her eyes rather malignantly on Widmerpool; and certainly there was no reason to suggest that she knew anything of his former interest in Barbara. However, if she intended to tease him, she scored a point, for at mention of the name his face at once took on a somewhat guilty expression. Mrs. Widmerpool inquired curtly what had happened. She also seemed to feel that Miss Walpole-Wilson might be trying to provoke her son.

“Barbara is engaged,” said Miss Walpole-Wilson, smiling, though without good-humour.

“Who to?” asked Widmerpool, abruptly.

“I can’t remember whether you know him,” she said. “He is a young man in the Guards. Rich, I think.”

I felt certain, immediately, that she must refer to someone I had never met. Many people can never hear of any engagement without showing envy, and no one can be quite disinterested who has been at one time an implicated party. The thought that the man would turn out to be unknown to me was, therefore, rather a relief.

“But what is the name?” said Widmerpool, insistently.

He was already nettled. There could be no doubt that Miss Walpole-Wilson was deliberately tormenting him, although I could not decide whether this was simply her usual technique in delaying the speed at which she passed on gossip with the object of making it more appetising, or because she knew, either instinctively or from specific information in her possession, that he had been concerned with Barbara. For a moment or two she smiled round the table frostily.

“He is called Pardoe,” she said, at last. “I think his other name is John.”

“Her parents
must
be pleased,” said Mrs. Widmerpool. “I always thought that Barbara was becoming—well—almost a problem in a small way. She got so noisy. Such a pity when that happens to a girl.”

I could see from Widmerpool’s pursed lips and glassy eyes that he was as astonished as myself. The news went some way to dispel his air of self-satisfaction, that had seemed only momentarily displaced by irritation with Miss Walpole-Wilson before this announcement. I was myself conscious of a faint sense of bitterness, rather indefinite in its application. Among the various men who had, at one time or another, caused me apprehension, just or unjust, in connection with Barbara, Pardoe had never at any moment, figured in the smallest degree. Why this immunity from my jealousy should have attached to him, I was now quite unable to understand, when, in the light of the information just imparted, I considered past incidents. Even after deciding that I was no longer in love with Barbara, I could still slightly resent her attitude towards Tompsitt; but objection—like Widmerpool’s—to her crossing the supper-room to sit with Pardoe would never have entered my mind.

In fact, Widmerpool’s instinct on the matter, if not his action, had, in one sense, been sound, so it now appeared; though it was true that his own emotions were still at that time deeply involved, a condition having a natural tendency to sharpen all perceptions in that particular direction. The manner in which jealousy operates is, indeed, curious enough, having perhaps relatively little bearing on the practical menace offered by a rival. Barnby used to describe a husband and lover known to him, who had both combined against a third—or rather fourth—party, found to be intervening. However, that situation was, of course, poles apart from the one under examination. Widmerpool now made an effort to control his voice.

“When did this happen?” he asked, speaking casually.

“I think they actually became engaged in Scotland,” said Miss Walpole-Wilson, pleased with the impression she had made. “But it has not been made public yet.”

There was a pause. Widmerpool had failed to rise above the situation. For the moment he had lost all his good-humour. I think he was cross not only at Barbara’s engagement, but also at the inability he was experiencing to conceal his own annoyance. I felt a good deal of sympathy for him in what he was going through.

“Rather a ridiculous little man,” he said, after a time. “Still, the fortune is a large one, and I have been told it is a nice house. I hope she will be very happy.”

“Barbara has great possibilities,” said Miss Walpole-Wilson. “I don’t know how she will like being an officer’s wife. Personally, I always find soldiers so dull.”

“Oh, not in the
Guards
, surely?” said Mrs. Widmerpool, baring her teeth, as if in expectation, or memory, of behaviour on the part of Guardsmen infinitely removed from anything that could be regarded as dull, even by the most satiated.

“Of course, one of Barbara’s brothers went into the Army,” said Miss Walpole-Wilson, as if that might be calculated to soften the blow.

Discussion of the engagement continued in a desultory manner. Such matters are habitually scrutinised from angles that disregard almost everything that might be truly looked upon as essential in connection with a couple’s married life together; so that, as usual, it was hard to think with even moderate clearness how the marriage would turn out. The issues were already hopelessly confused, not only by Miss Walpole-Wilson and Mrs. Widmerpool, but also by anarchical litter enveloping the whole subject, more especially in the case of the particular pair concerned: a kind of phantasmagoria taking possession of the mind at the thought of them as husband and wife. The surroundings provided by the Widmerpool flat were such as to encourage, for some reason, the wildest flights of imagination, possibly on account of some inexplicable moral inadequacy in which its inhabitants seemed themselves to exist. Barbara’s engagement lasted as a topic throughout the meal.

“Shall we leave the gentlemen to their port?” said Mrs. Widmerpool, when finally the subject had been picked bone-dry.

She mouthed the words “gentlemen” and “port” as if they might be facetiously disputable as strictly literal descriptions in either case. Widmerpool shut the door, evidently glad to be rid of both women for the time being. I wondered whether he would begin to speak of Barbara or Gypsy. To my surprise, neither girl turned out to be his reason for his so impatiently desiring a
téte-â-téte
conversation.

“I say, I’ve had an important move up at Donners-Brebner,” he said. “That speech at the Incorporated Metals dinner had repercussions. The Chief was pleased about it.”

“Did he forgive you for knocking his garden about?”

Widmerpool laughed aloud at the idea that such a matter should have been brought up against him.

“You know,” he said, “you sometimes make me feel that you must live completely out of the world. A man like Sir Magnus Donners does not bother about an accident of that sort. He has something more important to worry about. For example, he said to me the other day that he did not give tuppence what degrees a man had. What he wanted was someone who knew the ropes and could think and act quickly.”

“I remember him saying something of the sort when Charles Stringham went into Donners-Brebner.”

“Stringham is leaving us now that he is married. Just as well, in my opinion. I believe Truscott really thinks so too. People talk a great deal about charm,’ but something else is required in business, I can assure you. Perhaps Stringham will settle down now. I believe he had some rather undesirable connections.”

I inquired what Stringham was going to do now that he was departing from Donners-Brebner, but Widmerpool was ignorant on that point. I was unable to gather from him precisely what form his own promotion, with which he was so pleased, would take, though he implied that he would probably go abroad in the near future.

“I think I may be seeing something of Prince Theodoric,” he said. “I believe you just met him.”

“Sir Gavin Walpole-Wilson could tell you all about Theodoric.”

“I think I may say I have better sources of information at hand than to be derived from diplomats who have been ‘unstuck’,” said Widmerpool, with complacency. “I have been brought in touch recently with a man you probably know from your university days, Sillery— ‘Sillers’—I find him quite a character in his way.”

Feeling in no mood to discuss Sillery with Widmerpool, I asked him what he thought about Barbara and Pardoe.

“I suppose it was only to be expected,” he said, reddening a bit.

“But had you any idea?”

“I really do not devote my mind to such matters.”

In saying this, I had no doubt that he was speaking the truth. He was one of those persons capable of envisaging others only in relation to himself, so that, when in love with Barbara, it had been apparently of no interest to him to consider what other men might stand in the way. Barbara was either in his company, or far from him; the latter state representing a kind of void in which he was uninterested except at such a moment as that at the Huntercombes’, when her removal was brought painfully to his notice. Turning things over in my mind, I wondered whether I could be regarded as having proved any more sentient myself. However, I felt now that die time had come to try and satisfy my curiosity about the other business.

“What about the matter you spoke of at Stourwater?”

Widmerpool pushed back his chair. He took off his spectacles and rubbed the lenses. I had the impression that he was about to make some important pronouncement, rather in the manner of the Prime Minister allowing some aspect of governmental policy to be made known at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet or Royal Academy Dinner.

“I am glad you asked that,” he said, slowly. “I wondered if you would. Will you do me a great favour?”

“Of course—if I can.”

“Never mention the subject again.”

“All right.”

“I behaved unwisely, perhaps, but I gained something.”

“You did?”

I had accented the question in the wrong manner. Widmerpool blushed again.

“Possibly we do not mean the same thing,” he said. “I referred to being brought in touch with a new side of life—even new political opinions.”

“I see.”

“I am going to tell you something else about myself.”

“Go ahead.”

“No woman who takes my mind off my work is ever to play a part in my life in the future.”

“That sounds a wise decision so far as it goes.”

“And another thing …”

“Yes?”

“If I were you, Nicholas—I hope, by the way, you will call me Kenneth in future, we know each other well enough by now to use Christian names—I should avoid all that set. Deacon and the whole lot of them. You won’t get any good out of it.”

“Deacon is dead.”

“What?”

“I went to the funeral this afternoon. He was cremated.”

“Really,” said Widmerpool.

He demanded no details, so I supplied none. I felt now that we were, in a curious way, fellow-conspirators, even though Widmerpool might be unaware of this, and I was myself not unwilling to connive at his desire to draw a veil over the matter of which we had spoken. For a time we talked of other things, such as the arrangements to be made when he went abroad. After a while we moved into the next room, where Miss Walpole-Wilson was describing experiences in the Far East. When I left, at a comparatively early hour, she was still chronicling the occasion when she had trudged across the face of Asia.

“You must come again soon,” said Mrs. Widmerpool. “We never managed to have our chat about books.”

During the descent in the lift, still groaning precariously, thinking over Widmerpool and his mother, and their life together, it came to me in a flash who it was Mrs. Andriadis had resembled when I had seen her at the party in Hill Street. She recalled, so I could now see, two persons I had met, and although these two were different enough from each other, their elements, or at least some of them were combined in her These two were Stringham’s mother and her former secretary, Miss Weedon. I remembered the dialogue that had taken place when Stringham had quarrelled with Mrs Andriadis at the end of that night. “As you wish, Milly,” he had said; just as I could imagine him, in his younger days, saying to Miss Weedon: “As you wish, Tuffy,” at the termination of some trivial dispute at his home.

It was a moonlight night. That region has an atmosphere peculiar to itself, separated in spirit as far from the historic gloom of Westminster’s more antique streets as from the
louche
seediness and Victorian decay of the wide squares of Pimlico beyond Vauxhall Bridge Road. For some reason, perhaps the height of the tower, or more probably the prodigal inappropriateness to London of the whole structure’s architectural style, the area immediately adjacent to the cathedral imparts a sense of vertigo, a dizziness almost alarming in its intensity: lines and curves of red brick appearing to meet in a kind of vortex, rather than to be ranged in normal forms of perspective. I had noticed this before when entering the terrain from the north, and now the buildings seemed that evening almost as if they might swing slowly forward from their bases, and downward into complete prostration