At Lady Molly's: A Novel by Anthony Powell
Erridge was sitting at a desk, the upper part surmounted by a glass-fronted bookcase filled with volumes enclosed for the most part in yellow paper wrappers. He jumped up immediately we entered, removing his spectacles and stumbling forward confusedly, as if our arrival was totally unexpected. He had been writing, and the open flap of the desk was covered with letters and papers which now cascaded to the floor; where they lay in a heap for the rest of the time we were in the house. A dark wall-paper and heavy mahogany furniture, not very different in style to that exiled to the back parts of the house, made the room seem smaller than its real extent, which was in fact considerable. There were no pictures, though rectangular discoloured patches on the walls showed where frames had once hung. Over the fireplace hung a chart which I took to be the Tolland pedigree, but on closer examination proved to illustrate in descending scale some principle of economic distribution. Shelves holding more books—classics, Baedekers and a couple of bound copies of the Boy’s Own Paper—covered the far wall. At the end of the room stood a table littered with current newspapers and magazines. Another smaller table had been laid with four places for a meal.
It was clear that Erridge lived and moved and had his being in this room. I wondered whether he also spent his nights there on the sofa. Such rough and ready accommodation might easily be in keeping with his tenets: except that the sofa looked rather too comfortable to assuage at night-time his guilt for being rich. Still embarrassed, so it seemed, by the unexpectedness of our arrival, he had now begun to walk quickly up and down the room, as if to give expression and relief to the nervous tension he felt. Quiggin, his own self-possession completely restored by contact with his host—like the warm glow that comes after a plunge in cold water—must have recognised these symptoms in Erridge as normal enough. He took Mona by the arm and drew her towards the window, where the two of them stood side by side, looking down at the gardens and the park beyond. They began to discuss together some feature of the landscape.
Left by myself in the middle of the room, I was at first uncertain whether to join Quiggin and Mona in their survey of the Thrubworth grounds, or, by interrupting his pacing with some conventional remark, to follow up Erridge’s vague but general greeting to the three of us on arrival. The latter course threatened to entail an attempt to march up and down the room beside him: like officers waiting for a parade to begin. On the other hand, to move away towards Quiggin and the window would seem ineffective and unfriendly, Idecided to glance at the economic chart for a minute or two in the hope that the situation might assume a less enigmatic aspect; but when a moment later Erridge paused by his desk, and began laboriously to straighten some of the few papers that remained there, I saw that he and I, sooner or later, must establish some kind of host-guest relationship, however uneasy, if we were to spend an evening together. The quicker this were done the better, so far as my own peace of mind was concerned. I therefore tackled him without further delay.
‘I saw your butler some months ago at the Jeavonses’.’
Erridge started, at last coming to himself.
‘Oh, did you, yes,’ he said, laughing uncomfortably, but at least putting down the pages of typescript which he was shuffling together. ‘Smith went there while I was—while I was away—doing this—this—sort of investigation. He has been with me for—oh, I don’t know—several years. Our other butler died. He had something ghastly wrong with his inside. Something really horrible. It was quite sudden. Smith is rather a peculiar man. He doesn’t have very good health either. You can never guess what he is going to say. You know Aunt Molly, do you?’
Erridge’s face had begun to work painfully when he spoke of his earlier butler’s unhappy state of health and subsequent death. It was easy to see that he found the afflictions of the human condition hard even to contemplate; indeed, took many of them as his own personal responsibility.
‘I’ve been there once or twice.’
‘You seem to know a lot of my relations,’ said Erridge.
He made this remark in a flat, despondent tone, as if interested, even faintly surprised that such a thing should happen, but that was all. He appeared to wish to carry the matter no further, uttering no warning, but certainly offering no encouragement. It would probably have been necessary to discover a fresh subject to discuss, had not Quiggin at that moment decided that the proper period of segregation from Erridge was at an end—or had been satisfactorily terminated by my own action—so that he now rejoined us.
‘I was showing Mona the place where I advise you to have those trees down,’ he said. ‘I am sure it is the right thing to do. Get them out of the way.’
‘I’m still thinking it over,’ said Erridge, again using an absolutely flat tone.
He did not show any desire to hear Quiggin’s advice about his estate, his manner on this subject contrasting with his respectful reception of Quiggin’s political comments. Mona sat down on the sofa and gave a little sigh.
‘Would you—any of you—like a drink?’ asked Erridge.
He spoke enquiringly, as if drink at that hour were an unusual notion that had just occurred to him. It was agreed that a drink would be a good idea. However, Erridge seemed to have little or no plan for implementing his offer. All he did further was to say: ‘I expect Smith will be back in a minute or two.’
Smith did, indeed, return a short time later. He added a large jug of barley water to the things on the table.
‘Oh, Smith,’ said Erridge. ‘There is some sherry, isn’t there?’
‘Sherry, m’lord?’
It was impossible to tell from Smith’s vacant, irascible stare whether he had never before been asked for sherry since his first employment at Thrubworth; or whether he had himself, quite simply, drunk all the sherry that remained.
‘Yes, sherry,’ said Erridge, with unexpected firmness. ‘I am sure I remember some being left in the decanter after the doctor came here.’
Erridge said the word ‘doctor’ in a way that made me think he might add hypochondria to his other traits. There was something about the value he gave to the syllables that emphasised the importance to himself of a doctor’s visit.
‘I don’t think so, m’lord.’
‘I know there was,’ said Erridge. ‘Please go and look.’
A battle of wills was in progress. Clearly Erridge had little or no interest in sherry as such. Like Widmerpool, he did not care for eating and drinking: was probably actively opposed to such sensual enjoyments, which detracted from preferable conceptions of pure power. Quiggin, of course, liked power too; though perhaps less for its own sake than for the more practical consideration of making a career for himself of a kind that appealed at any given moment to his imagination. Quiggin could therefore afford to allow himself certain indulgences, provided these did not endanger the political or social front he chose to present to the world. In supposing that Erridge, like most people who employ eccentric servants, was under Smith’s thumb, I now saw I had made an error of judgment. Erridge’s will was a strong one. There could be no doubt of that. At his words Smith had bowed his head as one who, having received the order of the bowstring, makes for the Bosphorus. He turned in deep dejection from the room. Erridge’s sallow cheeks had almost taken on a touch of colour. In this mood his beard made him look quite fierce.
‘You would like some sherry, wouldn’t you?’ he repeated to Mona.
He was suffering a twinge of conscience that to the rest of us his demeanour to Smith might have sounded arrogant: out of keeping with his fundamental beliefs.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mona.
She adopted towards Erridge a decidedly flirtatious manner. Indeed, I wondered for a moment whether she might now be contemplating a new move that would make her Countess of Warminster. Almost immediately I dismissed such a speculation as absurd, since Erridge himself appeared totally unaware that he was being treated to Mona’s most seductive glance. Turning from her he began to discuss with Quiggin the economics of the magazine they hoped to found. Th
Smith returned with sherry on a salver. There was just enough wine to give each of us a full glass. I remarked on the beauty of the decanter.
‘Are you interested in glass?’ said Erridge. ‘Some of it is rather good here. My grandfather used to collect it. I don’t know, by the way, whether you would like to look round the house by any chance. There is nothing much to see, but some people like that sort of thing. Or perhaps you would rather do that after dinner.’
‘Oh, we are more comfortable here with our drinks, aren’t we, Alf?’ said Quiggin. ‘I don’t expect you want to trudge round the house, do you, Nick? I am sure I don’t.’
I think Quiggin knew, even at this stage, that there was no real hope of sabotaging the project, because Erridge was already determined to go through with it; but he felt at the same time, in the interests of his own self-respect, that at least an effort should be made to prevent a tour of the house taking place. Erridge’s face fell; looking more cheerful again at the assurance that, after we had dined, I should like to ‘see round’. Smith appeared with some soup in a tureen, and we ranged ourselves about the table.
‘Will you drink beer?’ asked Erridgc, doubtfully. ‘Or does anyone prefer barley water?’
‘Beer,’ said Quiggin, sharply.
He must have felt that the suggested tour of the house had strengthened his own moral position, in so much as the proposal was an admission of self-indulgence on the part of Erridge.
‘Bring some beer, Smith.’
‘The pale ale, m’lord?’
‘Yes, I think that is what it is. Whatever we usually drink on these occasions.’
Smith shook his head pessimistically, and went off again. Erridge and Quiggin settled down to further talk about the paper, a conversation leading in due course to more general topics, among these the aggressive foreign policy of Japan.
‘Of course I would dearly like to visit China and see for myself,’ Quiggin said.
It was a wish I had heard him express before. Possibly he hoped that Erridge would take him there.
‘It would be interesting,’ Erridge said. ‘I’d like to go myself.’
Soup was followed by sausages and mash with fried onions. The cooking was excellent. The meal ended with cheese and fruit. We left the table and moved back to the chairs round the fireplace at the other end of the room. Mona returned to the subject of her film career. We had begun to talk of some of the minor film stars of the period, when the sound of girls’ voices and laughter came from the passage outside. Then the door burst open, and two young women came boisterously into the room. There could be no doubt that they were two more of Erridge’s sisters. The elder, so it turned out, was Susan Tolland; the younger, Isobel. The atmosphere changed suddenly, violently. One became all at once aware of the delicious, sparkling proximity of young feminine beings. The room was transformed. They both began to speak at once, the elder one, Susan, finally making herself heard.
‘Erry, we were passing the gates and really thought it would be too bad mannered not to drop in.’
Erridge rose, and kissed his sisters automatically, although not without some shade of warmth. Otherwise, he showed no great pleasure at seeing them; rather the reverse. I had by then become familiar with the Tolland physical type, to which Susan Tolland completely conformed. She was about twenty-five or twenty-six, less farouche, I judged, than her sister, Norah; less statuesque than Frederica, though resembling both of them. Tall and thin, all of them possessed a touch of that angularity of feature most apparent in Erridge himself: a conformadon that in him became a gauntness recalling Don Quixote. In the girls this inclination to severity of outline had been bred down, leaving only a liveliness of expression and underlying sense of melancholy: this last characteristic to some extent masked by a great pressure of high spirits, notably absent in Erridge. His eyes were brown, those of his sisters, deep blue.
Would it be too explicit, too exaggerated, to say that when I set eyes on Isobel Tolland, I knew at once that I should marry her? Something like that is the truth; certainly nearer the truth than merely to record those vague, inchoate sentiments of interest of which I was so immediately conscious. It was as if I had known her for many years already; enjoyed happiness with her and suffered sadness. I was conscious of that, as of another life, nostalgically remembered. Then, at that moment, to be compelled to go through all the paraphernalia of introduction, of ‘getting to know’ one another by means of the normal formalities of social life, seemed hardly worth while. We knew one another already; the future was determinate. But what—it may reasonably be asked—what about the fact that only a short time before I had been desperately in love with Jean Duport; was still, indeed, not sure that I had been wholly cured? Were the delights and agonies of all that to be tied up with ribbon, so to speak, and thrown into a drawer to be forgotten? What about the girls with whom I seemed to stand nighdy in cinema queues? What, indeed?
‘Aren’t we going to be told who everyone is?’ said Susan, looking round the room and smiling.
Although her smile was friendly, charming, there could be no doubt that, like her sister, Norah, Susan was capable of making herself disagreeable if she chose.
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Erridge. ‘What am I thinking of? I am not used to having so many people in this room.’
He mumbled our names. Isobel seemed to take them in; Susan, less certainly. Both girls were excited about something, apparently about some piece of news they had to impart.
‘Have you come from far?’ asked Quiggin.
He spoke in an unexpectedly amiable tone, so much muting the harshness of his vowels that these sounded almost like the ingratiating speech of his associate, Howard Craggs, the publisher. Quiggin had previously named Erridge’s family in such disparaging terms that I had almost supposed he would give some outward sign of the disapproval he felt for the kind of life they lived. He would have been capable of that; or at least withholding from them any mark of cordiality. Now, on the contrary, he had wrung the girls’ hands heartily, grinning with pleasure, as if delighted by this opportunity of meeting them both. Mona, on the other hand, did not trouble to conceal traces of annoyance, or at least disappointment, at all this additional feminine competition put into the field against her so suddenly and without warning.
‘Yes, we’ve come rather miles,’ said Susan Tolland, who was evidently very pleased about something. ‘The car made the most extraordinary sounds at one point. Isobel said it was like a woman wailing for her demon lover. I thought it sounded more like the demon lover himself.’
‘Anyway, here you are in “sunny domes and caves of ice”,’ said Quiggin. ‘You know I get more and more interested in Coleridge for some reason.’
‘Do you—do you want anything to eat, either of you?’ Erridge enquired, uneasily.
He pointed quite despairingly at the table, as if he hoped the food we had just consumed would, by some occult processs, be restored there once more; as if we were indeed living in the realm of poetic enchantment adumbrated by Quiggin.
‘We had a bite at the Tolland Arms,’ said Isobel, taking a banana from the dish and beginning to peel it. ‘And very disgusting the food was there, too. We didn’t know you would be entertaining on a huge scale, Erry. In fact we were not even certain you were in residence. We thought you might be away on one of your jaunts.’
She cast a glance at us from under her eyelashes to indicate that she was not laughing openly at her brother, but, at the same time, we must realise th
‘Where have you come from?’ asked Erridge.
He spoke formally, almost severely, as if forcing himself to take an interest in his sisters’ behaviour, however extraordinary; behaviour which, owing to the fortunate dispensations of circumstance, could never affect him personally to the smallest degree. Indeed, he spoke as if utter remoteness from his own manner of life, for that very reason, made a subject otherwise unexciting, even distasteful, possess aspects impossible for him to disregard. It was as if his sisters, in themselves, represented customs so strange and incalculable that even the most detached person could not fail to allow his attention to be caught for a second or two by such startling oddness.
‘We’ve been at the Alfords’,’ said Isobel, discarding the banana skin into the waste-paper basket. ‘Throw me an orange, Susy. Susan had an adventure there.’
‘Not an adventure exactly,’ said her sister. ‘And, anyway, it’s my story, not yours, Isobel. Hardly an adventure. Unless you call getting married an adventure. I suppose some people might.’ ‘Why, have you got married, Susan?’ asked Erridge.
He showed no surprise whatever, and very little interest, at the presentation of this possibility: merely mild, on the whole benevolent, approval.
‘I haven’t yet,’ said Susan, suddenly blushing deeply. ‘But I am going to.’
She was, I think, suddenly overwhelmed at the thought of marriage and all it implied. The announcement of her engagement, planned with great dash, had not been entirely carried off with the required air of indifference. I even wondered for a moment whether she was not going to cry. However, she mastered herself immediately. At the sight of her sister’s face, Isobel began to blush violently too.