A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [15]
Over by the window, Margaret Budd, a beauty, was talking to Pardoe, a Grenadier; and laughing while he demonstrated with a small shovel taken from the fireplace a scooping shot, successful or the reverse, that he, or someone known to him had recently performed on the links. When she laughed, Margaret looked like an immensely—almost ludicrously—pretty child. She was, as it were, the female equivalent of Archie Gilbert: present at every dance, always lovely, always fresh, and yet somehow quite unreal. She scarcely spoke at all, and might have been one of those huge dolls which, when inclined backwards, say “Ma-ma” or “Pa-pa”: though impossible to imagine in any position so undignified as that required for the mechanism to produce these syllables: equally hard to conceive her dishevelled, or bad-tempered, or, indeed, capable of physical passion—though appearances may be deceptive in no sphere so much as the last. Never without a partner, usually booked up six or seven dances ahead, this was her third or fourth season—so Barbara had once pointed out—and there had, as yet, been no sign of her getting engaged. “Margaret is rather a Guardee’s girl,” Barbara had added, evidently intending the label to imply no great compliment in her own eyes.
Widmerpool’s presence reminded me that Margaret was cousin of the Budd who had been Captain of the Eleven one year at school; and I remembered the story Stringham had told me, years before, of Widmerpool’s pleased acceptance—delight almost—on being struck in the face with a banana thrown by that comparatively notable cricketer. I could not help toying with the fantasy that some atavistic strain, deep-seated in the Budd family, might cause Margaret to assail Widmerpool in similar manner; perhaps later in the evening when dessert, tempting as a missile, appeared at the Walpole-Wilson’s table. Such a vision was improbable to an almost infinite degree, because Margaret was the kindest, quietest creature imaginable; really, I think, almost wholly unaware, in gentle concentration on herself, of the presence of most of the people moving about her. Even her laughter was rare, and its audible provocation before dinner that evening by his strokes in the air with the shovel did Pardoe credit.
From a girl’s point of view, there was no doubt something to be said for considering Pardoe the most interesting person present that evening. He had recently inherited a house on the Welsh Border (Jacobean in architecture, though with more ancient historical associations going back to the Wars of the Roses), together with enough money, so it was said, to “keep up” the estate. He was an agreeable, pink-faced ensign, very short, square, and broad-shouldered, with a huge black moustache, brushed out so forcibly that it seemed to be false and assumed for a joke. Such affluent young men were known to have a tendency to abandon dances and frequent night-clubs. Pardoe, however, was still available, so it appeared; no one could tell for how long. Unlike Archie Gilbert, he had a great deal to say for himself—though his newly acquired possessions made small-talk scarcely necessary—and, as he modestly treated his own appearance as a matter for laughter, the moustache was a considerable asset in his anecdotes. He had at last abandoned the shovel, and, mildly interested in music had become engaged in some operatic argument with Miss Manasch. To this discussion Sir Gavin, from the background where he had been hovering, his moustache bristling more than ever, now cut in with the emphatic words:
“No one could sing it like Slezak.”
“Did you ever hear him in Lohengrin?” demanded Pardoe, taking the ends of his own moustache with both hands, as if about to tear it off and reveal himself in a new identity.
“Many a time and oft,” said Sir Gavin, defiantly. “But what was that you were saying about ldomeneo?”
All three of them embarked clamorously on a new musical dispute. The rest of us chatted in a desultory way. Barbara arrived late. She was wearing her gold dress