A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [28]
“We’ll have a—Blue Room a—
New room for—two room—
Where we will raise a family…
Not like a—ballroom a—
Small room a—hall room…
An equally insistent murmur came from the other side of the square:
“In the mountain greenery—
Where God makes the scenery …
Ta-rum … Ta-roo …”
“Why are you so glum?” said Barbara, picking up some pebbles and throwing them into the bushes. “I must tell you what happened at Ranelagh last week.”
In the face of recent good resolutions, I tried to take her hand. She snatched it away, laughing, and as usual in such circumstances said: “Oh, don’t get sentimental.”
This tremendous escape, quite undeserved, sobered me. We walked round the lawns. Barbara talked of Scotland, where she was going to stay later in the summer.
“Why not come up there?” she said. “Surely you can find someone to put you up?”
“Got to work.”
“Of course they don’t need you all the time at the office.”
“They do.”
“Have you ever danced reels? Johnny Pardoe is going to be there. He says he’ll teach me.”
She began to execute capers on the lawn. Stopping at last she examined her arm, holding it out, and saying: “How blue my hand looks in the moonlight.”
I found myself wondering whether, so far from loving her, I did not actually hate her. Another tune began and we strolled back through the garden. At the gate Tompsitt came up from somewhere among the shadows.
“This is ours, I think.”
In his manner of speaking, so it seemed to me, he contrived to be at once uncivil and pedantic. Barbara began to jump about on the path as if leaping over imaginary puddles, while almost at the top of her small, though shrill, voice she said: “I can’t, really I can’t. I must have made a muddle. I am dancing with Mr. Widmerpool. I have put him off till now, and I really must.”
“Cut him,” said Tompsitt.
He sounded as if taking Barbara away from her rightful partner would give him even more pleasure than that to be derived from dancing with her himself. I wondered if she had called Widmerpool “Mister” because her acquaintance with him had never been brought to a closer degree of intimacy, or if she spoke facetiously. From what Eleanor had said, the latter seemed more probable. It suddenly struck me that after all these years of knowing him I still had no idea of Widmerpool’s Christian name.
“Shall I?” said Barbara. “He would be terribly angry.”
Suddenly she took each of us by the hand, and began to charge along the pavement. In this unusual manner we reached the door of the Huntercombes’ house. By the time we had ceased running even Tompsitt seemed, in the last resort, rather taken aback; the combined movement of the three of us—rather like that of horses in a troika—being probably as unexpected for him as for myself. Barbara, for her part, was delighted with her own violent display of high spirits. She broke free and rushed up the steps in front of us.
In the hall, although the hour was not yet late, a few people were already making preparations to leave. As it happened, Widmerpool was standing by the staircase, looking, I thought, a little uneasy, and fingering a tattered pair of white gloves. I had seen him with just that expression on his face, waiting for the start of one of the races for which he used so unaccountably to enter: finishing, almost without exception, last or last but one. When he saw Barbara, he brightened a little, and moved towards us.
“The Merry Widow Waltz,” he said. “I always like that, don’t you? I wish I had known Vienna in the old days before the war.”
Barbara once more seized Tompsitt and myself by whichever arm was nearest to her. She said to Widmerpool: “My dear, I have made a muddle again. I have told all sorts of people that I will dance this one with them, but—as I can’t possibly dance with all three of you—let’s all go and have some supper instead.”
“But I’ve already had supper—” began Widmerpool.
“So have I,