A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [33]
“Do you know the chap Barbara poured sugar on?” he asked, at last.
“I was at school with him.”
“What was he like?”
“Rather the kind of man people pour sugar on.”
Tompsitt looked disapproving and rather contemptuous. I thought at the time that his glance had reference to Widmerpool. I can now see that it was directed, almost certainly, towards my own remark, which he must have regarded, in some respects justly, as an answer inadequate to his question. Looking back on this exchange, I have no doubt that Tompsitt had already recognised as existing in Widmerpool some potential to which I was myself still almost totally blind; and, although he may neither have liked nor admired Widmerpool, he was at the same time aware of a shared approach to life which supplied a kind of bond between them. My own feeling that it would have been unjustifiable to mention the story of the banana, because I felt myself out of sympathy with Tompsitt, and, although often irritated by his behaviour, was conscious of a kind of uncertain loyalty, even mild liking, for Widmerpool, probably represented a far less instinctive and more artificial or unreal understanding between two individuals.
It would, indeed, be hard to over-estimate the extent to which persons with similar tastes can often, in fact almost always, observe these responses in others: women: money: power: whatever it is they seek; while this awareness remains a mystery to those in whom such tendencies are less highly, or not at all, developed. Accordingly, Tompsitt’s acceptance of Widmerpool, and indifference, even rudeness, to many other persons of apparently greater outward consideration—in so much as I reflected on it—seemed to me odd; but this merely because, at that time, I did not understand the foundations required to win Tompsitt’s approval. In any case, I saw no advantage in inquiring further into the matter at that hour, having myself already decided to go home to bed as soon as possible. Tompsitt, too, had no doubt had enough of the tête-à-tête. He rose, as a matter of fact, before I did, and we walked out together, separating as soon as we had passed through the door, Tompsitt strolling upstairs again towards the ballroom, while I made for the cloak-room. Eleanor was crossing the hall.
“Off to get my bonnet and shawl,” she remarked, delighted that for her, at least, another dance was at an end.
I handed in the ticket, and was waiting while they looked for my hat, when Widmerpool himself appeared from the back regions of the house. He, and no doubt others too, had engaged in a thorough scouring of his person and clothes, most of, the sugar having been by now removed, though a few grains still glistened round the button-hole of his silk lapel. He appeared also to have recovered his normal self-possession, such as it was. One of the servants handed him an opera hat, which he opened with a sharp crepitation, placing it on his head at a tilt as we went down the steps together. The night was a little cooler, though still mild enough.
“Which way do you go?” he asked.
“Piccadilly.”
“Are you taxi-ing?”
“I thought I might walk.”
“It sounds as if you lived in a rather expensive area,” said Widmerpool, assuming that judicial air which I remembered from France.
“Shepherd Market. Quite cheap, but rather noisy.”
“A flat?”
“Rooms—just beside an all-night garage and opposite a block of flats inhabited almost exclusively by tarts.”
“How convenient,” said Widmerpool; rather insincerely, I suspected.
“One of them threw a lamp out of her window the other night.”
“I go towards Victoria,” said Widmerpool.
He had evidently heard enough of a subject that might reasonably be regarded as an unpleasant one, because the local prostitutes were rowdy and aggressive: quite unlike the sad sisterhood of innumerable novels,