At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [16]
‘Difficult for George,’ he said. ‘Delicate, with Erridge the eldest son. George doesn’t want to be snubbed.’
‘Oh, goodness,’ said Molly Jeavons, throwing up her hands, ‘you Tollands drive me mad.’
Some new guests came into the room at that moment, so that her own plan for solving the problem of the stained-glass window was never revealed. In the reshuffle of places, I found myself tête-à-tête with Mrs. Conyers. After a few preliminary enquiries about my parents, she explained that the General was indisposed, though not seriously, having fallen headlong from the stable loft where the poodles’ food was stored. He must at that time have been a few years short of eighty.
‘But I did not remember you knew Lady Molly,’ said Mrs. Conyers in a low voice.
‘I did not, until tonight.’
‘Rather a happy-go-lucky household. That very extraordinary butler. One does not know what is going to be said next.’
‘So I should think.’
‘Too much so for me. I am old-fashioned, I’m afraid. I do not at all mind admitting it.’
I was reminded of Hugo Tolland, said to like being ‘dated’, but thought it wiser not to remind Mrs. Conyers of the parallel. I wondered why she had agreed to dine with the Jeavonses if she felt so inimical to them.
‘But you yourself must have known Lady Molly for a long time?’
‘Of course we have known her for years and years. But never well. When she was Lady Sleaford my youngest sister, Mildred, knew her, and we used to meet sometimes. I have hardly seen her since her second marriage. We know the present Sleafords, but I don’t think Lady Molly ever sees anything of them. That is to be expected, perhaps.’
‘You dined here?’
‘It was really on account of my sister. I can’t remember whether you have ever met Mildred.’
‘Only when I was a child. When you showed me the sword the sultan gave the General.’
Mrs. Conyers smiled.
‘That was a long time ago,’ she said. ‘Then you really do not know her.’
Some of the subsequent history of Mildred Blaides was, in fact, familiar to me from occasional talk on the part of my parents. Considered rather ‘fast’ in her early days—as might be expected from my memory of her—she had married a Flying Corps officer called M’Cracken, who had been killed not long after the wedding in a raid over Germany. Then there had been a period of widowhood, when her behaviour had been thought ‘flighty’. From the manner in which this interlude in her career used to be discussed, I imagine that my parents’ generation supposed her to be about to go to the bad in a spectacular manner. However, this very generally prophesied débâcle never took place. Mildred Blaides married again: the second time to an Australian business-man, a Mr. Haycock, retired, fairly rich, who owned a villa in the South of France and spent a good deal of his time travelling round the world. Mr. Haycock, who was said to possess sterling virtues in addition to his comfortable income, was also agreed to be ‘rather rough’. The marriage, so far as I knew, had been quite a success. There were children, but I did not know how many.
‘As a matter of fact, my sister Mildred is a very old friend of our hostess,’ said Mrs. Conyers, as if the matter was weighing on her mind. ‘As I say, she knows Lady Molly far better than I do. Mildred nursed at Dogdene during the war.’
‘I remember her in nurse’s uniform.’
‘She is coming here tonight. She was to have dined, but at the last moment she was unable to be at dinner. She is—more or less engaged to a friend of Lady Molly’s. As I expect you know, Mildred’s husband died about a year ago. Unfortunately a business engagement prevented her—I suppose I should say—fiancé from dining. He is a very busy man. He just could not get away tonight in Ume. Then Mildred herself is always changing her plans. Goodness knows why she herself could not come here without him. However, she couldn’t, so there it was. They are both looking in later.’
There could be no doubt now that the matter which worried, or at least unusually preoccupied, Mrs. Conyers was connected with her sister’s arrival. I could not at first decide exactly what had upset her.