At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [54]
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.