At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [58]
These felicitations were handsome on Smith’s part, although Isobel, in spite of being several years younger than her sister, evidently had no wish for comparison between them to be drawn in a manner which made her, by representing, as it were, those girls not yet engaged, seem to come out second best. However, if Smith hoped by drawing attention to engagements in general to dispose of the question of champagne, he was disappointed.
‘Anyway, Smith, do go and have a look,’ said Isobel. ‘My throat is absolutely parched.’
Erridge might have no wish to drink champagne, even if available, but he had also clearly decided that things had gone too far for the idea to be abandoned without loss of face on his own part. Smith, too, must finally have realised that, for he now set down the coffee tray and abandoned the room in full retreat, moving like a man without either enthusiasm or hope.
‘Smith doesn’t seem to get any soberer,’ said Susan, when he had shut the door.
‘As a matter of fact, Smith hasn’t had one of his real bouts for a long time,’ said Erridge.
He spoke reprovingly.
‘So drink is Smith’s trouble, is it?’ said Quiggin, with great geniality. ‘You never told me that. I often thought he might be one over the eight. That explains a lot.’
‘Smith sometimes takes a glass too much,’ said Erridge, shortly, perhaps beginning to notice, and resent, the change in Quiggin’s manner since the arrival of the girls. ‘I usually pretend not to notice. It must be an awful job to be a butler anyway. I don’t really approve of having indoor men-servants, but it is hard to run a house this size without them, even when you live, like me, in only a small part of it. I can’t get rid of the place, because it is entailed—so there it is.’
He sighed. There was rather an awkward pause. Erridge was perhaps getting cross. It was possible that the entail was not a popular subject in the family.
‘What sort of luck will he have in the cellar?’ asked Isobel. ‘I must say champagne is just what I need.’
‘I really don’t know,’ said Erridge. ‘As I told you, I hardly drink anything myself.’
‘Do you keep it locked?’ asked Susan.
Erridge coloured a little.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I like trusting people, Susan.’
Susan showed no disposition to accept this observation as a snub, although her brother was obviously displeased by her flippancy. It was natural that anyone should be annoyed whose evening had been so radically altered by force of circumstance. He had been looking forward to some hours of discussing plans for the magazine, discussion which my own presence would not have hindered. A third, and unconcerned, party might even have made Quiggin more tractable, for a certain amount of patron-protégé conflict clearly took place between them. Now, the arrival of his sisters had transformed the room into a place not far removed from one of those haunts of social life so abhorrent to him. Instead of printing charges, advertising rates, the price of paper, names of suitable contributors, their remuneration, and other such matters which, by their very nature, carried with them a suggestion of energy, power and the general good of mankind, he was now compelled to gossip about such a trifle as Susan’s engagement, a subject in which he could not feel the smallest interest. This indifference was not, I felt sure, due to dislike of Susan, but because the behaviour of individuals, consanguineous or not, held, as such, no charm whatever for him. His growing vexation was plain: not lessened by Quiggin’s manifest betrayal of principles with the two girls.
‘Do you like driving, Lady Susan?’ asked Quiggin.
‘Oh, all right,’ she said. ‘We rattled along somehow.’
‘Have you had your car long?’
When he asked that, she began to blush furiously again.
‘It is a borrowed car,’ she said.
‘It’s Roddy’s,’ said Isobel. ‘Just to show him what married life is going to be like. Sue took his car away from him, and made him go back by train.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said her sister. ‘You know it was the most convenient arrangement.