At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [59]
This cross-fire continued until the return of Smith. He brought with him a bottle, which he banged down quite fiercely on the table. It was Mumm, 1906: a magnum. Nothing could have borne out more thoroughly Erridge’s statement about his own lack of interest in wine. It was, indeed, a mystery that this relic of former high living should have survived. Some latent sense of its lofty descent must from time to time have dominated Smith’s recurrent desire, and held him off. I could not help reflecting how different must have been the occasions when its fellows had been consumed; if, in truth, we were to consume this, which seemed not yet absolutely certain.
‘Just the one left,’ said Smith.
He spoke in anguish, though not without resignation. Erridge hesitated. Almost as much as Smith, he seemed to dislike the idea of broaching the wine for the rest of us to drink. A moral struggle was raging within him.
‘I don’t know whether I really ought not to keep it,’ he said. ‘If there is only one. I mean, if someone or other turned up who—’
He found no individual worthy enough to name, because he stopped suddenly short.
‘Oh, do let’s, Alf,’ said Mona.
She had hardly spoken since the arrival of Susan and Isobel Tolland. Her voice sounded high and strained, as if she were suffering strong nervous tension.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Erridge. ‘You’re right, Mona. We’ll break its neck and celebrate your engagement, Sue.’
He was undoubtedly proud of fetching from somewhere deeply embedded in memory this convivial phrase; also cheered by the immediate, and quite general, agreement that now was the moment to drink so mature—so patriarchal—a vintage. Smith disappeared again. After another long delay he returned with champagne glasses, which had received a perfunctory rub to dispel dust accumulated since at least the time of Erridge’s succession. Then, with the peculiar deftness of the alcoholic, he opened the bottle. The explosion was scarcely audible. He poured the wine, a stream of deep dull gold, like wine in a fairy story, at the same time offering an almost inaudible, though certainly generous, appreciation of the occasion by muttering: ‘I’ll be drinking your ladyship’s health myself later this evening.’ Susan thanked him. Erridge, who had himself refused a glass, shifted his feet about uneasily. Traces of the Mumm’s former excellence remained, like a few dimly remembered words of some noble poem sunk into oblivion, or a once famous statue of which only a chipped remnant still stands.
‘Have you informed Hyde Park Gardens yet?’ asked Erridge.
He spoke as if that were a new thought; one that worried him a little.
‘I rang up,’ said Susan.
The champagne had perhaps helped her to recover casualness of tone.
‘What was said?’
‘Great delight.’
I knew this reference must be to their stepmother, Katherine, Lady Warminster, of whom Lovell had given me some account, describing her as ‘frightfully amusing’. Invalid and somewhat eccentric, she was, I suspected, a less easy-going figure than Lovell’s words might lead one to suppose. There seemed indications that her stepchildren regarded her as formidable. She had always hated the country, so that her husband’s death had provoked none of those embarrassments, not uncommon, in which an heir has to apply pressure to enjoy sole rights in his inheritance. On the contrary, the difficulty had been to persuade Erridge to take over Thrubworth when Lord Warminster, a traveller and big-game hunter of some celebrity, died abroad. That had been five or six years before, when Erridge’s political views were still comparatively undeveloped. Lovell’s picture of Erridge’s early days depicted a vague, immature, unhappy young man, taking flats and leaving them, wandering about on the Continent, buying useless odds and ends, joining obscure societies, in general without friends or interests, drifting gradually into his present position.
‘I’m glad the news was well received,’ said Erridge.
‘So was I,’ said Susan. ‘Jolly glad.’
This interchange on the subject of their stepmother was somehow of a much closer intimacy than anything said previously about the engagement. In relation to Lady Warminster, the Tollands presented a united front. Their sentiments towards her were not, one felt, at all unfriendly; on the contrary, rather well disposed. They were at the same time sentiments charged with that powerful family feeling with which no outward consideration, not even love or marriage, could compete, except upon very unequal terms.