At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [88]
‘If Mildred is not careful,’ said Molly, ‘she will polish off Mr. Widmerpool before she has time to marry him. I hear he had to go home, he was feeling so ill.’
I thought the sooner the subject of that night was abandoned, the better. While we had been talking, Jeavons had listened in silence, as if he had never before heard of any of the persons under discussion, including himself. I admired his detachment. I wondered, too, whether at that very moment his head was seething with forgotten melodies, for ever stirring him to indiscretion by provoking memories of an enchanted past.
‘I can’t have all the Tollands at this party,’ Molly had said. ‘So I had better have none of them. Bound to be jealousy otherwise. Just like Erridge to go to China when one of his sisters gets engaged.’
Smith was again on duty with the Jeavonses on the day of the party. He looked haggard and more out of sorts than ever.
‘You’re late,’ he said, taking my hat. ‘It has all started upstairs. Quite a crowd of them arrived already. Hope her ladyship hasn’t invited every blessed soul she knows.’
The guests seemed, in fact, to have been chosen even more at random than usual. Certainly there had been no question either of asking people because they were already friends of Isobel or myself; still less, because Molly wanted either of us specifically to meet them. All that was most nondescript in the Jeavons entourage predominated, together with a few exceptional and reckless examples of individual oddity. I noticed that Alfred Tolland had not been included in the general prohibition against the Tolland family of my own generation. He was standing in the corner of the room, wedged behind a table, talking to—of all people—Mark Members, whom I had never before seen at the Jeavonses’, and might be supposed, in principle, beyond Molly’s normal perimeter, wide as that might stretch; or at least essentially alien to most of what it enclosed. To describe the two of them as standing looking at one another, rather than talking, would have been nearer the truth, as each apparently found equal difficulty in contributing anything to a mutual conversation. At the same time, the table cut them off from contact with other guests.
‘I know you are interested in books, Nicholas,’ said Molly. ‘So I asked a rather nice young man I met the other day. He also writes or something. You will like him. A Mr. Members.’
‘I know him of old.’
‘Go and talk to him then. I don’t think he is getting on very well with Alfred Tolland. It is a great compliment to Isobel that Alfred has come. As you know, he never goes out. At least that is what he says. I always tell him I believe he leads a double life of great wickedness. He tried to get out of coming tonight, but I told him he would never be asked to the house again if he did not turn up. Then he didn’t dare refuse. Isobel, dear, there is someone I want you to meet.’
Both Alfred Tolland and Mark Members showed relief at the arrival of a third party to break up their téte-à-téte. They had by then reached a conversational standstill. This was the first I had seen of Alfred Tolland since the announcement of my own engagement. I was aware that he could no longer be regarded merely as the embarrassed, conscience-stricken figure, vaguely familiar in the past. Now he fell automatically into place in the profusion of new relationships that follow an organic change of condition. He began at once to mutter incoherent congratulations. Members watched him with something like hatred in his beady eyes.
‘Expect you’ve heard that Erridge has gone East,’ said Alfred Tolland. ‘Just heard it myself. Not—a—bad—idea. They are in a mess there. Perhaps the best thing. Might do him a lot of good. Get experience. Good thing to get experience. Ever been East?’
‘Never.’
‘Got as far as Singapore once,’ he said.
It seemed incredible. However, there appeared to be no reason why he should invent such a thing. I said a word to Members, who stood there looking far from pleased.