At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [94]
‘I don’t set up as an expert myself. Last thing in the world I’d pretend to do. But look here, something I want to ask—do you know anything of Widmerpool’s mother?’
‘I’ve met her.’
‘What is she like?’
I felt as usual some difficulty in answering directly the General’s enquiry, put in his most pragmatical manner.
‘Rather a trying woman, I thought.’
‘Domineering?’
‘In her way.’
‘Father?’
‘Dead.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Manufactured artificial manure, I believe.’
‘Did he …’ said the General. ‘Did he …’
There was a pause while he thought over this information. It was undeniable that he had been setting the pace. I felt that I must look to my psycho-analytical laurels, if I was not to be left far behind.
‘Do you think it was fear of castration?’ I asked.
The General shook his head slowly.
‘Possibly, possibly,’ he said. ‘Got to be cautious about that. You see this is how I should approach the business, with the greatest humility—with the greatest humility. Widmerpool strikes me as giving himself away all the time by his—well, to quote the text-book—purely objective orientation. If you are familiar with tactics, you know you can be up against just that sort of fellow in a battle. Always trying to get a move on, and bring off something definite. Quite right too, in a battle. But in ordinary life a fellow like that may be doing himself no good so far as his own subjective emotions are concerned. No good at all. Quite the reverse. Always leads to trouble. No use denying subjective emotions. Just as well to face the fact. All of us got a lot of egoism and infantilism to work off. I’d be the last to deny it. I can see now that was some of Peploe-Gordon’s trouble, when I look back.’
‘I’m sure Widmerpool thought a lot about this particular matter. Indeed, I know he did. He spoke to me about it quite soon after he became engaged to Mrs. Haycock.’
‘Probably thought about it a great deal too much. Doesn’t do to think about anything like that too much. Need a bit of relaxation from time to time. Everlastingly talks about his work too. Hasn’t he any hobbies?’
‘He used to knock golf balls into a net at Barnes. But he told me he had given that up.’
‘Pity, pity. Not surprised, though,’ said the General, ‘Nothing disturbs feeling so much as thinking. I’m only repeating what the book says, but I didn’t spend thirty odd years in the army without discovering that for myself. Got to have a plan, of course, but no use knotting yourself up in it too tight. Must have an instinct about the man on the other side—and the people on your own side too. What was it Foch said? War not an exact science, but a terrible and passionate drama? Something like that. Fact is, marriage is rather like that too.’
‘But surely that was what Widmerpool was trying to make it? To some extent he seems to have succeeded. What happened sounded terrible and dramatic enough in its own way.’
‘I’ll have to think about that,’ said the General. ‘I see what you mean. I’ll have to think about that.’
All the same, although I had raised this objection, I agreed with what he said. Marriage was a subject upon which it was hard to obtain accurate information. Its secrets, naturally, are those most jealously guarded; never more deeply concealed than when apparently most profusely exhibited in public. However true that might be, one could still be sure that even those marriages which seem outwardly dull enough are, at one time or another, full of the characteristics of which he spoke. Was it possible to guess, for example, what lay behind the curtain of his own experience? As I had never before conceived of exchanging such a conversation with General Conyers, I thought this an opportunity to enquire about a matter that had always played some part in my imagination since mentioned years earlier by Uncle Giles. The moment particularly recommended itself, because the General rarely spoke either of the practice or theory of war. Th. transient reference he had just made to Foch now caused the question I wanted to ask to sound less inept.
‘Talking of the army,