Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [35]
She did not utter a word but, turning from them, walked quickly towards the door. Morally speaking, some sort of warning seemed required that all had not been well, yet any such announcement was hard to phrase. Before anything could be said – if, indeed, there were anything apposite to say – Hugo had gently encouraged the group to move on.
‘I think a revised seating arrangement might be advisable on the way back to the station,’ said Widmerpool.
‘I’m going in front,’ said Pamela.
The rest were contained somehow at the back. Alfred Tolland looked like a man being put to the torture for conscience sake, but determined to bear the torment with fortitude. Pamela lay back beside the driver with closed eyes. The taxi moved away slowly towards the arch, hooted, disappeared from sight. No one waved or looked back. Hugo and I re-entered the house. I told him what had happened in the passage.
‘In one of the big Chinese pots?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t mean literally?’
‘Quite literally.’
‘Couldn’t you stop her?’
‘Where was there better?’
‘You mean otherwise it would have been the floor?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Does that mean she’s going to have a baby?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘It’s the only excuse.’
‘I think it was just rage.’
‘Nothing whatever was said?’
‘Not a word.’
‘You just looked on?’
‘What was there to say? It wasn’t my business, if she didn’t want the others to sympathize with her.’
Hugo laughed. He thought for a moment.
‘I believe if I were given to falling for women, I’d fall for her.’
‘Meanwhile, how is the immediate problem to be dealt with?’
‘We’ll consult Blanche.’
The news of Pamela’s conduct was received at the beginning with incredulity, the first reaction, that Hugo and I were projecting a bad-taste joke. When the crude truth was grasped, Roddy Cutts was shocked, Frederica furious, Norah sent into fits of hysterical laughter. Jeavons only shook his head.
‘Knew she was a wrong ’un from the start,’ he said. ‘Look at the way she behaved to that poor devil Templer. You know I often think of that chap. I liked having him in the house, and listening to all those stories about girls. Kept your mind off the blitz. Turned out we’d met before in that night-club of Umfraville’s, though I couldn’t remember a word about it.’
Complications worse than at first envisaged were contingent on what had happened. The Chinese vase had to be sluiced out. Blanche, although totally accepting responsibility for putting right this misadventure, like the burden of every other disagreeable responsibility where keeping house was concerned, voiced these problems first.
‘I don’t think we can very well ask Mrs Skerrett to clean things up.’
‘Quite out of the question,’ said Frederica.
There was unanimous agreement that it was no job for Mrs Skerrett in the circumstances.
‘Why not tell that Jerry to empty it,’ said Roddy Cutts. ‘He’s doubtless done worse things in his time. His whole demeanour suggests the Extermination Squad.’
‘Oh, God, no,’ said Hugo. ‘Can you imagine explaining to Siegfried what has happened? He would either think it funny in that awful gross German way, or priggishly disapprove in an equally German manner. I don’t know which would be worse. One would die of embarrassment.’
‘No, you couldn’t possibly ask a German to do the cleaning up,’ said Norah. ‘That would be going a bit far – and a POW at that.’
‘I can’t see why not,’ said Roddy Cutts. ‘Rather good for him, to my way of thinking. Besides, the Germans are always desperately keen on vomiting. In their cafés or restaurants they have special places in the Gents for doing so after drinking a lot of beer.’
‘It’s not him,’ said Norah. ‘It’s us.’
‘Norah’s quite right,’ said Frederica.
For Frederica to support a proposition of Norah’s was sufficiently rare to tip the scale.
‘Well, who’s going to do it?’ asked Blanche. ‘The jar’s too big for me to manage alone.’
In the end, Jeavons, Hugo and I, with shrewd advice from Roddy Cutts, bore the enormous vessel up the stairs to Erridge