The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell [32]
The first through the door was a tall, rather overpowering lady, followed closely by Jimmy Stripling himself, looking much older than I had remembered him. The smoothness of the woman’s movements, as she advanced towards Mona, almost suggested that Stripling was propelling her in front of him like an automaton on castors. I knew at once that I had seen her before, but could not at first recall the occasion: one so different, as it turned out, from that of the moment.
‘How are you, Jimmy?’ said Templer.
Stripling took the woman by the arm.
‘This is Mrs. Erdleigh,’ he said, in a rather strangled voice. ‘I have told you so much about her, you know, and here she is.’
Mrs. Erdleigh shook hands graciously all round, much as if she were a visiting royalty. When she came to me, she took my hand in hers and smiled indulgently.
‘You see I was right,’ she said. ‘You did not believe me, did you? It is just a year.’
Once more, suffocating waves of musk-like scent were distilled by her presence. By then, as a matter of fact, a month or two must have passed beyond the year that she had foretold would precede our next meeting. All the same, it was a respectable piece of prognostication. I thought it wiser to leave Uncle Giles unmentioned. If she wished to speak of him, she could always raise the subject herself. I reflected, at the same time, how often this exterior aspect of Uncle Giles’s personality must have remained ‘unmentioned’ throughout his life; especially where his relations were concerned.
However, Mrs. Erdleigh gave the impression of knowing very well what was advisable to ‘mention’ and what inadvisable. She looked well; younger, if anything, than when I had seen her at the Ufford, and smartly dressed in a style that suggested less than before her inexorably apocalyptic role in life. In fact, her clothes of that former occasion seemed now, in contrast, garments of a semi- professional kind; vestments, as it were, appropriate to the ritual of her vocation. With Stripling under her control—as he certainly was—she could no doubt allow herself frivolously to enjoy the fashion of the moment.
Stripling himself, on the other hand, had changed noticeably for the worse in the ten years or more gone since our former meeting. His bulk still gave the impression that he was taking up more than his fair share of the room, but the body, although big, seemed at the same time shrivelled. His hair, still parted in the middle, was grey and grizzled. Although at that time still perhaps under forty, he looked prematurely old. There was an odd, disconnected stare in his eyes, which started from his head when he spoke at all emphatically. He appeared to be thoroughly under the thumb of Mrs. Erdleigh, whose manner, kindly though firm, implied supervision of a person not wholly responsible for his own actions. Later, it was noticeable how fixedly he watched her, while in conversation he inclined to refer even the most minor matters to her arbitration. In spite of his cowed air, he was far more friendly than when we had met before, an occasion he assured me he remembered perfectly.
‘We had a lot of fun that summer with my old pal, Sunny Farebrother, didn’t we?’ he said in a melancholy voice.
He spoke as if appealing for agreement that the days when fun could be had with Sunny Farebrother, or indeed with anyone else, were now long past.
‘Do you remember how we were going to put a po in his hat-box or something?’ he went on. ‘How we all laughed. Good old Sunny. I never seem to see the old boy now, though I hear he’s making quite a bit of money. It’s just the same with so many folks one used to know. They pass by on the other side or join the Great Majority.’
His face had lighted up when, upon entering the room, he had seen Jean, and he had taken both her hands in his and kissed her enthusiastically. She did not seem to regard this act as anything out of the way, nor even specially repugnant to her. I felt a twinge of annoyance at that kiss. I should have liked no one else to kiss her for at least twenty-four hours. However, I reminded myself that such familiarity was reasonable enough in an ex-brother-in-law; in fact, if it came to that, reasonable enough in any old friend; though for that reason no more tolerable to myself. Stripling also held Jean