The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [41]
‘Do you think this sell-out is going to prevent a war?’ he said, when we were reading the papers on Sunday morning.
‘No.’
‘You think we ought to have fought this time?’
‘I don’t know. The one thing everybody agrees about is that we aren’t ready for it. There’s no point in going to war if we are not going to win it. Losing’s not going to help anybody.’
‘What are you going to do when it comes?’
‘My name is on one of those various army reserves.’
‘How did you manage that?’
‘Offered myself, and was accepted, before all this last business started.’
‘I can only do ladylike things such as playing the piano,’ said Moreland gloomily. ‘I suppose I shall go on doing that if there’s a show-down. One wonders what the hell will happen. How are we getting to this place tonight?’
‘Donners rang up and said one of his guests is picking us up in a car,’ said Matilda.
‘When did he ring up?’
‘When you were all at the pub this morning.’
‘Why not tell us?’
‘I forgot,’ said Matilda. ‘I told Donners when we were asked he must arrange something. Finding transport is the least the rich can do, if they hope to enjoy one’s company. You must shave, sweetie, before we start.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Moreland, ‘I won’t let you all down by my tramp-like appearance. Do we know the name of our chauffeur?’
‘Somebody called Peter Templer,’ said Matilda. ‘Anybody ever heard of him?’
‘Certainly I’ve heard of Peter Templer,’ I said. ‘He’s one of my oldest friends. I haven’t seen him for years.’
‘Who is he? What’s he like?’
‘A stockbroker. Fast sports car, loud checks, blondes, golf, all that sort of thing. We were at school together.’
‘Wasn’t he the brother of that girl you used to know?’ said Isobel.
She spoke as if finally confirming a fact of which she had always been a little uncertain, at the same time smiling as if she hardly thought the pretence worth keeping up.
‘He was.’
‘Which girl?’ asked Moreland, without interest.
‘A woman called Jean Duport, whom I haven’t seen for years.’
‘Never heard of her,’ said Moreland.
I thought what a long time it seemed since I had visited Stourwater on that earlier occasion, when the luncheon party had been given for Prince Theodoric. Prince Theodoric’s name, as a pro-British element in a country ominously threatened from without by German political pressure, had been in the papers recently. Stringham, just engaged to Peggy Stepney, had still been one of Sir Magnus’s secretaries. Jean Duport, Peter Templer’s sister, had been there and I had wondered whether I was not perhaps in love with her. Now I did not know where she was, was ignorant of the very hemisphere she inhabited. When last seen – parting infinitely painful – she had been on her way to South America, reunited with her awful husband. Baby Wentworth was still – though not long to remain – Sir Magnus’s ‘girl’. Matilda must have taken on the job soon after that visit of mine. If mere arrival in the neighbourhood had imparted, of itself, a strong sense of having slipped back into the past, that sensation was certainly intensified by the prospect of meeting Peter Templer again. He had passed from my life as completely as his sister. There was nothing at all surprising about his staying at Stourwater, when I came to examine the question, except his own dislike for houses of that sort. Business affairs might perfectly well have brought him within the orbit of Sir Magnus. One of the odd things about Templer was that, although pretty well equipped for social life of any kind, he found places like Stourwater in general too pretentious for his taste. He preferred circles where there was less competition, where he could safely be tipped as the man most likely to appeal to all the women present, most popular with the men. It was not that Templer was in any way ill-adapted to a larger sort of life, so much as the fact that he himself was unwilling to tolerate that larger life