The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [44]
‘Wasn’t she the Medusa-like figure who appeared at that party Mrs Foxe gave for my symphony?’ said Moreland.
‘She was. Charles Stringham is Mrs Foxe’s son.’
‘It was Miss Weedon who hauled him off home when he was so tight.’
‘It wasn’t a very enjoyable party, anyway,’ said Matilda.
I remembered that it had ended by Moreland’s disappearing with Isobel’s sister, Priscilla. Templer showed no interest at all in these reminiscences. They were not, perhaps, very absorbing in themselves, but he might have been expected to have given them more attention inasmuch as they referred to so old a friend as Stringham.
‘Talking of people we knew at school,’ he said, ‘Kenneth will be at Stourwater this evening.’
‘Kenneth who?’
‘Kenneth Widmerpool.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You’ re a friend of his, aren’t you?’ said Templer, evidently surprised at my not grasping immediately whom he meant. I’ve heard him speak of you. His mother has a cottage near here.’
I saw that it was no longer a question of Stringham and Widmerpool having drawn level as friends in Templer’s mind; the fact was that Widmerpool was now miles ahead. That was clear from Templer’s tone. There was not a flicker of laughter or irony in his employment of Widmerpool’s Christian name, as there had certainly been when I had last seen them together at Dicky Umfraville’s night-club. There was, of course, absolutely no reason why Templer should adopt a satirical tone towards Widmerpool, who had as much right as anyone else to make friends with – if necessary, even to dominate – persons like Templer, who had made fun of him as a schoolboy. It was the juxtaposition of his complete acceptance of Widmerpool with Templer’s equally complete indifference to his old crony, Stringham, that gave the two things an emphasis that certainly jarred a little. Templer had probably not set eyes on him since the day when he had arrived in Stringham’s college room, later driven us all into the ditch in his newly bought car. If it came to that, I never saw Stringham these days myself, while Templer, doing business with Widmerpool for a long time now, had naturally come to regard him as a personal friend. By that time we were entering the park of Stourwater.
‘Look, the castle,’ said Isobel. ‘Nobody warned me it was made of cardboard.’
Cardboard was certainly the material of which walls and keep seemed to be built, as we rounded the final sweep of the drive, coming within sight of a large castellated pile, standing with absurd unreality against a background of oaks, tortured by their antiquity into elephantine and grotesque shapes. From the higher ground at the back, grass, close-cropped by sheep, rolled down towards the greenish pools of the moat. All was veiled in the faint haze of autumn.
‘I told you it was Wagnerian,’ said Moreland.
‘When we wind the horn at the gate, will a sullen dwarf usher us in,’ said Isobel, ‘like Beckford’s at Fonthill or the Castle of Joyous Gard in the Morte d’Arthur?’
‘A female dwarf, perhaps,’ said Moreland, rather maliciously.
‘Don’t miss the black swans,’ said Matilda, disregarding him.
‘An anachronism, I fear,’ said Moreland. ‘Sir Magnus admitted as much to me in an unguarded moment. They come from Australia. Doesn’t it all look as if the safety curtain would descend any moment amid bursts of applause?’
Stourwater was certainly dramatic; yet how unhaunted, how much less ghost-ridden than Stonehurst; though perhaps Sir Magnus himself might leave a spectre behind him. In my memory, the place had been larger, more forbidding, not so elaborately restored. In fact, I was far less impressed than formerly, even experiencing a certain feeling of disappointment. Memory, imagination, time, all building up on that brief visit, had left a magician’s castle (brought into being by some loftier Dr Trelawney), weird and prodigious, peopled by beings impossible to relate to everyday life. Now, Stourwater seemed nearer to being an architectural abortion, a piece of monumental vulgarity, a house where something had gone very seriously wrong. We crossed the glittering water by a causeway, drove under the portcullis and through the outer courtyard, entering the inner court, where a fountain stood in the centre of a sunken garden surrounded by a stone balustrade. Here, in the days when he had been first ingratiating himself with Sir Magnus, Widmerpool had backed his car into one of the ornamental urns filled with flowers.