The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [89]
‘They have probably requisitioned the place. I was down there a month or two ago for Uncle Giles’s funeral.’
‘Saw his death in the paper. Made rather a mess of his life, didn’t he? Don’t think I set eyes on him since a week or two before the earlier war broke out.’
‘Do you remember Dr Trelawney? He was staying in the hotel.’
‘That old scoundrel. Was he, indeed? How is he?’
‘He got locked in the bathroom.’
‘Did he, did he?’ said the General thoughtfully. ‘The Essence of the All is the Godhead of the True … may be something in it. Always meant to go and have a look at Trelawney on his own ground … all that stuff about the Astral Plane …’
He pondered; then, with an effort, brought himself back to earth, when I said that I must be going.
‘Sorry not to have been more use about your own problem, Nick. Have another talk with your father. Better still, get some young fellow to help you. No good trying too high up. Somebody quite junior, like a lieutenant-colonel. That’s the kind of fellow. Very nice to have seen you. You must come and visit us after we get back. Don’t know where we shall go yet.’
I left them together, discussing that question, Miss Weedon still looking immensely pleased about everything. As the flat door closed, I heard her laughter, now quite shrill, begin again. She had reason to be pleased. Stringham, so it appeared, had been cured by her of ‘drink’; now she had captured General Conyers. The one achievement was as remarkable as the other. They were perhaps not so disparate as might at first sight appear. There was a kind of dash about Stringham comparable with the General’s manner of facing the world; at the same time, the General’s advanced age, like Stringham’s taste for the bottle, gave Miss Weedon something ponderable upon which to exercise her talent for ‘looking after’ people, her taste, in short, for power. General Conyers had seemed as enchanted with Miss Weedon as she with him. I wondered what other men – in addition to Stringham – had been ‘in her life’, as Mrs Erdleigh would have said; what, for that matter, had been Miss Weedon’s true relationship with Stringham. One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.
‘Valery asks why one has been summoned to this carnival,’ Moreland once said, ‘but it’s more like blind man’s buff. One reels through the carnival in question, blundering into persons one can’t see, and, without much success, trying to keep hold of a few of them.’
There could be no doubt that General Conyers had taken on a formidable woman; equally no doubt that he was a formidable man. If he could handle Billson naked, he could probably handle Miss Weedon clothed – or naked, too, if it came to that. I felt admiration for his energy, his determination to cling to life. There was nothing defeatist about him. However, my parents, as I had expected, were not at all pleased by the news. They had, of course, never heard of Miss Weedon. The engagement was, indeed, quite a shock to them. In fact, the whole affair made my father very cross. Now that Uncle Giles was no more, he may have felt himself permitted a greater freedom of expression in openly criticising General Conyers. He did so in just the terms the General had himself envisaged.
‘No fool like an old fool,’ my father said. ‘I shouldn’t have believed it of him, Bertha hardly cold in her grave.’
‘I hope he hasn’t made a silly mistake,’ said my mother. ‘I like old Aylmer, with all his funny ways of behaving.’
‘Very awkward for his daughter too. Why, some of his grandchildren must be almost grown up.’
‘Oh, no,’ said my mother, who loved accuracy in such matters, ‘not grown up.’
‘Where did he meet this woman?’