The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [63]
“Let’s go upstairs and sit down for a bit,” she said. “I’ve had just about as much as I can take. We can sit in the drawing-room. That was one of the rooms that came off least badly.”
We went up to the first floor. The drawing-room, thick in dust and fallen plaster, had a long jagged fissure down one wall. There were two rectangular discoloured spaces where the Wilson and the Greuze had hung. These pictures had presumably been removed to some safer place at the outbreak of war. So, too, had a great many of the oriental bowls and jars that had formerly played such a part in the decoration. They might have been valuable or absolute rubbish; Lovell had always insisted the latter. The pastels, by some unknown hand, of Moroccan types remained. They were hanging at all angles, the glass splintered of one bearing the caption Rainy Day at Marrakesh. Eleanor and I sat on the sofa. She began to cry.
“It’s all too awful,” she said, “and I was so fond of Molly. You know, she usen’t to like me. When Norah and I first shared a flat together, Molly didn’t approve. She put out a story I wore a green pork-pie hat and a bow tie. It wasn’t true. I never did. Anyway, why shouldn’t I, if I wanted to? There I was in the country breeding labradors and bored to death, and all my parents wanted was for me to get married, which I hadn’t the least wish to do. Norah came to stay and suggested I should join her in taking a flat. There it was. Norah was always quite good at getting jobs in shops and that sort of thing, and I found all the stuff I knew about dogs could be put to some use too when it came to the point. Besides, I’d always adored Norah.”
I had sometimes wondered how Eleanor’s ménage with Norah Tolland had begun. No one ever seemed to know. Now it was explained.
“Where’s Norah now?”
“In Scotland, driving for the Poles.”
She dried her eyes.
“Come on,” she said. “We must get out some sort of plan. No good just sitting about. I’ll find a pencil and paper.”
She began to rummage in one of the drawers.
“Here we are.”
We made lists of names, notes of things that would have to be done. One of the wardens came up to say that for the time being the house was safe to stay in, they were going home.
“Where are you spending the night, Nick?”
“A club.”
“There might be someone who could take you part of the way. The chief warden’s got a car.”
“What about you?”
“I shall be all right. There’s a room fitted up with a bed in the basement. Ted used it sometimes, if he had to come in very late.”
“Will you really be all right?”
She dismissed the question of herself rather angrily. The A.R.P. official with the car was found.
“Good-bye, Eleanor.”
I kissed her, which I had never done before,
“Good-bye, Nick. Love to Isobel. It was lucky I was staying here really, because there’ll be a lot that will have to be done.”
The fire-engines had driven away. The street was empty. I thought how good Eleanor was in a situation like this. Molly had been good, too, when it came to disaster. I wondered what would happen to Ted. The extraordinary thing about the outside of the house was that everything looked absolutely normal. Some sort of a notice about bomb damage had been stuck on the front-door by the wardens; otherwise there was nothing to indicate the place had been subjected to an attack from the air, which had killed several persons. This lack of outward display was comparable with the Madrid’s fate earlier that evening, when a lot of talking in a restaurant had been sufficient to drown the sound of the Warning, the noise of the guns. This must be what Dr. Trelawney called “the slayer of Osiris and his grievous tribute of blood.” I wondered if Dr. Trelawney himself had survived: when Odo Stevens would receive the news: whether the Lovells’ daughter, Caroline, would be brought up by her grandparents. Reflecting on these things, it did not seem all that long time ago that Lovell, driving back from the film studios in that extraordinary car of his, had suggested we should look in on the Jeavonses