The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [58]
‘Does Barry’s mother do the cooking?’
‘No, Frederica. She found herself without a cook and no prospect of getting one. She’s always been rather keen on cooking, you know. Now she could get a job in any but the very best houses.’
I had an idea, from the way she spoke, that all this talk about Barry, and Frederica’s cooking, was, on Isobel’s part, a means of temporarily evading the subject of Priscilla. I could tell, from the way she had mentioned her sister, that, for some reason, Priscilla was on Isobel’s mind. She was worried about her.
‘Any news of Chips?’
‘Priscilla isn’t very communicative. Where do Marines go? Is he on a ship? She seems to hold it against him that he hasn’t been able to arrange for them to have a house or a flat somewhere. I don’t think that’s Chips’s fault. It’s all this bloody war. That’s why Priscilla is here. She is very restless.’
‘Is she having a baby too?’
‘Not that I know of. Audrey is, though.’
‘Audrey sounds a positive Messalina.’
‘Not in appearance. She is a good-natured, dumpy little thing with spectacles.’
‘A bit too good-natured, or her lenses need adjusting. Is it Barry’s father again?’
‘On the contrary, but we understand it may lead to marriage this time.’
‘I suppose Frederica will be the next with a baby. What about Robert and Mrs Wisebite?’
‘No doubt doing their best. Robert, by the way, is on embarkation leave. He’s only spending some of it here. He arrived with Flavia just before you did.’
‘Where is he going?’
‘He doesn’t know – or won’t say for security reasons – but he thinks France.’
‘How on earth has he managed that?’
‘He decided to withdraw his name from those in for a commission, as there was otherwise no immediate hope of a posting overseas.’
‘I see.’
‘Hardly what one would expect of Robert,’ Isobel said.
His own family regarded Robert as one of those quietly self-indulgent people who live rather secret lives because they find themselves thereby less burdened by having to think of others. No one knew much, for example, about his work in an export house dealing with the Far East. The general idea was that Robert was doing pretty well there though not because he himself propagated any such picture. He would naturally be enigmatic about a situation such as that which involved him with Mrs Wisebite. It was fitting that he should find himself in Field Security. Enterprise must have been required to place himself there too. I wondered what the steps leading to the Intelligence Corps had been. At one moment he had contemplated the navy. No less interesting was this attempt on Robert’s part to move closer to a theatre of war at the price of immediately postponing the chance of becoming an officer.
‘The war seems to have altered some people out of recognition and made others more than ever like themselves,’ said Isobel.
‘Have you ever heard of someone called David Pennistone? He was a man in the army I talked to on a train. He said he was writing an article on Descartes.’
‘Haven’t I seen the name at the end of reviews?’
‘That’s what I thought. We didn’t manage to find anyone we knew in common, but I believe I met him years ago for a minute or two at a party.’
‘Didn’t the Lovells talk about someone called Pennistone when they came back from Venice? I remember Chips explaining that he was no relation to the Huntercombes, because the name was spelt with a double-n. I have an idea Pennistone lives in Venice – some story of a contessa, beautiful but not very young. That’s how I’m beginning to feel myself.’
‘Anyway, it’s nice to meet again, darling.’
‘It’s been a long time.’
‘A bloody long time.’
‘It certainly has.’
Later that weekend, when I found him pacing the lawn, Umfraville himself supplied some of the background wanting in his own story.
‘Look here, old boy,’ he said, when I joined him, ‘how do you think you and the others are going to stand up to having me as a brother-in-law?’
‘A splendid prospect.’
‘Not everyone would think so,’ he said. ‘You know I must be insane to embrace matrimony again. Stark, staring mad. But not half as mad as Frederica to take me on. Do you realize she