The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [61]
Umfraville paused.
‘Next thing I heard,’ he said, ‘was that Dolly had taken an overdose of sleeping pills.’
‘Divorce proceedings had started?’
‘Not so far as that they couldn’t have been put in reverse gear. I suppose Dolly thought it too late in the day to suggest return, though there’s nothing I’d have liked better.’
‘But why did that prevent you from Commanding London District?’
‘That’s a sensible question, old boy. The reason was this. I had to leave the service – abandon my gallant and glorious Regiment. I’ll explain. You see I wasn’t feeling too good after my poor wife Dolly decided to join the angels, and naturally I looked about for someone to console me. Found several, as a matter of fact. The one I liked best was a girl I met one night at the Cavendish called Joy Grant – at least that was her professional name, and a very suitable one too – so I thought I might as well marry her. Of course, there couldn’t be any question of staying in the Regiment, if I married Joy. To begin with, I should have been hard put to it to name a brother officer who hadn’t shared the same idyllic experiences as myself in that respect. I sent in my papers and made up my mind to up stumps and emigrate with my blushing bride. Thought I’d try Kenya, the great open spaces where men are men, as Charles Stringham used to say. Well, Joy and I had scarcely arrived in the hotel at Nairobi when it became abundantly clear we had made a mistake in becoming man and wife. We were already living what’s called a cat-and-dog life. In short, it wasn’t long before she went off with a fellow called Castlemallock, twice her age, who looked like an ostler suffering from a dose of clap.’
‘The Corps School of Chemical Warfare is at a house called Castlemallock.’
‘That’s the family. They used to live there until they lost all their money a generation or two ago. Castlemallock himself, marquess or not, was a common little fellow, but what was much worse, so far as he himself was concerned, was the fact that he found he couldn’t perform with Joy in Kenya. He thought it might have something to do with the climate, the altitude, so he took her back to England to see if he could make better going there, or at least consult a competent medical man about getting a shot of something to liven him up occasionally. However, he took too long to find the right specialist, and meanwhile Joy went off with Jo Breen, the jockey, the chap who was suspended one year at Cheltenham for pulling Middlemarch. They keep a pub together now in one of those little places in the Thames Valley, and overcharge you most infamously if you ever drop in for a talk about old times.’
Umfraville paused again. He took out a cigarette case and offered it to me.
‘Now this business of wives departing was beginning to get me down,’ he said. ‘It seemed to be becoming a positive habit. This time, I thought, I’ll be the one to do the cattle rustling, so I removed from him the wife of a District Commissioner. There was no end of trouble about that. When I previously found myself in that undignified position, I’d behaved like a gent. This fellow, the husband, didn’t see things in that light at all. I found myself in a perfect rough-house.