A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [113]
“I am very much looking forward to your meeting my mother,” he said.
He spoke as if introduction to his mother was an experience, rather a vital one, that every serious person had, sooner or later, to undergo. I became all at once aware that this was the first occasion upon which he and I had met anywhere but on neutral ground. I think that Widmerpool, too, realised that a new relationship had immediately risen between us from the moment when I had entered the drawing-room; for he smiled in a rather embarrassed way, after making this remark about his mother, and seemed to make an effort, more conscious than any he had ever shown before, to appear agreeable. In view of the embarrassments he had spoken of when we had last met—and their apparent conclusion so far as he were concerned—I had expected to find him depressed. On the contrary, he was in unusually high spirits.
“Miss Walpole-Wilson is supping with us,” he said.
“Eleanor?”
“Oh, no,” he said, as if such a thing were unthinkable. “Her aunt. Such a knowledgeable woman.”
Before any comment were possible, Mrs. Widmerpool herself came through the door, upon the threshold of which she paused for a moment, her head a little on one side.
“Why, Mother,” said Widmerpool, speaking with approval, “you are wearing your bridge-coat.”
We shook hands, and she began to speak at once, before I could take in her appearance.
“And so you were both at Mr. Le Bas’s house at school,” she said. “I never really cared for him as a man. I expect he had his good qualities, but he never quite appreciated Kenneth.”
“He was an odd man in many ways.”
“Kenneth so rarely brings the friends of his school days here.”
I said that we had also stayed together with the same French family in Touraine; for, if I had to be regarded as a close friend of her son’s, it was at La Grenadière that I had come to know him best, rather than at school, where he had always seemed a figure almost too grotesque to take seriously.
“At the Leroys’?” she asked, as if amazed at the brilliance of my parents in having hit on the only possible household in the whole of France.
“For six weeks or so.”
She turned to Widmerpool.
“But you never told me that,” she said. “That was naughty of you!”
“Why should I?” said Widmerpool. “You didn’t know him.”
Mrs. Widmerpool clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Her large features distinctly recalled the lineaments of her son, though she had perhaps been good looking when younger. Even now she seemed no more than in her late forties, though I believe she was, in fact, older than that. However, her well-preserved appearance was in striking contrast with Widmerpool’s own somewhat decaying youth, so that the pair of them appeared almost more like contemporaries, even husband and wife, rather than mother and son. Her eyes were brighter than his, and she rolled them, expanding the pupils, in comment to any remark that might be thought at all out of the ordinary. Her double row of firm teeth were set between cheeks of brownish red, which made her a little resemble Miss Walpole-Wilson, with whom she clearly possessed something discernibly in common that explained their friendly connection. She seemed a person of determination, from whom no doubt her son derived