A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [114]
“I hear you know the Gorings,” she said. “It seems such a pity they have allowed Barbara to run so wild. She used to be such a dear little girl. There really appears to be something a trifle queer about Lord Aberavon’s grandchildren.”
“Oh, shut up, Mother,” said Widmerpool, changing his almost amatory manner unexpectedly. “You don’t know anything about it.”
He must have felt, not entirely without reason, that his mother was on delicate ground in bringing up so early, and in such a critical spirit, the subject of Gorings and Walpole-Wilsons. Mrs. Widmerpool seemed not at all put out by the brusque form of address used by her son, continuing to express herself freely on the characteristics, in her eyes, good, bad and indifferent, of Barbara and Eleanor, adding that she understood that neither of the Goring sons were “very much of a hand at their books.” She felt perhaps that now was the time to unburden herself upon matters hardly to be pursued with the same freedom after the arrival of Miss Janet Walpole-Wilson. From her comments, I supposed that Widmerpool must have given his mother, perhaps involuntarily, some indication that the Gorings were out of favour with him; although it was impossible to guess how accurately she might be informed about her son’s former feelings for Barbara: even if she knew of them at all. It was possible that she had attributed the anxiety he had gone through with Gypsy Jones to a later aggravation of his entanglement with Barbara: in fact, the same conclusion to which I had myself first arrived, when, at Stourwater, he had spoken of the troubles that were oppressing him.
“There doesn’t seem any sign of Eleanor getting married yet,” said Mrs. Widmerpool, almost dreamily, as if she were descrying in the depths of the gas-fire a vision invisible to the rest of us, revealing the unending cavalcade of Eleanor’s potential suitors.
“Perhaps she doesn’t want to,” said Widmerpool, in a tone evidently intended to close the subject. “I expect you two will like a talk on books before the end of the evening.”
“Yes, indeed, for I hear you are in the publishing trade,” said his mother. “You know, I have always liked books and bookish people. It is one of my regrets that Kenneth is really too serious minded to enjoy reading for its own sake.: I expect you are looking forward to those articles in The Times by Thomas Hardy’s widow. I know I am.”
While I was making some temporising answer to these reassurances on Mrs. Widmerpool’s part regarding her inclination towards literature, Miss Walpole-Wilson was announced, who excused her lateness on the grounds of the chronic irregularity of the bus service from Chelsea, where her flat was situated. She was wearing a mackintosh, of which, for some reason, she had refused to divest herself in the hall; exemplifying in this manner a curious trait common to some persons of wilful nature, whose egotism seems often to make them unwilling, even incapable, of shedding anything of themselves until they can feel that they have safely reached their goal. She now removed this waterproof, folding and establishing it upon a chair—an act watched by her hostess with a fixed smile that might have signified disapproval—revealing that she, too, was wearing a richly-coloured coat. It was made of orange, black, and gold silk: a mandarin’s coat, so she explained, that Sir Gavin had given her years before.
The relationship between Mrs. Widmerpool and Miss Walpole-Wilson, in general an amicable one, gave the impression of resting not exactly upon planned alliance so much as community of interest, unavoidable from the nature of the warfare both waged against the rest of the world. Miss Walpole-Wilson was, of course, as she sometimes described herself, “a woman of wide interests,” while Mrs. Widmerpool concerned herself with little that had not some direct reference to the career of her son. At the same time there was an area of common ground