A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [38]
“I have not heard her mention his name,” said Widmerpool, forgoing none of his seriousness. “But, for my own part, I was not displeased with Isbister’s portrait of Cardinal Whelan at Burlington House last year. I preferred it to—was it the wife of the Solicitor-General—that was so much praised?”
It showed a rather remarkable effort of will on the part of Widmerpool, whose interest in such matters was not profound, to have been able to quote these examples on the spur of the moment; and there is no knowing into what inextricable tangle this subject would have led them both, if their conversation had not been mercifully interrupted by the girl, who now said: “Are we going to stand here all night? My feet hurt.”
“But how shameful,” said Mr. Deacon, with all his earlier formality. “I have not introduced you yet. This is Miss Gypsy Jones. Perhaps you have already met. She goes about a great deal.”
I mentioned Widmerpool’s name in return, and Miss Jones nodded to us, without showing much sign of friendliness. Her face was pale, and she possessed an almost absurdly impudent expression, in part natural outcome of her cast of features, but also, as almost immediately became apparent, in an even greater degree product of her temperament. She looked like a thoroughly ill-conditioned errand-boy. Her forehead had acquired a smudge of coal-dust or lamp-black, darker and denser than, though otherwise comparable to, the smudge on Tompsitt’s shirt-front. It seemed to have been put there deliberately to offset her crimson mouth. Like Mr. Deacon, she too clutched a pile of papers under her arm, somehow suggesting in doing so the appearance of one of those insects who carry burdens as large, or even larger, than their own puny frame.
“You must wonder why we are on our way home at this late hour,” said Mr. Deacon. “We have been attempting in our poor way to aid the cause of disarmament at Victoria Station.”
Mr. Deacon’s purpose had not, in fact, occurred to me—it is later in life that one begins to wonder about other people’s activities—nor was it immediately made clear by Gypsy Jones extracting a kind of broadsheet from the sheaf under her arm, and holding it towards Widmerpool.
“Penny, War Never Pays!” she said.
Widmerpool, almost counterfeiting the secretive gesture of Lady Walpole-Wilson pressing money on Archie Gilbert in the taxi, fumbled in his trouser pocket, and in due course passed across a coin to her. In return she gave him the sheet, which, folding it without examination, he transferred to an inner pocket on his hip or in his tails. Scarcely knowing how to comment on the dealings in which Mr. Deacon and his companion were engaged. I inquired whether night-time was the best season to dispose of this publication.
“There is the depot,” said Mr. Deacon. “And then some of the late trains from the Continent. It’s not too bad a pitch, you know.”
“And now you are going home?”
“We decided to have a cup of coffee at the stall by Hyde Park Corner,” said Mr. Deacon, adding with what could only be described as a deep giggle: “I felt I could venture there chaperoned by Gypsy. Coffee can be very grateful at this hour. Why not join us in a cup?”
While he was speaking a taxi cruised near the kerb on the far side of the road. Widmerpool was still staring rather wildly at Gypsy Jones, apparently regarding her much as a doctor, suspecting a malignant growth, might examine a diseased organism under the microscope; although I found later than any such diagnosis of his attitude was far from the true one. Thinking that physical removal might put him out of his supposed misery, I asked if he wanted to hail the passing cab. He glanced uncertainly across the street. For a second he seemed seriously to contemplate the taxi; and then, finally, to come to a decision important to himself.
“I’ll join you in some coffee, if I may,” he said. “On thinking things over, coffee is just what I need myself.”
This resolution was unexpected, to say the least. However, if he wanted