A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [54]
“Well-known nymphs,” said Sillery, sniggering. “The smaller one is Mrs. Wentworth—quite a famous person in her way—sister of Jack Vowchurch. Mixed up in the divorce of Charles’s sister. I seem to remember her name was also mentioned in the Derwentwater case, though not culpably. The tall and statuesque is Lady Ardglass. She was, I believe, a mannequin before her marriage.”
He began to move off, nodding, and rubbing his hands together, deriving too much pleasure from the party to waste any more valuable time from the necessarily limited period of its prolongation. I should have liked to make the acquaintance of one or both ladies, or at least to hear more of them, but I could tell from Sillery’s manner that he knew neither personally, or was, at best, far from being at ease with them, so that to apply for an introduction—should they ever leave Prince Theodoric’s side—would, therefore, be quite useless. Mrs. Wentworth was, outwardly, the more remarkable of the pair, on account of the conspicuous force of her personality: a characteristic accentuated by the simplicity of her dress, short curly hair, and look of infinite slyness. Lady Ardglass was more like a caryatid, or ship’s figurehead, though for that reason no less superb. Seeing no immediate prospect of achieving a meeting with either, I found my way to another room, where I suddenly came upon Gypsy Jones, who appeared to have taken a good deal to drink since her arrival.
“What’s happened to Edgar?” she asked clamorously.
She was more untidy than ever, and appeared to be in a great state of excitement: even near to tears.
“Who is Edgar?”
“Thought you said you’d known him since you were a kid!”
“Do you mean Mr. Deacon?”
She began to laugh uproariously at this question.
“And your other friend,” she said. “Where did you pick that up?”
Laughter was at that moment modified by a slight, and quickly mastered, attack of hiccups. Her demeanour was becoming more noticeably hysterical. The state she was in might easily lead to an awkward incident. I was so accustomed to the general principle of people finding Widmerpool odd that I could hardly regard her question as even hypercritical. It was, in any case, no more arbitrary an inquiry, so far as it went, than Stringham’s on the subject of Mr. Deacon; although long-standing friendship made Stringham’s form of words more permissible. However, Gypsy Jones’s comment, when thought of later, brought home the impossibility of explaining Widmerpool’s personality at all briefly, even to a sympathetic audience. His case was not, of course, unique. He was merely one single instance among many, of the fact that certain acquaintances remain firmly fixed within this or that person’s particular orbit; a law which seems to lead inexorably to the conclusion that the often repeated saying that people can “choose their friends” is true only in a most strictly limited degree.
However, Gypsy Jones was the last person to be expected to relish discussion upon so hypothetical a subject, even if the proposition had then occurred to me, or she been in a fit state to argue its points. Although she seemed to be enjoying the party, even to the extent of being in sight of hysteria, she had evidently also reached the stage when moving to another spot had become an absolute necessity to her; not because she was in any way dissatisfied with the surroundings in which she found herself, but