A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [58]
“Not the slightest use,” said Truscott, smiling again at such naïveté.
He regarded Widmerpool as if he thought—now that a decision to retire to bed had been finally taken—that the sooner Widmerpool embarked upon a good night’s rest, the better, if he were to be fit for the plans Truscott had in store for him in the near future.
“Then I’ll bid you good night,” said Widmerpool, turning to me and speaking in a voice of great exhaustion.
“Sweet dreams.”
“Tell Stringham I was sorry not to see him before I left the party.”
“I will.”
“Thank him for bringing us. It was kind. He must lunch with me in the City.”
He made his way from the room. I wondered whether or not it had indeed been kind of Stringham to bring him to the party. Kind or the reverse, I felt pretty sure that Stringham would not lunch with Widmerpool in the City. Truscott showed more surprise at Widmerpool’s mention of Stringham than he usually allowed himself, at least in public.
“Does he know Charles, then?” he asked, as Widmerpool disappeared through the door.
“We were all at the same house at school.”
“Indeed?”
“Widmerpool was a shade senior.”
“He really might be quite useful in our new politico-legal branch,” said Truscott. “Not necessarily full time—anyway at first—and the Chief always insists on hand-picking everyone himself. He’ll grow out of that rather unfortunate manner, of course.”
I thought it improbable that Widmerpool would ever change his manner at the mandate of Sir Magnus Donners, Truscott, Stringham, or anyone else, though the projected employment—an aspect of those rather mysterious business activities, so different from those of my own small firm—sounded normal enough. In fact the job, as such, did not at the time make any strong impression on me. I felt more interest in trying to learn something of Stringham’s life. This seemed an opportunity to make some inquiries.
“Oh, yes,” said Truscott, almost with enthusiasm. “Of course Charles is still with us. He can really be quite an asset at times. Such charm, you know. But I see my Chief has arrived. If you will forgive me …”
He was gone instantaneously, stepping quickly across the floor to meet, and intercept, a tallish man, who, with Mrs. Wentworth at his side, had just entered the room. At first I was uncertain whether this outwardly unemphatic figure could indeed be Sir Magnus Donners, the person addressed by Truscott being so unlike my pre-conceived idea of what might be expected from the exterior of a public character of that particular kind. Hesitation on this point was justifiable. The name of Sir Magnus Donners, both in capacity of well-known industrialist and former member of the Government (in which he had never reached Cabinet rank) attached to the imagination, almost automatically, one of those paraphrases—on the whole uncomplimentary—presented by the cartoonist; representations that serve, more or less effectually, to supply the mind on easy terms with the supposedly salient traits, personal, social, or political, of individuals or types: such delineations being naturally concerned for the most part with men, or categories of men, to be thought of as important in exercising power in one form or another.
In the first place, it was unexpected that Sir Magnus Donners should look at least ten years younger than might reasonably have been supposed; so that, although well into his middle fifties—where he stood beneath an unsatisfying picture executed in the manner of Derain—he seemed scarcely middle-aged. Clean-shaven, good-looking, rather than the reverse, possibly there was something odd, even a trifle disturbing, about the set of his mouth. Something that perhaps conveyed interior ferment kept in severe repression. Apart from that his features had been reduced, no doubt by laborious mental discipline, to a state of almost unnatural ordinariness. He possessed, however, a suggestion about him that was decidedly parsonic: a lay-reader, or clerical headmaster: even some distinguished athlete, of almost