A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [62]
Such emotions, sudden bursts of sexual jealousy that pursue us through life, sometimes without the smallest justification that memory or affection might provide, are like wounds, unknown and quiescent, that suddenly break out to give pain, or at least irritation, at a later season of the year, or in an unfamiliar climate. The party, and the young man with the orchid, supplied perfect setting for an attack of that kind. I was about to return to the subject of Duport, with a view to relieving this sense of annoyance by further unfavourable comment regarding his personality (as it had appeared to me in the past) in the hope that my views would find ready agreement, when I became suddenly aware that Stringham and Mrs. Andriadis were together engaged in vehement argument just beside the place we sat.
“But, sweetie,” Mrs. Andriadis was saying, “you can’t possibly want to go to the Embassy now.”
“But the odd thing is,” said Stringham, speaking slowly and deliberately, “the odd thing is that is just what I do want to do. I want to go to the Embassy at once. Without further delay.”
“But it will be closed.”
“I am rather glad to hear that. I never really liked the Embassy. I shall go somewhere else.”
“But you said it was just the Embassy you wanted to go to.”
“I can’t think why. I really want to go somewhere quite different”
“You really are being too boring for words, Charles.”
“I quite agree,” said Stringham, suddenly changing his tone. “The fact is I am much too boring to stay at a party. That is exactly how I feel myself. Especially one of your parties, Milly—one of your charming, gay, exquisite, unrivalled parties. I cast a gloom over the merry scene. ‘Who is that corpse at the feast?’ people ask, and the reply is ‘Poor old Stringham’.”
“But you wouldn’t feel any better at the Embassy, darling, even if it were open.”
“You are probably right. In fact, I should certainly feel no better at the Embassy. I should feel worse. That is why I am going somewhere much lower than that. Somewhere really frightful.”
“You are being very silly.”
“The Forty-Three would be too stuffy—In all senses—for my present mood.”
“You can’t want to go to the Forty-Three.”
“I repeat that I do not want to go to the Forty-Three. I am at the moment looking into my soul to examine the interesting question of where exactly I do want to go.”
“Wherever it is, I shall come too.”
“As you wish, Milly. As you wish. As a matter of fact I was turning over the possibilities of a visit to Mrs. Fitz.”
“Charles, you are impossible.”
I suppose he had had a good deal to drink, though this was, in a way, beside the point, for I knew from past experience that he could be just as perverse in his behaviour when there had been no question of drinking. If he were a little drunk, apart from making a slight bow, he showed no physical sign of such a condition. Mrs. Andriadis, who was evidently determined to master the situation—and who still, in her own particular style, managed to remain rather dazzling, in spite of being obviously put out by this altercation—turned to one of the men-servants who happened to be passing at that moment, carrying a tray laden with glasses, and said: “Go and get my coat—and be quick about it.”
The man, an old fellow with a blotched face, who had perhaps taken the opportunity to sample the champagne himself more freely than had been wise, stared at her, and, setting down the tray, ambled slowly off. Stringham caught sight of us sitting near-by. He took a step towards me.
“At least I can rely on you, Nick, as an old friend,” he said, “to accompany me to a haunt of vice. Somewhere where the stains on the table-cloth make the flesh creep—some cellar far below the level of the street, where ageing harlots caper cheerlessly to the discordant strains of jazz.”
Mrs. Andriadis grasped at once that we had known each other for a long time, because she smiled with one of those looks of captivating and whole-hearted sincerity that