At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [10]
It was a surprise to find Mrs. Conyers and Tolland here, but there was no reason why they should not both be friends of Lady Molly Jeavons. Mrs. Conyers was now engaged by her hostess, and led up to a swarthy young man, also wearing a dinner-jacket, who was standing by the gramophone turning over the pages of a book of records. They all began to talk French together. At that moment my eye caught Tolland’s. He stared back, not without a certain apprehension in his look. Then he cleared his throat and advanced towards me.
‘I didn’t see you at the Le Bas dinner this year,’ he said.
He spoke with reproach, as if to mention such a breach of faith was an embarrassing duty his conscience laid upon him. In these surroundings, evidently his own ground, I felt less ability to cope with his peculiarities than at the Le Bas dinners. It seemed better to conceal the decision never to attend another one.
‘I didn’t manage to get there.’
‘It went off all right,’ said Tolland slowly, as if ghastly failure had been a matter of touch and go. ‘I always accept when the card comes round. It makes a pleasant evening. Got to keep in touch. Of course Le Bas always says that in his speech.’
Molly Jeavons, after talking for a minute or two with Mrs. Conyers and the young man with the black moustache, now rejoined Tolland and myself.
‘I couldn’t keep it up any longer,’ she said. ‘French is too exhausting. My governess said I was the worst pupil she’d ever had at the irregular verbs. All the same, I wanted to hear if there was anything new about Theodoric.’
She pointed her finger at me.
‘Is he another of your relations, Alfred?’ she asked.
Her tone suggested that potential relationship with Tolland might explain everything: why I had come to the house: why I looked as I did: why we were talking together. I attempted to reduce my appearance to something as negative as possible, so that no one might be unduly committed by the enquiry, which had thrown Tolland into an appalling access of embarrassment.
‘Really, I believe you have more relations than I have myself,’ she went on. ‘My grandfather had ninety-seven first cousins, and he was only three up on my grandmother on my mother’s side.’
‘No—no—no,’ said Tolland, hurriedly. ‘At least I don’t think we are, are we? Never know—perhaps I oughtn’t to have been so definite—quite on the cards, I suppose, as a matter of fact. Shouldn’t speak hastily about such things. Certainly got a lot of ’em. Some people might think too many, as you say, Molly. No—no—no. Perhaps you can tell better than me. Are we related? No? Thought not. Always try to keep track of ’em. Hard to manage sometimes. Go abroad and get married and get divorced and into debt, glad to see the back of ’em sometimes. But where you and I meet is at the Le Bas dinner. That’s where we meet.’
He gasped a bit after all this, as if not only breathless from speaking at such length, but also overcome with confusion at the predicament into which he had been thrown by the question. Yet, even in spite of this floundering, he seemed to feel himself on much surer ground in this house than at our previous meetings. He might be temporarily at a disadvantage here with his hostess, even on guard against attack from her (a minute or two later I found he had good reason to fear that), but at least his credentials were known and freely accepted in the