At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [48]
‘I haven’t butted in, have I?’ he said.
He spoke not so much to Quiggin as to the world at large, without much interest in a reply. The remark was the expression of a polite phrase that seemed required by the circumstances, rather than anything like real fear that his presence might be superfluous. My impression of him began to alter. I came to the conclusion that under this burden of shyness he did not care in the least whether he butted in on Quiggin, or on anyone else. What he wanted was his own way. Mona, who had gone through to the kitchen now returned, bringing another glass.
‘Have a drink, Alf,’ she said. ‘Nice to see you unexpectedly like this.’
She had brightened up noticeably.
‘Yes, of course, Alf, have a drink,’ said Quiggin, now resigning himself to the worst. ‘And sorry, by the way, for forgetting to explain who everybody is. My rough North Country manners again. This is Nick Jenkins—Alf Warminster.’
This, then, was the famous Erridge. It was easy to see how the rumour had gone round among his relations that he had become a tramp, even if actual experience had stopped short of that status in its most exact sense. I should never have recognised him with his beard and heavily-lined face. Now that his name was revealed, the features of the preoccupied, sallow, bony schoolboy, with books tumbling from under his arm, could be traced like a footpath lost in the brambles and weeds of an untended garden: an overgrown crazy pavement. Examining him as a perceivable entity, I could even detect in his face a look of his sisters, especially Frederica. His clothes gave off a heavy, earthen smell as if he had lived out in them in all weathers for a long time.
‘Alf owns this cottage,’ said Quiggin, reluctantly. ‘But he kindly allows us to live here until the whole place is turned into a collective farm with himself at the head of it.’
He laughed harshly. Erridge (as I shall, for convenience, continue to call him) laughed uneasily too.
‘Of course you know I’m frightfully glad to have you here,’ he said.
He spoke lamely and looked more than ever embarrassed at this tribute paid him, which was certainly intended by Quiggin to carry some sting in its tail: presumably the implication that, whatever his political views, whatever the social changes, Erridge would remain in a comfortable position. When Quiggin ingratiated himself with people—during his days as secretary to St. John Clarke, for example—he was far too shrewd to confine himself to mere flattery. A modicum of bullying was a pleasure both to himself and his patrons. All the same, I was not sure that Erridge, for all his outward appearance, might not turn out a tougher proposition than St. John Clarke.
‘I don’t know that farming is quite my line,’ Erridge went on, apologetically. ‘Though of course we have always done a bit of it here. Incidentally, is the water pumping satisfactorily? You may find it rather hard work, I am afraid. I had the hand pump specially put in. I think it is a better model than the one in the keeper’s cottage, and they seem to find that one works all right.’
‘Mona and I take our turn at it,’ said Quiggin; and, grinning angrily in my direction, he added: ‘Guests are expected to do their stint at the pump as a rule. Pumping is a bit of a bore, as you say. You can’t do it any better, or any quicker, or any way that makes the tank last longer. The pump movement is just short of the natural leverage of the arm from the elbow, which makes the work particularly laborious. But we get along all right. Pumping is a kind of image of life under the capitalist system.’
Erridge laughed constrainedly, and took a gulp of gin, involuntarily making a grimace as he did so. This seemed to indicate that he belonged to the class of egoist who dislikes the taste of food and drink. He would probably have abstained from alcohol entirely had not his special approach to life made a duty of mixing on equal terms with people round him. He seemed now a little put out by Quiggin’s lack of affection for the pump. Having installed the equipment