At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [76]
‘I expect you heard that Anne and I didn’t manage to hit it off,’ he went on. ‘Charming child, but the fact was I was too old for her. She didn’t like grown-up life—and who shall blame her?’
He sighed.
‘I don’t like it much myself,’ he said.
‘Where is she now?’
I hardly knew whether the question was admissible. However, Umfraville had apparently achieved complete objectivity regarding his own life: certainly his matrimonial life.
‘Living in Paris,’ he said. ‘Doing some painting, you know. She was always tremendously keen on her painting. I fell rather short on that score too. Can’t tell a Sargent from a “Snaffles”. She shares a flat with a girl who also walked out on her husband the other day. Come on, Ted, you mustn’t go to sleep. I agree this place is pretty boring, but I can’t have it turned into a doss-house. Not for the first week or so, anyway.’
Jeavons came too with a jerk. He began to beat time thoughtfully on the table.
‘How are you doing here?’ he asked.
He spoke severely, as if he had come to audit the accounts. Umfraville shrugged’his shoulders.
‘Depends how people rally round,’ he said. ‘I don’t picture myself staying at this job long. Just enough to cover my most urgent needs—or rather my creditors’ most urgent needs. These joints have a brief vogue, if they’re lucky. We haven’t been open long enough yet to see how things are going. I lock upon your arrival, Ted, as a very good omen. Well, I suppose I must see everything about the place is going all right. Ought to have turned up earlier and done that already. I’ll look in again. By the way, Max Pilgrim and Heather Hopkins are coming in later to do a turn.’
He nodded to us, and moved away. People were now arriving in the club by twos and threes. The tables round us began to fill up. The girls lost some of their apathy. These newcomers offered little or no clue to the style of the place. They belonged to that anonymous, indistinct race of nightclub frequenters, as undifferentiated and lacking in individuality as the congregation at a funeral. None of them was in evening dress.
‘Rum bird, Umfraville,’ said Jeavons, thickly. ‘Don’t like him much. Knows everybody. Wasn’t a bit surprised when it turned out you’d met him before. Molly used to see quite a lot of him in the old days when he was a johnny about town.’
‘He married a girl much younger than himself as his fourth wife. They parted company, I hear.’
‘I know. The Bridgnorths’ second daughter,’ said Jeavons. ‘She has been to the house. Badly brought up. Been taken down a peg or two, I hope. Bad luck on Eddie Bridgnorth to have a girl like that. Done nothing to deserve it.’
Earlier in the evening, Jeavons had expressed only the vaguest knowledge of Umfraville’s last marriage. Now, he seemed familiar with all its essential aspects. His awareness seemed quite unpredictable from one moment to another. The compassionate tone in which he had named Lord Bridgnorth clearly voiced regret for a member of a caste rather than an individual, revealing for a split second a side of Jeavons on the whole concealed, though far more developed than might be supposed on brief acquaintance; the side, that is to say, which had by then entirely assimilated his wife’s social standpoint. Indeed, the words might have been uttered by Alfred Tolland, so conventional, yet at the same time so unaffected, was the reflection that Eddie Bridgnorth had done nothing to deserve a rackety daughter.
‘I think I’ll make a further inspection of these quarters,’ said Jeavons, rising. ‘Just as well to know your way about.’
He made at first towards the band, but a waiter redirected bim, and he disappeared through a small door. He was away a long time, during which two fresh elements were added to the composition of the room.
The first of these new components, a man and a woman, turned out to be Max Pilgrim and Heather Hopkins. They entered with the animation of professionals, almost as if their act had already begun, at once greeted by Umfraville who led them to a table near the band. I had never met Pilgrim,