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By Root 2689 0

although I had more than once watched his performances at restaurants or cabarets, since that night, years before, when he had quarrelled so bitterly with poor Mr. Deacon at Mrs. Andriadis’s party. Tall and stooping, smiling through large spectacles, there was something mild and parsonic about his manner, as if he were apologising for having to draw peoples’ attention to their sins in so blatant a manner. He wore tails. Hopkins had cleaned herself up greatly since her application for the loan of an egg from Norah Tolland and Eleanor Walpole-Wilson. Her black coat and skirt, cut like a dinner jacket, had silk lapels above a stiff shirt, butterfly collar and black bow tie. Her silk stockings were black, too, and she wore a bracelet round her left ankle.

This couple had scarccly appeared when another, far less expected party came in, and were shown to a table evidently reserved for them. Mrs. Haycock led the way, followed by my old friend, Peter Templer; then Widmerpool, walking beside an unusually good-looking girl whose face I did not know. They were in evening dress. From the rather stiff way in which Templer carried himself, I guessed that he felt a shade self-conscious about the company he was keeping. By that time I was used to the idea that he no longer regarded Widmerpool with derision. After all, they did business together, and Widmerpool had helped Bob Duport to get a job. All the same, there remained something incongruous about finding Templer and Widmerpool embarked upon a partie carrée at a night club. Night clubs were so much to be regarded as Templer’s natural element, and so little Widmerpool’s, that there seemed even a kind of injustice that Widmerpool should in this manner be forced to operate in a field so inappropriate to himself; and, on top of that, for Templer to be covertly ashamed of his company.

In addition to his air of being—almost literally—a fish out of water, Widmerpool looked far from well. Still yellow from his jaundice, he had grown thinner. His dinner jacket hung on him in folds. His hair was ruffled. His back was bent like that of an elderly man. Perhaps it was this flagging aspect of Widmerpool’s that made Templer seem more elegant than ever. He, too, was thinner than when I had last seen him. His habitual tendency was to look just a little too well dressed, and that evening he gave the appearance of having walked straight out of his tailor’s wearing an entirely new outfit. This glossy exterior, in juxtaposition with Widmerpool, could hardly have been more sharply emphasised. The unknown pretty girl was wearing an unadventurous frock, but Mrs. Haycock was dressed to kill. Enclosed within a bright emerald-green dress with huge leg-of-mutton sleeves, she was talking with great vivacity to Templer, whose arm from time to time she took and squeezed. She looked younger than when I had last seen her.

Before any sign of recognition could take place between the members of this party and myself, the band withdrew from their position at the end of the room, and settled down at one of the tables. A moment later Pilgrim and Hopkins mounted the dais, Hopkins appropriating the pianist’s stool, while Pilgrim lounged against the drum. He glanced at his nails, like a nervous don about to lecture a rowdy audience of undergraduates. Hopkins struck a few bars on the piano with brutal violence. By that time Jeavons had returned.

‘Found it all right,’ he said.

‘Have you seen who has arrived?’

‘Saw them on my way back. You know Mrs. H. doesn’t look a bit different from what she looked like in 1917.’

This comment on Mrs. Haycock seemed to me an extraordinary proposition: either crudely untrue, or most uncomplimentary to her earlier appearance. In due course one learns, where individuals and emotions are concerned, that Time’s slide-rule can make unlikely adjustments. Angular and flamboyant, Mrs. Haycock was certainly not without powers of attraction, but I doubted whether Jeavons saw in those severe terms. It was impossible to say. That side of her may, indeed, have constituted her charm for him both at