At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [88]
‘I don’t think I know about a secretary.’
‘Perhaps I am mistaken. Someone may have said something cf the sort. What did you think of Thrubworth? Erridge does not take much interest in the house, I am afraid. Still less in the grounds.’
‘I commented on Thrubworth and its surroundings, again aware that banality had not been avoided. Lady War minster sighed. She moved her thin, pale hands, covered with a network of faint blue veins, lightly over the surface of a cushion.
‘You were staying in the neighbourhood, I think.’
‘Yes.’
‘Not, by any chance, with the writer, J. G. Quiggin?’
‘Yes—with J. G. Quiggin. I have known him a long time. Do you read his articles?’
‘I was so interested when I heard Erridge had him living in that cottage. I enjoy Mr. Quiggin’s reviews so much, even when I do not agree with them. They have not been appearing lately.’
‘No. I haven’t seen any of them lately.’
‘Is there a Mrs. Quiggin?’
‘Yes, she —’
‘But I do not know why I am asking you this, because Susan and Isobel told me how they met you and the Quiggins, both of them, at Thrubworth. She is a great beauty, is she not?’
‘I think she might certainly be called a great beauty.’
‘An actress?’
‘No, a model. But she thinks of going on the films.’
‘Does she? And what does Mr. Quiggin think about that?’
‘He seemed quite to like the idea.’
‘Did he?’ she said. ‘Did he? How strange.’
She paused for a moment.
‘I like his articles so much,’ she went on, after a few seconds. ‘He is such—such a broad-minded man. So few critics are broad-minded. You know I want to talk to you about the new book I am writing myself. Will you give me your advice about it?’
For the time being the subject of Erridge was abandoned. I was glad of that. Lady Warminster had either learnt enough, or decided that for the moment, whatever her available knowledge, she would pursue the matter no further. Instead she talked for a time about Frederica, explaining that she had been so named on account of a Tolland great- uncle, a secretary of legation in Prussia, who, sharing an interest in painting, had been on friendly terms with the Empress Frederick. That was how the name had come into the family; that explained why Alfred Tolland had wanted to hear Mrs. Conyers’s anecdote about the Empress, the night we had met at the Jeavonses’. Lady Warminster represented to a high degree that characteristic of her own generation that everything may be said, though nothing indecorous discussed openly. Layer upon layer of wrapping, box after box revealing in the Chinese manner yet another box, must conceal all doubtful secrets; only the discipline of infinite obliquity made it lawful to examine the seamy side of life. If these mysteries were observed everything might be contemplated: however unsavoury: however unspeakable. Afterwards, thinking over the interview when I had left the house, I knew something of what Alfred Tolland could feel after one of Molly Jeavons’s interrogations. Lady Warminster might be outwardly quieter than her sister: her capacity for teasing was no less highly developed. A long time later, when the subject of Erridge and Mona had become a matter of common talk at the Jeavonses’—gossip which she must have known from her sister, even though they met rather rarely—Lady Warminster continued to refer to the association under enigmatic pseudonyms.
This mannered obscurity of handling the delicate problems of family life had nothing in common with the method of Chips Lovell, who, as I have indicated, spent a good deal of his time at the Studio telling the other scriptwriters about his relations. It would be easy to imagine a community in which this habit might have given offence, since many people feel disquisitions of that kind in some manner to derogate their own importance, few being interested in how others live. Lovell’s material was presented with little or no editing, so it was for the listener to decide for himself whether the