At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [91]
‘You are a very dissipated young man,’ she said. ‘What do you mean by keeping poor Teddy up till all hours in the way you did? I never heard such a thing. Do you know he had to spend a whole week in bed after going out with you?’
I tried to make some apology, although at the same time feeling not greatly to blame for the way Jeavons behaved when he went out on his own. As a matter of fact, I had not been at all well myself the following day, and was inclined to blame Jeavons for having caused me to sit up so late.
‘Just as well he found Mildred Blaides to look after him,’ said Molly. ‘I always thought they had known each other for ages, but it turned out they had only met once, a long time ago. You know she was a nurse at Dogdene during the war. Lucky she didn’t turn up when Teddy was there, or she would have scalded him to death with hot-water-bottles, or something of that sort. She was the worst nurse they ever had there—or in the whole of the V.A.D., for that matter.’
Molly spoke with more than a touch of acrimony, but at the same time it was impossible to guess how much she knew, or suspected, of Jeavons’s night out; impossible, if it came to that, to know with any certainty how that night had ended, even though the nostalgic mood of Jeavons’s and Mrs. Haycock’s impetuous nature might, in unison, give a strong hint.
‘If Mildred is not careful,’ said Molly, ‘she will polish off Mr. Widmerpool before she has time to marry him. I hear he had to go home, he was feeling so ill.’
I thought the sooner the subject of that night was abandoned, the better. While we had been talking, Jeavons had listened in silence, as if he had never before heard of any of the persons under discussion, including himself. I admired his detachment. I wondered, too, whether at that very moment his head was seething with forgotten melodies, for ever stirring him to indiscretion by provoking memories of an enchanted past.
‘I can’t have all the Tollands at this party,’ Molly had said. ‘So I had better have none of them. Bound to be jealousy otherwise. Just like Erridge to go to China when one of his sisters gets engaged.’
Smith was again on duty with the Jeavonses on the day of the party. He looked haggard and more out of sorts than ever.
‘You’re late,’ he said, taking my hat. ‘It has all started upstairs. Quite a crowd of them arrived already. Hope her ladyship hasn’t invited every blessed soul she knows.’
The guests seemed, in fact, to have been chosen even more at random than usual. Certainly there had been no question either of asking people because they were already friends of Isobel or myself; still less, because Molly wanted either of us specifically to meet them. All that was most nondescript in the Jeavons entourage predominated, together with a few exceptional and reckless examples of individual oddity. I noticed that Alfred Tolland had not been included in the general prohibition against the Tolland family of my own generation. He was standing in the corner of the room, wedged behind a table, talking to—of all people—Mark Members, whom I had never before seen at the Jeavonses’, and might be supposed, in principle, beyond Molly’s normal perimeter, wide as that might stretch; or at least essentially alien to most of what it enclosed. To describe the two of them as standing looking at one another, rather than talking, would have been nearer the truth, as each apparently found equal difficulty in contributing anything to a mutual conversation. At the same time, the table cut them off from contact with other guests.
‘I know you are interested in books, Nicholas,’ said Molly. ‘So I asked a rather nice young man I met the other day. He also writes or something. You will like him. A Mr. Members.’
‘I know him of old.’
‘Go