Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [16]
‘She’s kept that to herself so far as you were concerned?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Is she a Party Member too?’
Bagshaw laughed heartily.
‘Ada’s ambitions are primarily literary. Within that area she’ll take any help she can get, but I doubt if she’d get much from the Party. What did you think of her?’
‘All right.’
‘She’s got a will of her own. Quiggin & Craggs did right to sign her up. JG was much taken.’
‘You produced her?’
‘We met during the war – all too briefly – but have remained friends. She’s to be on the publishing side, not Fission. I’d like you to meet Trapnel. I really do think there’s promise there. I’ll call you up, and we’ll have a drink together. I won’t be able to arrange anything next week, as I’m getting married on Tuesday – thanks very much, my dear fellow, thanks very much… yes, of course… nice of you to put it that way… I just didn’t want to be a bore about a lot of personal matters …’
2
RATHER UNEXPECTEDLY, ERRIDGE WAS FOUND to have paid quite recent attention to his will. He had replaced George Tolland (former executor with Frederica) by their youngest, now only surviving brother, Hugo. Accordingly, by the time I reached London, Hugo and Frederica had already gone down to Thrubworth. Accommodation in Erridge’s wing of the house was limited. The rest of the family, as at George’s funeral, had to make up their minds whether to attend as a day’s expedition, or stay at The Tolland Arms, a hostelry considerably developed from former times, since the establishment in the neighbourhood of an RAF station. Norah, Susan and her husband Roddy Cutts, with Isobel and myself, chose The Tolland Arms. As it happened Dicky Umfraville had just arrived on leave from Germany, where he was serving as lieutenant-colonel on the staff of the Military Government (a job to which he was well disposed), but he flatly refused to accompany Frederica.
‘I never met your brother,’ he said. ‘Therefore it would be an impertinence on my part to attend his funeral. Besides – in more than one respect the converse of another occasion – there’s room at the inn, but none at the stable. Nobody would mind one of the Thrubworth loose-boxes less than myself, but we should be separated, my love, so near and yet so far, something I could not bear. In addition – far more important – I don’t like funerals. They remind me of death, a subject I always try to avoid. You will have to represent me, Frederica, angel that you are, and return to London as soon as possible to make my leave a heaven upon earth.’
Veronica, George Tolland’s widow, was not present either. She was likely to give birth any day now.
‘Pray God it will be a boy,’ Hugo said. ‘I used to think I’d like to take it all on, but no longer – even though I’d hardly make a scruffier earl than poor old Erry.’
His general demeanour quietened by the war, Hugo’s comments tended to become grimmer. He had remained throughout his service bombardier in an Anti-Aircraft battery, not leaving England, but experiencing a reasonably lively time, for example, one night the only man on the gun not knocked out. Now he had returned to selling antiques, a trade at which he became increasingly proficient, recently opening a shop of his own with a former army friend called Sam – he seemed to possess no surname – not a great talker, but good-natured, of powerful physique, and said to be quick off the mark when a good piece came up at auction.
Like Hugo – although naturally in terms of his own very different temperament and approach to life – Roddy Cutts had also quietened. There was sufficient reason for that. The wartime romance at HQ Persia/Iraq Force, with the cipherine he had at one moment planned to marry, had collapsed not long after disclosure of the situation in a letter to his wife. While on leave in Teheran the cipherine had suddenly decided to abscond with a rich Persian, abandoning Roddy