Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [25]
However, Le Bas dinners could explain why Widmerpool and Alfred Tolland had travelled down together after seeing each other at the station. Widmerpool was, in fact, now revealed as standing close behind, as if he expected Alfred Tolland to make some statement that concerned himself or his party, the rest of whom were no longer to be seen. They could be concealed by mist, or have left in a body after the committal. To make sure his own presence as a mourner was not overlooked by Erridge’s family would be characteristic of Widmerpool, even though the reason for his attendance remained at present unproclaimed. He was looking even more worried than in the church. If he had merely desired to register attendance and go away, he would certainly have pushed in front of Alfred Tolland, whose hesitant, deferential comportment always caused delays, particularly at a time like this. Neat, sad, geared perfectly in outward appearance to the sombre nature of the occasion, Tolland stood, head slightly bent, gazing at the damp grass beneath his feet. He had once admitted to having travelled as far as Singapore. One wondered how he had ever managed to get there and back again. Unlikely he had taken with him a girl like Mona, though one could never tell. Barnby always used to insist it was misplaced to speak categorically about other people’s sexual experiences, whoever they were.
‘Uncle Alfred?’
‘My dear Isobel, this is very …’
He was all but incapable of finishing a sentence, a form of diffidence implying unworthiness to force a personal opinion on others. Even when Alfred Tolland spoke his own views, they were hedged round with every sort of qualification. Erridge’s passing, the company in which he found himself on the way down, stirred within him concepts far too unmanageable to be accommodated in a single phrase. Isobel helped him out.
‘A very sad occasion, Uncle Alfred. Poor Erry. It was so unexpected.’
‘Yes – quite unexpected. These things are unexpected sometimes. Absolutely unexpected, in fact. Of course Erridge always did …’
What did Erridge always do? The question was capable of many answers. The wrong thing? Know he was a sick man? Fear the winter? Hope the end would be sudden? Want Alfred Tolland to reveal some special secret after his own demise? Perhaps just ‘do the unexpected’. On the whole that termination was the most probable. Alfred Tolland, this time unassisted by Isobel, may have feared that any too direct statement about what Erridge ‘did’ might sound callous, if spoken straight out. Instead of completing, he altogether abandoned the comment, this time bringing out in its entirety another concept, quite different in range.
‘I’m feeling rather ashamed.’
‘Ashamed, Uncle Alfred?’
‘Never got down here for George’s … In bed, as a matter of fact.’
‘Nothing bad, I hope, Uncle Alfred.’
‘Had a bit of – chest. Felt ashamed, all the same. Not absolutely right now, but can get about. Can’t be helped. Didn’t want to stay away when it came to the head of the family.’
He spoke as if he would have risen from the dead to reach the funeral of the head of the family. Perhaps he had. The idea was not to be too lightly dismissed. There something not wholly of this world about him. Time, for example, seemed to mean nothing. One hoped he would come soon to the point of what he had to say. Although the worst of the rain had stopped, a pervasive damp struck up from the ground and into the bones. Obviously something was on his mind. In the background Widmerpool shifted about, stamping his feet and kicking them together.
‘We’ll give you a lift back to the house, Uncle Alfred, if you want one. That’s if any of the cars will start. Some of them are rather ancient. It may be rather a squeeze.’
‘Quite forgot, quite forgot … These good people I travelled down with … shared a taxi from the station … Mr –