Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell [38]
‘Molly mentioned something about it to me,’ said Lady Warminster.
She spoke very calmly, as if in reassuring confirmation that there was really nothing whatever for anyone to worry about. Having once registered her own illimitable horror of alcohol, Lady Warminster was fully prepared to discuss Stringham’s predicament, about which, as usual, she probably knew a great deal more than her own family supposed. The information about Stringham was not only entirely new to me, but full of all kind of implications of other things deep rooted in the past; far more surprising, far more dramatic, for example, than Erridge’s setting off for Spain.
‘Charles is Amy Foxe’s son by her second husband,’ said Lady Warminster. ‘There was a daughter, too – divorced from that not very nice man with one arm – who is married to an American called Wisebite. Amy has had trouble with both her children.’
Stringham’s mother was an old friend of Lady Warminster’s, although the two of them now saw each other rarely. That was chiefly because Mrs Foxe’s unrelenting social activities allowed little time for visits to the drowsy unruffled backwater in which the barque of Lady Warminster’s widowhood had come to rest; unruffled, that is to say, in the eyes of someone like Mrs Foxe. In fact, life at Hyde Park Gardens could not always be so described although its tenor was very different from the constant rotation of parties, committee meetings, visits, through which Mrs Foxe untiringly moved. Perhaps this description of Mrs Foxe’s existence was less exact since she had become so taken up with Norman Chandler; but, although she might now frequent a less formal social world (her charity organising remained unabated), she had been, on the other hand, correspondingly drawn into Chandler’s own milieu of the theatre and music.
‘It is really very good of Miss Weedon to look after Charles Stringham,’ Lady Warminster continued. ‘His mother, what with her hospitals and those terrible wars over them with Lady Bridgnorth, is always so dreadfully busy. Miss Weedon – Tuffy, everyone used to call her – was Flavia Stringham’s governess before she became her mother’s secretary. Such a nice, capable woman. I don’t know why you should not like her, Sue.’
This speech did not make absolutely clear whether Lady Warminster cared as little as Susan for Mrs Foxe’s former secretary, or whether, as the words outwardly indicated, she indeed approved of Miss Weedon and liked meeting her. Lady Warminster’s pronouncements in such fields were often enigmatic. Possibly we were all intended to infer from her tone a shade of doubt as to whether Miss Weedon should have been allowed to take such absolute control over Stringham as now seemed to prevail. I felt uncertainty on that subject myself. This new situation might be good; it might be bad. I remembered Miss Weedon’s unconcealed adoration for him when still a boy; the signs she had shown later t the Jeavonses’ of hoping to play some authoritarian role in Stringham’s life.
‘I am doing what I can to help,’ Miss Weedon had said, when we had met at the Jeavons house not long before my marriage.
Then, I had wondered what she meant. Now I saw that restraint, even actual physical restraint, might have been in her mind. Perhaps nothing short of physical restraint would meet Stringham’s case. It was at least arguable. Miss Weedon seemed to be providing something of the sort.
‘Molly will be glad of the additional rent,’ said Lady Warminster, who seemed to be warming to the subject, now that its alcoholic aspects had faded into the background. ‘She has been complaining a lot lately about being hard up. I tremble to think what Ted’s doctor’s bill must be like at any time. What difficulties he has with his inside. However, he is off slops again, I hear.’
‘Have the Stringhams any money?