Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [26]
‘This little number? It’s from the Boutique of the Impenitent Bachelor – Vests & Transvests, we regular customers call the firm. The colour’s named Pale Galilean. To tell the truth I can hardly sit down in these trousers.’
‘Our brother-in-law, Dicky Umfraville, always refers to his tailor as Armpits & Crotch.’
‘Their cutter must have moved over to the Boutique. How are you both? Oh, Isobel, I can’t tell you how much I miss your uncle, Ted Jeavons. Watching the telly will never be the same without his comments. Still, with that piece of shrapnel, or whatever it was from the first war, inside him, he never thought he’d last as long as he did. Ted was always saying how surprised he was to be alive.’
Inhabiting flats, both of them, in what had formerly been the Jeavons house in South Kensington, Chandler and Jeavons had developed an odd friendship, one chiefly expressed in watching television together. Jeavons, who had always possessed romantic feelings about theatrical life, used to listen in silence, an expression of deep concentration on his face, while Chandler rattled on about actors, directors, producers, stage designers, most of whose names could have meant little or nothing to Jeavons. Umfraville – who always found Jeavons a bore – used to pretend there was a homosexual connexion between them, weaving elaborate fantasies in which they indulged in hair-raising orgies at the South Kensington house. Umfraville himself did not change much as the years advanced, spells of melancholy alternating with bursts of high spirits, the last latterly expressed by a rather good new impersonation of himself as an old-fashioned drug-fiend.
When Matilda spread out the photographs on a table the manner in which the actual photography ‘dated’ was immediately noticeable; their peculiarity partly due to the individual technique of Sir Magnus as photographer, efficient at everything he did, but altogether unversed in any approach to the camera prompted by art. This was especially true of his figure subjects. Painfully clear in outline (setting aside the superimposed exoticism of the actions portrayed), they might have been taken from the pages of a mail-order catalogue, the same suggestion of waxworks, in this case, rather sinister waxworks. Details of costume scrupulously distinct, the character of the models was scarcely at all transmitted. This method did not at all diminish the interest of the pictures themselves. Sir Magnus had remarked at the time that he had taken up photography with a view to depicting his own collections – china, furniture, armour – in the manner he himself wished them photographically recorded, something in which no professional photographer had ever satisfied him. One speculated whether – the Seven Deadly Sins pointing the way – he had later developed this hobby in a manner to include his own tastes as a voyeur. A certain harshness of technique would not necessarily have vitiated that sphere of interest. That Sir Magnus had actually introduced Widmerpool to the practices of which Pamela had so publicly accused her husband at Venice, was less likely, though there, too, photography, of a dubious intention, was alleged. Matilda set out the photographs, as if playing a game of Patience.
‘So few of one’s friends qualify for all the Sins. Quite a lot of people can offer six, then break down at the seventh. They’re full of Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Pride, Anger, Sloth – then fall down on Avarice. One knows plenty of good performers at Avarice, but they so often lack Gluttony or Sloth. Of course it helps if you’re allowed to include drink, in place of food, for Gluttony.’
She picked up the picture of herself as Envy.
‘It was unjust of Donners to make me take on Envy. I’m not at all an envious person.’
That was probably true, notwithstanding her green eyes. Matilda had never shown any strong signs of being envious. Then one thought of her rivalry with Rosie Stevens. Even that was scarcely Envy in the consuming sense that certain persons display the trait. It was competitive jealousy,