Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [83]
‘Are your kids here? Angus couldn’t get away either. He had to cover a strike. Iris will be at the reception. Fancy fetching up at Stourwater again. I used to go on visitors’ day when I was a child. The park’s open to the public now. My father’s job was in the local town. I expect I’ve often said that – also I was at school with Matilda Donners, when she was a little girl called Betty Updike. Did you hear she’d died?’
‘Apparently been ill for some time. I didn’t know that. I always liked Matilda.’
‘She made quite a career for herself. I don’t know half the people here. Who’s the good-looking black girl with the young Huntercombes. I know – she’s wife of Jocelyn Fettiplace-Jones. His mother was an Akworth. How glad I am I live in London now.’
Like Ted Jeavons, Veronica had taken on the workings of a world rather different from that of her earlier life, without ever in the least wanting to be part. She had always regarded that world, not without a certain enjoyment, from the outside. Now she felt free of it all, except on occasions such as this one, which she liked to attend. In spite of such inherent sentiments, Veronica had come by now to look more than a little like a conventional dowager on the stage.
‘See you later.’
The immediate vision of Stourwater, in thin vaporous April sunshine, was altogether unchanged. On the higher ground, in the shadows of huge contorted oaks, sheep still grazed. Down in the hollow lay the Castle; keep; turrets; moat; narrow causeway across the water, leading to the main gate with double portcullis. All seemed built out of cardboard. Its realities had in any case belonged more to the days of Sir Magnus Donners, rather than to the later Middle Ages, when the Castle’s history had been obscure. The anachronistic black swans were gone from the greenish waters of the moat. A large noticeboard directed to a car park. Round about the Castle itself playing fields came into view.
‘What games would they be?’
‘Net-ball, hockey, I suppose.’
We parked, then crossed the causeway on foot. The reception was taking place in the Great Hall, now the school’s Assembly Room. Armoured horsemen no longer guarded the door. Forms had been pushed back against the walls, a long table for refreshments set across the far end. In place of Sir Magnus’s Old Masters – several of doubtful authenticity according to Smethyck, and others with a taste for picture attribution – hung reproductions of the better known French Impressionists. We joined the queue, a long one, formed by guests waiting to meet bride and bridegroom. The two families had turned out in force. There must have been a hundred or more guests at least. We took a place far back in the line, working our way up slowly, as Roddy, relic of his parliamentary days, liked to talk for a minute or two to everyone he knew personally. When at last we found ourselves greeting the newly married pair, their closer relations in support, I felt this no moment to remind Sir Bertram Akworth that we had been at school together. There would in any case have been no opportunity. Susan Cutts drew us aside.
‘Come away from them all for a moment. There’s something I must tell you both.’
Leaving her husband to undertake whatever formalities were required, Susan was evidently impatient to reveal some piece of news, good or ill was not clear, which greatly excited her.
‘Have you heard about Fiona?’
‘No, what?’
One was prepared for anything. My first thought was that Fiona had returned to Murtlock and the cult.
‘She’s married.’
I thought I saw how things had at last fallen out.
‘To Gibson Delavacquerie?’
Susan looked puzzled by the question. The name did not seem to convey anything to her, certainly not that of their daughter’s new husband. Susan’s words plainly stated that Fiona possessed a husband.
‘You mean her