Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [96]
‘If the matter of reporting Akworth has never come up in the years you’ve been meeting him, doesn’t it seem wiser to leave things at that now? It might even be preferable not to go to the reception?’
Widmerpool was not listening.
‘Amazing how long it took me to understand the ritual side of sex. Although I never enjoyed sex much myself, I’d always supposed you were meant to enjoy it. Now I know better. I see now that, even when I was young, I was reaching out for the ritual side, to the exclusion of enjoyment. In objecting to Akworth’s conduct, I was displaying an attitude I later took up in my own mind in relation to Donners and his irregular practices. He, too, may have had his own instinctive reactions in the same field. In those days I knew nothing of the Dionysiac necessities. They were revealed to me all but too late. If Donners was aware of such needs earlier than myself, he fell altogether short in combining them with transcendental meditation, or mystical exercises of a physical kind, other than sexual.’
Widmerpool, absorbed with the case of Sir Magnus, shook his head. By this time we were crossing the causeway, about to pass under the portcullised gate, through which Fiona’s vanguard had already disappeared. Either to catch up with the rest of his company, or from impatience to make contact with Sir Bertram Akworth, Widmerpool pressed forward. This urgency on his part impelled his own entry into the Great Hall well ahead of myself, something I was anxious to manoeuvre, but had seen no way of bringing about. Widmerpool was lost in the crowd by the time I came through the doorway. Caroline Lovell – a niece of ours, married to a soldier called Thwaites – was standing just by. She began some sort of conversation before it was possible to estimate the effect of Fiona’s additions to the party. We talked for a minute or two.
‘Is Alan here?’
Caroline said her husband, having just been posted to Northern Ireland, had been unable to come to the wedding. She looked worried, but was prevented from saying more of this by Jonathan Cutts, who joined us, and began to speak of the Sleaford Veronese – as it once had been – a favourite subject of Caroline’s father, Chips Lovell. The Iphigenia had come on the market again, handled by Jonathan’s firm, and achieved a record price. Neither Jonathan Cutts nor Caroline seemed to have noticed the incursion of Fiona’s friends from the cult; confirming the impression that, once within the lofty dimly lit limits of the Great Hall, they had quickly merged with other less than conventionally clad guests. Certainly there was no clearcut isolation of the group. For a second I caught a glimpse of Bithel; a moment later he disappeared. He had been surrounded by a circle of laughing young men. By this time a fair amount of champagne had been drunk. Widmerpool was nowhere to be seen. No doubt he was searching for Sir Bertram Akworth, but Sir Bertram, too, had disappeared for the moment. I asked Caroline where he had gone.
‘There was a hitch about the car to take Sebastian and Clare to the airport. Sir Bertram’s making some new arrangement, somebody said.’
Flavia Wisebite appeared again at my elbow.
‘Have you seen who’s just come in?’
‘Do you mean Fiona Cutts and her former crowd?’
‘Widmerpool.