The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell [18]
The news that Polly was to be born was the last I had heard of her mother. Little as I could imagine how Jean had brought herself to marry Duport—far less be ‘mad about him’—I had by then learnt that such often inexplicable things must simply be accepted as matters of fact. His sister’s matrimonial troubles evidently impressed Templer as vexatious, though in the circumstances probably unavoidable; certainly not a subject for prolonged discussion.
‘Talking of divorces and such things,’ he said. ‘Do you ever see Charles Stringham now?’
There had been little or no scandal connected with the break-up of Stringham’s marriage. He and Peggy Stepney had parted company without apparent reason, just as their reason for marrying had been outwardly hard to understand. They had bought a house somewhere north of the Park, but neither ever seemed to have lived there for more than a few weeks at a time, certainly seldom together. The house itself, decorated by the approved decorator of that moment, was well spoken of, but I had never been there. The marriage had simply collapsed, so people said, from inanition. I never heard it suggested that Peggy had taken a lover. Stringham, it was true, was seen about with all kinds of women, though nothing specific was alleged against him either. Soon after the decree had been made absolute, Peggy married a cousin, rather older than herself, and went to live in Yorkshire, where her husband possessed a large house, noted in books of authentically recorded ghost stories for being rather badly haunted.
‘That former wife of his—The Lady Peggy—was a good-looking piece,’ said Templer. ‘But, as you know, such grand life is not for me. I prefer simpler pleasures——
‘ “Oh, give me a man to whom naught comes amiss,
One horse or another, that country or this… .”’
‘You know you’ve always hated hunting and hunting people. Anyway, whose sentiments were those?’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘chaps like you think I’m not properly educated, in spite of the efforts of Le Bas and others, and that I don’t know about beautiful poetry. You find you’re wrong. I know all sorts of little snatches. As a matter of fact I was thinking of women, really, rather than horses, and taking ‘em as you find ‘em. Not being too choosy about it as Charles has always been. Of course they are easier to take than to find, in my experience—though of course it is not gentlemanly to boast of such things. Anyway, as you know, I have given up all that now.’
At school I could remember Templer claiming that he had never read a book for pleasure in his life; and, although an occasional Edgar Wallace was certainly to be seen in his hand during the period of his last few terms, the quotation was surprising. That was a side of him not entirely unexpected, but usually kept hidden. Incidentally, it was a conversational trick acquired—perhaps consciously copied—from Stringham.
‘You remember the imitations Charles used to do of Widmerpool?’ he said. ‘I expect he is much too grand to remember Widmerpool now.’
‘I saw Widmerpool not so long ago. He is with Donners-Brebner.’
‘But not much longer,’ said Templer. ‘Widmerpool is joining the Acceptance World.’
‘What on earth is that?’
‘Well, actually he is going to become a bill-broker,’ said Templer, laughing. ‘I should have made myself clearer to one not involved in the nefarious ways of the City.’
‘What will he do?’
‘Make a lot of heavy weather. He’ll have to finish his lunch by two o’clock and spend the rest of the day wasting the time of the banks.’
‘But what is the Acceptance World?’
‘If you have goods you want to sell to a firm in Bolivia, you probably do not touch your money in the ordinary way until the stuff arrives there. Certain houses, therefore, are prepared to ‘accept’ the debt. They will advance you the money on the strength of your reputation. It is all right when the going is good, but sooner or later you are tempted to plunge. Then there is an alteration in the value of the Bolivian exchange, or a revolution, or perhaps the firm just goes bust—and you find yourself