The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell [55]
She was fond of Peter, though free from that obsessive interest that often entangles brother and sister. They were not alike in appearance, though her hair, too, grew down like his in a ‘widow’s peak’ on her forehead. There was also something about the set of her neck that recalled her brother. That was all.
‘They might have a lot of children.’
‘They might.’
‘Would that be a good thing?’
‘Certainly.’
I was surprised that she was so decisive, because in those days children were rather out of fashion. It always seemed strange to me, and rather unreal, that so much of her own time should be occupied with Polly.
‘You know, I believe Mona has taken quite a fancy for your friend J. G. Quiggin,’ she had said, laughing.
‘Not possible.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘Has he appeared at the house again?’
‘No—but she keeps talking about him.’
‘Perhaps I ought never to have introduced him into the household.’
‘Perhaps not,’ she had replied, quite seriously.
At the time, the suggestion had seemed laughable. To regard Quiggin as a competitor with Templer for a woman—far less his own wife—was ludicrous even to consider.
‘But she took scarcely any notice of him.’
‘Well, I thought you were rather wet the first time you came to the house. But I’ve made up for it later, haven’t I?’
‘I adored you from the start.’
‘I’m sure you didn’t.’
‘Certainly at Stourwater.’
‘Oh, at Stourwater I was very impressed too.’
‘And I with you.’
‘Then why didn’t you write or ring up or something? Why didn’t you?’
‘I did—you were away.’
‘You ought to have gone on trying.’
‘I wasn’t sure you weren’t rather lesbian.’
‘How ridiculous. Pretty rude of you, too.’
‘I had a lot to put up with.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘But I had.’
‘How absurd you are.’
When the colour came quickly into her face, the change used to fill me with excitement. Even when she sat in silence, scarcely answering if addressed, such moods seemed a necessary part of her: something not to be utterly regretted. Her forehead, high and white, gave a withdrawn look, like a great lady in a medieval triptych or carving; only her lips, and the elegantly long lashes under slanting eyes, gave a hint of latent sensuality. But descriptions of a woman’s outward appearance can hardly do more than echo the terms of a fashion paper. Their nature can be caught only in a refractive beam, as with light passing through water: the rays of character focused through the person with whom they are intimately associated. Perhaps, therefore, I alone was responsible for what she seemed to me. To another man—Duport, for example—she no doubt appeared—indeed, actually was—a different woman.
‘But why, when we first met, did you never talk about books and things?’ I had asked her.
‘I didn’t think you’d understand.’
‘How hopeless of you.’
‘Now I see it was,’ she had said, quite humbly.
She shared with her brother the conviction that she ‘belonged’ in no particular world. The other guests she had found collected round Sir Magnus Donners at Stourwater had been on the whole unsympathetic.
‘I only went because I was a friend of Baby’s,’ she had said; ‘I don’t really like people of that sort.’
‘But surely there were people of all sorts there?’
‘Perhaps I don’t much like people anyway. I am probably too lazy. They always want to sleep with one, or something.’
‘But that is like me.’
‘I know. It’s intolerable.’
We laughed, but I had felt the chill of sudden jealousy; the fear that her remark had been made deliberately to tease.
‘Of course Baby loves it all,’ she went on. ‘The men hum round her like bees. She is so funny with them.’
‘What did she and Sir Magnus do?’
‘Not even I know. Whatever it was, Bijou Ardglass refused to take him on.’
‘She was offered the job?’
‘So I was told. She preferred to go off with Bob.’
‘Why did that stop?’
‘Bob could no longer support her in the style to which she was accustomed—or rather the style to which she was unaccustomed, as Jumbo Ardglass never had much money.’
It was impossible, as ever,