The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell [86]
‘So these are the famous Widmerpool good manners, are they?’ he shouted. ‘This is the celebrated Widmerpool courtesy, of which we have always heard so much. Here is the man who posed as another Lord Chesterfield. Let me go, you whited sepulchre, you serpent, you small-time Judas, coming to another man’s house in the guise of paying a social call, and then holding him down in his own bed.’
The scene was so grotesque that I began to laugh; not altogether happily, it was true, but at least as some form of nervous relief. The two of them wrestling together were pouring with sweat, especially Widmerpool, who was the stronger. He must have been quite powerful, for Stringham was fighting like a maniac. The bed creaked and rocked as if it would break beneath them. And then, quite suddenly, Stringham began laughing too. He laughed and laughed, until he could struggle no more. The combat ceased. Widmerpool stepped back. Stringham lay gasping on the pillows.
‘All right,’ he said, still shaking with laughter, ‘I’ll stay. To tell the truth, I am beginning to feel the need for a little rest myself.’
Widmerpool, whose tie had become twisted in the struggle, straightened his clothes. His dinner-jacket looked more extraordinary than ever. He was panting hard.
‘Is there anything you would like?’ he asked in a formal voice.
‘Yes,’ said Stringham, whose mood was now completely changed. ‘A couple of those little pills in the box on the left of the dressing-table. They will knock me out finally. I do dislike waking at four and thinking things over. Perhaps three of the pills would be wiser, on second thoughts. Half measures are never any good.’
He was getting sleepy again, and spoke in a flat, mechanical tone. All his excitement was over. We gave him the sleeping tablets. He took them, turned away from us, and rolled over on his side.
‘Good-night, all,’ he said.
‘Good-night, Charles.’
‘Good-night, Stringham,’ said Widmerpool, rather severely.
We perfunctorily tidied some of the mess in the immediate neighbourhood of the bed. Stringham’s clothes were piled on a chair. Then we made our way down into the street.
‘Great pity for a man to drink like that,’ said Widmerpool.
I did not answer, largely because I was thinking of other matters: chiefly of how strange a thing it was that I myself should have been engaged in a physical conflict designed to restrict Stringham’s movements: a conflict in which the moving spirit had been Widmerpool. That suggested a whole social upheaval: a positively cosmic change in life’s system. Widmerpool, once so derided by all of us, had become in some mysterious manner a person of authority. Now, in a sense, it was he who derided us; or at least his disapproval had become something far more powerful than the merely defensive weapon it had once seemed.
I remembered that we were not far from the place where formerly Widmerpool had run into Mr. Deacon and Gypsy Jones on the night of the Huntercombes’ dance. Then he had been on his way to a flat in Victoria. I asked if he still lived there with his mother.
‘Still there,’ he said. ‘Though we are always talking of moving. It has great advantages, you know. You must come and see us. You have been there in the past, haven’t you?’
‘I dined with you and your mother once.’
‘Of course. Miss Walpole-Wilson was at dinner, wasn’t she? I remember her saying afterwards that you did not seem a very serious young man.’
‘I saw her brother the other day at the Isbister Retrospective Exhibition.’
‘I do not greatly care for the company of Sir Gavin,’ said Widmerpool. ‘I dislike failure, especially failure in one holding an official position. It is letting all of us down. But—as I was saying—we shall be rather occupied with my new job for a time, so that I expect we shall not be doing much entertaining. When we have settled down, you must come and see us again.’
I was not sure if his ‘we’ was the first person plural of royalty and editors, or whether he spoke to include his mother; as if Mrs. Widmerpool were already a partner with him