The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [45]
‘It is really too extraordinary our meeting again in this way, Nick,’ he said. ‘Though it’s just like a millionaire to make one of the persons staying with him fetch the guests for dinner, instead of using his own chauffeur, but now I’m glad Magnus was running true to form. Do you live in London?’
‘Yes – and you?’
‘We’re at Sunningdale.’
‘Isn’t that where Stringham’s mother, Mrs Foxe, has a house?’
‘Charles Stringham – I haven’t thought of him for years.’
‘Does she still live there?’
‘She does, as a matter of fact. We don’t know them. Rather too grand for us. Odd you should mention Stringham. It wasn’t quite true when I said I hadn’t thought of him for years, because, as it happened, I ran across Mrs Foxe’s naval-officer husband at a golf tournament handicap not so long ago who said something about him.’
‘Stringham was knocking it back pretty hard when I last saw him. What did Buster Foxe say? They don’t much care for each other.’
‘Don’t they? I gathered from Commander Foxe they were great pals. Now, what did he say? Gone right out of my head. No, I know – Stringham is living at Glimber, the house Mrs Foxe inherited from her first husband. It’s huge, uninhabitable, entailed, nobody wants to rent it. Stringham looks after it apparently. He has a former secretary of his mother’s to help him. It’s like being an agent, I suppose.’
‘Sounds rather grim.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Stately home, and all that. Commander Foxe said Charles liked it. Now you come to mention it, he did say something, too, about giving up the bottle. I hadn’t realised Stringham’s drinking had reached the headline category.’
‘He used to hit it fairly hard. The secretary you mention is called Miss Weedon – Tuffy to her intimates. Rather a frightening lady. She has always taken a great hand in arranging Charles’s life. In fact, she had more or less undertaken to stop his drinking at one moment. They even lived in the same flat.’
‘Wasn’t she the Medusa-like figure who appeared at that party Mrs Foxe gave for my symphony?’ said Moreland.
‘She was. Charles Stringham is Mrs Foxe’s son.’
‘It was Miss Weedon who hauled him off home when he was so tight.’
‘It wasn’t a very enjoyable party, anyway,’ said Matilda.
I remembered that it had ended by Moreland’s disappearing with Isobel’s sister, Priscilla. Templer showed no interest at all in these reminiscences. They were not, perhaps, very absorbing in themselves, but he might have been expected to have given them more attention inasmuch as they referred to so old a friend as Stringham.
‘Talking of people we knew at school,’ he said, ‘Kenneth will be at Stourwater this evening.’
‘Kenneth who?’
‘Kenneth Widmerpool.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You’ re a friend of his, aren’t you?’ said Templer, evidently surprised at my not grasping immediately whom he meant. I’ve heard him speak of you. His mother has a cottage near here.’
I saw that it was no longer a question of Stringham and Widmerpool having drawn level as friends in Templer’s mind; the fact was that Widmerpool was now miles ahead. That was clear from Templer’s tone. There was not a flicker of laughter or irony in his employment of Widmerpool’s Christian name, as there had certainly been when I had last seen them together at Dicky Umfraville’s night-club. There was, of course, absolutely no reason why Templer should adopt a satirical tone towards Widmerpool, who had as much right as anyone else to make friends with – if necessary, even to dominate – persons like Templer, who had made fun of him as a schoolboy. It was the juxtaposition of his complete acceptance of Widmerpool with Templer’s equally complete indifference to his old crony, Stringham, that gave the two things an emphasis that certainly jarred a little. Templer had probably not set eyes on him since the day when he had arrived in Stringham’s college room, later driven us all into the ditch in his newly bought car. If it came to that, I never saw Stringham these days myself, while Templer, doing business with Widmerpool for a long time now, had naturally come to regard him as a personal