The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [60]
We thanked Sir Magnus profusely. He bowed us out. There was not much room in Widmerpool’s car. We charged insecurely through murky lanes.
‘What happened to Peter’s wife?’ asked Widmerpool. ‘She is rather delicate, isn’t she? I have hardly met her.’
We gave him some account of the Stourwater evening.
‘You seem all to have behaved in an extraordinary manner,’ said Widmerpool. ‘There is a side of Magnus of which I cannot altogether approve, his taste for buffoonery of that kind. I don’t like it myself, and you would be surprised at the stories such goings-on give rise to. Disgusting stories. Totally untrue, of course, but mud sticks. You know Magnus will sit up working now until two or three in the morning. I know his habits.’
‘What is wrong with Betty Templer?’ I asked.
‘I have been told that Peter neglects her,’ said Widmerpool. ‘I understand she has always been rather a silly girl. Someone should have thought of that before she became involved in your ragging. It was her husband’s place to look after her.’
We arrived at the Morelands’ cottage.
‘Come in and have a drink,’ said Moreland.
‘I never touch alcohol when I’m driving,’ said Widmerpool, ‘more especially when in uniform.’
‘A soft drink?’
‘Thanks, no.’
‘I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ said Matilda.
‘No, Mrs Moreland, I will push on.’
The car’s headlights illuminated a stretch of road; then the glare disappeared from sight. We moved into the house.
‘Who was that awful man?’ said Moreland.
‘You met him with me once in a nursing home.’
‘No recollection.’
‘What a party,’ said Isobel. ‘Some of it was rather enjoyable, all the same.’
‘What do you think of Stourwater?’ asked Matilda. ‘I find it really rather wonderful, in spite of everything.’
‘Eldorado banal de tous les vieux garçons,’ said Moreland.
‘But that was Cythera,’ said Isobel, ‘the island of love. Do you think love flourishes at Stourwater?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Moreland. ‘Love means such different things to different people.’
3
EVERY CHRISTMAS, as I have said, Albert used to send my mother a letter drafted in a bold, sloping, dowager’s hand, the mauve ink of the broad nib-strokes sinking deep, spreading, into the porous surface of the thick, creamy writing paper with scalloped edge. He had kept that up for years. This missive, composed in the tone of a dispatch from a distant outpost of empire, would contain a detailed account of his recent life, state of health, plans for the future. Albert expressed himself well on paper, with careful formality. In addition to these annual letters, he would, every three or four years, pay my mother a visit on his ‘day off’. These visits became rarer as he grew older. During the twenty-five years or so after we left Stonehurst, I saw him on such occasions twice, perhaps three times; one of these meetings was soon after the war, when I was still a schoolboy; another, just before ‘coming down’ from the university. Perhaps there was a third. I cannot be sure. Certainly, at our last encounter, I remember thinking Albert remarkably unchanged from Stonehurst days: fatter, undeniably, though on the whole additional flesh suited him. He had now settled down to be a fat man, with the professional fat man’s privileges and far from negligible status in life. He still supported a chronic weariness of spirit with an irony quite brutal in its unvarnished view of things. His dark-blue suit, assumed ceremonially for the call, gave him a rather distinguished appearance, brown canvas, rubber-soled shoes temporarily substituted for the traditional felt slippers (which one pictured as never renovated or renewed), adding a seedy, nearly sinister touch. He could have passed for a depressed, incurably indolent member of some royal house (there was a look of Prince Theodoric) in hopeless exile. The ‘girl from Bristol’ had taken him in hand, no doubt bullied him a bit, at the same time arranged a life in general tolerable for both of them. She had caused him to find employment in hotels where good wages were paid, good cooking relatively