The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [59]
‘The clasp is broken,’ he said. ‘Look, if I can take it with me now, I’ll put it right in a couple of ticks. I can bring it back on Sunday night, when I turn up with the car.’
‘But that would be wonderful,’ she said. ‘Do you know about brooches?’
‘All about costume jewellery. In the business.’
‘Oh, do tell me about it.’
‘I must be off now,’ he said. ‘Some other time.’
He turned to me, and we checked the time he would bring the car for our return to Aldershot. Then Stevens said goodbye all round.
‘I’ll come to the door with you,’ said Priscilla. ‘I want to hear more about costume jewellery, my favourite subject.’
They went off together.
‘What a nice young man,’ said Frederica. ‘He really made one feel as if one were his own age.’
‘Take care,’ said Umfraville. ‘That’s just what I was like when I was young.’
‘But that’s in his favour,’ she said, ‘surely it is.’
‘Barely twenty,’ said Umfraville, in reminiscence. ‘Blind with enthusiasm. Fighting like a hero on Flanders fields.’
‘Oh, rot,’ said Frederica. ‘You said you were nearly twenty-four when you went to the war.’
‘Well, anyway, look at me now,’ said Umfraville. ‘A lot of good my patriotism did me, a broken-down old RTO.’
‘Cheer up, my pet.’
‘Ah,’ said Umfraville, ‘the heroes of yesterday, they’re the maquereaux of tomorrow.’
‘Well, you’re my maquereau anyway,’ said Frederica, ‘so shut up and have another drink.’
Later, when we were alone together upstairs, Isobel gave a fuller account of herself. There was a lot to talk about. The doctor thought everything all right, the baby likely to arrive in a couple of weeks’ time. There were, indeed, far more things to discuss than could be spoken of at once. They would have to come out gradually. Instead of dealing with myriad problems in a businesslike manner, settling all kind of points that had to be settled, making arrangements about the future – if it could be assumed there was to be a future – we talked of more immediate, more amusing matters.
‘What do you think about Frederica?’ Isobel asked.
‘Not a bad idea.’
‘I think so too.’
‘When did she break the news?’
‘Only yesterday, when he arrived on leave. I was a bit staggered when told. She’s mad about him. I’ve never seen Frederica like that before. The boys get on well with him too, and seem to approve of the prospect.’
Frederica and Dicky Umfraville getting married was something to open up hitherto unexplored fields of possibility. The first thought, that the engagement was grotesque, bizarre, changed shape after a time, developing until one saw their association as one of those emotional hook-ups of the very near and the very far, which make human relationships easier to accept than to rationalize or disentangle. I remembered that if Frederica’s husband, Robin Budd, had lived, his age would not have been far short of Umfraville’s. I asked Isobel if the two of them had ever met.
‘Just saw each other, I think. Rob looked a little like Dicky too.’
‘Where did Frederica pick him up?’
‘With Robert. Dicky Umfraville knew Flavia Wisebite in Kenya. Her father farms there – or did, he died the other day – but of course you know that.’
‘Do you suppose Flavia and Dicky—’
‘I shouldn’t wonder. Anyway, it was an instantaneous click so far as Frederica was concerned.’
‘Frederica is aware, I suppose, that the past is faintly murky.’
‘One wife committed suicide, another married a jockey. Then there was the wife no one knows about – and finally Anne Stepney, who lasted scarcely more than a year, and is now, I hear, living with J. G. Quiggin.’
‘That’s as many as are recorded. But where did Robert contract Mrs Wisebite? That is even more extraordinary.’
‘One never knows with Robert. Tell me about her. She is sister of your old school pal, Charles Stringham. What else?’
‘Charles never saw much of her after they were