‘We haven’t brought any evening clothes,’ I said.
‘Good God,’ said Moreland, ‘we’re not changing for Donners.’
It was a warm autumnal evening, so that we were all in the garden when Templer’s car drew up at the gate. The vehicle was of just the kind I had predicted. Templer, too, as he jumped out, seemed scarcely to have changed at all. The car was shaped like a torpedo; Templer’s clothes gave the familiar impression – as Stringham used to say – that he was ‘about to dance backwards and forwards in front of a chorus of naked ladies’. That outward appearance was the old Templer, just as he had looked at Dicky Umfraville’s night-club four or five years before. Now, as he strode up the path with the same swagger, I saw there was a change in him. This was more than the fact that he was distinctly fatter. A coarseness of texture had always coloured his elegance. Now, that coarseness had become more than ever marked. He looked hard, even rather savage, as if he had made up his mind to endure life rather than, as formerly, to enjoy it. From the first impression that he had changed hardly at all, I reversed judgment, deciding he had changed a great deal. When he saw me he stepped back melodramatically.
‘Is it really you, Nick?’
‘What’s left.’
I introduced him to the Morelands and to Isobel.
‘I believe you invited me to your wedding, Nick,’ said Templer. ‘Somehow I never manage to get to weddings – it’s an effort even to reach my own.’
‘Have you been having many weddings lately, Peter?’
‘Oh, well, not for a year or two,’ said Templer, suddenly becoming more serious. ‘You knew I married again after Mona?’
‘I didn’t, as a matter of fact.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘How shameful that we should have missed the announcement.’
‘I’m not sure that we made one,’ Templer said. ‘It was all very quiet. Hardly asked a soul. Since then – I don’t know – we’ve been living in the country. Just see a few neighbours. Betty doesn’t like going out much. She has come to Stourwater this week-end, as a matter of fact, but that’s rather exceptional. She felt jumpy for some reason about staying at home. She gets these jumpy fits from time to time. Thinks war’s going to break out all the time.’
He smiled rather uncomfortably. I felt suddenly certain that Templer’s new wife must be responsible for the change that had come over him. At the same time, I tried, quite unsuccessfully, to rationalise in my own mind what exactly this change was. Now that we were face to face and I was talking to him, it was more than ever apparent, almost horrifying. He had slowed up, become more ‘serious’, at the same time lost that understanding, sympathetic manner formerly characteristic of him, so unexpected in a person of his sort. That was my first thought. Then I wondered whether, in fact, he was even less ‘serious’ – if that were possible – determined to get as much fun out of living as he could, whatever the obstacles, whatever the cost. These dissections on my own part were rather absurd; yet there was something not far away from Templer that generated a sense of horror.
‘What a nice colour your car is,’ said Moreland.
I could see he had at once placed Templer in the category of persons he found unsympathetic. That was to be expected. Just as most of the world find it on the whole unusual that anyone should be professionally occupied with the arts, Moreland could never get used to the fact that most people – in this particular case, Templer – lead lives in which the arts play no part whatsoever. That is perhaps an exaggeration of Moreland’s attitude. All the same, he always found difficulty in accustoming himself to complete aesthetic indifference. This narrowness of vision sometimes led Moreland, with all his subtlety in some matters, to complete misunderstanding of others, especially to underestimate some of the people who came his way. On Templer’s side, the meeting had been equally lacking in fellow feeling. He had no doubt been prepared for the Morelands to look – from his point of view – a pretty extraordinary couple. From Templer’s point of view, it had to be admitted, the Morelands did look pretty extraordinary. Matilda was still wearing trousers, bright emerald green in colour, her feet in immensely thick cork-soled sandals, her hair done up on the top of her head, in the fashion of the moment, like a bird’s nest. Moreland had shaved, otherwise made no effort to tidy himself, a carelessly knotted tie slipping away from the buttonless collar of his blue shirt. Templer began to laugh, partly, I supposed, at the thought of our having met again after so long, partly, too, I felt sure, at the strange picture the Morelands presented to one unaccustomed to people like them. Templer must also have known of Matilda’s former relationship with Sir Magnus. Perhaps that was what made him laugh.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘all aboard for Stourwater and the picturesque ruins.’
We climbed into the car. The Morelands were rather silent, because there is always something a shade embarrassing about an old friend suddenly encountering another old friend, quite unknown to you. They were perhaps meditating on their own differences of opinion regarding the desirability of accepting the hospitality of Sir Magnus. Templer himself kept up a running fire of questions, as if anxious to delay the moment when he had to speak of his own life.
‘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 friend. By that time we were entering the park of Stourwater.
‘Look, the castle,’ said Isobel. ‘Nobody warned me it was made of cardboard.’
Cardboard was certainly the material of which walls and keep seemed to be built, as we rounded the final sweep of the drive, coming within sight of a large castellated pile, standing with absurd unreality against a background of oaks, tortured by their antiquity into elephantine and grotesque shapes. From the higher ground at the back, grass, close-cropped by sheep, rolled down towards the greenish pools of the moat. All was veiled in the faint haze of autumn.
‘I told you it was Wagnerian,’ said Moreland.
‘When we wind the horn at the gate, will a sullen dwarf usher us in,’ said Isobel, ‘like Beckford’s at Fonthill or the Castle of Joyous Gard in the Morte d’Arthur?’
‘A female dwarf, perhaps,’ said Moreland, rather maliciously.
‘Don’t miss the black swans,’ said Matilda, disregarding him.
‘An anachronism, I fear,’ said Moreland. ‘Sir Magnus admitted as much to me in an unguarded moment. They come from Australia. Doesn’t it all look as if the safety curtain would descend any moment amid bursts of applause?’
Stourwater was certainly dramatic; yet how unhaunted, how much less ghost-ridden than Stonehurst; though perhaps Sir Magnus himself might leave a spectre behind him. In my memory, the place had been larger, more forbidding, not so elaborately restored. In fact, I was far less impressed than formerly, even experiencing a certain feeling of disappointment. Memory, imagination, time, all building up on that brief visit, had left a magician’s castle (brought into being by some loftier Dr Trelawney), weird and prodigious, peopled by beings impossible to relate to everyday life. Now, Stourwater seemed nearer to being an architectural abortion, a piece of monumental vulgarity, a house where something had gone very seriously wrong. We crossed the glittering water by a causeway, drove under the portcullis and through the outer courtyard, entering the inner court, where a fountain stood in the centre of a sunken garden surrounded by a stone balustrade. Here, in the days when he had been first ingratiating himself with Sir Magnus, Widmerpool had backed his car into one of the ornamental urns filled with flowers.
‘Is Kenneth Widmerpool staying in the house?’ I asked, thinking of that incident.
‘Just driving over after dinner,’ said Templer. ‘Some sort of business to clear up. I’m involved to a small extent, because it’s about my ex-brother-in-law, Bob Duport. Between you and me, I think I’ve been asked partly because Magnus wants me to know what is going on for his own purposes.’
‘What are his own purposes?’
‘I don’t know for certain. Perhaps he wants this particular scheme given a little discreet publicity.’
We had drawn up by the wing of the castle that was used for residence. The girls and Moreland had left the car by then, and were making their way up the steps to the front door. Templer had paused for a moment to fiddle with one of the knobs of the dashboard which for some reason seemed to dissatisfy him. This seemed a good opportunity for learning privately what had happened to Jean; for although by then I no longer thought about her, there is always a morbid interest in following the subsequent career of a woman with whom one has once been in love. That I should have been in this position vis-à-vis his sister, Templer himself, I felt pretty sure, had no idea.
‘Duport is an ex-brother-in-law now?’
‘Jean finally got a divorce from him. They lived apart for quite a time when Bob was running round with Bijou Ardglass. Then they joined up again and went to South America together. However, it didn’t last. You never really knew Jean, did you?’
‘I met her when I stayed with your family years ago – a few times later. What’s happened to her now?’
‘She married a South American – an army officer.’
‘And Bob Duport?’
‘There is some question of his going to Turkey for Magnus. Kenneth has been fixing it.’
‘On business?’
‘Magnus is interested in chromite.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Used for hardening steel.’
By that time we were half-way up the steps, at the top of which the others were waiting.
‘Shall I lead the way?’ said Templer. ‘Magnus was in the Bailiff’s Room when last seen.’
If the outside of Stourwater made a less favourable impression than when I had come there with the Walpole-Wilsons, improvements within were undeniable. Ten years before, the exuberance of the armour, tapestries, pictures, china, furniture, had been altogether too much for the austere aesthetic ideals to which I then subscribed. Time had no doubt modified the uninstructed severity of my own early twenties. Less ascetic, intellectually speaking, more corrupt, perhaps, I could now recognise that individuals live in different ways. They must be taken as they come, Sir Magnus Donners, everyone else. If Sir Magnus liked to make his house like a museum, that was his affair; one must treat it as a museum. In any case, there could be no doubt that protégés like Moreland and Barnby, mistresses like Baby Wentworth and Matilda, had played their part in the castle’s redecoration. Certainly it was now arranged in a manner more in keeping with contemporary fashion. Sir Magnus had cleared out some of the more cumbersome of his belongings, although much remained that was unviable enough.
‘It’s all rather wonderful, Nick, isn’t it?’ said Matilda in a whisper, as we passed through the main hall. ‘Whatever Hugh may say about the Donners taste. How would you like to own it all?’
‘How would you?’
‘I nearly did.’
I laughed, surprised by her directness, always attractive in women. Entering a panelled gallery, Templer opened a door and indicated we were to go in. The room overlooked the garden. Between bookshelves hung drawings: Conder, Steer, John, a couple of Sickerts. Barnby’s nude of Norma, the waitress from Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant, was beside the fireplace, above which stood a florid china statuette of Cupid Chastised. Just as the last of our party crossed the threshold, one of the bookcases on the far side of the room swung forward, revealing itself as an additional door covered with the spines of dummy volumes, through which Sir Magnus Donners himself appeared to greet his guests at exactly the same moment. I wondered whether he had been watching at a peephole. It was like the stage entrance of a famous actor, the conscious modesty of which is designed, by its absolute ease and lack of emphasis, both to prevent the performance from being disturbed at some anti-climax of the play by too deafening a round of applause, at the same time to confirm – what everyone in the theatre knows already – the complete mastery he possesses of his art. The manner
in which Sir Magnus held out his hand also suggested brilliant miming of a distinguished man feeling a little uncomfortable about something.
‘You did not tell me I was to collect one of my oldest friends, Magnus,’ said Templer, addressing his host as if he were on the most familiar terms with him, in spite of any differences between them of age and eminence. ‘Nick and I were at school together.’
Sir Magnus did not answer. He only raised his eyebrows and smiled. Introductions began. While he was shaking hands with Isobel, I observed, from out of the corner of my eye, a woman – whom I assumed to be Templer’s wife – sitting in an armchair with its back towards us in the corner of the room. She was reading a newspaper, which she did not lower at our entry. Sir Magnus shook hands all round, behaving as if he had never before met the Morelands, giving, when he reached me, that curious pump-handle motion to his handshake, terminated by a sudden upward jerk (as if suddenly shutting off from the main a valuable current of good will, of which not a volt too much must be expended), a form of greeting common to many persons with a long habit of public life. Ten years left little mark on him. Possibly the neat grey hair receded a trifle more; the line on one side of the mouth might have been a shade deeper; the eyes – greenish, like Matilda’s – were clear and very cold. Sir Magnus’s mouth was his least comfortable feature. Tall, holding himself squarely, he still possessed the air, conveyed to me when I first set eyes on him, of an athletic bishop or clerical headmaster. This impression was dispelled when he spoke, because he had none of the urbane manner usual to such persons. Unlike Roddy Cutts or Fettiplace-Jones, he was entirely without the patter of the professional politician, even appearing to find difficulty in making ‘small talk’ of any kind whatsoever. When he spoke, it was as if he had forced himself by sheer effort of will into manufacturing a few stereotyped sentences to tide over the trackless wilderness of social life. Such colourless phrases as he achieved were produced with a difficulty, a hesitancy, simulated perhaps, but decidedly effective in their unconcealed ineptness. While he uttered these verbal formalities, the side of his mouth twitched slightly. Like most successful men, he had turned this apparent disadvantage into a powerful weapon of offence and defence, in the way that the sledge-hammer impact of his comment left, by its banality, every other speaker at a standstill, giving him as a rule complete mastery of the conversational field. A vast capacity for imposing boredom, a sense of immensely powerful stuffiness, emanated from him, sapping every drop of vitality from weaker spirits.
Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 2 Page 55