‘Indeed, Nicholas. What sort of a book?’
‘A novel, Kenneth.’
‘Has it been published?’
‘A few months ago.’
‘Oh.’
His ignorance of novels and what happened about them was evidently profound. That was, after all, reasonable enough. Perhaps it was just lack of interest on his part. Whatever the cause, he looked not altogether approving, and did not enquire the name of the book. However, probably feeling a moment later that his reply may have sounded a shade flat, he added: ‘Good . . . good,’ rather in the manner of Le Bas himself, when faced with an activity of which he was uninformed and suspicious, though at the same time unjustified in categorically forbidding.
‘As a matter of fact I am making some notes for a book myself,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Quite a different sort of book from yours, of course. So we may be authors together. Do you always come to these dinners? I have been abroad, or otherwise prevented, on a number of occasions, and thought I would see what had happened to everybody. One sometimes makes useful contacts in such ways.’
Le Bas himself arrived in the room at that moment, bursting through the door tumultuously, exactly as if he were about to surprise the party assembled there at some improper activity. It was in this explosive way that he had moved about the house at school. For a second he made me feel as if I were back again under his surveillance; and one young man, with very fair hair, whose name I did not know, went scarlet in the face at his former housemaster’s threatening impetuosity, just as if he himself had a guilty conscience.
However, Le Bas, as it turned out, was in an excellent humour. He went round the room shaking hands with everyone, making some comment to each of us, more often than not hopelessly inappropriate, showing that he had mistaken the Old Boy’s name or generation. In spite of that I was aware of a feeling of warmth towards him that I had never felt when at school; perhaps because he seemed to represent, like a landscape or building, memories of a vanished time. He had become, if not history, at least part of one’s own autobiography. In his infinitely ancient dinner-jacket and frayed tie he looked, as usual, wholly unchanged. His clothes were as old as Sillery’s, though far better cut. Tall, curiously Teutonic in appearance, still rubbing his red, seemingly chronically sore eyes, as from time to time he removed his rimless glasses, he came at last to the end of the diners, who had raggedly formed up in line round the room, as if some vestige of school discipline was reborn in them at the appearance of their housemaster. After the final handshake, he took up one of those painful, almost tortured positions habitually affected by him, this particular one seeming to indicate that he had just landed on his heels in the sand after making the long jump.
Maiden, who, as I have said, was one of the organisers of the dinner, and was in the margarine business, now began fussing, as if he thought that by his personal exertions alone would anyone get anything to eat that night. He came up to me, muttering agitatedly.
‘Another of your contemporaries accepted—Stringham,’ he said. ‘I suppose you don’t know if he is turning up? We really ought to go into dinner soon. Should we wait for him? It is really too bad of people to be late for this sort of occasion.’
He spoke as if I, or at least all my generation, were responsible for the delay. The news that Stringham might be coming to the dinner surprised me. I asked Maiden about his acceptance of the invitation.
‘He doesn’t turn up as a rule,’ Maiden explained, ‘but I ran into him the other night at the Silver Slipper and he promised to come. He said he would attend if he were sober enough by Friday. He wrote down the time and place on a menu and put it in his pocket. What do you think?’
‘I should think we had better go in.’
Maiden nodded, and screwed up his yellowish, worried face, which seemed to have taken on sympathetic colouring from the commodity he marketed. I remembered him as a small boy, perpetually preoccupied with the fear that he would be late for school or games: this tyranny of Time evidently pursuing him no less in later life. Finally, his efforts caused us to troop into the room where we were to dine. From what I had heard of Stringham recently, I thought his appearance at such a dinner extremely unlikely.
At the dinner table I found myself between Templer and a figure who always turned up at these dinners whose name I did not know: a middle-aged—even elderly, he then seemed—grey-moustached man. I had, rather half-heartedly, tried to keep a place next to me for Stringham, but gave up the idea when this person diffidently asked if he might occupy the chair. There were, in any case, some spare places at the end of the table, where Stringham could sit, if he arrived, as a certain amount of latitude always existed regarding the size of the party. It was to be presumed that the man with the grey moustache had been at Corderey’s, in the days before Le Bas took over the house; if so, he was the sole survivor from that period who ever put in an appearance. I remembered Maiden had once commented to me on the fact that one of Corderey’s Old Boys always turned up, although no one knew him. He had seemed perfectly happy before dinner, drinking a glass of sherry by himself. Hitherto, he had made no effort whatever to talk to any of the rest of the party. Le Bas had greeted him, rather unenthusiastically, with the words ‘Hullo, Tolland’; but Le Bas was so notoriously vague regarding nomenclature that this name could be accepted only after corroboration. Something about his demeanour reminded me of Uncle Giles, though this man was, of course, considerably younger. There had been a Tolland at school with me, but I had known him only by sight. I asked Templer whether he had any news of Mrs. Erdleigh and Jimmy Stripling.
‘I think she is fairly skinning Jimmy,’ he said, laughing. ‘They are still hard at it. I saw Jimmy the other day in Pimm’s.’
The time having come round for another tea at the Ufford, I myself had visited Uncle Giles fairly recently. While there I had enquired, perhaps unwisely, about Mrs. Erdleigh. The question had been prompted partly by curiosity as to what his side of the story might be, partly from an inescapable though rather morbid interest in what happened to Stripling. I should have known better than to have been surprised by the look of complete incomprehension that came over Uncle Giles’s face. It was similar technique, though put into more absolute execution, that Quiggin had used when asked about St. John Clarke. No doubt it would have been better to have left the matter of Mrs. Erdleigh alone. I should have known from the start that interrogation would be unproductive.
‘Mrs. Erdleigh?’
He had spoken not only as if he had never heard of Mrs. Erdleigh but as if even the name itself could not possibly belong to anyone he had ever encountered.
‘The lady who told our fortunes.’
‘What fortunes?’
‘When I was last here.’
‘Can’t understand what you’re driving at.’
‘I met her at tea when I last came here—Mrs. Erdleigh.’
‘Believe there was someone of that name staying here.’
‘She came in and you introduced me.’
‘Rather an actressy woman, wasn’t she? Didn’t stay very long. Always talking about her troubles, so far as I can remember. Hadn’t she been married to a Yangtze pilot, or was that another lady? There was a bit of a fuss about the bill, I believe. Interested in fortune-telling, was she? How did you discover that?’
‘She put the cards out for us.’
‘Never felt very keen about all that fortune-telling stuff,’ said Uncle Giles, not unkindly. ‘Doesn’t do the nerves any good, in my opinion. Rotten lot of people, most of them, who take it up.’
Obviously the subject was to be carried no further. Perhaps Mrs. Erdleigh, to use a favourite phrase of my uncle’s, had ‘let him down’. Evidently she herself had been removed from his life as neatly as if by a surgical operation, and, by this mysterious process of voluntary oblivion, was excluded even from his very consciousness; all done, no doubt, by an effort of will. Possibly everyone could live equally untrammelled lives with the same determination. However, this men
tion of Uncle Giles is by the way.
‘Jimmy is an extraordinary fellow,’ said Templer, as if pondering my question. ‘I can’t imagine why Babs married him. All the same, he is more successful with the girls than you might think.’
Before he could elaborate this theme, his train of thought, rather to my relief, was interrupted. The cause of this was the sudden arrival of Stringham. He looked horribly pale, and, although showing no obvious sign of intoxication, I suspected that he had already had a lot to drink. His eyes were glazed, and, holding himself very erect, he walked with the slow dignity of one who is not absolutely sure what is going on round him. He went straight up to the head of the table where Le Bas was sitting and apologised for his lateness—the first course was being cleared—returning down the room to occupy the spare chair beside Ghika at the other end.
‘Charles looks as if he has been hitting the martinis pretty hard,’ said Templer.
I agreed. After a consultation with the wine waiter, Stringham ordered a bottle of champagne. Since Ghika had already provided himself with a whisky and soda there was evidently no question of splitting it with his next-door neighbour. Templer commented on this to me, and laughed. He seemed to have obtained relief from having discussed the collapse of his marriage with a friend who knew something of the circumstances. He was more cheerful now and spoke of his plans for selling the house near Maidenhead. We began to talk of things that had happened at school.
‘Do you remember when Charles arranged for Le Bas to be arrested by the police?’ said Templer. ‘The Braddock alias Thorne affair.’
We were sitting too far away from Le Bas for this remark to be overheard by him. Templer looked across to where Stringham was sitting and caught his eye. He jerked his head in Le Bas’s direction and held his own wrists together as if he wore handcuffs. Stringham seemed to understand his meaning at once. His face brightened, and he made as if to catch Ghika by the collar. This action had to be explained to Ghika, and, during the interlude, Parkinson, who was on Templer’s far side, engaged him in conversation about the Test Match.
I turned to the man with the grey moustache. He seemed to be expecting an approach of some sort, because, before I had time to speak, he said:
‘I’m Tolland.’
‘You were at Corderey’s, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, I was. Seems a long time ago now.’
‘Did you stay on into Le Bas’s time?’
‘No. Just missed him.’
He was infinitely melancholy; gentle in manner, but with a suggestion of force behind this sad kindliness.
‘Was Umfraville there in your time?’
‘R. H. J. Umfraville?’
‘I think so. He’s called “Dicky”.’
Tolland gave a slow smile.
‘We overlapped,’ he admitted.
There was a pause.
‘Umfraville was my fag,’ said Tolland, as if drawing the fact from somewhere very deep down within him. ‘At least I believe he was. I was quite a bit higher up in the school, of course, so I don’t remember him very well.’
A terrible depression seemed to seize him at the thought of this great seniority of his to Umfraville. There was a lack of serenity about Tolland at close quarters, quite different from the manner in which he had carried off his own loneliness in a crowd. I felt rather uneasy at the thought of having to deal with him, perhaps for the rest of dinner. Whitney was on the other side and there was absolutely no hope of his lending a hand in a case of that sort.
‘Umfraville a friend of your?’ asked Tolland.
He spoke almost as if condoling with me.
‘I’ve just met him. He said he might be coming tonight.’
Tolland looked at me absently. I thought it might be better to abandon the subject of Umfraville. However, a moment or two later he himself returned to it.
‘I don’t think Umfraville will come tonight,’ he said. ‘I heard he’d just got married.’
It certainly seemed unlikely that even Umfraville would turn up for dinner at this late stage in the meal, though the reason given was unexpected, even scriptural. Tolland now seemed to regret having volunteered the information.
‘Who did he marry?’
This question discomposed him even further. He cleared his throat several times and took a gulp of claret, nearly choking himself.
‘As a matter of fact I believe she is a distant cousin of mine—perhaps not,’ he said. ‘I can never remember that sort of thing—yes, she is, though. Of course she is.’
‘Yes?’
‘One of the Bridgnorth girls—Anne, I think.’
‘Anne Stepney?’
‘Yes, yes. That’s the one. You probably know her.’
‘I do.’
‘Thought you would.’
‘But she is years younger.’
‘She is a bit younger. Yes, she is a bit younger. Quite a bit younger. And he has been married before, of course.’
‘It makes his fourth wife, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, I believe it does. His fourth wife. Pretty sure it does make his fourth.’
Tolland looked at me in absolute despair, I think not so much at the predicament in which Anne Stepney had involved herself, as at the necessity for such enormities to emerge in conversation. The news was certainly unforeseen.
‘What do the Bridgnorths think about it?’
It was perhaps heartless to press him on such a point, but, having been told something so extraordinary as this, I wanted to hear as much as possible about the circumstances. Rather unexpectedly, he seemed relieved to report on that aspect of the marriage.
‘The fellow who told me in the Guards’ Club said they were making the best of it.’
‘There was no announcement?’
‘They were married in Paris,’ said Tolland. ‘So this fellow in the Guards’ Club—or was it Arthur’s?—told me. My brother, Warminster, when he was alive, used to talk about Umfraville. I think he liked him. Perhaps he didn’t. But I think he did.’
‘I was at school with a Tolland.’
‘My nephew. Did you know his brother, Erridge? Erridge has succeeded now. Funny boy.’
Sir Gavin Walpole-Wilson had mentioned a ‘Norah Tolland’ as friend of his daughter, Eleanor. She turned out to be a niece.
‘Warminster had ten children. Big family for these days.’
We rose at that moment to drink the King’s health; and Le Bas’s. Then Le Bas stood up, gripping the table with both hands as if he proposed to overturn it. This was in preparation for the delivery of his accustomed speech, which varied hardly at all year by year. His guttural, carefully enunciated consonants echoed through the room.
‘. . . cannot fail to be gratifying to see so many of my former pupils here tonight . . . do not really know what to say to you all . . . certainly shall not make a long speech . . . these annual meetings have their importance . . . encourage a sense of continuity . . . give perhaps an opportunity of taking stock . . . friendship . . . I’ve said to some of you before . . . needs keeping up . . . probably remember, most of you, lines quoted by me on earlier occasions . . .
And I sat by the shelf till I lost myself,
And roamed in a crowded mist,
And heard lost voices and saw lost looks,
As I pored on an old School List.
. . . verses not, of course, in the modern manner . . . some of us do not find such appeals to sentiment very sympathetic . . . typically Victorian in their emphasis . . . all the . . . rather well describe what most of us—well—at least some of us—may—feel—experience—when we meet and talk over our . . .’
Here Le Bas, as usual, paused; probably from the conviction that the word ‘schooldays’ had accumulated various associations in the minds of his listeners to which he was unwilling to seem to appeal. The use of hackneyed words had always been one of his preoccupations. He was, I think, dimly aware that his own bearing was somewhat clerical, and was accordingly particularly anxious to avoid the appea
rance of preaching a sermon. He compromised at last with ‘. . . other times . . .’ returning, almost immediately, to the poem; as if the increased asperity that the lines now assumed would purge him from the imputation of sentimentality to which he had referred. He cleared his throat harshly.
‘. . . You will remember how it goes later . . .
There were several duffers and several bores,
Whose faces I’ve half forgot,
Whom I lived among, when the world was young
And who talked no end of rot;
. . . of course I do not mean to suggest that there was anyone like that at my house . . .’
This comment always caused a certain amount of mild laughter and applause. That evening Whitney uttered some sort of a cry reminiscent of the hunting field, while Widmerpool grinned and drummed on the tablecloth with his fork, slightly shaking his head at the same time to indicate that he did not at all concur with Le Bas in supposing his former pupils entirely free from such failings.
‘. . . certainly nobody of that sort here tonight . . . but at the same time . . . no good pretending that all time spent at school was—entirely blissful . . . certainly not for a housemaster . . .’
There was more restrained laughter. Le Bas’s voice tailed away. In his accustomed manner he had evidently tried to steer clear of any suggestion that schooldays were the happiest period of a man’s life, but at the same time feared that by tacking too much he might become enmeshed in dangerous admissions from which escape could be difficult. This had always been one of his main anxieties as a schoolmaster. He would go some distance along a path indicated by common sense, but overcome by caution, would stop half-way and behave in an unexpected, illogical manner. Most of the conflicts between himself and individual boys could be traced to these hesitations at the last moment. Now he paused, beginning again in more rapid sentences:
‘. . . as I have already said . . . do not intend to make a long, prosy after-dinner speech . . . nothing more boring . . . in fact my intention is—as at previous dinners—to ask some of you to say a word or two about your own activities since we last met together . . . For example, perhaps Fettiplace-Jones might tell us something of what is going forward in the House of Commons . . .’
Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 1 Page 65