‘He lives near Maidenhead.’
‘Too far. He must be mad. Is he married?’
‘His wife has just left him.’
‘There you are. Women are all the same. My wife left me. Has your wife left you, Nick?’
‘I’m not married.’
‘Lucky man. Who was Peter’s wife, as they say?’
‘A model called Mona.’
‘Sounds like the beginning of a poem. Well, I should have thought better of her. One of those long-haired painter fellows must have got her into bad habits. Leaving her husband, indeed. She oughtn’t to have left Peter. I was always very fond of Peter. It was his friends I couldn’t stand.’
‘Let’s go.’
‘Look here, do let’s have another drink. What happened to Le Bas?’
‘He is going to be taken home in an ambulance.’
‘Is he too tight to walk?’
‘He had a stroke.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘No—Brandreth is looking after him.’
‘What an awful fate. Why Brandreth?’
‘Brandreth is a doctor.’
‘Hope I’m never ill when Brandreth is about, or he might look after me. I’m not feeling too good at the moment as a matter of fact. Perhaps we’d better go, or Brandreth will start treating me too. It was Widmerpool’s speech, of course. Knocked Le Bas out. Knocked him out cold. Nearly knocked me out too. Do you remember when we got Le Bas arrested?’
‘Let’s go to your flat.’
‘West Halkin Street. Where I used to live before I was married. Surely you’ve been there.’
‘No.’
‘Ought to have asked you, Nick. Ought to have asked you. Been very remiss about things like that.’
He was extremely drunk, but his legs seemed fairly steady beneath him. We went upstairs and out into the street.
‘Taxi?’
‘No,’ said Stringham. ‘Let’s walk for a bit. I want to cool off. It was bloody hot in there. I don’t wonder Le Bas had a stroke.’
There was a rich blue sky over Piccadilly. The night was stiflingly hot. Stringham walked with almost exaggerated sobriety. It was remarkable considering the amount he had drunk.
‘Why did you have so many drinks tonight?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I do sometimes. Rather often nowadays, as a matter of fact. I felt I couldn’t face Le Bas and his Old Boys without an alcoholic basis of some sort. Yet for some inexplicable reason I wanted to go. That was why I had a few before I arrived.’
He put out his hand and touched the railings of the Green Park as we passed them.
‘You said you were not married, didn’t you, Nick?’
‘Yes.’
‘Got a nice girl?’
‘Yes.’
‘Take my advice and don’t get married.’
‘All right.’
‘What about Widmerpool. Is he married?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘I’m surprised at that. Widmerpool is the kind of man to attract a woman. A good, sensible man with no nonsense about him. In that overcoat he used to wear he would be irresistible. Quite irresistible. Do you remember that overcoat?’
‘It was before my time.’
‘It’s a frightful shame,’ said Stringham. ‘A frightful shame, the way these women go on. They are all the same. They leave me. They leave Peter. They will probably leave you. . . . I say, Nick, I am feeling extraordinarily odd. I think I will just sit down here for a minute or two.’
I thought he was going to collapse and took his arm. However, he settled down in a sitting position on the edge of the stone coping from which the railings rose.
‘Long, deep breaths,’ he said. ‘Those are the things.’
‘Come on, let’s try and get a cab.’
‘Can’t, old boy. I just feel too, too sleepy to get a cab.’
As it happened, there seemed to be no taxis about at that moment. In spite of what must have been the intense discomfort of where he sat, Stringham showed signs of dropping off to sleep, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the railings. It was difficult to know what to do. In this state he could hardly reach his flat on foot. If a taxi appeared, he might easily refuse to enter it. I remembered how once at school he had sat down on a staircase and refused to move, on the grounds that so many annoying things had happened that afternoon that further struggle against life was useless. This was just such another occasion. Even when sober, he possessed that complete recklessness of behaviour that belongs to certain highly strung persons. I was still looking down at him, trying to decide on the next step, when someone spoke just behind me.
‘Why is Stringham sitting there like that?’
It was Widmerpool’s thick, accusing voice. He asked the question with a note of authority that suggested his personal responsibility to see that people did not sit about in Piccadilly at night.
‘I stayed to make sure everything was done about Le Bas that should be done,’ he said. ‘I think Brandreth knows his job. I gave him my address in case of difficulties. It was a disagreeable thing to happen. The heat, I suppose. It ruined the few words I was about to say. A pity. I thought I would have a breath of fresh air after what we had been through, but the night is very warm even here in the open.’
He said all this with his usual air of immense importance.
‘The present problem is how to get Stringham to his flat.’
‘What is wrong with him? I wonder if it is the same as Le Bas. Perhaps something in the food——’
Widmerpool was always ready to feel disturbed regarding any question of health. In France he had been a great consumer of patent medicines. He looked nervously at Stringham. I saw that he feared the attack of some mysterious sickness that might soon infect himself.
‘Stringham has had about a gallon to drink.’
‘How foolish of him.’
I was about to make some reply to the effect that the speeches had needed something to wash them down with, but checked any such comment since Widmerpool’s help was obviously needed to get Stringham home, and I thought it better not to risk offending him. I therefore muttered something that implied agreement.
‘Where does he live?’
‘West Halkin Street.’
Widmerpool acted quickly. He strolled to the kerb. A cab seemed to rise out of the earth at that moment. Perhaps all action, even summoning a taxi when none is there, is basically a matter of the will. Certainly there had been no sign of a conveyance a second before. Widmerpool made a curious, pumping movement, using the whole of his arm, as if dragging down the taxi by a rope. It drew up in front of us. Widmerpool turned towards Stringham, whose eyes were still closed.
‘Take the other arm,’ he said, peremptorily.
Although he made no resistance, this intervention aroused Stringham. He began to speak very quietly:
‘Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide,
And wash my Body whence the Life has died . . .’
We shoved him on to the back seat, where he sat between us, still murmuring to himself:
‘. . . And lay me shrouded in the living leaf
By some not unfrequented garden-side . . .
I think that’s quite a good description of the Green Park, Nick, don’t you. . . . “Some not unfrequented garden-side” . . . Wish I sat here more often . . . Jolly nice. . . .’
‘Does he habitually get in this state?’ Widmerpool asked.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for years.’
‘I thought you were a close friend of his. You used to be—at school.’
‘That’s a long time ago.’
Widmerpool seemed aggrieved at the news that Stringham and I no longer saw each other regularly. Once decided in his mind on a given picture of what some aspect of life was like, he objected to any modification of the design. He possessed an absolutely rigid view of human relationships. Into this, imagination scarcely entered, and whatever was lost in gras
ping the niceties of character was amply offset by a simplification of practical affairs. Occasionally, it was true. I had known Widmerpool involved in situations which were extraordinary chiefly because they were entirely misunderstood, but on the whole he probably gained more than he lost by these limitations; at least in the spheres that attracted him. Stringham now lay between us, as if fast asleep.
‘Where is he working at present?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It was a good thing he left Donners-Brebner,’ said Widmerpool. ‘He was doing neither himself nor the company any good.’
‘Bill Truscott has gone, too, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Widmerpool, looking straight ahead of him. ‘Truscott had become very interested in the by products of coal and found it advantageous to make a change.’
We got Stringham out of the taxi on arrival without much difficulty and found his latchkey in a waistcoat pocket. Inside the flat, I was immediately reminded of his room at school. There were the eighteenth-century prints of the racehorses, Trimalchio and the The Pharisee; the same large, rather florid photograph of his mother: a snapshot of his father still stuck in the corner of its frame. However, the picture of ‘Boffles’ Stringham—as I now thought of him after meeting Dicky Umfraville—showed a decidedly older man than the pipe-smoking, open-shirted figure I remembered from the earlier snapshot. The elder String-ham, looking a bit haggard and wearing a tie, sat on a seat beside a small, energetic, rather brassy lady, presumably his French wife. He had evidently aged considerably. I wondered if friendship with Dicky Umfraville had had anything to do with this. Opposite these photographs was a drawing by Modigliani, and an engraving of a seventeenth-century mansion done in the style of Wenceslaus Hollar. This was Glimber, the Warringtons’ house, left to Stringham’s mother during her lifetime by her first husband. On another wall was a set of coloured prints illustrating a steeplechase ridden by monkeys mounted on dogs.
‘What are we going to do with him?’
‘Put him to bed,’ said Widmerpool, speaking as if any other action were inconceivable.
Widmerpool and I, therefore, set out to remove Stringham’s clothes, get him into some pyjamas, and place him between the sheets. This was a more difficult job than might be supposed. His stiff shirt seemed riveted to him. However, we managed to get it off at last, though not without tearing it. In these final stages, Stringham himself returned to consciousness.
‘Look here,’ he said, suddenly sitting up on the bed, ‘what is happening? People seem to be treating me roughly. Am I being thrown out of somewhere? If so, where? And what have I done to deserve such treatment? I am perfectly prepared to listen to reason and admit that I was in the wrong, and pay for anything I have broken. That is provided, of course, that I was in the wrong. Nick, why are you letting this man hustle me? I seem for some reason to be in bed in the middle of the afternoon. Really, my habits get worse and worse. I am even now full of good resolutions for getting up at half-past seven every morning. But who is this man? I know his face.’
‘It’s Widmerpool. You remember Widmerpool?’
‘Remember Widmerpool . . .’ said Stringham. ‘Remember Widmerpool. . . . Do I remember Widmerpool? . . . How could I ever forget Widmerpool? . . . How could anybody forget Widmerpool? . . .’
‘We thought you needed help, Stringham,’ said Widmerpool, in a very matter-of-fact voice. ‘So we put you to bed.’
‘You did, did you?’
Stringham lay back in the bed, looking fixedly before him. His manner was certainly odd, but his utterance was no longer confused.
‘You needed a bit of looking after,’ said Widmerpool.
‘That time is past,’ said Stringham.
He began to get out of bed.
‘No. . . .’
Widmerpool took a step forward. He made as if to restrain Stringham from leaving the bed, holding both his stubby hands in front of him, as if warming them before a fire.
‘Look here,’ said Stringham, ‘I must be allowed to get in and out of my own bed. That is a fundamental human right. Other people’s beds may be another matter. In them, another party is concerned. But ingress and egress of one’s own bed is unassailable.’
‘Much better stay where you are,’ said Widmerpool, in a voice intended to be soothing.
‘Nick, are you a party to this?’
‘Why not call it a day?’
‘Take my advice,’ said Widmerpool. ‘We know what is best for you.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘For your own good.’
‘I haven’t got my own good at heart.’
‘We will get you anything you want.’
‘Curse your charity.’
Once more Stringham attempted to get out of the bed. He had pushed the clothes back, when Widmerpool threw himself on top of him, holding Stringham bodily there. While they struggled together, Stringham began to yell at the top of his voice.
‘So these are the famous Widmerpool good manners, are they?’ he shouted. ‘This is the celebrated Widmerpool courtesy, of which we have always heard so much. Here is the man who posed as another Lord Chesterfield. Let me go, you whited sepulchre, you serpent, you small-time Judas, coming to another man’s house in the guise of paying a social call, and then holding him down in his own bed.’
The scene was so grotesque that I began to laugh; not altogether happily, it was true, but at least as some form of nervous relief. The two of them wrestling together were pouring with sweat, especially Widmerpool, who was the stronger. He must have been quite powerful, for Stringham was fighting like a maniac. The bed creaked and rocked as if it would break beneath them. And then, quite suddenly, Stringham began laughing too. He laughed and laughed, until he could struggle no more. The combat ceased. Widmerpool stepped back. Stringham lay gasping on the pillows.
‘All right,’ he said, still shaking with laughter, ‘I’ll stay. To tell the truth, I am beginning to feel the need for a little rest myself.’
Widmerpool, whose tie had become twisted in the struggle, straightened his clothes. His dinner-jacket looked more extraordinary than ever. He was panting hard.
‘Is there anything you would like?’ he asked in a formal voice.
‘Yes,’ said Stringham, whose mood was now completely changed. ‘A couple of those little pills in the box on the left of the dressing-table. They will knock me out finally. I do dislike waking at four and thinking things over. Perhaps three of the pills would be wiser, on second thoughts. Half measures are never any good.’
He was getting sleepy again, and spoke in a flat, mechanical tone. All his excitement was over. We gave him the sleeping tablets. He took them, turned away from us, and rolled over on his side.
‘Good-night, all,’ he said.
‘Good-night, Charles.’
‘Good-night, Stringham,’ said Widmerpool, rather severely.
We perfunctorily tidied some of the mess in the immediate neighbourhood of the bed. Stringham’s clothes were piled on a chair. Then we made our way down into the street.
‘Great pity for a man to drink like that,’ said Widmerpool.
I did not answer, largely because I was thinking of other matters: chiefly of how strange a thing it was that I myself should have been engaged in a physical conflict designed to restrict Stringham’s movements: a conflict in which the moving spirit had been Widmerpool. That suggested a whole social upheaval: a positively cosmic change in life’s system. Widmerpool, once so derided by all of us, had become in some mysterious manner a person of authority. Now, in a sense, it was he who derided us; or at least his disapproval had become something far more powerful than the merely defensive weapon it had once seemed.
I remembered that we were not far from the place where formerly Widmerpool had run into Mr. Deacon and Gypsy Jones on the night of the Huntercombes’ dance. Then he had been on his way to a flat in Victoria. I asked if he still lived there with his mother.
‘Still there,’ he said. ‘Though we are a
lways talking of moving. It has great advantages, you know. You must come and see us. You have been there in the past, haven’t you?’
‘I dined with you and your mother once.’
‘Of course. Miss Walpole-Wilson was at dinner, wasn’t she? I remember her saying afterwards that you did not seem a very serious young man.’
‘I saw her brother the other day at the Isbister Retrospective Exhibition.’
‘I do not greatly care for the company of Sir Gavin,’ said Widmerpool. ‘I dislike failure, especially failure in one holding an official position. It is letting all of us down. But—as I was saying—we shall be rather occupied with my new job for a time, so that I expect we shall not be doing much entertaining. When we have settled down, you must come and see us again.’
I was not sure if his ‘we’ was the first person plural of royalty and editors, or whether he spoke to include his mother; as if Mrs. Widmerpool were already a partner with him in his bill-broking. We said good-night, and I wished him luck in the Acceptance World. It was time to make for Jean’s. She was reaching London by a late train that evening, again lodged in the flat at the back of Rutland Gate.
On the way there I took from my pocket the postcard she had sent telling me when to arrive. I read it over, as I had already done so many times that day. There was no mistake. I should be there at the time she asked. The events of the evening seemed already fading into unreality at the prospect of seeing her once more.
The card she had sent was of French origin, in colour, showing a man and woman seated literally one on top of the other in an armchair upholstered with crimson plush. These two exchanged ardent glances. They were evidently on the best of terms, because the young man, fair, though at the same time rather semitic of feature, was squeezing the girl’s arm just above the elbow. Wearing a suit of rich brown material, a tartan tie and a diamond ring on the third finger of his right hand, his face, as he displayed a row of dazzling teeth, reminded me of Prince Theodoric’s profile—as the Prince might have been painted by Isbister. The girl smiled back approvingly as she balanced on his knee.
‘Doesn’t she look like Mona?’ Jean had written on the back. Dark, with corkscrew curls, the girl was undeniably pretty, dressed in a pink frock, its short sleeves frilled with white, the whole garment, including the frills, covered with a pattern of small black spots. The limits of the photograph caused her legs to fade suddenly from the picture, an unexpected subordination of design created either to conceal an impression of squatness, or possibly a purely visual effect—the result of foreshortening—rather than because these lower limbs failed in the eyes of the photographer to attain a required standard of elegance. For whichever reason, the remaining free space at the foot of the postcard was sufficient to allow the title of the caption below to be printed in long, flourishing capitals:
Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 1 Page 67