The effect of his discourse on those sitting round the table had been mixed. Fettiplace-Jones’s long, handsome, pasty face assumed a serious, even worried expression, implying neither agreement nor disagreement with what was being said: merely a public indication that, as a Member of Parliament, he was missing nothing. It was as if he were waiting for the Whip’s notification of which way he should vote. Parkinson gave a kind of groan of boredom, which I heard distinctly, although he was separated from me by Templer. Tolland, on the other hand, leant forward as if he feared to miss a syllable. Simson looked very stern. Whitney and Brandreth had begun a whispered conversation together. Maiden, who was next to Widmerpool, was throwing anxious, almost distracted glances about him. Ghika, like Tolland, leant forward. He fixed his huge black eyes on Widmerpool, concentrating absolutely on his words, but whether with interest, or boredom of an intensity that might lead even to physical assault, it was impossible to say. Templer had sat back in his chair, clearly enjoying every phrase to the full. Stringham also expressed his appreciation, though only by the faintest smile, as if he saw all through a cloud. Then, suddenly, the scene was brought abruptly to a close.
‘Look at Le Bas,’ said Templer.
‘It’s a stroke,’ said Tolland.
Afterwards—I mean weeks or months afterwards, when I happened upon any of the party then present, or heard the incident discussed—there was facetious comment suggesting that Le Bas’s disabling attack had been directly brought about by Widmerpool’s speech. Certainly no one was in a position categorically to deny that there was no connection whatever between Widmerpool’s conduct and Le Bas’s case. Knowing Le Bas, I have no doubt that he was sitting in his chair, bitterly regretting that he was no longer in a position to order Widmerpool to sit down at once. That would have been natural enough. A sudden pang of impotent rage may even have contributed to other elements in bringing on his seizure. But that was to take rather a melodramatic view. More probably, the atmosphere of the room, full of cigar smoke and fumes of food and wine, had been too much for him. Besides, the weather had grown distinctly hotter as the night wore on. Le Bas himself had always been a great opener of windows. He would insist on plenty of fresh air on the coldest winter day at early school in any room in which he was teaching. His ordinary life had not accustomed him to gatherings of this sort, which he only had to face once a year. No doubt he had always been an abstemious man, in spite of Templer’s theory, held at school, that our housemaster was a secret drinker. That night he had possibly taken more wine than he was accustomed. He was by then getting on in years, though no more than in his sixties. The precise cause of his collapse was never known to me. These various elements probably all played a part.
Lying back in his chair, his cheeks flushed and eyes closed, one side of Le Bas’s face was slightly contorted. Fettiplace-Jones and Maiden must have taken in the situation at once, because I had scarcely turned in Le Bas’s direction before these two had picked him up and carried him into the next room. Widmerpool followed close behind them. There was some confusion when people rose from the table. I followed the rest through the door to the anteroom, where Le Bas was placed full-length on the settee. Somebody had removed his collar.
This had probably been done by Brandreth, who now took charge. Brandreth, whose father had acquired a baronetcy as an ear-specialist, was himself a doctor. He began immediately to assure everyone that Le Bas’s condition was not serious.
‘The best thing you fellows can do is to clear off home and leave the room as empty as possible,’ Brandreth said. ‘I don’t want all of you crowding round.’
Like most successful medical men in such circumstances, he spoke as if the matter had now automatically passed from the sphere of Le Bas’s indisposition to the far more important one of Brandreth’s own professional convenience. Clearly there was something to be said for following his recommendation. Brandreth seemed to be handling the matter competently, and, after a while, all but the more determined began to disappear from the room. Tolland made a final offer to help before leaving, but Brandreth snapped at him savagely and he made off; no doubt to appear again the following year. I wondered how he filled in the time between Old Boy dinners.
‘I shall have to be going, Nick,’ said Templer. ‘I have to get back to the country tonight.’
‘This dinner seems to have been rather a fiasco.’
‘Probably my fault,’ said Templer. ‘Le Bas never liked me. However, I think it was really Widmerpool this time. What’s happened to him, by the way? I never had my chat about Bob.’
Widmerpool was no longer in the room. Maiden said he had gone off to ring up the place where Le Bas was staying, and warn them what had happened. By then Le Bas was sitting up and drinking a glass of water.
‘Well, fixing old Bob up will have to wait,’ said Templer. ‘I want to do it for Jean’s sake. I’m afraid you had to listen to a lot of stuff about my matrimonial affairs tonight.’
‘What are your plans?’
‘Haven’t got any. I’ll ring up some time.’
Templer went off. I looked round for Stringham, thinking I would like a word with him before leaving. It was a long time since we had met, and I was not due to arrive at Jean’s until late. Stringham was not in the small group that remained. I supposed he had left; probably making his way to some other entertainment. There was nothing surprising in that. In any case, it was unlikely that we should have done more than exchange a few conventional sentences, even had he remained to talk for a minute or two. I knew little or nothing of how he lived since his divorce. His mother’s picture still appeared from time to time in the illustrated papers. No doubt her house in the country provided some sort of permanent background into which he could retire when desirable.
On the way out, I glanced by chance through the door leading to the room where we had dined. Stringham was still sitting in his place at the table, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. The dining-room was otherwise deserted. I went through the door and took the chair beside him.
‘Hullo, Nick.’
‘Are you going to sit here all night?’
‘Precisely the idea that occurred to me.’
‘Won’t it be rather gloomy?’
‘Not as bad as when they were all here. Shall we order another bottle?’
‘Let’s have a drink at my club.’
‘Or my flat. I don’t want to look at any more people.’
‘Where is your flat?’
‘West Halkin Street.’
‘All right. I shan’t be able to stay long.’
‘Up to no good?’
‘That’s it.’
‘I haven’t seen you for ages, Nick.’
‘Not for ages.’
‘You know my wife, Peggy, couldn’t take it. I expect you heard. Not surprising, perhaps. She has married an awfully nice chap now. Peggy is a really lucky girl now. A really charming chap. Not the most amusing man you ever met, but a really nice chap.’
‘A relation of hers, isn’t he?’
‘Quite so. A relation of hers, too. He will be already familiar with all those lovely family jokes of the Stepney family, those very amusing jokes. He will not have to have the points explained to him. When he stays at Mountfichet, he will know where all the lavatories are—if there is, indeed, more than one, a matter upon which I cannot speak with certainty. Anyway, he will not always have to be bothering the butler to direct him to where that one is—and losing his way in that awful no-man’s-land between the servants’ hall and the gun-room. What a house! Coronets on the table napkins, but no kind hearts between the sheets. He will be able to discuss important historical events with my ex-father-in-law, such as the fact that Red Eyes and Cypria dead-heated for the Cesarewitch in 1893—or was it 1894? I shall forget my own name next. He will be able to talk to my ex-mother-in-law about the time Queen Alexandra made that double entendre to her uncle. The only thing he won’t be able to do is to talk about Braque and Dufy with my ex-sister-in-law,
Anne. Still, that’s a small matter. Plenty of people about to talk to girls of Braque and Dufy these days. I heard, by the way, that Anne had got a painter of her own by now, so perhaps even Braque and Dufy are things of the past. Anyway, he’s a jolly nice chap and Peggy is a very lucky girl.’
‘Anne has married Dicky Urtifraville.’
‘Not the Dicky Umfraville?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well I never.’
Even that did not make much impression on him. The fact that he had not already heard of Anne Stepney’s marriage suggested that Stringham must pass weeks at a time in a state in which he took in little or nothing of what was going on round him. That could be the only explanation of ignorance of an event with which he had such close connexions.
‘Shall we make a move?’
‘Where is Peter Templer? I saw his face—sometimes two or three of them—during that awful dinner. We might bring him along as well. Always feel a bit guilty about Peter.’
‘He has gone home.’
‘I bet he hasn’t. He’s gone after some girl. Always chasing the girls. Let’s follow him.’
‘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 grasping 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 byproducts 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 Stringham, 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.
The Acceptance World Page 19