‘Flavia.’
Carefully balancing his stick and champagne, Umfraville embraced her.
‘How horrid of you not to recognize me.’
Umfraville swept that aside.
‘Flavia, this is an altogether unexpected delight. Does your presence at our nephew’s wedding mean that you and I are now related—in consequence of the marriage of these young people? How much I hope that, Flavia.’
The grey-haired lady—Stringham’s sister—laughed a rather tinkly laugh.
‘Dicky, you haven’t changed at all.’
Flavia Wisebite—it was to be assumed she still bore the name of her American second husband, Harrison Wisebite (like Veronica Tolland’s first, alcoholic, long departed)—laughed again tremulously. Her own affiliations with Umfraville dated back to infinitely distant days; Kenya, the Happy Valley, surroundings where, according to Umfraville himself—he had emphasized with a certain complacency his own caddishness in revealing the information—he had been the first to seduce her. That possibility was more credible than Umfraville’s follow-up, that he (rather than the reprehensible Cosmo Flitton, married to Flavia not long after) could be true father of Flavia’s daughter, Pamela. Pamela Flitton, it might be thought, carried all the marks of being Cosmo Flitton’s daughter. Age had done little or nothing to impair Umfraville’s capacities for routine banter, if he happened to be in the right mood. He continued to press the possibility of a remote family tie emerging from the Cutts/Akworth union that would connect Flavia Wisebite with himself.
‘Bride or bridegroom? Come on, Flavia. I want to be able to introduce you as my little cousin.’
‘No good, Dicky. I’m not a blood relation. I’m Clare Akworth’s godmother. Her mother’s a dear friend of mine. We live in cottages almost next door to each other, practically in walking distance of Stourwater.’
Flavia Wisebite began to narrate her past history to Umfraville in her rapid trembling voice; how nervous diseases had prostrated her, she had been in and out of hospital, was now cured. In spite of that assurance she still seemed in a highly nervous state. Umfraville, less tough in certain respects than in his younger days, was beginning to look rather upset himself at all this. No doubt he felt sorry for Flavia, but had reached a time of life when, if he came to a wedding, he hoped not to be harassed by having poured into his ears the troubles of a former mistress. His face became quite drawn as he listened. I should have been willing to escape myself, scarcely knowing her, and feeling in no way responsible. Before withdrawal were possible, Umfraville manoeuvred me into the conversation. Flavia Wisebite at once recalled the sole occasion when we had met in the past.
‘It was when Dicky was first engaged to your sister-in-law, Frederica. You drove over from Aldershot to Frederica’s house during the war. I was there with poor Robert, just before he was killed. I’m a contemporary of Frederica’s, you know. We came out at the same time. I remember you talking about my brother, Charles.’
She began to speak disjointedly of Stringham. She was, I thought, perhaps a little mad now. As one gets older, one gets increasingly used to encountering this development in friends and acquaintances; causing periods of self-examination in a similar connexion. Seeing that Flavia and I had something in common to talk about together, Umfraville slipped away. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him stumping across the room on his stick to have a further word with the bride. Flavia Wisebite rambled on.
‘Charles was never sent into the world to make old bones, of course I always knew that, but how sad that he should have died as he did, how sad. He was a hero, of course, but what difference does that make, when you’re dead?’
She seemed to require an answer to that question. It was hard to offer one free from sententiousness. I made no attempt to do so.
‘I suppose it makes a difference the way a few people remember you.’
That seemed to satisfy her.
‘Yes, yes. Like Robert.’
‘Yes. Robert too.’
She appeared to have been made quite happy by this justifiable, if unoriginal conclusion. Oddly enough, when at Frederica’s, Flavia Wisebite had spoken almost disparagingly of her brother’s determination, in face of poor health, to join the army. This canonization of Stringham after death had something of her daughter Pamela’s way of remembering dead lovers. Now, in a somewhat similar manner, Flavia began to talk of Umfraville with affection, though she had hardly noticed him at Frederica’s. Then, of course, she had been involved with Robert Tolland. Even so, the enthusiasm with which she went on about Kenya, how amusing Umfraville had been there, how much her father had liked him, was an illustration of the way human relationships fluctuate, without any action taking place; Umfraville, from being entirely disregarded, now occupying a prominent place in Flavia Wisebite’s personal myth. Without warning, she switched to Pamela.
‘Did you ever meet my daughter?’
‘Yes. I knew Pamela.’
I was about to say that I knew Pamela well, then saw that, in Pamela Flitton’s case, that might imply closer affiliations than had ever in fact existed. It was a needless adjustment of phrase. Her mother had certainly long ceased to worry, if she had ever done so, about her daughter’s affairs, with whom she had, or had not, slept. Perhaps, in her own state of health, Flavia had been scarcely aware of all that. In any case something else in relation to Pamela was now on her mind.
‘She died too.’
‘Yes.’
‘She married that dreadful man—Widmerpool.’
For the first time it occurred to me as strange, abnormally strange, that Flavia Wisebite had never, so far as I knew, played anything like an active rôle in her capacity as Widmerpool’s mother-in-law. In fact I now saw that, without formulating the idea at all clearly in my mind, I had always supposed Flavia to have died. Whatever the reason—chiefly no doubt the interludes in hospitals and nursing-homes—she seemed to have sidestepped the scandals that had enveloped her daughter’s name; not least Pamela’s unhappy end. If that had been her mother’s deliberate intention, she had been remarkably successful in keeping out of the way.
‘Did you know Widmerpool?’
‘Yes. I know him. I’ve known him for years.’
‘I said did you know him. Nobody could know him now.’
‘How do you mean?’
I did not grasp immediately the implication that Widmerpool had become literally impossible to know.
‘You can’t have heard what’s happened to him. He’s gone out of his mind. He lives with a crowd of dreadful people, most of them quite young, who wear extraordinary clothes, and do the most horrible, horrible things. They are quite near here.’
It was true that Widmerpool’s mother’s cottage had been only a mile or two from Stourwater.
‘I did know he’d become rather odd. I’d forgotten he was in this neighbourhood.’
‘I see them out running quite often.’
In the light of the cult’s habits there was nothing particularly extraordinary in Flavia Wisebite catching sight of them at their exercises from time to time. During the period of working for Sir Magnus Donners, Widmerpool had often spoken of his good fortune in having his mother’s cottage—later enlarged by himself—so close to the Castle.
‘Sometimes they’re in blue garments, sometimes hardly any clothes at all. I’ve been told they do wear absolutely nothing, stark naked, when they go out in the middle of the night in summer. They do all sorts of revolting things. I wonder it’s allowed. But then everything is allowed now.’
Flavia Wisebite grimaced.
‘I try not to look at them, if they come running in off a sideroad. When I see them in the distance I go off up a turning.’
‘Is Widmerpool head of the cult?’
‘How should I know? I thought he was. Didn’t he start it? As soon as Pamela married him, he began his horrible goings-on, though they weren’t quite like what he does nowadays. Why did she do it? How could she? Find the most horrible man on earth, and then ma
rry him? She always had to have her own way. It was quite enough that everyone agreed that Widmerpool was awful, hideous, monstrous. She just wanted to show that she didn’t care in the least what anyone said. She was the same as a child. Absolutely wilful. Nobody could control her.’
No doubt there was much truth in what her mother said. I remembered Pamela Flitton, as a child bridesmaid, being sick in the font at Stringham’s wedding. One of the children had made a good deal of noise at the ceremony just attended, but nothing so drastic as that. Flavia’s daughter had always been in a class by herself from her earliest days. A girl like Fiona was no real competitor.
‘Because Pam didn’t always go for unattractive people. When she was a little girl she fell madly in love with Charles—you know the way children do—at the time he was drinking too much. The amount he drank in those days was terrible. Pam didn’t see him often because of that. Still, Charles was always fond of her, very nice to her, whenever he came to see us, which wasn’t often. Charles left Pam his things, not much, hardly anything by then. Pam never made a will, of course, so Widmerpool must have got whatever there was. The Modigliani drawing. Pam loved that. I wonder what happened to it. I suppose that awful Widmerpool sold it.’
Flavia Wisebite took a small folded pocket handkerchief from her bag. She lightly dabbed her eyes. It was the precise gesture her mother had used, another memory of Stringham’s marriage to Peggy Stepney; Peggy Klein, as she had been for years now. Mrs Foxe’s tears had been more prolonged on that occasion, lasting intermittently throughout the whole service. Flavia’s were quickly over. She returned the handkerchief to the bag. I did not know what to say. Where could one begin? Stringham’s past? Pamela’s past? Flavia’s own past? These were extensive and delicate themes to set out on; Widmerpool’s present, even less approachable. There was no need to say anything at all. Flavia Wisebite, in the manner of persons of her sort, had suddenly recovered herself. She was perfectly all right again. Now she spoke once more in her tremulous social voice.
‘Isn’t Clare Akworth a sweet girl?’
‘I don’t really know her. She looks very attractive.’
‘I’m so proud to be her godmother. He’s a charming young man too. He told me all about his computers. It was far above my head, I’m afraid. I’m sure they’ll be very happy. I never was, but I’m sure they will be. So nice to have met again.’
Smiling goodbye, she disappeared into the crowd. In its own particular way the encounter had been disturbing. I was glad it was over. One of its side effects was a sense of temporary inability to chat with other guests, most of them, unless relations, from their age unknown to me. Flavia Wisebite had diminished exuberance for seeking out members of an older generation, whom one had not seen for some time, hearing their news, listening to their troubles. In that line, Flavia Wisebite herself was enough for one day. She had also in some way infected me with her own sense of disorientation. I required to recover. The idea suggested itself to slip away from the reception for a few minutes, find release in wandering through the corridors and galleries of the Castle. After all, that was really why I had come here. There was the dining-room, for example, draped with the tapestries of the Seven Deadly Sins, the little library or study, drawings and small oils between bookshelves, where Barnby’s portrait of the waitress from Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant had hung. A side door seemed the most convenient exit from the party. Rupert Akworth, the bride’s uncle, who had given her away, saw me about to leave.
‘The gents? Down the stairs on the left. Rather classy.’
‘Thanks.’
The Stourwater passages had by now acquired the smell common to all schools: furniture polish: disinfectant: fumes of unambitious cooking. I found the little library—now a schoolroom hung with maps—which Sir Magnus had entered with such dramatic effect that he seemed to have been watching for his guests’ arrival through a peephole in the far door (concealed with dummy books), the night we had come over with the Morelands to dinner at the Castle. One of the pictures in this room had been another Barnby, an oil sketch of the model Conchita, described by Moreland as ‘antithesis of the pavement artist’s traditional representation of a loaf of bread, captioned Easy to Draw but Hard to Get.’
After striking one or two false trails, I came at last to the dining-room of the Seven Deadly Sins. Rows of tables indicated that its function remained unchanged, though the Sins no longer exemplified their graphic warning to those who ate there. The fine chimneypiece, decorated with nymphs and satyrs—no doubt installed by Sir Magnus to harmonize with the tapestries—had been allowed to remain as adjunct to school meals. Above this hung a large reproduction of an Annigoni portrait of the Queen. Here, scene of the luncheon where I had first met Jean Templer after her marriage to Duport; later, of the great impersonation of the Sins themselves, recorded in the photographs shown by Matilda, were more pungent memories. I stood for a moment by the door, reconstructing some of these past incidents in the mind. While I was doing so, a man and a girl entered the dining-room from the far end. They were holding hands. Without abandoning this clasp, they advanced up the room. If wedding guests, like quite a few others present at the reception, neither had dressed up much for the occasion.
‘Hullo, Fiona—hullo, Russell.’
Gwinnett offered the hand that was not holding Fiona’s.
‘Hullo, Nicholas.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘You’ve heard.’
‘Yes.’
Gwinnett gave one of his rare smiles. I kissed Fiona, who accepted with good grace this tribute to her marriage. She, too, looked pleased. Her dress still swept the ground—as on the crayfishing afternoon, the last time I had actually set eyes on her—but her breast no longer bore the legend HARMONY. In her disengaged hand she carried a large straw hat trimmed with multicoloured flowers. A considerable cleaning up, positive remodelling, had taken place in Fiona’s general style. No doubt much of that was owed to Delavacquerie. Gwinnett had surmounted the sober suit of the Magnus Donners dinner with a thin strip of bow tie. His head seemed to have been newly shaved.
‘Have you both just arrived?’
‘A side door outside was open. We thought we might look around before meeting the family. Is the Castle thirteenth or early fourteenth-century? I’d say that was the date. The machicolations might be later. What’s its history?’
Gwinnett had shown architectural interests in Venice.
‘Not much history, I think. Sir Magnus Donners, who owned it, had some story about a mediaeval lord of Stourwater, whose daughter drowned herself in the moat for love of a monk.’
Halfway through the sentence I saw that tradition was one preferably to have remained unrepeated in the circumstances. Sir Magnus had narrated the tale to Prince Theodoric the day the Walpole-Wilsons had taken me to luncheon here. I added quickly that the room we were in had once contained some remarkable tapestries depicting the Seven Deadly Sins. That seemed scarcely an improvement as a topic. Fiona may have felt the same, as she enquired about the wedding.
‘How did Sebastian stand up to it?’
‘Very well. Let’s return to them, and drink some champagne.’
Fiona looked questioningly at Gwinnett, as she used to look at Murtlock for a decision; perhaps had so looked at Delavacquerie, before relinquishing him.
‘Do you want to see them all yet?’
‘Whatever you say.’
I supposed they would prefer to remain alone together.
‘I’m going to continue my exploration of the Castle for a short time, then I’ll see you later at the reception.’
Fiona did not seem anxious to face her relations yet.
‘We’ll come with you. You can show us round. I’d like to see a bit more of it. Wouldn’t you, Rus?’
‘I don’t know the place at all well. I was here absolutely years ago, and only went into a few rooms then.’
‘Never mind.’
The three of us set off together.
‘I’
m glad I wasn’t at school here.’
Stourwater was one of the educational establishments Fiona had never sampled. The new rôle of young married woman seemed to come with complete ease to her. There could be no doubt that she liked exceptional types. Gwinnett’s attraction to Fiona was less easy to classify. A faint train of thought was perceptible so far as Pamela Widmerpool was concerned, though Fiona had neither Pamela’s looks, nor force of character. The impact of Pamela might even have jolted Gwinnett into an entirely different emotional channel, his former inhibitions cured once and for all. That was not impossible.
‘Sir Magnus Donners once took some of his guests down to the so-called dungeons, but I’m not sure I can find them.’
Gwinnett pricked up his ears.
‘The dungeons? Let’s see them. I’d like to look over the dungeons.’
Fiona agreed.
‘Me, too. Do have a try to find them.’
They did not cease to hold hands, while several rooms and passages were traversed. Structural alterations had taken place in the course of adapting the Castle to the needs of a school. The head of the staircase leading to these lower regions, where the alleged dungeons were on view—knowledgable people said they were merely storerooms—could not be found. Several doors were locked. Then a low door, a postern, brought us out into a small courtyard, a side of the Castle unenclosed by moat. Here school outbuildings had been added. Beyond this open space lay playing fields, a wooden pavilion, some seats. Further off were the trees of the park. Gwinnett surveyed the courtyard.
‘This near building might have been a brewhouse. The brickwork looks Tudor.’
Fiona turned towards the fields.
‘At least I’ll never have to play hockey again.’
‘Did you hate games?’
‘I used to long to die, playing hockey on winter afternoons.’
Gwinnett gave up examining the supposed brewhouse. We moved towards the open.
‘In the ball-courts of the Aztecs a game was played of which scarcely anything is known, except that the captain of the winning side is believed to have been made a human sacrifice.’
Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 4 Page 70