A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement

  On the whole, Mrs. Andriadis’s guests belonged to a generation older than that attending the dance, and their voices swelled more loudly throughout the rooms. The men were in white ties and the ladies’ dresses were carried in general with a greater flourish than at the Huntercombes’: some of the wearers distinctly to be classed as ‘beauties’. A minute sprinkling of persons from both sexes still in day clothes absolved Mr. Deacon and Gypsy Jones from looking quite so out of place as might otherwise have been apprehended; and, during the course of that night, I was surprised to notice how easily these two (who had deposited their unsold copies of War Never Pays! in the hall, under a high-backed crimson-and-gold chair, designed in an uneasy compromise between avant garde motifs and seventeenth-century Spanish tradition) faded unobtrusively into the general background of the party. There were, indeed, many girls present not at all dissimilar in face and figure to Gypsy Jones; while Mr. Deacon, too, could have found several prototypes of himself among a contingent of sardonic, moderately distinguished, grey-haired men, some of whom smelt of bath-salts, dispersed here and there throughout the gathering. The comparative formality of the scene to be observed on our arrival had cast a certain blight on my own—it now seemed too ready—acceptance of Stringham’s assurance that invitation was wholly unnecessary; for the note of ‘frivolity’, to which Uncle Giles might so undeniably have taken exception, was, so I could not help feeling, infused with an undercurrent of extreme coolness, a chilly consciousness of conflicting egoisms, far more intimidating than anything normally to be met with at Walpole-Wilsons’, Huntercombes’, or, indeed, anywhere else of ‘that sort’.

  However, as the eye separated individuals from the mass, marks of a certain exoticism were here revealed, notably absent from the scene at Belgrave Square: such deviations from a more conventional standard alleviating, so far as they went, earlier implications of stiffness; although these intermittent patches of singularity—if they were to be regarded as singular—were, on the whole, not necessarily predisposed to put an uninvited newcomer any more at his ease; except perhaps in the sense that one act of informality in such surroundings might, roughly speaking, be held tacitly to excuse another.

  For example, an elderly gentleman with a neat white moustache and eye-glass, evidently come from some official assemblage—perhaps the reception at the Spanish Embassy—because he wore miniatures, and the cross of some order in white enamel and gold under the points of his collar, was conversing with a negro, almost tawny in pigmentation, rigged out in an elaborately waisted and square-shouldered tail-coat with exaggeratedly pointed lapels. It was really this couple that had made me think of Uncle Giles, who, in spite of advocacy of the urgent dissolution of the British Empire on grounds of its despotic treatment of backward races, did not greatly care for coloured people, whatever their origin; and, unless some quite exceptional circumstance sanctioned the admixture, he would certainly not have approved of guests of African descent being invited to a party to which he himself had been bidden. In this particular case, however, he would undoubtedly have directed the earlier momentum of his disparagement against the man with the eye-glass, since my uncle could not abide the wearing of medals. ‘Won ’em in Piccadilly, I shouldn’t wonder,’ he was always accustomed to comment, when his eye fell on these outward and visible awards, whoever the recipient, and whatever the occasion.

  Not far from the two persons just described existed further material no less vulnerable to my uncle’s censure for a heavily-built man, with a greying beard and the air of a person of consequence, was unsuccessfully striving, to the accompaniment of much laughter on both sides, to wrest a magnum of champagne from the hands of an ancient dame, black-browed, and wearing a tiara, or jewelled head-dress of some sort, who was struggling manfully to retain possession of the bottle. Here, therefore, were assembled in a single group—as it were of baroque sculpture come all at once to life—three classes of object all equally abhorrent to Uncle Giles; that is to say, champagne, beards, and tiaras: each in its different way representing sides of life for which he could find no good to say; beards implying to him Bohemianism’s avoidance of those practical responsibilities with which he always felt himself burdened: tiaras and champagne unavoidably conjuring up images of guilty opulence of a kind naturally inimical to ‘radical’ principles.

  Although these relatively exotic embellishments to the scene occurred within a framework on the whole commonplace enough, the shifting groups of the party created, as a spectacle, illusion of moving within the actual confines of a picture or tapestry, into the depths of which the personality of each new arrival had to be automatically amalgamated; even in the case of apparently unassimilable material such as Mr. Deacon or Gypsy Jones, both of whom, as I have said, were immediately absorbed, at least to the eye, almost as soon as they had crossed the threshold of Mrs. Andriadis.

  ‘Who is this extraordinary old puss you have in tow?’ Stringham had asked, while he and I had walked a little ahead of the other three, after we had left the coffee-stall.

  ‘A friend of my parents.’

  ‘Mine know the oddest people too—especially my father. And Miss Jones? Also a friend—or a cousin?’

  He only laughed when I attempted to describe the circumstances that had led to my finding myself with Mr. Deacon, who certainly seemed to require some explanation at the stage of life, and of behaviour, that he had now reached. Stringham pretended to think—or was at least unwilling to disbelieve—that Gypsy Jones was my own chosen companion, rather than Mr. Deacon’s. However, he had shown no sign of regarding either of them as noticeably more strange than anyone else, encountered on a summer night, who might seem eligible to be asked to a party given by a friend. It was, indeed, clear to me that strangeness was what Stringham now expected, indeed, demanded from life: a need already become hard to satisfy. The detachment he had always seemed to possess was now more marked than ever before. At the same time he had become in some manner different from the person I had known at school, so that, in spite of the air almost of relief that he had shown at falling in with us, I began to feel uncertain whether, in fact, Anne Stepney had not used the term ‘pompous’ in the usual, and not some specialised, sense. Peter Templer, too, I remembered, had employed the same word years before at school when he had enquired about Stringham’s family. ‘Well, I imagine it was all rather pompous even at lunch, wasn’t it?’ he had asked. At that time I associated pomposity with Le Bas, or even with Widmerpool, both of whom habitually indulged in mannerisms unthinkable in Stringham. Yet there could be no doubt that he now possessed a personal remoteness, a kind of preoccupation with his own affairs, that gave at least some prima facie excuse for using the epithet. All the rather elaborate friendliness, and apparent gratitude for the meeting—almost as if it might offer means of escape from some burdensome commitment—was unquestionably part of a barrier set up against the rest of the world. Trying to disregard the gap, of which I felt so well aware, as it yawned between us, I asked about his family.

  ‘My father sits in Kenya, quarrelling with his French wife.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Similarly occupied with Buster over here.’

  ‘At Glimber?’

  ‘Glimber—as arranged by Buster—is let to an Armenian. They now live in a house of more reasonable proportions at Sunningdale. You must come there one day—if only to see dawn breaking over the rock garden. I once arrived there in the small hours and had that unforgettable experience.’

  ‘Is Buster still in the Navy?’

  ‘Not he.’

  ‘A gentleman of leisure?’

  ‘But much humbled. No longer expects one to remember every individual stroke he made during the polo season.’

  ‘So you both rub along all right?’

  ‘Like a house on fire,’ said Stringham. ‘All the same, you know parents—especially step-parents—are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don’t fulfil the promise of their early years. As a matter of fact
, Buster may come to the party if he can get away.’

  ‘And Miss Weedon?’

  ‘Tuffy has left. I see her sometimes. She came into a little money. My mother changes her secretary every week now. She can’t get along with anyone since Tuffy resigned.’

  ‘What about Peggy Stepney?’

  ‘What, indeed!’

  ‘I sat next to her sister, Anne, at dinner tonight.’

  ‘Poor Anne, I hope you were kind to her.’

  He gave no hint as to whether or not he was still involved with Peggy Stepney. I presumed that there was at least no longer any question of an engagement.

  ‘Are you still secretary to Sir Magnus Donners?’

  ‘Still to be seen passing from time to time through the Donners-Brebner Building,’ said Stringham, laughing again. ‘It might be hard to establish my precise status there.’

  ‘Nice work if you can get it!’

  ‘“A transient and embarrassed spectre”, as Le Bas used to say, when one tried to slip past him in the passage without attracting undue attention. As a matter of fact I saw Le Bas not so long ago. He turned up at Cowes last year. Not my favourite place at the best of times, but Buster seems to like the life.’

  ‘Was Le Bas sailing?’

  ‘Got up rather like a park-keeper. It is extraordinary how schoolmasters never get any older. In early life they settle on a cruising speed and just stick to it. Le Bas confused me with a Kenya friend of my father’s called Dicky Umfraville—you probably know the name as a gentleman-rider—who left the school—sacked as a matter of fact—some fifteen or twenty years earlier than myself.’

  It was true that Le Bas, like most of his profession, was accustomed to behave as if never particularly clear as to the actual decade in which he might, at any given moment, be existing; but, once assuming that recognition had not been immediate, his supposition that Stringham was something more than twenty-three or twenty-four—whatever his age at their meeting at Cowes—was not altogether surprising, because he looked, so it seemed to me by then, at least ten years older than when we had last seen each other. At the same time, it was no doubt unreasonable to mistake Stringham for Dicky Umfraville, of whose activities in Kenya I remember Sillery speaking a word of warning towards the end of my first year at the university. However, tête-à-tête conversation between Stringham and myself had now to come to an end, because by this time we had been admitted to the house, and the presence of a surrounding crowd of people put a stop to that kind of talk.

  In one room the carpet had been rolled back, and a hunchback wearing a velvet smoking-jacket was playing an accordion, writhing backwards and forwards as he attacked his instrument with demiurgic frenzy.

  ‘I took one look at you——

  That’s all I meant to do——

  And then my heart—stood still . . .’

  To this music, cheek to cheek, two or three couples were dancing. Elsewhere the party, again resembling the Huntercombes’, had spread over the entire building, its density as thick on landings and in passages as among the rooms. There were people everywhere, and voices sounded from the upper levels of bedroom floors. Stringham pushed his way through this swarming herd, the rest of us following. There was a buffet in the drawing-room, where hired butlers were serving drinks. Moving through the closely packed mob, from which a powerful aroma of tobacco, alcohol, and cosmetics arose, like the scent of plants and flowers in some monstrous garden, we came suddenly upon Mrs. Andriadis herself, when a further, and enormous, field of speculation was immediately projected into being. Stringham took her hand.

  ‘Milly . . .’

  ‘Darling . . .’ she said, throwing an arm round his neck and kissing him energetically. ‘Why so disgustingly late?’

  ‘Overslept.’

  ‘Milly ought to have been there.’

  ‘Why wasn’t she?’

  ‘Milly thought this was going to be a horrible party and she was going to hate it.’

  ‘Not now?’

  ‘Couldn’t be.’

  I did not remember exactly what outward appearance I had planned before arrival for Mrs. Andriadis. A suspicion may not have been altogether suppressed that she might turn out to resemble, in physiognomy and dress, one of those formalised classical figures from bronze or ceramic art, posed as Le Bas would sometimes contort himself; but my invention, though perhaps in one aspect ancient Greek, was certainly modern Greek in another. However, the shape any imaginary portrait may have taken was quite unlike this small woman with powder-grey hair, whose faint touch of a Cockney accent, like her coiffure, was evidently retained deliberately as a considered attraction. She was certainly pretty, though the effect was obtained in some indirect and unobtrusive manner. Her dark eyebrows were strongly marked.

  She stood clinging to Stringham’s arm, while, as if dancing, she twitched her body this way and that. Her eyes were brown and very bright, and the jewels she wore, in rather defiant profusion, looked as if they might have cost a good deal of money. She could have been about thirty-five; perhaps a year or two more. At first it seemed to me that she must have been a great beauty ten or fifteen years earlier; but I discovered, in due course, from those who had known Mrs. Andriadis for a long time, that, on the contrary, the epoch of this party represented perhaps the peak of her good looks—that is, if her looks (or anyone else’s) could be admitted as open to objective judgment by some purely hypothetical standard; for, as Barnby used to say: ‘It’s no good being a beauty alone on a desert island.’ Barnby himself adhered to the theory that Mrs. Andriadis’s appearance had been greatly improved after her hair had turned grey: being accustomed to add to this opinion the statement that the change of shade had taken place ‘After her first night with The Royal Personage, as Edgar always calls him.’ I was strongly reminded by her appearance—so it seemed to me—of another woman; though of whom I could not decide.

  ‘I brought some friends along, Milly,’ said Stringham. ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘You darlings,’ said Mrs. Andriadis. ‘It is going to be a lovely party now. All arranged on the spur of the moment. Come with me, Charles. We are making Deauville plans.’

  Although obviously in the habit of having her own way in most matters, she showed no surprise at all at the sight of Widmerpool, Mr. Deacon, Gypsy Jones, and myself. Indeed, it seemed probable that, as newly-arrived entities, she took cognisance, so far as our self-contained group was concerned, of no more than Mr. Deacon and me, since Widmerpool and Gypsy Jones, threading their way across the room, had been left some little way behind the rest of us. Even Mr. Deacon, in spite of strenuous efforts on his own part, scarcely managed to shake hands with Mrs. Andriadis, although, as he bent almost double, the tips of their fingers may have touched. It was at that instant of tenuous contact that Mr. Deacon attempted to explain the matter, mentioned already by him at the coffee-stall, to the effect that he thought they had met once before ‘in Paris with the Murats’. An assertion of which Mrs. Andriadis herself took no notice whatsoever.

  As it turned out, neither Widmerpool nor Gypsy Jones ever reached her at that—nor, as far as I know, any other—stage of the party, because, evidently deciding to spend no more time on her welcome of such miscellaneous guests, she took Stringham by the arm, and bore him away. Widmerpool, with a set expression on his face, passed obliquely through the crowd, still filled, as I supposed, with an unquenchable determination, even stronger, if possible, than Mr. Deacon’s, to make himself at all costs known to his hostess. Gypsy Jones also disappeared from sight at the same moment, though not, it might be presumed, with the same aim. Their effacement was effected rather to my relief, because I had feared from Widmerpool a stream of comment of a kind for which I felt not at all in the mood; while at the same time, rather snobbishly, I did not wish to appear too closely responsible for being the cause, however indirect, of having brought Mr. Deacon and Gypsy Jones to the house. This was the moment when the surrounding tableaux formed by the guests began to take coherent shape in my eyes
, when viewed from the corner by the grand piano, where I had been left beside Mr. Deacon, who now accepted, with a somewhat roguish glance, a beaker of champagne from the tray of one of the men-servants.

  ‘I cannot say I altogether like these parties,’ he said. ‘A great many of them seem to be given these days. Paris was just the same. I really should not have accepted your nice-looking friend’s invitation if we had not had such a very indifferent evening with War Never Pays! As it was, I felt some recreation was deserved—though I fear I shall not find much here. Not, at least, in any form likely to appeal to my present mood. By the way, I don’t know whether you would ever care to lend a hand with War Never Pays!, a penny, one of these days? We are always glad to enlist new helpers.’

  I excused myself decisively from any such undertaking on grounds of lacking aptitude for any kind of salesmanship.

  ‘Not everyone feels it a bounden duty,’ said Mr. Deacon. ‘I need not tell you that Gypsy is scarcely a colleague I should choose, if I were a free agent, but she is so keen I cannot very well raise objection. Her political motives are not identical with my own, but Pacifism is ally of all who desire this country’s disarmament. Do you know, I even put her up at my place? After all, you can’t expect her to get all the way back to Hendon Central at this time of night. It wouldn’t be right.’

  He spoke almost with unction at the nobiltiy of such self-sacrifice, and, finishing his champagne at a gulp, wiped the corners of his mouth carefully with a silk handkerchief. On the wall opposite us, one of the panels of the room had been replaced—possibly with the object of increasing the rather ‘daring’ effect at which decoration of the house evidently aimed—with squares of looking-glass, in the reflections of which could be observed the changing pattern made by the occupants of the room.