Books Do Furnish a Room

  The brags of life are but a nine-days wonder:

  And after death the fumes that spring

  From private bodies, make as big a thunder

  As those which rise from a huge king.

  One thought of Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov. Reference to bodily corruption was a natural reaction from ‘Whom none should advise, thou hast persuaded’. Ralegh might be grandiloquent, he was also authoritative, even hypnotic, no less resigned than Herbert, as well. I thought about death. It seemed most unlikely Burton had really hanged himself, as rumoured, to corroborate the accuracy of the final hour he had drawn in his own horoscope. The fact was he was only mildly interested in astrology.

  By this time the bearers were showing decided strain from the weight of the coffin. They had reached a stage about halfway up the aisle, and were going fairly slowly. Suddenly a commotion began to take place in one of the pews opposite this point. Pamela was attempting to make her way out. Her naturally pale face was the colour of chalk. She had already thrust past Alfred Tolland and Quiggin, but Widmerpool, an absolutely outraged expression on his face, stepped quickly from the pew behind to delay her.

  ‘I’m feeling faint, you fool. I’ve got to get out of here.’

  She spoke in quite a loud voice. Widmerpool seemed to make a momentary inner effort to decide for himself the degree of his wife’s indisposition, whether she were to be humoured or not, but she pushed him aside so violently that he nearly fell. As she hurried into the aisle he recovered himself, for a second made as if to follow her, then decided against any such action. Had he seriously contemplated pursuit, there had been in any case too great delay. Although Pamela herself managed to skirt the procession advancing with the coffin, it was doubtful whether anyone of more considerable bulk could have freely negotiated the available space in the same manner, especially after the disruption caused. She had brushed past the vicar so abruptly that he gasped and lost the thread of his words. A second later the bearers, recovering themselves, were level with Widmerpool, blocking his own egress from the pew. Pamela’s heels clattered away down the flags. When she reached the door, there was difficulty in managing the latch. It gave out discordant rattles; then a creak and loud slam.

  ‘My God,’ said Norah.

  She spoke the words softly. They recalled her own troubles with Pamela. The service continued. I tried to recompose the mind by returning to Ralegh and Herbert. ‘Whom none should advise, thou hast persuaded.’ Was that true of everyone who died? Of Erridge, eminently true: true too, in its way, of Stringham and Templer: to some extent of Barnby: not at all true of George Tolland: yet, after all, was it true of him too? I thought of the Portraits of Ralegh, stylized in ruff, short cloak, pointed beard, fierce look. ‘All the pride, cruelty and ambition of men.’ Ralegh knew the form. Still, Herbert was good too. I wondered what Herbert had looked like. In the end one got back to Burton’s ‘vile rock of melancholy, a disease so frequent, as few there are that feel not the smart of it’. Melancholy was so often the explanation, anyway melancholy in Burton’s terms. The bearers took up the coffin once more. The recession was slow, though this time uninterrupted.

  ‘I hope old Skerrett will be all right,’ whispered Isobel. ‘He looked white as a sheet when he passed.’

  ‘Whiter than Mrs Widmerpool?’

  ‘Much whiter.’

  Outside, the haze had thickened. The air struck almost warm after the church. Rain still fell in small penetrating drops. The far corner of the churchyard was occupied with an area of Tolland graves: simple headstones: solid oblong blocks of stone with iron railings: crosses, two unaccountably Celtic in design: one obelisk. Norah, who had never got on at all well with her eldest brother, was in convulsions of tears, the other sisters dabbing with their handkerchiefs. There was no sign of Pamela in the porch. The mourners processed to the newly dug grave. The old parson, his damp surplice clinging like a shroud, refused to be hurried by the elements. He took what he was doing at a thoroughly leisurely pace. There seemed no reason why the funeral should ever end. Then, all at once, everything was over. The mourners began to move slowly, rather uncomfortably away.

  ‘I’ll just have a word with Skerrett,’ said Isobel. ‘He’s looking better now. Meet you at the gate.’

  Before I reached the lychgate, a tall, rather distinguished-looking woman separated herself from other shapes lurking among the tombstones, and came towards me. She must have sat at the back of the church, because I had not seen her until that moment. She was fortyish, a formal magazine-cover prettiness organized to make her seem not only younger than that, but at the same time a girl not exactly of the present, rather of some years back. Her voice too struck a note at that moment equally out of fashion.

  ‘I thought I must say hullo, Nick, though it’s years since we met – you remember me, Mona, I used to be married to Peter Templer – what ages. Yes, poor Peter, wasn’t it sad? So brave of him at his age too. Jeff says you’re never the same in war after you’re thirty. We’re weaving about fairly close here, and I’ve got to scamper home this minute, because Jeff’s quite insane about punctuality. We’re living in a horrible house over by Gibbet Down, so I thought I ought to make a pilgrimage for Alf. It’s poor Alf now too, as well as poor Peter, isn’t it? Alf didn’t have much of a time, did he, though he was kindhearted in his way, even if he abominated spending a farthing on drink – one’s throat got absolutely arid travelling with him. I shall never forget Hong Kong. JG used to get so angry in the old days if I complained about the drought when we dined at Thrubworth with Alf, which wasn’t all that often. Lack of drink was even worse when I was alone with him, I can assure you. Fancy JG turning up today too. So unexpected when he does the right thing for once. I hear he lived for a time with someone called Lady Anne Stepney, and then she went off with one of the Free French. That did make me laugh – and Gypsy here too. Do you think she did have a walk out with Alf? He used to talk about seeing her at those awful political conferences he loved going to. I sometimes wondered. Well, we’ll never know now. I just waved to JG and Gypsy. I thought that would be quite enough.’

  Isobel reappeared.

  ‘Your wife? How sad it must be to lose a brother, I never had one, but I’m sure it is. And not at all old either, except we’re all centuries old now, I feel a million, but, of course – well, I don’t know – anyway, I just thought it was my duty to come, even in daunting weather. I’ll have to proceed back now with all possible speed, or Jeff will be having kittens. Jeff’s an Air Vice-Marshal now. Isn’t that grand? Burdened with gongs. He was rather worried about my using the car for a funeral, but I said I was going to a POW camp, and if an Air Vice-Marshal’s lady can’t inspect a POW camp, what in hell can she do? Well, it’s been nice seeing you, Nick, and your wife, not to mention having a word about those poor dears who are no more. That erk will have to drive like stink if I’m not to be late. We’ve got some personnel coming to tea of all things – drink quite impossible to get for love or money these days, anyway to dish out to all and sundry, as well you must know, so I’ll just say bye-bye for now ...’

  While talking, she had fallen more than once into what Mr Deacon used to call a ‘vigorous pose’. Now, as she walked away, the controlled movement of her long swift strides recalled the artists’ model she once had been. In the road stood a large car, a uniformed aircraftman at the wheel. She turned and waved, then disappeared within.

  ‘Who on earth?’

  ‘That’s Mona.’

  ‘ Not the girl Erry took to China?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why didn’t you indicate that? I could have had a closer look. What a pity the poor old boy didn’t hang on. She might have kept him going.’

  As the RAF car drove away, the outlines of Alfred Tolland, picking his way between the graves, came into view. He had been waiting for Mona to move on before he approached. It now struck me that he must have met Widmerpool at the Old Boy dinners of Le Bas’s house, because Alfred Tolland retain
ed sentiments about his schooldays that age had in no way diminished. Except for Le Bas himself, he had always – in the days long past when I myself attended them – been the eldest present by at least twenty years.

  ‘Uncle Alfred’s a sad case in that respect,’ Hugo had remarked. ‘Personally I applaud that great enemy of the Old School Tie, the Emperor Septimius Severus, who had a man scourged merely for drawing attention to the fact that they had been at school together.’

  However, Le Bas dinners could explain why Widmerpool and Alfred Tolland had travelled down together after seeing each other at the station. Widmerpool was, in fact, now revealed as standing close behind, as if he expected Alfred Tolland to make some statement that concerned himself or his party, the rest of whom were no longer to be seen. They could be concealed by mist, or have left in a body after the committal. To make sure his own presence as a mourner was not overlooked by Erridge’s family would be characteristic of Widmerpool, even though the reason for his attendance remained at present unproclaimed. He was looking even more worried than in the church. If he had merely desired to register attendance and go away, he would certainly have pushed in front of Alfred Tolland, whose hesitant, deferential comportment always caused delays, particularly at a time like this. Neat, sad, geared perfectly in outward appearance to the sombre nature of the occasion, Tolland stood, head slightly bent, gazing at the damp grass beneath his feet. He had once admitted to having travelled as far as Singapore. One wondered how he had ever managed to get there and back again. Unlikely he had taken with him a girl like Mona, though one could never tell. Barnby always used to insist it was misplaced to speak categorically about other people’s sexual experiences, whoever they were.

  ‘Uncle Alfred?’

  ‘My dear Isobel, this is very …’

  He was all but incapable of finishing a sentence, a form of diffidence implying unworthiness to force a personal opinion on others. Even when Alfred Tolland spoke his own views, they were hedged round with every sort of qualification. Erridge’s passing, the company in which he found himself on the way down, stirred within him concepts far too unmanageable to be accommodated in a single phrase. Isobel helped him out.

  ‘A very sad occasion, Uncle Alfred. Poor Erry. It was so unexpected.’

  ‘Yes – quite unexpected. These things are unexpected sometimes. Absolutely unexpected, in fact. Of course Erridge always did …’

  What did Erridge always do? The question was capable of many answers. The wrong thing? Know he was a sick man? Fear the winter? Hope the end would be sudden? Want Alfred Tolland to reveal some special secret after his own demise? Perhaps just ‘do the unexpected’. On the whole that termination was the most probable. Alfred Tolland, this time unassisted by Isobel, may have feared that any too direct statement about what Erridge ‘did’ might sound callous, if spoken straight out. Instead of completing, he altogether abandoned the comment, this time bringing out in its entirety another concept, quite different in range.

  ‘I’m feeling rather ashamed.’

  ‘Ashamed, Uncle Alfred?’

  ‘Never got down here for George’s … In bed, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Nothing bad, I hope, Uncle Alfred.’

  ‘Had a bit of – chest. Felt ashamed, all the same. Not absolutely right now, but can get about. Can’t be helped. Didn’t want to stay away when it came to the head of the family.’

  He spoke as if he would have risen from the dead to reach the funeral of the head of the family. Perhaps he had. The idea was not to be too lightly dismissed. There something not wholly of this world about him. Time, for example, seemed to mean nothing. One hoped he would come soon to the point of what he had to say. Although the worst of the rain had stopped, a pervasive damp struck up from the ground and into the bones. Obviously something was on his mind. In the background Widmerpool shifted about, stamping his feet and kicking them together.

  ‘We’ll give you a lift back to the house, Uncle Alfred, if you want one. That’s if any of the cars will start. Some of them are rather ancient. It may be rather a squeeze.’

  ‘Quite forgot, quite forgot … These good people I travelled down with … shared a taxi from the station … Mr – met him at those dinners Nicholas and I … and his wife … very good looking … another couple too, Sir Somebody and Lady Something … also another old friend of Erridge’s … nice people … something they wanted to ask…’

  Alfred Tolland turned towards Widmerpool, in search of help, to give words to a matter not at all easy to summarize in a few broken phrases. At least he himself found that hard, which was usual enough, even if the situation were not as ticklish as this one appeared. Widmerpool, not happy himself, was prepared at the same time to accept his cue. He began to speak in his least aggressive manner.

  ‘Two things, Nicholas – though I don’t expect you’re really the person to ask, sure as I am, as an old friend, you’ll be prepared to act for us as – well, as what? – intermediary, shall we say? You know already, I think, the other members of the party I came down with. J. G. Quiggin, of course – must know him as a literary bloke yourself – and as for Sir Howard and Lady Craggs, of course you remember them.’

  One to admit that ‘Sir Howard and Lady Craggs’ conjured up a rather different picture from Mr Deacon’s birthday party, Gypsy lolling on Craggs’s knee, struggling to divert a too exploratory hand back to a wide area of pink thigh. If it came to that, one had one’s own reminiscences of Lady Craggs in an easy-going mood.

  ‘We all wanted, of course, to pay last respects to your late brother-in-law, Lord Warminster – much to my regret I never managed to meet him – but there was also something else. This seemed a golden opportunity to have a preliminary word, if possible, with the appropriate member, or members, of the family, now collected together, as to the best means of approaching certain matters arisen in consequence of Lord Warminster’s death.’

  Widmerpool paused. He was relieved to have made a start on whatever he wanted to say, for clearly this was by no means the end.

  ‘The late Lord Warminster left certain instructions in connexion with the publishing house Sir Howard Craggs – well, we can talk about all that later. As I say, this seemed a good moment to have a tentative word with the – in short with the executors, as I understand, Mr Hugo Tolland and Lady Frederica Umfraville.’

  Whatever complications now threatened were beyond conjecture. Within the family it had been generally agreed that for Erridge to leave the world without arranging some testing problem to be settled by his heirs and successors, was altogether unthinkable. The form such a problem, or problems, might take was naturally not to be anticipated. That Widmerpool should be involved in any such matters was unlooked for. His relief at having made the statement about Erridge’s dispositions, whatever they were, turned out to be due to anxiety to proceed to a far more troublesome enquiry from his own point of view.

  ‘Another matter, Nicholas. My wife – you know her, of course, I’d forgotten – Pamela, as I say, was overcome with faintness during the service. In fact had to leave the church. I hope no one noticed. She did so as quietly as possible. These attacks come on her at times. Largely nerves, in my opinion. It was arranged between us she should await me in the porch. She no doubt found the stone seat there too cold in her distressed state. I thought she might have taken refuge in our taxi, but the driver said, on the contrary, he saw her walking up the drive in the direction of the house.’

  Widmerpool stopped speaking. His efforts to present in terms satisfactory to himself two quite separate problems, so that they merged into coherent shape, seemed to have broken down. The first question was what Craggs and Quiggin wanted from the executors, no doubt something to do with the matters of which Bagshaw had spoken; the second, which Widmerpool, judging by past experience, regarded as more important, the disappearance of his wife.

  Frederica and Blanche, saying goodbye to the Alford relations to whom they had been talking, came over to have a word with their uncle. Al
fred Tolland, still considerably discomposed by all that was happening round him, managed to effect a mumbled introduction of Widmerpool, who seized his opportunity, settling on Frederica. He began at once to put forward the advantages of having a preliminary talk, ‘quite informal’, about straightening out Erridge’s affairs. Frederica had hardly time to agree this would be a good idea, before he returned to the question of Pamela, certainly worrying him a lot. Frederica, a very competent person when it came to making arrangements, took these problems in her stride. Like Erridge, she was not greatly interested in individuals as such, so that Widmerpool’s desire to talk business, coupled with anxiety about his wife, were elements to be accepted at their face value. Neither aroused Frederica’s curiosity.

  ‘Where are these friends of yours now, Mr Widmerpool?’

  ‘In the church porch. They wanted to get out of the rain. They’re waiting – in fact waiting for me to obtain your permission, Lady Frederica, to come up to the house as I suggest. I really think the house is probably where my wife is too.’

  This then was the crux of the matter. They all wanted to come up to the house. While that was arranged, Widmerpool had judged it best to confine them to the porch. Possibly there had been signs of mutiny. Judged as a group, they must have been just what Frederica would expect as representative friends of her brother, even though she could not guess, had no wish to examine, subtleties of their party’s composition. In her eyes Widmerpool’s conventional clothes, authoritative manner, made him a natural enough delegate of an otherwise fairly unpresentable cluster of Erridge hangers-on, a perfectly acceptable representative. Frederica and Erridge had been next to each other in age. Although living their lives in such different spheres, they were by no means without mutual understanding. The whim to leave complicated instructions after death was one with which Frederica could sympathize. Sorting out her brother’s benefactions gratified her taste for tidying up.