I wondered whether on this final confrontation Borrit had brought off the never realized ‘free poke’, before the grave claimed him. The war drawing to a close must have something to do with this readiness for marriage on the part of those like Borrit, Widmerpool, Farebrother, no longer in their first youth. These were only a few of them among the dozens who had never tried it before, or tried it without much success. Norah Tolland spoke with great disapproval of Pamela Flitton’s engagement
‘Pam must need a Father-Figure,’ she said. ‘I think it’s a tragic mistake. Like Titania and Bottom.’
Not long before the Victory Service, announced to take place at St Paul’s, Prasad’s Embassy gave a party on their National Day. It was a bigger affair than usual on account of the advent of Peace, primarily a civilian gathering, though a strong military element was included among the guests. The huge saloons, built at the turn of the century, were done up in sage green, the style of decoration displaying a nostalgic leaning towards Art Nouveau, a period always sympathetic to Asian taste. Gauthier de Graef, ethnically confused, had been anxious to know whether there were eunuchs in the ladies’ apartments above the rooms where we were being entertained. Accordingly, to settle the point, on which he was very insistent, Madame Philidor and Isobel arranged to be conducted to their hostess in purdah, promising to report on this matter, though without much hope of returning with an affirmative answer. They had just set out on this visit of exploration, when I saw Farebrother moving purposefully through the crowd. I went over to congratulate him on his marriage. He was immensely cordial.
‘I hear Geraldine’s an old friend of yours, Nicholas. You knew her in her “Tuffy” days.’
I said I did not think I had ever quite had the courage to address her by that nickname when she had still been Miss Weedon.
‘I mean when she was Mrs Foxe’s secretary,’ said Farebrother. ‘Then you knew the old General too. Splendid old fellow, he must have been. Wish I’d met him. Both he and Mrs Foxe opened up a lot of very useful contacts for Geraldine, which she’s never lost sight of. They’re going to stand me in good stead too. A wonderful woman. Couldn’t believe my ears when she said she’d be mine.’
He seemed very pleased about it all.
‘She’s not here tonight.’
‘Too busy.’
‘Catching spies?’
‘Ah, so you know where she’s working? We try to keep that a secret. No, Geraldine’s getting our new flat straight. We’ve actually found somewhere to live. Not too easy these days. Quite a reasonable rent for the neighbourhood, which is a good one. Now I must go and have a word with old Lord Perkins over there. He married poor Peter Templer’s elder sister, Babs, as I expect you know.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘One of the creations of the first Labour Government. Of course he’s getting on now – but, with Labour in again, we all need friends at court.’
‘Did anything more ever come out as to what happened to Peter?’
‘Nothing, so far as I know. He was absolutely set on doing that job. As soon as he heard I was going to work with those people he got on to me to try and get him something of the sort. You ought to meet Lord Perkins. I think Babs found him a change for the better after that rather dreadful fellow Stripling. I ran into Stripling in Aldershot about eighteen months ago. He was lecturing to the troops. Just come from the Glasshouse, where he’d given a talk on the early days of motor-racing. Someone told me Babs had been a great help to her present husband when he was writing his last book on industrial relations.’
He smiled and moved off. Widmerpool arrived in the room at that moment. He stood looking round, evidently deciding where best to launch an attack. Farebrother must have seen him, because he suddenly swerved into a new direction to avoid contact. This seemed a good opportunity to congratulate Widmerpool too. I went over to him. He seemed very pleased with himself.
‘Thank you very much, Nicholas. Some people have expressed the opinion, without much delicacy, that Pamela is too young for me. That is not my own view at all. A man is as young as he feels. I had quite a scene with my mother, I’m afraid. My mother is getting an old lady now, of course, and does not always know what she is talking about. As a matter of fact I am making arrangements for her to live, anyway temporarily, with some distant relations of ours in the Lowlands. It’s not too far from Glasgow. I think she will be happier with them than on her own, after I am married. She is in touch with one or two nice families on the Borders.’
This was a very different tone from that Widmerpool was in the habit of using about his mother in the old days. It seemed likely the engagement represented one of his conscious decisions to put life on a new footing. He embarked on these from time to time, with consequent rearrangements all round. It looked as if sending Mrs Widmerpool into exile was going to be one such. It was hard to feel wholly condemnatory. I enquired about the circumstances in which he had met Pamela, a matter about which I was curious.
‘In Cairo. An extraordinary chance. As you know, my work throughout the war has never given me a second for social life. Even tonight I am here only because Pamela herself wanted to come – she is arriving at any moment – and I shall leave as soon as I have introduced her. I requested the Ambassador as a personal favour that I might bring my fiancée. He was charming about it. To tell the truth, I have to dine with the Minister tonight. A lot to talk about. Questions of policy. Adjustment to new régimes. But I was telling you how Pamela and I met. In Cairo there was trouble about my returning plane. One had been shot down, resulting in my having to kick my heels in the place for twenty-four hours. You know how vexatious that sort of situation is to me. I was taken to a place called Groppi’s. Someone introduced us. Before I knew where I was, we were dining together and on our way to a night-club. I had not been to a place of that sort for years. Had, indeed, quite forgotten what they were like. The fact was we had a most enjoyable evening.’
He laughed quite hysterically.
‘Then, as luck would have it, Pam was posted back to England. I should have added that she was working as secretary in one of the secret organizations there. I was glad about her return, because I don’t think she moved in a very good set in Cairo. When she arrived in London, she sent me a postcard – and what a postcard.’
Widmerpool giggled violently, then recovered himself.
‘It arrived one morning in that basement where I work night and day,’ he said. ‘You can imagine how pleased I was. It seems extraordinary that we hardly knew each other then, and now I’ve got a great big photograph of her on my desk.’
He was almost gasping. The words vividly conjured up his subterranean life. Photographs on a desk were never without interest. People who placed them there belonged to a special category in their human relationships. There was, for example, that peculiarly tortured-looking midshipman in a leather-and-talc frame in the room of a Section with which ours was often in contact. Some lines of John Davidson suddenly came into my head:
And so they wait, while empires sprung
Of hatred thunder past above,
Deep in the earth for ever young
Tannhauser and the Queen of Love.*
On reflection, the situation was not a very close parallel, because it was most unlikely Pamela had ever visited Widmerpool’s underground office. On the other hand, she herself could easily be envisaged as one of the myriad incarnations of Venus, even if Widmerpool were not much of a Tannhauser. At least he seemed in a similar way to have stumbled on the secret entrance to the court of the Paphian goddess in the Hollow Hill where his own duties were diurnally enacted. That was some qualification.
‘You know she’s Charles Stringham’s niece?’
‘Naturally I am aware of that.’
The question had not pleased him.
‘No news of Stringham, I suppose?* ‘There has been, as a matter of fact.’ Widmerpool seemed half angry, half desirous of making some statement about this.
‘He was captured,??
? he said. ‘He didn’t survive.’
Scarcely anything was known still about individual prisoners in Japanese POW camps, except that the lives of many of them had certainly been saved by the Bomb. News came through slowly from the Far East. I asked how Widmerpool could speak so definitely.
‘At the end of last year the Americans sank a Jap transport on the way from Singapore. They rescued some British prisoners on board. They had been in the same camp. One of them got in touch with Stringham’s mother when repatriated. It was only just in time, because Mrs Foxe herself died soon after that, as you probably saw.’
‘I hadn’t.’
He seemed to want to make some further confession.
‘As I expect you know, Mrs Foxe was a very extravagant woman. At the end, she found it not only impossible to live in anything like the way she used, but was even quite short of money.’
‘Stringham himself said something about that when I last saw him.’
‘The irony of the situation is that his mother’s South African money was tied up on Stringham,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Owing to bad management, she never got much out of those securities herself, but a lot of South African stock has recently made a very good recovery.’
‘I suppose Flavia will benefit.’
‘No, she doesn’t, as it turns out,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Rather an odd thing happened. Stringham left a will bequeathing all he had to Pam. He’d always been fond of her as a child. He obviously thought it would be just a few personal odds and ends. As it turns out, there could be a good deal more than that. With the right attention, Stringham’s estate in due course might be nursed into something quite respectable.’
He looked rather guilty, not without reason. We abandoned the subject of Stringham.
‘I don’t pretend Pamela’s an easy girl,’ he said. ‘We fairly often have rows – in fact are not on speaking terms for twenty-four hours or more. Never mind. Rows often clear the air. We shall see it through, whatever my position when I leave the army.’
‘You’ll go back to the City, I suppose?’
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘Other plans?’
‘I have come to the conclusion that I enjoy power,’ said Widmerpool. ‘That is something the war has taught me. In this connexion, it has more than once occurred to me that I might like governing…’
He brought his lips together, then parted them. This contortion formed a phrase, but, the words inaudible, its sense escaped me.
‘Governing whom?’
Leaning forward and smiling, Widmerpool repeated the movement of his lips. This time, although he spoke only in a whisper, the two words were intelligible.
‘Black men …’
‘Abroad?’
‘Naturally.’
‘That’s feasible?’
‘My reputation among those who matter could scarcely be higher.’
‘You mean you could easily get an appointment of that sort?’
‘Nothing in life is ever easy, my boy. Not in the sense you use the term. It is one of the mistakes you always make. The point is, we are going to see great changes. As you know, my leanings have always been leftwards. From what I see round me, I have no reason to suppose such sympathies were mistaken. Men like myself will be needed.’
‘If they are to be found.’
He clapped me on the back.
‘No flattery,’ he said. ‘No flattery, but I sometimes wonder whether you’re not right.’
He looked at his watch and sighed.
‘Being engaged accustoms one to unpunctuality,’ he went on in rather another tone, a less exuberant one. ‘I think I’ll have a word with that old stalwart, Lord Perkins, whom I see over there.’
‘I didn’t know till a moment ago that Perkins was married to Peter Templer’s sister.’
‘Oh, yes. So I believe. I don’t see them as having much in common as brothers-in-law, but one never knows. Unfortunate Templer getting killed like that. He was too old for that sort of business, of course. Stringham, too. I fear the war has taken a sad toll of our friends. I notice Donners over there talking to the Portuguese Ambassador. I must say a word to him too.’
In the seven years or so that had passed since I had last seen him, Sir Magnus Donners had grown not so much older in appearance, as less like a human being. He now resembled an animated tailor’s dummy, one designed to recommend second-hand, though immensely discreet, clothes (if the suit he was wearing could be regarded as a sample) adapted to the taste of distinguished men no longer young. Jerky movements, like those of a marionette – perhaps indicating all was not absolutely well with his physical system – added to the impression of an outsize puppet that had somehow escaped from its box and begun to mix with real people, who were momentarily taken in by the extraordinary conviction of its mechanism. The set of Sir Magnus’s mouth, always a trifle uncomfortable to contemplate, had become very slightly less under control, increasing the vaguely warning note the rest of his appearance implied. On the whole he had lost that former air of desperately seeking to seem more ordinary than everyone else round him; or, if he still hoped for that, its consolations had certainly escaped him. A lifetime of weighty negotiation in the worlds of politics and business had left their mark. One would now guess at once he was an unusual person, who, even within his own terms of reference, had lived an unusual life. He looked less parsonic than in the days when he had suggested a clerical headmaster. Perhaps that was because he had not, so to speak, inwardly progressed to the archiepiscopal level in that calling; at least his face had not developed the fleshy, theatrical accentuations so often attendant on the features of the higher grades of the clergy. At some moment, conscious or not, he had probably branched off from this interior priestly strain in his make-up. That would be the logical explanation. Matilda, looking decidedly smart in a dress of blue and black stripes, was standing beside her husband, talking with the Portuguese Ambassador. I had not seen her since their marriage. She caught sight of me and waved, then separated herself from the others and made her way through the ever thickening crowd.
‘Nick.’
‘How are you, Matty?’
‘Don’t you admire my frock? An unsolicited gift from New York.’
‘Too smart for words. I couldn’t imagine where it had come from.’
To be rather older suited her; that or being married to a member of the Cabinet. She had dyed her hair a reddish tint that suited her, too, set off the large green eyes, which were always her most striking feature.
‘Do you ever see anything of Hugh the Drover?’
She used sometimes to call Moreland that while they had been married, usually when not best pleased with him. I told her we had not met since the night of the bomb on the Café de Madrid: that, so far as I knew, Moreland was still touring the country, putting on musical performances of one sort or another, under more or less official control; whatever happened in the war to make mounting such entertainments possible.
‘What’s his health been like?’
‘I don’t know at all.’
‘Extraordinary about Audrey Maclintick. Are they married?’
‘I don’t know that either.’
‘Does she look after him all right?’
‘I think she does.’
Obviously Matilda still took quite a keen interest in Moreland and his condition. That was natural enough. All the same, one felt instinctively that she had entirely given up Moreland’s world, everything to do with it. She had taken on Sir Magnus, lock, stock and barrel. The metaphor made one think of his alleged sexual oddities. Presumably she had taken them on too, though as a former mistress they would be relatively familiar. Perhaps she guessed the train of thought, because she smiled.
‘Donners has to be looked after too,’ she said. ‘I’m rather worried about him at the moment as a matter of fact.’
‘His job must be a great strain.’
Matilda brushed such a banal comment aside.
‘Will you come and see me???
? she said. ‘We’re going to Washington next week – but when we’re back.’
‘My Release Group comes up reasonably soon. We’ll probably go away for a bit when I get out of the army.’
‘Later then. Is Isobel here?’
‘Last seen on her way to the harem upstairs.’
Sir Magnus had now begun to make signs indicating that he wanted Matilda to return to him and be introduced to someone. She left me, repeating that we must meet when they came back from America. I had always liked Matilda and felt glad to see her again and hear that her life seemed endurable. Widmerpool reappeared at my side. He seemed agitated.
‘I wish Pamela would turn up,’ he said. ‘I shall be late if she doesn’t arrive soon. I can’t very well leave until she comes – ah, thank God, there she is.’
Pamela Flitton came towards us. Unlike the night at The Bartered Bride, she had this evening taken no trouble whatever about her clothes. Perhaps that was untrue, and she had gone out of her way to find the oldest, most filthy garments she possessed. She was almost in rags. By this time the party had advanced too far for it to be obvious to a newcomer whom to greet as host. She had in any case obviously not bothered about any such formalities.
‘Hullo, my dear,’ said Widmerpool. ‘I didn’t guess you’d be so late.’
He spoke in a conciliatory voice, making as if to kiss her.
She allowed the merest peck.
‘I’ll just introduce you to His Excellency,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll have to fly.’
Pamela, who was looking very pretty in spite of her disarray, was having none of that.
‘I don’t want to be introduced,’ she said. ‘I just came to have a look round.’
She gave me a nod. I made some conventional remark about their engagement. She listened to this rather more graciously than usual.
‘I think you ought to meet the Ambassador, dearest.’
‘Stuff the Ambassador.’
The phrase recalled Duport. Widmerpool laughed nervously.