Fettiplace-Jones did not need much pressing to oblige in this request. He was on his feet almost before Le Bas had finished speaking. He was a tall, dark, rather good-looking fellow, with a lock of hair that fell from time to time over a high forehead, giving him the appearance of a Victorian statesman in early life. His maiden speech (tearing Ramsay MacDonald into shreds) had made some impression on the House, but since then there had been little if any brilliance about his subsequent parliamentary performances, though he was said to work hard in committee. India’s eventual independence was the subject he chose to tell us about, and he continued for some little time. He was followed by Simson, a keen Territorial, who asked for recruits. Widmerpool broke into Simson’s speech with more than one ‘hear, hear’. I remembered that he had told me he too was a Territorial officer. Whitney had something to say of Tanganyika. Others followed with their appointed piece. At last they came to an end. It seemed that Le Bas had exhausted the number of his former pupils from whom he might hope to extract interesting or improving comment. Stringham was sitting well back in his chair. He had, I think, actually gone to sleep.
There was a low buzz of talking. I had begun to wonder how soon the party would break up, when there came the sound of someone rising to their feet. It was Widmerpool. He was standing up in his place, looking down towards the table, as he fiddled with his glass. He gave a kind of introductory grunt.
‘You have heard something of politics and India,’ he said, speaking quickly, and not very intelligibly, in that thick, irritable voice which I remembered so well. ‘You have been asked to join the Territorial Army, an invitation I most heartily endorse. Something has been said of county cricket. We have been taken as far afield as the Congo Basin, and as near home as this very hotel, where one of us here tonight worked as a waiter while acquiring his managerial training. Now I—I myself—would like to say a word or two about my experiences in the City.’
Widmerpool stopped speaking for a moment, and took a sip of water. During dinner he had shared a bottle of Graves with Maiden. There could be no question that he was absolutely sober. Le Bas—indeed everyone present—was obviously taken aback by this sudden, uncomfortable diversion. Le Bas had never liked Widmerpool, and, since the party was given for Le Bas, and Le Bas had not asked Widmerpool to speak, this behaviour was certainly uncalled for. In fact it was unprecedented. There was, of course, no cogent reason, apart from that, why Widmerpool should not get up and talk about the life he was leading. Just as other speakers had done. Indeed, it could be argued that the general invitation to speak put forward by Le Bas required acceptance as a matter of good manners. Perhaps that was how Widmerpool looked at it, assuming that Le Bas had only led off with several individual names as an encouragement for others to take the initiative in describing their lives. All that was true. Yet, in some mysterious manner, school rules, rather than those of the outer world, governed that particular assembly. However successful Widmerpool might have become in his own eyes, he was not yet important in the eyes of those present. He remained a nonentity, perhaps even an oddity, remembered only because he had once worn the wrong sort of overcoat. His behaviour seemed all the more outrageous on account of the ease with which, at that moment on account of the special circumstances, he could force us to listen to him without protest.
‘This is terrific,’ Templer muttered.
I looked across at Stringham, who had now woken up, and, having finished his bottle, was drinking brandy. He did not smile back at me, instead twisting his face into one of those extraordinary resemblances to Widmerpool at which he had always excelled. Almost immediately he resumed his natural expression, still without smiling. The effect of the grimace was so startling that I nearly laughed aloud. At the same time, something set, rather horrifying, about Stringham’s own features, put an abrupt end to this sudden spasm of amusement. This look of his even made me feel apprehension as to what Stringham himself might do next. Obviously he was intensely, if quietly, drunk.
Meanwhile, Widmerpool was getting into his stride:
‘. . . tell you something of the inner workings of the Donners-Brebner Company,’ he was saying in a somewhat steadier voice than that in which he had begun his address. ‘There is not a man of you, I can safely say, who would not be in a stronger position to face the world if he had some past experience of employment in a big concern of that sort. However, several of you already know that I am turning my attention to rather different spheres. Indeed, I have spoken to some of you of these changes in my life when we have met in the City . . .’
He looked round the room and allowed his eyes to rest for a moment on Templer, smiling again that skull-like grin with which he had greeted us.
‘This is getting embarrassing,’ said Templer.
I think Templer had begun to feel he had too easily allowed himself to accept Widmerpool as a serious person. It was impossible to guess what Widmerpool was going to say next. He was drunk with his own self-importance.
‘. . . at one time these financial activities were devoted to the satisfaction of man’s greed. Now we have a rather different end in view. We have been suffering—it is true to say that we are still suffering and shall suffer for no little time—from the most devastating trade depression in our recorded history. We have been forced from the Gold Standard, so it seems to me, and others not unworthy of a public hearing, because of the insufficiency of money in the hands of consumers. Very well. I suggest to you that our contemporary anxieties are not entirely vested in the question of balance of payment, that is at least so far as current account may be concerned, and I put it to you that certain persons, who should perhaps have known better, have been responsible for unhappy, indeed catastrophic capital movements through a reckless and inadmissible lending policy.’
I had a sudden memory of Monsieur Dubuisson talking like this when Widmerpool and I had been at La Grenadière together.
‘. . . where our troubles began,’ said Widmerpool. ‘Now if we have a curve drawn on a piece of paper representing an average ratio of persistence, you will agree that authentic development must be demonstrated by a register alternately ascending and descending the level of our original curve of homogeneous development. Such an image, or, if you prefer it, such a geometrical figure, is dialectically implied precisely by the notion, in itself, of an average ratio of progress. No one would deny that. Now if a governmental policy of regulating domestic prices is to be arrived at in this or any other country, the moment assigned to the compilation of the index number which will establish the par of interest and prices must obviously be that at which internal economic conditions are in a condition of relative equilibrium. So far so good. I need not remind you that the universally accepted process in connexion with everyday commodities is for their production to be systematised by the relation between their market value and the practicability of producing them, a steep ascent in value in contrast with the decreased practicability of production proportionately stimulating, and a parallel descent correspondingly depressing production. All that is clear enough. The fact that the index number remains at par regardless of alterations in the comparative prices of marketable commodities included in it, necessarily expresses the unavoidable truth that ascent or descent of a specific commodity is compensated by analogous adjustments in the opposite direction in prices of residual commodities . . .’
How long Widmerpool would have continued to speak on these subjects, it is impossible to say. I think he had settled down in his own mind to make a lengthy speech, whether anyone else present liked it or not. Why he had decided to address the table in this manner was not clear to me. Possibly, he merely desired to rehearse aloud certain economic views of his own, expressing them before an indifferent, even comparatively hostile audience, so that he might judge what minor adjustments ought to be made when the speech was delivered on some far more important occasion. Such an action would not be out of keeping with the eccentric, dogged manner in which he ran his life. At the same time, it was also
likely enough that he wanted to impress Le Bas’s Old Boys—those former schoolfellows who had so greatly disregarded him—with the fact that he was getting on in the world in spite of them; that he had already become a person to be reckoned with.
Widmerpool may not even have been conscious of this motive, feeling it only instinctively, for there could be no doubt that he now thought of his schooldays in very different terms from any that his contemporaries would have used. Indeed, such references as he had ever made to his time at school, for example when we had been in France together, always suggested that he saw himself as a boy rather above the average at work and games: that justice had never been done to his energies in either direction was on account of the unsatisfactory manner in which both these sides of life were administered by those in authority
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 Umfraville.’
‘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.’
Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 1 Page 66
