A Buyer's Market (8 page)

I did not hear Eleanor’s views on Mrs. Widmerpool, because at that moment the music ceased; and, after clapping had died down and couples round us dispersed, the subject of Widmerpool and his family was quickly forgotten.

The ball took its course: dance-tune following dance-tune: partner following partner. From time to time, throughout the course of the evening, I saw Widmerpool ploughing his way round the room, as if rowing a dinghy in rough water, while he talked energetically to girls more often than not unknown to me; though chosen, no doubt, with the care devoted by him to any principle in which he was interested. He did not, as it happened, appear to be dancing much with any member of the Walpole-Wilson dinner-party, perhaps regarding them, when considered as individuals, as unlikely to lead to much that he could personally turn to profit. Later on in the evening, while sitting out with Miss Manasch, I was suddenly made aware of him again when he stumbled over her foot on his way upstairs.

“I know who he is!” she said, when he had apologised and disappeared from sight with his partner. “He is the Frog Footman. He ought to be in livery. Has he danced with Anne yet?”

“Anne Stepney?”

“They would be so funny together.”

“Is she a friend of yours?”

“We were at the same finishing school in Paris.”

“They didn’t do much finishing on her, surely?”

“She is so determined to take a different line from that very glamorous sister of hers.”

“Is Peggy Stepney glamorous?”

“You must have seen pictures of her.”

“A friend of mine called Charles Stringham used to talk about her.”

“Oh, yes—Charles Stringham,” said Miss Manasch. “
That
has been over a long time. I think he is rather a fast young man, isn’t he? I seem to have heard.”

She laughed, and rolled her beady little eyes, straightening her frock over plump, well-shaped little legs. She looked quite out of place in this setting; intended by nature to dance veiled, or, perhaps, unveiled, before the throne of some Oriental potentate—possibly one of those exacting rulers to whom Sir Gavin’s well-mannered diplomatists of the past might have appealed—or occupying herself behind the scenes in all the appetising labyrinth of harem intrigue. There existed the faintest suspicion of blue hairs upon her upper hp, giving her the look of a beauty of the Byronic era.

“Anne Stepney said he was pompous. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen him for ages.”

“Anne thinks Charles Stringham pompous, does she?” said Miss Manasch, laughing again quietly to herself.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know him. At least only by reputation. I have met his mother, who is, of course, too wonderful. They say she is getting rather tired of Commander Foxe and thinking of having another divorce. Charles was more or less engaged to Anne’s sister, Peggy, at one stage, as I suppose you know. That’s off now, as I said. I hear about Peggy occasionally from a cousin of mine, Jimmy Klein, who has a great passion for her.”

“Is Charles about to marry anyone at the moment?”

“I don’t think so.”

I had the impression that she knew more about Stringham than she was prepared to divulge, because her face assumed an expression that made her features appear more Oriental than ever. It was evident that she possessed affiliations with circles additional to—perhaps widely different from—those to be associated with Walpole-Wilsons, Gorings, or Huntercombes. Only superficially invested with the characteristics of girls moving within that world, she was at once coarser in texture and at the same time more subtle. Up to that moment she had been full of animation, but now all at once she became melancholy and silent.

“I think I shall leave.”

“Have you had enough?”

“Going home seems the only alternative to sitting among the coats,” she said.

“Whatever for?”

“I comb my hair there.”

“But does it need combing?”

“And while I tug at it, I cry.”

“Surely not necessary to-night?”

“Perhaps not,” she said.

She began to laugh softly to herself once more; and, a minute or two later, went off with some partner who appeared satisfied that the moment had come to claim her. I set about looking for Barbara, with whom at the beginning of the evening I had danced only once. She was in one of the rooms downstairs, talking excitedly to a couple of young men, but she seemed not unwilling to leave their company.

“Let’s sit this one out,” she said.

We made our way outside and to the garden of the square. Guests like Archie Gilbert, who had been asked to both dances, and no doubt also a few who had not enjoyed that privilege—were passing backwards and forwards from one party to another. The reception at the Spanish Embassy, mentioned by Tompsitt, was still in full swing, so far as could be seen. Now and then a breath of air lightened the heavy night, once even causing the shrubs to sway in what was almost a breeze. The windows of both ballrooms stood open, music from the rival bands playing sometimes in conflict, sometimes appearing to belong to a system of massed orchestras designed to perform in unison.

“We’ll have a—Blue Room a—
New room for—two room—
Where we will raise a family…
Not like a—ballroom a—
Small room a—hall room…

An equally insistent murmur came from the other side of the square:

“In the mountain greenery—
Where God makes the scenery …
Ta-rum … Ta-roo …”

“Why are you so glum?” said Barbara, picking up some pebbles and throwing them into the bushes. “I must tell you what happened at Ranelagh last week.”

In the face of recent good resolutions, I tried to take her hand. She snatched it away, laughing, and as usual in such circumstances said: “Oh, don’t get sentimental.”

This tremendous escape, quite undeserved, sobered me. We walked round the lawns. Barbara talked of Scotland, where she was going to stay later in the summer.

“Why not come up there?” she said. “Surely you can find someone to put you up?”

“Got to work.”

“Of course they don’t need you all the time at the office.”

“They do.”

“Have you ever danced reels? Johnny Pardoe is going to be there. He says he’ll teach me.”

She began to execute capers on the lawn. Stopping at last she examined her arm, holding it out, and saying: “How blue my hand looks in the moonlight.”

I found myself wondering whether, so far from loving her, I did not actually hate her. Another tune began and we strolled back through the garden. At the gate Tompsitt came up from somewhere among the shadows.

“This is ours, I think.”

In his manner of speaking, so it seemed to me, he contrived to be at once uncivil and pedantic. Barbara began to jump about on the path as if leaping over imaginary puddles, while almost at the top of her small, though shrill, voice she said: “I can’t, really I can’t. I must have made a muddle. I am dancing with Mr. Widmerpool. I have put him off till now, and I really must.”

“Cut him,” said Tompsitt.

He sounded as if taking Barbara away from her rightful partner would give him even more pleasure than that to be derived from dancing with her himself. I wondered if she had called Widmerpool “Mister” because her acquaintance with him had never been brought to a closer degree of intimacy, or if she spoke facetiously. From what Eleanor had said, the latter seemed more probable. It suddenly struck me that after all these years of knowing him I still had no idea of Widmerpool’s Christian name.

“Shall I?” said Barbara. “He would be terribly angry.”

Suddenly she took each of us by the hand, and began to charge along the pavement. In this unusual manner we reached the door of the Huntercombes’ house. By the time we had ceased running even Tompsitt seemed, in the last resort, rather taken aback; the combined movement of the three of us—rather like that of horses in a troika—being probably as unexpected for him as for myself. Barbara, for her part, was delighted with her own violent display of high spirits. She broke free and rushed up the steps in front of us.

In the hall, although the hour was not yet late, a few people were already making preparations to leave. As it happened, Widmerpool was standing by the staircase, looking, I thought, a little uneasy, and fingering a tattered pair of white gloves. I had seen him with just that expression on his face, waiting for the start of one of the races for which he used so unaccountably to enter: finishing, almost without exception, last or last but one. When he saw Barbara, he brightened a little, and moved towards us.

“The Merry Widow Waltz,” he said. “I always like that, don’t you? I wish I had known Vienna in the old days before the war.”

Barbara once more seized Tompsitt and myself by whichever arm was nearest to her. She said to Widmerpool: “My dear, I have made a muddle again. I have told all sorts of people that I will dance this one with them, but—as I can’t possibly dance with all three of you—let’s all go and have some supper instead.”

“But I’ve already had supper—” began Widmerpool.

“So have I,” said Barbara. “Of course we have all had supper. We will have some more.”

“
I
haven’t had supper,” said Tompsitt.

Widmerpool did not look at all pleased at Barbara’s proposal; nor, for that matter, did Tompsitt, who must have realised now that instead of carrying Barbara gloriously away from a dashing rival—he had probably failed to catch Widmerpool’s name at the dinner-party—he was himself to be involved in some little game played by Barbara for her own amusement. Perhaps for that reason he had felt it more dignified to deny a previous supper; for I was fairly sure that I had seen him leaving the supper-room earlier that night. I could not help feeling pleased that Barbara had insisted on my joining them, although I was at the same time aware that even this pleasure was a sign that I was by now myself less seriously concerned with her; for a few weeks before I should have endured all kind of vexation at this situation. Widmerpool, on the other hand, was by no means prepared to give in at once, though his struggles to keep Barbara to himself were feeble enough, and quite ineffectual.

“But, look here,” he said. “You promised—”

“Not another word.”

“But—”

“Come along—all of you.”

Almost dragging Widmerpool with her, she turned, and set off towards the door of the supper-room; bumped heavily into two dowagers on their way out, and said: “Oh, sorry,” but did not pause. As I passed these ladies, I caught the words “Constance Goring’s girl,” spoken by the dowager who had suffered least from the impact. She was evidently attempting to explain, if not excuse, this impetuosity on some hereditary ground connected with Barbara’s grandfather. Her more elderly and bedraggled companion, who seemed to have been badly shaken, did not appear to find much solace in this historical, or quasi-scientific, approach to Barbara’s indifferent manners. They went off together up the stairs, the elder one still muttering angrily, while Tompsitt and I followed Barbara and Widmerpool to one of many tables decorated with blue hydrangeas in gilt baskets.

The room was still fairly full of people, but we found a place in the corner underneath a picture of Murillo’s school in which peasant boys played with a calf. A large supper-party, making a good deal of noise, were seated at the next table, among them Pardoe, who was telling a complicated story about something that had happened to him—or possibly a brother officer—when “on guard” at the Bank of England.

“The first thing is to get some lemonade,” said Barbara, who never touched any strong drink, in spite of behaviour that often suggested the contrary.

Clearly Widmerpool had been outraged by the loss of his dance. This annoyance, on the face of it, seemed scarcely reasonable, because by that stage of the evening several “extras” had been played, causing the numbers of dances to become confused, so that there had been plenty of excuse for an unimpeachable mistake to have been made; and obviously Barbara was the kind of girl, at best, to be expected to be in a chronic state of tangle about her partners. However, such considerations seemed to carry no weight whatever with Widmerpool, who sat in silence, refusing food and drink, while he gloomily crumbled a roll of bread. Barbara, who possessed a healthy appetite at all times of day or night, ordered lobster salad. Tompsitt drank—in which I joined him—a glass of what he called “The Widow.” The wine had the effect of making him discourse on racing, a subject regarding which I was myself unfortunately too ignorant to dispose as summarily as I should have wished of the almost certainly erroneous opinions he put forward. Barbara embarked upon an account of her own experiences at Ascot, of no great interest in themselves, though at the same time hardly justifying the splenetic stare which Widmerpool fixed on her, while she unfolded a narrative based on the matter of starting prices for runners in the Gold Cup, associated at the same time with the question whether or not she had been finally swindled by her bookmaker.

She was, as usual, talking at the top of her voice, so that people at surrounding tables could hear most of what she said. Owing to this very general audibility of her remarks, she became in some way drawn into an argument with Pardoe, who had apparently been a member of the same Ascot party as herself. Although Barbara’s voice was not without a penetrating quality, and Pardoe, who spoke, as it were, in a series of powerful squeaks, could no doubt make the welkin ring across the parade-grounds of Wellington Barracks or Caterham, they did not, for some reason, contrive to reach any mutual understanding in their attempts to make their respective points of view plain to each other; so that at last Barbara jumped up from her seat, saying: “I’m going across to tell him just what did happen.”

There was a vacant chair next to the place where Pardoe sat. If Barbara ever reached that place, there could be little doubt that she would spend the rest of her time in the supper-room—perhaps the remainder of her time at the dance—discussing with Pardoe bets, past, present, and future; because he had abandoned any effort to talk to the girl next to him, who was, in fact, amusing herself happily enough with two or three other young men in the neighbourhood. The consequence of these various circumstances was for a decidedly odd incident to take place, with Widmerpool for its central figure: an incident that brought back to me once more expressive memories of Widmerpool as he had been at school. This crisis, as it might reasonably be called, came about because Widmerpool himself must have grasped immediately that, if Barbara abandoned our table at that moment, she would be lost to him for the rest of the time both of them were under the Huntercombes’ roof. That, at least, seemed the only possible explanation of the action he now took, when—just as Barbara stood up, in preparation to leave us—he snatched her wrist.