A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell

“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 to-night.”

“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 Buildings,” 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, téte-â-téte 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 Gyspy 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 or 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 nobility 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.

The lady with the tiara had at last reluctantly abandoned the magnum to her bearded opponent (now accommodated with a younger, though less conspicuous, woman), and, apparently much flattered by the attention, she was accepting a cigarette from the Negro’s long case, which he was holding out towards her, the metal seeming delicately matched in tone with the skin of its owner’s hand, also the tint of old gold. Beyond this couple, the gentleman with the eye-glass and medals was now talking to a figure whose back-view — for some reason familiar — showed an immensely time-worn suit of evening clothes, the crumpled tails of which hung down almost to its wearer’s heels, giving him the appearance of a musical-hall comedian, or conjuror of burlesque, whose baggy Charlie Chaplin trousers, threatening descent to the ground at any moment, would probably reveal red flannel, grotesquely spotted, or some otherwise traditionally comic, underclothes, or lack of them, beneath. Matted white hair protruded over the back of this person’s collar, and he was alternately rubbing together his hands and replacing them in the pockets of these elephantine trousers, while he stood nodding his head, and sagging slightly at the knees. I suddenly became aware, with some surprise, that the man with the medals was Colonel Budd — Margaret Budd’s father — who held some minor appointment at Court. He had also perhaps, “come on” from the Huntercombes’.

“She reposes herself at the back of the shop,” said Mr. Deacon, pursuing the topic of his connection with Gypsy Jones. “I make up the bed — a divan — myself, with some rather fine Cashmere shawls a former patron of mine left me in his will. However, I don’t expect she will need them on a warm night like this. Just as well, if they’re not to be worn to shreds. As a matter of fact they are going for a mere song if you happen to know anyone interested in Oriental textiles. I can always find something else to put over Gypsy. Of course Barnby doesn’t much like her being there.”

I did not at that time know who Barnby might be, though I felt sure that I had heard of him; connecting the name — as it turned out, correctly — with painting.

“I see his point,” said Mr. Deacon, “even though I know little of such things. Gypsy’s attitude naturally — perhaps Barnby would prefer me to say ‘unnaturally’—offends his amour propre. In some ways he is not an ideal tenant himself. I don’t want women running up and down stairs all day long — and all night long too, for that matter — just because I have to put up with Gypsy in a good cause.”

He spoke complainingly, and paused for breath, coughing throatily, as if he might be suffering from asthma. Both of us helped ourselves to another drink. Meanwhile, seen in the looking-glass, Colonel Budd and the wearer of the Charlie Chaplin trousers now began to edge their way round the wall to where a plump youth with a hooked nose and black curly hair, perhaps an Oriental, was talking to a couple of strikingly pretty girls. For a minute or two I had already been conscious of something capable of recognition about the old clothes and assured carriage of the baggy-trousered personage, whose face, until that moment, had been hidden from me. When he turned towards the room, I found that die features were Sillery’s, not seen since I had come down from the university.

To happen upon Sillery in London at that season of the year was surprising. Usually, by the time the first few weeks of the Long Vacation had passed, he was already abroad, in Austria or Italy, with a reading party of picked undergraduates: or even a fellow don or two, chosen with equal care, always twenty or thirty years younger than himself. Sillery, probably with wisdom, always considered himself at a disadvantage outside his own academical strongholds. He was accordingly accustomed, on the whole, to emphasise the corruption of metropolitan life as such, in spite of almost febrile interest in the affairs of those who found themselves habitually engaged in London’s social activities; but, on the other hand, if passing through on his way to the Continent, he would naturally welcome opportunity to be present, as if by accident, at a party of this kind, when luck put such a chance in his way. The accumulated gossip there obtainable could be secreted, and eked out for weeks and months — even years — at his own tea-parties; or injected in judiciously homeopathic doses to rebut and subdue refractory colleagues at High Table. Possibly, with a view to enjoying such potential benefits, he might even have delayed departure to the lakes and mountains where his summers were chiefly spent; but if he had come to London specially to be present, there could be no doubt that it was to pursue here some negotiation judged by himself to be of first-rate importance.