Anthony Powell - At Lady Mollys
‘I thought you were going to be in London all the week,’ he said, ‘with your committee to re-examine the terms of the Sedition Bill.’
He sounded vexed by the bearded man’s arrival at this moment, though at the same time exerting every effort to conceal his annoyance.
‘Craggs couldn’t be there, so I decided I might as well come back. I walked up from the station. I’ve got a lot of stuff to go through still, and I always hate being in London longer than I need. I thought I would drop in on the way home to show you what I had done.’
The bearded man spoke in a deep, infinitely depressed voice, pointing at the same time with one hand to a small cardboard dispatch-case he carried in the other. This receptacle was evidently full of papers, for it bulged at top and bottom, and, since the lock was broken, was tied round several times with string.
‘Wouldn’t you rather deal with it another time?’ Quiggin asked, hopefully.
He seemed desperately anxious to get rid of the stranger without revealing his identity. I strongly suspected this to be the landlord of the cottage, but still had no clue to Quiggin’s secrecy on the subject of his name, if this suspicion proved to be true. The man with the beard looked fairly typical of one layer of Quiggin’s friends: a layer which Quiggin kept, on the whole, in the background, because he regarded them for one reason or another — either politically or even for reasons that could only be called snobbish — to be bad for business. Quiggin possessed his own elaborately drawn scale of social values, no less severe in their way than the canons of the most ambitious society hostess; but it was not always easy for others to know where, and how, he drew his lines of demarcation. Possibly the man with the beard was regarded as not quite at a level to be allowed to drink with Quiggin when friends were present. However, he was not to be expelled so easily. He shook now his head resolutely.
‘No,’ he said. ‘There are just one or two things.’
He looked again in my direction after saying this, as if to make some apology either for intruding in this manner, or, as it were, on behalf of Quiggin for his evident wish that we should have nothing to do with each other.
‘I haven’t butted in, have I?’ he said.
He spoke not so much to Quiggin as to the world at large, without much interest in a reply. The remark was the expression of a polite phrase that seemed required by the circumstances, rather than anything like real fear that his presence might be superfluous. My impression of him began to alter. I came to the conclusion that under this burden of shyness he did not care in the least whether he butted in on Quiggin, or on anyone else. What he wanted was his own way. Mona, who had gone through to the kitchen now returned, bringing another glass.
‘Have a drink, Alf,’ she said. ‘Nice to see you unexpectedly like this.’
She had brightened up noticeably.
‘Yes, of course, Alf, have a drink,’ said Quiggin, now resigning himself to the worst. ‘And sorry, by the way, for forgetting to explain who everybody is. My rough North Country manners again. This is Nick Jenkins — Alf Warminster.’
This, then, was the famous Erridge. It was easy to see how the rumour had gone round among his relations that he had become a tramp, even if actual experience had stopped short of that status in its most exact sense. I should never have recognised him with his beard and heavily-lined face. Now that his name was revealed, the features of the preoccupied, sallow, bony schoolboy, with books tumbling from under his arm, could be traced like a footpath lost in the brambles and weeds of an untended garden: an overgrown crazy pavement. Examining him as a perceivable entity, I could even detect in his face a look of his sisters, especially Frederica. His clothes gave off a heavy, earthen smell as if he had lived out in them in all weathers for a long time.
‘Alf owns this cottage,’ said Quiggin, reluctantly. ‘But he kindly allows us to live here until the whole place is turned into a collective farm with himself at the head of it.’
He laughed harshly. Erridge (as I shall, for convenience, continue to call him) laughed uneasily too.
‘Of course you know I’m frightfully glad to have you here,’ he said.
He spoke lamely and looked more than ever embarrassed at this tribute paid him, which was certainly intended by Quiggin to carry some sting in its tail: presumably the implication that, whatever his political views, whatever the social changes, Erridge would remain in a comfortable position. When Quiggin ingratiated himself with people — during his days as secretary to St. John Clarke, for example — he was far too shrewd to confine himself to mere flattery. A modicum of bullying was a pleasure both to himself and his patrons. All the same, I was not sure that Erridge, for all his outward appearance, might not turn out a tougher proposition than St. John Clarke.
‘I don’t know that farming is quite my line,’ Erridge went on, apologetically. ‘Though of course we have always done a bit of it here. Incidentally, is the water pumping satisfactorily? You may find it rather hard work, I am afraid. I had the hand pump specially put in. I think it is a better model than the one in the keeper’s cottage, and they seem to find that one works all right.’
‘Mona and I take our turn at it,’ said Quiggin; and, grinning angrily in my direction, he added: ‘Guests are expected to do their stint at the pump as a rule. Pumping is a bit of a bore, as you say. You can’t do it any better, or any quicker, or any way that makes the tank last longer. The pump movement is just short of the natural leverage of the arm from the elbow, which makes the work particularly laborious. But we get along all right. Pumping is a kind of image of life under the capitalist system.’
Erridge laughed constrainedly, and took a gulp of gin, involuntarily making a grimace as he did so. This seemed to indicate that he belonged to the class of egoist who dislikes the taste of food and drink. He would probably have abstained from alcohol entirely had not his special approach to life made a duty of mixing on equal terms with people round him. He seemed now a little put out by Quiggin’s lack of affection for the pump. Having installed the equipment himself, like most innovators or, indeed, most owners of property, he did not care for the disparagement of his organisation or possessions; at least on the part of persons other than himself.
‘1 met some of your sisters the other day,’ I said.
Erridge’s face clouded at these words, while Quiggin gritted his teeth in irritation. This, as intended, was nothing short of a declaration that I knew more about Erridge and his background than Quiggin might think desirable, and also was not prepared to move solely upon lines laid down by Quiggin himself. Indeed, Quiggin may have hoped that the name ‘Warminster’ inarticulately mumbled with the emphasis on the prefix ‘Alf, would in itself at the time convey little or nothing; later, he could please himself how much he revealed about his current patron. There was a moment’s pause before Erridge answered.
‘Oh, yes — yes—’ he said. ‘Which — which ones—?’
‘Priscilla and then Frederica, who took me to see Norah.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Erridge. ‘Priscilla — Frederica — Norah.’
He spoke as if he had now begun to remember them quite well. The manner in which he screwed up his face, while making this effort of memory recalled his uncle, Alfred Tolland. Although, at first sight, it would have been difficult to think of two men whose outward appearance was superficially more different, something deeper remained in common. If Alfred Tolland had grown a beard, dressed in rags and slept out all night, or if Erridge had washed, shaved and assumed a stiff collar and dark suit, something more than a passing resemblance might have become evident. Indeed, Erridge’s features had assumed some of that same expression of disappointment which marked his uncle’s face when Molly Jeavons teased him; with the contrast that, in Erridge, one was reminded of a spoilt child, while Alfred Tolland’s countenance was that of a child resigned from an early age to teasing by grown-ups. There could be no doubt that Erridge recoiled from the invocation of his immediate family. The world of his relations no doubt caused him chronic dissatisfaction. I saw no reason, for my own part, why he should be let off anything. If he lent Quiggin the cottage, he must put up with Quiggin’s guests; especially those invited primarily to help Mona become a film star.
Silence fell. Erridge looked out towards the uncurtained window beyond which night had already fallen. Unlike his uncle, he had no wish to discuss his family. After all, it was perhaps hard that he should be forced to talk about them merely to plague Quiggin, though to try the experiment had been tempting. Quiggin himself had become increasingly restive during this interchange. Mona had spoken little, though undoubtedly cheered by the visit. Quiggin seemed to judge, perhaps correctly, that Erridge was displeased by all this chit-chat, and began to mention tentatively executive matters existing between them; although at the same time unquestionably anxious that Erridge should leave the cottage as soon as possible. However, Erridge in spite of his own unwillingness to make conversation, showed equally no desire to move. He took an ancient leather tobacco-pouch from one of his coat pockets and began to roll himself a cigarette. When he had done this — not very successfully, for a good deal of tobacco protruded from each end of the twist of rice-paper — he licked the edge to seal it and lit the rather flimsy result of these labours. The cigarette seemed not to ‘draw’ well, so after a minute or two he threw it into the grate. Sipping the drink Mona had given him, he again made a face, tipping back the kitchen chair upon which he sat until it cracked ominously. He sighed deeply.
‘I was wondering whether it would be better for you to be secretary instead of Craggs,’ he said.
‘What makes you think so?’ asked Quiggin cautiously.
‘Craggs always seems to have something else to do. The fact is, Craggs is so keen on running committees that he can never give any of them the right amount of attention. He is on to German refugees now. Quite right, of course, that something should be done. But last week I couldn’t get hold of him because he was occupied with Sillery about the embargo on arms to Bolivia and Paraguay. Then there’s the “Smash Fascism” group he is always slipping off to. He would like us to pay more attention to Mosley. He wants to be doing the latest thing all the time, whether it’s the independence of Catalonia or free meals for school-children.’
‘Anti-fascism comes first,’ said Quiggin. ‘Even before pacifism. In my opinion, the Sedition Bill can wait. After all, didn’t Lenin say something about Liberty being a bourgeois illusion?’
Quiggin had added this last remark in not too serious a tone, but Erridge seemed to take it seriously, shifting about uncomfortably on his hard wooden seat as if he were a galley-slave during an interval of rest.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I know he did.’
‘Well, then?’
‘I don’t always think like the rest of you about that.’
He rose suddenly from his chair.
‘I want to have a talk about the magazine some time,’ he said. ‘Not now, I think.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Quiggin.
He sounded as if he would have preferred ‘the magazine’ not to have been so specifically named.
‘What magazine?’ asked Mona.
‘Oh, it’s nothing, ducks,’ said Quiggin. ‘Just an idea Alf and I were talking about.’
‘Are you going to start a magazine?’
Mona sounded quite excited.
‘We might be,’ said Erridge, moving his feet about.
‘It is all very vague still,’ said Quiggin, in a voice that closed the matter.
Mona was not to be so easily silenced. Whether her interest had been genuinely aroused or whether she saw this as a means expressing her own views or teasing Quiggin was not clear.
‘But how thrilling,’ she said. ‘Do tell me all about it, Alf.’
Erridge smiled in an embarrassed way, and pulled at his beard.
‘It is all very vague, as J.G. has explained,’ he said. ‘Look here, why not come to dinner tomorrow night? We could talk about it then.’
‘Or perhaps later in the week,’ said Quiggin.
‘I’ve got to go away again on Monday,’ Erridge said.
There was a pause. Quiggin glared at me.
‘I expect you will have to go back to London on Sunday night, won’t you, Nick?’ he said.
‘Oh, do come too,’ said Erridge, at once. ‘I’m so sorry. Of course I meant to ask you as well if you are staying until then.’
He seemed distressed at having appeared in his own eyes bad mannered. I think he lived in a dream, so shut off from the world that he had not bothered for a moment to consider whether I was staying with Quiggin, or had just come in that night for a meal. Even if he realised that I was staying, he was probably scarcely aware that I might still be there twenty-four hours later. His reactions placed him more and more as a recognisable type, spending much of his time in boredom and loneliness, yet in some way inhibited from taking in anything relevant about other people: at home only with ‘causes’.
‘The trains are not too good in the morning,’ said Quiggin. ‘I don’t know when you have to be at the Studio—’
‘The Studio is closed all this week owing to the strike,’ I said. ‘So I had thought of going up on Monday morning in any case — if that is all right.’
‘Oh, are you on strike?’ asked Erridge, brightening up at once, as if it were for him a rare, unexpected pleasure to find himself in such close contact with a real striker. ‘In that case you simply must come and have a meal with me.’
‘I’d love to, but it is not me on strike, I am afraid — the electricians.’
‘Oh, yes, the strike, of course, the strike,’ said Quiggin, as if he himself had organised the stoppage of work, but, in the light of his many similar responsibilities, had forgotten about its course. ‘In that case we would all like to come, Alf. It’s an early supper, as I remember.’
So far as Quiggin was concerned, it had been one of those great social defeats; and, in facing the fact squarely, he had done something to retrieve his position. Presumably he was making plans for Erridge to put up the money to install him as editor of some new, Left Wing magazine. It was perhaps reasonable that he should wish to keep their plans secret in case they should miscarry. However, now that the dinner had been decided upon, he accepted the matter philosophically. Erridge seemed to have no similar desire to discuss matters in private. He was, I think, quite unaware of Quiggin’s unwillingness to allow others to know too much of their life together. I could see, too, that he was determined not to abandon the idea that I was myself a striker.
‘But you support them by not going,’ he said. ‘Yes, come early. You might possibly like to look round the house — though there really is nothing to see there that is of the slightest interest, I’m afraid.’
