Free Books Do Furnish a Room by Anthony Powell Page A

gongs. He was rather worried about my using the car for a funeral, but I
said I was going to a POW camp, and if an Air Vice-Marshal’s lady can’t inspect
a POW camp, what in hell can she do? Well, it’s been nice seeing you, Nick,
and
your
wife, not to mention having a word about those poor dears who are no more. That
erk will have to drive like
stink
if I’m
not to be late. We’ve got some personnel coming to
tea
of
all things – drink quite impossible to get for love or money these days, anyway
to dish out to all and sundry, as well you must know, so I’ll just say bye-bye
for now ...’
    While talking, she had fallen
more than once into what Mr Deacon used to call a ‘vigorous pose’. Now, as she
walked away, the controlled movement of her long swift strides recalled the
artists’ model she once had been. In the road stood a large car, a uniformed
aircraftman at the wheel. She turned and waved, then disappeared within.
    ‘Who on earth?’
    ‘That’s Mona.’
    ‘ Not the girl Erry took to
China?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Why didn’t you indicate that?
I could have had a closer look. What a pity the poor old boy didn’t hang on.
She might have kept him going.’
    As the RAF car drove away, the
outlines of Alfred Tolland, picking his way between the graves, came into view.
He had been waiting for Mona to move on before he approached. It now struck me
that he must have met Widmerpool at the Old Boy dinners of Le Bas’s house,
because Alfred Tolland retained sentiments about his schooldays that
age had in no way diminished. Except for Le Bas himself, he had always – in the
days long past when I myself attended them – been the eldest present by at
least twenty years.
    ‘Uncle
Alfred’s a sad case in that respect,’ Hugo had remarked. ‘Personally I
applaud that great enemy of the Old School Tie, the Emperor Septimius Severus, who had a man scourged merely for drawing attention to the fact that they had been at school
together.’
    However, Le Bas dinners could
explain why Widmerpool and Alfred Tolland had travelled down together after
seeing each other at the station. Widmerpool was, in fact, now revealed as
standing close behind, as if he expected Alfred Tolland to make some statement
that concerned himself or his party, the rest of whom were no longer to be
seen. They could be concealed by mist, or have left in a body after the
committal. To make sure his own presence as a mourner was not overlooked by
Erridge’s family would be characteristic of Widmerpool, even though the reason
for his attendance remained at present unproclaimed. He was looking even more
worried than in the church. If he had merely desired to register attendance and
go away, he would certainly have pushed in front of Alfred Tolland, whose
hesitant, deferential comportment always caused delays, particularly at a time
like this. Neat, sad, geared perfectly in outward appearance to the sombre
nature of the occasion, Tolland stood, head slightly bent, gazing at the damp
grass beneath his feet. He had once admitted to having travelled as far as
Singapore. One wondered how he had ever managed to get there and back again.
Unlikely he had taken with him a girl like Mona, though one could never tell.
Barnby always used to insist it was misplaced to speak categorically about
other people’s sexual experiences, whoever they were.
    ‘Uncle Alfred?’
    ‘My dear Isobel, this is very …’
    He was all but incapable of
finishing a sentence, a form of
diffidence implying unworthiness to force a personal opinion on others. Even
when Alfred Tolland spoke his own views, they were hedged round with every sort
of qualification. Erridge’s passing, the company in which he found himself on
the way down, stirred within him concepts far too unmanageable to be
accommodated in a single phrase. Isobel helped him out.
    ‘A very sad occasion, Uncle
Alfred. Poor Erry. It was so unexpected.’
    ‘Yes –