Free Books Do Furnish a Room by Anthony Powell Page B

quite unexpected. These
things are unexpected sometimes. Absolutely unexpected, in fact. Of course
Erridge always did …’
    What did Erridge always do? The
question was capable of many answers. The wrong thing? Know he was a sick man?
Fear the winter? Hope the end would be sudden? Want Alfred Tolland to reveal
some special secret after his own demise? Perhaps just ‘do the unexpected’. On
the whole that termination was the most probable. Alfred Tolland, this time
unassisted by Isobel, may have feared that any too direct statement about what
Erridge ‘did’ might sound callous, if spoken straight out. Instead of
completing, he altogether abandoned the comment, this time bringing out in its
entirety another concept, quite different in range.
    ‘I’m feeling rather ashamed.’
    ‘Ashamed, Uncle Alfred?’
    ‘Never got down here for George’s
… In bed, as a matter of fact.’
    ‘Nothing bad, I hope, Uncle
Alfred.’
    ‘Had a bit of – chest. Felt
ashamed, all the same. Not absolutely right now, but can get about. Can’t be
helped. Didn’t want to stay away when it came to the head of the family.’
    He spoke as if he would have
risen from the dead to reach the funeral of the head of the family. Perhaps he had.
The idea was not to be too lightly dismissed. There something not wholly of
this world about him. Time, for example, seemed to mean nothing. One hoped he would come
soon to the point of what he had to say. Although the worst of the rain
had stopped, a pervasive damp struck up from the ground and into the bones. Obviously something was on his
mind. In the background Widmerpool shifted about, stamping his feet and kicking them together.
    ‘We’ll give you a lift back to
the house, Uncle Alfred, if you want
one. That’s if any of the cars will start. Some of them are rather ancient. It
may be rather a squeeze.’
    ‘Quite forgot, quite forgot …
These good people I travelled down with … shared a taxi from the station … Mr –
met him at those dinners Nicholas and I … and his wife … very good looking …
another couple too, Sir Somebody and Lady Something … also another old friend
of Erridge’s … nice people … something they wanted to ask…’
    Alfred Tolland turned towards
Widmerpool, in search of help, to give words to a matter not at all easy to
summarize in a few broken phrases. At least he himself found that hard, which
was usual enough, even if the situation were not as ticklish as this one
appeared. Widmerpool, not happy himself, was prepared at the same time to
accept his cue. He began to speak in his least aggressive manner.
    ‘Two things, Nicholas – though
I don’t expect you’re really the person to ask, sure as I am, as an old friend,
you’ll be prepared to act for us as – well, as what? – intermediary, shall we
say? You know already, I think, the other members of the party I came down with.
J. G. Quiggin, of course – must know him as a literary bloke yourself – and as
for Sir Howard and Lady Craggs, of course you remember them.’
    One to admit that ‘Sir Howard
and Lady Craggs’ conjured up a rather different picture from Mr Deacon’s
birthday party, Gypsy lolling on Craggs’s knee, struggling to divert a too
exploratory hand back to a wide area of pink thigh. If it came to that, one had
one’s own reminiscences of Lady Craggs in an easy-going mood.
    ‘We all wanted, of course, to
pay last respects to your late brother-in-law, Lord Warminster – much to my
regret I never managed to meet him – but there was also something else. This
seemed a golden opportunity to have a preliminary word, if possible, with the
appropriate member, or members, of the family, now collected together, as to
the best means of approaching certain matters arisen in consequence of Lord
Warminster’s death.’
    Widmerpool paused. He was
relieved to have made a start on whatever he wanted to say, for clearly this
was by no means the