Books Do Furnish a Room (6 page)

Like Hugo – although naturally
in terms of his own very different temperament and approach to life – Roddy Cutts had also quietened.
There was sufficient reason for that. The wartime romance at HQ Persia/Iraq
Force, with the cipherine he had at one moment planned to marry, had collapsed not long after disclosure of the situation in a letter to
his wife. While on leave in Teheran the cipherine had suddenly decided to abscond with a rich Persian, abandoning Roddy to his own
resources. Susan, who had behaved impeccably during this unhappy interlude, now took over. When Roddy came back to England for the 1945 election, she worked
exceptionally hard. He retained his seat by a few hundred votes. As a
consequence, Susan’s ascendancy was now complete, Roddy utterly under her
control. She made him toil like a slave. That was no doubt right, what he
wanted himself. All the same, these factors were calculated to reduce high
spirits, even in one so generally appreciative of his own good qualities as
Roddy Cutts. His handsome, rather too large features were now marked with signs
of stress, everything about him a shade less strident, even the sandy hair. At
the same time he retained the forceful manner, half hectoring, half
subservient, common to representatives of all political parties, together with
the politician’s endemic hallmark of getting hold of the wrong end of the
stick. He was almost pathetically thankful to be back in the House of Commons.

When George Tolland had been
buried a few months before, Erridge had not been present at the funeral. He
had, in fact retired to bed with an attack of gastritis – then very prevalent –
but from the start this absence had been assumed almost as a matter of course
by his sisters. That was not because any of them accepted too seriously Erridge’s
own complaint about chronic ailments, but on the general principle that for an
eldest son, no matter how progressive his views, it was reasonable to avoid a
ceremony where a younger brother must inevitably occupy the limelight; in this
case additionally so in the eyes of those – however much Erridge himself might
deplore such sentiments – who felt an end such as George’s traditionally
commendable; as Stringham had commented, ‘awfully smart to be killed’. This
last factor was likely to be emphasized by the religious service, in itself
distasteful to Erridge. There was therefore more than one reason to keep him
away, as of late years he had become all but incapable of doing anything he
disliked. It was agreed that, even without illness, he would never have
attended.

‘A psychosomatic attack was a
foregone conclusion,’ said Norah. ‘Anyway all parties go better without Erry.’

Nevertheless George’s death had undoubtedly agitated his eldest brother. Blanche, in her sad, willing, never wholly comprehending way of
describing things, had been insistent about that. At least Blanche always appeared uncomprehending. Possibly she really grasped a great deal more than her own
relations supposed. The local doctor, Erridge’s
sole confidant in the neighbourhood, had not seen
him for a month, a most uncharacteristic omission. Blanche repeated Dr Jodrill’s words.

‘The coronary thrombosis
revealed by the post-mortem could owe something to emotional disturbance. I
venture to suggest Lord Warminster was greatly
unsettled by Colonel Tolland’s death.’

Perhaps Jodrill was right. Long
submerged sentiments might all at once have taken charge. Even Erridge’s
indisposition at the time of the funeral could have had something to do with
these. Still, it was hard to contradict Norah in thinking Erridge better
absent. Several army friends turned up at the church, Tom Goring, always a
crony – ’Rifleman notwithstanding’, as George used to say – who had commanded a
brigade in the sector where George was wounded. Ted Jeavons was there too,
punctilious observance on the part of an uncle by marriage, whose own health
was notoriously poor. For obscure reasons of his own, Jeavons made the journey
by a different railway line from the rest of the family, returning the same
night. The church had not been full, fog and rationed petrol keeping people
away.

At George’s funeral, as so
often on such occasions, the sharp contrast between life and death was
emphasized by one of those incongruous incidents that seem to bear on the
character or habits of the deceased. So far from diminishing the nature of the
ceremony, their aptness often increases its intensity, by-passing, so to speak,
ingenuities of ritual and music, bridging with some peculiar fitness the gulf
presented to the imagination by the fact of death. The sensibilities are
brought up with a start to accept what has happened by action or scene,
outwardly untimed, inwardly apposite.

George’s coffin had been
committed to the moss-lined earth, the mourners moving away, when a party of
German prisoners-of-war from the camp, their guard equipped with a tommy-gun
(carried with the greatest nonchalance), straggled across the churchyard on the
way back from a local excursion. They seemed quite unaware of what had been
taking place a moment before, mingling, as it were, with the mourners, at whom
they sheepishly gazed. During the service there had been, in fact, no music, a
minimum of anything that could be called ritual. The POWs seemed in a manner to
take the place of whatever had been lacking in the way of external effects,
forming a rough-and-ready, unknowing guard-of-honour; final reminder of the
course of events that had brought George’s remains to that quiet place.

The church, at the end of the
village, was a few hundred yards from the gates of the park. On the day of
Erridge’s interment, though the weather was not cold for the time of year, rain
was pouring down in steely diagonals across the gravestones. Within the
mediaeval building, large for a country church, the temperature was lower than
in the open, the interior like a wintry cave. Isobel and Norah sat on either
side of me under the portrait medallion, lilac grey marble against an alabaster
background, of the so-called ‘Chemist-Earl’,
depicted in bas relief with sidewhiskers and a high collar, the accompanying
inscription in gothic lettering. A scientist of some distinction and FRS, he
had died unmarried in the eighteen-eighties.

‘My favourite forebear,’ Hugo
said. ‘He did important research into marsh gases, and something called alcohol-radicles.
As you may imagine, there were a lot of contemporary witticisms about the
latter, also jokes within the family about his work on the deodorization of
sewage, which was, I believe, outstanding.’

Heraldry had evidently been
considered inappropriate for the Chemist-Earl, but two or three escutcheons in
the chancel displayed the Tolland gold bezants – ’talents’, in the punning
connotation of the arms – over the similarly canting motto:
Quid oneris in praesentia tollant
. The family’s memorials went
back no further than the middle of the eighteenth century, when the Hugford
heiress (only child of a Lord Mayor) had inhabited Thrubworth; her husband, the
Lord Erridge of the period, migrating there from a property further north. On
the other side of the aisle, almost level with where we sat, a tomb in white
marble, ornate but elegant, was surmounted with sepulchral urns and trophies of
arms.

Sacred to the Memory of
Henry Lucius 1st Earl of Warminster,
Viscount Erridge, Baron Erridge of Mirkbooths,
G.C.B., Lieutenant-General in the Army, etc.

‘Be of good courage and let us
behave ourselves valiantly
for our people, and for the cities of our God:
and let the Lord do that which is good in his sight.’

I. Chronicles, xix. 13.

Even if Wellington were truly
reported in expressing reservations about his abilities as a commander, Henry
Lucius had left some sort of a legend behind him. An astute politician, he had
voted at the right moment for Reform. ‘Lord Erridge made a capital speech,’
wrote Creevey, ‘causing the damn’dest surprise to the Tory waverers, and as I
have heard he is soon to retire with an earldom, he must have decided to
present his valedictions with a flourish before devoting the remaining years of
his life to his
hobbies
.’ Gronow’s Memoirs throw light
on this last comment, endorsing the caution displayed by the commemorative text
in fields other than military. After noting that Brummell paid Henry Lucius the
compliment of asking who made his driving-coat, Captain Gronow adds: ‘His
Lordship was not indifferent to the charms of the fair sex, but the exquisitely
beautiful Creole of sixteen, who was under his immediate protection when he
breathed his last in lodgings at Brighton, was believed by many people in
society to be his daughter.’

It looked as if Erridge, long
shut away from everyday life, would bring together an even smaller gathering of
mourners than his brother George. Two or three elderly neighbours were there as
a matter of form, a couple of Alfords from his mother’s side of the family, a
few tenants and people from the village. Most of this congregation stole in
almost guiltily, as if – like Bagshaw – they hoped to draw the least possible
attention to themselves, choosing pews at the back of the church in which they
sat hunched and shivering. There was a longish, rather nerve-racking wait,
emphasized by much coughing and clearing of throats. Then came manifestations
from the porch. At last something was happening. There was a noise, quite a
commotion. It sounded as if the coffin-bearers – just enough men of required
physique had been found available on the estate for that duty – were
encountering difficulties. The voices outside were raised in apparent argument,
if not altercation. From among these tones of dissension a female note was
perceptible; perhaps the protests of more than one woman. A pause of several minutes followed before whoever was arguing in the porch
entered the church. Then the steps of several persons sounded on the uncarpeted
flagstones. A general turning of heads took place to ascertain whether the
moment had come to stand up.

A party of six persons, four
men and two women, were advancing up the aisle in diamond formation. Widmerpool
was at the head. Carrying a soft black hat between his hands and in front of
his chest, he was peering over it as he proceeded slowly, reverently, rather suspiciously, up the unlighted interior of the
church. His appearance at this moment was wholly unexpected. George, in his
City days, had done business with Donners-Brebner when Widmerpool worked there,
but, so far as I knew, Widmerpool had no contacts with Erridge. There had been
no sign of Widmerpool at George’s funeral. At first sight, the rest of the
group seemed equally unlooked for, even figments of a dream, as faces became
recognizable in the gloom. A moment’s thought revealed their presence as
explicable enough, even if singular in present unison. To limit examination of
this cluster of figures to a mere glance over the shoulder was asking too much,
even to pretend any longer that the glance was only a requisite precaution for
keeping abreast of the progress of the service.
In fact most of the congregation settled down to a good stare.

A man in his sixties, tall,
haggard, bent, bald, walked behind Widmerpool, his untidy self-satisfied air
for some reason suggesting literary or journalistic affiliations. Beside him
was a woman about twenty years younger, short, wiry, her head tied up in a red
handkerchief, somehow calling to mind old-fashioned Soviet posters celebrating
the Five Year Plan. Too stocky and irritable in appearance, in fact, to figure
in pictorial propaganda, she had the right sort of aggressiveness. This was
Gypsy Jones. Oddly enough, the look of King Lear on the heath attached to Mr
Deacon, when, years before, I had seen him selling
War
Never Pays!
with Gypsy at Hyde Park Corner, was suddenly
recalled. However different his sexual tastes, Howard Craggs had developed much
of the same wandering demented appearance. It was almost as if association with Gypsy – they
had lived together years before the marriage reported by Bagshaw – brought
about this mien.

Behind these two walked another
couple unforeseen as proceeding side by side up the aisle of a church. One of
these was J. G. Quiggin, certainly an old friend of Erridge’s, in spite of many
ups and downs. It was also natural enough that he should have travelled here
with Craggs, co-director of the new publishing firm. Sillery’s description of
Quiggin’s current Partisan-style dress was borne out by the para-military
overtones of khaki shirt, laced ankle boots, belted black leather overcoat. To
be fair, the last dated back at least to the days when Quiggin was St John
Clarke’s secretary. Beside Quiggin, contrasted in a totally achieved funereal
correctness, smoothing his grey moustache in unmistakable agonies of
embarrassment – either at arriving at the church so late, or presenting himself
on such an occasion in the company of mourners so unconformist in dress – walked
the Tollands’ Uncle Alfred.

However, the last figure in the
cortege made the rest seem humdrum enough. At the rear of this wedge-shaped
phalanx, a long way behind the others, moving at a stroll that suggested she
was out by herself on a long lonely country walk, her thoughts far away in her
own melancholy daydreams, walked, almost glided, Widmerpool’s wife. Her eyes
were fixed on the ground as she advanced slowly, with extraordinary grace, up
the aisle. As centre of attention she put the rest of the procession utterly in
the shade. That was not entirely due to her slim figure and pent-up sullen
beauty. Another beautiful girl could have created no more than the impression
that she was a beautiful girl. It was not easy to say what marked out Pamela
Widmerpool as something more than that. Perhaps her absolute self-confidence,
her manner of expressing without words that to be present at all was a
condescension; to have allowed herself to be one of that particular party, an
accepted abasement of the most degrading sort. Above all, she seemed an
appropriate attendant on Death. This was not an account of her clothes. They
were far from sombre. They looked – so Isobel remarked afterwards – as if
bought for a cold day’s racing. This closeness to Death was carried within
herself. Even in his chastened state, Roddy Cutts could not withhold an audible
drawing in of breath.