They lived, as Widmerpool had described, on the top floor of one of the smaller erections of flats in the neighbourhood of Westminster Cathedral. The lift, like an ominously creaking funicular, swung me up to these mountainous regions, and to a landing where light shone through frosted panes of glass. The door was opened by a depressed elderly maid, wearing cap and pince-nez, who showed me into a drawing-room, where Widmerpool was sitting alone, reading The Times. I was dimly aware of a picture called The Omnipresent hanging on one of the walls, in which three figures in bluish robes stand or kneel on the edge of a precipice. Widmerpool rose, crumpling the paper, as if he were surprised to see me, so that for a painful moment I wondered whether, by some unhappy mistake, I had arrived on the wrong night. However, a second later, he made some remark to show I was expected, and asked me to sit down, explaining that “in a minute or two” his mother would be ready.
“I am very much looking forward to your meeting my mother,” he said.
He spoke as if introduction to his mother was an experience, rather a vital one, that every serious person had, sooner or later, to undergo. I became all at once aware that this was the first occasion upon which he and I had met anywhere but on neutral ground. I think that Widmerpool, too, realised that a new relationship had immediately risen between us from the moment when I had entered the drawing-room; for he smiled in a rather embarrassed way, after making this remark about his mother, and seemed to make an effort, more conscious than any he had ever shown before, to appear agreeable. In view of the embarrassments he had spoken of when we had last met — and their apparent conclusion so far as he were concerned — I had expected to find him depressed. On the contrary, he was in unusually high spirits.
“Miss Walpole-Wilson is supping with us,” he said.
“Eleanor?”
“Oh, no,” he said, as if such a thing were unthinkable. “Her aunt. Such a knowledgeable woman.”
Before any comment were possible, Mrs. Widmerpool herself came through the door, upon the threshold of which she paused for a moment, her head a little on one side.
“Why, Mother,” said Widmerpool, speaking with approval, “you are wearing your bridge-coat.”
We shook hands, and she began to speak at once, before I could take in her appearance.
“And so you were both at Mr. Le Bas’s house at school,” she said. “I never really cared for him as a man. I expect he had his good qualities, but he never quite appreciated Kenneth.”
“He was an odd man in many ways.”
“Kenneth so rarely brings the friends of his school days here.”
I said that we had also stayed together with the same French family in Touraine; for, if I had to be regarded as a close friend of her son’s, it was at La Grenadière that I had come to know him best, rather than at school, where he had always seemed a figure almost too grotesque to take seriously.
“At the Leroys’?” she asked, as if amazed at the brilliance of my parents in having hit on the only possible household in the whole of France.
“For six weeks or so.”
She turned to Widmerpool.
“But you never told me that,” she said. “That was naughty of you!”
“Why should I?” said Widmerpool. “You didn’t know him.”
Mrs. Widmerpool clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Her large features distinctly recalled the lineaments of her son, though she had perhaps been good looking when younger. Even now she seemed no more than in her late forties, though I believe she was, in fact, older than that. However, her well-preserved appearance was in striking contrast with Widmerpool’s own somewhat decaying youth, so that the pair of them appeared almost more like contemporaries, even husband and wife, rather than mother and son. Her eyes were brighter than his, and she rolled them, expanding the pupils, in comment to any remark that might be thought at all out of the ordinary. Her double row of firm teeth were set between cheeks of brownish red, which made her a little resemble Miss Walpole-Wilson, with whom she clearly possessed something discernibly in common that explained their friendly connection. She seemed a person of determination, from whom no doubt her son derived much of his tenacity of purpose. The garment to which he referred was of flowered velvet, with a fringe, and combined many colours in its pattern.
“I hear you know the Gorings,” she said. “It seems such a pity they have allowed Barbara to run so wild. She used to be such a dear little girl. There really appears to be something a trifle queer about Lord Aberavon’s grandchildren.”
“Oh, shut up, Mother,” said Widmerpool, changing his almost amatory manner unexpectedly. “You don’t know anything about it.”
He must have felt, not entirely without reason, that his mother was on delicate ground in bringing up so early, and in such a critical spirit, the subject of Gorings and Walpole-Wilsons. Mrs. Widmerpool seemed not at all put out by the brusque form of address used by her son, continuing to express herself freely on the characteristics, in her eyes, good, bad and indifferent, of Barbara and Eleanor, adding that she understood that neither of the Goring sons were “very much of a hand at their books.” She felt perhaps that now was the time to unburden herself upon matters hardly to be pursued with the same freedom after the arrival of Miss Janet Walpole-Wilson. From her comments, I supposed that Widmerpool must have given his mother, perhaps involuntarily, some indication that the Gorings were out of favour with him; although it was impossible to guess how accurately she might be informed about her son’s former feelings for Barbara: even if she knew of them at all. It was possible that she had attributed the anxiety he had gone through with Gypsy Jones to a later aggravation of his entanglement with Barbara: in fact, the same conclusion to which I had myself first arrived, when, at Stourwater, he had spoken of the troubles that were oppressing him.
“There doesn’t seem any sign of Eleanor getting married yet,” said Mrs. Widmerpool, almost dreamily, as if she were descrying in the depths of the gas-fire a vision invisible to the rest of us, revealing the unending cavalcade of Eleanor’s potential suitors.
“Perhaps she doesn’t want to,” said Widmerpool, in a tone evidently intended to close the subject. “I expect you two will like a talk on books before the end of the evening.”
“Yes, indeed, for I hear you are in the publishing trade,” said his mother. “You know, I have always liked books and bookish people. It is one of my regrets that Kenneth is really too serious minded to enjoy reading for its own sake.: I expect you are looking forward to those articles in The Times by Thomas Hardy’s widow. I know I am.”
While I was making some temporising answer to these reassurances on Mrs. Widmerpool’s part regarding her inclination towards literature, Miss Walpole-Wilson was announced, who excused her lateness on the grounds of the chronic irregularity of the bus service from Chelsea, where her flat was situated. She was wearing a mackintosh, of which, for some reason, she had refused to divest herself in the hall; exemplifying in this manner a curious trait common to some persons of wilful nature, whose egotism seems often to make them unwilling, even incapable, of shedding anything of themselves until they can feel that they have safely reached their goal. She now removed this waterproof, folding and establishing it upon a chair — an act watched by her hostess with a fixed smile that might have signified disapproval — revealing that she, too, was wearing a richly-coloured coat. It was made of orange, black, and gold silk: a mandarin’s coat, so she explained, that Sir Gavin had given her years before.