The minutes passed: conversation flagged. The Louis Seize clock standing on a wall-bracket gave out a threatening tick-tock. One of the male guests had still not yet turned up. In those days, at that sort of party, there were no drinks before dinner; and, while Eleanor told me about her Girl Guides, the evening sun deflected huge golden squares of phosphorescent colour (spread rather in the manner advocated by Mr. Deacon, giving formal juxtaposition to light and shade) against the peacock-green shot-silk shadows of the sofa cushions. Outside, the detonation of loudly-slammed taxi doors, suggesting the opening of a cannonade, had died down. In place of those sounds some cats were quarrelling, or making love, in the gardens running the length of the square. I began to long for the meal to begin. After total silence had fallen on the room for the second time, Lady Walpole-Wilson, apparently with an effort, for her lips faltered slightly when she spoke, came to a decision to await the late-comer no further.
“Let’s go down in a troop,” she said, “and — as Mr. Tompsitt is so unpunctual — not bother about ‘taking in’. I really do not think we can delay dinner any longer.”
In speaking to each other the Walpole-Wilsons were inclined to give an impression that they were comparative strangers, who had met for the first time only a week or two before, but at this remark her husband, no doubt wanting food as much as — perhaps even more than — the rest of those present, replied rather gruffly: “Of course, Daisy, of course.”
He added, without any suggestion of complaint — on the contrary, if anything, with approbation: “Young Tompsitt is always late.”
The news that Tompsitt had been invited would once have filled me with dismay. Even at that moment, sudden mention of his name caused an instinctive hope that his absence was due to illness or accident, something that might prevent him from putting in any appearance at all, preferably grave enough to exclude him from dances for many months: perhaps for ever. He was one of various young men moving within Barbara’s orbit whose relationship with her, though impossible to estimate at all precisely, was yet in a general way disturbing for someone who might have claims of his own to put forward in that quarter. In that respect Tompsitt’s connection was of a particularly distasteful kind in that Barbara evidently found him not unattractive; while his approach to her, or so it seemed to me, was conditioned entirely by the ebb and flow of his own vanity: no inconsiderable element when gauged at any given moment, though laying a course hard for an unsympathetic observer to chart. That is to say he was obviously flattered by the fact that Barbara found him, apparently, prepossessing enough; and, at the same time, not sufficiently stirred within himself to spend more than comparatively brief spells in her company, especially when there were other girls about, who might be supposed, for one reason or another, to represent in his eyes potentially superior assets.
That was what I used, perhaps unjustly, to reflect; at the same time having to admit to myself that Tompsitt’s attitude towards Barbara posed, from my own point of view, a dilemma as to what, short of his own bodily removal, would constitute a change for the better. His relative lack of enthusiasm, though acceptable only with all kinds of unpalatable reservations, had, in its way, to be approved; while apprehension that his feelings towards Barbara might suddenly undergo some violent emotional stimulation was — or had certainly been until that evening — an ever present anxiety. At last, however, I felt, anyway on second thoughts, fairly indifferent as to whether or not Tompsitt turned up. Inwardly I was becoming increasingly convinced of this, and I might even have looked forward to Tompsitt’s entry if there had been serious threat of dinner being further delayed on his account.
In the dining-room I found myself sitting at the oval-ended table between Barbara and Anne Stepney, the second of whom was on Sir Gavin’s right. The Walpole-Wilsons defied prevailing mode by still employing a table-cloth, a preference of Sir Gavin’s, who prided himself on combining in his own home tastes of “the old school” with a progressive point of view in worldly matters. The scented geranium leaf usually to be found floating in the finger-bowls could be attributed to his wife’s leaning towards a more exotic way of life. Beyond Barbara was Archie Gilbert, probably placed on Lady Walpole-Wilson’s left to make up for having Tompsitt — or rather an empty chair, where in due course he would sit, if he had not forgotten the invitation — on her right. Tompsitt, a protégé of Sir Gavin’s, was not greatly liked either by Eleanor or her mother.
This chasm left by Tompsitt divided Margaret Budd, who had Widmerpool on her other side, from her hostess. Widmerpool’s precise channel of invitation to the house was still obscure, and the fact that he himself seemed on the whole surprised to find himself dining there made his presence even more a matter for speculation. He had been placed next to Eleanor, who had presumably been consulted on the subject of seating accommodation at the dinner table, though he seemed by his manner towards her to know her only slightly, while she herself showed signs, familiar to me from observing her behaviour on past occasions, of indifference, if not dislike, for his company. Barbara had been the only member of the party greeted by him as an old acquaintance, though she had done no more than wring him rather warmly by the hand when she arrived, quickly passing on to someone else, at which he had looked discouraged. Pardoe sat between Eleanor and Miss Manasch — who brought the party round once more to Sir Gavin. The table had perhaps not been easy to arrange. Its complications of seating must have posed problems that accounted for Lady Walpole-Wilson’s more than usually agitated state.
“There does not seem any substantial agreement yet on the subject of the Haig statue,” said Widmerpool, as he unfolded his napkin. “Did you read St. John Clarke’s letter?”
He spoke to Eleanor, though he had glanced round the table as if hoping for a larger audience to hear his views on the matter. The subject, as it happened, was one upon which I knew Eleanor to hold decided opinions, and was therefore a question to be avoided, unless driven to conversational extremities, as she much preferred statement to discussion. The fact of broaching it was yet another indication that Widmerpool could not have seen a great deal of her at all recently.
“Surely they can find someone to carve a horse that looks like a horse.”
She spoke with truculence even at the outset.
“The question, to my mind,” said Widmerpool, “is whether a statue is, in reality, an appropriate form of recognition for public services in modern times.”
“Don’t you think great men ought to be honoured?” Eleanor asked, rather tensely. “I do.”
She clenched her lips tightly together as if prepared to contest the point to die death — with Widmerpool or anyone else.
“Nobody — least of all myself — denies the desirability of honouring great men,” he said in return, rather sharply, “but some people think the traffic problem — already severe enough in all conscience — might be adversely affected if any more space is taken up by monuments in busy thoroughfares.”