‘Look here,’ she said. ‘We’ve just made the most marvellous discovery. Do you know that we both knew each other in the war — when I was a nurse?’
‘What, when you were at Dogdene?’ asked Widmerpool.
His mind, still full of the glories of that great house, remained unimpressed by this news. To him nothing could be more natural than the fact that Mrs. Haycock and Jeavons had met. She had been a V.A.D. at Dogdene: Jeavons had been a convalescent there. There was no reason why Widmerpool should even speculate upon the possibility that their Dogdene interludes had not overlapped. He was, in any case, not at all interested in the lives of others.
‘I never recognised him, which was quite mad of me, because he looks just the same.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Widmerpool.
He could not see what the fuss was about.
‘Isn’t it absolutely marvellous to meet an old friend like that?’
‘Why, yes, I suppose it is,’ said Widmerpool, without any great conviction.
‘It’s scrumptious.’
Widmerpool smiled feebly. This was plainly a situation he found hard to envisage. In any case, he was at that moment too oppressed by his own state of health to attempt appreciation of Mrs. Haycock’s former friendships.
‘Look here, Mildred,’ he said, ‘I am still feeling far from well. I really think I will go home. What about you? Shall I take you back?’
Mrs. Haycock was appalled.
‘Go back?’ she said. ‘Why, of course not. I’ve only just arrived. And, anyway, there are millions of things I want to talk about after making this marvellous discovery. It is too priceless for words. To think that I never knew all these years. It is really too extraordinary that we should never have met. I believe Molly did it on purpose.’
Widmerpool, to do him justice, did not seem at all surprised at this not very sympathetic attitude towards his own condition. There was something dignified, even a little touching, about the manner in which he absolutely accepted the fact that his state of health did not matter to Mrs. Haycock in the least. Perhaps by then already inured to indifference, he had made up his mind to expect no more from married life. More probably, this chance offered to slip away quietly by himself, going home without further trouble — even without delivering Mrs. Haycock to her hotel — was a relief to him. In any case, he seemed thankful, not only that no impediment had been put in his way of escape, but that Mrs. Haycock herself was in the best possible mood at the prospect of her own abandonment.
‘Then I can safely leave you with Peter Templer and Mrs. Taylor — or is it Mrs. Porter?’ he said. ‘You will also have Nicholas and Mr. Jeavons to look after you.’
‘My dear, of course, of course.’
Widmerpool rose a little unsteadily. Probably the people round thought, quite mistakenly, that he had had too much to drink.
‘I shall go then,’ he said. ‘I will ring you up tomorrow, Mildred. Make my apologies to Peter.’
‘Night, night,’ she said, not unkindly.
Widmerpool nodded to the rest of us, then turned, and picked his way through the dancers.
‘But this is too, too amusing,’ said Mrs. Haycock, taking Jeavons by the arm. ‘To think we should meet again like this after all these years.’
She poured out another drink for himself, and passed the bottle round the table, so delighted by the discovery of Jeavons that Widmerpool seemed now dismissed entirely from her mind. The sentiments of Jeavons himself at that moment were hard to estimate; even to know how drunk he was. He might have reminded Mrs. Haycock of their former encounter with some motive in his mind, or merely on impulse. The information could even have emerged quite fortuitously in the course of one of his long, rambling anecdotes. No one could predict where his next step would lead. Outwardly, he gave no impression of intoxication, except for those intermittent bouts of sleepiness, in which, for that matter, he probably often indulged himself at home when dead sober. Templer and his girl returned to the table.
‘This is really rather a grim place,’ said Templer. ‘What do you say to moving on somewhere else — the Slip-in, or somewhere like that?’
‘Oh, but darling Peter,’ said Mrs. Haycock, who had, so it appeared, met Templer for the first time that evening. ‘I’ve just begun to enjoy myself so much. Kenneth decided he wasn’t feeling well enough to stay, so he has gone home — with many apologies — and now I have just found one of my oldest, my very oldest, friends here.’
She pointed to Jeavons.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Templer.
He looked a bit surprised; but there was, after all, no reason why Jeavons should not be one of her oldest friends, even if, in Templer’s eyes, he was rather an oddity. If Tcmpler’s first predisposition had been embarrassment at being caught in a party with Widmerpool, his mood had later changed to one of amusement at the insoluble problem of why I myself was visiting a night club with Jeavons. Jeavons was not an easy man to explain. Templer had none of Chips Lovell’s appreciation of the subtleties of such matters. The Jeavons house, irretrievably tinged, in however unconventional a manner, with a kind of life against which he had rigidly set his face, would have bored Templer to death. Mrs. Haycock was, for some reason, another matter; he could tolerate her. Patently rackety, and habituated to association with what Uncle Giles called ‘all sorts’—different, for some reason, from Molly Jeavons’s ‘all sorts’—she presented no impediment to Templer. He sat down beside her and began to discuss other places that might be more amusing than Umfraville’s club. Umfraville himself now returned, bringing with him Max Pilgrim and Heather Hopkins.
‘May we join you for a moment?’ he said. ‘You know, Mildred, I don’t believe we have met since that terrible night at Cannes in — what was it? — about 1923, when Milly Andriadis gave that great party, and we walked round the port together and watched the sunrise.’
We made room for them. Hopkins and Pilgrim were on their best behaviour. Templer’s girl seemed for the moment almost to have forgotten him in the excitement of sitting with such celebrities. I found myself next to Templer and we had a moment to talk.
‘How are you, Nick,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you for centuries.’
‘No worse — and you?’
‘Not too bad,’ said Templer. ‘Family worries of various kinds, though there is a lot to be said for no longer being married. The usual trouble is raging with Bob and that sister of mine. No sooner does Bob get a good job than he goes off with some girl. All men are brothers, but, thank God, they aren’t all brothers-in-law. I believe Jean has left him again, and gone to stay in Rome with Baby Wentworth — or whatever Baby Wentworth is now called after marrying that Italian.’
It was quite a good test, and I came out of it with flying colours; that is to say, without any immediate desire to buy an air ticket to Rome.
‘You did know my sister, Jean, didn’t you?’ he said. “I mean I haven’t been telling you a long story about someone you’ve never met?’
‘Of course I knew her. And your other sister, too. I met her ages ago.’
‘Baby Wentworth is a cousin of mine,’ said Mrs. Haycock, suddenly breaking off an argument with Hopkins regarding the private life of the barman at the Carlton Hotel at Cannes. ‘What a pretty girl she is. When my father died, he hadn’t managed to produce a son, so Baby’s father succeeded. Her brother, Jack Vowchurch, is rather hell, I believe. I’ve never met him. They were quite distant cousins, and we never saw anything of them. Then one day at Andbes someone pointed out Baby to me. Didn’t Sir Magnus Donners have rather a fancy for her? She was with him then.’
‘Wasn’t your father the chap who rode his horse upstairs after dinner?’ asked Jeavons, wholly unexpectedly.