Books Do Furnish a Room by Anthony Powell Read Free Book Online Page A

little witch has ensnared this venerable scholar?’
    ‘She’s kept that to herself so
far as you were concerned?’
    ‘Absolutely.’
    ‘Is she a Party Member too?’
    Bagshaw
laughed heartily.
    ‘Ada’s ambitions are primarily
literary. Within that area she’ll take any help she can get, but I doubt if she’d
get much from the Party. What did you think of her?’
    ‘All right.’
    ‘She’s got a will of her own.
Quiggin & Craggs did right to sign her up. JG was much taken.’
    ‘You produced her?’
    ‘We met during the war – all
too briefly – but have remained friends. She’s to be on the publishing side,
not
Fission
. I’d
like you to meet Trapnel. I really do think there’s promise there. I’ll call
you up, and we’ll have a drink together. I won’t be able to arrange anything
next week, as I’m getting married on Tuesday – thanks very much, my dear
fellow, thanks very much… yes, of course… nice of you to put it that way… I
just didn’t want to be a bore about a lot of personal matters …’

2
    RATHER
UNEXPECTEDLY, ERRIDGE WAS FOUND to have paid quite
recent attention to his will. He had replaced George Tolland (former executor
with Frederica) by their youngest, now only surviving brother, Hugo.
Accordingly, by the time I reached London, Hugo and Frederica had already gone
down to Thrubworth. Accommodation in Erridge’s wing of the house was limited.
The rest of the family, as at George’s funeral, had to make up their minds
whether to attend as a day’s expedition, or stay at The Tolland Arms, a
hostelry considerably developed from former times, since the establishment in
the neighbourhood of an RAF station. Norah, Susan and her husband Roddy Cutts,
with Isobel and myself, chose The Tolland Arms. As it happened Dicky Umfraville
had just arrived on leave from Germany, where he was serving as
lieutenant-colonel on the staff of the Military Government (a job to which he
was well disposed), but he flatly refused to accompany Frederica.
    ‘I never met your brother,’ he
said. ‘Therefore it would be an impertinence on my part to attend his funeral.
Besides – in more than one respect the converse of another occasion – there’s
room at the inn, but none at the stable. Nobody would mind one of the
Thrubworth loose-boxes less than myself, but we should be separated, my love,
so near and yet so far, something I could not bear. In addition – far more
important – I don’t like funerals. They remind me of death, a subject I always try to avoid. You will have to
represent me, Frederica, angel that you are, and return to London as soon as possible to make my leave a heaven upon earth.’
    Veronica, George Tolland’s widow, was not present either. She was likely to give birth any day now.
    ‘Pray God it will be a boy,’
Hugo said. ‘I used to think I’d like to take it all on, but no longer – even
though I’d hardly make a scruffier earl than poor old Erry.’
    His general demeanour quietened
by the war, Hugo’s comments tended to become grimmer. He had remained
throughout his service bombardier in an Anti-Aircraft battery, not leaving
England, but experiencing a reasonably lively time, for example, one night the
only man on the gun not knocked out. Now he had returned to selling antiques, a
trade at which he became increasingly proficient, recently opening a shop of
his own with a former army friend called Sam – he seemed to possess no surname
– not a great talker, but good-natured, of powerful physique, and said to be
quick off the mark when a good piece came up at auction.
    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