She began to speak disjointedly of Stringham. She was, I thought, perhaps a little mad now. As one gets older, one gets increasingly used to encountering this development in friends and acquaintances; causing periods of self-examination in a similar connexion. Seeing that Flavia and I had something in common to talk about together, Umfraville slipped away. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him stumping across the room on his stick to have a further word with the bride. Flavia Wisebite rambled on.
‘Charles was never sent into the world to make old bones, of course I always knew that, but how sad that he should have died as he did, how sad. He was a hero, of course, but what difference does that make, when you’re dead?’
She seemed to require an answer to that question. It was hard to offer one free from sententiousness. I made no attempt to do so.
‘I suppose it makes a difference the way a few people remember you.’
That seemed to satisfy her.
‘Yes, yes. Like Robert.’
‘Yes. Robert too.’
She appeared to have been made quite happy by this justifiable, if unoriginal conclusion. Oddly enough, when at Frederica’s, Flavia Wisebite had spoken almost disparagingly of her brother’s determination, in face of poor health, to join the army. This canonization of Stringham after death had something of her daughter Pamela’s way of remembering dead lovers. Now, in a somewhat similar manner, Flavia began to talk of Umfraville with affection, though she had hardly noticed him at Frederica’s. Then, of course, she had been involved with Robert Tolland. Even so, the enthusiasm with which she went on about Kenya, how amusing Umfraville had been there, how much her father had liked him, was an illustration of the way human relationships fluctuate, without any action taking place; Umfraville, from being entirely disregarded, now occupying a prominent place in Flavia Wisebite’s personal myth. Without warning, she switched to Pamela.
‘Did you ever meet my daughter?’
‘Yes. I knew Pamela.’
I was about to say that I knew Pamela well, then saw that, in Pamela Flitton’s case, that might imply closer affiliations than had ever in fact existed. It was a needless adjustment of phrase. Her mother had certainly long ceased to worry, if she had ever done so, about her daughter’s affairs, with whom she had, or had not, slept. Perhaps, in her own state of health, Flavia had been scarcely aware of all that In any case something else in relation to Pamela was now on her mind.
‘She died too.’
‘Yes.’
‘She married that dreadful man — Widmerpool.’
For the first time it occurred to me as strange, abnormally strange, that Flavia Wisebite had never, so far as I knew, played anything like an active rôle in her capacity as Widmerpool’s mother-in-law. In fact I now saw that, without formulating the idea at all clearly in my mind, I had always supposed Flavia to have died. Whatever the reason — chiefly no doubt the interludes in hospitals and nursing-homes — she seemed to have sidestepped the scandals that had enveloped her daughter’s name; not least Pamela’s unhappy end. If that had been her mother’s deliberate intention, she had been remarkably successful in keeping out of the way.
‘Did you know Widmerpool?’
‘Yes. I know him. I’ve known him for years.’
‘I said did you know him. Nobody could know him now.’
‘How do you mean?’
I did not grasp immediately the implication that Widmerpool had become literally impossible to know.
‘You can’t have heard what’s happened to him. He’s gone out of his mind. He lives with a crowd of dreadful people, most of them quite young, who wear extraordinary clothes, and do the most horrible, horrible things. They are quite near here.’
It was true that Widmerpool’s mother’s cottage had been only a mile or two from Stourwater.
‘I did know he’d become rather odd. I’d forgotten he was in this neighbourhood.’
‘I see them out running quite often.’
In the light of the cult’s habits there was nothing particularly extraordinary in Flavia Wisebite catching sight of them at their exercises from time to time. During the period of working for Sir Magnus Donners, Widmerpool had often spoken of his good fortune in having his mother’s cottage — later enlarged by himself — so close to the Castle.
‘Sometimes they’re in blue garments, sometimes hardly any clothes at all. I’ve been told they do wear absolutely nothing, stark naked, when they go out in the middle of the night in summer. They do all sorts of revolting things. I wonder it’s allowed. But then everything is allowed now.’
Flavia Wisebite grimaced.
‘I try not to look at them, if they come running in off a sideroad. When I see them in the distance I go off up a turning.’
‘Is Widmerpool head of the cult? *
‘How should I know? I thought he was. Didn’t he start it? As soon as Pamela married him, he began his horrible goings-on, though they weren’t quite like what he does nowadays. Why did she do it? How could she? Find the most horrible man on earth, and then marry him? She always had to have her own way. It was quite enough that everyone agreed that Widmerpool was awful, hideous, monstrous. She just wanted to show that she didn’t care in the least what anyone said. She was the same as a child. Absolutely wilful. Nobody could control her.’
No doubt there was much truth in what her mother said. I remembered Pamela Flitton, as a child bridesmaid, being sick in the font at Stringham’s wedding. One of the children had made a good deal of noise at the ceremony just attended, but nothing so drastic as that. Flavia’s daughter had always been in a class by herself from her earliest days. A girl like Fiona was no real competitor.
‘Because Pam didn’t always go for unattractive people. When she was a little girl she fell madly in love with Charles — you know the way children do — at the time he was drinking too much. The amount he drank in those days was terrible. Pam didn’t see him often because of that. Still, Charles was always fond of her, very nice to her, whenever he came to see us, which wasn’t often. Charles left Pam his things, not much, hardly anything by then. Pam never made a will, of course, so Widmerpool must have got whatever there was. The Modigliani drawing. Pam loved that. I wonder what happened to it. I suppose that awful Widmerpool sold it.’
Flavia Wisebite took a small folded pocket handkerchief from her bag. She lightly dabbed her eyes. It was the precise gesture her mother had used, another memory of Stringham’s marriage to Peggy Stepney; Peggy Klein, as she had been for years now. Mrs Foxe’s tears had been more prolonged on that occasion, lasting intermittently throughout the whole service. Flavia’s were quickly over. She returned the handkerchief to the bag. I did not know what to say. Where could one begin? Stringham’s past? Pamela’s past? Flavia’s own past? These were extensive and delicate themes to set out on; Widmerpool’s present, even less approachable. There was no need to say anything at all. Flavia Wisebite, in the manner of persons of her sort, had suddenly recovered herself. She was perfectly all right again. Now she spoke once more in her tremulous social voice.
‘Isn’t Clare Akworth a sweet girl?’
‘I don’t really know her. She looks very attractive.’
‘I’m so proud to be her godmother. He’s a charming young man too. He told me all about his computers. It was far above my head, I’m afraid. I’m sure they’ll be very happy. I never was, but I’m sure they will be. So nice to have met again.’
Smiling goodbye, she disappeared into the crowd. In its own particular way the encounter had been disturbing. I was glad it was over. One of its side effects was a sense of temporary inability to chat with other guests, most of them, unless relations, from their age unknown to me. Flavia Wisebite had diminished exuberance for seeking out members of an older generation, whom one had not seen for some time, hearing their news, listening to their troubles. In that line, Flavia Wisebite herself was enough for one day. She had also in some way infected me with her own sense of disorientation. I required time to recover. The idea suggested itself to slip away from the reception for a few minutes, find release in wandering through the corridors and galleries of the Castle. After all, that was really why I had come here. There was the dining-room, for example, draped with the tapestries of the Seven Deadly Sins, the little library or study, drawings and small oils between bookshelves, where Barnby’s portrait of the waitress from Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant had hung. A side door seemed the most convenient exit from the party. Rupert Akworth, the bride’s uncle, who had given her away, saw me about to leave.