‘Why is Stringham sitting there like that?’
It was Widmerpool’s thick, accusing voice. He asked the question with a note of authority that suggested his personal responsibility to see that people did not sit about in Piccadilly at night.
‘I stayed to make sure everything was done about Le Bas that should be done,’ he said. ‘I think Brandreth knows his job. I gave him my address in case of difficulties. It was a disagreeable thing to happen. The heat, I suppose. It ruined the few words I was about to say. A pity. I thought I would have a breath of fresh air after what we had been through, but the night is very warm even here in the open.’
He said all this with his usual air of immense importance.
‘The present problem is how to get Stringham to his flat.’
‘What is wrong with him? I wonder if it is the same as Le Bas. Perhaps something in the food—’
Widmerpool was always ready to feel disturbed regarding any question of health. In France he had been a great consumer of patent medicines. He looked nervously at Stringham. I saw that he feared the attack of some mysterious sickness that might soon infect himself.
‘Stringham has had about a gallon to drink.’
‘How foolish of him.’
I was about to make some reply to the effect that the speeches had needed something to wash them down with, but checked any such comment since Widmerpool’s help was obviously needed to get Stringham home, and I thought it better not to risk offending him. I therefore muttered something that implied agreement.
‘Where does he live?’
‘West Halkin Street.’
Widmerpool acted quickly. He strolled to the kerb. A cab seemed to rise out of the earth at that moment. Perhaps all action, even summoning a taxi when none is there, is basically a matter of the will. Certainly there had been no sign of a conveyance a second before. Widmerpool made a curious, pumping movement, using the whole of his arm, as if dragging down the taxi by a rope. It drew up in front of us. Widmerpool turned towards Stringham, whose eyes were still closed.
‘Take the other arm,’ he said, peremptorily.
Although he made no resistance, this intervention aroused Stringham. He began to speak very quietly:
‘Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide,
And wash my Body whence the Life has died …’
We shoved him on to the back seat, where he sat between us, still murmuring to himself:
‘… And lay me shrouded in the living leaf
By some not unfrequented garden-side …
I think that’s quite a good description of the Green Park, Nick, don’t you…. “Some not unfrequented garden-side-’ … Wish I sat here more often … Jolly nice….’
‘Does he habitually get in this state?’ Widmerpool asked.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for years.’
‘I thought you were a close friend of his. You used to be — at school.’
‘That’s a long time ago.’
Widmerpool seemed aggrieved at the news that Stringham and I no longer saw each other regularly. Once decided in his mind on a given picture of what some aspect of life was like, he objected to any modification of the design. He possessed an absolutely rigid view of human relationships. Into this, imagination scarcely entered, and whatever was lost in grasping the niceties of character was amply offset by a simplification of practical affairs. Occasionally, it was true. I had known Widmerpool involved in situations which were extraordinary chiefly because they were entirely misunderstood, but on the whole he probably gained more than he lost by these limitations; at least in the spheres that attracted him. Stringham now lay between us, as if fast asleep.
‘Where is he working at present?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It was a good thing he left Donners-Brebner,’ said Widmerpool. ‘He was doing neither himself nor the company any good.’
‘Bill Truscott has gone, too, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Widmerpool, looking straight ahead of him. ‘Truscott had become very interested in the byproducts of coal and found it advantageous to make a change.’
We got Stringham out of the taxi on arrival without much difficulty and found his latchkey in a waistcoat pocket. Inside the flat, I was immediately reminded of his room at school. There were the eighteenth-century prints of the racehorses, Trimalchio and the The Pharisee; the same large, rather florid photograph of his mother: a snapshot of his father still stuck in the corner of its frame. However, the picture of ‘Boffles’ Stringham — as I now thought of him after meeting Dicky Umfraville — showed a decidedly older man than the pipe-smoking, open-shirted figure I remembered from the earlier snapshot. The elder Stringham, looking a bit haggard and wearing a tie, sat on a seat beside a small, energetic, rather brassy lady, presumably his French wife. He had evidently aged considerably. I wondered if friendship with Dicky Umfraville had had anything to do with this. Opposite these photographs was a drawing by Modigliani, and an engraving of a seventeenth-century mansion done in the style of Wenceslaus Hollar. This was Glimber, the Warringtons’ house, left to Stringham’s mother during her lifetime by her first husband. On another wall was a set of coloured prints illustrating a steeplechase ridden by monkeys mounted on dogs.
‘What are we going to do with him?’
‘Put him to bed,’ said Widmerpool, speaking as if any other action were inconceivable.
Widmerpool and I, therefore, set out to remove String ham’s clothes, get him into some pyjamas, and place him between the sheets. This was a more difficult job than might be supposed. His stiff shirt seemed riveted to him. However, we managed to get it off at last, though not without tearing it. In these final stages, Stringham himself returned to consciousness.
‘Look here,’ he said, suddenly sitting up on the bed, ‘what is happening? People seem to be treating me roughly. Am I being thrown out of somewhere? If so, where? And what have I done to deserve such treatment? I am perfectly prepared to listen to reason and admit that I was in the wrong, and pay for anything I have broken. That is provided, of course, that I was in the wrong. Nick, why are you letting this man hustle me? I seem for some reason to be in bed in the middle of the afternoon. Really, my habits get worse and worse. I am even now full of good resolutions for getting up at half-past seven every morning. But who is this man? I know his face.’
‘It’s Widmerpool. You remember Widmerpool?’
‘Remember Widmerpool…’ said Stringham. ‘Remember Widmerpool… Do I remember Widmerpool? … How could I ever forget Widmerpool? … How could anybody forget Widmerpool? …’
‘We thought you needed help, Stringham,’ said Widmerpool, in a very matter-of-fact voice. ‘So we put you to bed.’
‘You did, did you?’
Stringham lay back in the bed, looking fixedly before him. His manner was certainly odd, but his utterance was no longer confused.
‘You needed a bit of looking after,’ said Widmerpool.
‘That time is past,’ said Stringham.
He began to get out of bed.
‘No…’
Widmerpool took a step forward. He made as if to restrain Stringham from leaving the bed, holding both his stubby hands in front of him, as if warming them before a fire.
‘Look here,’ said Stringham, ‘I must be allowed to get in and out of my own bed. That is a fundamental human right. Other people’s beds may be another matter. In them, another party is concerned. But ingress and egress of one’s own bed is unassailable.’