‘Poor old Charles,’ he said. ‘Of course I remember you were a friend of his. Do you ever see him these days? Well, of course, nobody does much, do they? All the same, it hasn’t worked out too badly. Do you remember Miss Weedon, Amy’s secretary? Rather a formidable lady. Oh, you know all about that, do you? Yes, Molly Jeavons is an aunt of your wife’s, of course. Quite a solution for Charles in a way. It gives him the opportunity to live a quiet life for a time. Norman goes round and sees Charles sometimes, don’t you, Norman?’
‘I simply adore Charles,’ said Chandler, ‘but I’m rather afraid of that gorgon who looks after him – I believe you are too, Buster.’
Buster laughed, almost achieving his savage sneer of former times. He did not like Miss Weedon. I remembered that. He was no doubt glad to have ridded the house of Stringham too. They had never got on well together.
‘At least Tuffy keeps Charles in order,’ Buster said. ‘If one hasn’t any self-discipline, something of the sort unfortunately has to be applied from the outside. It is a hard thing to say, but there it is. Are you in this musical racket yourself? I hear Hugh Moreland’s symphony was very fine. I couldn’t manage to get there myself, much to my regret.’
I felt a pang of horror at the way his family now talked of Stringham: as if he had been put away from view like a person suffering from a horrible, unmentionable disease, or become some terrifying legendary figure, fearful as the Glamis monster, about whom it was appropriate to joke as dreadful to behold, but at the same time a being past serious credence. All the same, it was hard to know what else they could do about him, how better behave towards him Stringham, after all, was their problem, not mine. I myself could offer no better solution than Miss Weedon; was in no position to disparage his own relations so far as their conduct towards Stringham was concerned.
‘They were a bit hurried in seeing our former King off the premises, weren’t they?’ said Buster, changing the subject to public events, possibly because he feared his last words might provoke musical conversation. ‘Some of one’s friends have been caught on the wrong foot about it all. Still, I expect he will have a much better time on his own in the long run. His later job was not one I should care to take on.’
‘My dear, you’d do it superbly,’ said Chandler. ‘I always think that when I look at that photograph of you in tropical uniform.’
‘No, no, nonsense, Norman,’ said Buster, not displeased at this attribution to himself of potentially royal aptitudes. ‘I should be bored to death. I can’t in the least imagine myself opening Parliament and all that sort of thing.’
Chandler signified his absolute disagreement.
‘I must go off and have a word with Auntie Gossage now,’ he said, ‘or the old witch will fly off on a broomstick and complain about being cut. See you both later.’
‘What a wonderful chap Norman is,’ said Buster, speaking with unaccustomed warmth. ‘You know I sometimes wonder what Amy would do without him. Or me, either, for that matter. He runs the whole of our lives. He can do anything from arranging the flowers to mixing the best Tom Collins I have ever drunk. So talented in other ways too. Ever seen him act? Then, as for dancing and playing the saxophone… Well, I’ve never met a man like him.’
There seemed no end to Buster’s admiration for Chandler. I did not disagree, although surprised, rather impressed, by Buster’s complete freedom from jealousy. It was not that one supposed that Chandler was ‘having an affair’ with Mrs Foxe – although no one can speak with certainty, as Barnby used to insist, about any two people in that connexion – but, apart from any question of physical relationship, she obviously loved Chandler, even if this might not be love of quite the usual sort. A husband, even a husband as unprejudiced as Buster, might have felt objection on personal, or merely general, grounds. Many men who outwardly resembled Buster would, on principle, have disliked a young man of Chandler’s appearance and demeanour; certainly disliked for ever seeing someone like that about the house. Either natural tolerance had developed in Buster as he had grown older, or there were other reasons why his wife’s infatuation with Chandler satisfied him; after all Matilda had alleged the pinching of her leg. Possibly Chandler kept Mrs Foxe from disturbing Buster in his own amusements. If that was the reason, Buster showed a good grace in the manner in which he followed his convenience; in itself a virtue not universally practised. Perhaps he was a little aware that he had displayed himself to me in an unexpected light.
‘Amy needs a good deal of looking after,’ he said. ‘I am sometimes rather busy. Get caught up in things. Business engagements and so on. Most husbands are like that, I suppose. Can’t give a wife all the attention she requires. Know what I mean?’
This self-revelation was so unlike the Buster I remembered, that I was not sure whether to attribute the marked alteration in his bearing in some degree to changes in myself. Perhaps development in both of us had made a mutually new attitude possible. However, before Buster could particularise further on the subject of married life, a subject about which I should have liked to hear more from him, Maclintick, moving with the accustomed lurching walk he employed drunk or sober, at that moment approached us.
‘Any hope of getting Irish in a house like this?’ he asked me in an undertone. ‘Champagne always gives me diarrhoea. It would be just like the rich only to keep Scotch. Do you think it would be all right if I accosted one of the flunkeys? I don’t want to let Moreland down in front of his grand friends.’
I referred to Buster this demand for Irish whiskey on Maclintick’s part.
‘Irish?’ said Buster briskly. ‘I believe you’ve got us there. I can’t think why we shouldn’t have any in the cellar, because I rather like the stuff myself. Plenty of Scotch, of course. I expect they told you that. Wait here. I’ll go and make some investigations.’
‘Who is that kind and beautiful gentleman?’ asked Maclintick acidly, not showing the least gratitude at Buster’s prompt effort to satisfy his need for Irish whiskey. ‘Is he part of the management?’
‘Commander Foxe.’
‘I am no wiser.’
‘Our hostess’s husband.’
‘I thought she was married to Chandler. He is the man I always see her with at the ballet – if you can call him a man. I suppose I have shown my usual bad manners again. I ought never to have come to a place like this. Quite against my principles. All the same, I hope Baron Scarpia will unearth a drop of Irish. Must be an unenviable position to be married to a woman like his wife.’
His own matrimonial state seemed to me so greatly worse than Commander Foxe’s that I was surprised to find Maclintick deploring any other marriage whatever. Gossage – ‘that old witch’, as Chandler had called him – joined us before I could answer. He seemed to be enjoying the party, clasping together his fingers and agitating his hands up and down in the air.
‘What did you think of Moreland’s work, Maclintick?’ he asked. ‘A splendid affair, splendidly received. Simply wonderful. I rarely saw such enthusiasm. Didn’t you think so, Maclintick?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Maclintick, speaking with finality. ‘So far as reception was concerned, I thought it just missed being a disaster. The work itself was all right. I liked it.’
Gossage was not in the least put out by the acerbity of Maclintick’s disagreement. He stood on his toes, placing the tips of his fingers together in front of him like a wedge.
‘You judged that, did you, Maclintick?’ he said thoughtfully, as if a whole new panorama had been set in front of him. ‘You judged that. Well, perhaps there is something in what you say. All the same, I considered it a great personal triumph for Moreland, a great triumph.’