A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [17]
Le Bas at once looked less friendly. In any case it was an unwise remark to make and Templer managed to imply a kind of threat in the tone, probably the consequence in some degree of his perpetual war with Le Bas. As a result of this observation, Le Bas at once launched into a long, and wholly irrelevant, speech on the topic of his new scheme for the prevention of the theft of books from the slab in the hail: a favourite subject of his for wearing down resistance in members of his house. It was accordingly some time before we were at last able to escape from the field, and from Le Bas: who returned to his book of verse. Fortunately the pipe seemed to have extinguished itself during the latter period of Le Bas’s harangue; or perhaps its smell was absorbed by that of the gas-works, which, absent in the earlier afternoon, had now become apparent.
Behind the next hedge Templer took the pipe from his pocket and tapped it out against his heel.
“That was a near one,” he said. “I burnt my hand on that bloody pipe. Why on earth did you want to go on like that about poetry?”
“How Le Bas failed to notice the appalling stink from your pipe will always be a mystery,” Stringham said. “His olfactory sense must be deficient – probably adenoids. Why, therefore, did he make so much fuss about Jenkins’s uncle’s cigarette? It is an interesting question.”
“But Heraclitus, or whoever it was,” said Templer. “It was all so utterly unnecessary.”
“Heraclitus put him in a good temper,” said Stringham. “It was your threatening to jump on him that made the trouble.”
“It was your talking about Oscar Wilde.”
“Nonsense.”
“Anyway,” said Templer, “Le Bas has thoroughly spoiled my afternoon. Let’s go back.”
Stringham agreed, and we pursued a grassy path bordered with turnip fields. A short distance farther on, this track narrowed, and traversed a locality made up of allotments, dotted here and there with huts, or potting-sheds. Climbing a gate, we came out on to the road. There was a garage opposite with a shack beside it, in front of which stood some battered iron tables and chairs. A notice offered “Tea and Minerals.” It was a desolate spot. Stringham said: “We might just drop in here for a cooling drink.”
Templer and I at once protested against entering this uninviting booth, which had nothing whatever to recommend it outwardly. All shops were out-of-bounds on Sunday, and there was no apparent reason for running the risk of being caught in such a place; especially since Le Bas might easily decide to return to the house along this road. However, Stringham was so pressing that in the end we were persuaded to accompany him into the shack. The front room was empty. A girl in a grubby apron with untidy bobbed hair came in from the back, where a gramophone was playing:
“Everything is buzz-buzz now,
Everything is buzz, somehow:
You ring up on your buzzer,
And bozz with one anozzer,
Or, in other words, pow-wow.”
The girl moved towards us with reluctance. Stringham ordered ginger-beer. Templer said: “This place is too awful. Anyway, I loathe sweet drinks.”
We sat down at one of the iron tables, covered with a cloth marked with jagged brown stains. The record stopped: the needle continuing to scratch round and round its centre, revolving slower and slower, until at last the mechanism unwound itself and ceased to, operate. Stringham asked the girl if there was a telephone. She made some enquiries from an unseen person, still farther off than the gramophone, and an older woman’s voice joined in discussion of the matter. Then the girl came back and told Stringham he could use the telephone in the office of the garage, if he liked to come with her to the back of the building. Stringham disappeared with the girl. Templer said: “What on earth is happening? He can’t be trying to get off with that female.”
We drank our ginger-beer.
“What the hell is he up to?” said Templer again, after some minutes had passed. “I hope we don’t run into Le Bas coming out of here.”
We finished our drinks and Templer