A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [36]
“You thought you could plant one on Peter?”
“If Peter has got any sense he’ll get one.”
“Why not tackle someone of your own size?”
“I’ll plant one on you, Jimmy, once you see it work,”
“I bet you don’t.”
“You get some collars then.”
The end of it was that both of them went off to their respective rooms, Stripling returning with a round leather collar-box; Farebrother with a machine that looked like a pair of horse-clippers made from wood. All this was accompanied with a great deal of jocularity on Stripling’s part. He came downstairs again first, and assured us that “Old Sunny’s leg was going to be well and truly pulled.” Babs and Lady McReith now began to show some interest in what was going on. They threw aside The Tatler and each put up her feet on the sofa. Farebrother stood in the centre of the room holding the wooden clippers. He said: “Now you give me one of your collars, Jimmy.”
The round leather box was opened, and a collar was inserted into the jaws of the machine. Farebrother closed the contraption forward along the edge of the collar. After proceeding about two inches, there was a ripping sound, and the collar tore. It was extracted with difficulty. Everyone roared with laughter.
“What did 1 say?” said Stripling.
“Sorry, Jimmy,” said Farebrother. “That collar must have been washed too often.”
“But it was practically new,” said Stripling. “You did it the wrong way.”
Stripling chose a collar, and himself ran the clippers along it. They slipped from his grip half-way down, so that the collar was caused to fold more or less diagonally.
“Your collars are a different shape from mine,” Farebrother said. “They don’t seem to have the same ‘give’ in them.”
Farebrother had another try, with results rather similar to his first attempt; and, after that, everyone insisted on making the experiment. The difficulty consisted in holding the instrument tight and, at the same time, running it straight. Babs and Lady McReith both crumpled their collars: Peter and I tore ours on the last inch or so of the run. Then Farebrother tried again, bringing off a perfect turn.
“There you are,” he said. “What could be better than that?”
However, as three collars were ruined and had to be thrown into the waste-paper basket, and three more had to be sent to the laundry, Stripling was not very pleased. Although the utility of Farebrother’s collar-turner had certainly been called into question, he evidently felt that to some extent the joke had been turned against him.
“It is something about your collars, old boy,” Farebrother repeated. “It is not at all easy to make the thing work on them. It might pay you in the long run to get a more expensive kind.”
“They are damned expensive as it is,” said Stripling. “Anyway, quite expensive enough to have been made hay of like this.”
However, everyone, including his wife, had laughed a great deal throughout the various efforts to make the machine work, so that, angry as he was, Stripling had to let the matter rest there. Farebrother, I think, felt that he had not provided a demonstration very satisfactory from the commercial point of view, so that his victory over Stripling was less complete on this account than it might otherwise have seemed. Soon after this he went upstairs, carrying the collar-turner with him, and saying that he had “work to do,” a remark that was received with a certain amount of facetious comment, which he answered by saying: “Ah, Jimmy, I’m not a rich man like you. I have to toil for my daily bread.”
Stripling was, no doubt, glad to see him go. He probably wanted time to recover from what he evidently looked upon as a serious defeat over the collars. Peter turned on the gramophone, and Stripling retired to the corner of the room with him, where while Stripling’s temper cooled they played some game with matches. It was soon after this that I made a decidedly interesting discovery about Lady McReith, who had begun to discuss dance steps with Babs, while I looked through some of the records that Peter had been arranging in piles. In order to illustrate some point she wanted to make about fox-trotting, Lady McReith suddenly jumped from the sofa, took my arm and, sliding it round her waist, danced a few steps. “Like this?” she said, turning her face towards Babs; and then, as she continued to cling to me, tracing the steps back ag