A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [48]
It was hard to guess how best to reply to this admonition. To say: “Out, Widmerpool,” would sound silly, even a trifle flippant; on the other hand, to answer in English would be to aggravate my incorrect employment of the language; and might at the same time give the appearance of trying to increase the temptation for Widmerpool to relapse into his native tongue, with which my arrival now threatened to compromise him. In spite of his insignificance at school, I still felt that he might possess claims to that kind of outward deference one would pay to the opinion of a boy higher up in the house, even when there was no other reason specially to respect his views. In any case the sensation of nausea from which I had once more begun to suffer seemed to be increasing in volume, adding to the difficulty of taking quick decisions in so complicated a question of the use of language. After a long pause, during which he appeared to be thinking things over, Widmerpool spoke again.
“It would probably be simpler,” he said, “if I showed you round first of all in English. Then we can talk French for the rest of the time you are here.”
“All right.”
“But tell me in the first place how you knew of La Grenadière?”
I explained about Commandant Leroy and my father. Widmerpool seemed disappointed at this answer. I added that my parents had thought the terms very reasonable. Widmerpool said: “My mother has always loved Touraine since she visited this country as a girl. And, of course, as you know, the best French is spoken in this part of France.”
I said I had heard a Frenchman question that opinion; but Widmerpool swept this doubt aside, and continued: “My mother was always determined that I should perfect my French among the chateaux of the Loire. She made inquiries and decided that Madame Leroy’s house was far the best of the several establishments for paying-guests that exist in the neighbourhood. Far the best.”
Widmerpool sounded quite challenging; and I agreed that I had always heard well of the Leroys and their house. However, he would not allow that there was much to be said for the Commandant: Madame, on the other hand, he much admired. He said: “I will take you round the garden first, and introduce you.”
“No, for Heaven’s sake – Madame Leroy has already done that.”
Widmerpool looked offended at this speech, and seemed uncertain what should be the next move. He temporised by asking: “What sort of a journey did you have?”
“Hot.”
“You look a bit green.”
“Let’s go into the house.”
“Did you have a change,” he said. “I came straight through by a clever piece of railway management on my part.”
“Where can I be sick?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where can I be sick?”
At length he understood; and soon after this, with many expressions of sympathy from Madame Leroy, and some practical help from Rosalie, who unbent considerably now that I was established as a member of the household – and an indisposed one – I retired to bed: lying for a long time in a state of coma, thinking about Widmerpool and the other people in the garden. The images of Jean Templer and Suzette hovered in the shadows of the room, until they merged into one person as sleep descended.
*
How all the inhabitants of La Grenadière were accommodated in a house of that size was a social and mathematical problem, so far as I was concerned, never satisfactorily elucidated during my stay there. I could only assume that there were more bedrooms than passage doors on the upper storeys, and that these rooms led one from another. The dining-room was on the left of the main entrance: the kitchen on the right. In the sunless and fetid segment between these two rooms, Rosalie presided during meals, eating her own portion from a console table that stood on one side of the hall, facing a massive buhl cabinet on the other: the glass doors of this cabinet revealed the ragged spines of a collection of paper-backed novels. This segregation in the hall symbolised Rosalie’s footing in the house, by imposing physical separation from her employers on the one hand, and, on the other, from Marthe, a girl of eighteen, showing signs of suffering from goitre, who did the cooking: and did it uncommonly well.
Two dogs – Charley and Bum – shared with Rosalie her pitchy vestibule: a state of pe