A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [6]
“This is my uncle – Captain Jenkins.”
Checking the sausages with the paper-knife, Stringham said: “I’ll get another cup. You’ll have tea with us, won’t you?”
“Thank you, I never take tea,” said Uncle Giles. “People who eat tea waste half the afternoon. Never wanted to form the habit.” He added: “Of course, I’m not speaking of your sort of tea.”
He looked round at us, as if for sympathy, a bit uncertain as to whether or not this declaration expressed a justifiable attitude towards tea; unsure – and with good reason – if an assertion that he made efforts, however small, to avoid waste of time would prove easily credible, even in the company in which he now found himself. We borrowed a hard chair from next door, and he sat down, blowing his nose into a bandana handkerchief in a series of little grunts.
“Don’t let me keep you fellows from your sausages,” he said. “They will be getting cold. They look damned good to me.”
Neat, and still slightly military in appearance – though he had not held a commission for at least twenty years and “captain” was probably a more or less honorary rank, gazetted to him by himself and the better disposed of his relations – my father’s brother was now about fifty. His arrival that night made it clear that he had not emigrated: a suggestion put forward at one moment to explain his disappearance for a longer period than usual from public view. There had also been some rather uneasy family jokes regarding the possibility of his having overstepped the limits set by the law in the transaction of everyday business, some slip in financial dealings that might account for an involuntary absence from the scene; for Uncle Giles had been relegated by most of the people who knew him at all well to that limbo where nothing is expected of a person, and where more than usually outrageous actions are approached, at least conversationally, as if they constituted a series of practical jokes, more or less enjoyable, according to where responsibility for clearing up matters might fall. The curious thing about persons regarding whom society has taken this largely self-defensive measure is that the existence of the individual himself reaches a pitch when nothing he does can ever be accepted as serious. If he commits suicide, or murder, only the grotesque aspects of the event dominate the circumstances: on the whole, avoidance of such major issues being an integral part of such a condition. My uncle was a good example of the action of this law; though naturally I did not in those days see him with anything like this clearness of vision. If Reading were his destination, there could be no hint of immediate intention to leave the country: and, unless on ticket-of-leave, he was evidently under no sort of legal restraint. He finished blowing his nose, pushed the handkerchief back up his sleeve, and, using without facetious implication a then popular catchword, said: “How’s your father?”
“All right.”
“And your mother?”
“Very well.”
“Good,” said Uncle Giles, as if it were a relief to him personally that my parents were well, even when the rest of the world might feel differently on the same matter.
There was a pause. I asked how his own health had been, at which he laughed scornfully.
“Oh, me,” he said. “I’ve been about the same. Not growing any younger. Trouble with the old duodenal. I rather wanted to get hold of your father about signing some papers. Is he still in Paris? I suppose so.”
“That bit of the Conference is finished.”
“Where is he?”
“London.”
“On leave?”
“Yes.”
“The War Office haven’t decided where the