A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [7]
“No.”
My uncle looked put out at this piece of news. It was most unlikely, hardly conceivable, that he really intended to impose his company on my father, who had for many years discouraged close association with his brother, except when possessed with an occasional and uncontrollable desire to tell Uncle Giles to his face what he thought of him, a mood that rarely lasted more than thirty-six hours; by the end of which period of time the foredoomed inefficacy of any such contact made itself clear.
“In London, is he?” said Uncle Giles, wrinkling the dry, reddish skin at the sides of his nostrils, under which a web of small grey veins etched on his nose seemed to imply preliminary outlines for a game of noughts-and-crosses. He brought out a leather cigarette-case and – before I could prevent him – lighted a cigarette.
“Visitors are not really supposed to smoke here.”
“Oh, aren’t they?” said Uncle Giles. He looked very surprised. “Why not?”
“Well, if the place smells of smoke, you can’t tell if someone else smokes too.”
“Of course you can’t,” said Uncle Giles readily, blowing, outward a long jet of smoke. He seemed puzzled.
“Le Bas might think a boy had been smoking.”
“Who is Le Bas?”
“Our housemaster.”
How he had managed to find the house if he were ignorant of Le Bas’s identity was mysterious: even inexplicable. It was, however, in keeping with the way my uncle conducted his life that he should reach his destination without knowing the name of the goal. He continued to take small puffs at his cigarette.
“I see,” he said.
“Boys aren’t allowed to smoke.”
“Quite right. Stunts the growth. It is a great mistake to smoke before you are twenty-one.”
Uncle Giles straightened his back and squared his shoulders. One had the impression that he was well aware that young people of the day could scarcely attempt to compete with the rigorous standards that had governed his own youth. He shook his head and flicked some ash on to one of the dirty plates.
“It is a hundred to one Le Bas won’t come in,” said Stringham. “I should take a chance on it.”
“Take a chance on what?” Uncle Giles asked.
“On smoking.”
“You mean I really ought to put this out?”
“Don’t bother.”
“Most certainly I shall bother,” said Uncle Giles. “I should not dream of breaking a rule of that sort. Rules are made to be obeyed, however foolish they may sometimes seem. The question is where had I best put this, now that the regulation has been broken?”
By the time my uncle had decided to extinguish the cigarette on the sole of his shoe, and throw the butt into the fire, there was not much left of it. Stringham collected the ash, which had by now found its way into several receptacles, brushing all of this also into the cinders. For the rest of tea, Uncle Giles, who, for the time being at least, had evidently dismissed from his mind the question of discussing arrangements for meeting my father, discoursed, not very lucidly, on the possibility of a moratorium in connection with German reparations and the fall of the mark. Uncle Giles’s sympathies were with the Germans. “They work hard,” he said. “Therefore they have my respect.” Why he had suddenly turned up in this manner was not yet clear. When tea came to an end he muttered about wanting to discuss family matters, and, after saying good-bye – for my uncle, almost effusively – to Stringham, he followed me along the passage.
“Who was that?” he asked, when we were alone together.
As a rule Uncle Giles took not the slightest interest in anyone or anything except himself and his own affairs – indeed was by this time all but incapable of absorbing even the smallest particle of information about others, unless such information had some immediate bearing on his own case. I was therefore surprised when he listened with, a show of comparative attention to what I could tell him about Stringham’s family. When I had finished, he remarked:
“I used to meet his grandfather in Cape Town.”
“What was he doing there?”
“His mother’s father, that was. He made a huge fortune. Not a bad fellow. Knew all the right people