A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [9]
This proposal certainly suggested an act to which, on the face of it, there appeared no valid objection; but my uncle, perhaps from force of habit, continued to approach the matter circumspectly. “It is just a question of the trustees,” he said once or twice; and he proceeded to embark on explanations that seemed to indicate that he had some idea of presenting through myself the latest case for the adjustment of his revenue: tacking on repayment of an ancient debt as a piece of live bait. Any reason that might have been advanced earlier for my becoming the medium in these negotiations, on the grounds that my father was still out of England, had been utterly demolished by the information that he was to be found in London. However, tenacity in certain directions – notably that of the Trust – was one of Uncle Giles’s characteristics. He was also habitually unwilling to believe that altered circumstances might affect any matter upon which he had already made up his mind. He therefore entered now upon a comprehensive account of the terms of the Trust, his own pecuniary embarrassment, the forbearance he had shown in the past – both to his relations and the world at large – and the reforms he suggested for the future.
“I’m not a great business expert,” he said, “I don’t claim to be a master brain of finance or anything of that sort. The only training I ever had was to be a soldier. We know how much use that is. All the same, I’ve had a bit of experience in my day. I’ve knocked about the world and roughed it. Perhaps I’m not quite so green as I look.”
Uncle Giles became almost truculent for a man with normally so quiet a manner when he said this; as if he expected that I was prepared to argue that he was indeed “green,” or, through some other similar failing, unsuited to run his own affairs. I felt, on the contrary, that in some ways it had to be admitted that he was unusually well equipped for looking after himself: in any case a subject I should not have taken upon myself to dispute with him. There was, therefore, nothing to do but agree to pass on anything he had to say. His mastery of the hard-luck story was of a kind never achieved by persons not wholly concentrated on themselves.
“Quand même,” he said at the end of a tremendous parade of facts and figures, “I suppose there is such a thing as family feeling?”
I mumbled.
“After all there was the Jenkins they fought the War of Jenkins’s Ear about.”
“Yes.”
“We are all descended from him.”
“Not directly.”
“Collaterally then.”
“It has never been proved, has it?”
“What I mean is that he has a relation and that should keep us together.”
“Well, our ancestor, Hannibal Jenkins, of Cwm Shenkin, paid the Hearth Tax in 1674 —”
Perhaps justifiably, Uncle Giles made a gesture as if to dismiss pedantry – and especially genealogical pedantry – in all its protean shapes: at the same time picking up his hat. He said: “All I mean is that just because I am a bit of a radical, it doesn’t mean that I believe tradition counts for nothing.”
“Of course not.”
“Don’t think that for a moment.”
“Not a bit.”
“Then you will put it to your father?”
“All right.”
“Can you get leave to walk with me as far as the station?”
“No.”
We set off together down the stairs, Uncle Giles continually stopping on the way to elaborate points omitted in his earlier argument. This was embarrassing, as other boys were hanging about the passages, and I tried, without success, to hurry him along. The front door was locked, and Cattle, the porter, had to be found to obtain the key. For a time we wandered about in a kind of no-man’s-land of laundry baskets and coke, until Cattle, more or less asleep, was at last discovered in the boot-room. A lumbering, disagreeable character, he unlocked the door under protest, letting into the house a cloud of fog. Uncle Giles reached the threshold and plunged his hand deep into his trouser, pocket as if in search of a coin: stood for what seemed an age sunk in reverie: thought better of an earlier impulse: and stepped briskly out into the mist with a curt “Good night to you.” He was instantly swallowed up in the gloom, and I was left standing on the steps with Cattle, whose grou