The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [13]
No doubt Albert’s experience of a wider world gave him a certain breadth and generosity of view, not in the least sentimental, but founded on a fundamental belief in a traditional civilisation. Whether or not that was at the root of his conclusions, the argument became so heated that at last Billson, in tears, appealed to my mother. That was before the ‘ghost’ appeared to Billson. Indeed, it was the first serious indication of her highly-strung nerves. She explained how much it upset her to be forced to make decisions, repeated over and over again how she had never wanted to deal with the ‘young person from Dr Trelawney’s’. My mother, unwilling to be drawn into the controversy, gave judgment that dispensation of cake was ‘all right, if it did not happen too often’. There the matter rested. Even so, Billson had to retire to bed for a day. She felt distraught. In the same way, my mother’s ruling made no difference whatever to Bracey’s view of the matter; nor was Bracey to be moved by Albert’s emphasis on the undeniable staleness of the cake. It did not matter that Edith and Mrs Gullick supported my mother, or that Mercy did not care, since in her eyes donor and beneficiary were equally marked out for damnation. Bracey maintained his position. From this conflict, I lived to some extent apart, observing mainly through the eyes of Edith, a medium which left certain facts obscure. Getting Bracey alone was therefore an opportunity to learn more, even if an opportunity better disregarded. The fact was, I wanted to hear Bracey’s opinion from his own lips.
‘She didn’t ought to have done it,’ Bracey said.
‘But Albert thought it was all right.’
‘Course he thought it was all right. What’s it matter to him?’
‘Billson said the little boy was very grateful.’
Bracey did not even bother to comment on this last aspect of the transaction. He only sniffed, one of his habits when displeased. Billson’s statement must have struck him as beneath discussion. In fact that foolish question of mine came near to ruining the afternoon. The match ended. There was some ragged cheering. We passed once more across the barrack-square, from which prisoner and escort had withdrawn to some other sphere of penal activity. Bracey was silent all the way home. I knew instinctively that a ‘funny day’ – almost certainly provoked by myself – could not be far off. This presentiment proved correct. Total spleen was delayed, though stormily, until the following Friday, when a sequence of ‘funny days’ of the most gruelling kind took immediate shape. These endured for the best part of a week, causing much provocation to Albert, who used to complain that Bracey’s ‘funny days’ affected his own culinary powers, for example, in the mixing of mayonnaise, which – making mayonnaise being a tricky business – could well have been true.
Billson’s tactics to entrap Albert matrimonially no doubt took place to some considerable extent in his own imagination, but, as I have said, even Edith accepted the fact that there was a substratum of truth in his firm belief that ‘she had her eye on him