The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [64]
‘Does he still wear a beard and take his people out running?’
‘Still got a beard,’ said Albert, ‘but he lives very quiet now. Not so young as he was, like the rest of us. Has a lot of meals in his room. Quite a bit of trouble, he is. I get worried about him now and then. So does the wife. Not too quick at settling the account. Then he does say some queer things. Not everyone in the hotel likes it. Of course, we have to have all sorts here. Can’t pick and choose. Dr Trelawney’s health ain’t all that good neither. Suffers terrible from asthma. Something awful. I get frightened when he’s got the fit on him.’
It was clear that Albert, too well-behaved to say so explicitly, would have been glad to eject Dr Trelawney from the Bellevue. That was not surprising. I longed to set eyes on the Doctor again. It would be a splendid story to tell Moreland, with whom I had been out of any close contact since we had stayed at the cottage.
‘Used my uncle to see much of Dr Trelawney?’
‘They’d pass the time of day,’ said Albert. ‘The lady knew both of them, of course. They’d sometimes all three go out together on the pier and such like. Captain Jenkins used to get riled with some of the Doctor’s talk about spirits and that. I’ve heard him say as much.’
‘Was the lady called Mrs Erdleigh?’ I asked.
Uncle Giles had once been suspected of being about to marry this fortune-telling friend of his. It was likely that she was the link between himself and Dr Trelawney.
‘That’s the name,’ said Albert. ‘Lives in the town here. Tells fortunes, so they say. Used to come here quite a lot. In fact, she rang up and offered to help after Captain Jenkins died, but I thought I’d better wait instructions. As it was, we just put all the clothing from the drawers tidy on the bed, so the things would be easy to pack. We haven’t touched the Gladstone bag. Captain Jenkins didn’t have much with him at the end. Kept most of his stuff in London, so I believe.’
Albert sniffed. He evidently held a low opinion of the Ufford.
‘I’ll just give you your uncle’s keys, sir,’ he said. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I must see the wife now. She takes on if I don’t keep her informed about veg. Those silly girls never bring her what she wants neither. One of them’s having time off, extra like, old Mrs Telford persuading her to go to an ambulance class or some such. I don’t know what the young women of today are about. Making sheep’s eyes most of the time, that’s what it comes to.’
He moved off laboriously to Mrs Creech’s sick-bed. I thought the best system would be to deal with Uncle Giles’s residue straight away, then dine. The news of Dr Trelawney’s installation at the Bellevue aroused a cloud of memories. That he had not passed into oblivion like so many others Albert had met was a tribute to the Doctor’s personality. Even he would have been forgotten, if Uncle Giles had not recalled him to mind. That was strange because, as a rule, where others were concerned, Uncle Giles’s memory was scarcely more retentive than Albert’s. I wondered what life would be like lived in this largely memoryless condition. Better? Worse? Not greatly different? It was an interesting question. The reappearance of Mrs Erdleigh was also a matter of note. This fairly well known clairvoyante (whom Lady Warminster had consulted in her day) had once ‘put out the cards’ for me at the Ufford, prophesying my love affair with Jean Duport, for a time occupying so much of my life, now like an episode in another existence. Later, characteristically, Uncle Giles had pretended never to have heard of Mrs Erdleigh. However, rumours persisted at a later date to the effect that they still saw each other. There must have been a reconciliation. I wondered whether she would turn up at the funeral, what had been her relations with Uncle Giles, what with Dr Trelawney.