The Kindly Ones - Anthony Powell [68]
Uncle Giles’s acquisition of this book must have been one of the minor consequences of having Uranus in the Seventh House; that was the best that could be said for him. It reminded him perhaps of ladies like the garage proprietor’s widow, manicurist at Reading, once thought to be under consideration as his future wife; possibly it was used as a handbook in those far off, careless days. In any case, there was no reason to suppose Uncle Giles to have become more straitlaced as he grew older. I put the volume aside to reconsider. There was work to be done. The clothes were packed away at last in the suitcase, the papers spared from the waste-paper basket, returned to the Gladstone bag, the two pieces of luggage placed side by side to await removal. As Albert had remarked, Uncle Giles had not left much behind, even though further items would be found at the Ufford. By that time the gong had sounded for dinner.
I took the Sheik Nefzaoui’s treatise with me to the dining-room, which was fairly full, single white-haired ladies predominating, here and there an elderly couple. No doubt the seasons made little difference to the Bellevue, the bulk of its population living there all the year round, winter and summer, solstice to solstice. I was given a table in the corner, near the hatch through which food was thrust by Albert. The table next to mine was laid for one person. Upon it stood a half-consumed bottle of whisky, a room-number pencilled on the label. I wondered whether my neighbour would turn out to be Dr Trelawney. That would provide an excitement. I hoped, in any case, that I should catch a glimpse of the Doctor before leaving the hotel, contrive some anecdote over which Moreland and I could afterwards laugh. I had nearly finished my soup – which recalled only in a muted form Albert’s ancient skill – when a tall man, about my own age or a year or two older, entered the dining-room. He strode jauntily through the doorway, looking neither to the right nor left, making straight for the table with the whisky bottle. Hope vanished of enjoying near me Dr Trelawney’s mysterious presence. This man was thin, with fair to reddish hair, pink-faced, pale eyebrows raised in an aggressive expression, as if he would welcome a row at the least provocation. He wore a country suit, somehow rather too elegant for the Bellevue’s dining-room. I experienced that immediate awareness, which can descend all of a sudden like the sky becoming overcast, of the close proximity of a person I knew and did not like, someone who made me, at the same time, in some way morally uncomfortable. For a second, I thought this impression one of those sensations of dislike as difficult to rationalise as the contrasting feeling of sudden sympathy; a moment later realising that Bob Duport was sitting next to me, that there was excuse for this onset of tingling antipathy.
I had not set eyes on Duport since I was an undergraduate, since the night, in fact, when Templer had driven us all into the ditch in his new car. A whole sequence of memories and sensations, luxuriant, tender, painful, ludicrous, wearisome, rolled up, enveloping like a fog. Moreland, as I have said, liked talking of the variations of sexual jealousy, the different effect produced by men with whom a woman has been ‘shared’.
‘Some of them hardly matter at all,’ he had said. ‘Others you can’t even bear to think about. Very mention of their name poisons the whole relationship – the whole atmosphere. Again you get to like – almost to love – certain ones, husbands or cast-off lovers, I mean. You feel dreadfully sorry for them, at least, try to make their wives or ex-mistresses behave better to them. It becomes a matter of one’s own self-respect.’
Duport, so far as I was concerned, had been a case in point. I had once loved his wife, Jean, and, although I loved her no longer, our relationship had secreted this distasteful residue, an unalterable, if hidden, tie with her ex-husband. It was a kind of retribution. I might not like the way Duport behaved, either to Jean or towards the world in general, but what I had done had made him, at least in some small degree, part of my own life. I was bound to him throughout eternity. Moreover, I was, for the same reason, in no position to be censorious. I had undermined my own critical standing. Duport