A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh [9]
know?" "Ben says so. Besides you've only got to look at his dung." "Oh dear," said Brenda, "what would nanny say if she heard you talking like that?" "How old are you?" "Twenty-five. How old are you?" "What do you do?" "Nothing much." "Well if I was you I'd do something and earn some money. Then you'd be able to hunt." "But I shouldn't be able to call people tarts." "I don't see any point in that anyway." Later in the nursery, while he was having supper, John said: "I think Mr. Beaver's a very silly man, don't you?" "I'm sure I don't know," said nanny. "I think he's the silliest man who's ever been here." "Comparisons are odious." "There just isn't anything nice about him. He's got a silly voice and a silly face, silly eyes and silly nose," John's voice fell into a liturgical sing-song, "silly feet and silly toes, silly head and silly clothes... "Now you eat up your supper," said nanny. That evening before dinner Tony came up behind Brenda as she sat at her dressing table and made a face over her shoulder in the glass. "I feel rather guilty about Beaver-going off and leaving you like that. You were heavenly to him." She said, "Oh it wasn't bad really. He's rather pathetic." Further down the passage Beaver examined his room with the care of an experienced guest. There was no reading lamp. The ink pot was dry. The fire had been lit but had gone out. The bathroom, he had already discovered, was a great distance away, up a flight of turret steps. He did not at all like the look or feel of the bed; the springs were broken in the centre and it creaked ominously when he lay down to try it. The return ticket, third class, had been eighteen shillings. Then there would be tips. Owing to Tony's feeling of guilt they had champagne for dinner, which neither he nor Brenda particularly liked. Nor, as it happened, did Beaver, but he was glad that it was there. It was decanted into a tall jug and was carried round the little table, between the three of them as a pledge of hospitality. Afterwards they drove into Pigstanton to the Picturedrome where there was a film Beaver had seen some months before. When they got back there was a grog tray and some sandwiches in the smoking room. They talked about the film but Beaver did not let on that he had seen it. Tony took him to the door of Sir Galahad. "I hope you sleep well." "I'm sure I shall." "D'you like to be called in the morning?" "May I ring?" "Certainly. Got everything you want?" "Yes thanks. Goodnight." "Goodnight." But when he got back he said, "You know, I feel awful about Beaver." "Oh Beaver's all right," said Brenda. But he was far from being comfortable and as he rolled patiently about the bed in quest of a position in which it was possible to go to sleep, he reflected that, since he had no intention of coming to the house again, he would give the butler nothing and only five shillings to the footman who was looking after him. Presently he adapted himself to the rugged topography of the mattress and dozed, fitfully, until morning. But the new day began dismally with the information that all the Sunday papers had already gone to her ladyship's room. Tony invariably wore a dark suit on Sundays and a stiff white collar. He went to church, where he sat in a large pitch pine pew, put in by his great-grandfather at the time of rebuilding the house, furnished with very high crimson hassocks and a fireplace, complete with iron grate and a little poker which his father used to rattle when any point in the sermon attracted his disapproval. Since his father's day a fire had not been laid there; Tony had it in mind to revive the practice next winter. On Christmas Day and Harvest Thanksgiving Tony read the lessons from the back of the brass eagle. When service was over he stood for a few minutes at the porch chatting affably with the vicar's sister and the people from the village. Then he returned home by a path across the fields which led to a side door in the walls garden; he visited the hot houses and picked himself a button-hole, stopped by the gardeners' cottages for a few words (the smell