A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [10]
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 grousing, silenced for the passage of time during which there had seemed hope of money changing hands, now began to rumble again like the buzz of distant traffic. As I returned slowly up the stairs, this sound of complaint sank to a low growling, punctuated with sharp clangs as the door was once more laboriously locked, bolted, and chained.
On the whole it could not be said that one felt better for Uncle Giles’s visit. He brought with him some fleeting suggestion, always welcome at school, of an outside world: though against this had to be weighed the disturbing impact of home-life in school surroundings: even home-life in its diminished and undomestic embodiment represented by my uncle. He was a relation: a being who had in him perhaps some of the same essence that went towards forming oneself as a separate entity. Would one’s adult days be spent in worrying about the Trust? What was he going to do at Reading? Did he manage to have quite a lot of fun, or did he live in perpetual hell? These were things to be considered. Some apology for his sudden appearance seemed owed to Stringham: after that, I might try to do some work to be dealt with over the week-end.
When I reached the door I heard a complaining voice raised inside the room. Listening for a moment, I recognised the tone as Le Bas’s. He was not best pleased. I went in. Le Bas had come to find Templer, and was now making a fuss about the cigarette smoke.
“Here is Jenkins, sir,” said Stringham. “He has just been seeing his uncle out of the house.”
He glanced across at me, putting on an expression to indicate that the ball was now at my foot. The room certainly smelt abominably of smoke when entered from the passage. Le Bas was evidently pretty angry.
He was a tall, untidy man, clean-shaven and bald with large rimless spectacles that gave him a curiously Teutonic appearance: like a German priest. Whenever he removed these spectacles he used to rub his eyes vigorously with the back of his hand, and, perhaps as a result of this habit, his eyelids looked chronically red and sore. On some occasions, especially when vexed, he had the habit of getting into unusual positions, stretching his legs far apart and putting his hands on his hips; or standing at