A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [11]
“Stringham appears to think that you can explain, Jenkins, why this room is full of smoke.”
“I am afraid my uncle came to see me, sir. He lit a cigarette without thinking.”
“Where is your uncle?”
“I have just been getting Cattle to let him out of the house.”
“How did he get in?”
“I think he came in at the front door, sir. I am not sure.”
I watched Stringham, from where he stood behind Le Bas, make a movement as of one climbing a rope, following these gestures with motions of his elbows to represent the beating of wings, both dumb-shows no doubt intended to demonstrate alternative methods of ingress possibly employed by Uncle Giles.
“But the door is locked.”
“I suppose he must have come in before Cattle shut the door, sir.”
“You both of you —” he turned towards Stringham to include him in the indictment “ – know perfectly well that visitors are not allowed to smoke in the house.”
He certainly made it sound a most horrible offence. Quite apart from all the bother that this was going to cause, I felt a twinge of regret that I had not managed to control Uncle Giles more effectively: insomuch that I had been brought up to regard any form of allowing him his head as a display of weakness on the part of his own family.
“Of course as soon as he was told, sir …”
“But why is there this smell?”
Le Bas spoke as if smoking were bad enough in all conscience: but that, if people must smoke, they might at least be expected to do so without the propagation of perceptible fumes. Stringham said: “I think the stub – the fag-end, sir – may have smouldered. It might have been a Turkish cigarette. I believe they have a rather stronger scent than Virginian.”
He looked round the room, and lifted a cushion from . one of the chairs, shaking his. head and sniffing. This was not the sort of conduct to improve a bad situation. Le Bas, although he disliked Templer, had never showed any special animus against Stringham or myself. Indeed Stringham was rather a favourite of his, because he was quick at knowing the sources of the quotations that Le Bas, when in a good temper, liked to make. However, like most schoolmasters, he was inclined to feel suspicious of all boys in his house as they grew older; not because he was in any sense an unfriendly man, though abrupt and reserved, but simply on account of the increased difficulty in handling the daily affairs of creatures who tended less and less to fit into a convenient and formalised framework: or, at least, a framework that was convenient to Le Bas because he himself had formalised it. That was how Le Bas’s attitude of mind appeared to me in later years. At the time of his complaint about Uncle Giles’s cigarette, he merely seemed to Stringham and myself a dangerous lunatic, to be humoured and outwitted.
“How am I to know that neither of you smoked too?” he said, sweeping aside the persistent denials that both of us immediately offered. “How can I possibly tell?”
He sounded at the same time angry and despairing. He said: “You must write a letter to your uncle, Jenkins, and ask him to give his word that neither of you smoked.”
“But I don’t know his address, sir. All I know is that he was on his way to Reading.”
“By car?”
“By train, I think, sir.”
“Nonsense, nonsense,” said Le Bas. “Not know your own uncle’s address? Get it from your parents if necessary. I shall make myself very objectionable to you both until I