A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [25]
I told her that I had, unfortunately, to catch a train to the country.
“Oh, but that is too sad,” she said, seeming quite cast down. “Where are you making for?” I explained that the journey was to the west of England, where my father was on the staff of a Corps Headquarters. Thinking that the exigencies of army life might in all likelihood be unfamiliar to her, I added something about often finding myself in a place different from that in which I had spent previous holidays.
“I know all about the army,” she said. “My first husband was a soldier. That was ages ago, of course. Even apart from that we had a house on the Curragh, because he used to train his horses there – so that nothing about soldiering is a mystery to me.”
There was something curiously overpowering about her. Now she seemed to have attached the army to herself, like a piece of property rediscovered after lying for long years forgotten. Lord Warrington had, it appeared, commanded a cavalry brigade before he retired. She told stories of the Duke of Cambridge, and talked of Kitchener and his collection of china.
“Are you going to be a soldier too?” she asked.
“No.”
“I think Charles ought. Anyway for a time. But he doesn’t seem awfully keen.”
“No,” said Stringham, “he doesn’t.”
“But your father liked his time in the Grenadiers,” she insisted. “He always said it did him a lot of good.”
She looked so beseeching when she said this that Stringham burst out laughing; and I laughed too. Even Miss Weedon smiled at the notion that anything so transitory as service with the Grenadiers could ever have done Stringham’s father good. Stringham himself had seemed to be on the edge of one of his fits of depression; but now he cheered up for a time: though his mother seemed to exhaust his energies and subdue him. This was not surprising, considering the force of her personality, which perhaps explained some of Buster’s need for an elaborate mechanism of self-defence. Except this force, which had something unrestrained, almost alien, about it, she showed no sign whatever of her South African origin. It is true that I did not know what to expect as outward marks of such antecedents; though I had perhaps supposed that in some manner she would be less assimilated into the world in which she now lived. She said: “This is the last time you will see Charles until he comes back from Kenya.”
“We meet in the autumn.”
“I wish I wasn’t going,” Stringham said. “It really is the most desperate bore. Can’t I get out of it?”
“But, darling, you are sailing in two days’ time. I thought you wanted to go. And your father would be so disappointed.”
“Would he?”
His mother sighed. Stringham’s despondency, briefly postponed, was now once more in the ascendant. Miss Weedon said with emphasis: “But you will be back soon.”
Stringham did not answer; but he shot her a look almost of hatred. She was evidently used to rough treatment from him, because she appeared not at all put out by this, and rattled on about the letters she had been writing that morning. The look of disappointment she had shown earlier was to be attributed, perhaps, to her being still unaccustomed to having him at home again, with the kindness and cruelties his presence entailed for her. The meal proceeded. Miss Weedon and Mrs. Foxe became involved in a discussion as to whether or not the head-gardener at Glimber was selling the fruit for his own profit. Stringham and I talked of school affairs. The luncheon party – the whole house – was in an obscure way depressing. I had looked forward to coming there, but was quite glad when it was time to go.
“Write and tell me anything that may happen,” said Stringham, at the door. “Especially anything funny that Peter may do.”
I promised to report any of Templer’s outstanding adventures, and we arranged to meet in nine or ten months’ time.
“I shall long to come back to England,” Stringham said. “Not that I specially favour the idea of universities. Undergraduates all look so wizened, and suede shoes appear to be compulsory.”