A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [29]
“Stringham certainly seemed in bad form when she was there.”
“She led his father a dance, too.”
“Still, he need not join in all that if he doesn’t want to.”
“He will want to,” said Templer. “Take my word for it, he will soon disappear from sight so far as we are concerned.”
Armed, as I have said, with the knowledge of Stringham’s admission regarding his own views on Templer, I recognised that there must be some truth in this judgment of Stringham’s character; (though some of its implications – notably with regard to myself – I failed, rather naturally, to grasp at that period. That was the only occasion when I ever heard Templer speak seriously about Stringham, though he often used to refer to escapades in which they had shared, especially the incident of Le Bas’s arrest.
So far as Templer and I were concerned, nothing further had taken place regarding this affair, though Templer’s relations with Le Bas continued to be strained. Although so little involved personally in the episode, I found myself often thinking of it. Why, for example, should Stringham, singularly good-natured, have chosen to persecute Le Bas in this manner? Was it a matter for regret or congratulation: had it, indeed, any meaning at all? The circumstances revealed at once Stringham’s potential assurance, and the inadequacy of Le Bas’s defences. If Stringham had been brutal, Le Bas had been futile. In spite of his advocacy of the poem, Le Bas had not learned its lesson:
“And then we turn unwilling feet
And seek the world – so must it be –
We may not linger in the heat
Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea!”
He was known for a long time after as “Braddock alias Thorne,” especially among his colleagues, whose theory was that the hoaxer had recently left the school, and, while passing through the town, probably in a car, had decided to tease Le Bas. Certainly Stringham would never have been thought capable of such an enormity by any master who had ever come in contact with him. Not unnaturally, however, Le Bas’s tendency to feel that the world was against him was accentuated by an experience in many ways humiliating enough; and he persecuted Templer – or, at least, his activities in this direction were represented by Templer as persecution – more energetically than ever.
Finally Templer’s habitual carelessness gave Le Bas an opportunity to close the account. This conclusion was the result of Templer leaving his tobacco pouch – on which, characteristically, he had inscribed his initials – lying on the trunk of a tree somewhere among the fields where we had happened on Le Bas. Cobberton, scouting round that neighbourhood, had found the pouch, and passed it on to Le Bas. Nothing definite could be proved against Templer: not even the ownership of the half-filled tobacco pouch, though no one doubted it was his. However, Le Bas moved heaven and earth to be rid of Templer, eventually persuading the headmaster to the view that life would be easier for both of them if Templer left the school. In consequence, Peter’s father was persuaded to remove him a term earlier than previously intended. This pleased Templer himself, and did not unduly ruffle his father; who was reported to take the view that schools and universities were, in any case, waste of time and money: on the principle that an office was the place in which to learn the realities of life. And so I was left, as it seemed to me, alone.
Templer was not a great hand at letter-writing after his departure; though an occasional picture post-card used to arrive, stating his score at the local golf tournament, or saying that he was going to Holland to learn business methods. Before he left school, he had suggested several times that I should visit his home, always qualifying his account of the amusements there offered by a somewhat menacing picture of his father’s habitually cantankerous behaviour. I did not take these warnings about his father too seriously because of Templer’s tendency to impute bad temper to anyone placed in a position of authority in relation