A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [36]
I expressed the respect that I certainly felt for an appointment that brought opportunity to enjoy such encounters.
“It was a different world,” said Sunny Farebrother.
He spoke with more vehemence than usual; and I supposed that he intended to imply that hobnobbing with foreign statesmen was greatly preferable to touting for business from Peter’s father. I asked if the work was difficult.
“When they were kind enough to present me with an O.B.E. at the end of it,” said Farebrother, “I told them I should have to wear it on my backside because it was the only medal I had ever won by sitting in a chair.”
I did not know whether it was quite my place either to approve or to deprecate this unconventional hypothesis, daring in its disregard for authority (if “they” were superiors immediately responsible for the conferment of the award) and, at the same time, modest in its assessment of its expositor’s personal merits. Sunny Farebrother had the happy gift of suggesting by his manner that one had known him for a long time; and I began to wonder whether I had not, after all, been right in supposing that his nickname had been acquired from something more than having been named “Sunderland.” There was a suggestion of boyishness – the word “sunny” would certainly be applicable – about his frank manner; but in spite of this manifest desire to get along with everyone on their own terms, there was also something lonely and inaccessible about him. It seemed to me, equally, that I had not been so greatly mistaken in the high-flown estimate of his qualities that I had formed on first hearing his name, and of his distinguished record. However, before any pronouncement became necessary on the subject of the most appropriate region on which to distribute what I imagined to be his many decorations, his voice took on a more serious note, and he went on: “The Conference was, of course, a great change from the previous three and a half years, fighting backwards and forwards over the Somme and God knows where else – and fighting damned hard, too.”
Jimmy Stripling caught the word “Somme,” because his mouth twitched slightly, and he began chopping at a piece of pine-apple rind on his plate: though continuing to listen to his father-in-law’s diagnosis of the internal troubles of the Mercedes.
“Going up to the university?” Farebrother asked, “In October.”
“Take my advice,” he said. “Look about for a good business opening. Don’t be afraid of hard work. That was what I said to myself when the war was over – and here we are.”
He laughed; and I laughed too, though without knowing quite why anything should have been said to cause amusement. Farebrother had the knack, so it seemed to me, of making others feel that they were in some conspiracy with him; though clearly that was not how he was regarded by the Striplings. When Peter had asked the day before: “What do you think of old Sunny?” I had admitted that Farebrother had made a good impression as a man-of-the-world who was at the same time mild and well disposed: though I had not phrased my opinion quite in that way to Peter, in any case never greatly interested in the details of what people thought about each other. Peter had laughed even at the guarded amount of enthusiasm I had revealed.
“He is a downy old bird,” Peter said. “Is he very hard up?”
“I suppose he is doing just about as nicely in the City as anyone could reasonably expect.”
“I thought he looked a bit down at heel?”
“That is all part of Sunny’s line. You need not worry about him. I may be going into the same firm. He is a sort of distant relation, you know, through my mother’s family.”
“He and Jimmy Stripling don’t care for each other much, do they?”
“To tell the truth, we all pull Sunny’s leg when he comes down here,” said Peter. “He’ll stand anything because he likes picking my father’s brains, such as they are.” This picture of Sunny Farebrother did not at all agree with that which I