A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [44]
Again I was flattered at having my opinion asked upon such a subject; though I had to admit to myself that on the previous night I had been equally pleased when Stripling had, as it were, associated me with his projected baiting of Farebrother. Indeed, I could not help feeling, although the joke had missed fire, that I was not entirely absolved from the imputation of being in some degree guilty of having acted in collusion with Stripling on that occasion. I was conscious, therefore, unless I was to appear in my own eyes hopelessly double-dealing, that some evasive answer was required. Accordingly, although I had not much liked Stripling, I replied in vague terms, adding some questions about the relative success of his motor-racing.
“I don’t really understand the fellow,” Farebrother said. “I quite see he has his points. He has plenty of money. He quite often wins those races of his. But he always seems to me a bit too pleased with himself.”
“What was Babs’s first husband like?”
“Quite a different type,” said Farebrother, though without particularising.
He lowered his voice, just as he had done in the car, though we were still alone in the compartment.
“A rather curious thing happened when we got in from that dance last night,” he said. “As you know, I went straight up to my room. I started to undress, and then I thought I would just cast my eye over an article in The Economist that I had brought with me. I find my brain seems a bit clearer for that kind of thing late at night.”
He paused for a moment, and shook his head, suggesting much burning of midnight oil. Then he went on: “I thought I heard a good deal of passing backwards and forwards and what sounded like whispering in the passage. Well, one year when I stayed with the Templers they made me an apple-pie bed, and I thought something like that might be in the wind. I opened the door. Do you know what I saw?”
At this stage of the story I could not possibly admit that I knew what he had seen, so there was no alternative to denial, which 1 made by shaking my head, rather in Farebrother’s own manner. I had begun to feel a little uncomfortable.
“There was Stripling, marching down the passage holding a jerry in front of him as if he were taking part in some ceremony.”
I shook my head again; this time as if in plain disbelief. Farebrother was not prepared to let the subject drop. He said: “What could he have been doing?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“He was obviously very put out at my seeing him. I mean, what the hell could he have been doing?”
Farebrother leant forward, his elbows on his knees, confronting me with this question, as if he were an eminent counsel, and I in the witness box,
“Was it a joke?”
“That was what I thought at first; but he looked quite serious. Of course we are always hearing that his health is not good.”
I tried to make some non-committal suggestions that might throw light on what had happened.
“Coupled with the rest of his way of going on,” said Farebrother, “it made a bad impression.”
We passed on towards London. When we parted company Sunny Farebrother gave me one of his very open smiles, and said: “You must come and lunch with me one of these days. No good my offering you a lift as I’m heading Citywards.” He piled his luggage, bit by bit, on to a taxi; and passed out of my life for some twenty years.
*
3
BEING IN LOVE is a complicated matter; although anyone who is prepared to pretend that love is a simple, straightforward business is always in a strong position for making conquests. In general, things are apt to turn out unsatisfactorily for at least one of the parties concerned; and in due course only its most determined devotees remain unwilling to admit that an intimate and affectionate relationship is not necessarily a simple one: while such persistent enthusiasts have usually brought their own meaning of the word to something far different from what it conveys to most people in early life. At that period love