A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [54]
Apart from his regret that Monsieur Örn was so hopelessly ill-equipped so far as chic was concerned – an opinion of which, I found, he made no secret, expounding the view freely to everyone in the house – Monsieur Lundquist seemed quite unaware of the vigour of Monsieur Örn’s disapproval of his own attitude towards the world, which both of them agreed to be characteristically Swedish; nor was he prepared to accept Monsieur Örn’s repeated assertions that he did not understand the Swedish language. Monsieur Lundquist, transgressing the rule of La Grenadière, whenever he found his French inadequate to make his meaning clear, would often make use of Swedish. Monsieur Örn would then listen, adjusting his firm features in such a way as to indicate utter failure to comprehend that such outlandish – or, perhaps it was, such affected – sounds could possibly have any meaning at all: even for Swedes. Monsieur Örn would finally make some remark in his notably individual French, evidently wholly irrelevant to the matter raised by Monsieur Lundquist. On such occasions Monsieur Lundquist would only smile, and shake his head, unable to credit Monsieur Örn’s unvarying and oppressive lack of chic.
In this circle, Widmerpool had made himself an accepted, if not specially popular, figure. There was no question here of his being looked upon by the rest of the community as the oddity he had been regarded at school. In the weeks that followed I came to know him pretty well. We talked French to each other at meals, and kept up some show of using French during expeditions: alone together – usually late in the evening, when the others had gone to their rooms, to devote themselves to study, or to rest – we used to speak English; although Widmerpool rarely did so without making some reference to the reluctance with which he diverged from the rule of the house. He used to work hard at the language all the rest of the time. In spite of inherent difficulty in making words sound like French, he had acquired a large vocabulary, and could carry on a conversation adequately, provided he could think of something to say; for I found that he had no interest in anything that could not be labelled as in some way important or improving, an approach to conversation that naturally limited its scope. His determination to learn French set an example from which I fell lamentably short. In his rigid application to the purpose for which he came to France, he was undoubtedly the most satisfactory of Madame Leroy’s boarders, even including the industrious Monsieur Örn, who never could get his genders right.
Like Monsieur Dubuisson, Widmerpool showed no enthusiasm for Paul-Marie’s jokes.
“That boy has a corrupt mind,” he said, not many days after I had been in the house. “Extraordinary for a child of that age. I cannot imagine what would happen to him at an English school.”
“He’s like Stringham as a small French boy.”
I said this without thinking at all deeply about the accuracy of the comparison. I did not, in fact, find in Paul-Marie any startling resemblance to Stringham, though some faint affinity must have existed between them, in so much that more than once I had thought of Stringham, when Paul-Marie had been engaged in one of his torrential outbursts of