A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [55]
“You were rather a friend of Stringham’s, weren’t you?” he asked. “Of course I was a bit senior to know him. I liked the look of him on the whole. I should say he was an amusing fellow.”
For Widmerpool to imply that it was merely a matter of age that had prevented him from being on easy terms with Stringham struck me, at that time, as showing quite unjustifiable complacency regarding his own place in life. I still looked upon him as an ineffective person, rather a freak, who had no claim to consider himself as the equal of someone like Stringham who, obviously prepared to live dangerously, was not to be inhibited by the narrow bounds to which Widmerpool seemed by nature committed. It was partly for this reason that I said: “Do you remember the time when you saw Le Bas arrested?”
“An appalling thing to happen,” said Widmerpool. “I left soon after the incident. Was it ever cleared up how the mistake arose?”
“Stringham rang up the police and told them that Le Bas was the man they wanted to arrest,”
“What do you mean?”
“The criminal they were after looked rather like Le Bas. We had seen a picture of him outside the police-station.”
“But why —”
“As a hoax.”
“Stringham?”
“On the telephone – he said he was Le Bas himself.”
“I never heard anything like it,” said Widmerpool. “What an extraordinary thing to have done.”
He sounded so furious that I felt that some sort of apology was called for – in retrospect the episode certainly seemed less patently a matter for laughter, now that one was older and had left school – and I said: “Well, Le Bas was rather an ass.”
“I certainly did not approve of Le Bas, or of his methods of running a house,” said Widmerpool: and I remembered that Le Bas had particularly disliked him. “But to do a thing like that to his own housemaster … And the risk he ran. He might have been expelled. Were you concerned in this too, Jenkins?”
Widmerpool spoke so sternly that for a moment I thought he intended to sit down, there and then, and, in a belated effort to have justice done, report the whole matter in writing to Le Bas or the headmaster. I explained that personally I had had no share in the hoax, beyond having been out walking with Stringham at the time. Widmerpool said, with what I thought to be extraordinary fierceness: “Of course Stringham was thoroughly undisciplined. It came from having too much money.”
“I never noticed much money lying about.”
“Stringham may not have been given an abnormal amount himself,” said Widmerpool, irritably, “but his family are immensely wealthy. Glimber is a huge place. My mother and I went over it once on visiting day.”
“But he is not coming in to Glimber.”
I felt glad that I had been supplied by Templer with this piece of information.
“Of course he isn’t,’’ said Widmerpool, as if my reply had been little short of insulting. “But there are all his mother’s South African gold holdings. That divorce of hers was a very unfortunate affair for someone so well known.”
I should have liked to hear more of this last matter, but, Stringham being a friend of mine, I felt that it would be beneath my dignity to discuss his family affairs with someone who, like Widmerpool, knew of them only through hearsay. Later in life, I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one’s dignity, which can be an insuperable barrier against advancement in almost any direction. However, in those days, choice between dignity and unsatisfied curiosity, was less clear to me as a cruel decision that had to be made.
“And that thin, rather good-looking boy,” Widmerpool continued, “who used to be about a lot with you and Stringham?”
“Peter Templer.”
“Was he in the Le Bas affair too?”
“He was out for a walk with us on the same afternoon.”
“He did not have too good a reputation, did he?”
“Not too good.”
“That was my impression,” said Widmerpool. “That he was not a good influence in the house.”
“You and he were mixed up in the Akworth row, weren’t you?” I asked,