A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [77]
Members offered the ghost of a smile; but there could be no doubt of his uneasiness, as he tried to catch Sillery’s eye. However, Sillery, determined that his eye was not to be caught by Members, said: “The first year is a greaf period of discovery – and of self-discovery, too. What do you say, Vaalkiipaa? Can you find your way about yet?
“I make progress,” said Vaalkiipaa, unsmiling: to whom it was perhaps not clear whether Sillery’s question referred to discovery in the topographical sense or the more intimate interior examination with which Sillery had linked it. There was a silence, at the end of which Members put in, rather at random: “Sillers, it is too clever of you to buy a suit the same colour as your loose covers.”
Quiggin sat sourly on the extreme edge of the sofa, glancing round the room like a fierce little animal, trapped by naturalists. He had accepted a rock-bun from Sillery, and for some minutes this occupied most of his attention. Honthorst said: “They tell me the prospects for the college boat are pretty good, Professor Sillery.”
“Good,” said Sillery, making a deprecatory gesture in our direction to suggest his own unworthiness of this style of address. “Good. Very good.”
He said this with emphasis, though without in any way committing his opinion on the subject of current aquatics. It was evident that at present Quiggin was the guest who chiefly interested him. Stringham he must have regarded as already in his power because, although he smiled towards him in a friendly manner from time to time, he made no further effort to talk to him individually. Quiggin finished his rock-bun, closely watched by Sillery, picked some crumbs from his trousers, and from the carpet round him: afterwards throwing these carefully into the grate. Just as Quiggin had dealt with the last crumb, Members rose suddenly from the sofa and cast himself, with a startling bump, almost full length on the floor in front of the fireplace: exchanging in this manner his Boyhood-of-Raleigh posture for that of the Dying Gladiator. Sillery, whose back was turned, started violently, and Members pleaded: “You don’t mind, Sillers? I always lie on the floor.”
“I like my guests to feel at home, Mark,” said Sillery, recovering himself immediately, and playfully pinching the nape of Members’s neck between his finger and thumb, so that Members hunched his shoulders and squeaked shrilly.
“And you, Quiggin, are you happy?” Sillery asked.
Quiggin shook his head at the rock-buns, held out towards him once more; and, apparently taking the question to have a more general application than as a mere enquiry as to whether or not he wanted another cup of tea, or was comfortable sitting, as he was, at the springless end of the sofa, said in reply: “No, I’m not.” Sillery was enchanted with this answer.
“Not happy?” he said, as if he could not believe his ears.
“Never seem to get enough peace to get any work done,” said Quiggin. “Always somebody or other butting in.”
Sillery beamed, proffering the plate once more round the room, though without success. Quiggin, as if something , had been released within him, now began to enlarge on the matter of his own exasperation. He said: “All anyone here seems interested in is in messing about with some game or other, or joining some society or club, or sitting up all night drinking too much. I thought people came to the university to study, not to booze and gas all the time.”
“Very good, Quiggin, very good,” said Sillery. “You find we all fall woefully short of your own exacting standards – formed, no doubt, in a more austere tradition.”
He smiled and rubbed his hands, entranced. It even seemed that he might have been waiting for some such outburst on Quiggin’s part: and Quiggin himself somehow gave the air of having made the same speech on other occasions.
“What an extraordinary person,” said Members, under his breath, a remark probably audible only to myself, owing to the fact that the extreme lowness of the arm-chair in which I was sitting brought