A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [91]
“I hear you have been seeing something of Brother Quiggin,” he said to me.
“We met at one of Brightman’s lectures, Sillers.”
“You both go to Brightman’s lectures, do you?” said Sillery. “I hope they are being decently attended,”
“Moderate.”
“Mostly women, I fear.”
“A sprinkling of men.”
“I heard they were getting quite painfully empty. It’s a pity, because Brightman is such an able fellow. He won golden opinions as a young man,” said Sillery.
“But tell me, how do you find Brother Quiggin?”
I hardly knew what to say. However, Sillery seemed to require no answer. He said: “Brother Quiggin is an able young man, too. We must not forget that.”
Stringham did not seem much in the mood for Sillery. He moved away towards the window. A gramophone was playing in the rooms above. Outside, the weather was hot and rather stuffy.
“I hope my mother is not going to be really desperately late,” he said.
We waited. Sillery began to describe a walking tour he had once taken in Sicily with two friends, one of whom had risen to be Postmaster-General: the other, dead in his twenties, having shown promise of even higher things. He was in the middle of an anecdote about an amusing experience they had had with a German professor in a church at Syracuse, when there was a step on the stairs outside. Stringham went to the door, and out on to the landing. I heard him say: “Why, hallo, Tuffy. Only you?”
Miss Weedon’s reply was not audible within the room. She came in a moment later, looking much the same as when I had seen her in London. Stringham followed. “My mother is awfully sorry, Sillers, but she could not get away at the last moment,” he said. “Miss Weedon very sweetly motored all the way here, in order that we should not have a vacant place at the table.”
Sillery did not take this news at all well. There could be no doubt that he was deeply disappointed at Mrs. Foxe’s defection; and that he did not feel Miss Weedon to be, in any way, an adequate substitute for Stringham’s mother. We settled down to a meal that showed no outward prospect of being particularly enjoyable. Stringham himself did not appear in the least surprised at this miscarriage of plans. He was evidently pleased to see Miss Weedon, who, of the two of them, seemed the more worried that a discussion regarding Stringham’s future would have to be postponed. Sillery decided that the first step was to establish his own position in Miss Weedon’s eyes before, as he no doubt intended, exploring her own possibilities for exploitation.
“Salmon,” he remarked. “Always makes me think of Mr. Gladstone.”
“Have some, all the same,” said Stringham. “I hope it’s fresh.”
“Did you arrange all this lunch yourself?” asked Miss Weedon, before Sillery could proceed further with his story. “How wonderful of you. You know your mother was really distressed that she couldn’t come.”
“The boys were at choir-practice when I passed this way,” said Sillery, determined that he should enter the conversation on his own terms. “They were trying over that bit from The Messiah” – he hummed distantly, and beat time with his fork —” you know, those children’s voices made me mighty sad.”
“Charles used to have a nice voice, didn’t you?” said Miss Weedon: plainly more as a tribute to Stringham’s completeness of personality, rather than because the matter could be thought to be of any great musical interest.
“I really might have earned my living that way, if it hadn’t broken,” said Stringham. “I should especially have enjoyed singing in the street. Perhaps I shall come to it yet.”
“There’s been a terrible to-do about the way you earn your living,” said Miss Weedon. “Buster doesn’t at all like the idea of your living in London.”
Sillery showed interest in this remark, in spite of his evident dissatisfaction at the manner in which Miss Weedon treated him. He seemed unable to decide upon her precise status in the household: which was, indeed, one not easy to assess. It was equally hard to guess what she knew,