Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [101]
‘I was in your house —’
Obviously it would be absurd to call him ‘sir’, yet that still obtruded as the only suitable form of address. What on earth else could he be called? Just ‘Le Bas’? Certainly he belonged to a generation which continued throughout a lifetime to use that excellently masculine invocation of surname, before an irresponsible bandying of first names smothered all subtleties of relationship, in any case, to call Le Bas by a christian name was unthinkable. What would it be, in effect, if so daring an apostrophe were contemplated? The initials had been L. L. Le B. – Lawrence Langton Le Bas, that was it. No one had ever been known to call him Lawrence, still less Langton. Among the other masters, some – his old enemy Cobberton, for example – used once in a way to hail him as ‘Le B.’ There was, after all, really no necessity to call him anything. Le Bas himself grew impatient at this procrastination.
‘What’s your name?’
I told him. That made things easier at once. Direct enquiry of that sort on the part of a former preceptor was much to be preferred to Sillery’s reckless guessing. Confessed ignorance on the point – as on most points – showed a saner attitude towards life. Le Bas had learnt that, if nothing else. He was probably older than Sillery, a few years the wrong side of eighty. Like Sillery, though in a different manner, he too looked well; leathery, saurian; dry as a bone. Taking off the second pair of spectacles, he again rubbed in the old accustomed fashion the deep, painfully inflamed sockets of the eyes. Then he resumed the earlier pair, or perhaps yet a third reserve.
‘What’s your generation, Jenkins?’
This was like coming up for sentence at the Last Judgment. I tried to remember, to speak more exactly, tried to decide how best to put the answer clearly to Le Bas.
‘Fetdplace-Jones was captain of the house when I arrived … my own lot… Stringham… Templer …’
Le Bas glared, as if in frank disbelief. Whether that was because the names conveyed nothing, or my own seemed not to belong amongst them, was only to be surmised. It looked as if he were about to accuse me of being an impostor, to be turned away from the Library forthwith. I lost my head, began to recite names at random as they came into my mind.
‘Simson … Fitzwith … Ghika … Brandreth … Maiden … Bischoffsheim … Whitney … Parkinson … Summers-Miller … Pyefinch … the Calthorpes … Widmerpool…’
At the last name Le Bas suddenly came to life.
‘Widmerpool?’
‘Widmerpool was a year or so senior to me.’
Le Bas seemed to forget that all we were trying to do was approximately to place my own age-group in his mind. He took one of several pens lying on the desk, examined it, chose another one, examined that, then wrote ‘Widmerpool’ on the blotting paper in front of him, drawing a circle round the name. This was an unexpected reaction. It seemed to have nothing whatever to do with myself. Le Bas now sunk into a state of near oblivion. Could it be a form of exorcism against pupils of his whom he had never much liked? Then he offered an explanation.
‘Widmerpool’s down here today. I met him in the street. We had a talk. He told me about a cause he’s interested in. That’s why I made a note. I shall have to try and remember what he said. He’s an MP now. What happened to the others?’
It was like answering enquiries after a match – ’Fettiplace-Jones was out first ball, sir’ …’Parkinson kicked a goal, sir’ … ‘Whitney got his colours, sir’. I tried to recollect some piece of information to be deemed of interest to Le Bas about the sort of boys of whom he could approve, but the only facts that came to mind were neither about these, nor cheerful.
‘Stringham died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.’
‘Yes, yes – so I heard.’
That awareness was unexpected.
‘Templer was killed on a secret operation.’
‘In the Balkans. Somebody told me. Very sad.’
Once more the cognition was unforeseen. Its acknowledgment was followed by Le Bas taking up the pen again. Underneath Widmerpool’s name he wrote ‘Balkans’, drew another circle