Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [102]
‘Now I remember what it was Widmerpool consulted me about. Some society he has organized to encourage good relations with one of the Balkan countries. Now which one? Simson was drowned. Torpedoed in a troopship.’
He mentioned Simson as another relevant fact, not at all as if he did not wish to be outdone in consciousness of widespread human dissolution in time of war.
‘What are you doing yourself, Jenkins?’
‘I’m writing a book on Burton – the Anatomy of Melancholy man.’
Le Bas took two or three seconds to absorb that statement, the aspects, good and bad, implied by such an activity. He had probably heard of Burton. He might easily know more about him than did Sillery. Dons were not necessarily better informed than schoolmasters. When at last he spoke, it was clear Le Bas did know about Burton. He was not wholly approving.
‘Rather a morbid subject.’
He had used just that epithet when he found me, as a schoolboy, reading St John Clarke’s Fields of Amaranth. He may have thought reading or writing books equally morbid, whatever the content. To be fair to Le Bas as a critic, Fields of Amaranth – if you were prepared to use the term critically at all – might reasonably be so described. I now agreed, even if on different grounds. The admission had to be made. Time had been on Le Bas’s side.
We were interrupted at this moment by a very small boy, who had come to stand close by where we were talking. It would be fairer to say we were inhibited by his presence, because no direct interruption took place. Dispelling about him an aura of immense, if not wholly convincing goodness, his intention was evidently to accost Le Bas in due course, at the same time ostentatiously to avoid any implication that he could be so lacking in good manners as to break into a conversation or attempt to overhear it. Le Bas, possibly not unwilling to seek dispensation from further talk about the past, distant or immediate, with all its uncomfortably realistic – Trapnel might prefer, naturalistic – undercurrents, turned in the boy’s direction.
‘What do you want?’
‘I can wait, sir.’
This assurance that his own hopes were wholly unimportant, that Youth was prepared to waste valuable time indefinitely while Age span out its senile conference, did not in the least impress Le Bas, too conversant with the ways of boys not to be for ever on his guard.
‘Can’t you find some book?’
‘Sir – the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.’
‘Brewer’s?’
‘I think so, sir.’
‘You’ve looked on the proper shelf?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Akworth, sir.
Le Bas rose.
‘It will be the worse for you, Akworth, if Brewer turns out to be on the proper shelf.’
I explained to Le Bas why I had come; that it was time to move on to my appointment.
‘Good, good. Excellent. I’m glad we had a – well, a chat. Most fortunate you reminded me of that society of Widmerpool’s. I don’t know why he should think I am specially interested in the Balkans – though now I come to think of it, Templer’s … makes a kind of link. You know, Jenkins, among my former pupils, I should never have guessed Widmerpool would have entered the House of Commons. Fettiplace-Jones, yes – he was another matter.’
Le Bas paused. He had immediately regretted this implied criticism of Widmerpool’s abilities.
‘Of course, they need all sorts and conditions of men to govern the country. Especially these days. Sad about those fellows who were killed. I sometimes think of the number of pupils of mine who lost their lives. Two wars. It adds up. Come along, Akworth.’
The boy smiled, conveying at once apology for disruption of our talk, and his own certainty that its termination must have come as a relief to me. As he hurried off towards one of the shelves, beside which he had piled up a heap of books, he gave the impression that quite a complicated intellectual programme for ragging Le Bas had been planned. Le Bas himself sighed.
‘Goodbye, Jenkins. I hope the school will have acquired a regular