Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [4]
Again Short allowed polite agreement to be inferred, without prejudice to official discretion, or additional evidence that might be subsequently revealed.
‘ But what mysterious mission brings you to our academic altars, Nick? We don’t even know what you are doing these days. Back writing those novels of yours? I expect so. I used to hear something of your activities when you were a gallant soldier looking after those foreign folk. You know what an interest I take in old friends. Leonard and I were just speaking of poor Prince Theodoric, who was once going to perform all sorts of benefits for us here, endow scholarships and whatnot. Donners-Brebner was to co-operate, Sir Magnus Donners having interests in those parts. Now, alas, the good Prince is in exile, Sir Magnus gathered to his fathers. The University will never see any of those lovely scholarships. But we must march with the times. There’s a new spirit abroad in Prince Thedoric’s country, and, whatever people may say, there’s no doubt about Marshal Stalin’s sincerity in desire for a good-neighbour policy, if the West allows it. What I wrote to The Times. Those Tolland relations of yours, Nick? That unsatisfactory boy Hugo, how is he?’
I dealt with these personal matters as expeditiously as possible, explaining my purpose in staying at the University.
‘Ah, Burton?’ said Sillery. ‘An interesting old gentleman, I’ve no doubt. Many years since I looked into the Anatomy.’
That was undoubtedly true. Sillery was not a great reader. He was also wholly uncurious about the byways of writing, indeed not very approving of writing at all, unless books likely to make a splash beyond mere literary consideration, of which there was no hope here. He abandoned the subject, satisfied apparently that the motive alleged was not designed to conceal some less pedestrian, more controversially viable activity, and the unexciting truth had been told. A pause in his talk, never an opportunity to be missed, offered a chance, the first one, of congratulating him on the peerage conferred in the most recent Honours List. Sillery yelled with laughter at such felicitations.
‘Ain’t it absurd?’ he shouted. ‘As you’ll have guessed, my dear Nick, I didn’t want the dratted thing at all. Not in the least. But it looked unmannerly to refuse. Doesn’t do to look unmannerly. Literal case of noblesse oblige. So there it is. A Peer of the Realm. Who’d have prophesied that for crude young Sillers, that happy-go-lucky little fellow, in the days of yore? It certainly gave some people here furiously to think. Ah, the envies and inhumanities of the human heart. You wouldn’t believe. I keep on telling the college servants to go easy with all that my-lording. Makes me feel as if I was acting in Shakespeare. They will have it, good chaps that they are. Fact is they seem positively to enjoy addressing their old friend in that majestic way, revel in it even. Strange but true. Genuinely glad to see old Sillers a lord. Ah, when you’re my age, dear men, you’ll know what an empty thing is worldly success and human ambition – but we mustn’t say that to an important person like Leonard, must we, Nick? And of course I don’t want to seem ungrateful to the staunch movement that ennobled me, of which I remain the most loyal of supporters. Indeed, we’ve just been talking of some of Labour’s young lions, for Leonard has forgone his former Liberal allegiances in favour of Mr Attlee and his merry men.’
‘Of course, as a civil servant, I’m strictly speaking neutral,’ said Short primly. ‘I was merely talking with Sillers of my present